Tales From The Cloakroom

An anthology that I have had the privilege of contributing to (Tales From the Cloakroom) is going to be launching soon on Kickstarter!

This is an anthology from different writers attending the Scott Snyder Our Best Jackett writing course. It will feature an all-new story from me, as well as brand new material from a lot of different up-and-coming writers and artists. It won’t be any particular genre, but you can expect a particularly spooky story from me and from a few of the other contributors as well!

Check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cloakroom-comics/scott-snyder-presents-tales-from-the-cloakroom/

My 2019 Top 3 Albums

I’ve felt somewhat drained by music as of late. My own output has basically dropped to nothing and I spent quite a few months unable to actually listen to any, even if I didn’t create it myself. After a few months of basically just listening to 90’s Nu Metal, I found myself poking my head out the other side, ready for new stuff.

Here’s my top 3 albums of the year. Honorable mentions go to Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ “Ghosteen”, an emotionally harrowing listen, and to Soen’s “Lotus” for basically being a better Tool album than Tool themselves put out this year.

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#3 - Have A Nice Life - Sea Of Worry

Are we now in a world where a new Have A Nice Life album being fantastic is... kinda expected? While their debut, Deathconsciousness, is now considered to be a DIY music classic, and the follow-up, The Unnatural World, almost as much, their side projects such as Deadwing and Giles Corey are also looked at with similar reverence. HANL’s greatness is honestly in danger of becoming mundane at this point - the sun will rise, the birds will sing, Dan Barrett and Tim Macuga’s musical projects will impress.

Mixing musical elements of post punk, goth rock, heavy metal and ambient music with vocals that echo early midwest emo and screamo more than the goth pioneers they’re usually compared to, HANL captured the internet’s attention in an amazingly organic way that I haven’t seen replicated. The combination of mystery with openness and accessibility that half of the duo, Dan Barrett, has cultivated seems antithetical when described, but has the fact that this friendly SEO business-owner from Connecticut who frequently pops into internet discussions to share information about his projects and passion can somehow be the same occultist fear-merchant that wrote something as bleak as “Bloodhail” is part of the appeal of the band - the sorcerer next door, if you will.

Beginning with the epic “Sea of Worry”, which I previously covered at length in one of my newsletters, the album doesn’t dilly-dally, transitioning into the fantastic “Dracula Bells” before slowing down into the decidedly more electronic “Science Beat”. The electronics are relieving - while “Sea” is a great song, part of the appeal of HANL has been its lo-fi approach to electronics, and one of my worries was that they had abandoned that to follow the path of being a somewhat more traditional heavy post punk band. “Dracula Bells”, with its processed electronic beats, constant bass lines and almost Chris Isaak-y washed out guitar brings back a lot of the off-kilter combinations of influences and styles that made the first two albums so strong. 

Dancing between upbeat post punk like “Trespassers W” and more atmospheric pieces like “Destinos”, the rest of the album is quite a ride. The band have definitely benefited from a little more clarity in their recordings, while still understanding the power of their earlier distorted and compressed approach to production. This album managed to marry the two, offering a raw and organic take on their sound, while still somehow integrating the digital noise of their older work.

If there is one thing I feel that HANL may be missing now, which their earlier work had a great deal of, is the “extended universe”. Deathconsciousness was part of an album cycle along with Giles Corey’s self titled and Deconstructionist albums and Death Industrial side project Nahvalr’s self titled albums which explored the works of (probably fictional) philosopher Robert Voor. I feel that part of the draw of the earlier work was that you weren’t just hearing an album - you were experiencing an entire alternate world, where pieces of this philosophy and the ancient history it was based on were dotted around lyric books, essays included with albums and even in the tweets and blog posts of the creators. It felt like you were participating in this world as much as you were listening to it. Such things, unfortunately, are creatively draining and difficult to pull off for an extended period, so I can understand why they aren’t building mythology.

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#2: The Twilight Sad - IT WON/T BE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME

What can be said about Scotland's The Twilight Sad at this point that hasn't been said? Another band overlooked by press in general (although thanks to co-signs from peers such as Arab Strap, The Cure and We Were Promised Jetpacks they are not nearly as overlooked as Varaha) but deserving of a great deal more notoriety and fame.

This album finds The Twilight Sad dipping back into the "No One Will Ever Know" playbook, favoring heavy, distorted and detuned synths and cold motorik-style rhythms in their music again.

A reddit AMA with James, the band's singer, shed a little light on the concept behind the album. The typography and digital distortion in the artwork is utilized to represent lost and fading memories, which feels consistent with the murky and dense production style. While many indie rock bands seem to favor straightforward recording techniques, the Twilight Sad tend to layer heavily. Guitars, synths and possibly even vocal samples are placed on top of each other, generating unique sounds, and guitarist Andy MacFarlane Taylor's collection of pedals and effects (he has gone through many different setups over the years) offer a very chaotic take on the traditional shoegaze sound.

Famed for being quite obscure with his writing, and with a preference not to explain his lyrics when asked, singer James Graham made a significant effort this time around to write his lyrics as transparently as he could. Despite this, Graham's talent shines through, and songs such as "Shooting Dennis Hopper Shooting" and "VTr" offer as many intriguing and emotionally gripping turns of phrase as earlier favorites like "The Wrong Car" and "The Neighbors Can't Breathe".

The synth and keyboard work on the album, apparently a shared task of Andy MacFarlane and keyboardist Brendan Smith, really shine on this album. Even more than before, the band's sound hinges on these twisted and shaky melodies and tracks like the aforementioned "Shooting Dennis Hopper Shooting", "Sunday Day14" and "Aug/Maschine" really benefit from them.

All this being said, the real standout non-single  track on the album is "The Arbor", possibly the greatest goth rock song written by a non-goth rock band ever released.

With a tour supporting The Cure in the rearview and many high profile UK gigs coming up, I can only imagine more success is on the horizon for this band. I certainly hope so.

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#1 : Varaha - A Passage For Lost Years

Varaha are basically the platonic ideal of what I want from a metal band. Their sound is (and I say this without any negative connotation implied) melodramatic.

If I were to guess the Chicago-based group's influences, I would probably come up with Novembre, mid-era Katatonia, My Dying Bride and possibly some of the lesser known Gloom Metal bands like Rapture and Saturnus.

Beginning with the emotionally gripping "Severance", this album pulls the listener into a very dark and beautiful ride, and while this track and others, such as the Brave Murder Day-ish "My World and Yours" liberally use screams and death growls, these are used to punctuate the emotional crests of the album's songs, rather than as a constant.

One aspect of the album that I initially did not care for was the abundance of between-track instrumentals. It sees that between every two or so songs, there would be an instrumental piece that normally started with clean guitar and would incorporate a string section, a brass instrument, or both. After my second listen, this complaint went away. When I was able to appreciate the album as a whole work and not as just a collection of tracks, I started to notice how the instrumentals would echo pieces of the previous tracks, or preview pieces of upcoming ones. While I'm not sure if A Passage For Lost Years is a concept album, its usage of musical themes in this manner feels extremely solid and even if it is not thematically conceptual, it is emotionally consistent and cohesive.

Varaha have managed to put together something very special here. It's a shame that this seems to have been overlooked by the music press in general and by metal press especially. It's an ideal that all atmospheric metal should aspire to, and as close to a perfect album of this variety I can point to.

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