The Drink Tank

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The Drink Tank 457 - Goth
Page 4 - Two Histories of Goth: Reviews by
Chuck Serface
Page 12 - A Simple Primer on My Fave Goth
Music by Christopher J Garcia
Page 33 - Propaganda Magazine by Chris
Garcia
Page 37 - Goth Music by Chris Duvall
Page 43 - The Crow and The Craft by Chris
Garcia
Page 46 - Saturday Night Live’s Goth Talk by
Chris Garcia
Page 49 - Gothic Charm School: An Essential
Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them by
Jillian Venters: A Review by Chuck Serface
Page 53 - Goth Babe of the Week By Chris
Garcia
Page 57 - Let’s Talk Gothabilly by Chris Garcia

Comments -drinktankeditorial@gmail.com

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3 of 65
 Two Histories of Goth
Reviews by Chuck Serface

In 2023, two major histories of goth hit shelves. Both

contain considerations mainly about music, but they also
include literature, art, and political history, since goth as we
know it today fed from many inspirations, finally becoming
a fully realized movement and aesthetic celebrating
macabre sensibilities. One author co-founded a band that
provided immense influence before being inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Whether its members resisted
or accepted the goth label, certainly they’ve fired up many
creative souls over the decades. The other played bass for a
post-punk outfit before branching into music journalism,
among other things, having penned now essential additions
to any worthwhile music studies library. While covering the
same topic, each adopts differing tones, voices, and
emphases. Suggesting one over the other relies only on how
much reading time individuals possess. I’d go with both,
but you know how I roll.

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 Goth: A History by Lol Tolhurst

Goth: A History reads like hearing about the good

old days while sitting on your elder goth uncle’s lap. Of
course, Uncle Lol co-founded The Cure with Robert Smith
and Michael Dempsey, which he records in his previous

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book, Cured: A Tale of Two Imaginary Boys. Now he examines
goth history through his lens, beginning with the 1976 riot
at the Notting Hill Carnival in London, where Rocco
Macauley shot that infamous cover photo for The Clash’s
first album. Punk was the seedbed for goth and its cousin,
post-punk, but Tolhurst isn’t content with music alone. He
delves into Gothic literature, citing expert Dr. Tracy Fahey
quite heavily while discussing Walpole, Radcliffe, Shelley,
Stoker, Poe, and Lovecraft. Even T. S. Eliot, Franz Kafka,
Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Sylvia Plath, and Anne
Sexton come into play. Like modern pop music, these all
contain elements of the Gothic, but what finally sets goth
music apart? “This brings me to my long-held belief about
modern pop songs,” he starts. My rule of thumb, based on
what I’ve observed over my long career, is that they are
either about death or love. The difference with Goth
music? They’re usually about death and love in the same
song.” (28)
Goth for Tolhurst isn’t just fashion, rebellion, or a
subculture. It’s a way to understand the world. It
appreciates life’s macabre and somber notes and becomes
more than weird young adults with pallid skin dressing in
gray and black. Aspects of this sensibility always will be
with us since they always have been. We’ve seen it in punk,
post-punk, glam rock, psychedelic rock, and anywhere
someone dares to express melancholy themes. John
Stickney first applied goth to popular music when he
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described the venue of a Doors concert as the perfect
location for their “gothic rock.” How we’ve progressed
since then.
Tolhurst rambles poetically throughout, relating a
beautiful journey all the more meaningful for his
confessional tone much like that of Sylvia Plath or Anne
Sexton. Particularly touching is his section about Depeche
Mode, where he chronicles his 1988 departure from The
Cure due to ongoing mental health issues that landed him
at The Priory, a private London hospital he compares to
Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. There he encountered Andy
Fletcher who was grappling with anxiety and depression
he’d developed while recording Violator with his
bandmates. That Tolhurst wraps his analysis of Depeche
Mode inside this extremely personal wrapper moves us
beyond “just the facts,” engaging our hearts as well as our
minds.
Go with Goth: A History if you don’t have extensive
reading time. Tolhurst provides a meaty consideration
under 300 pages. If you’re more interested in reminiscent
accounts, Lol’s your boy. The next tome up for discussion,
and I don’t use “tome” lightly, covers the same ground but
with much more detail, and requires serious commitment
from any reading it from the first page to the last.

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 The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth
by John Robb

DJ, journalist, musician, TV presenter, model, and

publisher, John Robb is no stranger to musical history. His

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Punk Rock: An Oral History has become a must for any fan’s
library, and I look forward to reading his The North Will Rise
Again: Manchester Music City 1976-1996. After consuming
Tolhurst’s musings on Joy Division and what Robb shares
about that period here spurs me to learn more. Given that
The Art of Darkness runs 736 pages including notes and
index, I know Robb won’t give me short shrift.
Robb opens Chapter 1 by painting an image of the
1980s goth scene before reverting to 410 AD in Chapter 2
with Alaric’s Goths sacking Rome. “Ever since then,” he
says, “the term ‘gothic’ has been associated with that walk
on the dark side.” (15) In fact, “Gothic” when applied to
history, and architecture, has suffered negative
connotations: “In the eyes of the critics, ‘Gothic’ was seen as
the uncultured realm of a barbaric tribe and yet the styles
of the later Gothic revival also became an inspiration to a
whole host of architects and artists much despised by
sophisticates that would slowly spread across Europe.” (16)
Nonetheless, creative types move toward depicting
alienation, doomed love, and sorrow because how could
they not? Critics be damned! If all were June weddings
and Marcia Brady dating Doug Simpson, how boring would
that be? And even more, how unrealistic! Like Tolhurst,
Robb realizes the Gothic always has been and always will be
however it manifests. And manifest it will.
Robb reaches Siouxsie and the Banshees on page
163, then The Cure on page 282, and Bauhaus on page 322.
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His pace seems Ice Age glacial unless readers contemplate
how much information he’s sharing. Authoritative,
sometimes overly enjoying the weeds, Robb’s always
reverent toward goth, its cousins, and its antecedents. He
organizes his chapters so that curious seekers can choose
sections of interest much like perusing an encyclopedia or
reference text. He does have an endpoint, though,
encapsulated in his final chapter, “Apocalypse Now! Goth’s
End Days.” The twenty-first century, he feels, has become
the “most dystopian of times, even the darkest imaginations
of centuries of gothic writers and musicians could never
have concocted a story to mimic the world’s current gloomy
malaise.” (623) Additionally, what was once niche is now
mainstream with goth, or what could be termed goth,
everywhere. I’m reminded of how Apple co-opted John
Lennon and Mahatma Gandhi for advertising purposes, or
how Ben and Jerry’s now has a franchise at the corner of
Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. Superficiality seems
the endpoint of all earnestness, right? Not necessarily.
Robb concludes:
The art of darkness is all around us, reacting to the
dystopian as it always has. Culture blur continues
– where it was once easy to stand out in the crowd,
provocative clothing has become normalized, and
those without tattooed skin are the exception . . .
Yet the mainstream’s meddling and cynical
appropriation of the surface of a highly attractive
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 form, the post-punk’s alternative dark matter and
energy are everywhere.
Thankfully, the new dark ages still require a fitting
soundtrack and the art of darkness is the only
modern art that truly defines these dystopian
times. (640 -1)
Let your melancholy selves roar, my friends. Honest
expression may be the only thing that will save us. Tolhurst
and Robb, and everyone they scrutinize, teach us how.

