The dark side

In the early Nineties, the meeting between the low frequencies of doom and the grafts of avant-garde certainly metal extreme ( Celtic Frost of "Into The Pandemonium" above all) set the tone for a series of bands to push, progressively, ever further to the margins of the genre's canons, creating true hybrids with gothic-rock.

It's for them that the term gothic-metal was originally coined, and it's on them that this "top ten" focuses, digging up ten border-line works, some successful, others that remained semi-hidden cult items.

The quotation marks indicate the necessarily non-exhaustive nature of the selection: you won't find, for example, the symphonic variant of Theatre Of Tragedy and Nightwish, too far removed in mood and sound.

The comments section awaits, as always, your thoughts and suggestions.

 

Metal's debt dark to Ozzy and co. is undeniable: theirs is a "gothic" band even in name, thanks to the moniker that pays homage to the masterpiece by Mario Bava "Black Sabbath", the film that reached British shores under the very title that would inspire "Black Sabbath".

A couple of hours' drive from their native Birmingham lies Bradford, West Yorkshire, the "home base" of My Dying Bride, a band that debuted in 1992 with the doom-death monolith of "As The Flower Withers".

The prominence given to Martin Powell's violin (and piano) and the clean vocals of Aaron Stainthorpe on the following "Turn Loose The Swans" (1993) foreshadow the "turning point" of "The Angel And The Dark River", where the growl vocals are abandoned altogether. A work of strong stylistic cohesion, steeped in decadent romanticism and melancholy.

Also worth noting is "Like Gods Of The Sun" (1996), which continues along the same sonic lines with a majestic, solemn stride.

 

Creation of Sweden's Dan Swanö, multi-instrumentalist and sound engineer, a true key figure of the extreme Scandinavian scene, with countless collaborations and productions to his credit.

Nightingale started out precisely as his solo project, dedicated to exploring gothic-rock sounds, but as early as the following "The Closing Chronicles" they shifted towards 70's territory progressive.

"The Breathing Shadow" remains a great example of the successful blend between the musician's metal background and his passion for dark sounds. In this case the influence of the Sisters Of Mercyemerges, a name that for obvious reasons crops up several times in this piece, but the album shows a strong personality in shaping atmospheres that are darker and more shadowy than ever.

Recorded at Unisound Studios, owned by Swanö himself, the album came out on Black Mark Productions, a label best known for releasing the discography of Bathory.

After a opening of career in the violent thrashers Carnivore, Peter Steele founded this gothic/doom-metal outfit in the late Eighties. A project with unique traits, thanks to the vocals by Steele (calling them deep would be an understatement), to the “concept” of the lyrics – perpetually balanced between dark humour, romance and crudeness – and to an unprecedented sonic cocktail.

Indeed, because the sound of the Type O Negative displays all the expected influences: the “usual suspects” like Black Sabbath, obviously, but also “unlikely” names like Beatles e Doors.

And indeed pop sensibility is not lacking, boldly conveyed through granite-hard metal: “October Rust”, their masterpiece, represents a perfect synthesis of the amalgam that is the Type O Negative-style.

The New Yorkers released seven albums over the span of about twenty years; the last one, “Dead Again”, came out in 2007, three years before the premature death of the charismatic frontman, due to an aneurysm, at just 48 years old.

 

“Cold Heaven” is the debut of this Finnish outfit, who at the time billed themselves as “death-rock”. In their case the term is probably a blend of the death-metal and hard rockgenres, but the end result somehow ends up closer to American dark-punk instead.

The photo in the booklet shows the band, in bohémienguise, seated at a table laden with hard liquor and hookahs; an image in keeping with their lyrics poses as doomed poets, caught between urban and satanism, literary references and occultism.

Catchy and dark, "Cold Heaven" is undoubtedly unlike anything else on the Finnish metal scene of the time; it's followed by two more full-length, the last of which dates back to 2002, after which their appearances become increasingly sporadic.

Singer Ike Vil now lends his voice to the Sleep Of Monsters project, a collective goth/psychedelic which last year released "II: Poison Gardens".

 

Before it was the moniker of this Swedish band, "Sundown" was the title of the fourth album by Cemetary, a band with which it shared frontman Mathias Lodmalm and a taste for atmospheres dark.

