Best goth album EVER!

it is ONLY THEATRE OF PAIN

sorry, britain

Swans = not goths
Joy Division = not goths
The Birthday Party = not goths

Thanks.

neither are the Cocteau Twins or This Mortal Coil, or really Tones on Tail (real goths didn't dance), but this is a losing battle

yeah yeah I know but according to this logic we'd be left with an Alien Sex Fiend vs random Cleopatra band face-off...

real goths didn't dance

LOL

if you claimed goth and danced get what u were POSING

true goth = stands disaffectedly smoking cigarette pretending to ignore band, does not clap after songs, is bored by everything, thinks Bowie would be personally charmed by him/her
poseur goth = likes to dance, is happy

ah the halcyon days of Tamagothi

Should I vote for the best album on here (probably BP, maybe Swans) or should I vote for the best goth album. . .

Well that's all fine and good, John, but I go to a fantastic goth night every week here and if everyone just stood around and looked cool, it would be hella boring. Thank god some dare to dance, and I seem to notice the goth girls have a similar style of dancing that you probably wouldn't see at another club.

Bimble I'm being a li'l funny but really any "goth" now is pinin' for the fjords ain't it? we grow out of being goth as soon as we learn that it's actually fun to dance. I was a dancing i.e. posing goth don't get me wrong. but the goth kings who were my friends, them guys did not dance for nothing. it would have looked too festive.

OTM that the Goth Girl Dance is its own sort of modified Grateful Dead concert dance.

xpost

Hahah! Yeah, modified Grateful Dead dance, that pretty much nails it.

I know you're funnyin' John, I'm funnyin' too.

Annoyingly, I tend to label the ones I like as Not Goth Because (any old excuse).
(see also: "if I like it it's Techno, if I don't it's House" :-) )

This is a bit like Paris with the golden apple isn't it? How to pick the "fairest" among these gloomy titans?

Obligatory notGoth controversy, obligatory Goth contempt . . but there are some really great albums on this list, aren't there?

I'll sleep on it, but 'JuJu' probably just edges 'Junkyard' and 'Flat field'

In the fwiw category:

1. One of the most mesmerizing dances I've ever witnessed was this goth gal undulating in a Milwaukee goth club. I think she was following the footsteps of a rag doll dance. We were entranced. Spellbound even.

2. Same club. I got asked to leave the dancefloor cuz I was being too demonstrative and saying "look at me - I'm goth" or something to that effect.

3. That How to Dance Goth 101 clip is riotous!

It is nonsense to say Goths don't dance - all of that post-Sisters drum-machine stuff is 100% aimed for the dancefloor.

Bauhaus

Christian Death are the Dennis Kucinich of this poll

They're short and married to a tall redhead?

They're righteous in their goth values but don't stand a chance of winning.

no Virgin Prunes no cred

Juju vs Pornography vs Closer vs Children of God vs Floodland vs In The Flat Field
gah, this is too hard

Yeah, this poll is pretty goddamn hard. I should vote Closer, but I'd rather avoid that knee jerk response and give my vote to Swans or Cocteaus or This Mortal Coil or Dead Can Dance. Which means, jesus christ. There is no justice, here.

This is basically the poll of albums i discovered and fell in love with in high school

haha yeah - I started this poll but I don't think I'll even vote on this. So many of these albums are associated to specific times/things in my youth that I'd feel like betraying a part of me by picking one of them

Floodland is easily the best album listed above.

^^ Is this another one of those "objective truth" things?

tbh Floodland is probably the one I'd be most likely to put on these days

Bauhaus vs. Birthday Party for me.

Swans = not goths
Joy Division = not goths
The Birthday Party = not goths

Thanks.

stuff goth people like, ok?

joy division not goths? are you mad?

the cure disintegration

comus first utterance

must once again voice already-aired-many-times-but-still-totally-righteous opinion that Sisters of Mercy, as soon as they switched from being an EPs band to an albums band, sucked.

Barnes and Noble has beat you all to the punch:

After Dark

I just voted Pornography, but I also kind of understand J0hn's Sisters of Mercy take, even though I really love both First and Last and Always and Floodland -- not sure how much nowadays, though. Those 12" singles were fucking incredible. Most of that pollable shit above is amazing, too, though, isn't it?

(It took a long time before I acknowledged and came to terms with the goth side of my music taste, by the way.)

I'm sure no-one will mention them here but Fields of the Neph is a pretty strong contender for best proper goth band. I always see them as more of a singles band, though

Nope, that's it. I have the perfect reason to boycott this poll now: no Cure's Disintegration!

