2010's - the darkwave decade

For many years, there has been endless (futile and somewhat tedious) debate online about the original use of the word “goth” in a post-punk musical context, and which groups either belong or do not belong within that genre, but it is generally accepted that there was a first wave of bands that started with the likes of Bauhaus, Joy Division, Killing Joke and Siouxsie and The Banshees and developed through groups like Southern Death Cult, Sex Gang Children, The Danse Society and The Sisters of Mercy. From around 1985, these groups were then immediately followed by the “second generation” of bands which were clearly influenced by the afore-mentioned ensembles, beginning with Fields of the Nephilim and other bands which were largely retreads of TSOM (The Merry Thoughts, Rosetta Stone et al) or the bats'n'graveyard-obsessed American "death rock" scene or had gone down the “dressing-up not music” route (with many resurfacing in the steampunk movement more latterly).

Musically, however, things had already moved on by the end of the decade, and those who still clung to the alternative scene had to accept that their moment in the sun (or rather, in the dark!) had passed. With his band's singles increasingly struggling to scrape the Top 60 rather than burst into the Top 20 in the UK charts, The Cure’s Robert Smith wryly observed (of 1996’s Mint Car) : “I thought it was a better song than “Friday”. But it did absolutely nothing because we weren’t THE band at that time. The zeitgeist wasn’t right. It taught me that sometimes there’s a tipping point, and if you’re the band, you’re the band, even if you don’t want to be, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

It is hard to pinpoint exactly when the scene really started to fizzle out, but despite the efforts of bands like Type O Negative, The 69 Eyes, Tiamat and even Marilyn Manson to breathe new life into the gothic corpse as we headed into the new millennium, the movement seemed to be dead as a creative artistic force, bar a few diehards and the occasional impressive reunion album (eg FOTN’s Mourning Sun in 2005 or Bauhaus’ Go Away White the following year). By then however, almost all of the original early/mid 80’s goths had long moved on to the many vaguely-related subsequent musical movements, whether grebo, Madchester, grunge, shoe-gaze, industrial, trip-hop or emo (to name but a few), or were in reality now too busy changing nappies or focussing on their career (or both) to know who was on the front of the NME.

However, the 2010’s have seen a worldwide revival in gothic/post-punk music, appropriately so given that the decade shares its name with a release by one of the original movement’s brightest stars (“Twenty Tens” by Virgin Prunes, although that was in fact a cigarette reference!). This is not merely the result of fashion turning full circle but is also partly due to the rise of global broadband internet/smartphones/wifi technology which has resulted in the increased democratisation of the music industry. No longer does a band or artist need to convince an elite of journalists or music industry figures for their music to be heard by their potential audience, and so genres that were presumed to be extinct, such as goth, have been able to undergo a spectacular renaissance, appealing to both a new and a returning worldwide audience, initially via the myspace platform, and then via soundcloud and now (in particular) Bandcamp.

Although many of the current crop of bands show signs of influences of the major post-punk bands of the early 1980’s, they are equally influenced by the more melodic end of the indie movement of that time, groups such as And Also The Trees, The Chameleons, The Sound and The Comsat Angels who enjoyed very little success at the time in the UK. Add to that the effects pedals of the shoegaze bands, the pulsing backbeat overdrive of the electro-industrial bands and advances in (home) studio technology, and you realise that the modern plethora of bands are not actually gothic or post-punk, but have created new genres, generally described as coldwave (if synths are part of the mix) or darkwave (if more guitar driven), or more simply (to cover both strands) “wave”.

As Swedish band Then Comes Silence, one of the leading artistes on the new scene and one of very few signed to a relatively “major” label (German metal label Nuclear Blast), stated in a video interview last year, rather than being based on a local scene (in the way that Leeds and The Batcave were the two epicentres of early 80’s goth), “(dark)wave” is in fact a global network of individual cottage industries, with bands springing up all over the world, from Russia to Brazil, from Italy to the USA, all inspired by the same sounds of the 1980’s but creating their own modern aesthetic which is then shared with aficionados via sharing sites, notably Bandcamp which allow potential followers to stream the music initially before (hopefully) making a purchase. Then Comes Silence also correctly point to the mushrooming of the scene over the past five years, with new bands seemingly springing up somewhere in the world on an almost daily basis.

Certain individuals and organisations have been key figures in this rapid development, with entrepreneurial fans setting up record labels to release physical copies (on CD, cassette and/or vinyl) of bands whose streamed content has particularly excited them. Unknown Pleasures (Spain), Manic Depression (France), Post Gothic (Finland), Swiss Dark Nights (Switzerland, funnily enough!) and Alchera Visions (Poland) are all examples of labels which have as a result become synonymous with the very best new content alongside the more traditional Cleopatra Records (USA), the 1990's home of goth and deathrock. Alongside these, the many internet podcasts on the genre (too many to list here) and YouTube channels such as George Chlioumis, Guitars and Sound, Sound In The Distance and onlyyesterday1967 have become the “go to” sources on a daily basis for brand new bands, together with websites such as post-punk.com. Those artists whose music attracts significant attention via this route can find themselves in demand for the burgeoning raft of “wave” festivals whose bills are often fleshed out by returning names from the 1980’s scene, such as 1919, Twisted Nerve, Skeletal Family, The Society (featuring Paul Gilmartin, formerly of The Danse Society), The Eden House (featuring Tony Pettitt, ex-FOTN) and BFG, all of whom are still a major draw outwith their native UK. The more successful bands can also begin to earn an income through advertising on their YouTube channel where view counts extend into the millions (Lebanon Hanover’s unremarkable Gallowdance has nine million and counting!).

However, with the gothic genre still marginalised and ridiculed by the mainstream media, and with many “empty nest” 80's goths disappointingly sticking with their preferred bands of the original era and dogmatically unprepared to listen to newer material, the “wave” scene has remained an underground phenomenon for now, enjoyed only by those who have lucky enough to have stumbled across it, but as the decade draws to a close it is clear that “the storm is coming” (in the words of one of the more forgettable second generation bands).

For the remaining twenty weeks of this decade, this blog will feature (in roughly chronological order) my top twenty personal choices from the past ten years, hopefully highlighting some of the breadth and depth of talent which has emerged or re-emerged over that time. As with all lists, readers will no doubt disagree with many of my analysis, choices and opinion, or will be scandalised by the many omissions – please feel free to comment after each post!