Spiral of Silence – dEcAdEnT

Spiral of Silence consists of a group of musicians who have been playing together for more than ten years. This Belgian band first started in 1991, than called Theatre of Pain. Their music was in the new wave / cold wave vein of Joy Division, but there are also some goth rock influences. After the suicide of one of the band members they changed their name to Spiral of Silence. They released a demo in 1995. On this demo was a cover version of the Joy Division song ‘Atmosphere’ which drew the attention of the Energeia Records label. This record label released their first album ‘LEAP’ in 1995.

At this moment the band has finished writing songs for a new album. This album will be called ‘dEcAdEnT’ and will feature 12 tracks. These tracks have been co-produced by Antonio Palermo from the legendary 80’s cold wave band Siglo XX from Belgian. Some of the songs have been produced by Allan Muller from the Belgian alternative rock/pop group Metal Molly. But due to the fact that Spiral of Silence has not been able to find a new record label until now, the album is not released yet. The sample CD that I received contains five tracks from this forthcoming album.

These five songs give a good idea of what kind of music Spiral of Silence plays. The music has a strong 80’s wave feeling to it. It is a lot in the Joy Division and Siglo XX vein. There is even a Joy Division cover on this release, namely ‘Dead Souls’. This version of the songs is a bit more in the New Order style, due to the synth line, but it gives the song a nice touch. Songs like ‘Across’ and ‘Catz ‘n dogz’ are really excellent pieces of cold wave music, slow and with a lot of atmosphere. You can hear these musicians have been playing (together) for a long time. The quality of these songs is very high.

The only reason I can think of that no record label has shown interest in Spiral of Silence is that their music is not commercial enough for the alternative and goth scene of today. I sure hope that some label will put their new album out soon. This band deserves it!