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 A Simple Primer on My Fave Goth Music
by Christopher J. Garcia

It’s pretty simple; if you sound like you tuned the dial
halfway between 1970s punk and 1980s pop, you’re
probably going to find something I enjoy. I went to a
Convergence in the late 1990s. It’s the largest goth
gathering of the folks who used to hang about the alt.goth
newsgroup back in the day. I set up on a couch, dressed in
black pants and a series of black t-shirts, and had a laptop,
one of those big ones from 1997 or so, and a HUGE
external disk drive. As I recall, it was 5 gigs.
But the laptop had a CD-ROM drive, and I had a
small red boombox with two tape players and a record
button. I was ready to capture music.
And capture music I did.
You see, among the mass of velvet and satin, pretty
much every attendee had a pile of CDs or tapes with them,
and some of them were in bands that had demos, or had
traded for demos of other bands. I set up, there was a plug
on the wall next to me (though I had to unplug a lamp!) and
I stayed there save for dinner and bathroom breaks for
almost the entire time. I got a huge amount of music (and
saved a ton on a hotel room by intermittently napping and
being out of the way enough that no one seemed to care or
notice) and it informed my listening to ages. Some of my
faves were older things, and others were new brands. I may

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have been the first American to have some songs I captured
that weekend!
Much of that music is gone, though a few I still have
on various computers and playlists around, and I figured I’d
go and look for a lot of that music, and stuff like it.
Now, in the old times, I’d have made a mix tape, but
this is the twenty-first century, thus I made a Spotify
p l a y l i s t : h t t p s : / / o p e n . s p o t i f y. c o m / p l a y l i s t /
6kmZ22FDzF1jcBnR5v96Q4?si=c53c7e54fe884f89
Now, no single, manageable playlist could cover all
the aspects of goth rock, I’m not going into southern gothic
or gothabilly, but here’s the first list!

“The Killing Moon” by Echo & The Bunnymen

Some folks don’t consider this goth, partly because Echo &
the Bunnymen did so well on mainstream radio, but this
song’s got everything you could want in a 1980s goth track:
dark-themed lyrics, prominent bass, lots of echo, and a
perfect combo of distortion and jangle. It’s just about
perfection in every direction. Also, it would work
marvelously in any vampire movie.

“Spellbound” by Siouxsie & The Banshees

Again, jangly guitars and fairly simple drumming are
present, but it’s all about Siouxsie Sioux, easily the most
goth woman who has ever lived. This one also often gets
punted by hardcores, but it’s an excellent example of a goth

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song that feels like a pop song, but it’s all about the lyrics
and that guitar.

“Lucretia My Reflection” by The Sisters of Mercy

There is no question that this one is gothy, and it’s one of
the most foundational pieces of the genre. It’s got that
simple drumming, it’s got that bassline, and ultimately, it’s
got a lot of perfect synth going on. The lyrics aren’t quite at
the level of Echo or Siouxsie, but they’re dark (and kind of
sci-fi!)

“Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus

This is THE goth song, without
question. It evokes Bela, for god’s
sake! The instrumentation is fairly
simple, sparse I’d say. The echoing
voice, as if being sung from the far
edge of a dining hall, the jangle,
and most of all, the invocation of
the greatest of all heroin vampires
makes this the required song.
Funny note – this is not an 80s
song – it was released in 1979!

“Fascination Street” by The Cure

Okay, this is another one that often gets punted to the
mainstream, but there’s no question that The Cure is one of
the primary influencers of goth, and this has always been

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my favorite of all their songs! Well, okay, there are a couple
that at times eclipse it, but the long intro musically is
everything I think of when I think of goth rock from the
1990s, with the drums and bassline just hitting 100%. I love
this song, and when it gets a fair bit discordant towards the
end, it works even better.

“Gallowdance” by Lebanon Hanover

This one has a sparseness to it as well, and that drum and
bass thing that is simple, but it catches you. While Lebanon
Hanover is a newer band, formed in 2010, they’re certainly
of the style of bands like Bauhaus, and the vocals by the
amazing Larissa Iceglass (Greatest Goth name ever!) are so
perfect. The fact that Iceglass sings in German on this helps
add to the atmosphere.

“The Sanity Assassin” by Bauhaus

This is up-tempo goth, but even so, it still has the
unmistakable sensation that goth rock should leave you
with. Here, you can hear how goth grew out of post-punk.
The lyrics are, again, perfect, and we’re getting organ on
this one, which punches in and makes the impact for those
without the time for the lyrics!

“Persephone” by Cocteau Twins

While I usually consider Cocteau Twins to be dream pop,
they were 100% an early goth act and the stuff from the
mid-1980s was a massive influence. This one shows how

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Elizabeth Frazer’s vocals would move towards shoegaze and
dream pop, but the thing feels far closer to what we hear
from Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy than Lush or Ride.

“Body Electric” by The Sisters of Mercy

This is a personal fave, and really, it’s kind of like a strident
early Depeche Mode song. It’s got a very drum machine
sound, which I love, but it’s also got that bass and the
fuzzed guitar that marks so much of the transition into 90s
Goth and especially Goth Metal.

“(Russian Letters)” by Ploho

Russia has some great goth music, and this one sounds a lot
like The Sisters of Mercy. This was a group I found while
putting together the playlist that I must say spoke to what I
wanted to say with it. It’s newer also; Ploho was formed in
2013. I don’t know about the lyrics, but they’re Russian so I
assume they’re dark.

“Walking on Both Sides” by Pink Turns Blue

This half-sounds like a Smiths song, but it’s got a slightly
sinister sound. Pink Turns Blue is a German act, and they’re
good, though I tend to think they’re more along the lines of
darkwave, which is often a synonym for goth.

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“Lesbian Vampires from Outer Space” by Scary Bitches
This one is a fun song, telling the story of an invasion of
Lesbian Vampires and the populace complaining about it.
Scary Bitches are a fun band. They’re Britishers and
influenced by Siouxsie Sioux and company. This one is so
much fun, and that makes me happy because a lot of goth
from the late 90s and early-to-mid 2000s was a bit dour.

“Kill the Lights” by The Birthday Massacre

This one is weird on this list, because it’s by a goth metal
band, but it’s way more symphonic metal than anything, but
the vocals are incredible, and the lyrics are either about a
vampire, or a REALLY deep metaphor. This is a great song,
and one that I love so hard. It’s one from the 2000s which
makes me very happy because it was a period where most
goth music was more in the vein of Marilyn Manson than
this.

