Gothic punk

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Gothic punk

Development phase: Late 1970s
Place of origin: United Kingdom
Stylistic precursors
Punk · Glam rock · Psychedelic Rock
Pioneers
The Damned · Bauhaus · Siouxsie and the Banshees
Instruments typical of the genre
Electric guitar · electric bass · drums
Stylistic successor
Gothic rock

Gothic punk , goth punk , proto-goth , positive punk or batcave are retrospectively established terms for the early style of gothic rock , which was still strongly influenced by punk .

prehistory

In particular, the British punk band The Damned contributed to the look of the scene with their singer Dave Vanian. The Damned played punk, but rejected the punk-typical, prevailing fad designed by Vivienne Westwood and established by manager Malcolm McLaren as a style element of the Sex Pistols . Vanian, on the other hand, was based on classic vampire horror films . Some later gothic punk, death rock and horror punk bands were sometimes based on the music style and appearance of the band.

“Long before there was a clearly defined Gothic look, fans came to our concerts dressed like Dave. [...] With other bands, safety pins, spit and bondage pants were all the rage , but when you went to a The Damned show, half the city cemetery was in front of the stage. "

- Brian James : The Damned
Siouxsie Sioux 1986 in Oakland

Siouxsie and the Banshees , active since their appearance on September 20, 1976 at the 100 Club in London, made their debut in 1978 with The Scream . By 1980, her singer Siouxsie Sioux established herself as an icon of the burgeoning scene and British post-punk avant-garde. After her headlining appearance at the 1980 Futurama Festival, Paul Morley commented that Siouxsie was “showing off her latest outfit that will affect all girls for the months to come. About half of all girls in Leeds regard Sioux as a fashion role model, from head to toe. ”In 1978, the Joy Division , which is classified as post-punk, anticipated a plethora of upcoming musicians with their first release. The double 7-inch single A Factory Sample contained an early recording by Cabaret Voltaire, the Joy Division songs Digital and Glass . Digital in particular is "a dark, fast mourning song that combines speed and hardship."

Hook's bass carried the melody, Sumner's guitar leaves gaps instead of filling the mix with thick riffs, and Steve Morris' drums seem to trace the edge of a crater. Curtis sings about a "lonely place" in the center of this empty space [...]. "

- Simon Reynolds

The hitherto unique sound of Joy Division led to a number of performers who emulated the sound of the band. A year after Joy Division's first single in 1979, Bauhaus also presented itself for the first time with the song Bela Lugosi's Dead and in the following year filled a gap that Adam Ant left with his development into New Romantic pop with In the Flat Field would have. The “theatrical-glamorous […] blasphemy ” of Bauhaus was more attractive than “picture book fairy tales about pirates and Indians”. Bela Lugosi's Dead defined the “sound of a lifestyle” with a text “which was appropriately teeming with blood and bats” and the long, reverberant percussion as well as the late use of the guitar and the singing. Bauhaus combined with the erotic and blasphemous texts of Peter Murphys and their look, together with Siouxsie and the Banshees, the appearance and appearance of the emerging scene. The look reminiscent of Dave Vanian and The Damned, meanwhile, referred to Gloria Mundi , for whom Bauhaus appeared as the opening act in 1979. The death of the Joy Division singer Ian Curtis on May 18, 1980 at the latest opened the market for a number of new performers with a similar musical style.

"By commiting suicide, Ian Curtis of Joy Division not only put an end to his own life and that of his band, but allowed a vacuum to occur into wich all of these other bands scurried."

"With his suicide, Ian Curtis of Joy Division not only ended his own life and that of his band, he also created a vacuum into which all these bands rushed."

- David Dorrell

On July 5, 1983, Bauhaus ended their career for the time being with a concert in London's Hammersmith Palais.

Establishment

Even before the dissolution of Bauhaus, new bands came into the spotlight. The Southern Death Cult , Sex Gang Children and Gene Loves Jezebel were slowly becoming popular. The Southern Death Cult appeared on the cover of the NME in October 1982 and in early 1983 the up-and-coming bands Brigandage , Blood and Roses , as well as the Sex Gang Children and The Southern Death Cult u. a. representative of the mass of bands around the Batcave , and those who stylistically fit it are titled as Positive Punk , as their artistic, often characterized by performance art , theatricality and showcased dandyism , distinguish themselves 'positive' from others, more aggressive and 'More negative' currents within punk rock took off.

