Negative Gain – Queen City Sounds and Art

Astari Night, photo courtesy the artists

Astari Nite’s single “Tongue Tied Galore” and its new album Resolution of Happiness (out June 21, 2024 via Negative Gain Productions on digital download, limited edition vinyl LP and streaming) has a wonderfully scuzzy edginess reminiscent of Shadow Project, Rozz Williams’ post-Christian Death band. The confident but slightly quavering vocals from Mychael Ghost speaking to feelings of existential weariness and alienation – with others and with oneself. The sparkling and fuzzy guitar work and urgent rhythms lend the song a spirit of desperation and resignation tugging at each other in opposite emotional directions. The music with its old DV camera aesthetic of the band performing in various environments and times of day looks like a future segment of the V/H/S franchise set in the group’s home town of Miami bringing to the presentation of the music a menacing resonance that suits the subject matter of the lyrics. Watch that video on YouTube and follow Astari Nite at the links below.

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Bestial Mouths, photo courtesy the artist

The latest Bestial Mouths album R.O.T.T. (inmyskin) came out on August 11, 2023 via Negative Gain on digital and vinyl and, produced and mixed by Rhys Fulber of Front Line Assembly fame, it sounds like a new chapter for Lynette Cerezo’s songwriting. This is perhaps dramatically highlighted by the track that closes the album, “Road of Thousand Tears.” It mourns the losses of the world and of personal losses and trying to get back some of what you didn’t know you lost along the way as you make your way through the often rocky and challenging path of life. The song swims in expansive, ethereal synth melody and its processional pace is marked by electronic beats that splay in a crumbling distortion while maintaining a hypnotic cadence. In the music video Cerezo seems to be hanging out in the ruins of an old industrial town in the American West, all dry scrub and desert landscapes and the remains of buildings and railroads and of the skeletons of a once great world power. It’s like a post-apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy novel come to life and yet there’s a yearning in the mood of the song a hope for being able to reclaim what remains and make something of it whether that’s your life, your culture and/or your community, the seeds of that hope reside in the song and its slowly expansive dynamic and what initially sounds like a work of deep melancholy becomes more like the saying a goodbye to a difficult chapter of existence and working toward what must come next but not before mourning what will never be again. The song and the album has features of the darkwave and post-punk sounds of previous Bestial Mouths releases but also a way of songwriting that feels markedly different and new. Watch the video for “Road of Thousand Tears” on YouTube and follow Bestial Mouths at the links provided.