Between Wine and Blood by New Model Army
30 years have elapsed since the release of New Model Army’s debut album “Vengeance”, yet this unrivalled band from Bradford seems definitely embarked on its second youth. In 2013, “Between Dog and Wolf” already marked a before and after in New Model Army’s career, having drawn both popular and critical acclaim to the point of being the band’s best-selling album in decades, as well as reaching...
Visionaers by Aeon Sable (2014)
In these times, saying that a group innovates in Gothic Rock music seems a true display of audacity. However, there is a Germany-based band who has committed to revamp this style since its debut four years ago. Without losing sight of the pioneers, these German/Portuguese musicians create songs that rekindle in us deeply felt and somber memories. On the basis of emotionally loaded vocals and a deliberate guitar-switched driving,...
Haunted Summer by The Devil & The Universe (2014)
In 1816, Lord Byron invited a group of youthful art-lovers to spend an idyllic summer in his Geneva’s lakeside mansion: the famed Villa Diodati. Included in that exceptional guest list were the literary couple Percy and Mary Shelley, Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont and the physician John William Polidori – two women in their teens and three men in their twenties, afire with rebellion and revelry. To avoid the...
Meteora VII by Merciful Nuns (2014)
For Pythagoras, seven was a cosmic number: the sum of three (perfect triangle, divinity) and four (harmonious square, earthly elements), a bridge between heaven and earth. “Meteora” is precisely number seven on the Merciful Nuns’ list of full-length albums and, furthermore, it’s lyrically located “at the event horizon between this world and the beyond” – in Artaud’s own words. Still in...
What I Don’t See by Saigon Blue Rain – 2014
“What I don’t see” is the debut full-length album by the French duo Saigon Blue Rain (formerly known as Stupid Bitch Reject) and, as its title already implies, it somehow serves well as a soundtrack to the feeling that every intangible thing around – and even within us – is meaningful, wether it’s sublime or miserable. Such is the emotional grandeur with which Ophélie and Franck have impregnated...
The Mission – At War with Gods by Alex Daniele
AT WAR WITH THE GODS tells the story of the first 25 years of The Mission, from the speed-fuelled beginnings in Leeds to the tour which in 2011 saw the band reform and tread the boards of some of the most important venues in the world once again. During the 1980s, in a music landscape that was learning to build new trends from the rubble left by the punk storm, The United Kingdom confirmed its role as an inexhaustible source of...