Why is it so hard for gothic bands to find a drummer? I’ve wondered this on many occasions, usually whenever I hear an otherwise promising deathrock band plodding along with a poorly programmed drum machine as their sole rhythmic backbone. It’s not that I have a beef with Dr. Avalanche and his electronic brethren, but sometimes you just miss the organic clatter of a live human drummer. It brings an extra dimension of unpredictability and dynamics to the music that’s just hard to achieve with pre-arranged patterns.

Regardless of the absence of real drums, All Gone Dead’s debut album (excluding their 2005 demo ‘Conceiving the Subversion’) is a mixed bag. It has its rays of light, but it also contains a fair share of duds. After the departure of half the band in the time preceding the making this record, only the two core members remained at the time of recording ‘Fallen & Forgotten’. Barb, who handles the bass and some vocals, and Stitch (formerly of the SLC, Utah band Tragic Black) performing the main vocals, as well as the guitars and programming. Circumstances considered, they’ve done a decent piece of work, although as far as debut albums go, this musical cosplay parade probably won’t be remembered as a great, singular record.

To start off the proceedings, we get the first of three dark ambient tracks, ‘G (enerating)’ (the other two begin with ‘O’ and ‘D’, respectively). Nothing special in itself, it serves as a prelude to the first proper song of the record; ‘The Holy City of Karbala’. Lyrically, this gives the first hint that All Gone Dead are not your standard, graveyard-obsessed ghouls. While international politics is arguably more rife with horrors than your typical cemetery, this choice of subject matter is not necessarily a good thing. As in this case, where it leads someone to make a song about the Iraq war, filled with images like: “the tanks on the ground / the planes in the sky / we hear this disaster / just before we...” - he actually cuts out that last word and goes directly into the chorus of “one nation ... (insert all manner of vaguely referenced imperialistic things)”. The song itself is not that bad, filled as it is with standard goth rock elements like chugging guitar in the verses leading into a chorus with one-fingered keyboard melodies... What is a little annoying, is that it’s all so predictably structured, and that the lyrics are obviously written with the idea that they have to rhyme, all the time. As such, you don’t get any real understanding or interesting perspectives delivered. Instead, what you get is a bunch of images and bold proclamations that are neither poetical nor well-informed, but instead make you think of those awful ‘political poems’ you wrote when you were sixteen.

Track three, ‘Newspeak (Room 101)’ redeems the underwhelming opening somewhat, with a dance-friendly beat and synth melodies that balance nicely between soft choral chills and sunny pads. It treads a path similar to ‘A Forest’, only the guitars are replaced by soft-focus futurepop embellishments. Despite the lack of originality in the structural department, it is a pleasant and catchy song. The vocals are not bad either; a kind of Smith-ish sing-speak with a tougher edge that’s not overdone. Next up is ‘Just 80 Miles West’ [“of Salt Lake”]. From the moment that the very Sisters-like guitar intro of high pitched, droning string-picking hits, it becomes clear that this really is a band who likes trying on different clothes from the Batcave closet. Unfortunately, all too often they simply don’t have the girth it takes to fill out those costumes.

On ‘Skritch ‘n’ Skrill’, they suddenly whack you over the head, in a polite (but still pretentious) manner, with a low yield firecracker of another anti-war deathrock tune. Embarrassing free-associative word games get passed off as lyrics (“skies all raining / tropical acid rain / political tax / foreign lies”), and an über simplistic guitar/bass arrangement is bolstered by a ‘tribal’ drum pattern. Live, with a drummer, this song might sound good, I don’t know. As it is recorded here, the effect is about as cringeworthy as watching a middle-aged businessman in hip-hop gear attempt an ollie over a trashcan. ‘Cedric Krane’ is another song that suffers in a similar manner from a lack of energy despite its swinging beat. The last four songs however, does raise the bar for an eventual second album. Here, All Gone Dead seems more confident and focused, and bring the record to a close with a triptych of sharp rockers and a spooky slow-burner to round things off.

It is clear that this band has something to communicate, but as a musical unit, the guises they don to present their message are not always fitting. It’s actually hard for me when I hear those ‘punkier’ songs not to see the musicians in a small studio, dilligently hammering out chords at all the ‘right’ moments.

Maybe I’m just not capable of suspension of disbelief at the level this band seems to require. Add to that the awkward – and often plain meaningless - high-school lyrics, and you get a pretty tepid result. They just fail in convincing me, maybe because I’m spoilt with good political punk rock, which makes it hard for me to accept what is at times essentially a drum machine-driven pastiche in make-up (no offense, you look great). This album would probably sound much more realised if it wasn’t so sprawling and ambitious, but instead focused on the band’s strenghts. As it is, this gives the feeling of a band that bites over more than they can chew, although some of the morsels left behind are occasionally tasty.