Goth is a music-based subculture that began in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s. It was developed by fans of gothic rock, an offshoot of the post-punk music genre. Post-punk artists who presaged the gothic rock genre and helped develop and shape the subculture include Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, the Cure, and Joy Division.
A zine is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group, and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation. A fanzine is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest. The term was coined in an October 1940 science fiction fanzine by Russ Chauvenet and popularized within science fiction fandom, entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1949.
Gothic rock is a style of rock music that emerged from post-punk in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The first post-punk bands which shifted toward dark music with gothic overtones include Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, Bauhaus, and the Cure.
Gothic fashion is a clothing style marked by dark, mysterious, antiquated, homogenous, and often genderless features. It is worn by members of the Goth subculture. Dress, typical gothic fashion includes dyed black hair, exotic hairstyles, dark lipstick and dark clothing. Both male and female goths can wear dark eyeliner, dark nail polish and lipstick for a dramatic effect. Male goths use cosmetics at a higher rate than other men. Styles are often borrowed from the punk fashion and can also draw influence from Victorians and Elizabethan fashion. Goth fashion is sometimes confused with heavy metal fashion and emo fashion.
Electronic body music (EBM) is a genre of electronic music that combines elements of industrial music and synth-punk with elements of dance music. It developed in the early 1980s in Western Europe, as an outgrowth of both the punk and the industrial music cultures. It combines sequenced repetitive basslines, programmed dance music rhythms, and mostly undistorted vocals and command-like shouts with confrontational or provocative themes.
Dark wave is a music genre that emerged from the new wave and post-punk movement of the late 1970s. Dark wave compositions are largely based on minor key tonality and introspective lyrics and have been perceived as being dark, romantic and bleak, with an undertone of sorrow. The genre embraces a range of styles including cold wave, ethereal wave, gothic rock, neoclassical dark wave and neofolk.
A punk zine is a zine related to the punk subculture and hardcore punk music genre. Often primitively or casually produced, they feature punk literature, such as social commentary, punk poetry, news, gossip, music reviews and articles about punk rock bands or regional punk scenes.
The vampire lifestyle, vampire subculture, or vampire community is an alternative lifestyle and subculture based around the mythology of and popular culture based on vampires. Those within the subculture commonly identify with or as vampires, with participants typically taking heavy inspiration from media and pop culture based on vampiric folklore and legend, such as the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, the tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, and the book series The Vampire Chronicles by author Anne Rice. Practices within the vampire community range from blood-drinking from willing donors to organising groups known as 'houses' and 'courts' of self-identified vampires.
A rivethead or rivet head is a person associated with the industrial dance music scene. In stark contrast to the original industrial culture, whose performers and heterogeneous audience were sometimes referred to as "industrialists", the rivethead scene is a coherent youth culture closely linked to a discernible fashion style. The scene emerged in the late 1980s on the basis of electro-industrial, EBM, and industrial rock music. The associated dress style draws on military fashion and punk aesthetics with hints of fetish wear, mainly inspired by the scene's musical protagonists.
Cybergoth is a subculture that derives from elements of goth, raver, rivethead and cyberpunk fashion.
Dark culture, also called dark alternative scene, includes goth and dark wave culture, the dark neoclassical/dark ambient scene, parts of the post-industrial scene parts of neofolk and the early gothic metal scene. Dark culture's origin lies in followers of dark wave and independent music, but over the decades it has developed to a social network held together by a common concept of aesthetics, self-representation, and individualism. The musical preferences of the dark scene are characterized by a mix of styles ranging from futurism, electropop, early music, (neo-) classical, and folk music to punk rock, rock, techno and ambient music.
Rachel Blau DuPlessis is an American poet and essayist, known as a feminist critic and scholar with a special interest in modernist and contemporary poetry. Her work has been widely anthologized.
Gothic Beauty is an American magazine established by editor Steven Holiday in the fall of 2000 after the success of the Internet social group of the same name. Gothic Beauty covers numerous aspects of underground culture including fashion, music, events and various forms of entertainment. Issues have included interviews with such Goth and Goth-friendly musicians as Alice Cooper, Diamanda Galás, KMFDM, Rasputina, Midnight Syndicate and Peter Murphy. Also featured are interviews with fashion designers and other icons of the gothic and alternative subcultures, and myriad music reviews. Their main office is located in Portland, Oregon.
The Toronto goth scene, the cultural locus of the goth subculture in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the associated music and fashion scene, has distinct origins from goth scenes of other goth subcultural centres, such as the UK or Germany. Originally known as the "Batcavers", the term "goth" appeared only after 1988, when it was applied to the pre-existent subculture. Distinctive features included internationally recognized gothic and vampiric fashion store 'Siren', a goth-industrial bar named 'Sanctuary: The Vampire Sex Bar', and Forever Knight, a television series about an 800-year-old vampire living in Toronto. In Toronto, the goths did not seek to reject mainstream status, and achieved partial acceptance throughout the mid to late 1990s.
Sonic Seducer is a German music magazine that covers gothic rock, new wave, EBM and other kinds of electronic music and culture. The magazine is noted for organizing the annual M'era Luna Festival. Since its inception in 1994, the Sonic Seducer has become one of the major publications of the dark culture in Germany.
Propaganda was an American gothic subculture magazine. It was founded in 1982 by Fred H. Berger, a photographer from New York City. Berger's photography was featured prominently in the magazine. Propaganda focused on all aspects of the goth culture, including fashion, sexuality, music, art and literature. Propaganda was, at the time of its final issue in 2002, the longest running and most popular gothic subculture magazine in the United States.
Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music is a 2013 book by S. Alexander Reed, published by Oxford University Press, and bills itself as "the first serious study published on industrial music."
Incinerate is a compilation album by Sphere Lazza, released on July 25, 1995 by Fifth Colvmn Records.
Mall goths are a subculture that began in the late-1990s in the United States. Originating as a pejorative to describe people who dressed goth for the fashion rather than culture, it eventually developed its own culture based around nu metal, industrial metal, emo and the Hot Topic store chain. It has variously been described as a part of the goth subculture, as well as a separate subculture simply influenced by goth.
