After having listened to Hope Springs Infernal, the first track on Gospelheim’s debut album Ritual & Repetition, I thought I had the band all figured out. Here was yet another goth rock project, playing very appealing music, music I liked and could instantly relate to, but still just another such project in a wave of similar bands currently springing up all over the place.
How wrong I was. Already with the second track, the band had me completely side-lined. While the first song was built from a melodic goth matrix with clean, male vocals and passages with fast drumming – not unlike the music of Germans Rope Sect, for example – Satan Blues, song number two, had a different soundscape. The vibe leaned more towards hard rock; you could hear the 70s, and a bit of psychedelia in the sound. Had I not known that both songs were from the same band, I would never have guessed it.
To my amazement, the music got ever more versatile as the album progressed. Lux Ephemera, track number three, was a short instrumental piece consisting of spherical tunes only. Having listened to the album numerous times by now, I know the track is cleverly placed to allow you to pause and reflect on what you have heard so far and to prepare you for what lies ahead.
What follows, namely, is Praise Be, one of the albums central tracks for which the band also produced a video. The lyrical content and a doomy beginning hint towards sermons and rituals – of the occult kind. Female vocals additionally diversify the sound. The band’s founders, bassist Coco and guitarist Ricardo both sing, sometimes together, sometimes taking turns. In the track’s last third the tempo changes significantly, the drumming becomes faster and more complex, and the song takes on a black metal shape.
With Into Smithereens, the other central track on the album, the black metal soundscape continues, spectacularly in fact, but with clean double vocals. This results in a peculiar sound combination, and one I have not encountered so far. A comment somewhere on social media said that the song sounds like the Pet Shop Boys meeting black metal, but in a good way. I’d say it’s rather Placebo meeting black metal, but, yes, it sounds excellent.
Voyeuristic Schism slightly changes the album’s course yet again, treading into heavy metal and hard rock territory, including soaring guitar parts. Valles Marineris, named after a system of canyons on Mars, is an instrumental piece and another unexpected addition. Highly atmospheric and gigantic as its namesake, it includes a devastating, sweeping finish. This is definitely not a filler, but an exciting piece of music all by itself.
The Hall of the Unconsumed, the album’s eighths and final track, strikes calmer and melancholier notes in the beginning, but then changes into a nervous, tense and less harmonic mix of sounds in comparison with the previous tracks. This, I must say, is the only piece of music on the album that didn’t sit really well with me. However, one somewhat less appealing song won’t change my overall overwhelmingly positive impression of this debut. Despite the plethora of influences displayed, the album, impressively, still forms a cohesive whole.
I’d like to finish this with a bit of unusually well-written and fitting piece of promo text from the band’s bandcamp page:
“Lo and behold! ‘Tis a wondrous beast that Gospelheim have conceived with “Ritual & Repetition”: Its glittering skin is made from catchy dark rock melodies. Its bones are carved from solid gothic metal. Its forked tongue sings with both a beautiful female and a male voice. Its fiery eyes reflect deep melancholia, yet its sharp teeth bite hard without remorse.”
If you’re your musical tastes include goth rock and heavy metal, and if you also have an affinity for metal of the black kind, you will love this.
(8.5/10 Slavica)
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