Track Listing: Gasoline, Holding On, Happiness, Absinth Minded, Look At Us, Reality, Stream, Won’t Be Coming Back, In Time.

Though Paatos are the least eclectic of the current offerings, I am shamelessly in love with their song, “Gasoline”, which reminds me very strongly of both The Changelings and Switchblade Symphony, two sadly defunct personal favorites. Apart from this relatively fast-paced arabic/indian influenced song, the rest of the album is mostly dreamy, moody etherea, with some songs featuring sustained waves of orchestrated intensity and inspired melodic invention. Quality musicianship throughout and some novel effects. I enjoyed this a lot.

For more information, check out www.paatos.com

Track Listing: Icy Stars, Sentence Now, Breach, Moonlight Kiss, Crowded, All That’s Needed, 80 Years of Dirt, Flicker, Flicker & Out, Eyes on the Ocean, Tonal, Alien, Too Far Gone, Red Satin Rivers, Apocalypse & Pawn, The Ne'er Do Well, Orchid (by Nim Vind), Goodnight Lustmord, The Cowboy Vampire.

Bowie and Bono get together with Manson and Reznor for a spot of tea and industrial dreaming, punctuated by the occasional flash of originality; here and there the surprising touch of something like acid jazz. Professional and well wrought, so they can wear their influences on their sleeves and get away with it.

For more information, check out www.kooperkain.com

Track Listing: Over Your Dead Body, Prom Night, This Night I Call (Bad Luck), ‘Til The End, Her Open Grave, Dead Flesh Gurl, Bigger Shop Of Horrors, All My Monsters, Love Thornz, Amy Sue, Little Frankenstein, Transylvania Mania, Send More Paramedics, Scars...19.

Hard driving darkwave punk/metal for the most part, with the accent on punk. Can a skeleton have a mohawk? This one does – and piercings too. Some slow numbers make an anachronistic nod to do-wop antiquity (boo-wop?) that I didn’t quite know what to do with, though there is a strain of this aesthetic running effectively through several more up-tempo songs. Are they playing at irony with the sacred American tradition... as in your well-scrubbed teenage daughter on a date with a corpse?

Available through Middle Pillar’s Hell’s Hundred Records.

Track Listing: Sodom Elementary (Monologue), Alice In Gothland, Day of the Dead, Mardi Gras Masquerade, Vampire Circus, Blue Melancholy Death, Lament Of The Undead (Dark Bite Version), Transylvania (Creepy Muse Version), Everyday Is Halloween *Ministry Cover, Black Dahlia, Mr. Styx, Vincent Price, Skull Love, Ghoul Parlor, Ghost Parade, Boris Karloff, Dead Lover’s Blues, Paint It Black *Rolling Stones Cover, Lady Death (Live In L.A.).

A goth band that, dare I use the term, kicks ass... or rather, whips ass. Need something a tad hot and heavy to help drive your fetish ball over the top? Look no further. Pounding, guitar driven, outre rock ‘n’ roll. It isn’t until six tracks in that the bowed strings come out to introduce some slow melancholia, which then bleeds over into the hot rock of the next couple songs. Every goth cliché in the Necronomicon seems to be included here, down to the black kitchen sink; but it all seems finely granulated into tiny bits and reconstituted in a manner that keeps the presentation fairly fresh. Perhaps it’s just a relentless commitment to the macabre that reanimates the beast. They probably return a bit too much to some variation of the same beat and riff, but Astrovamps still merit at least three antimatter stars.

For more information, check out www.astrovamps.com.