Ignore the Machine: The Death of Gothic Rock.

Death to false goths.

I’m a fan of gothic rock.  Well, not what passes for gothic rock these days.  No, I’m definitely not referring to the dolled-up tarts that Terrorizer Magazine wastes valuable pages on with their uber-lame magazine-within-a-magazine known as Dominion, which should probably be re-titled Eyeliner-Wearing Attention Whores Monthly. But it isn’t really Terrorizer’s fault that Dominion sucks, it’s just that they’re about 25 years late to the party.  It is the modern day practitioners of gothic rock that are to blame.  Look at the cover image above and try to tell me that it hasn’t turned into a joke and a fashion show.

It should also be noted that when I use the terms “goth” or “gothic”, I am not referring to all the dyed-black hair and makeup-smeared buffoons that have taken up residence on various social networking sites like a legion of trolls living under one giant bridge. The gothic rock I’m referring to isn’t the domain of myspace namby-pambies with usernames like TeamEdwardLover0112.  Excuse me while I vomit.

It is for the above reasons that so many metal fans write off gothic rock as musical tripe for whiney teens who shop at Hot Topic and cry themselves to sleep every night while their makeup runs all over the pillowcase. That’s pretty unfortunate when you consider how many revered metal bands were influenced by the genre. Type O Negative, Katatonia, Moonspell, Cradle of Filth and Tiamat are just a few that come to mind. Of course the other problem is that most of what is billed as gothic metal is actually artery-clogging pop metal cheese with distorted guitars and some marginally talented, buxom trollop on vox. Blame Napalm Records, Nuclear Blast and Century Media for helping that shit propagate.

Ugh.

In the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s, gothic rock actually meant something. It was punk rock’s grave-robbing bastard cousin, prone to psychotic outbursts, deep depressions and unhealthy sexual proclivities.  The music could be as dangerous, incendiary and nihilistic as anything punk could conjure, but it also had atmosphere. Eerie and thick like a midnight trudge through a fog-enshrouded cemetery.  The Misfits successfully combined punk and goth, but it is the “pure” goth bands that we’ll be focusing on this dark and stormy night.

So take my hand, if you dare… as we look at some of my personal favorite gothic rock bands.  Bands who rocketed out from the crypt before image became everything…

Bauhaus

Arguably the original goth band, Bauhaus had it all; energy, atmosphere and Peter Murphy’s prototypical deep baritone vocals.  If there was ever a goth group with a knack for amazing singles, it was this UK foursome.  They could write haunting, chill-inducing numbers like “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” or catchy dark rock nuggets like “The Passion of Lovers”. The band even made a cameo appearance in David Bowie’s cult vampire flick The Hunger (coincidentally, their cover of Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” was also their biggest hit).  The band broke up in 1983, but briefly reformed on several occasions and released final album Go Away White in 2008. Peter Murphy has had a successful solo career, while other members of the band went on to form the considerably less gothic Love & Rockets.

The Sisters of Mercy

The Sisters of Mercy are the vehicle of the enigmatic Andrew Eldritch and are probably the most danceable of the original goth bands. You can hear their influence in groups like KMFDM and Rammstein. I’m pretty sure that Satyr Wongraven stole his current look from Eldritch as well. Powered by a drum machine known as “Doktor Avalanche” and deep, thudding basslines, The Sisters of Mercy possess an incomparable sense of groove that is more likely to make you want to shake your ass than slit your wrists. They can also sound quite epic and Wagnerian, as on tracks like “Dominion/Mother Russia” and “This Corrosion”. Although they still tour occasionally and perform new songs, the band has not released an album since 1991. Here’s to hoping they release something new in my lifetime.

Alien Sex Fiend

Some of you may recognize this band from Beavis & Butthead. The video for “Now I’m Feeling Zombified” appeared on the show, introducing pre-pubescent American males everywhere to the wonders of UK goth. ASF are probably one of the more genuinely frightening gothic rock groups, thanks to vocalist Nik Fiend’s bizarre physical appearance. He looks like a cross between Nosferatu and an anorexic mild psychotic.  Alien Sex Fiends’s songwriting tends to be noisier and more off-the-wall than some of the other bands, giving off a more frenzied and demented vibe. The band is still skulking around the goth scene today, though I can’t speak for the quality of their more recent output.

