LIVE REVIEW: Drab Majesty, Nuovo Testamento, Fabric, London, 01/02/2024
Photo credit: Corinne Schiavone
The first place one thinks of in London when thinking of a big goth show is probably somewhere in Camden where there are shows every night of the week, the kind of venue where you can practically feel the history and the black hair dye coalescing as one sentient mass. You don’t expect it to be at a venue with a very different kind of musical heritage and history, dance music mecca Fabric, nestled near Farringdon station and surrounded by insurance firms, random hedge funds and other nebulous businesses who deal in the arts of “circling back” and “synergies”.
Touching on synergies, this reviewer had no idea that Nuovo Testamento were opening tonight until they were walking into the venue and descending what feels like an infinite series of steps. When the Italian-American trio came on, there was a sense that nobody outside of about ten people knew what to expect, and the assumption probably would have been a moody, icy goth band. The Italo Disco stylings were quite the surprise for that large portion of the audience, though the combination does make a lot of sense when you step back and have a think in terms of the actual soundscapes being used. Whilst the band were giving it the energy you would want, there were sound issues through most of the set. Chelsey Crowley vocals in particular weren’t quite cutting through as much as you would need them to to really win new fans over, although the crowd was very warm towards them by the end. A bit of a shame, but the songs remain incredibly strong and incredibly catchy, and their album Love Lines from 2023 is so, so, so much fun. Its a record designed to get you dancing, and if it doesn’t, this reviewer would be shocked to his core. Also, shoutout to the big electronic drums because the world is a better place with them in it. 7/10
The other major issue with the show would have to be the exhausting amount of time between both doors and the nearly 45 minute wait between supporting and headlining act. You could hear the grumbles, in between the strange, insistent smoke machine that every so often let out a single, increasingly smaller and anaemic smoke blast, like the dying gasp of a car engine in a bad comedy. Whilst the intrigue had been built and kind of lost past about 9:45, when 10pm hit and finally, the intro tape hit and the crowd lifted themselves, and when Dot In The Sky starts up, sounding absolutely enormous, like a big icy cloud. Deb Demure (aka Andrew Clinco from the brilliant and much missed Marriages) and Mona D are a visually striking pair, the white blonde wigs and wraparound sunglasses both keeping the audience out but also bringing them in at the same time. The silver body paint on their faces completes the eerie look. The guitars chime loudly, the synths and keys fill the room, transporting the audience fully away from any grumbling about trains and people in suits talking about Q2 projections.
The Other Side sounds like the biggest club hit of 1986, a song absolutely designed to get you moving from side to side, whilst trying not to actually get spotted dancing at any point. The crowd is gently moving in some parts, and more serious shapes are being thrown in others. The lighting choices really added to the atmosphere, and when you can pull a song like Long Division out of your back pocket, with its gorgeous chorus not about the infuriatingly hard form of mathematics but the difficulties faced in personal relationships, you can bring a dark beautiful joy to any room. Modern Mirror is the album where Majesty went all in on great hooks, and those are the songs that hit the biggest highs this night. They suit a bigger room. Other tracks from 2017’s excellent The Demonstration had the crowd enraptured, including a version of Cold Souls that had various members of the audience making the kind of hand movements often seen during contemporary dance performances and occasionally at last orders in the pub.
The hour-long set passed through very smoothly, and the band could easily have played another hour as the crowd were fully enraptured. The only slight moment where the crowd weren’t quite as all in was when they played Vanity from the recent An Object In Motion EP, which leant in a more psychedelic direction. Still, a slower moment can easily be forgiven when the song is as lush and brilliant evocative as Vanity. Whilst there wasn’t much way of crowd interaction, this really isn’t the show or band for it. Cold and mesmerising tones don’t lend themselves to the vague “how are you doing tonight London” spiel, and the band keep up the mystique very well, keeping the thanks to the end, and they were generously and graciously received.
All in all, the big goth adventure to Fabric was a success, and the crowd headed for their last train home in just the right mood of lovely darkness. This rite was just right. 9/10
Written by: Louis Tsangarides
