Rosegarden Funeral | uk

Rosegarden Funeral is a very obscure British goth / new-wave band, which existed and then dissolved in the mist of total obscurity in the ’80s. As far as i know, they managed to release only a couple of demos and a very beautiful lyric book (the book of dead names, on the cover there is a very beautiful painting by Dore, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy) before disbanding and fading into the unknown. Even the net has kept very little info about them, and that’s a pity because these guys are brilliant.
Their sound is firmly rooted in the ’80s new wave / dark sound, in particular their main influence (both in music and in the general attitude) seems to be the Sisters of Mercy, in particular in their early acid and psychedelic incarnation.
The sound is very thick, dark, obscure and obsessive; the lyrics are firmly centered about the themes of the eternal game between love and death and on romantic, etheral feminine phantom figures filled with beauty and sorrow. These words bleeds love, despair, anguish and melhancony in equal terms. The group has two singing voices, one dark, deep and gloomy and one more ethereal, romantic, desperate and full of sorrow. The synergy between the two works very well in building up a genuinely creepy atmosphere.
The opening song, vendetta, is a fast and obsessive bass-driven number which throws the listener in a dark world filled up with very strong hazy and nasty feelings; acid valentine is a morbid and eerie song about a very tormented sadomasochistic love story, which slowly builds up in tension and then explodes in the final verse “deep inside i love you more, when you make me crawl”, which genuinely sends a shiver down the spine of the listener.
Angel is a low-key, mid paced, obsessive piece centered around the interwine of love, addiction and death. It’s a genuine and a desperate plea, it’s the scream of an heart which deep inside only desire it’s very annihilation.
The very best is saved for last, the wonderful gem hollow heart, a slow, acoustic gloomy masterpiece filled with sorrow. Love becomes the empty and bottomless abyss, in which the altar of the extreme sacrifice of the self is kept, the wish of death mixes up with the wish of being loved, and the result is a very fascinating descent into the very deep darkness of the soul, a darkness in which, maybe, some light is hidden. The combination of the group’s two voices do wonders in this slow and splendid funeral march, creating a dark masterpiece of rare greatness, a truly epic descent into the abyss of the human heart.

It’s such a pity that such a great band never truly had the chance to surface from the underground, they had a very great talent that sadly dissolved into oblivion. I hope that more material from this great group is going to surface, one day… .