The Cure

The Cure’s Robert Smith is the poster boy for gothic rock. The makeup, the hair, the voice; everything necessary to make a Suicide Girl swoon, Smith had it in spades before age caught up with him.  Yes, Smith had the goth look down pat, but that wouldn’t have meant a thing if The Cure’s music hadn’t been utterly fantastic.  And fantastic it was, bringing a pop sensibility to the genre that was often sorely lacking amongst the other bands.  Rivaled only by Bauhaus in the area of writing great singles, The Cure have so many excellent songs under their belt that it’s hard to know where to start, but you could do a hell of a lot worse than “A Forest”, “Killing an Arab” or “Boys Don’t Cry”.  The band brought gothic rock’s gloomy atmospheres to the mainstream and became the genre’s most successful band in the process.  Although their material has gone downhill over the years, their longevity and influence can’t be denied.

The Birthday Party

Although they may have disdained the genre tag, The Birthday Party were among the most volatile and genuinely threatening bands to ever be classified as gothic rock. This is largely due to the presence of a fucking madman known as Nick Cave on vocals. Cave took Iggy Pop’s maniacal drug fiend schtick to its illogical extreme with The Birthday Party, howling and shrieking like a man possessed over the band’s decidedly twisted, cacophonous musical arrangements. “Deep in the Woods”, “Sonny’s Burning”, “Mr. Clarinet”, just about any track The Birthday Party ever released sounds like either Cave, the band, or both could fly off the handle and kill everyone in the room at any given moment. They never garnered much mainstream success, but The Birthday Party represented gothic rock at its most unhinged and avant-garde.

Of course, now some of you are thinking, “What about Christian Death, Specimen, Siouxie and the Banshees, Fields of the Nephilim, etc?!”  All I can say is, you can’t please all the goths all the time.  This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive guide. This is just a sampling of bands intended to prove that gothic rock does not and should not mean a bunch of ridiculous fashion victims parading around in faux-bondage gear and pretending to be depressed.

So… are there any modern bands out there doing gothic rock the “right” way that are flying under my radar, or is the genre officially as dead as Bela Lugosi?  Let me know.

Amebix – Redux (Profane Existence, 2010)

Band reformations have always been among the most dicey of propositions in the world of extreme music.  The more seminal or legendary the band is considered, the more intense the pressure.  Ridiculous amounts of hype and inflated fan expectations are the equivalent of playing with fire, and the possibility of irrevocably tarnishing a legacy or being branded a cash-in is always lurking over the shoulders of these bands, no matter how noble their intentions may be.  Thankfully, UK punk/thrash overlords Amebix have kicked off the recorded aspect of their reunion with an EP that’s anything but subpar.

I often find re-recordings wholly unnecessary, but it’s hard to argue with how great the three tracks that comprise Redux sound.  Although the production scheme is certainly more modern than the “classic” Amebix recordings (which sound more or less like they were performed inside a trashcan), Redux still maintains the booming, rough-around-the-edges quality that helped the band become godfathers of the crust punk genre (although they aren’t too happy about that particular achievement according to this interview).  The synths are more noticeable this time around, and to be honest they’re a bit overpowering on “Chain Reaction” (along with the weird vocal effects).  But aside from that the band has done an excellent job of keeping their sound intact.  In fact, “Arise!” and “Winter” sound just as gnarly as they did back in the day, if not more so.

