AFFECTIONATE WIDOWS - Burial Ground Beauties SPEAK OUT!
Shock-Rockers from all over Scotland coalesced in October at the Banshee Labyrinth for a cabaret variety of the intriguing and interesting, laid bare to a willing congregation. Amongst this cabaret of curiosity was “Affectionate Widows”. If you have traversed the Scottish gothic scene, you’ll have likely found yourself entranced by the AFFECTIONATE WIDOWS, a trio of Consecrated Victorian burial-ground beauties that have been floating divorced, beheaded and dead around the gloomy streets of Edinburgh. They’re incomparable to the burgeoning “Nu Goth scene”, they’re something else entirely, ethereal and paranormal, in every sense of the word, undoubtedly top of the scare board, the widows gave a Haunting, inter-missionary showing of theatrics & sound with the evangelical range of Altered Images. NWT spoke with the AFFECTIONATE WIDOWS to get the scoop on graveroots goth-rock here in Scotland
NWT - How many times have you all been widowed, would you say, like all between you?
Marta- 13
Photography Courtesy Of Jordan Hartley
NWT - I was expecting something in the hundreds
Widows - Six hundred and Sixty Sixty (said all in unholy unison)
NWT- it’s one or the other, and I’m happy with either answer
We shall leave the death tally to you, dear reader
NWT - You have a drum machine, what’s it called ?
Marta - Autumn. Just Autumn.
NWT- What I’ve written down to pinhole your genre is late Siouxsie in the Banshees, Strawberry Switchblade, Kate Bush, Lana Del Ray-Sian gothic. What would you call yourselves?
“ We experimented with mashing words together.We quite liked GRAVE-WAVE”
Marta- That’s the problem because like whenever we have an event, they ask us, you know, like, what’s your genre? I’m always like I don’t know because we go by whatever we’re feeling, you know, we use different genres to create atmosphere, sometimes we’re rock, we’re heavy, then we get a bit poppy, you know. We all have different influences, but we try and merge them in a way that makes sense
NWT - I see, I like Grave-wave. How about you, Julian, you play the violin?. Tell me about it
Julian - I play the violin. Yeah. I did it in school, but I picked it back up again. I think I was in Jude’s, I can’t remember why. And Jude was like, “Oh you should come play in the band”, and I did
NWT - It adds a sort of etherealism, well, I’ve got to ask, where have the widows come from?
Judee- beyond the grave obviously, but to get like a base and a foundation for our music, we went to like graveyards, we want to be thematically based around the occult and un-death.
NWT- In that vein, would you consider yourselves spiritual in any way? Or believers in some sort of spirituality?
Marta - I’m partly spiritual, but I know I don’t know anything. I have my theories about ghosts and demons and fairies, but I can’t tell what they are and how they function
On Halloween 2025, The Widows began their recorded journey beyond the veil. Their first double single Feeble/Dry Bones drops soon on various streaming services Feeble was recorded and mixed by @judeejose and features:
Vox: Marta - Violin: Julian and Judee - Bass: Violet - Guitar: Judee - Drum: Marta - Lyrics: Marta
CATCH THE WIDOWS AS SOON AS YOU CAN
