Are you a fan of goth? Do you have a penchant for glam? Do you have a dark soul but an extravagant showy side? Do you still mourn the loss of Bowie and Bolan? Are you coming to terms with the Bauhaus boys finally calling it a day and hanging up their black clothes and guyliner?
Fear not, on their second album, Bela and the Lugosis are here to fill the void, providing the sounds to satiate that niche goth/glam yearning… This is the band Bowie and Co. may have become if he hadn’t broken up the band, if the Spiders had fallen to Earth and joined forces with the spider-man who was having Robert Smith for dinner. Blinding Red Sunglow is the album Bowie could have made if he’d pulled on a pair of black Cuban-heeled winkle pickers and danced the Mezcal Dance instead of putting on red shoes and dancing the Blues. This album has a dark beating heart of goth with a sparkling sheen of glam.
In these days of AI, if you’d asked a bot to come up with how they thought a combination of Bowie, Bolan and Bauhaus would sound, this would probably not be far off the result.
There is no standing on ceremony, Blinding Red Sunglow crashes in with searing glam riffs blazing an incandescent trail and setting the pace for an album crammed full of gothic glam stompers. Experience a breathless onslaught of thunderous goth anthem, as on the sinuous riffs of Love Nation, after glorious glam smash. The Starman may have left the planet but in his leaving has begat a Starchild…
Glitter Mix has the mark of The Glitter Band, sprinkled with a liberal dusting of darkness. Where Bowie had Cat People, Bela has Dinosaur People. A Dream of Primrose Hill has an underlying bass growl that channels King of the Rumbling Spires, while the album closes in style, the final track has a bombastic seventies swagger to it, the spirit of the Bolan Boogie made, well, Flesh!
Once you get to the end, catch your breath, then press play again and jump back in with both feet. Silver platforms or black buckled winkle pickers, everyone is welcome…