Track Listing: Tongue Tied & Twisted, Chaotic, A Little Too Much, Pure Bliss, Spaces In Between, Silently Creeping, Head Spin, Two Headed Monster, Shifting, Utopia.

I am addicted to this stuff like an opiate drug. What’s not to die for? It is very well crafted, hypnotic, dreamy, compelling, seductive, alluring, sensual, dangerous, crazy, insightful, provocative, driving... I run out of superlatives and breath. If you aren’t already into this band, you owe it to your soul to discover them pronto. If you already love them, expect more of what you expect. They seem to keep getting better at it; more refined and expert, like finely buffed jewels. I can’t say what it is that keeps this group well ahead of the pack, but I suspect it has something to do with integrity of aesthetic vision, not to mention they are teh hotzor.

For more information, check out the web site, their Wikipedia Page, or their Myspace Page.

Track Listing: 48 Hours In Tokyo, Damaged, Golgotha Falls, Luna, Of God and Gasoline, Day of the Dead, Another World, Love Song, Shaken, Your Eyes (snake mix).

This album is a guitar-driven, odd blend of sirensong, hard rock, techno, and even touches of something like jazz fusion from seasoned vets of the UK darkwave community. The heart and scars, lo-fi approach keeps things terrestrial with an emotional quality that feels more like something actual humans live with in the day to day. The lyrics and melody lines rely on repetitive phrases with alternating developmental insertions, but rather than the hypnotic effect this approach usually creates, what we have is something like funky ethereal. This stuff has a comfortable way of growing on you and sticking. Is it possible to be refreshingly different in a musical universe where everything thrives on being different?

For more information, check out the web site or their Myspace Page.

Track Listing: Curl, Ventriloquist, Cherubim Rapture Police, Mercury Dolls, Perfume Vial, Inverted Horseshoe, Opaque Vignette, Vinegar Attic, Imortal vat, Vile, Catharsis, Osiris the Green Pope, Pandora’s Music Box, Silkworms Making Lingerie, Marie Laveau, Betty’s Nickelodeon, Ponograph, Reefer Madness, A Jester’s Torment, Spider Monkey Melodian, Undurl.

This is not a band. It is one guy, and what he has done here is create his own soundtrack for the 1922 classic silent film, Nosferatu. The artist, who uses the name Hymnlock for his creative persona, has done something quite fine here. Aside from the more obvious influences of Bauhaus, Trent Reznor and Danny Elfman, et al, with the odd dash of steampunkishness (as the title might suggest), there is clearly a clever and witty fellow at work on this project.

There is at times, for example, an undercurrent of tongue-in-cheek mirth that is very engaging and altogether enjoyable. The music is well played and well put together, with or without vocals, and a number of tracks make good stand alone songs. The overall sound has been antiqued in a way that makes it seem as if it could have been recorded on equipment from the same period as the film. Check this guy out.

For more info, visit the artist’s MySpace page.

Track Listing: Sakrileg, Broken Glass, La Lune Blanche, Daar, Iter Devium, My Last Way, Palldium [Night], Ways, Modesty, Hanuz Nist, A Drinking Song, So Many Clouds, Tacitum.

Beauty. This is what happens when highly skilled musicians and singers, with a lot of exposure to/experience in classical music and chorale, develop and perform their own material. This stuff is transporting... it seems to somehow combine essences of past ages and the distant future in a new ambience, as if it isn’t really happening in the present world with its harsh realities. Ever want to just blow off this plane and go to some finer eternity? Here is the door.

“Supernal ecstasies” is what Poe termed the place where music can take us; too bad it is a revolving door and we wind up back here after entering. But hey, we can always listen to more, am I right? Oh yeah... um... I forgot to mention... some of the ecstasies Stoa transports you to might involve supernal darkness as well as light.

For more info, visit the Stoa website or their MySpace page.

Track Listing: Theme I, Haydn (or mine), My Friend is Golden, Death Trick, Peacemaker, Two Miles Up, Milano (Auto-Italian), Interlude, History Man, Theme II, The Fiftieth Gate, (bonus 12 inch), Haydn (or mine) 12 remix, Lady Look Now, Haydn (biding time), Sideways Glance, To The Devil, Take Five, Shotgun Dream, Haydn (the final cut).

This reissue of an album from 1988 includes some remixes and rare tracks that should make hard core Attrition collectors happy. However, if your familiarity with this group extends to more recent material – say, starting from their affiliation with Projekt to the present – get ready for surprises. Electric guitar, for one thing, including shredding lead licks. WTF... and they are doing SONGS! I mean verse/chorus variety, like normal bands do. Top it off with Martin Bowes actually singing... and he’s good at it.

Once the novelty wears off, one can begin to appreciate the fact that this band has always been great. This material is a lot more industrial/martial than what you hear in recent releases, and the deep punk roots are much more in evidence. You don’t have the classical/electro/acoustic amalgamation that is a hallmark of current work, but you do find strains of the unmistakable aura of profundity and mystery that is so overpowering in later Attrition, as well as more subtle Bowes touches, like sly thematic development going on even in the drum tracks.

The spiritual questing is there as well. I can’t be positive, but I assume the title refers to Jewish mysticism. The Fiftieth Gate is attained when one has followed the paths of the Kabbala to arrive at a state in which the world and knowledge of good/evil fall away and one is ready to meet God. Something like that anyway. The Fiftieth Gate also refers to the tradition of putting stones or pebbles on the graves of Holocaust victims, maybe because death is the ultimate way to meet God.

For more info visit the band website or their MySpace page.