Gothic Rock Reviews
Despite having devoted much of my musical love to hard rock and heavy metal since my early teenage years, the eerie clean guitars, darkly romantic atmosphere and often deep vocals of gothic rock greatly appeal to me. Several gothic rock releases are reviewed on this site, especially since the genre seems to have been going through a bit of a revival in recent years. You can find all of the Album of the Week reviews about gothic rock releases right here. Minor overlaps with my gothic metal reviews inevitably exist.
While I didn’t write a lot of gothic rock reviews in the first few years of Kevy Metal, when I didn’t properly tag my reviews yet, they may exist. Therefore, if you are looking for something specific, using the search bar at the bottom of the page to search by artist or release title is recommended.
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Album of the Week 03-2020: Grave Pleasures – Motherblood
While I welcome the increasing influence of early eighties post-punk in rock music, many bands attempting the style try to stick to the genre’s conventions slightly too closely to really make an impact. Grave Pleasures is an exception to the rule and have been so since their inception as Beastmilk.…
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Album of the Week 52-2019: Killing Joke – Hosannas From The Basements Of Hell
Killing Joke albums come in many forms. Militant like their first two albums, polished like ‘Pandemonium’, catchy like ‘Night Time’… ‘Hosannas From The Basements Of Hell’ is different. With its long, slowly unfolding tracks, it feels like a deliberate attempt to create Killing Joke’s least accessible album to date. Therein…
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Album of the Week 51-2019: The Vision Bleak – The Unknown
Gothic rock’s mournful melodies and doom metal’s crushing heaviness appear to be made for each other, both having an irresistibly ominous theatricality to them. More often than not, however, gothic metal bands go for the goth aesthetic rather than the stylistic properties of the genre. For every ‘Irreligious’, there is…
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Album of the Week 50-2019: Nefilim – Zoon
Back in the mid-nineties, the lone Nefilim album ‘Zoon’ must have been quite a shock for anyone who expected a continuation of the cinematic gothic rock sound that Fields Of The Nephilim was known for. There are similarities with the Fields’ sound, but those are not immediately apparent. Upon first…
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Album of the Week 33-2019: Kukryniksy – Artist
Farewell albums often are a bit of an afterthought. Musicians throw some odds and ends together or, at worst, force one more product out. ‘Artist’, the final album of Saint Petersburg-based band Kukrynisky is the mirror opposite of that. For me, ‘Artist’ is the album where they finally fulfill their…
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Album of the Week 27-2019: Swallow The Sun – When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light
Occasionally, there are rare instances in which the cliché that great misery inspires great art proves to be true. Swallow The Sun’s seventh album ‘When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light’ is one of those instances. Rhythm guitarist and main songwriter Juha Raivio lost his wife, South African singer…
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Album of the Week 08-2019: Whispering Sons – Image
Belgium’s Whispering Sons really managed to impress me at the Eurosonic festival last month. My first impression of the band was that they were a very authentic sounding tribute to the darkest side of the early eighties post-punk and proto-goth sounds, think Joy Division at their most depressive with hints…
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Album of the Week 49-2018: Fields Of The Nephilim – The Nephilim
A significant portion of Fields Of The Nephilim’s fan base still considers their sophomore album ‘The Nephilim’ their best album. And while I personally prefer its follow-up ‘Elizium’, it is easy to understand why. It certainly delivers on the promise that the band’s somewhat underdeveloped debut album ‘Dawnrazor’ occasionally showed.…
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Album of the Week 37-2018: Atsushi Sakurai – Ai No Wakusei
With his amazing voice being the defining factor that it is in Buck-Tick, it is quite surprising that no one in the Japanese record industry pushed Atsushi Sakurai to release more solo albums than just ‘Ai No Wakusei’. It sold reasonably well, but it would be logical to assume that…
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