10. To/Die/For - Cvlt:This is simply a great band from the gothic metal scene, and it is curious that I've been a fan since they released the amazing song "Little Deaths", but it was not before this year that I realized how amazing these guys are by listening to their whole discography. First thing that has been criticized about them is the lack of the gothic atmosphere that they could easily create back in the days of All Eternity and Epilogue (mostly). Some even say that the past record Samsara was the beginning of a decay in the creativity and performance of the band, and well, I think that Cvlt (yes, with "v") succeeds when Samsara failed. It is heavy, sometimes truly gothic as in the good old times, and it is even weird. For instance, the band chose to cover a hit song by Paula Abdul called Straight Up, which is totally not-To/Die/For-ish, and if anyone had known before listening to the final result that this would be the cover to appear in this record, it would have been very hard to imagine what the band would do to turn this into something that fits good with the rest of the songs (yes, adding the word "bitch" a couple of times changed the poppish mood of this song very much). There is also a third The Unknown, a classic and awesome song from Epilogue. This third Unknown is not one of the highlights of the record, but it does justice to the past two parts from Epilogue and Jaded, and it is very enjoyable after a few times. The best of this record is given by You, maybe the heaviest song here, the glorious opener In Black, whose lyrics and dark mood set the stage for the even more glorious first single Screaming Birds. This sounds like old To/Die/For to me, the good old times are not completely gone, as this song seems to say. Jape Peratalo sounds great in this, although we can hear that time is doing its part to Jape's vocals. All in all, this is To/Die/For at their best, and enough reason to give this album a chance.
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09. Lana del Rey - Honeymoon: Yes, Lana del Rey found a place in this list. It was clear, by listening to their Ultraviolence from 2014, that this would happen at some point. Lana has truly evolved since their debut with Born To Die and it has been for good. Honeymoon is a solid piece of art, full of catchy and melancholic songs, all of them such that Lana's voice and one-of-a-kind lyrics shine in all their glory. Here we do not have an instant tear-maker like Old Money from Ultraviolence, but we have Salvatore instead, which might or might not turn the listeners into a river of tears, but it is undeniable that it is one of the most beautiful ballads Del Rey has written. The chorus is catchy and highly melancholic and without a doubt, Lana's performance here is heart-touching. There is also the very well known High by the beach, which is definitely the song "to get high with". Totally catchy, and sometimes even atmospheric (the mixture of vocal lines and melody is so great here that they seem to have been written at the same time). Some other highlights are Honeymoon, Music To Watch Boys To and, yes, I think Swan Song is a beautiful ballad too, with a great and atmospheric chorus and musically very well conceived (I've heard a few comments about this being the big flaw from the record, and as I just said, I totally disagree). Expect no National Anthem, Off To The Races or Diet Mountain Dew here; instead be sure that this is a record that you will enjoy from the first to the last song, and will get you in touch with different forms of melancholy.
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08. IAMX - Metanoia: Chris Corner is back after a few years in which he had to face depression, and abandon his solo project IAMX, which was just starting to get the attention it always deserved. Last IAMX records have been great, and they prove that Chris is truly great at creating dark and catchy tunes with poetic and mostly depressive lyrics, but what he has done with this latest effort entitled Metanoia is simply AWESOME. The catchy Happiness, which has been featured in the OST of the tv series How To Get Away With Murder, is probably one of the best singles that Chris Corner's ever written, one in which he desperately claims for... Yes, he claims for happiness, and he does this providing one of his best vocal performances ever. He then turns a little more experimental, almost in the industrial sense, with the powerful, hypnotic and atmospheric North Star, another stand out in this album. Melancholia and its derivatives are probably the words that appear the most in this list, and the same applies in this album once that we reach the amazing, deep and emotional Say Hello Melancholia and the highly depressive The Background Noise, in which the operatic background vocals add an extra feeling that perfectly matches the sad complaining that this song intends to tell. The dreamy and synth-pop influenced Insomnia is a desperate call from within that, with the help of Chris's vocals, becomes definitely heart-touching. Since this record seems to be something like a diary of a depression, I find it hard to decide whether the also industrial-like Aphrodisiac is truly about sexual desire or about being seduced by the darkness that depression implies. This does not happen with Surrender, another gloomy stand out in which we go back to Chris' darkest days, in the extreme in which giving up seems the only possible choice. Wildest Wind, the last track on the record and another highlight, is a gloomy love song, with a funeral-like mood, which brings this masterpiece to its glorious end. The whole album is truly dark and depressive, and actually I think that Chris Corner had never released something with this level of darkness before. Fortunately, he managed to turn his darkest days into art, and the result is precisely that: art in the shape of this beautiful record.
