The Bowery in September carries its own kind of twilight; a season of half-spent warmth and lengthening shadows, when the city’s heartbeat seems to move underground. In that subterranean rhythm, the tenth anniversary of A Murder of Crows Festival this past Labor Day weekend found its setting, a celebration spun from devotion and joy in the darkness. The festival, hosted by The Nite Church and The Red Party, unfolded over three nights like a secret diary, one written in the margins of New York’s nocturnal life.
Conceived in the twilight hours by New York’s Sean Templar and M. Banshie Templar, the minds behind The Red Party and Underworld, alongside Los Angeles’ Dave Bats and London’s Martin Oldgoth, A Murder of Crows was born of a late-night revelation at Leipzig’s Wave Gotik Treffen. What began in 2015 as a modest gathering at NYC’s Mercury Lounge in the Lower East Side, with three bands and four DJs, soon stretched its wings: two nights by 2016, a sprawling Twitch marathon in 2021, and, since 2023, the addition of a devoted pre-party. This year, however, was special indeed.
The festival’s prologue unfolded at TV Eye in the Queens neighbourhood of Ridgewood, where the patio burned with the glow of cigarettes and the perfume of patchouli, and the air was alive with chatter. Goths of every persuasion, from skeletal deathrockers to velvet-clad dandies, circled the bar like planets caught in the same orbit. “1000 Gothic DJs” played as backdrop, while friends leaned close to share the latest hot gossip, the smoke curling upward in arabesques.
William Faith and Bootblacks‘ Barrett Hiatt, who once squared off in the race for Mayor of Schaumburg, clasped arms like brothers, the feud replaced by cheesing for the camera. Around them: photographer Rose Callahan, Phantom Creep, Scary Lady Sarah, MIDNIGHTCHOIR, Frenchy and the Punk, Cesar Marin from None Shall Remain. The gathering felt less like a pre-party than a covenant, a reunion of kindred souls who understood why such nights mattered.
The Brickbats roared into the night with the venom of a long-awaited reckoning, their set furious and unrelenting, joined in wild communion by Scary Lady Sarah, who handed out sparkly pumpkins to her fans. The Long Losts followed, carrying the torch forward with equal intensity. Between sets, festival organizer Sean Templar admitted, almost shy in his sincerity: “I just brought in bands I like,” and then added with warmth how much he loved the community, how vital it was to sustain New York’s independent music scene.
The second evening drew the crowd to the Bowery Ballroom, where the room itself seemed charged with anticipation, the balconies thick with black attire and restless energy. Hallowed Hearts ignited the hall with solemn brilliance as singer Alex Virlios led a winding journey of love and loss, while multi-instrumentalist Andrew Sega (ex. Iris) paints a three-dimensional canvas of angular guitars and distorted ambience.
Miami’s Astari Nite entered like a fever dream. Their style is reminiscent of classic alternative bands like Clan of Xymox and Placebo, yet their modern production and unique lyrical content give them a contemporary edge. Mychael Ghost wore a shirt splashed with pop-art newspaper headlines, a costume made of fragments of the world’s chaos, sewn into something both absurd and prophetic.
Los Angeles’s Soft Vein carried their set with the cool precision of circuitry as songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Justin Chamberlain brought his unique brand of darkly romantic, industrial-tinged electronic music, dubbed “nostalgic futurism.”
Detroit’s Ritual Howls brought a different kind of thunder, their performance as unyielding as stone. The band combines a cinematic blend of twangy industrial-rock that could fuel a post-apocalyptic dance floor. A collaboration between Paul Bancell (vocals, guitar), Chris Samuels (synth, samples, drum machine), and Ben Saginaw (bass), the Detroit trio creates expansive arrangements sculpted with masterful production.
The headline set on Night 2 belonged to German goth legends Pink Turns Blue, weary from travel, eyes heavy with the fog of international flight. After a stolen nap backstage, they emerged renewed, delivering a set that was fragile and fierce in equal measure. Mic Jogwer (vocals, guitar), Paul Richter (drums) and Luca Sammuri (bass) enthralled the audience, many fans had been waiting ages to see them live on US soil.
From the wings, Sean Templar’s smile revealed he was one of them: “I’d been wanting to get these guys to play this festival for years.”
By the third night, the crowd had swelled into something mythic. Octavian Winters opened the procession, with frontwoman Ria Aursjoen darting across the stage in her wreath crown, like a dark faerie. Octavian Winters is guitarist Stephan Salit (Thrill of The Pull), drummer Randy Gzebb (Thrill of The Pull, Love Club), bassist Jay Denton, and Ria (Amenti) Aursjoen on vocals and keyboards. Together, they weave their visceral and ethereal sound into stories once told but half-remembered, under a dusk of shadows and stars, in an abandoned city under the winter moon.
Nox Novacula came like a tempest, Charlotte Blythe striding into the lights as if the storm itself had chosen a voice. Formed in the pale graveyards of Seattle in 2017, they rose from quiet soil to carry their hymns of gothic rock ’n’ roll to the unsuspecting. Each song they performed exhaled a breath of cold air across the body of modern goth and deathrock, at once reverent to the ghosts of the 1980s and alive with a sharpened urgency. Their work bears the weight of struggle, both personal and political, and in that collision of reverence and unrest, Nox Novacula conjure something unmistakable.
Altar De Fey, legends whose name carries the scent of graveyard roses, took command of the room with ease, their set an incantation of the old deathrock spirit. Altar De Fey first took form in San Francisco in the early 1980s, when the city’s restless nights still pulsed with the aftershocks of punk’s unruly blaze. From that fleeting flash of the ’70s, a darker current began to stir: a sound that carried the rebellion of the counterculture into deeper waters, where gloom ripened into gravity, and the reckless spirit of youth grew stranger, more spectral, and more severe. They put this on full display in the perfect place: the grittiness of Delancey Street, an area of the city that still teems with sleaze, graffiti, and debauchery.
Past Self, a relatively newly minted Las Vegas outfit that performs in both English and Korean, was drafted at the eleventh hour to replace 45 Grave. transformed the hall with theatrical spectacle: handmade shirts streaked with sequined blood, red sashes flashing under the lights. Later, at the merch table, vocalist Sung gestured proudly toward aether: “She’s the mastermind behind our look and graphic design.”
The festival’s final hour belonged to Athens, GA rising goth rock stars Vision Video. Between songs, speeches from frontman Dusty Gannon (known to many fans as his alter ego “Goth Dad”) bled into the air with urgent politics, before giving way to crowd-favourites like Dead Gods, I Love Cats, and Stay. It was less a concert than a communion, a moment when song and conviction fused into something greater.
The Bowery was thick with familiar faces in the underground goth scene: Miss Cherry Delight, Daniel Kasshu (Mevius), Traci Danielle (My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult), Angela Benedict, Peter Michell from None Shall Remain, author Eddie McNamara (Brooklyn Hardcore), DJs Ivy Ohwowee and Mortasha Kinski, photographers Kevin Vonesper, Emily Lyche and Bub Cardi…all part of a scene that thrives on presence as much as performance.
A Murder of Crows has always been more than a festival; it is a ritual of recognition, a reminder of why New York still holds court as a citadel for those who walk the darker streets of music. Baby bats and elder goths alike found common ground on these sacred floors. On its tenth anniversary, the beloved Bowery Ballroom filled with ghosts and dreams, where each note and gesture left behind a glimmer of immortality.
Can’t wait until next year.
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