If I were still my twenty-year-old formative self, that strange blend of gothic punk aficionado and sleazy rock fan, I would be all over this new one from Absinthe Vows. I would have been the first of my friends to own “Grand Horror”… on vinyl, obviously. I would have been the first to get tickets to their gigs. I would be the first down the front. I would have been the first to get my record autographed. What am I saying, I’d still be doing that now, but for the fact that they live on a different continent, and everything is now online. (Have you ever tried to get a signature on a download? Very tricky!)
That aside, the younger me would have loved everything about it, I know, because the current, older me loves everything about it. How could I not? It has the same blend of garage rock and dark psychedelia that the early Damned did so well, the same gothic-surrealism that Bauhaus revelled in, neat nods to 90’s grunge and industrial sounds, it rocks like a basteard and rolls to it’s own groove. And it does all that without playing the nostalgia or plagiarism card.
This isn’t the sound of a band looking back to others’ past glories; this is the sound of a band picking up the torch, well, several torches actually, and running headlong into the future with them. Not a recap, more a whole new chapter being written.
Count me in.
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