Modern Goth

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Do you guys like modern goth music?

Yes

Interesting. Hopefully we'll get some neo-industrial soon as well. I still say Skinny Puppy was the most technically advanced 80's group. It would be nice to see a new gen in North America try to push the technical aspect of electronic music in a serious way again.

This just came onto my radar - it's a little cheesy, but good, and definitely in the Skinny Puppy vein:


A group called Author and Punisher has been getting some buzz.

But yeah, I'd be interested in seeing a resurgence. I especially like those early, noisy groups like Test Dept., Einstürzende Neubauten, SPK, and Factrix.

How about ancient Goth music?

Want to dress like visigoths and hang out at the mall, Kraftie?

That would be cool....

The term actually has an interesting lineage. When the Visigoths and Ostrogoths were conquering, they were considered barbarous wreckers of civilization, especially by the Romans. Because of that, "gothic" became an insult in Europe for anything that was basically considered uncivilized. So, during the middle ages "gothic architecture" was termed so pejoratively, as a jab at the new popular style that stood in stark contrast to classical architecture (the greco-roman style with big pillars and such). In the late Romantic period, literary critics started applying it to Romantic writers like Byron and the Shelleys, as basically a jab at them. Like all Romantics, they valued nature and emotion over the strict logic and rationalism of the enlightenment. However, they were interested in dark, macabre, horrific imagery to get their message across. Despite the gothic label being an insult, they embraced the term, which was sort of a punky thing to do. Obviously, the gothic romantics were the major inspiration for modern horror in both literature and film. Fast forward to the late 70s, and the term was applied to a bunch of punk/new wave bands that were really into gothic horror imagery and atmosphere.