Today I put the light on a band that didn’t exist and too fast forgotten: Din (A) Tod and their awesome second album “Westwerk”.
Sold at this time by Out of Line as a band making old shool 80’s Coldwave with a modern 00’s feel. I guessed what it could be and I went to their website to listen some excerpt that convinced me.
I order the album and it was a blast. All was perfect in this album: Energy, Sound, modernity, voices, songs. An awesome disc that changed many things in Lyncelia early days.
The first song gives the tune, energy, synths, drum machines and coldwave guitars; but the second song “Westwerk” had my intentions with the drum soud (especially the snare one, I’m still searching for a snare like that) and the Cure / Joy Division simple bass part. The voice, low and sensual, told me how I had to sing in Lyncelia.
This album contains lots of good songs as “Glory in the highest” with its female and languorous voice for a song with lots of synths in a melancholic and gothic feel. A masterpiece I’m not fed up to listen.
They made a cover of Joy Division “Warsaw” in a good modern version but not as good as the original one. One of the last songs “Flames on clavary” is on of my favorite. A songs with lots of synths but what a song. Hypnotizing with these sounds enveloping me in a sonic balance with female voice and mid-tempo drum machine beating hard.
It’s a shame this band didn’t go further after this 2nd album. I was waiting for another one. Din (A) Tod could go further and become a great international band. But I understand, it’s hard to make a better album than “Westwerk”.
After the Gothic Metal of Theatre of Tragedy and Paradise Lost, today I come back on our pure Gothic influences with this other cult band Clan of Xymox and the album “Creatures” from 1998.
I discover this band around 2005-2006, some friend of mine told me to listen to this album.
I must say that the album start well with a really strong song, for me one of their best, “Jasmine and Rose”.
After a beautiful Piano intro, the tempo grow up on a drum beat almost coming from the 80’s with clear guitars on bass parts that still shakes all the Goth club dancefloors.
The melodic sense of Clan of Xymox on this album is really precise and know how to make great and simple melodies. The sound is also a great part of their talent, reminding the best of the 80’s while staying modern.
“Creature” will hypnotize you with subtle synthesizers arrangements, really present but discreet without drowning the mix in too much sound.
Other great song, “Consolation” is my favourite songs and defined, for me, what must be Gothic Music. Melancholic, desperate with strong emotions. Guitars in arpeggios, a clear bass, a drum with a great reverb and heartbreaking lyrics. That’s what must be Gothic Music, resonating all that is hidden deep in your soul.
The next song “Waterfront” plunge into obscurity with a mid-tempo song with strong lyrics. The synths are more distorted to oulined this plaintive voice.
For me, “Creatures” is the best of Gothic Music as powerful as The Sisters of Mercy. It was a big influence for Lyncelia and Clan of Xymox is one the bands I’ve most seen on stage. Even if they release, this last years less interesting albums, Clan of Xymox remains one the best Gothic bands ever.
Once again a cult album, even if I discovered Paradise Lost with another album (“Icon” in 1997 but I didn’t love it. I wasn’t prepared to love Paradise Lost at this time).
I must say that when “Draconian Times” came out, it makes some noise and it was justified cause it’s a great album. Even today, each Paradise Lost fan is upset when you say “Draconian Times”.
This album and this band were very important for me and Lyncelia cause my way of writing music changed just after I listened it.
I love how they write music with two distinctive guitar parts, each one must be with the other one. The lead parts aren’t guitar hero solos confirming that the guitarist is playing so fast but are melodic parts changing the songs. Take off this parts and the songs are melodically disfigured. That’s here that Paradise Lost is great. Gregor Mackintosch is a great Guitar player and composer, I never get bored to listen or to see on stage. All the melodies are ciseled and justified, not too much or less notes. All is perfect in a melancholic feel.
The first songs “Enchantment” and “Hallowed land” are Gothic-Metal masterpieces, even more Gothic than Metal, almost Gothic-Rock. but the better songs are after, “Forever Failure” is one of these.
A down tempo almost Doom, melancholic guitar notes, clean guitar arpeggios making my cry, a voice both powerful and soft and a final guitar lead ending this song in a gothic climax. This song is not going to go out of my mind.
I also find these feelings in the song “Jaded” that end the album on this track full of desperate melodies and clean hypnotizing aerial guitars. This song is perfect rarely reached. When I hear this song I must stop to listen it and plunge into it. I’m taken in this song emphasizing all that is deep hidden in my soul in a deafening sensorial vortex.
My favorite songs are the downtempo ones. A melancholic feel resonating in me, in my guts.
In 2005, this album comforts me to make a Gothic music project taking from The Cure, The Sisters of Mercy and Clan of Xymox coldwave and taking from the way that Paradise Lost and Theatre of Tragedy treats their guitars.
