Gothic Rock

Gothic rock is a genre of rock music dealing with dark themes such as Romanticism, nihilism, gothic horror, and existentialism. An integral part of the larger gothic subculture, gothic rock first emerged in Great Britain out of the post-punk movement.

Musically, gothic rock can be pretty varied, as the most important element is an association with goth culture, expressed through lyrical themes, imagery and atmosphere. A history of goth culture would be beyond the scope of this site (and many excellent articles are easily found elsewhere), but there are a few interesting things worth mentioning here, mostly dealing with the historical relationship between gothic rock and other dark music genres.

Early post-punk groups labelled as gothic--Joy Division and Bauhaus, for example--expressed their introspective, darker nature by dressing all in black with makeup, a satirical jab at glam rockers like David Bowie. These groups, combined with the dark ambiance of The Batcave, a club in London famous for featuring bands from the early goth scene, gave birth in the early 1980s to a gothic subculture that would come to inspire generations of imitators. As a result, early gothic bands were quite similar sylistically, fitting in with the post-punk sound popular at The Batcave and other goth clubs that sprung up in Los Angeles, Amsterdam and other large cities.

As the 1980s progressed, post-punk gave rise to alternative rock, industrial music and several other electronic music genres. Gothic rock had grown in popularity, with Siouxsie And The Banshees and Fields Of The Nephilim carrying the standard for the genre; a scene that spurned the mainstream and reveled in its underground status was now breaking into the top 10 of the British charts, getting power play on John Peel's influential radio show, and in the end cross-contamination was inevitable. Siouxsie began experimenting with drum machines, a trend that quickly caught on, and synthesizers were soon to follow. As a result, a second generation of gothic rock began to merge musically with the post-industrial and synthpop scenes, quickly distinguishing themselves from the gothic bands of the original Batcave set.

By the mid-1990s, the music industry was becoming increasingly global, and groups like Switchblade Symphony and The Crüxshadows were attracting worldwide followings. Seeing this, major labels started trying to get in on the action, marketing popular hard rock and metal groups like Marilyn Manson as "goth." This seeping of an artificial, manufactured goth culture into the public consciousness--Hot Topic stores being the antithesis of what the gothic and punk rock movements originally stood for--has led to a wealth of misinformation about the subculture which has unfortunately fueled a lot of hostility between goths and mainstream society.

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