The Cult’s career is perhaps the largest success story from the golden age of goth subculture, formed out of a meeting of minds between ex-Southern Death Cult frontman Ian Astbury and ex-Theatre of Hate guitarist Billy Duffy. Often upstaged by its more commercially successful counterpart “She Sells Sanctuary,” which appeared on their 1985 album Love (which catapulted the group from Bradford, Yorkshire to international fame) The Cult’s “Rain” is an evergreen anthem of gothic rock, apparently inspired by vocalist Ian Astbury’s interest in Native American culture and the traditional rain dance. Satan isn’t in the wait anymore he’s arrived.
#BEST GOTHIC METAL FULL#
The first verse comes as stream-of-consciousness beat poetry, wordy and full of thorns, with a penchant for the gothic: “ That bastard had a head like a matchstick/Face like he was sucking concrete through a straw.” But it’s in the chanted mantra of “ this world is opening up” that we begin to understand the scale of the apocalypse that Alexis Marshall is describing. As the first single off of their comeback album You Won’t Get What You Want, “Satan in the Wait” announced a new era of Daughters that was just as terrifying, but slower, and more muscular. It’s seven minutes of an unrelenting attack on the listener, dour beyond belief, and actively chilling (somehow, every time you put it on, a cold wind sweeps through the room). Alright, line up kids, let’s walk outside single file. “Satan in the Wait” sounds like a fire alarm. Some of these you’ll know by heart, some might require a broader view, but they’d all make a great soundtrack for a night of hedonistic darkness. We debated over what was goth and what wasn’t, we kept a Google doc with comments and dissents, and we came to a consensus on a broad but specific list of the songs that represent the best of what this dark subculture has wrought across five decades and change. What it is, instead, is a chart of its roots and its influences, the best goth songs from its earliest days, the songs that showcase how far those influences have spread, and the progenitors that first made pulses and waves that began to ripple across the Atlantic. What this list is not: A definitive, comprehensive history of goth as a sound and a scene. Which is the intent we had in mind when we took it upon ourselves to compile a list of our favorite goth songs. Goth-rock begat deathrock and darkwave, and eventually the spheres of industrial and EBM began to cross over-go to a goth club in 2020 (early 2020, I suppose- sigh), and you’ll likely hear all of these different distinct, yet related styles and subgenres. Gothic rock as a genre has its own signature sounds, but the goth aesthetic has spread far and wide since the early ’80s. With the opening of the Batcave in 1982, however, a black-clad, fishnetted subculture embraced the term, savoring dark fashion and aesthetics while dancing to bands whose music did likewise-often comprising a gloomy atmosphere, abrasive melodies and taut rhythms. But goth as we know it didn’t begin to take shape until the late ’70s across the Atlantic Ocean, with the rise of bands like Bauhaus, The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, all of whom bristled at the term when applied by critics. The first band to be described as “gothic rock,” was The Doors, in a 1967 review-a fact that’ll either cause a smug sense of satisfaction or groans of displeasure.