Nik Fiend from Alien Sex Fiend 2012 Live

The Batcave, the London club of the slowly establishing scene, was founded in July 1982 by the band Specimen . One of the Batcave's staff was Nik Fiend, singer of the band Alien Sex Fiend . Both Alien Sex Fiend and Specimen made repeated appearances in the Batcave. There was also glam rock , rockabilly and the music that later became known as Gothic, as well as Gothic fiction film classics and cabaret appearances. The Batcave closed after three years and great successes due to dwindling visitors in the middle of 1985, but until this end other early Gothic bands such as Sex Gang Children , Cabaret Voltaire , The Birthday Party or Christian Death performed there. The Christian Death from the United States of America meanwhile represented the parallel development of music to Gothic Punk; the deathrock , in addition to Christian Death on 45 Grave , the early TSOL , Theater of Ice , Kommunity FK , Superheroines and Voodoo Church based, arose from the punk scene of Los Angeles . What the bands had in common was their tendency towards punk and shock rock bands such as The Cramps , The Damned and Alice Cooper .

"In Gothic bands, a penchant for horror film kitsch met a genuine interest in the 'dark side'."

- Simon Reynolds

In Germany, too, at the beginning of the 1980s, a parallel musical development emerged “out of the haze of mostly punk-oriented bands”, which also referred to Joy Division, Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees. The German interpreters were hardly perceived as a unified movement despite their similar characteristics. Bands known as Depro-Punk such as (late) Chaos Z / Fliehende Stürme or EA80 were not generally, like the German horror punk band Der Fluch or the bands X-Mal Deutschland , Asmodi Bizarr , Circle of Sig-Tiu, which were initially covered in Gothic Punk , Marque Moon and Cyan Revue , assigned to the German Gothic scene, but rather subordinate to punk and hardcore punk.

Transition to Gothic Rock

Andrew Eldritch Live at the M'era Luna Festival 2000

Between 1984 and 1985 the scene changed. The most important bands in the change from the early Gothic scene to Gothic Rock were The Sisters of Mercy and The Cult . While the early performers were skeptical of the idea of ​​producing rock music and rejected rock clichés, Andrew Eldritch saw himself as a rock musician.

“An awful lot of horrific bands come from England, especially from London. A lot of them go on stage talking about 'We're not a rock band'. We do it the other way around - take a step forward. We say, 'We're a rock band.' Very loud."

- Andrew Eldritch : The Sisters of Mercy

Ian Astbury dissolved The Southern Death Cult and called his new band just The Cult; they released Dreamtime in September, one of the first rock albums to emerge from the scene. 1985 debuted Fields of the Nephilim with the EP Burning the Fields and followed the basic idea of the Sisters of Mercy, Gothic than playing rock music. Another year later , The Mission , founded by Wayne Hussey after breaking up with the Sisters of Mercy, made a successful debut with Gods Own Medicine . In 1984, The Cure oriented themselves towards experimental New Wave with The Top and other bands such as Christian Death , Virgin Prunes or Siouxsie and the Banshees also reoriented themselves during this time, while new interpreters emerged who followed the style of The Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim oriented. Groups like Love Like Blood , Nosferatu , London After Midnight , Rosetta Stone or Two Witches played with the idea of ​​understanding Gothic as rock music. German development also took a more rock-oriented direction from the mid-1980s with performers such as Love Like Blood and Girls Under Glass . Whereas the original interpreters are reorienting themselves in different directions.

"Many local bands of the first hour went through the development from punk to Gothic / Dark-Wave to Rock-oriented, straighter, harder sounds, whereas bands that came directly from the Gothic / Dark-Wave area either turned to the avant-garde , to industrial or in the opposite direction, to pop- oriented. "

revival

In the new millennium there was a clearly gothic-punk-oriented death rock revival in the USA, through bands such as Cinema Strange , Scarlet's Remains or Tragic Black, the effects of which also spread to Europe. This revival is often referred to as the "Batcave Revival" due to its stylistic and visual reference to the style of the Batcave Club in London in the 1980s. In Germany, bands like Murder at the Registry and Bloody Dead and Sexy in particular left their mark on the resurrection of the movement. In the UK , bands like The Scary Bitches joined the scene. As in the original gothic punk movement, the revival merged fashionable and musical elements from horror punk , gothabilly , punk and gothic rock .

Concept history

The music is considered to be the original style of Gothic Rock that emerged in the post-punk environment , which was only referred to as Gothic Punk in the second half of the 1990s and was retrospectively attributed to previously published publications. Previously, cultural-scientific and market -based style terms such as post-punk, wave and new wave, but also subcultural terms such as batcave and gothic rock were used to describe the style.

In the heyday of the Batcave in 1983, the scene still saw itself as a current of the punk scene, while the music was already described as Gothic. In the attempt to capture this development took music journalists in the early 1980s terms such as Punk Gothique and Positive Punk while the scene of San Francisco as deathrock was titled, sometimes the title established himself Positive Punk for the British scene. With the change to a more rock-oriented music, the term Gothic Rock increasingly established itself for music without regional distinctions and Gothic for the scene, which experienced various subdivisions until the mid-1990s.

"I don't know how things went from death rock to Goth, but I think the Sisters had something to do with it."

"I don't know how it went from Death-Rock to Goth, but I think the Sisters had something to do with it."

