THE BREATHING SHADOW

What if, back in 1989, Marillion had not hired Hogarth but would have chosen Andrew Eldritch from Sisters Of Mercy as the replacement for Fish? I think the prog community would still not have fully recovered from the shock and the goth fans would still get shivers down their spine from the disbelief that Eldritch switched over from the coolest band on the planet to that cheesy prog-pop band. Just imagine tasteful medleys like "Alice, I just wanna say I'm sorry!"

Now, that could have been fun!

And I would have been in the clouds! Believe it or not, but around 1989 I had two favourite bands: I was fading out my years of Marillion adoration and fading in my Sisters phase. You could say that I went from sparkling rainbows, magpies and jolly jesters to pitch black nihilism over the course of a few months.

At least one other person on the face of the planet must have had a similar dream: Dan Swanö, the brain behind the progressive death metal phenomena Edge Of Sanity (and around 20 other bands). He made his dream come true in 1995 on the debut of his Nightingale project where he combined his love for Marillion with the stark red-on-black decadence of the Sisters. He only uses his powerful clean lower register here in a strong set of catchy rock songs that celebrate both goth-rock and at the same time neo-prog.

As you see from the number of ratings, 99% of the PA community is certainly not losing their sleep over the same dream. In fact, people are probably quite relieved that this nightmare never turned into a trend. However, for the few lovers of goth that got stranded on these pages here, this is an absolute must.

4 Black Planets!