Indeed, Sundown represent a further departure from their early metal sound: the sound of "Design 19" is clean and powerful; bolstered by keyboards, it sits perfectly halfway between the two strands.

Sundown also brought in Johnny Hagel, a defector from Tiamat (discussed further below), and released only two albums (the follow-up "Glimmer", from 1999, emphasizes the electronic component) before Cemetary's return.

All Cemetary albums were released by Black Mark Productions, while Sundown released exclusively on Century Media; with the latter, Lodmalm also released, in 2003, an album under the name "Cemetary 1213".

 

The Portuguese Moonspell have stood out from the very beginning for the distinctiveness of their approach: a black-metal visceral, far removed from the “grim and frostbitten” atmospheres of the Norwegian scene; no less epic, though: conceived under a scorching sun, it's steeped in Mediterranean pathos.

The first two albums, “Wolfheart” (1995) and “Irreligious” (1996), continue what was started with the demo “Under The Moonspell”, moving progressively closer to increasingly gothic and “contaminated” sounds.

The following “Sin/Pecado” is exemplary in this regard: a peculiar work, laden with heavy electronic touches, that doesn't hide but rather flaunts the Portuguese band's will to experiment. On the record, Moonspell handle with skill the alternation between ambient noise textures and tracks dense with groovemelodic but never syrupy.

Criticized on several fronts at the time, given the difficulty “purists” had in digesting all the various “turns” that had involved the metal scene. Listened back to twenty-odd years later, “Sin/Pecado” remains a groundbreaking, boundary-crossing work, confirming the solidity of songwriting of Fernando Ribeiro's band.

 

The only album released by this Norwegian outfit, the brainchild of Stian “Culto Cultus” Johansen, who was also frontman – for a brief period – a member of Mayhem post-Dead. This latter biographical note is probably behind the (limited) circulation, exclusively within metal circles, of a work that is - in fact - a gothic opus tout court.

The music of Johansen's band, made up entirely of black metallers (including some members of Ragnarok), is influenced by the work of Fields Of The Nephilim and similar acts, but that's merely an inspiration. Because the eleven tracks of “Equilibrio” flaunt a sound very personal, drawing on the most disparate influences: hard rock, progressive, psychedelia… paired with a genuinely impressive vocal performance.

A work that remained in the shadows, even in the internetera, which is precisely why Shadow Dancers can only be described as a cult band.

 

In the Scandinavia of the early Nineties, dominated by the wave of Norwegian black metal and the Swedish death-metal school, this Stockholm outfit stands out by abandoning growled vocals within the space of three albums growl and veering towards a gothic metal marked by a distinctly pessimistic tone. Album titles like "Discouraged Ones" or songs like "I Break" and "Saw You Drown" perfectly capture the dark, introspective universe depicted by Katatonia.

"Tonight's Decision" is their fourth full-lengthalbum, the one where the transition from the rawness of their early work to a "second phase" is fully completed, defined by clean vocals and dark yet captivating, magnetic melodies. A successful crossover with shades of black from the wavegenre, marked by powerful, melancholic guitar charges.

A long journey, that of Katatoniabut one that has always stayed true to its own concept; "Tonight's Decision" also makes room for a cover of Jeff Buckley: and to think that in their early days they were sometimes even compared to the aforementioned black metal!

For Sweden's Tiamat, the transition away from their "extreme metal" beginnings started early: as far back as 1992, "Clouds" was already incorporating gothic-rock elements, and the following "Wildhoney" (1994) and "A Deeper Kind Of Slumber" (1997) are two masterpieces steeped in psychedelia, hard to pin down to any single genre. 1999 brought "Skeleton Skeletron", and the departure from their metal roots becomes even more pronounced: here and there, sturdy riffs riffs of Scandinavian heavy metal still peek through, but it's the Sisters Of Mercy (them again) who remain the main influence, filtered with great personality thanks to Johan Edlund's deep voice and his songwriting poetic, epic and at the same time dark songwriting.

Their later albums would continue in this vein, with occasional returns to the abrasive sound of their early days; Edlund, the only founding member still in the band, indulged his passion for dark sounds a few years back by remixing some tracks by Rammstein and by goth-glamster Los Angeles' own London After Midnight.