No one is going to catch me alive choosing between This Mortal Coil's It'll End In Tears and Swans Children of God. Ha! No way. Tough cookies. *bangs gavel*

I can't seem to get interested in Fields Of The Nephilim now. I remember a song or two by them that made me buy an album back in the day, but I fear them now. I remember that guy's vocals and...well I don't think I want to hear them again, thanks. ;)

Lately I've been absolutely dying to have that Red Lorry Yellow Lorry album again, though. Oh, man. I've been jonesing hard for that one this week.

Christian Death are the Dennis Kucinich of this poll

― unexpected item in bagging area (sarahel), Friday, March 20, 2009 4:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

so, does this mean that rozz williams lead a major american city into bankruptcy?!?

Having slept on it, I realise that Siouxsie trumps both Bauhaus and the Birthday Party, so Juju wins.

xpost on the Neph: there were about a million Sisters clones around by the time they came along, and I always wrote them off as just more of the same, even though I had friends who actually followed them on tour. The spaghetti western image was the sort of thing that put me off at the time, but seems endearing now. Given all that, and the Neph love here, maybe I should give them another chance.

Poor old rozz. I tried hard with 'Only Theatre of Pain', and I know Xtian Death are really important to a lot of people, but . . just not happening for me somehow.

I've always preferred "Catastrophe Ballet" and "Ashes" to "Only Theatre of Pain"
also "Dream Home Heartache" is very good

Rozz killed himself on april fools
what a sense of humor!

xxxp re. Neph: I wouldn't really classify them as Sisters clones besides the spaghetti western imagery maybe. Musically, later albums are unexpectedly pretty awesome (the voice I could without). They hit some kind of a dubby trance goth sound that I haven't heard anywhere else (eg. Psychonaut).

Not convinced by the music, but this clip for 'Psychonaut' is pretty nuts:

Look, if Joy Division doesn't win this poll, what will happen? Will the universe explode? Will we give up on humankind? Are we gonna have to start "crackin' skulls"?

I like Pornography, Garlands, In The Flat Fields, Dead Can Dance and Tocsin better than Closer.

. . and it's OK to say that. Really.

I predict that JD fans won't vote for Closer anyway, because they are NOT GOTH.

On the NotGoth thing, I think most of the bands listed would react badly to being termed Goths. ASF and Xymox play Goth festivals regularly, so I imagine they've made their peace with the term. I suspect Xtian Death probably didn't have too much of a problem with it.

I hate to ever vote against the Birthday Party but I've just listened to Pop by Tones on Tail pretty much weekly for about 20 years...

swans

First Xymox album is here! GOD! Talk about some damn fine goth, there. Woah.

Is this the meaning of life or am I dreaming?

Israel?

whoops that song wasn't on this poll, sorry

damnit that wasn't the version of Israel I meant to post, sorry

No Cranes???

One thing I regret not including = Virgin Prunes (although very far from being one of the best thinsg on this list)

Yeah, Virgin Prunes can suck a dick, sorry.

Virgin Prunes were fucking great. What's the matter with you?

Oh my god you have to hear "Blind Dumb Deaf" by the Coctau Twins

then you will vote for it and never be the same again

Goddmnit I'm voting for Garlands here. Don't ask me later, though.

I know it's not going to win.

And meanwhile, Swans Children of God hangs in the balance.

But I'm telling you, Coteau Twins Garlands will fuck you up. And if that isn't goth, I don't know what is.

Heard Garlands recently, and it is very Goth indeed.

yeah Garlands is as goth as it gets. Probably would get my gothiest bass playing award

Bimble how can you say Virgin Prunes can suck a dick and claim your gother than me?
Thinking i'm going to go with Children of God
going to give a few of these another listen just to make sure

Virgin Prunes only had two good songs really...

! lies !
I just listened to New Form of Beauty and Heresie last week
enjoyed them both thoroughly
Come To Daddy!
Sandpaper Lullabye! great tunes dude!

Garlands holds a special place in my heart since it is the first Cocteau Twins record I bought, but it is definitely very heavily indebted to the Banshees, especially Severin's bass sound. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, and you could have worse influences, but the Cocteaus found their own voice almost immediately after that (or more accurately, after Peppermint Pig, and what a glorious voice it was.

But I can't remember how I voted when I first saw this poll. Pornography, maybe?

Problem is... are we voting for albums or are we voting for bands? Because there are lots of my "not favourite album" from "are favourite bands" and I don't really know what to go with.

Mask by Bauhaus, yes. ITFF, no.

First and Last and Always? yes. Floodland? no.

Garlands? yes. But Cocteau Twins are not goth in the slightest!

