Hitokiri wrote:To be honest, Ghost, I think they are just generalizing. No offense to those in question but I think they were just taking 3 genres they know are loud and heavy and putting it up. Now, I can't say 100% this is how it is, but I can guess that most people won't think Saviour Machine when putting "goth metal" down nor the more harder gothic metal bands down.
And there's where the decline of the real Gothic music comes in - in the void left by its decline people think gothic consists of wearing black and listening to the latest reincarnation of Alice Cooper style grotesque shock rock. These are people, as well as the people who react to them who could not utter a single sentence about the Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Sisters of Mercy, Clan of Xymox, Faith and the Muse, or anyone else. Why is Saviour Machine Gothic? Because they have the ethereal opera vocal of Eric Clayton and a general sense of dark romanticism laced into the music. For this reason, I say that Gothic Metal is closest to Progressive Metal.
Because it's quote on quote gothic people apply it to being loud and freaky. I can stomach bands like Cannibal Corspe, Horsemen of the Apolocyspe, Behemoth, etc but barely.
In the Gothic slang terms, this sort of "Goth" is generally given the mocking epithets of "Mallgoth", "Spooky Kid", or "Mansonite", coined after a habit of wearing black and listening to the latest incarnation of Alice Cooper style spooky shockingness. I wouldn't be making such a horrible fuss here, but after linking to the Sisters of Mercy and Clan of Xymox videos which are typical of both old school and modern Gothic music, calling it "too heavy" and equating it with the same style as Death Metal owes to wholesale laziness.