“Jasmine and Rose” by Clan of Xymox

The intro is a clanky old piano and it sets the mood
perfectly. Clan of Xymox has been around for more than 40
years, continually releasing new material and just being
awesome. This one is from 1999, and it shows that they’re
still Darkwave and Goth, but it feels like it could have been
from their 1980s albums just as easily as from the late
1990s.

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“Demon” by London After Midnight
YES! Another opening that just makes the entire song! This
one has an organ and you could put “Jasmine and Rose” in
the same bucket, this one feels exactly like an early 1990s
goth song, with the drumming and synth strings, along with
the lyrics, which are about . . . Jack the Ripper. I think.
Honestly, if they’re not, they’re dark enough that they
scream goth!

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“A Forest” by The Cure
Another by The Cure and one that I feel sums up how you
do gloom. The intro to this near-six-minute masterpiece is a
minute of ambiance with a simple guitar line, and then the
drums and bass kick in and it’s amazing! This song shows
off the perfection of 1980s goth, and once we get Robert
Smith singing, we understand more fully what they’re going
for with the whole thing. It’s straight ahead, and at the same
time, it feels like it’s not trying very hard but managing to
hit every single thing they attempt.

“Love Like Blood” by Killing Joke

Want to talk about goth metal? Killing Joke is halfway down
that road. This isn’t goth metal, it’s too early, but with just a
little more guitar it would be, and you can see how they
became one of the biggest influences on that strain of
music. The bass here plays a more interesting role than in a
lot of 1980s goth rock, and I think that’s one of the reasons
I love it so much. I know one of the albums I got at
Convergence back in the day was a Killing Joke album with
this on it.

“Under the Milky Way” by The Church

I know folks think this is a straight-up 1980s mainstream
radio hit, and they’re right, but there’s no way this
combination of music and lyrics doesn’t influence what
we’d see in the early 90s. It’s a beautiful song, and The
Church is an amazing band that played with the goth scene,

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often having young bands who would go on to big things as
goth rockers open for them.

“Russian Roulette” by The Lords of the New Church

Want to hear what I think of when I think of goth? This is
it. The Lords of the New Church is a band that does not get
enough love despite the fact they were a super-group
composed of members from The Dead Boys, The Damned,
The Barracudas, and Sham 69. It’s very post-punk from four
of the greatest punks ever, but it also feels like goth, even
with the line “La, La, La, La, I feel love, and I feel groovy.”

“My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” by Type O Negative

Here’s more of the goth metal I’ve been talking about. Type
O Negative didn’t invent it, but they’re the first ones I think
of, especially for their output in the 1990s and 2000s. Here
is a lovely song that shows exactly how you put together
metal guitar and dark vocals with synth and dark lyrics.
Plus, what’s more goth than polyamory?

“The Spider and The Fly” by London After Midnight

This one opens with a soundscape and then goes electronic
goth that borders on synthpop and goth metal, and it’s
perfect and it’s beautiful. The lyrics are really smart, but
again, it’s got an organ-y synth sound that makes me feel
somehow like this is played in an abandoned church,
perhaps with vampires circling outside.

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“Grimly Fiendish” by The Damned
This is perky goth joy and dark sunshine and dying roses!
It’s The Damned, one of the finest of all Brit first-wave punk
bands. It’s bouncy, but it feels like a song celebrating goth
kids. I love it so much! It’s a good song to pogo to, and you
can see why The Damned are such a gigantic influence on
goth music.

“Severina” by The Mission UK

This one is goth because it has the most goth possible
female name as the title. It’s a good song that establishes its
Gothness with an intro that is so damn tense. The bulk of
the song is kinda power-pop, and I like it a lot. The best part
might be the jangle of the guitar, but it’s the lyrics that give
it the needed sense of darkness! The Mission UK included
members from The Sisters of Mercy who broke off to form
this band. They’ve released a few great records!

“A Day” by Clan of Xymox

Another great intro with a screeching guitar, drum machine,
and weird, slightly echo-y synths. Things get more upbeat
into the kind of thing that goth clubs like Man Ray would
play over and over and over in the early 1990s. This one
takes a while to get lyrics, and when we do, they’re exactly
the kind of thing that matches the music, slightly drawling,
maybe, but there’s a bit of whine in the chorus that makes
me nervous, and it works.

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“Just Like Honey” by The Jesus and Mary Chain
This was a band that the goth-leaning kids in my high
school all worshipped.
This is half-shoegaze
and half-goth, and it
runs slow, just like
honey. The guitar here
is underplayed with
massive amounts of
fuzz and the vocals are
practically gauzy. I love
this one, and it’d been
d e c a d e s s i n c e I ’d
heard it before putting
this together.

“Adrenaline” by Rosetta Stone

The open is what we early 90s kids would call techno, and
then it becomes straight-up late 80s goth. It came out in
1991 and was one I remember from WECB radio at
Emerson. It’s a good example of what 1990s goth would
head more and more towards – electronic drive and lots
more metal-ish guitar work.

“Walk into the Sun” by the March Violets

This one is peppy and I love it! The vocals are 100% the
kind of thing I expect from goth bands, and it makes the
whole thing feel a lot more impressive. This was a great

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example of what the British goth scene was like in the
mid-1980s, and influenced by The Damned and The
Cramps.

“Pleasure and Pain” by The Chameleons

This is one of those songs I remember and can’t think of
why. They’re another Manchester band who rose about the
same time as The Smiths, shortly after Joy Division and The
Buzzcocks, and I think at the same time as Inspiral Carpets.
You can see the influence of The Damned on them,
specifically, and a lot of the same sound that gave us the
Madchester scene in the late 80s and early 90s.

“Spies in the Wires” by Cabaret Voltaire

This one is again kinda electro-sparse, and I love it. Cabaret
Voltaire is a band that I think of as being way ahead of the
curve in Industrial, but here, and in a lot of their first wave
of music, you can see that they’re goth at their core. Here,
there’s a lot of what would come to us as a part of Nine Inch
Nails’s Pretty Hate Machine. The sound is clean, but the
effect is heavier than you’d expect.

“I Just Can’t Be Happy Today” by The Damned

Is there a more goth title? This one is The Damned still
going for their punk sound, but adding a layer of keyboards
that moves it. It’s hard to differentiate between punk and
goth in the early 80s, especially with bands who
transitioned successfully. The Damned used their lyrics to

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get the difference across, and this one has a breakdown that
certainly seems like it could have been on a Bauhaus of
Sisters of Mercy inter-track record.

The Evil of His Kiss by Das Kabinette

Okay, this song is so simple but part of the genre and a
great listen in general. Das Kabinette, I believe named after
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari were a couple of Blackpool Art
College students in the early 1980s. They remind me of the
New York punk act, Suicide. It’s a touch minimalist, but
really, it’s very much the kind of music I remember from the
late 80s on college radio goth shows.