This blend was natural for me car it gathered all that I loved and all I wanted to do in a Gothic feel few years later with Lyncelia.
I remember the first time I listened to this album. It was several months after my entry in the Gothic Underground and I saw the name The Sisters of Mercy on each gothic party flyers in the list of music.
I was making my gothic culture to know it better, to feel it, to absorb it and at least to live it. I decided to download on the web this band’s albums for, at last, discover what was said a cult band according to all goth people (throughout the world).
I started by listening to the first one, “First & Last & Always” from 1985. The first song “Black Planet” didn’t impressed me, honestly it didn’t makes effects on me.
The second song “Walkaway” followed with its drum fill introduction, and it was a big blast!
The guitar sound, clear and powerful was perfect with the bass made me thrill. And the voice, what can we say about it? ultra low end voice giving a tragic side to their music.
The other songs followed up and I couldn’t escape my ears from these. “No time to cry” and its guitar riffs with chorus/Flanger effects, great sound entering in my head forever. In The Sisters of Mercy I found an echo to The Cure (at that time, Robert Smith got all my musical awareness).
“Marian” was my Goth music passion detonator, even today this song is still one of my favourite. I knew it in parties without knowing it was the Sisters. This song convinced me that I was listening to an album that will be important for me. A masterpiece.
Aerial guitars, powerful bass, a beating drum machine and a low end expressive voice. Both danceable, cold, dark but easy to listen.
After it, I knew that I wanted to play this kind of music. I was looking for a way to express all the melancholia I had deep down in me and The Sisters gave me the keys to this way.
I also found this feel in song “Nine While Nine” with its recognizable guitar riff (later inspiring me the main riff of “Persistence of Vision”).
Then the final song “Some Kind of Stranger” closing the album with a powerful song, all in melancholia and retained energy to explode at the end with the great voice of Andrew Eldritch.
End.
I didn’t know where I was, I experienced an intense thing that it was hard to came back.
From this, I bought their entire discography that I listened and listened again.
This band remains en exception, often imitated, never equaled.
Third article of this thread, today I talk about an album I do adore, this is “Aegis” from Theatre of Tragedy.
Important album cause this is with this one that I started to enter in the Gothic universe in 1998. At this time I only swear with Metal (and the Spice Girls!), I wasn’t fan of Gothic Music that my friends loved. It was too down-tempo or too repetitive until this album came out.
A friend of mine let me listen to this album. Without being convinced I put it on my cd desk. The album opens on the song “Cassandra”. From the very first note I’m hypnotized, the drum sound is awesome, clear and powerful (I love this Reverb), the piano very captivating and the 12 Strings guitars with arpeggios take me away. The singer comes with a low and clear voice that suits the music (the singer gave up with Metal grunts for a Sisters of Mercy like vocals).
Then on the middle of the song Liv Kristine starts to sing. And I’m blown away, lost in time and space.
Her clear voice with an extreme sweetness is so emotional, a real melancholy entering in my mind and soul to never came back out of it.
A mastered fragility, she reach each notes with a divine sweetness without failing. Her voice is crystal clear and perfect and she’ll never sing like that after this album.
From this day, Liv Kristine is one of my favourite female singer, her voice captivate me each time I listen to.
My work on adding female voices in Lyncelia came from that and I have the chance to have great singers in my family whose voices are like Liv Kristine’s one. I couldn’t dream better.
“Lorelei” with its upper tempo is a Gothic-Rock / Gothic-Metal Hit, they made the perfect synthesis of these 2 genres. Back on melancholic sensuality with the great “Angélique” with its acoustic guitars and arpeggios. Perfect match with “Aoede” and its 2 voices chorus. “Siren” and “Venus” make no doubt, Liv Kristine lead this album from start to end with her crystal clear voice.
All in this album is perfect, each notes are justified. Nothing unwanted, all is necessary. No demonstrations, just emotions. Male voice and female voice suits well in a perfect chord on Shakespearian Beauty lyrics with lots of old English.
This album is apart from their discography, their was a before in Doom-Metal and an after in Electro-Metal. They never managed to find this perfection and the feeling of this album more Gothic than Metal. A Masterpiece. Thank you Theatre of Tragedy.
Second article for this series of the most influent albums for Lyncelia, today I talk about this album that left nobody safe. It’s “Pornography” by The Cure released in 1982.
After using the old “Seventeen Seconds” cassette during summer 2003, I came back and go to the first record store to buy it as CD. This day, my father said “This album, I don’t know it, but I heard it’s a strong one” by pointing his finger on “Pornography”.
I came back with two CDs of this band I’m interested in.
