Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Albums can pass you by, as if you are not careful, can days, family and friends. Family and friends might forgive you, Time is as likely to absolve you as is it to climb aboard the Orient Express and order several cups of Russian Caravan tea before the train leaves the platform in a cloud of comforting smoke, so it leaves the album as the only one that is sure to pardon your stupidity completely as long as you find it eventually.

From the deep well of the concealed remnants of the music archive, to find Ashestoangels’ album With Tape and Needles is a find having worth waited for. Like coming across the slightly less impressive sister of the fabled Holy Grail, you are aware that Time may have got their first but it’s still worth exploring in depth the album that Crilly, Jim, Nico and Adam put together with the overflowing anger of a bull elephant finding out that the hangover it has been suffering was because you poured it one too many ciders than it was used to, and the musical self-control and beautiful outpouring of a good wake.  

Some albums of the genre lose their intensity over time, the manic progression and snake like svelteness fades into shadow, it only retains the type of fan who truly appreciates the sound completely and with the devotion that you would normally expect from Morticia and Gomez. You would expect more of that devotion when it comes to Ashestoangels, for the songs encased forever inside With Tape and Needles, go past a singular point in time, they pound at the skull as if they using the hardest diamond known to humanity but with a small amount of sympathy for the scare they cause you.

Tracks such as Dorian, Wintervention, Good Things Come To Those Who Waste and Ghost Frequency all tickle the taste buds of Goth/Punk excess and are a great example of the fight back needed from the traditional homes of the genre in the face of the extraordinary amount of the Nordic lands and mainland Europe.

Ashestoangels may be only the early messengers in what is going to be a long but outstanding battle of musical nerves but the significance of their recorded communication is one to feel hearted by.

Ian D. Hall