The Gypsy Pistoleros – Dark Faerie Tales
The Gypsy Pistoleros – Dark Faerie Tales
The New Church Records / Plastic Head Distribution
Release Date: 17/04/26
Review by Jon Deaux
8/10
Another gothic glam punk album comes my way. How many of these do we really need? I’ll just come right out and say it: Rock music has lost the plot, and I think that might be a problem. Good, bad, or just plain crazy, I don’t really know anymore. The so-called experts are still arguing about all of this with a case of cheap beer and a bunch of worn-out records, and they don’t appear to be in any great hurry to come to a conclusion.
Gypsy Pistoleros is the kind of band name Keith Richards might mumble into a Bloody Mary after a long night, and they’re about to release their new album Dark Faerie Tales, and I’ll admit to having a soft spot for this one. All the sarcasm I was saving for a band that promised “danger” but delivered nothing but a pair of soggy socks? I forgot about it the moment the title track began to play. This one kicked the door off the hinges, threw glitter everywhere, ate all of my leftovers, and then had the nerve to look up and ask if it can do it again.
Dave Draper is once again at the controls, and he has a way of working with the louder misfits of the Rock genre, from Michael Monroe to Ginger Wildheart, Therapy?, Elvana, and so forth. The Gypsy Pistoleros take a look at the current state of the Rock genre, see how clean and proper it has all become, and decide to set it all ablaze, laughing maniacally while they’re at it, and then prancing about in their eyeliner and jacket, which they most certainly stole anyway. That’s the kind of energy that needs to be injected into the genre of Rock music, and Dave Draper does not clean up the mess, thank goodness. He simply lets it all hang out, and the result is a monster of a record, a little bit crazy, a little bit haunted, the kind of record that I imagine was recorded in a haunted house with a film crew that has certainly spent a little too much time in dark places themselves. The bass rages, the guitars run amok, and it all pulses with life, something that cannot be said of much of the so-called Rock music that is currently out there.
Not only are the influences of the band upon the music clearly indicated, they are slapped squarely across the face, no apologies made for the borrowing of sounds and styles from such places as the sneer of The Damned, the sleaze of Hanoi Rocks, the dark threat of the kind of music that can be found lurking in the shadows of Killing Joke, and the distant presence of The Cult, lurking in the mist, a hint of the raw nerves that might be found in the music of YUNGBLUD (it isn’t), the weird, the genius, the mad, and so forth.
But what makes this really interesting is that ‘Dark Faerie Tales’ doesn’t sound like a tribute band. It doesn’t sound like some nostalgia trip, some bunch of musicians who dress up as their heroes. It’s not watered down, nor is it desperate to seek some form of retro validation. This, you see, is what happens when all these crazy influences meet, when all these wild and wacky notions are thrown together, and something brand new, and slightly mad, shambles out, kicking about in some platform boots and a bottle of… well, whatever. What you get is pure Pistoleros. They call themselves the world’s only Glam Punk Goth ‘n’ Roll Outlaws. Sounds daft, doesn’t it? Well, it is.
But is it perfect? Well, nothing is perfect, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they’re probably the sort who wants to sell you something on colored vinyl at a premium price. There’s a theatricality to the whole thing which sometimes crosses into the realm of the world of expectation – the dry ice machine going haywire mid-chorus, the sound of someone at the back giggling. At times the gothic sincerity of the Pistoleros is so strong that the only way to react is to surrender fully to the cause. Anything less than this is to leave yourself in a position where you’re stuck between admiration and embarrassment, and you don’t want to be stuck in a place like that for four minutes. The Gypsy Pistoleros require you to believe fully in the concept of belief – in the neon-lit dreams and the woods where the ghosts reside, the poetic majesty of being a beautiful misfit, and the concept of ‘Eyeliner is a state of mind’. Not believing them is up to you. The album doesn’t care. It has places to be.
This sounds like too much of a good thing, too much of everything, to those who cannot hope to compete with it on its own level. And to those people, they may not be wrong, but they are simply not the target audience, and the Gypsy Pistoleros have never made any real efforts to win them over in the first place.
And to the rest of us, to the outsider and the true believer, to the romantic and the beautiful misfit, to the people who need Rock and Roll to sometimes be a little dangerous, a little over-the-top, a little excessive in the very best way, to the people who need rock and roll to sometimes be a little more than just music, ‘Dark Faerie Tales’ is the record, a love letter to the beautiful and the broken, scrawled in lipstick on a cracked mirror in a green room that’s a little more squalid, a little more glamorous, than we can quite define, a moderately threatening postcard from a band that’s never had any real interest in making things easy, safe, and sane for you, a band that’s been making music that’s been praised as one of the boldest Rock records of 2025 with ‘Church of the Pistoleros,’ and that’s somehow managed to up the ante on that with ‘Dark Faerie Tales’ and win.
Rock music in 2026 may play it safe, but the Gypsy Pistoleros are burning the rule book, and ‘Dark Faerie Tales’ is the fire.
This is the real deal.
Dark Faerie Tales – Official Music Video
TRACKLISTING:
01. Dark Faerie Tales
02. My One Desire, Burn It Up
03. King of Almost Everything
04. She’s Getting Stranger
05. Take My Hand to Nightmare Land
06. Behind The Mask
07. Prince of the Damned
08. Rattling
09. I Whisper Goodbye
10. The Ghost of Baby Strange
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Jon Deaux and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
