If there was ever a for a genre called nudryicewave, Dead would beat the forefront of it.I caught Rennes act Dead at the Transmusicales when they played at the L'étage at the Liberté venue in the city centre.
There were echoes of late 80s post-industrial electronic dance acts like Front 242 or Nitzer Ebb in their performance, but to this listerner at least I couldn't help but compare them to the Sisters of Mercy, the one-time dark lords of the dry ice, menace and moodiness.
Not that they actually sounded like the Sisters, more that they sounded the way that the Sisters should sound like today.
Much as I was a fan of Eldritch and co. in the past, re-listening to their material today is a fairly disappointing experience. Despite live shows and new songs, the band have released no new material since 1992.
The intervening decades reducing much of their recorded output, which was once an all-consuming techno rock into something now sounding rather thin and dated.
Not so Dead. They're very much across the changes that have mutated electronic music in the years since the Sisters went into hibernation. Their music might well be no stranger to the sounds of the dancefloor of a punk night at a student union in the late 80s, but Dead are very much a product of the 2010s musical environment.
When Andrew Eldritch awakes from a troubled sleep and tries to recall what the band he dreamed about sounded like, they probably sounded a bit like Dead.
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