Ashes and Diamonds | Are Forever (album)
RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1st (2025)
RECORD COMPANY: Cleopatra Records
Ashes and Diamond: Are Forever | Sarcastic, sensual and soulful. An organic and textured album where hierarchy fades and all three musicians shine as one.
Daniel Ash has never been one to sit still and look backward. From the spectral shadows of Bauhaus to the psychedelic pulse of Love and Rockets, he’s built a career on reinvention. With Ashes and Diamonds, his collaboration with Paul Denman and Bruce Smith, he sounds newly reborn. “It’s like being nineteen again” he says — and Are Forever, seven years in the making and recorded twice from scratch, proves it. When the band scrapped their first completed version and decided to start again, it wasn’t a mistake — it was liberation, a blessing. Ten days at Johnny Depp’s Hollywood studio gave them what remote recording couldn’t: depth, warmth and chemistry. In that small, smoke-scented room, everything snapped into place. Daniel Ash rediscovered his passion for guitar after plugging into a found Fender Hot Rod amp — its tone became the album’s emotional core. The result feels organic and connected. It breathes like a live band in one room, not files stitched together across borders.
The record opens with Hollywood, where sirens melt into a narcotic haze. Trip-hop tension and muted glamour swirl together, blurring the line between dream and decay. It’s a hypnotic descent into the city’s restless heart, Daniel Ash’s voice gliding between confession and detachment. Teenage Robots takes that theme further, a sleek, electronic lament for a world drowning in connection but starving for contact. Its rhythm pulses like circuitry, but the ache beneath is entirely human. Then comes On a Rocka, the album’s surge of blood and laughter, a glam-fueled anthem of speed, release, and reckless joy. The guitars roar like engines; it’s a celebration of freedom for freedom’s sake. On shifts the mood inward. Minimal, sensual and spectral, it whispers rather than shouts, a study in restraint where silence becomes its own rhythm. Boy or Girl follows with playful seduction. Written years ago, it now resonates with new cultural meaning, exploring identity without ever naming it. “We didn’t want it to be political but it’s open for interpretation” — Daniel Ash said. The result is irresistible: teasing, tender, and slyly subversive. The A Listers turns satire into atmosphere, a smoky night song about vanity and self-performance, half smirk, half sigh. Plastic Fantastic, a song that sparkles with irony and sunlight, a tongue-in-cheek ode to our obsession with surfaces. Unexpectedly bright, buoyant and pop. Daniel Ash sings in the purest sense, not whispering, snarling or narrating. There’s warmth in the phrasing.
Then the light fades. Ice Queen is narrated. The song was recorded “drunk on vodka” is icy and somewhat cinematographic. It’s the sound of someone letting go while pretending not to. Setting Yourself Up to Love plays like a confession caught mid-transformation. What begins as mechanical and monochrome suddenly erupts into color, mirroring the lyric’s push and pull between desire and fear. “Many want love but bolt when it arrives” — Daniel Ash said — and here that tension blooms into melody. Alien Love steps fully into dream. It’s haunting and hypnotic, a slow-burn reverie that feels scary and tender. Its pulse sways like something suspended. It’s fantasy on the surface — a lone figure meeting a visitor from another world, but beneath the humor lies a deep yearning for connection untouched by cynicism. Champagne Charlie, a portrait of someone who seems to have it all while feeling nothing inside, it’s Daniel Ash at his most candid. The song glows with late-night melancholy, elegance cracked by truth. Finally, 2020 closes the album with beautiful grace, a requiem for isolation. “I actually loved the solitude” — Daniel Ash told us, “but I saw what the pandemic did to other people.” Its slow build feels like dawn after a long blackout, fragile, luminous, and cleansing.
Through it all, Bruce Smith’s intricate beats and Paul Denman’s fluid bass form the gravity that anchors Daniel Ash’s voice and guitar. There’s no hierarchy here — every element burns at the same intensity. That balance is what makes Are Forever such a rare achievement: warm, organic and alive. Co-mixed by Robert Stevenson, the sound breathes rather than gleams. At its core, Are Forever is an album about time, how it corrodes, renews, and ultimately reveals. It’s about second chances, and the courage to dismantle something beautiful in order to make it real. Sarcastic, sensual and soulful, it encapsulates three veterans daring to feel excited like teenagers again. Are Forever is an excellent album from start to finish. Highly recommended, go get your copy now!
⩺ INTERVIEW | HERE
__________________
Mandah FRÉNOT
(c) VMJ
TRACKLIST:
01. Hollywood
02. Teenage Robots
03. On a Rocka
04. On
05. Boy or Girl
06. The A Listers
07. Plastic fantastic
08. Ice Queen
09. Setting yourself up for love
10. Alien Love
11. Champagne Charlie
12. 2020
MUSIC VIDEOS:
PURCHASE:
Cleopatra Records | SHOP
⩺ OFFICIAL WEBSITE | HERE
⩺ OFFICIAL FACEBOOK | HERE
⩺ OFFICIAL INSTAGRAM | HERE
⩺ OFFICIAL X (ex-TWITTER) | HERE
⩺ OFFICIAL YOUTUBE | HERE
