The Art Of Darkness is the first major and only complete comprehensive overview of Goth music and culture and its lasting legacy.
650 pages long The Art Of Darkness explores the context that created the culture in the post-punk period and also spans the fall of Rome, Lord Byron and the romantic poets, European folk tales, Gothic architecture and painters, and the occult to the modern Instagram influencers.
The book is built mainly around the post-punk Goth period with interviews from Robert Smith, the Banshees, Bauhaus, Nick Cave, Ian Astbury, Andrew Eldritch, John Cale, Xmal Deutschland, Jordan, The Sisters Of Mercy, and many others.
The book is also a first hand account and looks at the music, style and the political and social conditions that spawned the culture and is also a first-hand account of being there at the gigs and clubs that made the scene happen…the book is the first and only deep dive into the topic and gives a context to why it happened and its in-depth history. It also covers how and why it happened across the UK and the world and looks at the small towns where it thrived and the clothes, the music, the drinks and the aesthetic that made it thrive before ending up as a huge worldwide culture in these modern times with the taint of goth everywhere in mainstream culture from the Wednesday TV series to films to books and the classic acts from the scene who have always denied being called goth filling stadiums under the flag of a scene that never officially existed and was a retrospective term for what was once known at alternative culture – the book looks at this awkward relationship with the G-0word and also what constitutes a scene and also celebrates the music which was some of the most groundbreaking and thrilling of any genre and it’s resonance through the decades.
