Sean Ragon’s Gothic punk-folk outfit Cult of Youth released its second record, Love Will Prevail, to much acclaim in September. It was recorded in a studio Ragon built himself in the back of his own record store (Brooklyn’s Heaven Street Records), and features his hard, snarling vocals bolstered by a rich instrumentation of guitar, trumpet, and synthesizer alongside darkly thudding drums and a swirling violin. The songs deal with such weighty subject matter as human consciousness and the heavenly struggle between devils and angels, but there’s a consistent optimism and light that shines through—in the album’s hopeful title, and in the poetic words of “To Lay With the Wolves”: “I fell in love/In love with the world . . . That’s when it hit me/That the future was bright.” With King Dude, Perpetual Ritual. ERIN K. THOMPSON

Wed., Oct. 24, 8 p.m., 2012