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07. Bang Gang - The Wolves Are Whispering:What should someone expect from an album with a cover like this? Yes, something slow, gloomy and a dark atmosphere here and there. This is the first record I hear from this band (actually it is just Baroi Johannsson), although they have been around for a while, and it was the only time I paid attention to something recommended on my facebook account (it all happened when the video for Out Of Horizon was released). I am so glad this happened. Bang Gang are great, and I don't know if they've been this great before, but still I don't care, they are amazing in this album, almost every single song fits perfectly here (I said "almost every" because I'm not a big fan of A Lonely Bird). There are many highlights but I will mention those I'm more attached to: Out Of Horizon, a piece of beautiful melodic and melancholic pop which lyrically is an invitation to let oneself be seduced by the beauty of darkness. Silent Bite, in which Helen Marnie from Ladytron is the one in charge of the voice, is maybe the darkest track in this record. Both its lyrics and melody create a landscape of gothic beauty that might even bring chills to the listener' spine, and yes, despite how much I love Baroi's vocals, listening to Helen is always delightful, and she shines in all her vocal glory in this song. Sabazios O is another track with a mood like this; very ghostly although more oriented to a deep feeling of sadness and solitude. The last two tracks are also beautiful pieces of art. First we have Wait By The Lake, maybe the most melancholic track on this record, slow and beautiful, and greatly sung by Baroi. Even sadder is the closing track, We Will Never Get Along, a beautiful ballad in which Baroi's vocals almost sound like a crying. Beautifully written-lyrics, dark and melancholic melodies and an awesome production, which is obvios at first listen, are some of the reasons to give this record a chance. It is definitely seductive from the first song to the last.
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06. Scream Silence - Heartburnt:One of the greatest bands from the gothic rock scene, one which knows how to please their fans with every release they make, and one I want to listen to until the end of my days. After the awesome self-titled album from 2012, and after a masterpiece like Aphelia, waiting for a new Scream Silence album means expecting too much, and Heartburnt (in spite of the not-great-at-all cover) means no disappointment to such expectations. We have the usual dark and gloomy sounds we are very much used to, as in songs like the awesome Born With Blood On My Hands and Heartburnt, the heavier (in the darkest sense possible) songs in this record, but this time there is also an almost danceable track, which is the first single from this record, the glorious Art Remains. The topic in the lyrics is different from those in the other songs, since Art Remains deals with trying to stay true to oneself in a society corrupted and almost turned into zombies, a topic that has meant a lot to me during almost the whole last year. We also have The Weeping, which sounds like the point of view of the victim of someone who's in total discontrol, a tale told in a very poetic way because of the great lyrics, and helped by the awesome music and effect that the use of synths, as only this guys know how to use, provides to the song. The cover of The National's Converation 16 is another stand out track. It is a very well known and great song which the band has turned into something that fits into their style, in such a way that this version is totally an Scream Silence song. The End of the Lie, one of the longest tracks, closes the record in a beautiful way, with Hardy Fieting sounding as glorious as always. To finish this small review, I have to mention my favorite track (or one of my favorite tracks) on this record: the ultra catchy Echoes, which is typical Scream Silence, and by typical I mean that synths are the main star in this melody, as in Days of Yore from 2012's Scream Silence and the great Creep from Saviourine. However, the sad and melancholic lyrics of this song and the also melancholic melody prove again how great this band is at evoking emotions, and this is exactly what makes them the awesome band they are, since the huge connection that they are able to create between the music and the listener, is something not every band/singer out there would be able to do.
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05. Susanne Sundfør - Ten Love Songs:Susanne Sundfør is simply brilliant! A great musician, a great songwriter and a great singer who is not afraid to experiment with her sound. This latest record by her is a masterpiece, and it presents a nice diversity of sounds which highly pleases the listener. Lyrics are all about "love", but as the first line of the great, dark and atmospheric Accelerate indicate, many people will get hurt (by this kind of "love"). This is not love as in Disney's universe, this is love as it is; with happiness, rage, sadness and many different emotions, as we can hear when we compare the topics of songs like the catchy Kamikaze, the 80's sounding and almost EBM-ish Delirious (the angriest lyrics on this record) or the super sad Memorial, in which Susanne shows her high skills as a pianist, at the same time that she creates a classical atmosphere that enriches the previously mentioned diversity of sounds that can be found in this record. This is definitely a record to enjoy from its first to its last second, and it only becomes greater and more beautiful as each one of its ten songs are played.
