This is the debut r
elease by Colorado-based duo Ryan Policky and Andy Uhrmacher, under the splendid moniker Alien Gothic, which has ambitions of creating its own sub-genre. As Policky says, “It’s something we knew would destroy the seedy, cobweb filled dance clubs of the past, bringing forth a new era of goth… alien goth!” However, just as ‘metal’ seemingly spawns every week a new version we don’t need, so ‘goth’ has become lazy shorthand for anything “Ooh, wait, this is a bit doomy,” so I wasn’t sure what this statement of intent quite meant.
Luckily, for this listener anyway, it turns out that their definition of ‘alien gothic’ seems to shift throughout this impressive, hour-long album. That may well be the result of the album’s lengthy four-year gestation, from 2020-2023. Part of that time has been spent creating a strong image around the band, with atmospheric hooded figures on a questing mission somewhere, as shown on their video for second track ‘In The Night’. Landscapes are transformed from daylight desert to night-time mysterious gathering, and so it is with much of this album.
Looking down the track listing, with titles such as ‘A Star is Death’ and ‘Drowning in a Dark Cavern’, you feel you’re unlikely to be in for a fun time, but while those two tracks are quite sludgy, elsewhere, particularly when the drums kick in, things get lively and even poppy in their riffs. Standouts are ‘A Drone of Her Celebration’, ‘The Last Battle’ and ‘Carl’ in this regard, all propelled by great tunes, along with the manifesto track ‘Alien Dance Club’.
When guitars rather than synths are to the fore, as on ‘Alien Warfare’ and ‘The Actual Ending’ the band veer into more standard metal territory and the sound is less distinctive and more generic, for me anyway.
The tracks which feature conventional singing and lyrics I also find less intriguing, as the vocal style is rather flat. Better use of voices is the scattering of mutterings and snatched voices that run through the album, as on ‘The Olde Town’. This track, and the two that follow and bring the album to a close, ‘Wormhole’ and ‘Church of the Empty’, coalesce into a section that seems to point to the future direction of Alien Gothic, and plays to their strengths: instrumentals with original arrangements and textures, breaking free from any ‘goth’ limitations.
