The Sanctuary Gazette

The duo Dead Astronauts, made up of Jared Kyle and Slade Templeton, releases Shallow Grave, the follow-up to the album Ghosts. The project has already put out records on Cold Transmission Music and NewRetroWave.

The record combines the romantic fatalism of gothic rock, the mechanics of post-punk and the synthetic architecture of darkwave. It opens with An Intro, a whispered poem over synthesizer pads, then moves into Bodies, which tackles violence and its psychological consequences over post-punk rhythms.

The title track, Shallow Grave, deals with a relationship turning into self-destruction. Get Lost and Glistening Things explore emotional dependency and the transformation of the body, Who Kills Who organized oppression, and Stuck (In a Modern Day Cult) psychological manipulation.

Louder Than War published a piece by Dave Thomson on September 21, 2026, devoted to the first years of goth. The site presents it as an extension of The Art Of Darkness - the History of Goth, the book by John Robb, head of LTW.

Thomson starts from post-punk, between 1979 and 1982, when bands and producers in the United Kingdom and Ireland rejected established rules and independent music fragmented city by city. He places the capital of this dark offshoot in Leeds, a city hit by factory closures and by the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper, who was still at large.

The text describes a club, Le Phonographique, located in the basement of the Merrion Centre shopping centre. A fluid scene, open to all, takes shape there, dressed in secondhand clothes dyed black. Thomson compares it to Northern Soul: people remembered not so much artists as certain of their songs, depending on their character.