They’d always seemed destined for it, between Steve Severin’s prominent bass lines and Siouxsie Sioux’s theatrical wailing (to say nothing of her alluringly demonic makeup). Siouxsie and the Banshees – Juju (1981)Įmerging from the primordial punk ooze in 1976 and eventually twisting their way towards their own kind of neo-psychedelia with 1982’s A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, Siouxsie and the Banshees fully embraced their gothic tendencies in 1981 with Juju.
So, with that, here are 13 great goth albums. And for those of you not regularly clad in black, please take this as an opportunity to discover some new music that is near and dear to an entirely subversive, generally misunderstood subculture. Instead, think of this as an opportunity to hear some different perspectives on what our music sounds like to foreign ears. So, for those dyed-black Goths, please don’t read this list as the end-all, be-all of goth music or think that we at Spectrum are attempting to assume an authoritative role on what goth is-we’re not. It is a dark subculture with many shades of black. It is challenging to the norm, as we are. That’s part of why those of us who wear eyeliner daily like the genre. Goth is a lot of things, but it isn’t always pleasant. Much of goth music is challenging: to the ear, to one’s sense of identity, to one’s faith, to one’s sense of what music is. And if you think about it, this is understandable.
Not all on our panel loved it (or even liked it). Christian Death-while abrasive, lo-fi and sloppy musically-practically shaped the entire image of goth, codifying crosses, lace and fishnets into the wardrobes of the black-clad worldwide. Christian Death’s Only Theatre of Pain is one of the more influential deathrock albums and practically defines American Goth as it crawls out of its punk roots. I feel that one particular album (which was a part of the rotation, but didn’t make the cut) needs an honorable mention. Once music makes it to the 2000s, the overarching acceptance of Marilyn Manson into the mainstream confused music and confused American society’s understanding of what goth is (Marilyn Manson and most heavy metal in general is definitely not goth), not to mention the overarching acceptance and mainstreaming into Germany. We fortunately tended to focus on first-wave and second-wave goth acts (1979–19–1995, respectively). I incorporated a lot of non-musical knowledge (prevalence in the goth scene, frequency I hear at clubs, image and canon-how much I think that this is an important band and influencer on goth music). If you’ve ever been on a voting panel, you will quickly realize that everyone does things a bit differently. And when it comes to voting, we vote on a one-to-five scale.
That sort of perspective means that when they nominate albums, they may nominate music that someone like me will completely miss (like Scott Walker’s The Drift, which I loved). For this panel, not necessarily everyone identifies with the community, especially on a daily basis. When we come up with an idea, we assemble a panel of writers who are interested in a concept. Part of this is a function of how we do things at Spectrum. What I would like to say is that I feel we captured some of the heart of goth music, but not necessarily all of the canon. As the resident lifetime Goth on the panel, I felt I needed to preface this section.