With five albums, many more singles, EPs and splits released over the past three decades, Skeletal Family still lives on, passing on the musical legacy of romantic darkness to younger generations of Goth fans at live performances the band is still important to the scene, especially in its home base, the UK. The band's name was taken from the 1974 song, “Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family” by David Bowie, and originally included singer Anne-Marie Hurst, bassist Roger Nowell guitarist Stan Greenwood, drummer Steve Greenwood and keyboard/saxophone player Ian Taylor. But, there was something unique about the dark melodies, clean female vocals, and eerie guitar tones of Skeletal Family. When the band came into existence in the early '80s, many other so called Gothic Rock bands had been around for a few years. See also: The 10 Best Brazilian Metal Bands Suffice it to say, both versions of the band with the same name and a troubled past, are crucial to the development and legacy of Goth music.
Though today many purists still flock to the music, poetry, art and tragedy of the first and original incarnation Christian Death and its true mastermind, Rozz Williams. But Kand's version of Christian Death still defiantly marches on, to this day having released a dozen albums over the past 30 years, which have woven experimental, electronic, black metal and doom metal into the Goth sound and genre. Sadly, in 1998 after years of drug addictions, Williams was found dead, by apparent suicide. Williams eventually went on to other musical projects, and his own version of Christian Death, but in the mid '90s, he lost the legal rights to the name to Kand in court. Through years of infighting, drug abuse, line up changes, and disagreements, Williams left the band he created initially, while Kand kept on going. Some consider these records to be precursors of the American Goth movement. This version of Christian Death released the albums Catastrophe Ballet (1984) and Ashes (1985), which featured both Rozz Williams and Valor Kand. Christian Death's debut album, Only Theater of Pain (1982) pretty much put the American Deathrock scene on the map.īut, the band broke up less after the record came out, and in 1983 Williams revived the Christian Death moniker with LA musician Valor Kand. Williams was a performer as well as a vocalist bringing cathartic performance art alive with his dark, gloomy and macabre music. The simple, yet slower punk riffs seemed to fit with Christian Death's obsession with black clothes, skulls and religious iconography. The band's name, morbid fashion style, and sound made an impact almost immediately.
The band is still active today, though the most recent release was Violent Acts of Beauty (2007).ĭeathrock visionary Rozz Williams created Christian Death in 1979, in the cities of Pomona and Claremont, just outside of the angst, fury and aggression of the old school LA/OC hardcore punk scene. LAM have shared the stage with such varied artists as The Cure, Green Day, HIM, Rammstein, and countless others. Brennan is also an open liberal, never hiding his support for human rights, animal rights, and environmentalism. LAM is popular all over the globe, with a particularly huge fan base in Europe, and South America. Brennan has in past interviews shown his disdain for the term Goth, claiming it furthers limitation and confinement of music to a single genre. LAM raised in the '90s, in the LA music scene, in particular, the plethora of area Rock and Goth clubs, with a dark, romantic and yet political vibe that no one else had in the Goth scene. We now present the10 Best Goth bands.Ĭonsidered to be part of the new generation of Goth Rockers, this musical project is the concept of mastermind Sean Brennan, songwriter, lyricist and multi instrumentalist. Years later, they became the influences for bands like HIM, My Chemical Romance and Marilyn Manson, though none of those bands can hold a candle to any of the bands on our list. Taking a wide array of influences from various bands like Joy Division, Killing Joke, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, New York Dolls, Gary Glitter, The Damned, and tons more, many of the bands created a new, invigorating brand of rock music, appealing to the dark side with themes of death, love, religion, and the occult. Most notably, much of the subculture originates from England, in the late 1970s, but the influence has now spread around the globe. Goth, or Gothic Rock as it is sometimes referred, was the coming together of different eras and genres of music.