FANGS

HMLTD are back with their new album, FANGS. The sonic counterpart to this enquiry is what the band claim is their own new genre: Götherdammerüng (An allusion to Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, or ‘Twilight of the Gods’. In HMLTD’s reading, this becomes a ‘Twilight of the Goths.’), or - less verbosely - ÜberGöth. Predictably unpredictable, this new sound could not be further away from the band’s last outing, 2023’s rock opera The Worm.

On FANGS, the sixteen-piece orchestra of The Worm has been traded in for Ableton, the timpani’s and violins replaced with side-chained four-to-the-floor and rave synths, and the gospel choir swapped for guttural gothic howling and black metal screams. The result is both unique and terrifying: a total reinvention and rehabilitation of the goth genre, through the looking glass of modern electronic and doomscroll-era dance music.