City of Dark Angels

Mad Max Into the Thunderdome Edition

April 24, 2015
Left Field
87 Ludlow NYC

By Doktor John

Every 4th Friday, for about the past five years, promoter and prominent scene personality Archangel Santana puts on a dance-club event that is tied to what he calls “occult” movie themes, by which he means sci-fi, fantasy or horror. Last month it was “The Crow”. This night it was “Mad Max into the Thunderdome,” a recurring theme, but now partly in anticipation of the upcoming release of the remake of that famous cinema classic.
This night there was a Who’s Who of dark event personalities, starting with hosts Sir William Welles, of New Goth City website, and Gina Divine, the promoter’s wife. Statuesque beauty Miz Margo, a bi-coastal DJ, who is also famous for her position with NYC’s oddities boutique, Obscura Antiques, was present and had a special role to play. She announced and toasted her friend, one of the guest DJs, Hi-Fi Hillary for her birthday, and she distributed cake to those with an appetite for celebration.

Regular DJs Aengel and V Christ were joined by guest DJs Paradox and birthday girl, Hi-Fi Hillary to keep the upstairs lounge interesting and the downstairs dance floor moving with everything from 80s to Scandinavian EBM. Upstairs saw a live performance by full-throated vocalist Militia Vox, formerly of all-female tribute band Judas Priestess, who could have passed for Tina Turner not only by her outfit, but by the intensity of her performance. Attendees, but not all, in deference to the theme, donned dark, post-apocalyptic costumes and make-up, although there was no enforced dress-code. Downstairs saw both elaborately attired dancers and those in basic black rock the dance floor into the wee hours and imbibing from a well stocked and courteously manned bar.
A team called Post Apocalyptic Warlords was responsible for the staff’s thematic wardrobes. Colorful, sometimes full-face make-up, complicated headdresses and extensions of metal, rubber and leather were worn by the crew and by visitors. Archangel moved about with an extra head towering on an extension above the one that he was born with. Archangel’s policy is to maintain an open, friendly welcome, in order to serve as an attractive entry event for newcomers as well as those deeply committed to the New York nightlife and Goth music scene. At that, I would say, he definitely succeeds.

iVardensphere
Fables

Metropolis Records

By Doktor John

This tribal/industrial Canadian group, has been around since 2009. Having, regrettably, no prior exposure to their oeuvre, I was stunned by the varied richness and the grim appeal of this 14-track masterwork that respects no boundaries or genres as it free-forms each song and crosses through every electronic musical category.

The album opens with “Million Year Echo,” featuring a persistent EBM groove that is interrupted by odd, sci-fi imbued samples that seem to emerge from a desolate, post-apocalyptic soundscape. It is followed by “Stygian,” a 7-minute, plodding, whip-cracking zombie march overlaid with harsh, hoarse male vocals. Several tracks take the listener on a techno-industrial visit to the Middle East, complete with synthetic versions of Arabic instrumental accompaniment, sacred-sounding male vocals as well as sensuous, almost erotic female vocals. Synthetic versions of everything from the Australian aboriginal didgeridoo to bongo drums are present.

“A Tale of Two Wolves” is a techno-industrial track that renders it easy to imagine a pair of canine predators loping through the forest in single-minded pursuit. “Black Lodge,” the track that follows, is a slow-paced trudge through a nightmarish dystopia, narrated by a desperate and hostile speaker, while merciless mechanical noises pound out a cadence and are joined by a mournful male chorus. I particularly enjoyed “Papa Legbo” with its ominous “the natives are restless” beat and intermittent chants.

In addition, there are frenzied hand-drum ensembles; eerie female a capella singing; languid but delicious, acoustic guitar riffs; ominous vocal narratives; and echoes of various genres including Scandinavian darkwave, aggrotech and even a piece, “Terra Sapian” featuring ultra-fast-paced, “swing ” beats. The poignant “Girl With No Hands” is a pessimistic and frankly psychotic poem with groaning choral and emotionally delicious strings plus prominent percussion. In the eighth track, “It Is As Blackness Is” an eloquent lecturer recommends philosophical acceptance of “a new dark age,” as a relentless EBM groove suggests the relentless march of Time.

