Music from The Succubus Club
A Soundtrack to Vampire: The Masquerade (Dancing Ferret)
by Scott “Bloodsucker MC” Hefflon
Clunky title for such a cool-ass comp… So, with little help from the liner notes (written in that oblique, poetic, melodramatic sigh that sounds like it’s saying “Calgon, take me away!” when all they’re really saying is “you’re toast is done”), I think I’ve gathered that The Succubus Club is a Goth club in a fictious world, and Vampire: The Masquerade is a video game or role-playing game or both or something. Fuckin’ Goths, can’t come out and say anything, huh? Leading the moping pack is The Crüxshadows, a band I learned to like because a roommate had their CD on endless repeat whenever she was home for almost a year. While perhaps not significantly better than anyone else, they have a confidence and a full, smooth, unsilly sound that seems to touch on everything I consider Goth (in a good way). I think they’re also tight with the crew at The Succubus Club (can a group of Goths be considered a posse? A gang? Aside from the CO cult – more to do with inbred, bored, dumb rebellion than any specific kind of music – is an oncoming motley crew of Goths something to fear, or is the worst that could happen that get some black lipstick or facepaint or your coat? I kid because I love…).
OK, so this here’s mostly the dance side of Goth, not surprising considering it’s put together by the DJ of a dance club. And while a song like “Bloodsucker 2000” by Paralyzed Age is freakily like Billy Idol’s cover of “Mony Mony,” I guess Goths are entitled to “get down” and do the mash potato, and do the twist and all that. Grinning like ghouls all the while, of course. And aside from a couple songs that just kinda suck (and not in a vampire way, K?), Music from The Succubus Club is surprisingly consistent, rich, full-sounding (you know how a lot of electronica is so thin-sounding ya can’t even feel the beat) and, well good. That’s a terrible word to describe anything, but I could spend entirely too long saying that if more Goth music was of this quality, I’d be much more inclined to say it loud and proud, “Yes, I like Goth music.”
(1939 Catherine St. #3f Philadelphia, PA 19143)