...though fuck it, if we're just going for albums, I'm voting for Pornography, I guess. Though Mask or Sky's Gone Out would totally have won over it, had they been the Bauhaus choice.

The thread says album. We vote for albums. That's why there were all those preliminary polls. ,

I DISAGREED WITH THE PRELIMINARY POLLS!!! :-P

xpost: "Cocteau Twins are not goth in the slightest!" 'Garlands' is, though, and most of the bands whose albums are listed here would strenuously deny being goths in any way, shape or form. (However, the Cocteaus, along with a lot of the others, got a cover photo in Mick Mercer's ZIGZAG, which was about as goth as you could get at the time.)

Fools! Everyone knows the best goth album ever was a compilation released in a limited edition on a cassette label out of Milan, heard only four times, mostly by a teenager who drank an entire bottle of absinthe, wrote a poem in his own blood and then stabbed himself through the heart with a shard of his own broken mirror.

I was going to vote for Pornography but Faith seems more goth to me. So uh. Yeah.

(I'm only half joking here - back in the day one of my friends had an Italian exchange student staying at her house, and he was a huge goth fan, listening to endless amounts of Christian Death, And Also the Trees and such. But he also had a number of Italian tapes with various goth bands, and I have to say they were pretty amazing...if only I could remember any of the band now...)

I totally shocked myself by NOT voting Pornography

"Pornography" is by no means my favourite Cure album, but still better than the rest here.

Proto-goth album "Heroes" by David Bowie is way better than that again though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Bimble I'm being a li'l funny but really any "goth" now is pinin' for the fjords ain't it? we grow out of being goth as soon as we learn that it's actually fun to dance. I was a dancing i.e. posing goth don't get me wrong. but the goth kings who were my friends, them guys did not dance for nothing. it would have looked too festive.

J0hn I know u old and all, but this hasn't been the case for at least 10 years now. Well not in any gothclub I've ever been to. It's all EBM doof these days, everyones pilled/speedied up and most do nothing BUT dance!

Except for the oldskool nights where us aulde farts sit around moaning about how we're too old to do this anymore and why wont someone turn the bloody music down, its too loud.

PS I havent been to a goth club for like 4 years, so I shouldnt even speak with authority any more :/

You reap what you sow
Put your face to the ground
Here come the marching men
Your colours wrapped around

(Uncle Andy would be very testy at being included in this poll.)

I'm going to go with Children of God
out of these it's the record I'm most likely to put on these days.
Also, they are the only band here who I fell in love with after high school
Plus BLACKMAIL
have you heard that song?
you NEED to hear that song

(I've never heard The Mission but doubt that they would win this for me)

I found the Mission embarrasing dreck even when I loved embarrasing goth dreck.

my top five:

Joy Division - Closer
This Mortal Coil - It'll End in Tears
Tones On Tail - Pop
Clan Of Xymox - Clan Of Xymox
and
The Cure - Pornography

I think mine'd be

Cocteau Twins - Garlands
X-mal Deutschland - Tocsin
Dead Can Dance - s/t
Clan Of Xymox - Clan Of Xymox
The Cure - Pornography

Tho I'm a little more ambivalent abt the Cure. Theyre goth to me the same way Depeche Mode are. Not goths, just part of the goth wallpaper?

to me goth is all about piling on synthetics to ham up the melodrama.

don't hear that so much with joy division.

had to indulge my ancient X-mal fixation here though some of the others are real old faves as well...

well, i hate to inform you that you're wrong and the correct answer was Children of God

I listened to Garlands this morning inthe metro - that album is crazy goth but gets a bit boring after a while.

I wonder if anyone is gonna vote for Alien Sex Fiend

no sane human would
i mean, alien sex fiend are fine and all
but really not match for the majority of these
i guess if you're onlny looking for pure laughs and fun... but psh

I think I might've done. Can't remember now. I was floating between ASF & X-mal Deutschland.

xpost

I know people who really rate ASF for layered-up noise and beats. (Sane human beings? Well, maybe.) Never been able to get past the silly jokes, myself.

Nothing wrong with a touch of melodrama and silliness in goth though. In fact, it's what I find lacking in JD and the Swans.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Nice showing for the Swans! I'm impressed! Hell, I bet they wouldn't like to be called goth at all, but who cares?

feeling extremely guilty now

sorry, real goths

Glad to see that I wasn't the only one who picked Christian Death here.

THE SEX IN YOUR SOUL WILL DAMN YOU TO HELL

Nothing wrong with a touch of melodrama and silliness in goth though.

Agreed. Come on, Bauhaus were totally all about this.

