The Only 1983 Playlist that Matters: Goth and Industrial

I have a truly shocking revelation to share with the world. I hope you’re sitting down.

Ready for this? OK, here it comes: TikTok Zoomers didn’t invent androgyny. They weren’t even the first generation to run around looking like rejects from a sideshow attraction. Zoomer girls, I mean Zoomer uterus havers, didn’t invent shaving the sides of your head and dyeing what's left weird and unnatural colors.

Mind-blowing, I know.

Goth came into its own in 1983 when The Batcave Club — originally  just a themed club-night — moved to Leicester Square and inadvertently gave rise to a new genre. The Inkies, clueless as ever, dubbed it with the ridiculous misnomer “Positive Punk” until “Goth” took hold a couple years later. 

Musically-speaking, Goth was an offshoot of Post-Punk guitar rock, which had pretty much faded from fashion in the UK by ’83. Visually, Goth took the garish grotesqueries of second-wave punk and threw in some exhibitionist infusions from the dead-as-a-doornail New Romantic movement. Goth also took spiritual inspiration from Hammer Horror and the rising occult underground and stylistic inspiration from gloomy Post-Punk groups like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, and Joy Division, as well as synthpop and New Wave.

No one ever could have foreseen Goth would inspire a huge boutique chain (Hot Topic) or the massive Vampire craze, and influence everything from movies to comic books to video games to interior design.

The Batcave was the brainchild of two Specimen, whose look and mystique was infinitely more interesting than their rather-generic new wave guitar rock. Jon Klein would go on to be Siouxsie and the Banshees’ longest-serving axeman and their outfits would be picked up by Sigue Sigue Sputnik at a rummage sale.

Fellow Batcave regulars Sex Gang Children may have looked and sounded like a Virgin Prunes cover band… 

That’s all I have to say about them.

Alien Sex Fiend offered up a unique synthesis of early Killing Joke and early Alice Cooper, replete with an irrepressible frontman who couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket. But you can’t help but admire their tenacity.

Come to think of it, maybe it wasn’t early Alice Cooper after all. This 1980 clip may in fact be the template for the Fiends’ entire career.

Bauhaus wouldn’t stick around to enjoy the fruits of their labors: a split was developing between singer Peter Murphy and the rest of the band, who’d briefly reform as Tones on Tail and then as Love and Rockets. Bauhaus would reunite several times since their breakup in 1983 and play to far larger crowds than they dreamed possible in their heyday.

A Gothic Singularity in 1983 was reached when Robert Smith rejoined Siouxsie and the Banshees after guitarist John McGeoch fell victim to substance abuse. Unlike Smith’s prior stint in 1979, some actual records would come out of this chemical wedding, including 1983 live set Nocturne and 1984 studio LP Hyaena.

Workaholic Smith and fellow Banshee Steve Severin formed The Glove side-project in 1983 with some random Goth chick and beta-tested the ideas they’d be bringing to the Mothership and a reformed Cure the following year.  The Glove were short-lived but produced a fantastic album (Blue Sunshine) filled to the brim with undiluted ’83 essence.

OG punks turned OG Goths Lords of the New Church struggled to find the sizable audience they were craving but still pumped out some great 60s psych-flavored rock, including this ’83 club hit.

The March Violets were more in the vein of Sisters of Mercy and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, but this late ’83 hit captures the zeitgeist as well as anything else.

The exact same can be said for Play Dead and this killer cut.

The Cult began their long career as Southern Death Cult, which had Ian Astbury in full Adam Ant mode and backed by a band of Juju-era Banshees soundalikes. No one could have foreseen this would all evolve into AC/DC clonery in a few short years, but everyone could have foreseen Astbury fronting a reformed lineup of The Doors.

Kirk Brandon may be the most star-crossed contender in British post-punk. How star-crossed? Well, basically the only thing he’s remembered for now is being the inspiration for Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” Spear of Destiny was pretty much the same deal as his Theatre of Hate: quasi-Goth with an odd fusion of Ennio Morricone and Jacques Brel slathered atop. Interesting in theory, but the songwriting was never really there.