“Away” by The Bolshoi

This is clearly what goth metal was built off of. They only
lasted a few years, but you can see that they knew what was
coming and while they fit in with the stuff we were getting
from The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, and The Damned, they
would have been very much at home with Killing Joke and
Type O Negative.

“Cry Wolf by 1919”

A music box intro is goth. The goth metal that hits a few
seconds after puts the mark down even harder. This track
from 1983 is another that clearly shows how metal was
going to get involved with the whole goth thing, and if 1919
had stayed together longer, it probably would have
happened sooner. As it stands, this track is fantastic.

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“Pictures of You” by The Cure
The most goth track off one of the essential albums of all
time. Disintegration is a masterpiece that never seems to age.
This song has a beautiful guitar line, and the production
isn’t cluttered, but somehow they manage to include chimes
and a synth blare that works so well.

“Beautiful Monster” by Folk Devils

A 1984 hit, they fell off pretty quickly, but this is a great
track I’ve heard compared to the Electric Prunes. I wouldn’t
know, but I will say that the way this song builds is just
about perfect.

“She Sells Sanctuary” by The Cult

Another hit for The Cult and this one has less of a feel to it
than “Under the Milky Way,” but its lyrics are downbeat, and
that jangly guitar and drumline that’s pretty dang simple
puts it in the mood of goth for me. It also hits with so much
of the early stuff.

“60/40” by Nico
Nico was a major influence on goth through her entire
aesthetic, not just through her work with Andy Warhol and
The Velvet Underground. She did a goth album in the 80s,
and this track is so great, and it fits in beautifully with
everything. It’s the only work Nico ever did that didn’t
feature John Cale. Cale would have a huge influence on

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goth, both for his music with and without the Velvets, but as
a producer.

“Somewhere” by The Danse Society

Another early, and barely remembered early 80s goth act.
This one is a 1982 single, and it feels a bit cookie-cutter, but
the whole thing leads to a wonderful synth section that
turns off the lyrics, which are fairly dour, and makes the

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whole thing feel a lot more rounded. They reformed and I
think have released new stuff in the last decade or so.

“Because You’re Frightened” by Magazine

Magazine is freaking great! Formed by the legendary
Howard Devoto of The Buzzcocks, it’s such a great Post-
Punk band, but much of its stuff feels completely at home
with goth, especially with the lyrics. You can see the threads
leading from Magazine to The Smiths and Simple Minds.

“Nag, Nag, Nag” by Cabaret Voltaire

They’re a bunch of goth Dadaists, okay? This weird
soundscape is cool because it’s a heavily processed
theremin, I think, with a solid beat. It’s weird, but it shows
that this is a piece of malleable music.

“Moya” by The Southern Death Cult

The lead singer went on to The Cult, but he was way more
goth here than with The Cult. This one has vocals that just
cut so hard. The jangle and the drums are perfect. I think
this was the first time I’d heard them feel so ethereal,
though that’s not quite the word for it. They exist in
darkness on this one.

“Release the Bats” by The Birthday Party

Crawling and screaming, a song about releasing the most
goth of all mammals, the bat. The fact that it’s Nick Cave as
the lead singer probably helps. This one is pure rage and

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harsh. It’s along the lines of The Cramps and The Damned,
but it’s the drums and bass getting to do almost all the
instrumental work save for guitar punctuation that sells this
on.

“Kiss” by London After Midnight

Toy Piano gives way to electronic drive and it hits hard!
This one came at exactly the right moment, as it was from a
2004 album and you can see how much more electronic and
metal-tinged even the foundational bands have become
with their newer material. I love this one as you could
almost slip it into any portion of their discography and it
wouldn’t feel out of place.

“Auf Deiner Haut” by Selofan

This is technogoth as it stood in 1982, and only the music
was created starting in 2012. They’re incredible, out of
Athens, and they do the kind of stuff that doesn’t feel like
they’re going retro, but that this is their thing and it
happens to be in the style of the past. This is what
happened in bluegrass in 2007. They’re a fairly eclectic
band and one that I think could easily find a massive
crossover. I don’t know about their lyrics, my German is
rusty like a bicycle that’s become part of a tree, but I know
that it’s delivered like I would expect it to be.

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“Eternite” by Hante
This is so beautiful, a near-dirge that turns into an
electronic slow groove that unfolds in layers and just feels
like a fog rolling in. Hante calls her brand of ethereal music
“Haunted Wave,” and it certainly fits! There’s something of
scores to old horror films in her work that I find
fascinating! This one is from 2017, and it feels fresh and
ancient at the same time.

“Hall of Ice” by Lebanon Hanover

This one is another stripped-down piece of recent music
that just feels like it came out on vinyl in 1979. Here,
though, you can see the way that so many influences
collided. The first is Nico, as the vocals have that same
sensation to them. The next is the minimalism of bands like
Bauhaus and especially the clear influence of filmic music
that has driven this stuff for ages.

“I Love You More Than Death” by Tearful Moon

This is another title that screams goth. Out of Texas, Tearful
Moon is doing incredible darkwave music, and this is my
favorite of their pieces. My current musical crush is lead
singer Sky Lesco. Fun fact: it started as a spoken word
project and evolved. Jim Carroll, eat your heart out.

“Never Leave Me” by Sixth June

Another female-fronted duo still putting out new music
today. The lead singer Lidija Andonov is incredible, and

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since they’re German, they’ve got that sort of 1980s dark
German electropop sound that I go so hard for.

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“Blind” by Swans
This was what all the goth kids at Santa Clara High School
loved. Swans are a band that’s been around for ages, and
the line-up seems to change hourly, but this is very typical
of the stuff that SCHS kids were listening to on their
Walkman tape players. I think it’s Michael Gira’s voice that
makes the project work. I mean, it’s his band, everyone else
seems to float in and out, but the singing is amazing.

“A Sadness Song” by Current 93

This is a band that is so very damn goth. This is my second
fave of their songs (“Gothic Love Song” is number one) and
it’s a rare largely acoustic piece that hits so strongly. Our
singer’s voice is light, and maybe reedy, and I think this
might be the first appearance of the most goth of all wind
instruments – the flute.

“Talk About The Weather” by Red Lorry Yellow Lorry

Man, this one is so great, and it feels like the kind of thing
you’d expect from Nice Cave, though his voice isn’t quite as
smoothed gravel. They were another early goth rock band,
but they never hit it as big as they should have in America.

