New Zealand Music Month: Disjecta Membra

**It’s New Zealand Music Month this May. **New Zealand’s **annual celebration of homegrown music. Generally, that involves a lot of mainstream media highlighting a lot of mainstream acts. So I’m here to try and redress the balance a bit.  **I’ll be posting a link to some rowdy New Zealand music for you to check out every day over the next month. Some bands will no doubt be familiar; others I hope will be fresh to your ears.

Disjecta Membra was founded by Michel Rowland in 1993, and was the first gothic rock group from New Zealand to ever receive wide recognition overseas. Disjecta Membra’s darkly poetic 1997 debut, Achromaticia, has come to be both highly regarded and highly collectable over the years. And while the band has gone through various incarnations and periods of activity and inactivity, Rowland has always remained at the helm.

In 2008, Achromaticia was re-released digitally, in expanded form, and the album is replete with those theatrical, ethereal, and melancholic moments that define evocative and enrapturing gothic rock. Achromaticia is also a timeless example of dramatic and romantic late-90s gothic rock; and elements of death rock, darkwave, and post-punk can be found on the album too. Achromaticia is one of those albums often spoken of in hushed whispers (“Yeah, but have you heard…”). And it’s as majestic and moving today as it ever was.

See Disjecta Membra’s Bandcamp page for other releases from the band. Including their fantastically wry and brooding 2013 internet single, “Death by Discothèque”.