The uncategorizable Killing Joke were still in their “Adam and the Ants, but Evil” mode in 1983 and put out a solid LP (Fire Dances) and a couple singles. This is by no means their best song of the year but it is their most 1983-sounding song. I can’t put my finger on why, but it really captures the essence of the time. And it has the weird occultic-apocalyptic vibe that would eventually produce masterpieces like Mandy and Stranger Things 1.

This song was released in late 1982 but also nails that 1983 vibe as well. This band was formed by Martin “Youth” Glover when he began a 12 year rumspringa from Killing Joke after Jaz and Geordie traipsed off to Iceland to drop staggering amounts of acid and fuck hot Viking babes on a spiritual pilgrimage.

Another of Youth’s post-Killing Joke projects was producing this pack of psychotics from suburban Philadelphia, of all places. The Slacks were way ahead of the curve when it came to Industrial but were never to reap the windfall that they helped create. 

Longtime Secret Sun readers will remember the Slacks' incredibly sick, objectively insane and legitimately disturbing video for “Sexual Witchcraft.”

And here’s where Goth and Industrial rock began to diverge. Both were still bunched under the Post-Punk umbrella and both would interstitch over the coming decades but two separate genres and audiences were beginning to emerge. I should note that I can’t recall hearing any of these terms being used as categories at the time. They were exclusively adjectives in 1983, at least as I remember.

Cabaret Voltaire arose from the same milieu of post-hippie art-school miasma as Throbbing Gristle, but were already well on their way to poppier climes in ’83. “Poppier” being a relative term, of course. Their ideas would be more profitably exploited by others, alas. Ministry began their march of thievery by ripping off the Cabs with Twitch and Nine Inch Nails drunk deep from the well on Pretty Hate Machine. But the weirdest Cabaret Voltaire knockoff has to be Justin Timberlake’s 2018 single “Filthy.”

Shriekback weren’t objectively Industrial but soaked up a lot of the vibe from the nascent genre. This early single best captures the influence.

Section 25 began life as a weirder and even more austere variant on Public Image Ltd and Joy Division, but picked up some sequencers, a female lead singer and a more generous sonic palette along the way. Another utter obscurity that captures the essence of the time in a way more well-known songs cannot.

Weird postscript: Kanye West would sample Section 25 for ‘FML’. 

Australian noise-terrorists SPK had plumbed the extremes of psychosis with their early recordings, culminating in their trailblazing LP, Leichenshrei. They’d move towards a slightly more accommodating sound in 1983 before eventually morphing into a relatively-conventional electrodance outfit.

The emerging Industrial aesthetic would be concretized by San Francisco’s Survival Research Laboratories, who combined nightmare soundscapes with horrific displays of remote control robots, often decorated with animal carcasses and random slabs of meat. Dark, psychopathic, mechanized black magick, absolutely not for the faint of heart.

A weird parallel genre was emerging alongside goth and industrial, largely inspired by Public Image Ltd’s seminal Flowers of Romance LP, which presented a bleak blend of ruthless drum riffs seasoned with detuned synths and found sounds and then basted with John Lydon’s tuneless wailing. 

Swans were loosely affiliated with New York’s fading, arty-farty No Wave movement, but were way too high-T for that pack of pretentious rich kids. Michael Gira and company kicked off a long, eclectic and artistically fruitful career in 1983 with Filth.

Einsturzende Neubauten were similarly spawned from Flowers of Romance’s fecund soil and would enjoy the same longevity as Swans. Frontman Blixa Baargeld would later moonlight as guitarist for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Test Dept. would take the formula to further extremes and package the sounds in 1930s totalitarian chic. Despite the socialist social realism, the band were instrumental in the creation of the Edinburgh Beltane Fire Festival, an early exemplar of pagan revanchist beta-testing.

So what are your fave Goth raves and Industrial rompers from the Year that Broke Reality?

Also check out the Secret Sun history of Goth.