The Moshville Times - Gig Review: Louise Lemón / The Osiris Club – The Black Heart, London (26th September 2018)

I first discovered Swedish singer/songwriter Louise Lemón via a popular music streaming service while I was listening to the likes of Myrkur and Chelsea Wolfe and really liked her “death-gospel” sound, so when she announced a show at one of my favourite independent London venues – The Black Heart – of course I headed along to check her out live.

Doors were at 7pm but the first band weren’t on until 8:30pm which meant I had time to sink a couple of nice, cold after-work beers before heading upstairs to the venue. came from London psychedelic/prog band The Osiris Club, who entered the stage all dressed in long, dark, hooded robes. It was a bit of a squash to fit all six of them onto the small stage but each member of the band managed to find their own space and they played a brilliant set featuring tracks from their latest album The Wine-Dark Sea which was released in February of this year.

At around 9:30pm the lights went down and a hooded figure shuffled around the stage with an incense burner, which added a sense of intrigue to proceedings. Once the hooded figure had shuffled off backstage Louise Lemón and her band took to the stage, to rapturous applause before launching into “Shipwreck” from her debut album Purge.

Purge was released back in April of this year via Swedish record label Icons Creating Evil Art and was mixed by American producer Randall Dunn, who has worked previously with Chelsea Wolfe and Murkur, which explains the similarly dark, gothic sound. Louise Lemón’s sound is hard to describe as it fits into many different musical subgenres, but if I was describing her music to someone who had never heard of her before I would say it is Nordic soul with a dark, gothic twist. Her songs are soulful yet dark and haunting and I really enjoyed hearing them live in such an intimate setting. Her set-list largely featured tracks from Purge (including one of my favourites “178”), as well as her most recent single “Cross” was released just a few days ago.

Louise Lemón will be heading out on tour with Icelandic atmospheric metal legends Sólstafir for a selection of their European tour dates in November and December – more details can be found here.

Pics by Katie Frost Photography