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04. Dear Strange - Lonely Heroes:It is almost time to unveil the first three places on this list, but first, there is another masterpiece to talk about, one which meant a hard time to decide the first places of this list. Dear Strange are Dorian E (vocals) and Romain Frequency (music). They have been around for a while, and this last year they released their first full record together as Dear Strange, a masterpiece for the gothic music scene in which songs share moods, but no song sounds like any other in this record. The first we get to hear is a very electronic introduction which allows the amazing single The Unicorn to start and shine in all its glory. This is, to me, the song with the saddest lyrics in the record, it is also the one with my favorite melody and vocal performance by Dorian E. It is catchy, dark, gloomy and it is that kind of song that you can hardly stop listening to after the first time. But this is not the only highlight in this masterpiece; I Can See Through This presents one of the darkest moments of the record because of its awesome lyrics and the very particular way in which Dorian E sings "the devil is looking through my window". Actually I think Dorian's vocals are crucial in the power of each and every single song on this record. Her vocals are mysterious, touching and atmospheric, and add a very special feeling to the songs, one that very few singers in this genre can add. A clear example of this is the catchy danceable and 80's influenced Strangers As We Are, which could easily turn into a disco anthem, without losing a single bit of the poetry that a song like this represents to music. Starting as a purely disco tune, the song changes to a darkwave anthem in the end, and we notice how Dorian's vocal lines follow this change in a way that it seems that she's totally become one with the melody. Other favorites of mine include the dreamy (yet not happy like a regular pop song) A Hand Full Of Nothing and Sweeter Than This, another catchy electronic tune with an 80's wave and Dorian's captivating vocals. The end of this great record comes with the beautiful Minima Moralia, maybe the most emotional part of the record, a song with a beauty and simplicity that only highlight the skills of these two musicians to create a sound that no other artist/band in this dark electronic environment is capable of.
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03. Moonspell - Extinct: Moonspell is a band which needs no introduction. They are one of the greatest acts in the whole metal scene, and lately they have experimented with so many types of metal that it has become impossible to just label them as [some kind of] metal. This new record is a good example. It sounds like two records in one, since the first half of Extinc is heavy, gothic and sometimes even darkwave-oriented, while the second half is more mid-tempo. Extinc is full of highlights, like the song which gives the album its name, in which we hear Fernando Ribeiro's grunts in a way which reminds us of the band's awesome Night Eternal. The opener, Breathe (Until We Are No More) is heavy, awesomely performed and has a bass line which alternates with synths and symphonic moments, resulting in one hell of a track which sets the perfect stage for huge expectations. Medusalem is a more darkwave tune, surprisingly too darkwave considering what band this is, but they have managed to create a great mixture between this sound and pure gothic metal, and the final result is one of the best tracks in this record. We also have slow songs like the gloomy Domina, the super depressive The Future Is Dark and Malignia, whose lyrics are, so far, my favorite metaphor about Medusa (yes, the gorgon from greek mithology). Instrumental moments in A Dying Breed are also worth mentioning, along with the distinctive sound of the closing track La Baphomette, an almost purely lounge-oriented track. I have saved for the last part of this review the track that has become my favorite song in this record, although it is not the one which best defines the kind of music that Moonspell play. Actually, it is also as different from any other thing that Moonspell created before as it is La Baphomette. I talk about the catchy and Sisters Of Mercy-like song "The Last Of Us", which truly offers a chance to both, metal and not metal fans, to join in one single chorus and sing and enjoy a track which, in spite of its simple structure, possesses a truly high quality and it is very easy to sing along with, without turning into a crappy pop song or something. It is also another prove of how good these guys are when it comes to experimenting with their sound.
