Plague Garden's chrysanthemums may be wilted, but that doesn't stop them from blooming regularly: Under the Sanguine Moon is their fourth album since 2020. Their productivity is impressive but goes hand in hand with an efficient working method: don't expect any major rethinking on the part of the band or any avant-garde flourishes. Gothic rock that gets straight to the point is on the menu... and there's nothing to complain about that, so prepare to dance with your eyes glued to the floor of your vault.
This time, Plague Garden are bringing out their black capes and sharp canines. A blood-red cover, tracks with bloody or blasphemous references: the Denver band's new album is all about vampirism. The piano, the theatrical accents, the deep, gravelly voice with its spectral echoes that almost fade into the background, leaving the purring bass to impose its mysterious haze? The ingredients are there, and if the guitar on Running From Satan sometimes smells of desert sand, you're reminded of John Carpenter's Vampire.
Plague Garden get straight to the point with their gothic rock under influence, which never seeks to revolutionise the genre or demonstrate its modernism: in fact, we're closer to the sound of the early 80s, with its post-punk tension and the ghost of Christian Death moping in the corner, than to the hits of The 69 Eyes. However, Plague Garden vary the pleasures, whether inviting Azy Bats to sing on the mysterious Pandora, switching to Spanish to pay tribute to the teenage vampires of Lost Boys with the dynamic Los Niños Perdidos, or having fun vampirising Garbage by covering #1 Crush, adding an extra touch of seductive menace to the original slowness.
Theatrical and cold, Under the Sanguine Moon is an album to dance in the shadow of the graves, whether to the more biting riffs of the nervous Shadows and The Dirty Dead or the melancholy of Blood Debt. There's no revelation on the horizon, just a work made by some fans for other fans, respectful of the codes of the genre and made with enough love and talent to make you want to sink your teeth into it. By the time the spell wears off, Plague Garden will have released a new album!