The album ends on an aquatic theme, “Poseidon,” featuring the seductive sirens’ call on vocals and electro-symphonic instrumental accompaniment The majority of tracks, if not all are eminently danceable. In fact, I dare any listener to sit still while hearing these infectious and hypnotic rhythms as I tried to do when writing this. Aptly named, “Fables” transports the listener into a fantasy realm of myths, seductive melodies and mesmerizing rhythms.

Rating; A
In a word: Bountiful

Jekyll & Hyde Times Square

Feb 15, 2015

New York, N Y

As far as Goth happenings go, there isn’t any topping the various events hosted by legendary impresario, Fr. Sebastiaan. From Berlin and Amsterdam to Miami, New Orleans and Paris, the notorious fang-maker (he prefers “fangmaster”) puts together the most memorable and entertaining balls and gatherings to be produced since the rise of this subculture so many years ago. This night’s Anti-Valentine’s Ball marked 20 years of progressively more proficient and increasingly entertaining “Endless Night” events he has produced for this community which includes Goths, counterculture devotees, self-identified vampyres (special meaning when spelled with a “y”), dark music aficionados, Steampunk, cosplay and history re-enactment enthusiasts.

What better venue in the greater New York area than the elaborately decorated and wildly fanciful restaurant/nightclub, Jekyll & Hyde in Manhattan’s theater district? The night prior to this major event saw the holding of a “pre-party” at the Lovecraft Bar NYC in lower Manhattan’s Alphabet City, with live entertainment by top DJs and the likes of operatic sorceress Ariel de Ment. Crooner Baron Misuraca also boosted his retro-lounge distinction with a live performance. I confess to have missed the opportunity to attend.

Most attendees came early for dinner at Jekyll & Hyde, to socialize with friends and make new acquaintances. The slick and creepy animated gimmicks, costumed staff and live actors of the restaurant provided a perfect run up to the ball itself, a ticketed event held in a dungeon-like chamber with eerie props abounding, a neat dance floor, raised DJ booth, a couple of side chambers and a bar.

The guests were dressed in dark and vampirish attire or adorned with fantastical costumes and make-up out of gothic and historic literature or cinema. One witnessed a reasonable facsimile of Vlad the Impaler, of Egyptian deities, and of New Romantic, Edwardian or Victorian villains gyrating on the dance floor to the darkwave sounds of DJ Eric Aengel or imbibing on the sidelines.

Fr. Sebastiaan himself addressed the crowd warmly, introduced his hard-working staff and thanked both them and the attendees for the historic success of the “Endless Night” series of events. He introduced talented and highly accomplished soprano Ariel De Ment, now a regular entertainer at his events, who sang an emotionally moving aria from the opera “Carmen” as she always does, with a mouthful of costume fangs. The contrast of bitter cold outside and festive camaraderie within suggested something like a theme from the writings of Edgar Allen Poe, and will have throngs of enthusiasts looking forward to the next such happening.

Cybertron at Santo’s Party House

Jan 31, 2015

By Doktor John

New York NY
Cybertron at Santo’s Party House
Jan 31, 2015

By Doktor John
New York NY
I’ve been to countless Goth-industrial music and social events in the past 25 years or so, and many hosted by Vampire Freaks, the online community and seller of Goth clothing and paraphernalia. I have hit all the events in the NY, NJ and Philadelphia area along these lines. I travel regularly to Germany and Poland for world-wide, like-themed events. I’ve also long admired the sound of Colorado-based electro-industrialists VAC. Nothing in my prior experience all these many and varied events could have prepared me or my similarly-experienced friends for the rude, crude and inexcusably inane experience this miserable Saturday in this incredibly uncomfortable lower Manhattan venue.

