Gothic Metal

Gothic metal, the heaviest music ever to light a candelabra on stage, was carried out of the doom and death metal rehearsal rooms of the early nineties and dressed for a funeral that never quite ends, to turn grief into theatre. The curtain never falls.

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Mourning in full dress

The most funereal ballroom in heavy metal, gothic metal, drags the crushing weight of doom and death metal into the cold atmosphere of gothic rock, where synthesised strings, piano and eerie keyboard textures count for as much as the guitars, and a song can walk at the pace of a cortege for six minutes without ever breaking into a run. The riffs still crack floorboards. They arrive in mourning clothes, like a battering ram wrapped in a funeral pall and swung slowly at a cathedral door, so the blow lands later and echoes longer.

The voice is where the genre shows its range. Male singers in gothic metal bands run from guttural growls and black metal shrieks down to a clean, deep baritone like Peter Steele's in Type O Negative, and female singers go from operatic soprano to open screaming. The Norwegian band Theatre of Tragedy set Liv Kristine's soprano against male death growls on their 1995 debut and fixed that duel in place. The scene still calls it beauty and the beast.

The lyrics dwell on death, misery, lost love and the furniture of gothic fiction, vampires and horror included, and the tone is melodramatic by design. What separates the genre from its neighbours is what it does with grief. Doom metal buries the listener under the weight, while gothic metal hauls the weight onto a stage, lights it from below and hands it a chorus. The theatre is the point.

Gothic metal, chapel by chapel

Seeping out of the three Peaceville bands of the early nineties like damp through the stone of an old chapel, the map spreads into nearly every country that had a doom and death metal scene: Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Anathema at the source, Tiamat and Katatonia in Sweden, Theatre of Tragedy and Tristania in Norway, The Gathering and Within Temptation in the Netherlands. Portugal answered with Moonspell. Italy sent Lacuna Coil, whose "Heaven's a Lie" reached American radio and pulled the band into the country's mainstream.

New York supplied the irony and the gold record in one stroke. Type O Negative's Bloody Kisses became the first Roadrunner album certified gold in the United States, and the critic Greg Prato later argued that before the band there was really no such thing as goth metal. Finland turned the style into a chart habit through HIM, Sentenced and The 69 Eyes, while Evanescence smashed it into the American mainstream with Fallen in 2003.

The borders blur on every side. The soprano and the orchestra lead straight into symphonic metal, where Epica and Within Temptation work in both rooms at once, and Moonspell began near black metal before building their whole career in gothic metal. The Greek veterans of Rotting Christ and the Swedes of Tribulation crossed the same line from the extreme side.

Seven for the wake

Seven gothic metal albums, from the doom and death metal source in 1993 to the grey Swedish rain of 2006. Draw the curtains first.

My Dying Bride Turn Loose the Swans Peaceville, 1993
Martin Powell's violin wound through monstrous riffs, Aaron Stainthorpe moving between growl, speech and song, and a closing track built on an eighteenth century Scottish poem.
Type O Negative Bloody Kisses Roadrunner, 1993
Peter Steele's baritone over Josh Silver's layered keyboards, "Black No. 1" and "Christian Woman", and the first Roadrunner album to go gold in the United States.
Tiamat Wildhoney Century Media, 1994
Johan Edlund chased Pink Floyd out of the death metal cellar into psychedelic, atmospheric songs, produced by Waldemar Sorychta at Woodhouse Studio.
Paradise Lost Draconian Times Music for Nations, 1995
Stark gothic rock gloom locked to crunching heavy metal, "The Last Time" as the single, and number 16 on the UK albums chart.
Moonspell Irreligious Century Media, 1996
"Opium", "Full Moon Madness", the song that usually closes their shows, and Aleister Crowley reading his own poem on "Awake!".
Lacuna Coil Comalies Century Media, 2002
Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro trading lines in English and Italian, "Heaven's a Lie" as the single, and more than 300,000 copies sold in the United States.
Katatonia The Great Cold Distance Peaceville, 2006
Doom slowed into alternative rock and shoegaze textures, "My Twin" as the single, produced with Jens Bogren and David Castillo in Örebro.