By the time Chameleon came out, Atlanta’s Hollyfaith was one of the most beloved acts on the Southern touring circuit, thanks to gritty, oversized guitar riffs, hyperactive rhythms and singer Rob Aldridge’s distinctive, Jägermeister-saturated growl. The quartet neatly binds these elements together with seemingly inexhaustible energy, swaggering melodies and a healthy dose of arrogance on…
With the mass-market success of grunge peaking in 1993, Los Angeles’ Dig fit right in, with distorted, aggressive guitar riffs, insidiously catchy melodies and rough-voiced singer Scott Hackwith. Fortunately, the quintet’s self-titled album, produced by Dave Jerden, isn’t some hastily thrown-together copycat shuck: the dozen tracks are uniformly well-written. Commercially, of course, Dig entered the…
Das Ich plays hard, hard-hitting industrial music, with strictly German lyrics adding to the harsh, foreign atmosphere. The band’s bombastic, strident music is not some industrial-by-the-numbers exercise in Nine Inch Nails faux-miserabilism: Das Ich means every howl of anger and estrangement. Stefan Ackermann’s alien vocal stylings are the centerpiece of the unsettling Die Propheten, with…
Bakersfield, California’s Cradle of Thorns melds metal/hard rock with funk, goth, industrial, a little jazz and even a touch of opera to create a sound that, while not always pleasant, is at the very least intriguing. Feed-Us presents a young band that’s as musically ambitious and ambiguous as Jane’s Addiction once was. Countered by Tamera…
The touristy city of Nice on the sunny Riviera might seem an unlikely hometown for Corpus Delicti, France’s only goth band of international repute. Any doubts about Gallic suitability for that gloomy genre are quickly laid to rest by Twilight: Sebastian (vocals), Roma (drums/synths), Chrys (bass) and Frank (guitars) serve up by-the-book heaviness on all…
Maybe Big Electric Cat’s thoroughly original interpretation of the gothic sound results from being based in Sydney, Australia, maybe not. In any case, the band’s surprisingly enthusiastic method is on spirited display in Dreams of a Mad King. Guitarist Paul Sadler’s emotional vocals alternate from a sensual purr to a menacing snarl, all the while…
