As someone old enough to have seen the gothic sound come to fruition, take flight, and evolve, it seems logical that its sound echoes the dark places where it first took root – driven on by the industrial beat of places usch as Sheffield, UK or riding the post-Cold-War chill through the backstreets of Berlin, celebrated in in alternative night clubs in the darkened basement clubs of Leeds and London, Kreuzberg and Kracow. So to find myself faced with a gothic, or at least gothic-infused band, from Costa Rica – a place I associate with sand, sea, and sunshine – shows you that the gothic sound might have had a cold and difficult European birth, but now it is a world phenomenon.
What is excellent about Algo En La Sangre is that while this album fits into the gothic sonic family, it is also colored by the musical hues of the place that its creators call home.
“Lo Eterno” neatly lays out some of these unique flavors, starting with classical guitar and reveling in the romance of the Spanish language. Similarly, “De Amor” blends this delicate and cascading acoustic guitar, Latin grooves, and occasional horns into the mix.
While songs such as “Detra De La Peil” and “No Somos Nada” will sound closer to the familiar sound of European and US-born gothic music, others—“La Luz” and “Mary Posa Muerta,” for example—remind us that this is the sound of a musician, Ariel Maniki exploring his Latin American roots whilst using his grounding in gothic and darkwave sounds, not to mention alternative rock, as a backdrop.
It is a reminder that the gothic sound is more a state of mind, a place of darker themes and romantic venture, introspection and imagination, rather than a signature sound. And of course, now nearly half a century on from the genre’s first stirrings, it is only natural that the sound has crossed oceans and merged with other musical traditions and is found on distant, sun-soaked shores as readily as it is in dark, underground basement clubs.