It was the coldest night on the coldest date in 2015. Vampire Freaks, the supposed hosts, as they are of many such club nights, announced that the starting time was — on short notice —postponed to 11 pm. All well and good. Pity those who came when doors officially opened at that time. The line of soon-to-be maltreated event-goers stood in freezing wind for up to an hour, while unsympathetic bouncers served as gate-keepers, letting in the slowest trickle of ticket-holders at an agonizingly glacial, and inexplicably slow rate. I was frozen, and I was wearing a full-length leather coat over a series of layers that even included a leather vest and heavy-duty cargo pants. Woe for the scantily-clad goth-chicks, whose fishnet tights and bikini bottoms offered considerably less in the way of protection. They stood in that line, most of them, for over an hour, adjacent to frigid buildings and on icy sidewalks while the 19ºF and 30 mph wind whipped us all until well past midnight.

Wait! That’s not the worst of it. Our bouncer, whom we all know wasn’t responsible for the incompetence of the management or the decree about to be announced —while stopping to check the I.D.s of everyone on line (including gray-bearded oldsters)— informed each of the outrageous and purely gratuitous policy of “Mandatory Coat Check!” What in the world was that about? Just to squeeze another $4 out of each patron?! The effect it had was to then create another tedious and obnoxious line inside the venue where we were commanded to remove our outerwear (for many, this was part of their Vampire Freaks-acquired fashion-statement) for no good reason, made to pay $4 per item, under signs that warned that gloves, hats and scarves would not be allowed in pockets or sleeves, but had to be checked, each a separate item, by a single, overwhelmed and overworked coat check girl!

Wait! That’s still not the worst of it! This night we were forced not into the club, but into the downstairs basement, the low-ceiling, painfully cramped and overcrowded cellar where there was neither room to move, to reach the bar nor to get a decent view of the performers, who after all, had started playing long before the throngs of spectators had even gotten into the building and certainly before they had cleared the coat-check regimen. It’s well that the bar was hard to reach. Straight drinks went for upwards of $12 and $13.

Openers Mindless Faith played their version of industrial. DJ Sean Templar spun some dance tracks, but there was no room at all to dance. VAC, who sounded a lot better on disc and at better venues, blasted their set, some of which was with the accompaniment of a gorgeous, platinum blond female vocalist. Fans knew her as Donna from Ego Likeness.

If I hadn’t paid for the tickets in advance, I would have left the outdoor line after an hour in the cold. As it was, cramped into a dark hovel, unable to see each other or converse with fellow-victims, we pulled out in the middle of VAC’s second or third set, and after frontman Erickson’s angry, if stereotypical tirade which included, laughably, a denunciation of “Bush.” It came across as smug, politically-correct and way out of date.

Santo’s Party House basically screwed all three victims: VAC, Vampire Freaks and the audience!

Exhibition Opening
Morbid Anatomy Museum

Brooklyn NY

A wine and cheese party was held at this uniquely eccentric Brooklyn museum to celebrate the opening of a new, mind-boggling exhibition, called The Collector’s Cabinet, the second at this institution since its opening last June.

The festivities began when curator and co-founder Joanna Ebenstein introduced the exhibitors, each a collector of oddly interesting items, and invited them to expound upon the items in their own display assemblage.

Antique dealers, eccentrics and hoarders of unusual artworks plus a few medical professionals made up the list of contributors.

The range of things on display was eclectic to say the least, and included painted wooden religious figures, dental models representing the wide range of shapes of human teeth, séance props, a disarticulated skeleton and historic anatomical charts.

One wall was covered with an artistically-cheesy, carnival-type tent banner for a magician. Large glass cases in the middle of the room contained taxidermy specimens of squirrels dressed and posed in anthropomorphic situations: patrons imbibing at a bar and bikini clad, topless exotic dancers.

A pair of candlesticks was unique in that it was composed of actual, preserved baboon forearms. One wall display was a ViewMaster-like, 3-D, back-lit viewer with images of 19th century French miniature, sculpted diabolical tableaux. On display also was a series of cute little paired terra-cotta figurines of Death leading medieval characters to their doom, examples of what is called Danse Macabre or Totentanz.

One by one, each collector spoke briefly about the history and significance of the item or the array that they had lent to the Museum for this show. Art historians, antique enthusiasts and lovers of the off-beat crowded around and took obvious delight at each station.

