Like most genres, the gothic sound was never and indeed still isn’t easily defined. Generic labels are, at best, vague and overextended, and one person’s idea of what constitutes the signature sound can be drastically different from the next. But this can only be a good thing, for it means that bands have room to push boundaries, pull at sonic threads, and generally reinvent the genre with necessary regularity.
Such freedom to wander within a loosely defined landscape is exactly what gives us bands like Licorice Chamber. Their sound seems to have explored all of the darker fringes of the musical map to bring together the sonic building blocks that make their impressive sound.
“The Things We Said” has just an echo of Siouxsie and the Banshees and the coiled guitars and washes of sound that swirl around Layla Reyna’s unforgettable voice seem to come from the same primordial musical crucible that gave us the shoegaze and dream pop sound, only here stripped of all its primary sonic colors.
“All I Ever Wanted” reminds us that the gothic/darkwave sound always had more in common with the alternative dance set than the guitar-wielding Zeppelin fans who eventually came to dominate the formative scene, and “Flesh and Bone” is bathed in stygian atmospherics and brooding menace.
We end with “Hanged Man,” which adds groove and grace, poise, and pace to their sound, a blend of digital deftness and analog creativity, again, one that the dance-creatures of the night will warm to immediately.
Goth, for want of a better term, never died; it evolved, embraced its past, redefined itself for the present, and, in doing so, created space for it to have a bright (dark?) future. Licorice Chamber is the sound of that future being written.
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