Gothic Club Classics, Volume 1
Various Artists
SPV
Despite all of the wankery in the genre and “scene” (read: thoroughly beaten and decaying horse), music under the rubric of “Gothic” has at times in the last twenty years been some of the most exhilarating and crucial perfect pop. So forgive ‘em for dodgy fetish nights, Marilyn Manson, fat goth girls doing inhumane things to corsets, dorky boys perpetrating crimes against fashion armed only with black eyeliner, every “dark” “personal” Web site EVER, and fucking dumbshit Voltaire, cuz there has been some godlike noise out of this mess. I bet you don’t believe me. Okay, smug bastard, lucky for you, SPV has managed to corral a whole treasure trove of early Goth classics into a neat little double CD set. As far as I’m concerned, Disc One is where it’s at, Disc Two has haunted my stereo only about five times. Why’s that? Type O Negative, Inkubus Sukkubus, “I Walk the Line,” and poor Diamanda Galas shoehorned in there, sticking out like a damn sore thumb – five shitty reasons should suffice. But Disc One, there’s the good medicine. Mission UK, Das Ich, Clan Of Xymox (before they were shitty), “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” “The Weeping Song,” a transcendent Fields of the Nephilim cut, and and and “LOVE LIKE BLOOD” (yeeeeeeeeeesssssss). God, and indeed, damn, this one makes me pine for the days before Orgy’s version of “Blue Monday” was sure to fill the dancefloor. There I go, dating myself again•
SPV, PO Box 72047, Hanover, Germany, 30531
