The Whitby-based festival has announced that Los Angeles rock band Christian Death will appear as ‘very special guests’ in its April ‘Spring Gathering’. The new Tomorrow’s Ghosts event will take place over the weekend of the 28th – 30th April. Tomorrow’s Ghosts has already made a name for itself as one of the primary gothic music venues in the UK, and its recently-shared April lineup only confirms that. Christian Death will appear in the company of the likes of New Model Army, Cold Cave and Lebanon Hanover, among others.
Hailed as the founders of goth rock, Christian Death are Los Angeles trio Maitri, Valor Kand and Ryan Paolilli. The provocative band have earned themselves a reputation as fiercely confrontational towards organized religion and conventional morality over the years, from the time of their debut album Only Theatre of Pain in 1982.
This will not be the band’s first stint in the UK. In the mid-Eighties, Christian Death moved to London, where they went on to record some of their most confrontational work, rife with the shock value that they have come to be known for. There, they also put out single “Church of No Return”, a track that reached No. 12 on the UK Independant Chart and attracted mainstream attention for the band from the likes of MTV, VH1, Super Channel, the BBC and a host of other European broadcasting shows. Meanwhile, during the same period in the USA, album releases like Sex and Drugs and Jesus Christ, whose album art included a polarizing image of Jesus Christ shooting heroin, incited burnings of the band’s material by Christian groups.
The controversy that has marked their careers has by no means slowed the band down. 2022 marked the release of Christian Death’s 17th studio album, Evil Becomes Rule, on which they hone their signature mix of gothic rock and post-punk. Previous festival appearances for the band have included Hellfest Open Air and Cloak and Dagger Festival.
Check out the band performing “Romeo’s Distress” live:
You can find more details about Tomorrow’s Ghosts ‘Spring Gathering’, along with ticket info and the full lineup, here.
