Golem Dance Cult and the Vampire Mirror of Pretty at Dawn: A Dark Wave Single Worth Hearing
Golem Dance Cult and the Vampire Mirror of Pretty at Dawn: A Dark Wave Single Worth Hearing
The Australian-French Band’s Glam Goth Album Track Gets a Video About Mirrors and Appearances
Golem Dance Cult gave Pretty at Dawn a second life at the turn of 2026. The song came out as a single, with a new video posted on YouTube at the end of December 2025. In fact, it first appeared on their June 2025 album Shamanic Faultlines. It is a short, dark piece of dark wave and art rock, sung by guest vocalist Inga Liljestrom with Jean-Philippe Feiss on cello.
Golem Dance Cult’s Pretty at Dawn now sits in the playlist below, among the rock and alternative picks, and the band’s artist profile gathers the rest of their coverage. The song came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Give it a spin, then read on for the vampire and the mirror behind its video.
Golem Dance Cult Built Pretty at Dawn on a Catalogue That Runs From Grotesque Radio to Shamanic Faultlines
The catalogue opens with Grotesque Radio, an EP released in May 2021. Next came Dalek Rhetoric in December 2022, a single you can still hear on Spotify. The debut album, Legend of the Bleeding Heart, then followed in May 2023.
After that, the 2023 single Carpe Noctem drew reviews from a wide spread of outlets, including Illustrate Magazine and Plastic Magazine. Meanwhile, Punk Head ran a piece on how the band made it.
Their own biography describes Golem Dance Cult as an Australian-French band working in industrial dance rock, post-punk and glam goth. It also passes on a description of their sound as a Hammer Horror film directed by Salvador Dalí and recoloured by Andy Warhol. Overall, that is a fair summary of the theatre involved.
Then Shamanic Faultlines arrived on 13 June 2025. It is the band’s second full-length album, released through the Spanish label Pugilat Deluxe.
Charles Why recorded it at the Black Obsidian Woodshed studio with Klaus Karloff assisting, and the pair produced it together. Joe Carra then mastered it at Crystal Mastering in Melbourne.
On the record, the band is a duo at its core. Laur sings lead and backing vocals and adds percussion, while Charles Why covers vocals, bass, guitars, harmonica, keyboards and programming.
Gong, shamanic drums, a Tibetan bowl, a shruti box and a cigar box are on the same credit list too. Between them, the pair wrote every song.
Pretty at Dawn Runs to Under Three Minutes
Pretty at Dawn is track six of thirteen and runs to just under three minutes. Inga Liljestrom sings lead and backing vocals, and Jean-Philippe Feiss adds cello.
As a result, the song has a string-led colour that stands out on the album. Liljestrom also sings on three other album tracks, including the title track.
The video, created by Milan Bruneau and edited by Klaus Karloff, carries the song’s idea. In the band’s own description, it is about a relationship where things are not what they seem, and about looking hard in the mirror to see past appearances. Of course, for a vampire, as the band points out, that mirror is a problem.
Coverage followed in the new year. Obscure Sound wrote about the song in January 2026, and The Big Takeover reviewed it in February. Both picked out the cello, and Obscure Sound also noted the lonesome guitar and bird chirps that open the track.
Listeners who know Bauhaus will recognise the territory. Their 1979 debut single, Bela Lugosi’s Dead, is often called the first goth record, and its subject is the screen’s most famous Dracula. Golem Dance Cult evidently enjoy the same imagery.
Fans of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, led by a songwriter from regional Victoria, will also hear a familiar taste for dark storytelling. Similarly, Siouxsie and the Banshees remain the obvious reference for dark wave that stays theatrical without losing its edge.
What Comes After the Pretty at Dawn Video for Golem Dance Cult and Their Listeners
For new listeners, the video is a front door. Pretty at Dawn leads straight into the rest of Shamanic Faultlines, thirteen tracks that take in Call of the Wendigo and Ned Kelly’s Arms before the album closes on its title track. The guest list is long there too, with theremin, oud, Moog and extra guitars spread across the record.
That makes the album the natural next step after the video. It is also the fullest picture yet of a catalogue that has grown from a 2021 EP into two albums, all set in the same world of goth theatre and post-punk rhythm.
Besides streaming, the album is out on Bandcamp as a limited-edition black vinyl LP and a limited-edition CD. Meanwhile, the band have been taking it to record shops one at a time.
This release is for listeners and curators of dark wave, art rock and alternative rock who like their music visual. It also suits anyone building a gothic or post-punk playlist who wants a sense of humour behind the shadows.
From the MusicDrops.News Curator Team: “The cello is the detail that sells Pretty at Dawn. It pulls the song away from straight goth rock and into something more theatrical, and the vampire-in-the-mirror video gives that theatre a story to play out.”
Hear Shamanic Faultlines in full on Bandcamp, and find Golem Dance Cult on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and SoundCloud. Follow the band on their YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, X, Threads and TikTok, or visit the official site.
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