Quite unexpected when it comes to the Pelagic label that has been unleashing sounds from post-metal, synth-rock, and this time a band from Philadelphia which has caught the grasp of feeling the room with emotions and tear-dropping beauty in its peak. That band is New Miserable Experience. Originally starting as a two-man studio file-trading collaboration, the group has expanded featuring members from various metal bands.
The core considers vocalist/bassist Rosetta alumni David Grossman and multi-instrumentalist Joshua Mahesh Kost from Savage Mystic. Adding in three members you have Rosetta drummer Bruce “B.J” McMurtie Jr, Rivers of Nihil guitarist Brody Uttley, and Revocation bassist Brett Bamberger. They wanted to prove listeners that what they’re doing with the sound that has been unfolded with their second album Gild the Lily.
Following it up with their 2024 debut Absent Lovers, Gild the Lily exists like a soundtrack inside your mind with a new wave, post-rock orientation, the way that you would create a mixtape from the sounds of Joy Division, The Cure, Magazine, Tears for Fears, This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, David Bowie, and Kraftwerk. This takes it up to this higher dimension, beyond your wildest dreams.
And the way that the quintet has brought forth on this powering signal with an amplifying sound, you can’t deny the structures in a way that the New Miserable Experience has brought a new life. From the likes of the opening upbeat measurements of the Berlin School of Music on ‘Heartsick’ which speaks of Kraftwerk’s Radio Activity to the psychedelic spaghetti western, driving along in the Mojave Desert seeing these strange ‘Ordinary People’, but it does speak of the band Ra Ra Riot which speaks volume into this track.
Then, all hell breaks loose with its synths firing all cylinders with brutal flashpoint behind ‘The Devil We Know’, gives us more details on why the Joker does what he likes to do by tormenting Batman’s mind before sending into this massive PTSD breakdown in which we see Batgirl / Barbara Gordon suffers from the events of The Killing Joke during the New 52 era.
New Miserable Experience have created this alternate-like soundtrack for the universe in Gotham City, viewing Barbara’s return to the cowl, after being Oracle in the Birds of Prey-era, but for how long she has to be in the dark knight’s shoes. When I think of ‘In The House of Denial’ I think immediately of Steven Wilson’s Insurgentes-era the Philadelphia group tackles into, viewing the layered and edifying reflections of someone going through an emotional collapse, right in front of the listener’s eyes.
‘Infinite Sadness’ is a tribute to the Thin White Duke’s comeback from being weird again during the Reality and Heathen-era while ‘Payback from God’ and ‘Perfect Things’ are a futuristic electro-pop setting with a city on the brink of collapse and the clock ticking to witness the emperor in his war room, seeing his own world being destroyed, knowing he’s on the townsfolk’s hit list to be put down, once and for all.
The melodies and darkness on Gild The Lily, is quite a moment of realisation and not a single bad track the band put forth for 2026. And you can’t deny the structures in a way New Miserable Experience has put together on their spiritual journey they put together.
