Gothic Rock is a difficult genre to craft. The negative feelings shouldn't born out of explicit depressive constructions, and the melancholy has to flow out from subtle, hidden musical elements. Many bands fail trying to create directly mournful ambiences, with sad vocal lines and creepy instrumentations, but at the end, in truly emotional music the fear, nihilism and despair must be veiled to show their inner essence. Just like sensuality can be exploited as an art in erotism but not in pornography, depression can only be transformed into music through a complex composition work in which emotions are not directly exposed.

"The Cataclysm" is the first solo album by David Galas (known by his work in Darkwave act LYCIA). More than 70 minutes of music written from 1999 to 2005, and those six years were enough time to create out of every single song, a sophisticated masterpiece. Guitars ranging from a psychedelic, ethereal mood to a rather heavy riffing are the melodic base... a tired, heavy drumming adds density to this musical body and Galas' vocals are simply superb... by times showing a quiet passion or controlling an enclosed fury, his vicious, often distorted voice is a crawling force that fits perfectly with the instrumentation.

"The Cataclysm" is a Gothic ROCK album, please note the emphasis... it has a strong riffing, an interesting construction that mixes a perfect harmonic balance and rhythmic changes that fit the mood variation shown here. If my introduction paragraph was a thesis, this album would be the demonstration because, although crafting something really depressive, the dark emotions are given just through a flawless musicianship... no cliches, no commercialism, only well played, softly punching and blood-chilling music.