On the heels of their latest release — the excellent Double Negative — Treblezine considers each album in Low’s discography: ​“With one of the best albums of their career looming large among the year’s most prominent releases, the time seemed ripe to listen to the band’s catalog as a whole and chart their progression from reluctant pioneers of ​‘slowcore’ into the consistently compelling iconoclasts they’ve become.”

I particularly liked their thoughts concerning Low’s debut, I Could Live in Hope: “[It] stands among the band’s darkest and most haunting albums, sharing a lot more in common with the sepulchral starkness of The Cure’s Faith than the more meditative strums of slowcore pioneers Galaxie 500.” I’m glad I’m not the only one who caught the Cure similarities with that album.

Aimee Armstrong offers a brief introduction to the strange and inimitable music of David Tibet and Current 93:

The world of Current 93 is a darkly splendid one. At its centre is David Michael Bunting, who’s better known by his Genesis P-Orridge given name, David Tibet. After four decades as the inner cog of the project, Tibet’s perverse vernacular has cemented him as one of the great unsung English poets. His lyrics are decadent and often esoteric, but at their core these songs are both beautiful and tragic. He writes words that are informed as much by gnostic poetry as the love and loss of his own pet cats.

Current 93 is one of those groups that I find endlessly fascinating and intriguing, though I confess I rarely listen to their music. But their legacy is hard to avoid, as their shadow looms large over several realms of music that I frequently explore, particularly neo-folk.

Although they could easily be mentioned in the same breath as Depeche Mode, Clan of Xyxmox, and New Order, Québec’s Handful of Snowdrops may be the best post-punk/post-goth band that nobody seems to have heard of. But over the course of 30+ years, Jean-Pierre and Michel Mercier (plus numerous collaborators) have released several albums and compilations’ worth of moody, atmospheric rock that any fan of the classic 4AD sound would do well to check out. (Case in point, their excellent cover of Clan of Xymox’s ​“Back Door.”)

By all appearances, 2015’s excellent III was Handful of Snowdrops’ final album. But earlier this year, the band ran a successful Indiegogo campaign to fund their fourth studio album. Titled Noir and consisting of 8 new songs, the new album will be released on November 30 (and is the planned first album in a trilogy titled ​“Trois Niveaux de Gris”). However, the band has released the above teaser for Noir, with brief snippets of the songs — all of which sound really good, and true to form for the long-running band.

Cameron McAllister reviews Low’s Double Negative for Christ and Pop Culture:

[I]f there’s one image that can encapsulate this arresting album, it’s the snow-strewn ruins of an ancient church. By turns haunting, beautiful, and sad, it’s a place that hints at a hidden wholeness, especially at moments when the sun shines through the broken stained glass windows, or when the shadow of an old cross falls across the icy floor. If you stand absolutely still, the wind howling through the sanctuary might even sound like a choir.

Double Negative is easily one of my favorite albums of 2018 (read my review), and one of my favorite Low albums to date — which, given their considerable discography, is saying something.

I was making my way through Treble’s mammoth (and excellent) ​“Top 100 Post-Punk Albums” and decided to give The Sisters of Mercy’s ​“Lucretia, My Reflection” a spin… and my kid started flossing to it. What does this mean for his goth status?

I bought The Spinanes’ Manos on a whim two decades ago, and though I don’t reach for it on a regular basis, whenever I do, I totally fall for the band’s big, hook-y sound. Case in point, ​“Noël, Jonah, and Me.” Rebecca Gates’ riffs and Scott Plouf’s propulsive drumming here make for a tight, potent blend, with the result being some ​‘90s indie-rock of the finest variety.

I had no idea this video existed, but I came across it in this Treblezine article about the upcoming Manos reissue, courtesy of Merge Records (it was originally released by Sub Pop Records).

Charles Kahler offers a primer on the ​“dungeon synth” genre:

Dungeon synth is an offshoot of the dark ambient genre of electronic music. Like dark ambient, dungeon synth compositions rely on droning synths and harmonies to create melancholic, sometimes foreboding atmospheres. However, dungeon synth is distinct in its goal of building soundscapes with a fantastical feel, and many tracks employ musical structures taken from folk or medieval-period music.

Related: My review of Thangorodrim’s Gil-Estel.

By this point, My Bloody Valentine fans know to take everything that Kevin Shields says with a grain of salt. But the MBV frontman recently announced plans to release two new albums in 2019, instead of a pair of previously announced EPs. My Bloody Valentine’s most recent album was 2013’s m b v.

Bassist Tim Chandler, who was a member of seminal Christian bands Daniel Amos, The Choir, and The Swirling Eddies, has passed away due to natural causes. He also played on albums by Randy Stonehill, Tonio K., Mike Stand, and Terry Scott Taylor (to name a few). Chandler’s last performance was on The Choir’s Bloodshot, which was released this past June.

Following the release of their new (and very excellent) album, Double Negative, Alan Sparhawk looks back over the band’s discography and ranks albums like Trust, The Curtain Hits the Cast, and I Could Live in Hope. Via

Liam Green discusses the ​“beautiful pain” of This Mortal Coil’s debut: ​“In case it isn’t already abundantly clear, It’ll End in Tears is the essence of goth not because of volume, shock value or even its haunting cover photo… Most of the music is low-key piano and synthesizer, arpeggiated clean guitar, extraordinarily expressive bass playing, basic drum machine programming and about 16 tons of dark atmosphere. The album simply radiates the feeling of slow emotional collapse.”

The discography of the venerable indie-pop label Sarah Records (The Field Mice, Heavenly, Secret Shine) is now available on Bandcamp. And here’s a guide to some of the label’s best and most acclaimed songs. Personally, I’ve become rather enamored with Blueboy’s Unisex, especially ​“Boys Don’t Matter,” which is about as perfect and dreamy a pop song as I can imagine.