Words & Photos: Magda Campagne
★★★★★
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Club Cheek was a place I had heard of, but never stepped into. That was until I found myself on a side Brixton street, heading under the railway arches. An orderly queue of goths and garden-variety misfits was forming steadily. I stepped inside to find a Lynchian vignette: an industrial room sunken in dark red lights. In the perfectly designed, gender-neutral toilets, I chatted with someone with fangs in their teeth. Initially, I put that down to it being almost Halloween, also known as the Goth Christmas. But the answer lay much closer to home. HMLTD’s third album ‘Fangs’, which we were there to celebrate, was a much more obvious hint.
Photo: Magda Campagne
‘Fangs’ signals a new chapter in HMLTD’s journey - not only in the band’s line-up, but also in their sound. To their acclaimed theatrical art-pop, they have now added a generous sprinkle of industrial rave to create a new genre: ÜberGöth, and the launch event could not have been put together more perfectly.
As an appetiser, goth performance artist trashedbaby, featured in a piece documenting the state of goth culture in Britain in DAZED Magazine, warmed the room with a breakcore/gabber set. Illuminated by a white spotlight to match their harsh sound, they set the night's tone: industrial, theatrical, and unapologetically goth.
Looking around the room, I could see the full cross-section of goth culture, from the aforementioned people with fangs, to the new romantics, to the more casual goths like myself. Bleeding Cocteau Twins on the inside, clad in simple blacks on the outside. And trashedbaby made sure we were all included when they stepped among us with a microphone to add layers of screams to their set, or simply to perform among us. They had a type of performance art that really spoke to me - full of cultural references, arresting and memorable.
Then the new HMLTD lineup took to the stage. Henry Spychalski and Duc Peterman were joined by Theo Spark and Andrei Martynchyk. Right off the bat, we were invited to ‘Grab The Crucifix’, and the full lore of ‘Fangs’ unfurled.
The venue filled to the brim and soon it felt as if Bob Fosse and Vampire Lestat threw a goth rave together. Spychalski, wearing a period suit from the album cover and a Phantom of the Opera half-mask, enchanted the audience. With the new album only a weekend old, the devoted crowd was already singing along to every word. Soon Spychalski’s mask came off, and it didn’t take long for the haze-covered bodies to start moshing for ‘Dancing On Your Grave’. “It doesn’t get more goth than that”, Spychalski joyfully said from the stage, before getting even more goth on ‘Close To You’.
The new material hit the spot with the crowd. Maybe it’s the nostalgia, maybe it’s the omnipresent AI that makes people who appreciate art seek out experiences rooted in lived experiences. The room had a distinctive sense of community, and everyone shared an understanding of what HMLTD was creating. Drawing on obvious inspirations like Bauhaus, as well as early 2000s blog-house and synthwave, they somehow drew a line through a broad spectrum of modern goth influences. Both sonic and visual, the idea of ÜberGöth came to life in front of my eyes. I felt as if they placed pins on the map of my life and made that into a record.
But before ‘Fangs’ drew to a close, they invited their previous band members onstage to perform fan favourites from ‘West Of Eden’, ‘Satan, Luella and I’ and ‘To The Door’. “We’ve never had so many people on the stage - and it’s such a small stage!” - Spychalski exclaimed. But it was wholesome to see the ‘old’ HMLTD together with the ‘new’, the shared joy and clearly no love lost.
As we filtered out of the venue onto the dark, soggy streets of Brixton, I noticed a show at Village Underground already announced for March 2027. So grab your crucifix, pick up some fangs, and let's do the dance of the vampire again.