Buyer's Guides.

Perhaps one of the most misunderstood of all sub genres, Goth had its golden (or gloomy) years in the early to mid-80s; but its influence can still be felt today, especially among American bands like Panic! At The Disco, 30 Seconds To Mars, Good Charlotte and the other determinedly black-clad punks.

Goth fully deserves its reputation as the darkest strain of alternative rock, as well as the most visually theatrical. Sonically, Goth took the icy synthesizers and processed guitars of post-punk and used them to create intensely dark soundworlds.

Early on, Goth's lyrics were a heady mixture of the floridly romantic, the unflaggingly morbid, and the melodramatically symbolic, often with a liberal pinch of the quasi-occult. However, and for much the same reason, it spawned a devoted, monomaniacal and still-thriving subculture that lovingly tends to Goth's dark flame while others have grown up and moved on.

Goth's DNA can be traced back to British post-punkers Joy Division. They may not have looked the part but their obsessively frosty music became the template for the goth bands to come.

Following in their chilly slipstream were bands like The Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees. They certainly DID look the part. The excessive make-up and the dark clothes became the essential accesories for any self-respecting goth band. Both these bands, after intense early albums, gradually thawed and let pop sunshine into their music.

But bands like The Sisters of Mercy, Alien Sex Fiend, and the American band Christian Death were much heavier and vastly more self-important.

The music continued to mutate throughout the 90s, taking on board industrial and metal influences: bands like Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails could never have existed without the foundations of goth. The current goth darlings are Evanescence. Again, their sound is more metal than post-punk, but the vampiric iconography and operatic theatrics are all present and correct.