Artist: Shadow Image
Title: Kiss The Ashes
Genre: Goth Rock
Release Date: 24th May 2013
Label: Danse Macabre
Album Review
Okay, maybe it´s true and that genre we call Goth Rock is dead. Suffocated from the limitations of its boundaries. What came into being as a counterpart to the aggressive and outgoing attitude of punk grew (paradoxically) bigger by its otherness, by its subcultural gravity and especially by its embedding in the zeitgeist. A virtue it has lost for years now. Maybe all is said and all is done. Too many gods and deities, blackness and emotional glaciers, mists, dust and sunglasses. The breath is cold ashes and the body is petrified. But maybe it´s just the visible shape that´s dead, like a dying cell, whose shell got stiff and porous, but the nucleus is still active? That´s what I think, cause over the last years I came across a lot of interesting, new bands, acting far beyond front covers and commercial chart rankings, which proved that you can make up a good and captivating story even in a dead language. It´s not always a crime to play with the dead!
And this is what Shadow Image extensively and fervently do on ‘Kiss the Ashes’, the debut album of the recent two-headed American Goth / Death Rock outfit, scraped out from the darkness with the help of the German Danse Macabre label these days. Right at the outset; this is not about the reinvention of the musical wheel. It is cooking with recipe, including all these ingredients admirers of Goth will easily recognize and appreciate. But nevertheless there are these creative permutations and stylistic combinations scattered all over the album, especially the collision of classical Goth rock elements with classical, baroque and medieval keyboard sounds, which let it sound familiar but unpredictable, traditional but somehow contrary to the rule.
‘This Side of the Wasteland’ seems apparently borrowed from the canon of the old (may God rest their souls!) FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM, robed in sacred chorales, sawing guitars, wailing, deep toned vocals and a sepia-coloured, energetic drive, but by including a medieval touch with the help of a spinet the song gets a timbre the above mentioned band had never dared to reach. ‘The Call of Midnight’ is pure nostalgia ´cause it owns all elements the Sisters seemed to have lost on the way to their present phantom-like state. Machine-like rhythms, a head-reaching bass run, vocals, which are swinging from despair to accusation and dissecting guitars, which cut off everything that seems to be redundant and unneeded. ‘There in the Snow’ is an enjoyable caesura in the present “rocking” flow with its soundtrack-like texture and atmospheric and mystic surface.
‘The Shadows linger on’ seems to find it´s sources in the American Death Rock (what is geographically not far to seek), tangled with clear references to the Batcave sound. Rough edges and a slightly psychedelic and defiant arrangement tied together from Mr Mace´s voice, which causes a mood between ritual purification and nails on a blackboard. ‘Shades of Demise’ sounds a bit like the later musical reincarnation of Mr McCoy, commonly known as NEFILIM, but in a lighter version, adapted by the stylistics of the late 80´s / early 90´s Goth template. Programmed drums, a hovering flanger-raped bass and sharp-edged guitars, but again blurred by an accompanying piano layer. And now we´ve revealed the crux. What seemed to be an unfamiliar and interesting touch during the first songs turns out to be a sonic golden thread, guiding you through the shadowy and misty haze, but in time it covers all with a thin film of repetition concurrently!
It works brilliantly for the instrumentals, like the above mentioned ‘There in the Snow’, the sweet ‘Shade´s Piano’ or the piano-driven version of ‘Lost but not forgotten’, but the wedding of straight rocking Goth elements and medieval-baroque-classical keyboard tunes is losing its impact by its permanence! It´s hard for me to confess (because I´m addicted to the sound of the piano!), but it starts to annoy a bit in the end! So why not crossing the threshold of the door they have opened?
It is definitely a good and effective step to crack the sclerotic crust of that genre, but it would not have harmed to take one or two steps further! So ‘Kiss the Ashes’ is an solid album with a bundle of good songs and an atmospheric and technically credible patina, polished by some interesting and catching ideas, but who fail to keep their state throughout the whole album, caused by decrease through constancy. To put it in the words of Goethe: “Einen Regenbogen, der eine Viertelstunde steht, sieht man nicht mehr an.“ A must for nostalgic ones and worshippers of tradition and a smouldering flicker of hope for a possible reincarnation of a death rattling genre.
Tracklist
01. This Side of the Wasteland
02. Kiss the Ashes
03. The Call of Midnight
04. In the Name Of
05. There in the Snow
06. I Died for Love
07. The Shadows Linger On
08. Shades of Demise
09. Lost but not Forgotten
10. Shade's Piano
11. Lost but not Forgotten (Reprise)
Line-up
Harley Mace – All instruments, vocals
Mandy Monster – Keyboards
Website
www.facebook.com/ShadowImageband
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 7
Sound: 6
Total: 6.5 / 10
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