I chose Vendemmian for a few reasons. The most obvious one is that I like their music, but there are a lot of goth bands I love that I could potentially write about. Vendemmian stands out how much. A lot of goth bands tend to be rather short lived only releasing a few albums at best, but Vendemmian has had a fairly long career with quite a bit of releases and multiple sound and line-up changes.

Vendemmian was a goth rock band that was mostly active in the 90s. There were lots of bands doing the Sisters of Mercy style goth rock back then, and just taking a superficial glance, Vendemmian could be considered to be one of them, but they are also quite a bit more than that. On their VampireFreaks page, the band lists a rather interesting mix of influences. They name the Mission U.K. which is fairly typical, but they also name Play Dead, The Danse Society and The Chameleons. The wider range of influences can be heard in their music, which regularly changed sounds over the years, encompassing multiple variations of goth rock. Thus to best describe their music we have to get into their history. I like to think of the band as having 4 different periods, all of which I will cover in addition to what the members did before and after Vendemmian.



I was first introduced to the band through Last.fm back when they had a free streaming service., sometime between 2010-2012. It was what introduced me to a lot of 90s 2nd wave goth rock and 2000s deathrock revival bands. Before that I was mostly familiar with 80s stuff and whatever I could find hidden in the back of the Border’s CD selection or could be procured at HMV when I visited the U.K. It was a big eyes opener to be introduced to all these new bands that took what I loved about the goth music and turned it up another notch.

Vendemmian was one of the many bands I was introduced to during that time. What stood out and really grabbed my attention about them was their song Starter for Ten. The song was more upbeat and catchy than a lot of the other stuff I was hearing. It had a bit of a 80s indie vibe to it. It stood out from the typical goth rock pack in how is pulling more influences than just the trinity of the Sisters of Mercy, the Mission and Fields of the Nephilim. Sadly I got into this stuff right before taking a break from goth, but when I got back in 3 or so years ago, Vendemmian was one of the bands I immediately came back to and since then they have been one of my favorites.



Before Vendemmian was formed two of the band’s members, Bassist Mark Douglas and Guitarist Dave Drum where in a band called Restoration. They were very much a Mission/Sister’s inspired goth rock band. The band put out a few demo tapes and then an EP through Nightbreed records, before Mark and Dave went on to form Vendemmian. The third member of the band, Steve Weeks continued on with the band Restoration II, which sounded a lot like Restoration, which eventually became the band Revolution by Night. If you’re really into digging deep and love the whole 90s demo tape vibe, Restoration and it’s sequel are worth checking out.