Carl Begai

By Carl Begai

Folks on this side of the music industry desk will tell you that the vast majority of press releases and band biographies are loaded with hollow bullshit. Many of these essays are too bloated with adjectives, mixed metaphors and blatant flavor-of-the-month ass-kissing to be taken seriously, often peppered with keywords and band names popular at the time and space in question, or yanked from a Wikipedia heavy metal page. These things raced through my head while scanning the bio for Moonspell’s newest outing, Alpha Noir, wondering out loud more than once if the newbie dweeb hired to write it had ever heard of the band before. Dropping names like Bathory and King Diamond as influences to describe an act hailed as one of the few and true remaining old school goth metal bands was absurd to the point of insulting.

Give Alpha Noir a spin and you’ll discover the description is dead on.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” frontman Fernando Ribeiro grins. “I tend to write those things myself. It’s not that I don’t trust someone else to do it, but I like to write and I think that sometimes the people at the record labels kind of miss the point. A lot of labels have many bands, and sometimes the people that write the press releases have to do it in a rush. I’d rather make things a bit more personal by doing it myself, so I’m glad you found everything in the press release to be true (laughs). With all the metaphors and poetry and personal notes that we put into the press releases, it’s good to know that people check out the new songs and realize that we’re not just blabbering and self-praising. We really tried to give people a clear view of what’s going on with Alpha Noir.” (continue reading…)

I’m not a huge goth metal fan, even less of a goth rock supporter. On the metal end of things the vast majority of goth-ick bands seem more concerned with having a hot piece of ass on stage front and center than the music, paired up with a male counterpart who wishes he was Peter Steele (Note to Doodness: There can be only one). The black #1 rockers, meanwhile, get their yeah-yeahs off playing the same three Sisters Of Mercy chords over and over from album to album, pretending they’re rejects from an Anne Rice vampire epic. It worked for The 69 Eyes and HIM, of course it’ll work for them…

How bloody boring.

That isn’t to say that all bands out of the goth realm suck – and Jeez help me, there are some knockout women to be drooled over – but very few have bent my ear for more than a spin over the last several years. Image, it seems, takes precedence over substance. Very sad indeed, especially in light of the fact that the band who gave goth metal life beyond the underground have decided to call it quits. (continue reading…)