Back in stock, now sold out at the source. It's funny how these little zeitgeists come about in underground music; certain themes and sounds strike a cultural chord, often tied to nostalgia. Sounds deemed pass� just a few years ago suddenly find favor among a new, younger audience, or are rediscovered by longtime fans. In recent years, there's been a resurgence of interest in 80's era death rock and UK goth from within the realms of both hardcore punk and black metal, with those sounds being devoured and spat back up into strange new mutations that imbue the style with newfound aggression and edge. There's been some amazing stuff coming out lately in this style, weird and aggressive mutations of death rock combined with heavier sounds, and some of my favorite stuff in this style has been coming from the Portland, Oregon band Deathcharge. Not that these guys are a new band; Deathcharge has been at it for over a decade, originally starting out as another Discharge-influenced hardcore outfit, but later evolving into a darker, more post-punk influenced style that first started to appear on the awesome Hangman 7" from 2005 (which foreshadowed the whole neo-deathrock / hardcore sound), and really peaked on their Love Was Born To An Early Death album. Now the band are back, but that Dis-goth sound has been scaled back into something a little more traditional, following up Early Death's ferocious hardcore with a new six song 12" titled Bad Dream Forever>

This 12" continues in the vein of their previous recordings while refining the band's blend of classic goth rock, hardcore punk, and metallic crunch, dropping the faster tempos in favor of a more rocking approach. Opener "A Grey Day" is a killer slab of dark kosmische drift, an ominous dronescape of rumbling black synthesizers and gleaming ghostly tones and distant voices that swirl around mysterious, metallic clanking, the sound of an axe striking a cave wall, joined by far-off crooning vocals for a moment. And then the title track kicks in, all plodding, morose bass-line and gorgeous minor key arpeggios spun into a wicked goth rock hook, like a rawer, hardcore-tinged Sisters Of Mercy, the singer sounding more Eldritch than ever; gone are the thunderous D-beat tempos and crusty metallic edge of their debut album, but this is still powerful stuff, the band now sounding like something off of First And Last And Always with less polish and more grime. This EP is littered with so much shit I can't get enough of, dark Tangerine Dream-esque synthesizers drifting through the cosmos, heavy, driving Joy Divisionish bass-lines that cruise through said nebula like some pummeling deathrock version of Hawkwind (you gotta blast the song "Isolation" to get where I'm coming from on that, it might be my favorite Deathcharge song ever). And the songs "Limbless", "To An Early Death" and "Buried Alive" are all equally brooding, driving goth-punk jams threaded with tough metallic guitar riffs amid the dark downbeat melodies. Absolutely killer stuff, but be warned - we've got just a handful of copies of this now out-of-print record, so it'll no doubt disappear from here pretty quickly.