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32 of 65
 Propaganda Magazine
by Christopher J. Garcia

If you were a sub-genre in the 1980s or 90s, there was

a zine for you.
This was true of every musical style, from ska to
metal, and even goth. The thing about goth was that they
had one of the truly magnificent zines of the time that

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transitioned from the punk-zine aesthetic into something
slicker. After Wrapped in Plastic, and Morri’zine, it happened
to be my favorite of the early 1990s – Propaganda.
The start with, we need to talk about Fred Berger.
Now, goth photography is old, old, old. It grew out of
the world of concert photography, and especially punk
c o n c e r t p h o t o g r a p hy. T h e r e a r e s o m e n o t a b l e
photographers of the punk world, perhaps none so much so
as the legendary Bruce Conner. Berger was one of those
photographers who captured an exciting time in New York’s
music scene. Berger was known for his eye, and when you
have a scene needing coverage, photographers often start
looking for a way to publish. Berger thankfully started
Propaganda in 1982.
It was a remarkable piece of work. It started off
looking much like the punk zines of the time, like Sniffin’
Glue. It’s a bit paste-up stylistically but the work is much
more formal. Looking at issue 3 (I don’t think I’ve ever seen
issues 1 or 2) you can see that photography is the focus. The
third page includes a 2-by-2 grid of images called “Gothic
Faces,” which encapsulates the era perfectly. There’s no
denying that Berger had the look and feel of the scene at
the time down pat. There’s an excellent look at Liquid Sky,
and bands like Specimen and Einsturzende Neubauten.
By the time 1988 rolled around, and this was when I
was seeing it at Tower Records, it was evolving out of the
cut-and-paste methodology. I’d wager he was using
Pagemaker by that point, but it was certainly done on a

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computer. The photos were still the stars, though I did
notice that there were often those little pieces of Nazi
imagery that popped up in the 1970s and early 80s punk
scenes. Nothing overt, but I think it had much more to do
with rebellion. It was dumb, and I’m so glad the scene
almost entirely grew out of it, but still, it’s there.
This may be the most important artifact to show that
goth was not an island. There was a lot of fetish-type
material, plus a lot of industrial, metal, and punk material.
There’s a piece about Guns ‘n Roses! The stunning visuals
are the centerpieces, even when they interviewed Robert
Smith of The Cure.
And that speaks to the role it played in the scene.
Propaganda was widely read, and many goths around the
world read it. Many non-goths did as well, including my
goth-adjacent self. I certainly had issues from 1993 through
about 1996, almost all bought at Tower Records in Boston.
They were gorgeous, and I kept up with the goings-on
through them far more than by attending shows at the
Paradise or Avalon.
It was super-slick by the time I was regularly buying,
which was one of the peaks of zine culture. It couldn’t last
forever, and in 2002, it shuttered. It outlasted almost all the
other goth zines, though it certainly wasn’t the end of Goth
zining. Gothic Beauty is still out there, being fairly awesome
after taking a few years off. They’ve been around since 2000,
but they never had the penetration into the collective
unconscious that Propaganda had. Still, it’s so pretty!

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36 of 65
 Goth Music
by Chris Duval

Siouxie and the Banshees

I remember the group from Lallapalooza I at the

Shoreline. There was a pause as the day waned because
they had to come on after sundown. Kathy said that women
were busy changing out of shorts and into black dresses
and applying black and white make-up in the women's
restroom. As it happens, the set was a most impressive
Hindu exotica rather than goth, but the fans weren’t
disappointed in the change of tone.

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The album back cover of Siouxie and The Banshees’ Hyæna,
including “We Hunger” with the lyric: “The thirst from a vampire
bite fills the emptiness inside.”

Bauhaus
Every Halloween we play the song “Bela Lugosi’s
Dead” by Bauhaus. My favorite line is “Alone in a darkened
room / The Count.”

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A page from one of the two album inserts from the Bauhaus
compilation album, Bauhaus: 1979-1983, which includes several
goth songs such as “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”

The Cure

Kathy’s favorite song by the Cure is “A Forest,”

though she strongly prefers the original mix from Seventeen
Seconds or Standing on a Beach: The Singles. This is clearly
goth. My favorite song by them is ‘The Kiss’ from the album
Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. It is less clearly goth but definitely
dark.

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The CD of The Cure’s Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me was originally
a double vinyl album. The song “Kiss Me” contains the lyric: “Kiss
me kiss me kiss me / Your tongue is like poison / So swollen it fills
up my mouth.”

Depeche Mode

While Joy Division is often cited as proto-goth,

their successor band, Depeche Mode is often omitted. But
songs like “Fly on the Windscreen-Finial” and “Dressed in
Black” are clearly goth. Both are on Black Celebration, a
treasured album.

Album cover of Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration.

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 The Damned

The Damned are problematic. While their

presentation supporting their album, Phantasmagoria, is
often said to be goth, it was tongue in cheek, somewhat like
The Smiths’ song “Girlfriend in a Coma.”
Their album Anything was a hodgepodge of styles.
But the mood and guitars of the cover of Love’s song “Alone
Again, Or” and their original “In Dulce Decorum” are goth,
whatever the lyrical themes. I play the latter every
November 11 for reasons related to non-goth sources and
associations, such as Wilfred Owen, Eric Maria Remarque,
and Horace.

The back cover of The

D a m n e d ’s c o m p i l a t i o n
album The Light at the
End of the Tunnel, which
has both punk and post-
punk songs.

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 Other Early 1980s Dark-Themed Music

Some pieces from the late 1970s into the 1990s express
themes or evoke moods consonant with goth, although they
belong to other sub-genres. Among them are:

• Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights,” which continued to

get airplay into the 1980s; the ghostly romance of the
source is the 18th-century Gothic novel, one of the few
school-assigned books I enjoyed.

• Concrete Blonde’s “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)”

from the album Bloodletting (1990). Kathy or I bought
this, originally as a cassette, because we were inspired
by the band’s non-goth cover of Leonard Cohen’s
“Everybody Knows.”

• “Down by the Water” by PJ Harvey on her album To

Bring You My Love (1995); a fictional mother sings in the
first person about killing her daughter

• “Country Death Song” from The Violent Femmes

Hallowed Ground album (1984); another fictional parent,
this time a father, sings in the first person about killing
his young daughter

• “1963” by New Order about murder (or attempted

murder) of one’s partner (B-side of “True Faith” single
from 1987

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 The Crow and The Craft
by Christopher J. Garcia

There are several films that goths seem to love.

There’s Liquid Sky for those of film depth, and there’s the
Universal Monster flicks, but, in the 1990s, it was The Crow
and The Craft that goth kids loved.
Why, though you may ask
Easy, because they were awesome!
Let’s look at The Crow first.
Based on the third most goth comic ever made (after
Gloomcookie and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac), The Crow is a
fairly simple revenge story. The look could have come
straight out of the pages of Propaganda, and the soundtrack
features names like Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, My Life with
the Thrill Kill Kult, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Jane
Siberry. It’s an incredible soundtrack, with a couple of great
covers (notably Suicide’s “Ghostrider” by Rollins Band) and
the score is great too. Overall, it’s a strong audio
presentation.
The look of the film is DARK. It’s so dark, it’s
DARQUE. The cinematography is a bit pat, but it’s very
moody. The editing is okay, the acting is solid, with a little
villainous scene-chewing, and a lot of brooding.
Of course, one of the real reasons goths loved it
involved the backstory of Brandon Lee.