Also, I forgot to vote ;_;

(but you know I wdve voted for Garlands anyway)

I'm surprised by Pornography won this so easily

Swans/Gira=Not Goth

Thanks for pointing that out

Sorry, tired and distracted. I know that's been covered.

Yeah, Children of God is my favourite album here, but I didn't vote for it cos it was just not Goffy enough. My reasoning was insufficient levels of patchouli oil among their fans.

Actually is patchouli oil even a goth thing is the present goth era?

aw poor The Mission & The Lorries. Both bands gave good gig but were never going to get a look in on a best anything ever poll. I tried listening to The Mission the other week and couldn't do it - I don't think I've ever gone off a band so much as them.

I think I voted for either Juju or Pornography but on any given day I could have picked half a dozen others. Great selection of albums.

'Nothing wrong with a touch of melodrama and silliness in goth though.'

Agreed. Come on, Bauhaus were totally all about this.

― one art, please (Trayce)

I'd agree with the melodrama but I think they took themselves a bit more seriously than ASF. The silliness shone through in Tones on Tail and (to a lesser degree) Love & Rockets so I think we can blame Peter Murphy for bringing the seriousness.

well, "Peter Murphy" goes like this...

Take a fish
And a potato
Hold the fish
And the potato
In your hand
In your hand
Put the potato
In the fish
Make it digest it
Smash it up
Smash it up
Smash it up
Smash it up
This is how you make fishcakes
This is how one makes fishcakes
Smash it up
Poke it up
Fishcakes
Fishcakes
Fishcakes
Fishcakes
Put it down the fish
Put it down the fish
Throw it against the wall
Stamp on the fish
Fishcakes
Fishcakes
Fishcakes
Fishcakes
Throw it on the wall
Smash it on the wall
Throw it on the wall
Smash it on the wall
Fishcakes
Fishcakes

He takes that shit serious. No wry grins on the delivery whatsoever.

(I did think of a load of stupid Bauhaus stuff after I posted earlier so I suppose I should retract that and admit they were occasionally intentionally silly but never in an ASF way)

not ASF levels, but apart from that, Bauhaus is prob the silliest band in this poll (not counting unintentional silliness like the Neph or Wayne Hussey)

I thought Children was the Mission classic? Although it's probably more arena rock than anything.

Mission classic = oxymoron tho

Hahah, I'm just now remembering that lyric where Murphy goes "NOW I AM SILLY!" But yeah, he sounds pretty mad crazy "don't fuck with me" serious about it.

Yeah, Mission are not that great, really. I liked their first 12" a lot, but I can't even remember how much I might have liked the album back then or not. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry weren't going to be the best of anything, either, as I think they turned out to be one-trick-ponies to some degree, but didn't Peel like them? I still do to some degree. They packed a ferocious apocalyptic punch when they wanted and in retrospect I could almost tie them to Killing Joke for that.

I think it would be fun to do this poll again with second choices or maybe even 'vote for what you would have voted for last time but didn't for some reason' kind of thing.

Also Trayce OTM about goth clubs/nights being too much about EBM now. I feel fortunate that in my town there are two that I can go to to get away from that crap.

I forgot to vote, too. Would've voted Junkyard.

http://www.younggodrecords.com/images/upload/image/SWANS/19_82.jpg
GOFF.

Man, I wish I had spent more time hanging out with goths in the late 90s than I did with Phish-heads and SCA types.

Y'all seem alright.

there really should be more of a goth/SCA crossover than there is.

High school made me sad cus i listened to this stuff but all the goth kids listened to Marilyn Manson and other nu-"goth" stuff :(

Aww...heheh Curtis to thread!

Also what does SCA stand for? Sorry I iz olde.

Society for Creative Anachronism - my two goth housemates in college were in it. They did role playing games.

Nothing wrong with a touch of melodrama and silliness in goth though. In fact, it's what I find lacking in JD and the Swans.

That's because NEITHER JOY DIVISION NOR SWANS WERE GOTH BANDS.

I hated 'Goth'. The hairspray veered me off into awful Yank stuff like blackThreatDu etc.
Then I heard Christian Death's first LP.
and 45 fucking Grave

Only Theatre of Pain wins in my book.

I get the Cocteau connection. Garlands WAS goth and it was their worst album. By far.

there really should be more of a goth/SCA crossover than there is.

Hahahaha.. oh man Ian you need to come to Melbourne. The SCA/LARPers are all the fuck over the goth scene. You have your pofaced, porcelian doll rocker goth chicks who are all cool and serious and have day jobs in record/clthing stores... and then you have your role player goths who over-dress, do the dramatic wavy-hand dances, know far too much about Firefly/Buffy/Bab5/LARPing etc etc, and are usually all computer programmers/IT people. And mostly overweight, too.

