In its original guise, gothic music, dark-post-punk, new wave…call it what you will… seemed more concerned with imagery garnered from such fantastical and obscure places as post-apocalyptic predictions, Regency romance, paganism, and H.P.Lovecraft stories. Thankfully, the genre has something more poignant and purposeful to say in the modern age.
“Burning,” the new one from Los Angeles-based The Sea At Midnight, is a case in point. Although it uses some dark and classic imagery, the burning in question refers to the destruction of our planet and the effects of climate change. And I can’t think of a more critical issue for us all to unite behind today.
And teaming up with Chemical Waves for this latest single proved to be a brilliant move as the results are fantastic. The song becomes intense and incendiary when shared between them, much more than the sum of its parts. Bouncing off each other’s strengths, “Burning” is soaked in dark and delicious sonics, wonderous washes of synth waves, and metronomic backbeats that here replicate the countdown of a doomsday clock: a stark warning via scintillating music.
The gothic scene, back in the day at least, was more about style than substance, a good-looking place to be but with little to say. Thanks to bands like The Sea at Midnight and Chemical Waves, its modern equivalent is a more switched-on and savvy place. Far from the style-over-substance scene it once was, songs such as this show us that it is now a realm where music has both style and substance.
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