Death Rock – does that name wind you up as it does me? I am just too long in the tooth and too scarred by crimpers to dig that kind of jive talking. However, our colonial friends over the Atlantic like to reinvent and rehash things and rename them so I cast aside my prejudice as if I were sowing the seed and breaking imaginary cobwebs at a darkened London club in the late 80’s.

Cemetery Echo hail from Buffalo New York but have set their musical sights on a certain Homepride loving band from Stevenage for their inspiration.

This E.P only contains 4 tracks so opening with 2 minutes of “atmospheric” haunted house guff is a mistake. It adds nothing lads we know you want to be spooky – look at the blooming name.

Now onto the good stuff. Bright jangly Hussey guitars usher in a nostalgic Mission / Nephillim hybrid which tugs at my dark heartstrings. It is a well-trodden path but a familiar and welcome one and the vocalist seems to mix McCoy and Wayne well with a lil bit of death doom rasp thrown in . It’s late 80’s Goff 101 and I am gloomy as Gary /Happy as Larry.  The title track has a great chorus that could easily be sung by topless Eskimos atop their friends’ shoulders.

“Youth Disease” is a dancey little number.  Still lots of Mission and Fields in there but some love and Rockets and Killing Joke as well plus the raspy vocals add a great punch to the blood spattered throat as well. This track needs a good pint of Purple Nasty/Witch , some patchouli and a spin around a sticky dancefloor.

“Transylvanian Moon” how cliché’d, how predictable. How fucking marvellous!!!!! If you can’t stick to the dark and gloomy tropes of double F Goff then what is the point?  This track has it all. Big bassline, jangly guitars, oh so dramatic vocals. Plus, of course the kind of rhythm that makes you want to dance in straight lines towards the girl you have been eyeing up all night as she re applied her Black Kohl eyeliner in the mirror at the back of the bar.  I am not sure if this is the mists of time I am looking through or dry ice.

Cemetery Echo are cold pint of nostalgia with a shot of extremity on the side as a chaser. This Goth wants to hear more – just forget about the intros please – save that for a gloomy hall in Whitby.

(8/10 Matt Mason)  

https://www.facebook.com/cemeteryecho

https://cemeteryecho.bandcamp.com/album/come-share-my-shroud