Among the luminaries to present was Evan Michelson, co-star of TV’s long-running series, “Oddities” and co-owner of the NYC antiques boutique, “Obscura.” She demonstrated a pair of primitive artificial arms that once belonged to an unfortunate railway brake-man who lost his own arms in a terrible accident, but resumed his railroad career with these wooden replacements!

The several taxidermy specimens included a kitten born with two faces, a two-faced calf-head, plus a seven-legged, two-bodied piglet.

Morbid Anatomy Museum co-founder and board chair Tracy Hurley Martin loaned one of the more serious and prestigious of the antiquities, a leather-bound first edition of the 18th Century Kuper-Bibel (Copper Bible), a compendium of art, mysticism, religion and science, containing exquisite copper engravings of cosmography, paleontology, zoology, botany and anatomy. This volume, along with various unclassifiable curiosities, articles of religious iconography, and tame, antiquated erotic images comprises representative sampling of the diverse spectrum of objects that embody the spirit of this museum of the forgotten but truly fascinating.

Rise Again

Metropolis Records
By Doktor John

Stabbing Westward’s lead vocalist Christopher Hall and programmer/keyboardist Walter Flakus have been reinventing themselves as The Dreaming since the demise of the parent band in 2002. Three EP releases, a video, a track for the movie “Elektra” and live performances on the West Coast have kept them busy since the band’s inception. Joined by former SW drummer Johnny Haro, plus a bass and a guitarist, “Rise Again” is clearly a resurrection of the immensely popular Stabbing Westward style.

The newest CD, “Rise Again” is scheduled for release this coming February and captures all the intensity and ecstatic bombast of the original band.

Consisting of 10 tracks, “Rise Again” is characterized by Hall’s extraordinary tenor vocals, full of intensity and defiance, accompanied by bombastic, symphonic metal.

The titles and the lyrics are profound and penetrating, mostly probing harsh, even painful emotions. The third track asks, “Why do all your kisses taste like death?” The fifth track aggressively asserts, “I will not be afraid anymore” as a kind of self-assuring mantra. I think you get the idea.

From the first track, “Alone” with its galloping cadence and accusatory tone, to the final and title track, “Rise Again,” every track has a delicious, melodious hook and a restless, hypnotic groove. Angry, belching guitars are woven into fast-paced electronic rhythms that will have industrial dancers in a frenzy on the dance floors or fervently bobbing their heads on the sidelines. For those who loved and sorely miss the now-defunct Stabbing Westward, this revival of that sound is more than welcome.
Rating: A+

The Birthday Massacre
“Superstition”

Metropolis Records

By Doktor John

This ten-track release by Canadian Goth-rock sextet The Birthday Massacre represents their sixth studio album. It lives up to the hopes of those who have come to expect gorgeous, dark-themed female vocals by lead singer Chibi, delicious minor-key melodies and symphonic elements realized through heavy, down-tuned bass and guitar as well as synthetic accompaniment.

From the opening track —“Divide” with Chibi’s ultra-sweet vocals and menacing, drone-like bass background — to the all-instrumental concluding track, “Trinity,” the theme is dreamy, hallucinatory and ethereal. Occasional hissing, menacing male spoken word interjections are set against her luscious singing. The flow is generally upbeat, with a few ventures into more complex, syncopated rhythms., The title track “Superstition” slows the tempo down to a pace that is just shy of depressing, giving the entire ensemble a chance to be heard and for soloists to sound off alongside a blend of synthetic effects.

Fans and newcomers to The Birthday Massacre will enjoy poetic narratives, the seductive if somewhat vampiric propositions, the allegorical portrayals of such phenomena as the ocean, rain, the so-called coming of age and the mysterious “other side.” Above all, they will find themselves drawn into succulent melodies and mesmerizing rhythms that have been the signature sound of this band from their earliest appearance on the dark-music scene.

The Sedona Effect

The Knitting Factory
Aug 23, 2014
By Doktor john
Brooklyn, NY

Inspired by the gritty extremes of her new digs in New York, singer/actress Kai Irina Hahn brought her EBM band to the Knitting Factory for its debut performance.

