I love it when a song feels brand new and yet nostalgic of an era. Sweet For You, the new single from Edinburgh Gothic Alt-rock band Revelation 23 delivers just that with something that sounds like you’d have heard on Kerrang! in golden age of emo and nu-metal.
I’m not sure if this necessarily falls under either of those categories, perhaps it does but I can totally imagine a world where this song appears on a compilation of Kerrang! greatest emo hits alongside Funeral for a Friend, The Used, and Evanescence. I hope Revelation 23 are ok with me bringing up Evanescence, I’m sure they hear it a lot because although they absolutely have their own thing going on, there is that blend of operatic haunting vocal with sludgey riffs and the shimmer of cymbals.
I remember the headline of an article from Kerrang! (sorry, I appear to be reliving my youth here) that simple read “Ba-Rock” a tasty little bit of wordplay on the classical genre baroque. The article spoke of the influx of bands who had taken an influence from classical music and specifically the kind of opera thing and they cited Muse and Evanescence as examples. Well, Revelation 23 fit nicely into that box. It’s a big box with numerous sub-genres, obviously, so this also doesn’t mean they sound anything like Muse; they have their own, unique flavour of opera influenced rock.
Sweet For You is deep with melancholy like the goths from the 80s (Robert Smith, Billy Idol, and Depeche Mode) rather than the angry goths in the noughties. It also reminds me of the blue opera singer from Fifth Element, totally hypnotic because of its uniqueness and the impossibility to accurately pin it to a decade. The lyrics draw on an obsessive attraction to someone and are delivered with dark imagery that evoke romantic vampirism.
It’s moody and potentially dangerous but in the most lustful and satisfying way.
