My Love Of Goth
by Mike Hill of TOMBS

Text Written by Mike Hill of TOMBS
twitter @MikeHillHQ

I was always first and foremost a metalhead / heavy rocker when it came to music. My favorite bands were Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Rainbow at first, and when punk started seeping into my consciousness, it was the more metallic elements of it that I got off on; the Rollins-era Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies, Bad Brains, that was what directly me down the path that motivated me to start playing music and become more active in “The Scene.” I grew up in the suburbs in the 80’s, so there wasn’t such a wall built around the genres, because there were literally only about 8 kids that were into this kind of thing. For that reason, bands like Slayer and Metallica got a pass; there were loud, fast and intense and had an anti-authority vibe.

At some point, I saw the Tony Scott, vampire movie called “The Hunger” which features David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve, but more importantly, it featured an intro sequence with Peter Murphy singing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” and a whole other layer was added to my musical obsessions. My main fascination with metal and most of the hardcore punk bands that I enjoyed was the “darkness” element. Sabbath and Slayer incorporated overtly Satanic themes into their music which I later discovered were more theatrics than actual believe, but at the time it seemed real and a little frightening to me; it added a feeling that you were discovering something forbidden.

I discovered that the band performing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” was called Bauhaus and if I wanted a dark descent, then they were a perfect starting point. Back then, intel was hard to come by; I had to rely on word of mouth, it was a more one-on-one thing which led to the discovery of other bands. Someone suggested that I check out a band called The Cure if I liked Bauhaus. They were more of a hard sell to me because in comparison to the subterranean guitars and arcane vocals of Bauhaus, they seemed way more “mainstream” to me. It wasn’t until much later that I grew to appreciate them.

Around this time, I started checking out bands like Samhain and T.S.O.L. who merged the gothic vibe with hardcore punk. The entire Samhain catalogue and the “Weathered Statues” record by T.S.O.L. were enablers for me to fully embrace the darkness and albeit softer elements that bands like Sisters of Mercy, Cocteau Twins, Southern Death Cult (later known as The Cult) and Siouxie and the Banshees. I picked up on Joy Division and dug the bleak, emotional textures on tracks like “Shadowplay,” “She’s Lost Control” and “Novelty,” but a my musical education developed, I realized that they had very little in common with the jet-black haired batcavers that most people associate them with.

In the pre-internet age, zines were important; there were crucial and Propaganda was the unholy bible of the goth scene, at least in my opinion; a glossy, black and white zine that turned me on the Fields of the Nephilim, which to this day, is one of my favorite bands. There was a heaviness to their music that really got its hooks into me. Mostly, it was the frontman Carl McCoy and his stentorian voice and occult lyrics. McCoy was one of the first to impress the distinction between “occult” and “Satanism,” and especially these days; that is an important distinction lost on most people. When listening to Field of the Nephilim, you feel that McCoy’s occult beliefs aren’t just a cartoonish version of Satanism / Christ Inversion, it’s an actual independent believe that is parallel to Christianity. You can spend hours reading his lyrics and it gives a deeper meaning to the dark imagery. I’ve always felt like Fields of the Nephilim were different from the other bands because of this.

I feel like a lot of current Black Metal draws from this as well. Carl McCoy appears the last Watain record “Lawless Darkness,” and Eric cites him as an influence and a motivation for becoming a singer. In my own creative endeavors, I draw heavily from this genre; as much as Black Sabbath, Black Flag and Slayer. In conclusion, I’ll eave you with one of McCoy’s more haunting passages from “At the Gates of Silent Memory” from the Fields of the Nephim record “Elizium.”

“Yes today life that I knew
So sick of all the people
A blind moon over to the window
Where the night has become Elizium
For the sleepless souls
And our days to come”