by Matt Vowles
We are the goth rockers, Black Angel, from Los Angeles (even though I hail from 80’s England) and have just released an extended version of our debut album “The Widow.” Initially released in October 2019, some may think this is a little quick for an extended version. But while the first version was awesome, something wasn’t quite right.
It was mastered for the “headphone and streaming” generation, and it just didn’t have the bollocks it needed for a Goth/Post-punk album – not the ones I grew up listening to. I should have gone with my gut, I shouldn’t have catered to this popular way of mastering songs, should have stuck to my guns. So now I’m doing it again. And I couldn’t just re-release it, so we thought let’s just make it longer and more impressive, so fans have a reason to want it.
Listen to the album while reading the text.
Remastering and Remixing
The new extended album has all the tracks from before (apart from “Fire” as it didn’t make the grade second time around) plus four club remixes and three live tracks. We already had the live tracks from our performance at LA’s Teragram Ballroom in December of 2019, when we supported Ours.
The songs just needed mixing and mastering with a few tweaks. Additionally, I reached out to producer friends in the UK and around the world and had four club remixes created for “Poison,” “She,” “Lie to you,” and “Christine”. They turned out great, and now the album is really complete.
In it for the Music
I particularly want fans to know that if they bought the original album on CD and if they would like to reach out to us via our website, we will more than happily send them a complimentary digital copy of the remastered album for free. We aren’t one of those bands that make their fans pay for music twice!
The original CD is a limited edition one-off version for sure – in fact, there are only about 10 left available for sale – and they’ll be gone soon, it’s already a collectors’ item.
New Video for Poison
I also did re-cut, and color graded the original ‘Poison’ music video to a starker black and white version to compliment the new ‘Poison – Dark Angel Remix’ of which I collaborated on. Producer Dark Angel also hails from Bristol in the UK, and we have done multiple projects together in the past.
“Poison” tells the story of a girl being stalked by a male predator. Once cornered, she transforms into a vampire and makes her kill. I have always been inspired by film noir and the classic ‘twist’ ending – or at least that’s what we were hoping to achieve.
The video was shot in Los Angeles. We found a great actress, Veronica, who was totally game for running around the streets of Downtown LA screaming whilst being chased. We got some odd looks, but fortunately, people clocked it fairly quickly that we were making some kind of movie.
Kiss of Death
“The Widow extended Deluxe” is out now exclusively on Bandcamp. The CD of the album will be available on March 16th. I did also reach out to Black Angel fans to see who would be interested in having their names on the CD liner notes. There were ten spots available and I am over the moon from the response and can’t thank fans enough for snapping up those spots so quickly.
Black Angel are currently in the studio writing and recording for our follow up album “Kiss of Death.” We are looking to release the first single from the album next month.
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