My vision of music has changed with the famous “Seventeen seconds” but I didn’t know that my entire life was about to change so quickly when I put for the first time the album “Pornography” on my CD player.
I didn’t know what was about this album, nor foresee the thrashing beat I was about to have.
The CD player is closing and I press Play. And “One Hundred Years” sounds.
A strange beat of drum machine then guitars came with very dark chords playing on minor second (I better knew in Black Metal) threw me on the walls. I never heard this!
And the voice of Robert Smith, dark, powerful and desperate. Haunted with feelings I knew.
This song could speak about the entire album: Despair, uneasiness
Je ne savais pas du tout à quoi m’attendre, ni même envisagé l’énorme claque que j’allais prendre.
I never felt a so emotional power.
“A short term effect” start on more traditional thing for me, a simple drum beat, a rounding bass and guitars enhancing the voice. But there was a weird thing, something hidden. There is lots of dissonant guitars introducing some sickness to this song. It could be a pleasing song but now it became more difficult to hear with all these dissonances.
The album follows an ascension in despair with the song “Siamese Twins”. Down tempo song, hypnotising me at the first notes full of melacholia. How a melody could translate so well what I felt deep in me since few years. This melancholia blow me, at last I accept it.
Then comes for me the Climax of the album, its higher top in two words: “The Figurehead”.
After the melacholia of “Siamese Twins” we come on the despair of “The Figurehead”. For me, these two songs are unsplitable.
“The Figurehead” upset me the most. I will never be the same after this song. All is despair, the bass (sober and catchy), minor guitar chords, its cold and dark melody that fills my body and soul even today. The best song of the best album of The Cure, they’ll never do a better song, and NOBODY could never do better than this song.
Then follow the great “A strange day” and “Cold” that confirms that this album is a pure masterpiece for whom who have the strength to go down introspective obscurity risking to never come back.
I don’t really appreciate the song “Pornography” even if lots of person consider it as an apocalyptic ending, for me there is not the same strength as “The Figurehead”, “Siamese Twins” or “One Hundred Years”.
This album is a great album I still listen with the same pleasure.
From this first lestening, my life has completely changed, I go down the Gothic music Obscurity that push me inside the Gothic underground.
The Cure with “Pornography” gave me a different music that fits me perfectly.
At this time I was fed up with Metal Music and Metalheads, Gothic Music was a salvation, a fresh air. The Gothic Underground were a place where I could be myself with people like me.
I open this new serie of article on the album that directly or undirectly influenced Lyncelia.
I start with this one, “Seventeen Seconds” by The Cure.
The starting point is here, summer 2003, my father gives me an audio cassette saying “Hey, at last I found my old Cure cassette”. I didn’t know that my live was about to change.
It’s been 2 years that I played on stage with my previous Metal band with this cool The Cure shirt, it was in my drawer since the end of the 80’s. It was the property of my cousin deceased in 1988, I wore it in memory of him.
My father told me “I must find my Cure cassette to make you listen to”. I was interested cause I wanted to know what my cousin was into to get closer from his memory that haunts me.
Back to summer 2003,
I put this cassette in my walkman plugged in little portative speaker to listen to it in the shower. The intro “A Reflection” sounds, the chords both clear and mysterious have an interesting effect. Then comes “Play for today” with its up tempo. I don’t understand what I hear.
What music is it? What kind is it?
How could you make a fast and rock song with no distortion?
This is what stayed in my mind during few weeks. I listen again and again to try to understand something. It seems both simple to listen but hard to understand. As if the hermetism let foresee some lights behind.
The sound, both clear and aerials takes me higher on each listening. Since that, I always was in search of this sound.
I heard some melancholia hidden behind this pure naked sound and catchy gimmicks.
And the bass parts, never I could thought that bass could be so important. Coming from Metal, the bass is always on background.
I was still wondering what kind of music it could be. Is it Rock? Pop? Jazz?! Nothing of these, it’s another kind. Later I read that it’s ColdWave. What? Coldwhat? ColdWave? What’s this name coming from nowhere…
Wave for the new wave style, Cold for the sound. It’s coherent.
From this time my life is not the same, my meaning to the music has changed. My state of mind changed, I’ve found the soundtrack of my new life.
I’ll never fed up to listen to this album (even today after 15 years of listening). A song like “At night” makes me thrill each time, and say that melancholy is the quintessence of beauty and nothing and nobody could do better than this song.
After this summer, I came back home and the first thing I done was to go to the first record store to buy this album and this day my father told me “This album, I don’t know it, but it seems that its a very intense one” pointing on “Pornography”.
I came back with the 2 albums.
And again my life was about to change, but this time in the gothic obscurity of “Pornography”.
