The album Sounds from a Silent Age by the band Lotus Feed is a very interesting piece for those who are familiar with the evolution of alternative music in the 80’s. This album explores a very specific period in Post Punk and Goth and seems to re-create in perfect detail that period where a branch of Post Punk was slowly giving birth to the first Goth / Wave sounds. We cannot put a a specific date to the birth of Goth but we can definitely place it during the interval between 1981 to 1983.
Songs from a Silent Age is full of energy unlike the later, more mellow Goth bands, Lotus Feed gives you that Punk grittiness, but also balances out very neatly with very early Goth. The album is also interesting in that its sound throughout is very guitar driven, and its from this premise that we see the the building blocks of what is to become one of the first sub-genres of Goth: Gothic Rock (which we all know the formula got perfected by The Sisters of Mercy whether Andrew Eldritch wants to acknowledge it or not).
But Lotus Feed invokes here the unsung heroes of Gothic Rock that don't get enough credit like New Model Army, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, The March Violets and Death Cult (Previously Called Southern Death Cult and later called The Cult) which started to change the Post Punk and early Goth formula to a harder more guitar driven experience.
This album is quite a gem in its own regard. This is a history lesson in modern times so if you wanted to know how early Goth but before Gothic Rock sounded back in time, this album is you best bet nowadays. Also, Lotus Feed, unlike their new Goth/Wave revival counterparts, favors hardware over the digitized sound head in much of the Post Punk/Goth/Darkwave coming out today. This gives them a raw in your face experience that gets you blood pumping. If we say today that Goth is Not dead because of the recent Goth/Wave then Songs from a Silent Age goes to show you that Goth (In the old gritty school style) is not dead either and just because the sound of Lotus Feed seems old it still holds up greatly even today.
The style they play here is an immortal piece of history of a specific era in music and they honor it perfectly. I recommend the entire album if you know about this time in music but that song called Legacy is a classic today and would have been a classic in the early 1980s.
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