Reliquia – The Graveyard School
In truth, there aren’t many genres that go well blended together. That doesn’t mean that the majority of musical genres haven’t been forcefully glued by someone looking to churn out a new flavour. With the audience’s full acknowledgement that these kinds of attempts are, for the most part, damned to fail, most modern-day mashups are designed to be viewed as humorous, if nothing else.
The fact is that in order to bring two separate musical worlds together, you don’t need to worry about the sounds fitting each other but rather about the mood and philosophy behind each genre. Gothic rock is chilly, mysterious music best played on overcast late autumn days. Heavy metal is a British musical invention that came to life in industrial cities covered in dark ash and ridden with crime. Perhaps there’s a match here!
Reliquia does like the detached feel and nightmarish obsessions of gothic rock. But the group also likes the power that screamed vocals and distorted guitars found on most heavy metal records can bring to a song. “The Graveyard School” is a gothic-metal song, not unlike early Paradise Lost, where everything is covered in darkness, and all you can hear is the occasional scream of terror.
The Damn Devils – Death Knell
Just how much information can you take in when you’re busy getting scared? If the scare is worth the entry ticket, if you find yourself panting, forgetting your surroundings and hoping for it to be over soon, the answer is “not a lot.” Like porn, horror movies don’t usually concern themselves with elaborate plot twists, character development, or a deeper unifying theme.
Scary rock bands eventually came to the same conclusion. Sure, the guitarist will want to play fast solos, but the drummer is in danger of falling asleep if he doesn’t do a lightning-fast fill every time he can. But, by and large, Black Sabbath was right. You get heavier when you go slower. You get scarier when you emphasise a little bit of musical information. Playing fast, complex songs isn’t scary. It’s homework.
Consider The Damn Devils’ “Death Knell” your required post-Halloween listen, a song that won’t let you fall into the despair of acknowledging that Christmas has once again inched closer to eventually being celebrated during the Summer. The Damn Devils play slow, ominous grunge-metal. The guitar riffs are delivered with menace and intention. The vocals recall the Seattle grunge bands before any of them actually got famous. The song’s easy to hum and to remember, and The Damn Devils understand how to do their very best work when avoiding the really heavy lifting.