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 The son of Bruce Lee was pretty good in the role,
and he hit all the notes, though honestly, it’s a role that
someone like Hugo Weaving would have elevated. He died
on set, playing Russian Roulette, and they finished it after
he died. That alone makes the entire movie a 90s goth kid’s
dream and taken as a whole, it’s a good viewing experience.
I saw it seven or eight times in the theater, and even several
weeks after its release, there were always girls in fishnets
and guys with heavy eye makeup in the rows in front of me.
The Craft I never saw in the theater. However, I did
buy the VHS and watched it endlessly for about three
months. It’s the story of a coven in a high school who is just
another bunch of Wiccan girls until they meet Sarah, who
has actual powers. Things start to happen for them, and
they take their magic to the next level. One of them goes
nutty and things get nasty.
It’s a lot of dark, witchy fun.
Goths love it so much because Fairuza Balk’s Nancy
is the best representation of a goth babe on screen up until
that point. Yes, she does go power-mad, and she’s amazing.
Does she overact at points? Well, no. She goes fully for the
material and it works. The entire film is so much fun, but
Balk is what everyone remembers, and deservedly so.
These films were perfect for the AMC and VHS era.
They served as gathering points at theaters, Blockbusters,
and Tower Records. They were some of the first films to
have massive online fanbases. There were Crow zines, and I

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remember seeing The Craft fanfic throughout the early
2000s. I mean, it was rife for it, right?
These films still hold sway, and of course, there are
re-makes. That’s a thing that keeps the originals in the
public eye while also punting them aside a little. You’ll still
see goth kids sharing these films as memes, which I think
speaks to exactly how important they are, and always were.

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 Saturday Night Live’s Goth Talk
by Christopher J. Garcia

I can’t remember most of the 1990s, but I

remember the names Azrael Abyss and Circe Nightshade.
There was a time when Saturday Night Live wasn’t good,
from 1995 to 2002. It wasn’t terrible, but it bordered one of
the best periods of the show (1989-1995), and right before
things got good with Tina Fey as head writer and Weekend
Update co-anchor. The skits were just not that funny, and
though this period has aged better than many (Will Ferrell
and Ana Gasteyer had some great stuff) at the time, even
Saturday Night Live made fun of how bad Saturday Night
Live had gotten. This was made famous in a Norm
McDonald monologue when he came back to host
after being fired for not being funny. Wayne’s World had
been a huge hit, eventually moving on to the big screen
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with two movies. Saturday Night Live, never a show willing
to let a dead horse go unbeaten, continued (and some
would argue still continues) to create skits in the same vein.
One of these was Goth Talk, starring Chris Kattan (as
Azrael) and Molly Shannon (as Circe)
What’s the formula? Take a public access show
hosted by charming, but weird, members of some
subculture, and fill it with catchphrases. For Wayne’s World
it was metal kids, for Goth Talk, well, it was baked into the
title, right?
It was intensely funny, at least for anyone who had
spent time around the late 80s and early 90s goths. Both the
characters, and the guests they brought on to portray other
people in the Tampa, Florida goth scene, were exactly like
people I knew. Molly Shannon was great, but really, it was
Chris Kattan who nailed it the hardest. He had a squeaky
voice but was so earnest and perky as he talked about being
a creature of darkness. He’s fantastic, and when we see the
glimpses of his outside life, such as when his dumb jock
brother comes in (played by Jim Breuer) or when he has to
talk about his job at Cinnabon, it’s exactly like when I’d talk
with my friends in full gear talking about cleaning out the
grease trap at Burger King.
My buddy Neil, who went on to write the fantastic
book How to Be a Villain, was in love with Circe
Nightshade. She was lovely. While Kattan looked like he was
dressing up for a skit, Molly Shannon approached her
character like she both respected and enjoyed the goth

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subculture.
I love these skits, and I’ve found all of them on
YouTube, and they hold up!

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 Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for
Goths and Those Who Love Them
by Jillian Venters
A Review by Chuck Serface

For decades, Jillian Venters, the Lady of the Manners,

has been cultivating better deportment among goths, which
is important because individuals should resist reacting to
harsh societal judgments about this subculture with equal
venom and thus inviting perhaps even worse abuse. There
are additional perks as well:
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 There’s an added benefit to being a Goth and
having good manners: it’s actually more shocking
to some people than the “Booooo! I’m so spooky
and scary!” antics they expect from Goths.
Looking like you’ve just come from a gathering
with a particularly sinister dress code and being
gracious and polite messes with some people’s
heads far more effectively than anything else you
might be able to think up. (2)
Nonetheless, Venters is more interested in keeping things
civil than providing fodder for head games. She wants us
all to play nicely together. Not only does she instruct her
goth cohorts, but she also enlightens non-goths about their
shadowy loved ones, challenging stereotypes and fears
surrounding the lifestyle. It’s even in the book’s subtitle.
During the early 1990s, I frequently walked after
hours, clearing my head and enjoying Campbell, California
without bustling noise and other daytime distractions.
Often I encountered a group of teens, sporting capes and
heavy eyeliner, sometimes reading passages from Poe, Rice,
Lovecraft, Brite, Machen, Chambers, or others beneath
parking garage lights, each taking turns within the circle
they’d formed and enunciating the words like acolytes
summoning Mammon or Azazel. At other times, I
witnessed them running through parks or congregating
near load docks while LARPing Vampire: The Masquerade
adventures. This is Venters’s target audience, and she’s well
qualified to educate such baby bats.

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 Expanding from her website, www. gothic-charm-
school.com, Venters covers everything from goth weddings
to helping those outside the subculture dress and act when
visiting goth settings or events to avoid drawing unwanted
attention or insulting their hosts. Most educational is the
section, “Gothy Cliché s and Why They’re So Pervasive.”
Here outsiders receive excellent lessons about how goth
works that hopefully will move them beyond erroneous
preconceptions. Take this to heart: Friends don’t let friends
dress like the Crow. Many consider The Crow a hallmark
goth film, but it’s entered the mainstream, inspiring many
beginners and wannabes to emulate Brandon Lee’s iconic
look. Venters defends her admonition:
Dressing up like the Crow is considered by most
Goths to be trite, overdone, and a bit like holding
up a sign that says “mostly clueless.” But you
know what? The Lady of the Manners also thinks
that if you really, really, really want to dress up like
the Crow, you should do it. If that is what makes
you happy, if you think that would be the coolest
Halloween ever for you, then do it. The Lady of
the Manners does, however, have two pieces of
advice. First: accept that people will roll their eyes,
snicker, laugh, and generally try to make you feel
like an idiot. Ignore them. Second: Do the best
job you can with the makeup and assembling the
costume. (98)

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She continues by warning those without the “proper
physique” to avoid Crow costumes, since “it is a harsh, sad
fact that nothing becomes an object of ridicule faster than a
heavier-set person dressed up as a character previously
portrayed by Brandon Lee” (98). Venters strives to protect
others from emotional harm, of course, but nothing
becomes an object of wrath faster than a body-shaming
asshole among those following Venters's larger message
about civility, kindness, and tolerance. Good manners
include supporting anyone engaging in harmless self-
expression. Remember to judge not, keep your stones from
glasshouses, and know that the author of this review and
others supporting codes of conduct at public events have
your back.
Begin with Venters if you have no experience with
goth. She provides a nicely written entry-level study chock
full of advice that applies not only to goths but to humanity
at large. Much of how goths should treat one another is
how we all should treat one another. You’ll enjoy the
illustrations by her husband Pete too. I thought the
author’s constant referring to herself in the third person
would put me off, but she handles that nicely from the
outset, admitting that this is an affectation utilized for
frivolous fun. Recently, I quipped online that I’ve never
encountered a mean goth girl. Venters vindicates that
observation admirably.