The terms Goth-Punks or Batcaver for a group interested in the early bands and fashionably oriented towards punk became common in the Gothic scene . In the 1990s, the terms death rock , batcave and gothic punk also became common for the style of music.

Musical classification

The core idea of ​​Gothic Punk remained true to the musical ideals of Punk. Even the early Gothic saw itself as a departure from the clichés of rock music .

“Never a guitar solo , never end a song with a loud drum bang. At some point Siouxsie Kenny Morris had removed the cymbal from his drums. "

The drums, in which the following bands such as The Southern Death Cult also minimized the use of the cymbals, appeared in early Gothic instead like “hypnotic funeral marches or Tom-Tom- heavy”, with “blazing fast guitars” and “high post-joy division” -Basslaufen ", the singing either almost went" operatic "or sounded deep and plaintive in the style of Ian Curtis and Jim Morrison .

Fashion

Visitors to the WGT in Gothic-Punk style

In terms of outfit and hairstyle, many members of the Gothic-Punk movement are clearly influenced by punk . Torn clothes and tights are common, the typical mohawk cut is common and the bondage and BDSM fashion elements of the punk scene introduced by Vivienne Westwood can also be found as accessories . In addition, elements of horror punk were common early on in the scene.

“In terms of appearance, a combination of terminally ill-looking pallor, combed back or tousled black hair, wrinkled Regency shirts , crumpled cylinders, leather clothing and dog collars with rivets was popular, with the ensemble being complemented by accessories such as religious, magical or macabre jewelry, which in usually made of silver (bone earrings, rosaries , pentagonal stars , ankh symbols, skulls). "

- Simon Reynolds

Well-known representatives

Early gothic punk representative UK



Early Gothic-Punk representative internationally

Newer representatives with outside influences

Individual evidence

  1. Dave Thompson, Kirsten Borchardt: Shadow World - Heroes and Legends of Gothic Rock . 2004, ISBN 3-85445-236-5 , p. 49.
  2. Mick Mercer: Zillo Report - Gothic History Part 3 . In: Zillo Musikmagazin , issue 9/95, September 1995, p. 74.
  3. Alice Bag: Woman in LA Punk - Dinah Cancer Interview. Alice Bag, archived from the original on February 17, 2015 ; accessed on March 23, 2014 .
  4. Dave Thompson, Kirsten Borchardt: Shadow World - Heroes and Legends of Gothic Rock . 2004, ISBN 3-85445-236-5 , p. 51
  5. a b Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up and Start Again - Post Punk 1978–1984 . Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-571-21569-6 , p. 435
  6. Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up and Start Again - Post Punk 1978-1984 . Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-571-21569-6 , p. 200
  7. Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up and Start Again - Post Punk 1978-1984 . Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-571-21569-6 , p. 201
  8. Dave Thompson, Kirsten Borchardt: Shadow World - Heroes and Legends of Gothic Rock . 2004, ISBN 3-85445-236-5 , p. 70.
  9. Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up and Start Again - Post Punk 1978-1984 . Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-571-21569-6 , p. 431
  10. Dave Thompson, Kirsten Borchardt: Shadow World - Heroes and Legends of Gothic Rock . 2004, ISBN 3-85445-236-5 , pp. 75ff.
  11. Dave Thompson, Kirsten Borchardt: Shadow World - Heroes and Legends of Gothic Rock . 2004, ISBN 3-85445-236-5 , pp. 82ff.
  12. David Dorrell quoted from Roman Rutkowski: Das Charisma des Grabes . 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1351-4 , p. 52
  13. a b Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up and Start Again - Post Punk 1978–1984 . Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-571-21569-6 , p. 432
  14. Richard North: Positive Punk. NME, archived from the original ; accessed on July 14, 2015 .
  15. Dave Thompson, Kirsten Borchardt: Shadow World - Heroes and Legends of Gothic Rock . 2004, ISBN 3-85445-236-5 , p. 182.
  16. ^ Dave Thompson: The Birth of Goth . In: Dave Thompson: Alternative Rock: Third Ear - The Essential Listening Companion . Miller Freeman Books, 2000, ISBN 978-0-87930-607-6 , pp. 62 ff.
  17. a b c Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up and Start Again - Post Punk 1978-1984 . Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-571-21569-6 , p. 433
  18. a b c Josef Maria Klumb : Linernotes : VA: Godfathers of German Gothic. Sub Terranean 1994.
  19. a b c d Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up and Start Again - Post Punk 1978–1984 . Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-571-21569-6 , p. 445 ff.
  20. David Johnson: Beyond the Batcave. the Face, archived from the original on March 3, 2007 ; Retrieved October 4, 2014 .
  21. Dave Thompson, Jo-Ann Greene: Undead Undead Undead. Alternative Press, archived from the original ; accessed on March 24, 2014 .
  22. ^ Roman Rutkowski: The charisma of the grave . 2004, ISBN 3-8334-1351-4 , p. 47 ff.