Plunder the Tombs: Blood and Roses – Enough is Never Enough (Audiodrome Records, 1985)

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Blood and Roses – Enough is Never Enough (Audiodrome Records, 1985)

Naming themselves after an old vampire flick based on Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla, Blood and Roses were destined to become the great lost Goth band that never was.

First coming to major attention in the British musical press along with Brigandage around 1983, the band suffered from too much attention too soon, hitting the front page of NME at a time when the only thing they’d ever officially released was the Love Under Will EP (Kamera, 1983) and the track “ShM YHShVH” on The Whip compilation (Jungle, 1983). A transcript of the original NME article is here:
http://www.scathe.demon.co.uk/posipunk.htm

Saddled by the media with the label “positive punk” the resulting public backlash to a genre totally invented by the press reportedly nearly killed off both bands, and the departure of their original drummer and the tragic misfortune of their original bass player Jez being literally hit by a bus would see Blood and Roses disappear from view for a few years.

When they do resurface in 1995, it would be in triumphant style in the form of the Enough is Never Enough album. The cover art was done by the band themselves and, while lacking much in the aesthetics department needs to be viewed in the light that Blood and Roses were very much from the DIY school of thought and as guitarist Bob Short put it;

“We didn’t have designers and image consultants. We didn’t have a team of suits planning our next move. We just did it ourselves and let what ever happened happen. Besides, if we’d pooled our meager resources, we’d still have been short of a pot to piss in. There are quite a few illicit substances that are way more interesting than your average A&R man.”

The album Enough Is Never Enough is exceptional. Blood and Roses were quite obviously reading from the same play book as Sex-Gang Children, but in a vastly less confrontational way. How I wish Goth had continued in this direction. Although I’m unclear why they chose to release “Some Like it Hot” as a single in the light of much stronger contributions here (perhaps it’s a matter of personal taste), the title track, “Enough is Never Enough”, “Your Sin is Your Salvation” and “The Tower Falls” all represent towering icons of what Goth should have become.

Sadly though, Blood and Roses had missed the boat, 1985 being the year that Goth would begin to transmogrify ever more into a rock-based entity with The Cult releasing Love and the nascent Sisters Of Mercy releasing “First and Last and Always”.

After being out of print for years, Blood & Roses was again made available by Anagram in 2007 under their Goth Collectors series. The CD Same As it Never Was includes not only Enough is Never Enough, but also the Crowleyesque Love Under Will EP (Kamera, 1983) and a number of remastered songs. It is easily one of the best things I’ve bought in years. Truth be told, the purchase that inspired this blog.

Yes, you want to own this.

Track Listing:

Enough is Never Enough
Some Like it Hot
Your Sin is Your Salvation
Whirr
Roles
Breakdown
Assault on Precinct 13
The Tower Falls
Possession
Living For Today
Tomorrow
Spit Upon Your Grave

Bonus Tracks on Same as it Never Was:

Line Up: Lisa Kirby (vocals), Ralph Jezzard (bass), Bob Short (guitars, keyboards), Parrot (drums).

http://www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/?p=3396

Blood and Roses also have a Myspace page and an entry on Deathrock.com but both bring up malware alerts - visit at your own risk.

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A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….