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 Goth Babe of the Week
By Christopher J. Garcia

On Wednesdays, I would go to a website and check for

the week’s update. The website, or at least later on, was
Industrialgothic.com, and the content I was there for? Goth
Babe of the Week.
Starting in 1996, a new goth babe would be
selected each week and shown on the site. The idea was to
give folks living the goth dream a chance to shine, to

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promote their website, LiveJournals, what have you, and
feature a picture on the site, which would then be posted
for the rest of time . . . or at least until a wayback machine
would be required to access it, which seems to have
happened in 2019 or so.
The first specific one I remember seeing, having
been pointed to the site by my buddy Neil, was Nefaria. She
had a unique look, and I was impressed with the photo. I
think I contacted her, though honestly, I don’t remember if
we communicated much or for how long. The first GBotW I
remember becoming friends with was Jenni. She was
super-sweet, and we emailed off and on for a year or so, and
later got connected on Myspace. I haven’t heard from her in
decades, but I remember her fondness for Swans.
The first goth babe of the week I ever met was
Gabriella, and she was super nice. She was in college in Los
Angeles, and I remembered her from my days trolling the
alt.goth newsgroup. I can’t remember where we met the
first time (I think it might have been at one of the
bookstores a lot of goth friends of mine hung out at) but I
know I ran into her one night at a Denny’s.
By October of 1996, I was spending a ton of time
in Emerson’s computer lab looking at the site, and the sites
of the featured babes of the week. I found some folks I
admired, some of which I am still in touch with on Twitter
and Facebook. I remember seeing my friend Trystan there,
having met her no more than a few weeks prior, and being
most impressed that she’d ascended to the top.

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 1997 was probably my peak year for interest,
though 1999 through 2001 would certainly compete. I
contacted, so many or at least lingered on their sites. I
learned a lot of various music scenes, read a lot of dark
poetry, and eye-balled a bunch of boudoir photography (and
quite a few beyond the boudoir). It was a great site that
allowed a guy with limited resources to interact with a
widespread community. These were women from around
the world, though mostly from the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Europe. I did get to meet one
frequently in person, though almost always randomly.
Elisabat was a San Francisco goth who ran a message
board. I was never a big clubgoer, but I did once in a while.
I ran into her at random places, often after a long night of
other San Francisco fun. I kept up with her for a while, and
for some reason not too long ago I remembered her and
that her dad had been something of a surrealist artist,
William S. Riley. She was nice, and the last I heard she was
sick. It got me thinking – how many of them have passed
away? How many were struggling through something and
came out the other side changed? How many are moms
now? How many burned every piece of goth clothing,
deleted every picture, and settled into a Good Suburban
Housewife routine?
The incredible thing about today is that the
Internet Archive’s wayback machine has this stuff saved. I
spent hours looking at names I remembered, the pictures I
knew, and the websites folks had submitted. It was so long

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ago, the last update more than a decade passed, but still, the
celebration is on. Living forever in a drop of digital amber
sounds like a pretty goth idea to me.

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 Let’s Talk Gothabilly
by Christopher J. Garcia

Like all hybrid musical sub-sub-sub-genres,

gothabilly is fuzzy about the edges.
Gothabilly is, of course, the unholy union of goth
and rockabilly. Goth rock, well we’ve been talking about
that all issue, haven’t we, but Rockabilly is one of the oldest
forms of rock and roll. It’s a twangier form of rock. The
roots are in things like hillbilly music, country music from
the 1940s and 50s, bluegrass, western swing, and jump
blues. Rockabilly drew from the most famous figures in
early rock, especially Elvis, Bill Haley, and Roy Orbison. As
the 60s and 70s went on, it became a more distinct sound.
What I say now will sound weird, but gothabilly is
older than goth music.
I’ll let you sit with that for a minute.
Now, the origins of gothabilly are layered. The first is
the horror-themed rock-and-roll stuff. One of the best
examples of this which I write about in the “Jack the Ripper
in Fiction” issue of Journey Planet is Screamin’ Lord Sutch’s
“Jack the Ripper.” The Brit Sutch did a ton of horror-
themed music in the 1960s, notably “Murder in the
Graveyard.” Now, it’s not rockabilly, I think it might be
called skiffle, but it’s pretty much straight rock with dark
imagery. In the way that a lot of post-punk got labeled goth
because of the subject matter, the same could be said of

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those acts like Sutch, In the United States, you had Boris
Pickett, with “Monster Mash,” and then Sheb Wooley’s
“Flying Purple People Eater.” We saw those as novelty
records, but they certainly had an influence. The same
might be said of the Jim Burgett song “Jekyll and Hyde.” It’s
a gem of a tune, as is “The Living Dead.” He wasn’t a huge
national star, but in Northern California and especially in
Tahoe, he was well known, and his records got played on
the radio.
You can point to the dark blues tune “She’s My
Witch” by Kip Tyler as an influence, and you can hear what
would become The Cramps’ signature sound poking
through. The distinctly Rockabilly Hasil Adkins did some
songs that would influence a lot of Gothabilly performers,
notably The Cramps, including the wonderful and highly
danceable “Haunted House.” Jackie Morningstar, another
Rockabilly kid, released “Rockin’ in the Graveyard “in 1959.
When rockabilly was going through a revival in the 1990s,
he was widely rediscovered.
The second part was the 50s and 60s pop culture,
specifically horror culture. The theme song to The Munsters
is an excellent example. Many gothabilly bands cover it to
this day. There was also a Munsters record, and the track
“Munster Creep” is an outstanding example of a dance track
(a song that describes a dance, like “The Time Warp,” “The
Humpty Dance,” or “The Bartman”) that has all the markers
we’d look for in a modern gothabilly song. Of course, film

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music had an influence, specifically scores from 1950s
science fiction and horror films.
And then, there is surf.
No other kind of music has better played with pop
culture than surf rock. These tended to be weird ones.
Bands like The Ventures were doing songs that sounded like
dark film scores. “The Bat” was one of their better songs
The Ventures would ever release and one that would define
a creepier edge to their music. In the middle 1960s, there
was The Deadly Ones, an amazing surf band that would
influence a generation of surf rockers from Shadowy Men
on a Shadowy Planet to Man or Astroman. “Monster
Surfing Theme” had a big impact on other surf bands, as it
is a statement of what horror-tinged surf rock could sound
like. As time passed, many surf bands would take on weird,
dark, horror, or sci-fi personae.
But more on that in a minute.
The Cramps were the first to use the term gothabilly
to describe their sound, and it’s appropriate. Their less
punk more goth sound is slower, there’s a tang to it that
“Strange Love” feels like a tune that Hank Williams the
Elder would have performed, but when you get to a song
like “Aloha from Hell,” it’s straight Elvis. The guitar is, of
course, more rockabilly than punk, or the drone of goth,
and there’s more energy to the bass, which is upright-type.
One of the greatest goth-rock vocalists, Lux Interior, shines
when singing about monsters and other horror topics.