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02. Meg Myers - Sorry: So those days when singers like Alanis Morissette, Poe, Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos and PJ Harvey were at the top of the charts are too long gone, and there have been nearly no new female singers who can bring back something of what the aforementioned singers did to become popular, and at the same time add their very own style to find their own place in the music business. Well, this year I discovered the young and talented Meg Myers, whose brilliant lyrics, awesome voice and greatly produced songs have definitely showed me that female solo singers can still be impressive and evoke many emotions with simple lyrics. Although Meg's been in the music business for a while, Sorry is her official debut, and it consists of both some songs she wrote in the past and totally new songs. There are very few words to describe this record (or maybe there aren't enough words), it is simply PERFECT. Very few records can be totally enjoyed from the first to the last song without feeling like clicking the skip button a few times, but Sorry is so good that skipping any of these ten brilliant tracks would be sinful. I could talk about each and every single one of them, but I'll limit myself to those that I'm more addicted to. First, the first song I heard from Meg, and also the opener of the album, the Poe-ish and catchy Motel, whose first notes reminded me at first of Chvrches and Purity Ring, and then allowed to instantly realize the beautiful voice that this girl has, and then, by paying attention to the lyrics, I could also realize how great Meg Myers is at writing lyrics that can draw images inside the listener's head. Most of these songs have a dark feeling, like the lustful Desire or the amazing alternative pop oriented I Really Want You To Hate Me, which to me is the example of what that song by Meredith Brooks called "Bitch" should have been. That is, a song about giving no fuck about who you are (maybe even being proud of yourself and your dark side), with great lyrics, catchy sound and simple yet great vocal lines (none of them present in the aforementioned song by Brooks, if you ask). On the other hand we have A Bolt From The Blue, the happiest song when it comes to lyrics, and the most poppy with some electronic beats in the whole record. This means no flaw to it, since it actually feels like a bit of fresh air from the dark mood of the other songs. And talking about gloom and darkness, The Morning After is a gloomy mostly acoustic piece of art worth of all the attention in the world. It is one of Meg's best lyrics and vocal performances, just like the closing track Feather or the beautiful ballad Parade, whose lyrics seem like a bullet to the heart of that who inspired them. We also have the heavier and mostly rock-oriented Sorry, whose powerful chorus and vocal performance made me want to jump from my chair the first time I heard them. The record as a whole clearly proves that Meg's voice can sound great no matter what kind of music she sings, and it also leaves the feeling of wanting more from this too talented girl (fortunately, there are a couple of EP's released before this album, which are also great).
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01. Solar Fake - Another Manic Episode: Finally, my favorite record from 2015. The greatest production created by Sven Friedrich and André Feller (aka Solar Fake), cleverly entitled Another Manic Episode, although this is by no means "just another manic episode". This is an elegantly written and produced EBM/Industrial/Synthpop record, focused mostly in what Sven is truly great at, which is creating synthpop mid-tempo tunes that evoke deep emotions. The first single entitled All The Things You Say is a fine example of this, and it is as catchy as any club hit should be, in spite of its sad lyrics, which are by the way, cleverly written and equally poetic and addictive. Simply, a great electronic piece which easily gets stuck in the listener's head. Greatness is also obvios in tracks like the brilliant and powerful opener Not What I Wanted, whose fastly-sung chorus is one of the best in the whole record, and it works perfectly as a first glimpse of what it is yet to come with the remaining songs. Then we get the also awesome Fake To Be Alive, a bit more agressive than the previous one, still powerful and more danceable, one of the best melodies in the whole record. Other agressive and brilliant tunes appear in Observer and the most industrial oriented The Race Of The Rats, two of the greatest and most agressive lyrics in the whole record. First we hear Sven singing with all his pain and rage a line like "why the fuck you broke my heart?" in Observer, and then we witness his critics to someone who seems to be facing the worst time in their life in The Race Of The Rats. Actually, I think this song might be taken as a some kind of social criticism and something about people pretending to be something they are not, in order to be part of society. These are not the only stars in the album, we get a couple of "fuck you, you suck" kind of lyrics, although not in a way as agressive as in Observer or TROTR. This is the case of the great If I Were You and the more synth-pop oriented I Don't Want You In Here, and we also have what Sven is better at: songs to cry a river. These are, first, the catchy and extremely sad Until It's Over, one of my favorite tracks and one which is reminiscent of the awesome Rise And Fall from Reasons To Kill. Second, the song which might be labeled as the saddest and most emotional creation of Solar Fake, the closing track Stay, which continues the topic about losing someone important, as in the previously mentioned Until It's Over. But this time the choice of words for the lyrics, the melody (more ballad-like) and Sven's vocals, make it very easy to be moved so much that crying would be hard to avoid (I've cried a fucking river when listening to the last two choruses of the song, in which Sven changes the lyrics a little). This is just a perfect album, greatly written and produced, with enough songs to skip the EP label and also enough to be enjoyed without feeling the need to skip any of these songs, although the catchiest ones like Fake To Be Alive, All The Things You Say and Until It's Over, for instance, will make it hard to stop clicking the "repeat" button a few/many times.
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