The Ravens Nest

Biscuits, Gravy & Chicken-Fried Darkness

I’ve never considered myself “country.”

I was always a little too rock n’ roll.

Being a kid in the ‘80s, piled into a Caprice with my siblings and no seat belts with Bayou 104 playing, we heard our share of rock n’ roll. I was in love with rock music since I was a kid.

Little did I know to whom some of the songs I heard repeatedly were attributed to.

Today, I can honestly saying I’ve been listening to gothic rock n’ roll since I was a kid. I heard The Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees songs right alongside Eddie Money, .38 Special, Bon Jovi and a ton of others.

When I got into metal, my mom flipped out. I was listening to Guns N’ Roses and the stuff I heard on rock radio. There was something really liberating about metal. I progressed to the Big Four, Ozzy, Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, you get the picture. My friends and I ran back and forth through eras of hard rock and metal. We listened to every album that we could get our hands on, the harder, the better and, friends, at the time, I know will appreciate this, Cannibal Corpse was becoming colossal. They were in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Beavis & Butt-Head, and MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball. We could not believe what we were listening to. This shit was so over-the-top with it’s violence and gore, we completely got how they got the Tipper Sticker. Thing was, we congratulated them for it. Anyone bearing that meant that there was something in there…they…did not want me to hear.

Something happened though. My friends’ tastes got heavier, louder, harder and mine were getting…darker. Type O Negative entered the conversation. I had a friend, the only one on the street that had MTV and the only other guy who would share what Headbanger’s Ball episodes he’d taped. He’d never, even if I gave him a blank videotape, would he ever, just let the Type O Negative videos be recorded. My boy actively gatekept me. Dave…bro. We need to clear the air about that, sometime.

Anywhoozles, Dave moves outta town and there I am…all on my own. I’m working by that time so Friday Night is New Music Night. Weekends are for listening to it all. I was getting into Marilyn Manson by then because it was something I hadn’t seen before but I couldn’t look away. I was already listening to Type O Negative by then and Cradle of Filth, Black Funeral, I mean we’re getting into Black Metal territory there, I get it but then I’m also leaning into Industrial, by the time it became mainstream, that is because that’s the only way this small-town guy is finding this stuff. I’m getting re-introduction to that aesthetic and vibe again and it’s appealing, won’t lie. It’s just me, might as well.

I’m finding bands like Stabbing Westward, Rammstein via Movie Soundtracks and KMFDM via the Manga Anime montage trailer. Toss some Stevie Ray Vaughan, classic rock and Kenny Wayne Shepherd and some of the local groove metal bands into the mix and you have me…right before I met the first girl to actually get me. She looks through my music collection and she’s rather well-traveled and is astonished.

She’s the one that introduced me to The Sisters of Mercy, reintroduced me to some other bands I’d either forgotten about or wasn’t exactly listening to the right songs.

That’s a pretty long, strange trip down music. I’m hardly mentioning all of the stuff that I was finding and scouring these indie record stores for. I mean I found bands like Sister Machine Gun and Machines of Loving Grace through those places and The Crow Soundtrack.

Okay, Keyboard Warriors…unhand the keyboards until you’re done reading this because my love for gothic rock and darkwave has a very unlikely source.

It’s all Def Leppard’s fault. If you want someone to blame, it’s them and I know how that sounds but like I said, hey! Back up! Keep Your Hands On Your Desk Where I Can See Them! Better yet, sit on ‘em. Put them in your pockets. I do not care what you do with them but do not put them on your keyboard…

Def Leppard is responsible. I mean, they make seriously feel-good music. Love them to death and when Euphoria dropped, you know I snatched mine up immediately, but let’s dial it back to Pyromania.

Too Late For Love.

Come on.

For a band that was usually upbeat, lively and celebratory aside from the occasional song you could fall apart to, fall in love to or the odd one where you could do both at the same time if not one or the other, this was one of their darkest songs.

Listen to that clean exchange of arpeggios on the song’s opening.

That opening stanza, painting one person as putting on a performance for singing children, the entire theatre motif sounds like it has something underneath it that threatens everything. You can feel the heaviness of the song itself. There is a truly something dark and oppressive, almost Poe-like about the song’s lyrics. Coming from a band steeped in glam rock as an influence, that can seem strange. One song out of their entire catalogue did that.

I couldn’t get that song out of my head for a long time. Not because it was an earworm but because the lyrical imagery stuck with me. That song still lives in my head rent-free but I’m convinced that, had I never heard that song, I don’t know if I’d have opened up to more bands like Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, The Mission, London After Midnight, L’Ame Immortelle quite as well.

I may not have been curious about a band with a name like Type O Negative. Then again, in terms of rock n’ roll, that was the turning point and the heaviest point of influence for me.

I would probably still developed an appreciation for gothic rock and even darkwave but that, I think might have been a more recent development rather than one that brewed over a period of years.

I mean there were other external influences like the works of Poe, the multitude of times I watched Dracula starring Frank Langella as a kid or ‘Salem’s Lot with my dad. I’m pretty sure that aesthetic and vibe stuck with me for a long time for a reason.

These days, I’m far too “country” for where I am.

To be straight with you, I’m happy as hell to have fallen in love with gothic rock because, The Nocturneverse wouldn’t exist the way it is if I hadn’t.

I call it a win.

I just also love music and felt like talking about it.

I’m also thinking that the next character I introduce, he’s gonna live right here in my area in the mid-90s. No idea why, I just wanna see what happens to a mortal in that world.

Let’s Fucking Go!