Black is the new black

I’ve sometimes wondered what happened to the goths.

You don’t seem to see them around quite so much these days. Unless you happen to live in Whitby at Halloween, in which case you probably can’t move for black lace, backcombed hair and people looking magnificently miserable.

But musical genres don’t simply disappear.

They shift. They mutate. They retreat into the shadows, gathering new influences and new generations of devotees before eventually emerging again, polished, twisted and reimagined.

And Mouth Ulcers are here to remind us that the gloomy-looking kids standing around looking, well, gloomy, never really went away.

The band appear to have materialised from nowhere over the past twelve months, but dig a little deeper and you’ll discover musicians who have been orbiting the darker corners of the alternative scene for several years before finally coalescing into this particular incarnation.

The familiar Gothic architecture is certainly present, but it’s been rebuilt rather than simply restored.

This isn’t industrial noise masquerading as innovation, nor is it heavy metal with a generous application of black eyeliner. Mouth Ulcers understand the musical language of the original post-punk goth movement, but they’re speaking it with their own particular accent.

Wave after wave of guitar washes across the room, building an almost impenetrable wall of sound. The drums are clipped and insistent, the atmosphere dense with swirling echoes and uneasy textures. But beneath the darkness lies a surprising sense of melody and precision.

The reference points are immediately recognisable. There’s the brooding intensity of Joy Division, the theatrical unease of Bauhaus and, perhaps most obviously, the early Cure of ‘A Forest’ and ‘Killing an Arab’, before Robert Smith discovered that melancholy could occasionally be accompanied by a rather chirpy pop chorus.

But these aren’t influences worn like badges on a leather jacket. They’re foundations upon which Mouth Ulcers are constructing something of their own.

On Lady Rust, they plunge headlong into the darkness.

Zak Watson’s vocals drift through the arrangement in a low, slightly off-kilter growl, half incantation, half warning, as the song unfolds like some unsettling fragment of a half-remembered nightmare.

The lyrics conjure a procession of horror-film imagery and Gothic unease. Not cheap theatrical shocks, but something more atmospheric and insidious. The suggestion that something terrible might be waiting just beyond the edge of the light.

And the instrumentation is wonderfully unconventional.

The bass carries much of the melody, weaving its way through the shadows, while the guitars become almost percussive, repeating their patterns with an obsessive insistence that draws everything deeper into the song’s hypnotic atmosphere.

Close your eyes and the landscape begins to assemble itself.

Empty moorland. Driving rain. A ruined house silhouetted against an unforgiving sky. Something moving in the distance that probably shouldn’t be there.

Gothic drama in the literary sense, rather than simply a collection of black clothes and gloomy expressions.

And that’s what makes Lady Rust compelling. Mouth Ulcers understand that darkness in music isn’t necessarily about volume or aggression. It’s about tension, atmosphere and the peculiar pleasure of allowing yourself to become lost in something unsettling.

There’s a confidence here that suggests a band beginning to realise exactly what they’re capable of.

They’ve emerged quickly, but nothing about this sounds hurried or accidental. The arrangements are assured, the identity is distinctive and the ambition is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

If they can carry this momentum into 2027, Mouth Ulcers could find themselves moving from the shadows into considerably larger rooms.

And the wonderful thing is that they shouldn’t need to compromise a single note of their music to get there.

I really didn’t think they made records like this any more.

Mouth Ulcers most certainly do.

And the future is looking gloriously dark.

Lady Rust is out now on all brooding streaming platforms. Mouth Ulcers are about to embark on their biggest UK tour to date and release their debut album in Spring 2027.