Aided by drummer Roy Mayorga (ex-Nausea, Stone Sour?!), founding members/brothers Rob “The Baron” and Chris “Stig” Miller churn out the debilitating, bottom heavy doom-punk Amebix is known for.  The reason bands all over the world are still copying Amebix today, 25 years after Arise!, is because their sound is timeless.  In this respect, the Baron and Stig have smartly decided only to make the most subtle of modifications and will hopefully keep this winning formula intact for their upcoming full length.  The power remains.

http://www.amebix.net

http://www.myspace.com/amebixuk

But Life Goes On…

It’s been hard not to think about death in 2010.  I’ve seen two of my old friends pass away this year; one from a heart attack, the other chose to take his own life.  These were both people I had unfortunately lost touch with, people whom I always assumed I would reconnect with somewhere down the line.  Maybe I’d run into them at a bar or on the street or at fucking Wal Mart… maybe they’d call me out of the blue and we’d meet up for dinner or a beer to catch up and fill in the gaps.  After all, my life has always been an endless stream of people coming and going (as I’m assuming most people’s is), why should it be any different with them?

But it IS different with them now.  That phone call out of the blue will never come.  I won’t run into them at some random event.  The memories I have of them are finite, there won’t be any more.

I’m listening to Early Graves‘ Goner as I write this.  As all of you know by now, vocalist Makh Daniels died tragically on Monday, August 2nd.  It’s strange listening to the album, so full of crackling, goddamn electric energy, knowing the man with the violent, throat-shredding roar that’s driving this musical beast has been snuffed out before his time.  I didn’t know Daniels personally, and up until recently I was only mildly familiar with his band in their previous incarnation as Apiary.  However, I had heard plenty of good things about Early Graves, and they were on my version of the seemingly endless list kept by every metalhead  of “bands I need to check out”.

It just shouldn’t be this way.  Instead of discovering this young band with a world of potential and watching them grow and develop, we’re left with a finite discography, an artistic statement cut painfully short.  We should be writing reviews talking about Early Graves being a “band to watch”, but instead we’re left to speculate about what they might have achieved had this tragedy not taken place. Mr. Daniels should be out there somewhere tearing up a stage, not being lamented by his friends, family and fans.

I don’t want to associate such a snarling, vicious motherfucker of an album with real life death.  Goner is the sound of five men raging against the inevitable end with every ounce of blood, every drop of sweat.  As Johnny Cash once said, “It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”

In some weird way, I feel the same about my two friends.  What else could they have achieved had they not been taken from this world before their time?  Where would their lives have taken them if they somehow could’ve avoided their respective untimely fates, staved off the grim reaper for just a few more years?

As fans of extreme music, we are inundated with death.  From Goner itself to early documents of the genre such as Left Hand Path, Morbid Tales and beyond, bands have been grappling with life’s eternal question.  It has never made me feel numb or desensitized, rather it makes me super-aware of death as an integral aspect of our lives and culture.  Even bands like Cannibal Corpse, with their over-the-top gory lyrical bent never seemed to be glorifying death; I always took their approach as a kind of black humor. We all find different ways to cope or try to make sense of it all.  Only death is real.

But we cannot dwell on the negative aspects of death forever.  We can’t spend forever contemplating what might have been.  Not as friends or family and not as fans.  What we can do is be eternally grateful for what we’ve been left with.  I’d rather have a finite amount of Early Graves to listen to than live in a world where Mr. Daniels never got a chance to step behind a mic and scream his guts out.  I’d much rather have wonderful but finite memories of my two friends than nothing at all.

http://www.myspace.com/earlygravessf

For Jubal and Scotty B.

New faux-Misfits songs: Pretty much the worst thing I’ve ever heard.

Jerry Only should really be ashamed of himself at this point.  When he (along with brother/guitarist Doyle) originally resurrected the Misfits name back in 1997 with the American Psycho album, I had some pretty high hopes, in spite of my undying allegiance to original Misfits singer Glenn Danzig.  Michael Graves was a solid new vocalist, and the songs were catchy and heavy.  Even if they didn’t touch the heights of classic Misfits material, at least they weren’t dragging the name through the mud, and I came to think of the “nu-Misfits” as an entirely separate band, allowing myself to enjoy them without worrying too much about the legacy factor.