Goth's Dark Empire

Appendix: A Discography of Goth Rock Artists

Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix Appendix A Discography of Goth Rock Artists by Don Anderson As far back as I can remember I have always been fond of dark and depressing music. I never considered myself a depressed individual. The passion contained in a sad song simply spoke to me more than a happy jingle. I feel there is something noble, honest, and even proud about writing sad music. It’s a strong position to take, a kind of backward machismo. “We are sadder than you,” one could proclaim. My own involvement in dark music began when I first started playing guitar. While I was what one would call a Metal-head, I still retained a deep love for the slower doom bands. Eventually my tastes expanded and I discovered Goth rock. I became a fan of bands such as Fields of the Nephilim, The Sisters of Mercy, Christian Death, and The Cure. I was attracted to how original each band was, writing music that was transcendent in its sadness and mysticism. Later, when I began working with the band Agalloch in 1996, both the band and I insisted on integrating influences of Goth rock into our sound. To this day, three albums later, Agalloch is still a dark and depressing band, and that couldn’t make me happier. Attempting to design a discography concerned with a specific genre of music that fairly and accurately represents the artists and their respective recordings is a challenging, even daunting, task. It is impossible to avoid assigning certain artists to general categories, which ultimately belies the originality of the music. One soon finds this attempt is in vain because categories of music, especially music composed in these postmodern times, begin to collapse . This is due in part to musical crossbreeding and the exponential growth of information providing access to any style of music imaginable. We can no longer depend on a single descriptor to signify a particular sound. Nowhere are these problems more apparent than in trying to form a discography of Goth rock. The term “Goth” is used in so many ways and has origins in so many different areas, such as literary history, medieval history, 170 Appendix architecture, and fashion, that it is often unclear what one means by the term. There exist so many offshoots and lines of flight within Goth music that creating a discography is further problematized. For example, could not Led Zeppelin be considered Goth, what with their interests in the occult and Aleister Crowley, not to mention their Byron-esque lyrical themes that would not have been out of place in the eighteenth-century English Gothic revival? Yet I am confident one would be hard pressed to find a self-described Goth prepared to accept Led Zeppelin as a Goth band. How does one treat a band such as Fields of the Nephilim, who, most fans would argue, were a pivotal and influential quintet in the mid-late ’80s Goth scene, but who dressed in Western garb inspired by Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns? If one of the primary prerequisites for Goth acceptance is a dark sound and look, then almost every genre of music is in some way guilty of Goth tendencies. So I have thrown my arms up in desperation and surrendered to categories and labels. The contemporary discourse on Goth rock makes so much use of these terms I thought it irresponsible not to at least approach the bands with some sort of description. Nonetheless, within the discography itself, I have chosen to employ my own categories, which are less polarized and do not enforce a rigid musical dress code. I have opted to host bands under the following buzzword-free categories: “Traditional, Contemporary, and Classic ,” “On the Periphery,” and “Guilty by Association.” The first includes those bands universally recognized as being an integral part of Goth music’s oeuvre. “On the Periphery” considers those bands that never claimed to be Goth, yet include former members of traditional Goth bands or have recourse to typical Goth themes. Those bands that are “Guilty by Association” normally get lumped in by fans of Goth rock, although the groups themselves may never have expressed a fondness for Goth, dressed like Goths, or even followed typical Goth themes. Blame this category on Goth fans whose school backpacks display both Bauhaus and the Smiths patches and buttons. This discography is far from exhaustive. A complete discography would require a book in and of itself. It...