NEW BREED: From The Vaults (Selfreleased 2015)
The norwegians, New Breed, released in January this old song compilation, only available for direct download and with the intention of releasing songs that, for some reason, have been forgotten. Not so long ago we commented their last album, the Pleasure & Pain remaster eleven years after its releasing. So this is the last snack before an LP with new songs, we wish it will be soon. It urges us.
This need is because with this scarce eight songs, the ones from Stavanger show us again how the lifelong goth rock has no secrets for them, and they do it with a song compilation that brings together the best parts of the said style: powerful guitars, deep voices, strong basses and sharp percussion. In such way, the fact that Tilt is almost instrumental or that Rain has in its shattered epic all the coldness of the best tunes of the Scandinavian scene doesn’t really matter. The powerful bass and the tremendous guitar guide a sober, intense and projected voice, that reminds you the great ones without you missing none of them and with the dark key factors (specially in the last third of the album). Outside has in its initial keyboard a differential point, of the noir-rockers’ line Les Fleurs Du Mal, an important detail that doesn’t fog up the guitar’s melody. It has less appeal than Rain, but not less emotion. That’s why we chose it for the sixth chapter of the podcast. Electra is slower, even darker, less impressive in its structure but full of little details that make it great. Kristian Gundersen’s vocal register gets more dramatic and near. Ecstasy is, for me, not the weakest song but the one that touches me less. The choir and the keyboard gives the song an atmosphere that doesn’t hook me at all. Matter of taste, of course.
Desire is a different story. Slow, again the darkness shows up when the first notes appear. The song grows, dragging, taking you to its cold and gloomy beauty. One of the best songs without a doubt, not only from From the Vaults but from their entire career. Summer Rain speeds up the rhythm, the melody is more complex especially regarding the drumsticks, that are out of control. A different piece, rare when it has to be, original but without fanfare. Let’s be canonical, yes; let’s prove too that we do not feed on orthodoxies only. JGK is weirder. Messed, devious, almost Lo-Fi, it’s a kind of epilogue, as curious as hypnotic. Samplers and keyboards, apart from the habitual instruments, a non-typical ending, but obviously this is a minor matter, unpretentious, funny and perfect as a weird ending.
From the Vaults is a magnificent opportunity to get together some songs that would be difficult to collect in any other way, a great reason to listen to this norwegians again and again, at least until we can have some new material…
