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mephistowalz newapostles
Artist: Mephisto Walz
Title: New Apostles
Genre: Gothic Rock
Release Date: 22nd July 2013
Label: Black Lagoon Music


Album Review

MEPHISTO WALZ and the power of reinventing a band!

How many times have we feared a band's member departure? Apocalyptic visions of how our favourite band will never recover from that abandonment fill our nightmares and if we are totally honest, just a few have actually survived the amputation of a core member, and the process of reinvention, always comes with a high price that usually is the unforgiveness of the fans and the subsequent oblivion. However this is not the case of MEPHISTO WALZ who has gone through not only one but three reinventions, or reincarnations as its founder Barry Galvin calls them. On the contrary, each time the band has seen a member walk away, they took it with the most gracious modern perspective: burn what is left to the ground and build upon its ashes.

From the all-male deathrock formation to the more ethereal goth-rock with the addition of Christianna and William Faith, to the departure of both and the arrival of Sara Reid, MEPHISTO WALZ has seen a new streak of great music that started with the album ‘IIIrd Incarnation’, and now with ‘New Apostles’. From deconstructing hard-rock to building melancholic atmospheres by flirting with a memory of French cabaret and funnelling some COCTEAU TWINS, never forgetting the punk tint and a good couple of covers, ‘New Apostles’ is a full album that lacks nothing.

The perfect intro in ‘New Apostles’ provides apocalyptic images within a desperate environment that plays the agony vs. a dispassionate machine. Through the voice of melancholia, the ambient gets darker yet more beautiful transmitting the mournful sadness in ‘I die inside’ without bringing the listener down but giving the opportunity to relate to. Just to be seduced and challenged all the while by Sara´s vocals inviting us to sing along and become a Lolita fantasy. ‘Blue Aether’ plays with the sound, dirtying it by overfilling the space with guitars and bass emulating the effect of topping up the volume to the point of distortion to clear out when the verse comes in yet carrying the stressing distortion through the chorus and bridge.

Following the ride of this fairy tale, we are lulled to sit down in a French boulevard by the nostalgic mirage of ‘Goodbye Innocence,’ and when ‘How my heart beats’ reaches our ears, we get the sense of melancholia full circle. ‘Poupee De Cire Poupee De Son’ is a call to lost childhood in a Guignol theatre that presents the fate of cities and humanity through modernity as in ‘Wretched survivors.’ With a memory of COCTEAU TWINS, ‘Embers’ sets up the fire with raw and untreated vocals embracing our ears with a haunting sensation. And because nothing feels safer than tradition, the known combination of front and back guitars that carry a sweet tune, narrates ‘When day falls’ summoning our old school MEPHISTO.

Finally we hit a sweet spot with two old-school treats, HOWARD BLAKE´s classic ‘Walking in the Air’ with its ethereal fantasy, and LED ZEPPELIN´s ‘Kashmir’ treating a classic of hard-rock through the post-punk experimentation. For the ones who haven't heard the first incarnation of MEPHISTO WALZ, the prominence of Bari Bari´s presence throughout different songs might come as a surprise, yet they are up for a treat. His voice has a certain singularity that although it might sound constrained to some and even small and muffled to others, these characteristics make it totally attuned to the spectral atmospheres and tales told through the music. This is the constant that characterises and casts a spell on MEPHISTO´s music, the pond of melancholia and nostalgia upon which core members have built their sound, new members have drunk to take it further, and listeners gotten drunk to lose themselves within their own darkness...


Tracklist

01. New Apostles
02. I Died Inside
03. The Folie
04. Blue Aether
05. Goodbye Innocence
06. How my Heart beats
07. Poupee de Cire Poupee de Son
08. Wretched Survivors
09. Embers
10. When Day Falls
11. Walking in the Air
12. Isolation
13. Kashmir


Line-up

Barry Galvin
Sara Reid


Website

http://www.mephistowalz.com / https://www.facebook.com/mephistowalz


Cover Picture

mephistowalz newapostles


Rating

Music: 9
Sound: 9
Total: 9 / 10





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