Teen Gothic

There's more goth bands out there than you can shake a stick at and a vast number of them were small outfits with few releases and next to no presence online. There's something special and enchanting about the obscure goth band. The band that never really went anywhere, the band that could have been great but never got there and faded away into a murky obscurity. Especially since in the current online landscape it's much harder than ever before to be obscure. Many, many of these small goth bands struggled uphill and it did not pay off for them. Most of them simply broke apart.

I find that sort of melancholy, that sense of unfulfilled dreams and sense of loss to be fitting! I often find myself pondering, yearning and thinking about the obscure bands that I've listened to that now exist only as cult, underground stuff to be appreciated by a small circle of people, or sometimes not even that. Sometimes they exist only as a memory, a band someone once saw back in the late 80's and early 90's, someone may have their original tape or vinyl stashed away somewhere.

I feel like we often focus on just a rotating cast of well known bands, so it'd be sweet for everyone to have a chance to throw out a really obscure band that is your personal obsession. They deserve it.

My personal pick is Shamefaces. Active for only a few months from 1992 to 1993 and with only two cassette releases, and only two songs available on YouTube, A Tale of Two Men and Shadowboy. Very little info on them online besides the band member names, most of whom have moved on from the goth scene it seems, but some are still active musicians.

Previously, they were a different obscure band, Dëx Cröix. They released one (REALLY good) EP and have a YouTube account that's over 15 years old and only has some really poor quality recordings of them in a Battle of the Bands tournament in 1988.

So, what's yours?