Teen Gothic

I would go in there looking for jeans on the bargain rack and I look around at all this… like… 2008 stuff. Metal core stuff I guess. Colorful tank tops and… I don't know. It was probably for the best.

They are perfect. Every single second of their music are astonishing, their albums are just unbelievable good, from starts to finish. Nothing on the scene of goth compares with them, and perhaps, they'll be the most relevant band during the future years.

These pics are from when I attended a Hex Cassette concert with my friend back in February. I don't get the opportunity to dress up this much very often so I thought I'd share! The Fear Cult top is handpainted by me 🙂

I don’t mean which city has the most goths, I’m just wondering which city’s ambience, culture and vibe is most suitable for a goth. I’m not even talking specifically about the music scene itself, or even gothic architecture, but rather trying to find which city on earth would be most suitable for the goth mindset and emotional landscape.

My personal thoughts are London, not just for the weather but also the size and diversity of it; it’s a place where you can dress however without feeling too judged. Maybe NYC’s the same but I haven’t been there. Of course the UK has the music history too: Joy Division, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees, etc. So there’s that.

But I wanted to hear other people’s thoughts – what do you think??

I've heard many, MANY people say that they aren't good as a live act. My individual ticket (because I'm the only irl goth I know) is somewhere between $ 200-250 USD after taxes and fees. I have NO problems dropping that kind of money for a band that makes the experience worth it. So I have to ask…. would you guys go?

I see this complaint all over social media that goth has become mainstream, that everyone is goth now, that there’s so many goth young people etc… and it always inevitably leads to people trying to compare individuals as to who’s “more goth” based purely on appearances. But I just don’t think that’s happening at all. Maybe alternative fashion and music is on the rise, but I just don’t see that many truly goth/alternative people when I’m going about my day to day life.

That being said, I do think post punk music has been “mainstream” for a long time. Just look at the streaming statistics for popular 80’s post punk bands. But if you look for people that live and eat and breathe the goth lifestyle and who listen mostly to post punk/goth music, I still don’t think it’s that popular. It’s just all over social media because if you’re goth, you’re likely interacting with goth content.

It's a point of common knowledge among goths that the label wasn't really universally accepted or even liked by many of the seminal artists we come to consider forerunners of the genre, the most popular and well-known goth artists never took themselves under that label and often were very resentful of the term being applied. I don't think i need to belabor this point further or to list out who they were, we all know.

Which leads me to ask, who was the first musicians or band who actually openly declared themselves to be goth and proudly took it upon themselves as a moniker? I'm sorry if this is a stupid question but it's being asked sincerely. I hear so much about how this artist or that rejected the label despite being either pioneers of the genre or important to it's further development, and never about any musician who proudly claimed to be part of a nascent musical culture. Even today i feel like many musicians, wanting to be taken seriously, do not label themselves as goth because they feel it limits them creatively.