Three Obscure Metal/Goth Songs That Absolutely Rule

Well, since I was still in the mood for writing about music, I thought that I’d talk about three interesting – but obscure – metal and goth songs today. Whilst I will try to find links to music videos (and, in one case, the musician giving the song away for free), I couldn’t really find one for one of the songs here. It seems to have disappeared completely from the internet.

1) “Karma” by HiK: Back when I used to use the DRM-service “Steam”, one of my favourite games on there was “Left 4 Dead 2” (2009) and I downloaded numerous mods for it during the early-mid 2010s. One of those mods – “Witch Hunter” – contained the song I’m talking about here, “Karma” by HiK.

The interesting thing about this song is that it’s an interesting mixture between melodic and non-melodic metal. Most of the song has a surprisingly “rough” sound, with lots of crunchy guitars, but it also contains this amazing “1980s Iron Maiden”-esque guitar solo at one point, as well as a couple of brief 1980s-style guitar flourishes near the beginning too. The lyrics are relatively simple, but sung with enough emotion and repetition to add a brilliantly menacing mood to the song. There’s an edge to the vocals but they aren’t really quite “death growls” either.

As the title implies, the song is about the concept of karma – but it is mostly a song about a vengeful spirit of some sort. It’s one of those horror genre metal songs which sounds “low-budget” in a good way and it’s ridiculously catchy as well.

2) “Thunder Hotel” By Ben Benjamin: Back in 2012, I stumbled across a Youtube video claiming to be a leaked Sisters Of Mercy demo called “Thunder Hotel”. Even though I could tell that the singer’s voice was subtly different to Andrew Eldritch’s, this SoM-inspired gothic rock song had a weirdly celebratory mood to it and it is probably this contrast which made it stick in my mind. It’s a song, probably inspired by The Eagles’ “Hotel California”, about a mysterious hotel.

Flash forward to a couple of hours before I wrote this article and I remembered this video. To my surprise, there was a comment posted below it pointing out that the song is actually by Ben Benjamin. And, whilst someone else posted the song on Youtube with it’s correct title (and incorrect album artwork), I did a bit more digging and was astonished to find a Reddit page which contains a statement from Ben Benjamin explaining the background to the song – it was a fun pastiche he made to get through a creative block – and actually providing a link to a free download of it too.

3) “Heart In The Dark” by Karilian: Alas, the indie music site “Purevolume” seems to have closed and disappeared in 2018. This was a site that I used to look at regularly during the mid-late 2000s or so, since musicians would sometimes give music away for free on there. And I’ve still got a few MP3s left over from those days.

The one I want to talk about today is “Heart In The Dark” by Karilian (stylised as “KARILIAN” in the file name). If I remember rightly, I found it in about 2007 or so, and the site suggested using good headphones. It starts out with some ominous electronic noises, before slightly muted/quiet crunchy guitars kick in and the singer’s forlorn but clean vocals begin: “It comes on in the morning/ And it stays for the rest of the day...”.

The mood of the song is dark and ominous, but not frightening. It was a song I used to listen to whilst reading old horror novels. It’s a song about someone who is haunted by something. Most of the guitars are crunchy, but there are also some eerie melodic “arpeggio” type segments and a few growled vocals too. It’s metal rather than goth, but it definitely has a gothic atmosphere to it. A mood of dark rooms late at night, of ominous relaxation.

Alas, I can’t find it on Youtube, Amazon or Bandcamp and I’d feel extremely wary about posting someone else’s entire song on the internet without permission. If this was a Youtube video, I could probably include a clip under “fair use” but this is a written blog article (and a screenshot of the MP3 file would look weird). But if you know anyone else who downloaded this song back in the day or have some other way of finding it, then I’d heavily recommend it. it sounds slightly “low-budget” but in this really endearing way which is quintessentially “2000s”.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