gothic rock

The tradition & historical record

Gothic rock (also known as goth rock or simply goth) is a subgenre of rock music which grew out of British post-punk in the late 1970s. The genre draws from gothic literature, nihilism, dark romanticism, poetry and tragedy. The style evolved through early post-punk bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus, and the Cure, who shifted their music toward darker gothic overtones through an emphasis on minor chords, reverb, dark arrangements, and melancholic melodies. In 1981, Sounds writer Steve Keaton published an article on "punk gothique", a term coined by UK Decay frontman Steve Abbott to describe their music. By 1983, the NME briefly used "positive punk" to describe a music scene associated with a London club known as the Batcave, which included artists such as Alien Sex Fiend, Specimen, UK Decay, Sex Gang Children, Rubella Ballet and Southern Death Cult. The British press later opted for the term "goth" to define the subculture and style of music, which was further developed by the arrival of the Sisters of Mercy, followed by Flesh for Lulu, Play Dead, Rubella Ballet, Gene Loves Jezebel, Blood and Roses, and Ausgang. In the United States, 45 Grave and Christian Death further developed the scene, which led to the emergence of deathrock. By the late 1980s and 1990s, gothic rock gave rise to several fusion genres such as gothabilly, gothic country and gothic metal. ¹

The term "gothic rock" was originally coined by critic John Stickney who used the label to describe the music of the Doors in October 1967, in a review published in The Williams Record. Stickney wrote that the band met the journalists "in the gloomy vaulted wine cellar of the Delmonico hotel, the perfect room to honor the gothic rock of the Doors". The author noted that contrary to the "pleasant, amusing hippies", there was "violence" in their music and a dark atmosphere on stage during their concerts. Stickney ultimately titled his article, "Four Doors to the Future: Gothic Rock Is Their Thing". In April 1977, critic Dave Marsh of The Morning Record described Philip Glass's album North Star as "the best neo-Gothic rock since John Cale and Terry Riley's Church of Anthrax, or more appropriately, the first couple of Doors albums". On 4 November 1978 Record Mirror's Tim Lott described Pere Ubu's 1975 debut single "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" as "discordant gothic rock". In a review of a Siouxsie and the Banshees' concert in July 1978, critic Nick Kent stated, "parallels and comparisons can now be drawn with gothic rock architects like the Doors and, certainly, early Velvet Underground". In 1980, Joy Division's album Closer was noted for its "dark strokes of gothic rock" by Sounds. ¹

According to music journalist Simon Reynolds, standard musical fixtures of gothic rock include "scything guitar patterns, high-pitched basslines that often usurped the melodic role [and] beats that were either hypnotically dirgelike or tom-tom heavy and 'tribal'". Reynolds described the vocal style as consisting of "deep, droning alloys of Jim Morrison and Leonard Cohen". Several acts used drum machines downplaying the rhythm's backbeat. Gothic rock typically deals with dark themes addressed through lyrics and the music's atmosphere. The poetic sensibilities of the genre led gothic rock lyrics to exhibit literary romanticism, morbidity, existentialism, religious symbolism, or supernatural mysticism. Gothic rock is an offshoot of post-punk. According to AllMusic, the genre "took the cold synthesizers and processed guitars of post-punk and used them to construct foreboding, sorrowful, often epic soundscapes." Early gothic rock had introspective or personal lyrics, but according to AllMusic, "its poetic sensibilities soon led to a taste for literary romanticism, morbidity, religious symbolism, and/or supernatural mysticism." Gothic rock creates a dark atmosphere by drawing influence from the drones used by the Velvet Underground, and many gothic singers are influenced by the "deep and dramatic" vocal timbre of David Bowie, albeit singing at even lower pitches. In terms of fashion, gothic bands incorporated influences from 19th-century Gothic literature along with horror films and, to a lesser extent, the BDSM culture. Gothic fashions within the subculture range from deathrock, punk, androgynous, Victorian, to Renaissance and medieval-style attire, or combinations of the above, most often with black clothing, makeup and hair. ¹

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, several musicians became influential in shaping the aesthetics and musical conventions of gothic rock such as Marc Bolan, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Jim Morrison and the Doors, David Bowie, Brian Eno, and Iggy Pop and the Stooges. ¹

Journalist Kurt Loder would write retrospectively that the song "All Tomorrow's Parties" by the Velvet Underground and Nico is a "mesmerizing gothic-rock masterpiece" while Rolling Stone claimed their song "Venus in Furs" made the band "goth pioneers". Nico's 1968 album The Marble Index has been described by Alternative Press as "the first truly gothic album". With its stark sound, somber lyrics, and dark visual aesthetic. However, music journalist Simon Reynolds considers shock rock artist Alice Cooper as "the true ungodly godfather of goth" due to his "theatrics and black humor", that was inspired by the sound and visual aesthetic of Arthur Brown. Screamin' Jay Hawkins' early style of shock rock, which blended occult imagery and theatricality with rock and roll, as exemplified in his 1956 track "I Put a Spell on You", has also been retroactively recognized as a forerunner to gothic music. In the late 1970s, the word "gothic" was used to describe the atmosphere of post-punk bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Magazine and Joy Division. In March 1979, Kent used the gothic adjective in his review of Magazine's second album, Secondhand Daylight. Kent noted that there was "a new austere sense of authority" to their music, with a "dank neo-Gothic sound". The second Siouxsie and the Banshees album, also released in 1979, was a precursor in several aspects. ¹

American gothic rock began with Californian bands such as 45 Grave and Christian Death, whose harder, more punk rock-influenced style of gothic rock became known as deathrock. Christian Death combined "self-consciously controversial tactics" with Los Angeles punk and heavy metal influences. Their singer Rozz Williams committed suicide by hanging in 1998 at age 34. 45 Grave was more inspired by heavy metal than Christian Death and featured female singer Dinah Cancer. Some punk acts like the Cramps, the Gun Club, Lydia Lunch, the Nuns, the Misfits and T.S.O.L. have been credited to be influential on both the sound and the aesthetics of the Goth subculture in America, being subsequently credited to be pioneers in contemporaneous goth-related styles such as "deathrock", "horror punk", "gothabilly" and "goth punk". ¹

The 1990s saw a resurgence of the goth subculture, fueled largely by… ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Gothic rock”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

gothic rock is musical subgenre of post-punk and alternative rock, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 18 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²