I fit neither scene, and so I kind of got bored with the whole thing. I didnt like feeling intimidated and ugly round all the impossible pricess goth brides (seriously, if I saw one more drawn on eyebrow I was going to scream), and I got tired of being chatted up by Comic Book Guy in a lacy nuromantic shirt blathering on about Monty Python :/

That Swans presskit photo looks like a "choose your character" screen from some sort of ultimate fighting game.

Id play as Jarboe! And kill everyone by whipping them to death with t'dreads.

OMG Trayce bringing the LOLs with the last three posts.

You know, Alex in NYC, I think you're a great man, and I mean no offense here, I'm just trying to understand your intense feelings on this matter. You see, back there Stan M had this post:

Annoyingly, I tend to label the ones I like as Not Goth Because (any old excuse).
(see also: "if I like it it's Techno, if I don't it's House" :-) )

― StanM, Friday, March 20, 2009 6:52 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

Well when I read that, a lightbulb went off over my head and I thought "Wow! That's it! That was what Alex's deal was all along!"

xpost: " . . who over-dress, do the dramatic wavy-hand dances, know far too much about Firefly/Buffy/Bab5/LARPing etc etc, and are usually all computer programmers/IT people."

Right. Not like anyone round here, eh?

Okay, I know I've posted a lot today, but this Red Lorry Yellow Lorry album is an absolute DELIGHT to hear again for the first time since...1985.

I would like so much to talk with people who know this band. I will dig up a thread of theirs.

Souk I have no interest whatsoever in LARPing, Buffy or computer programming.

Not saying you do, Trayce, but most of that stuff could be me, a lot of people I know, and, I daresay, not a few others on a thread like this on.

Actually is patchouli oil even a goth thing is the present goth era?

this was never a goth thing in any era in my experience. it is a hippy thing.

LOLOLOLOLOL

X MAL DEUTSCHLAND TOCSIN

Now how goth do you need to be? Because that is pretty goth.

http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn306/Floridian_20/XMal.jpg

When I was like ten there was this Goth issue of Thrasher, but I don't think they called it Goth or anything back then. There was a story about a skateboarding vampire or something, and a review of Peter Murphy's Deep, and a Fields of the Nephilim review. I was so curious about FOTM, but after reading the review, I conjured up this great image of their music in my mind and I was so afraid that if I laid down my seven dollars for a cassette of theirs at Sam Goody, I would walk away feeling disappointed.

Well this weekend, pretty much 20 years later, I d/l'd Dawnrazor off of iTunes and it was pretty much everything my ten-year-old self imagined.

One more reason for me to travel back in time and kick my own ass for being a wuss.

How do you pronounce Nephilim anyway?

this was never a goth thing in any era in my experience. it is a hippy thing.

Definitely was goth here in the 80s, knew plenty of Mission fans who reeked of the stuff.

http://i13.ebayimg.com/05/i/001/1f/c8/824f_1.JPG

^^^ "Gothic Room Spray" wtf

Most of the goths I knew overlapped with Rainbow Family types.

This may not be true in your suburb.

It's not about whether I like the bands in question or not, it's simply a matter of being able to differentiate right from wrong.

Hahahahaa

I find deciding if I like bands or not is easy, differentiating between right and wrong . . not always so easy.

I would not consider these goth albums:

Swans - Children of God 12
Cocteau Twins - Garlands 8
Tones On Tail - Pop 3 (except for maybe "Christian Says")

The Birthday Party & Joy Division are not "goth bands" per se but they definitely fulfill a niche in goth history

nevermind - "Christian Says" isn't even on Pop.

bbbbut Nick Cave invented the Goth hairstyle

Garlands is as goth as it gets.

The Birthday Party & Joy Division are not "goth bands" per se but they definitely fulfill a niche in goth history

Likewise Swans. This is a fair statement.

Okay, I know I've posted a lot today, but this Red Lorry Yellow Lorry album is an absolute DELIGHT to hear again for the first time since...1985.
I would like so much to talk with people who know this band. I will dig up a thread of theirs.

i saw the lorries support the killing joke in 86 in leeds.

the lorries were un-fuckin'-believable.
truly brilliant.
one intense white light behind them. one drum machine. one massive noise.
the joke were having a bad night, and not as impressive.
[late arrival + over stressing the pa = one mightily pissed off band who rushed through the set past the curfew hour and walked off to a hailstorm of boos]