First up band Thorazine Unicorn, a very attractive and talented group consists of a vocalist, guitar, bass and drums, but sounds like a lot more, with an industrial Sci-Fi sound, that comes across better on its studio-produced CD than the Knitting Factory’s speaker system. But they looked so good, I think I prefer the live performance.

Opening for Sedona was a very respectable classic-rock-meets-Goth group calling itself The Flies Are Out for Blood, that re-animated the spirit of the Doors with dark, poetic vocals, accompanied by crunching riffs and acid-laced melodies. I would compare them with Gene Loves Jezebel, but without implying anything imitative or lacking in originality.
Around 1:00 am, matching the rhythm of the new hit single, “Cross the Line,” (the video release of which was reviewed in the April 16 2014 issue of The Aq) Kai strutted on stage in the embrace of her full-grown male boa constrictor, Loki. A positively hypnotic, complex, EBM groove made the entire room of spectators sway rhythmically while Kai’s imperative to “Cross this line” was delivered in a distorted, sinister hiss. This was followed by their new single “Evolve Devolve,” featuring a spacey, soundtrack and epic drums. For this, second song, Kai dropped all distortion effects and sang in full, melodious voice. Unfortunately, this track hasn’t made it to the recording studio yet. On the next number, Kai began in full voice, but returned to distorted, breathy vocals, totally apt for the lyrics of the rapidly paced “I Burn.”

After another, this time, bass-driven song, Kai broke for a modest costume change. Wait. Did I say “modest?” Dressed in a red bikini top, corset, tutu and knee-high, multi-buckle, patent leather, giant platform, high-heel, boots, Kai’s costume change consisted of replacing Loki the snake, snuggled like a shawl around Kai’s neck and shoulders, for a tall, fan-like (or perhaps batwing-like) collar rising up behind her neck.

She now manned the keyboard —set on strings — and sang another new song, full-throated, “Between Now and Tomorrow” ending violently, high-pitched and seemingly out of control. The set ended with the notorious Billie Holiday standard “Gloomy Sunday,” performed in anything but standard style. Slowed to a crawl, and with ultra deep droning and deranged-piano arpeggios, Kai growled out the suicidal lyrics in the dramatic style reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich. The crowd screamed for more and forced an encore to be repeated from the preceding set and off their EP, “Cross the Line,” before lining up to buy a copy.

Recently transplanted from London where she honed her vocal skills on German art songs, classically trained lyric soprano Kai has pulled together a small group of musicians to found an Electro Dark Wave band with a very appealing, hybrid sound. The Sedona Effect —every bit a performance art project as it is an EBM band —made a spectacular debut, which should contribute to their rapidly growing fame in the metropolitan area, and allow multitalented, front Kai to establish herself as a kind of Nina Hagen meets Billie Holiday.

Album

TVMALSV

Band
Cocksure

Metropolis

By Doktor John

Lovers of old-school industrial who are waiting for a modern, novel reinterpretation of their genre will find TVMALSV by the irreverent band, Cocksure, to be right up their proverbial alley. Brainchild of Chris Connelly (KMFDM, Ministry, Pigface, Revolting Cocks) and Jason Novak (Cracknation and Czar) with guest appearance by Richard 23 (Front 242), this nine-track album contains all the elements they are listening for and more.

From the first cut, “Skeemy Gates,” to the pseudo-reggae finale, “Cokane in My Brain,” listeners are served up a techno-industrial slurry of mesmerizing rhythms and distorted vocals serving up cheerfully aggressive rap at various cadences in a matrix of organized, sonic chaos.

Echoes of the ancestor bands appeal to and entice the fans of Ministry, Front 242 and especially Revco, but Cocksure takes the audience a couple of steps further with a harsh, industrial-strength version of the rap style associated with hip-hop. Nasty topics, hoarse and rapid-fire vocals are suitably wedded to relentless mechanical beats and occasionally melodious background noise.

Dictionary.com defines “cocksure” as “overconfident.” The Urban Dictionary offers a more vulgar definition. I’m sure Connelly and Novak self-identify with both.