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 Those fuzzy edges start pretty early. The Misfits, the
band that gave us punk legend Glenn Danzig, did a lot of
horror-themed songs and were often on bills with The
Cramps, and at times, The Damned. Their songs like “Last
Caress” -- featuring the charming lyric, “I got something to
say, that I killed a baby today, and it doesn’t matter much to
me, as long as it’s dead -- and “Halloween II” are full of
darkness and EVIL! They’re a gimmicky band and happen
to do fun theatrics and put together crazy songs.
More fuzziness comes from the entire idea of
psychobilly. There’s a lot of crossover, with several bands
like The HorrorPops, Nekromantix, and The Meteors, all
releasing music that would fall into either category. Bands
like The Reverend Horton Heat don’t deal much with
horror imagery, and I’d say they would be further from
gothabilly (though the song “Bales of Cocaine” is an all-time

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classic). But there are great songs like the Nekromantix’s
“Who Killed the Cheerleader” that are within scope.
Okay, so now, let’s talk about surf.
Surf that falls into gothabilly seems a bit harder, but
believe it or not, it happens. Sometimes, it’s entire bands
like Deadbolt, whose song “Billy’s Dead,” is a classic.
Sometimes, it’s one song from an otherwise gothabilly act,
like “Horrorbeach” by The Horrorpops. There’s a fair bit of
crossover between surf and rockabilly, the twangy guitar-
driven sound for example, though most surf is done without
vocals. Still, there are exceptions. The surf acts I would say
fall as close to gothabilly as you can find? The Ghastly Ones,
for sure, has one of the best albums of horror-themed surf
rock ever made, A-Haunting We Will Go-Go. Again,
Deadbolt’s stuff is so great and they’ve got one of those
amazing lead singers. Los Straitjackets do some spooky
stuff, though they have the best gimmick ever, as they’re all
wearing lucha masks at all times, a bit they’ve been doing
since the 1990s. The Surfrajettes out of Toronto, Canada
also dabble in goth, and the song “Banshee Bop” is indeed
absolute bop.
Now, there’s more! What I was calling deadgrass,
bluegrass meets metal meets punk with a horror theme. The
best example of this is Ghoultown (and if you can find their
first releases, especially Give ‘em More Rope, an incredible
album with songs like “Pale Skinned Diva” and “A Killer in
Texas.” The Coffinshakers, an amazing Swedish band, would
fill the role beautifully.

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 One thing that always proves that a sub-sub-sub-
genre is viable is cover versions of awesome songs. There is
no shortage of them when it comes to gothabilly, and the
songs that bands cover speak, I think, to the general
concept of gothabilly. “Wicked Game,” a genuinely spooky
Chris Issac hit from the 1990s, is covered by gothabilly/
gothsurf outfit Messer Chups, who don’t speed it up much,
but they make it feel like something that would feel at home
in a set opening for The Cramps. They also cover one of the
greatest goth-adjacent acts of all time, Depeche Mode.
Messer Chups slays with their cover of “Enjoy the Silence.”
It’s slower, darker, and twangier. I adore this cover. Messer
Chups might be the best at the whole cover thing because
they also nail the Twin Peaks theme as “Twin Peaks Twist.”
The Tailgators do a more-than-passable cover of “Should I
Stay or Should I Go?” The Quakes might give “The Killing
Moon” the best
cover possible
at the same
time and define
what gothabilly
is and how it
both plays with
and against
goth in general.
I put The Cult’s
“The Killing
Moon” as a

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definite goth masterpiece, and here, they speed it up but
retain a lot of the atmosphere, and add a wet guitar sound,
making it a rockabilly tune, but it never loses the Goth. The
69 Cats’ cover of “People are Strange” does much the same.
And then, there’s The Bone Collectors’ version of
“Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” which is absolute perfection. It’s
faster, with rockabilly guitar, and a woman lead singer who
makes the lyrics somehow sassy and adds little vocal
markers that are fantastic, and even better once she gets all
breathy. They’re a Russian act, and they’re great!
Okay, enough of that! What should you be listening
to? Well, start by looking here: https://open.spotify.com/
playlist/1pdealtUcBqHO2BG04TdLy
Well, The Cramps, of course. Their stuff is more
downbeat, but it’s all superb, and when they’re at their best,
they perfectly define gothabilly. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy
are the first couple of gothabilly, and I love them so much.
I’m super glad I got to meet them before Lux passed away.
The Radiacs is another act that you should look into.
They’re a lot like The Cramps, coming out of England in
the late 1980s but really they broke up and then came back
about 2010 and have been killing it! They cover “She’s My
Witch,” and it’s phenomenal!
The Koffin Kats are the Speedmetal of gothabilly.
They take their theming incredibly seriously, but they rock
super-hard! The song “Graveyard Tree” is one of the best
gothabilly songs for those who like their stuff loud and fast!

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 Scary Bitches is a band with a great name, and they
fit more into the electronic age gothabilly. They have one of
the best pieces on my playlist, “I’m the Woman That Killed
Jack the Ripper.” The lyrics are pretty simple, but the song
itself has a lot of early New Order to it, and it feels like an
early 80s tune rocking hard.
Zombina & The Suicides are one of those bands that
seems to alternate between gothabilly and psychobilly, but
songs like “Nobody Likes You (When You’re Dead)”
certainly have the gothabilly theme I look for. They rock
pretty hard, and I’m glad I found them on Facebook back in
the day!
Demented Are Go is probably a psychobilly act, not
unlike the Koffin Kats, but they’re so much fun, and the
tune “Bodies in the Basement” absolutely slaps!
Going into the Deadgrass arena, The Coffinshakers
and Ghoultown are both great, but The Hillbilly Moon
Explosion ain’t to be missed. They’re a lot of fun! Of course,
Southern Culture on the Skids is too.
There you have it. Gothabilly is a subset and a fun
one. The aesthetic is similar, and the music is wider-ranging,
but really, they’re all at home with one another . . . at least
as far as a playlist goes!

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