Gothic metal can be said to be a rising music genre in the European rock metal music scene in recent years. Although compared with the mainstream status of music schools such as speed metal, progress metal and melody death metal, their influence is not huge, it is conceivable that these emerging Goethe groups will certainly form a force that cannot be ignored in the future. In this paper, I will make a detailed introduction from the origin and development of Goethe in art and culture, its influence on heavy metal music and the development of Goethe's metal music.
What is "Goth"? First of all, literally, it has three meanings. First, the greatest architectural feature of Goethe-style architecture, such as cathedral, is the tall beams and columns, pointed arched ceilings and structures; Secondly, in literature, Goethe is used to describe strange and mysterious adventure stories set in dark and lonely places, such as abandoned castles; Third, Goethe also represents a printing or writing style, gorgeous fonts.
The earliest word "Gothic" originated from the Renaissance and was used to distinguish the artistic styles of the Middle Ages (5th ~15th century). Its origin comes from Goethe, Germany, who invaded Italy and disintegrated the Roman Empire in the 3rd to 5th centuries. /kloc-in the 0/5th century, Italians had the idea of reviving ancient Roman culture and set off a brilliant Renaissance movement. Because Italians can't let go of the historical hatred of Goethe's destruction of the Roman Empire, in order to distinguish it from this period, they called the artistic style of the Middle Ages Gothic, which means barbarism to them. Although the word Gothic originally had a negative meaning, in fact quite a few beautiful works of art were created at this time.
12 century, due to the improvement of architectural technology, a large number of Goethe-style churches were born, the most famous of which is Notre Dame de Paris. Of course, Goethe's style is not limited to architecture, such as sculpture, glass products, decorations and colored pictures. , deeply influenced by it. This artistic creation lasted from the middle of12nd century to the beginning of16th century. In fact, religion plays a very important role in Goethe's art. Both painters and sculptors like to take religion as the theme in their works, but they are not very interested in realistic themes.
In the romantic movement that appeared around 1800, Goethe and medieval culture were once again favored by people and revived. Romanticism can be said to be a reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and perceptual and irrational attitudes are the center of this movement. During this period, Goethe began to be associated with darkness, strangeness and eccentricity. In fact, many symbols and themes of romanticism are quite similar to these Goethe subcultures. Some writers in this period were very keen to describe the darkness and emptiness in people's hearts, and sexual delusion, horror and mystery were widely used in literary works. In addition, in visual arts, romantic painters prefer dark and desolate scenery. Vampire is the most typical symbol in Goethe's novels. Bram stoker's classic Dracula even added the image of a vampire in the book, which is the origin of Goethe's literature on vampires in the19th century.
In the 1980 s, the New Gothic Movement began to be staged in Britain. The appearance of Goethe Movement may be regarded as a reaction to the previous punk culture. In any case, the Goethe spirit began to show its influence in music. Goethe's music also likes to pay attention to the darkness and emptiness of human nature and has a strong interest in death. Slowness, sadness and even horror are the characteristics of his music, and vampires are once again the best in these themes.
In addition to music performances, Goethe artists' groups also visually express the aesthetics of death. For example, their faces are painted pale and dressed in black, or they are ruffled clothes in Victorian England19th century. Medieval ruins and Goethe-style buildings are also widely used. The Goethe movement in Britain reached its peak in the mid-1980s. The most representative bands are Sisters of Charity and nephilim's mission and field.
As far as musical style is concerned, the British Goethe music in this period is called the new wave, with a large number of synthesizers (keyboards) added to rock music, as well as the Goethe elements mentioned above, and even an electronic flavor. After Gothic Rock/New Wave was introduced into the United States, it further developed into a branch of industrial, and the famous groups were Ministry and Nine Inch Nail. On the other hand, in Europe, it prefers electronic music.
Although Goethe's music developed in the direction of electronic music all over Europe, and there were some other variations, in fact, Goethe-style metal music began to brew in the early 1990s, and finally announced the arrival of the Goethe-style metal era with the first album 1995 of the famous Norwegian group Tragedy Theatre.
However, before we begin to talk about Goethe's Metal, we have to start with Destroying Metal, which is a heavy, dark, slow, melancholy and sad music style. Some people think that the earliest origin of doom metal can be traced back to the first album of the same name on Black Sabbath and subsequent ones.
Destroying metals began to develop in many ways after the 1990s. The album Paradise Lost, a British heavyweight band, was released in 9 1 year; Inspired by Gothic rock, it became one of the pioneers who took the lead in applying female vocal music and keyboard string base to metal music. Subsequently, the Norwegian Tragedy Theatre completely integrated doom metal with Gothic elements, thus creating and establishing a new genre of Gothic doom metal, and T.O.T can also be said to be the primary contributor to the revival of Goethe trend. The success of T.O.T made this Goethe metal trend spread rapidly from northern Europe.
Several characteristics of tragedy theater have since become the basic elements of Goethe-style metal, especially Gothic death, and become the mainstream style today. For example, the duet between the brutal male voice of death metal (even the harsh black voice of black metal) and the soft female voice is the dark and romantic Goethe spirit, and this contrast style also symbolizes darkness (the dead hole and the metal music part) and light, life and love (the female voice, piano and symphony part). And T.O.T soprano lead singer Liv Kristine Espe Nast's gentle and graceful singing has already conquered the hearts of many steel men. However, due to the cultural differences among European countries, Gothic metal has also developed and even extended into many different forms. In addition to Gothic doom, in the Netherlands, the party set up a pure Gothic metal, with a beautiful voice as the lead singer, focusing on spiritual feelings. The lead singer Anneke van Giersbergen's voice is ethereal and beautiful. It can be said to be a perfect example of Gothic metal. Later, two other Dutch Gothic metal groups "Within the Temptation" and "After Forever" are also famous for their female lead singers whose timbre and singing skills are similar to Annike's, which shows the influence of the party on Dutch Gothic metal. However, the poly-cost-effective has gradually changed its style recently, and the metal composition is getting weaker and weaker.
In addition, the Nordic Orchestra further blended some black metal elements into Gothic and became Gothic Black. Famous orchestras, including Tristan and The Sins Of Thy Beloved, are from Norway. But in fact, the development of Goth in northern Europe, Goth, bad luck, death, black has been integrated, it is difficult to classify it as a single style. For example, Tristan even used clean male voices, black voices and chorus of opera hostess and choir in addition to the grand symphony momentum.
Of course, the Nordic Orchestra's musical thinking is not limited to this. Therion, Sweden has developed the symphonic opera metal, which includes both orchestral instruments (synthesizer sampling timbre) and metal instruments, and its singing part has recently adopted professional male and female opera choirs. Besides, as a divine grace, Finland gives people a feeling of seeing the prosperity of the world with its quiet and elegant atmosphere of Gothic.
Speaking of the traditional Goethe vampire culture, we can't help but mention the cradle of filth in Britain. It creates an extremely dark, evil and mysterious atmosphere with a large number of keyboards, and successfully blends this Goethe atmosphere into the sadistic black metal, thus establishing the achievements of vampire black metal C.O.F and making it enjoy a very lofty position in the black metal world.
In Germany, classical folk Gothic folk songs have been developed, such as Lacrimosa and Haggard. In addition to synthesizers, these combinations also use real orchestral instruments, so they are quite classic. For example, Lacrimosa cooperated directly with the London Symphony Orchestra, and the members of Haggard even reached 18, which is quite classic.
In recent years, Italy is famous all over Europe for its avant-garde metal and symphony fast-acting metal, but it is not far behind in the development of Goethe metal. The Holy Land of the Heart and Macbeth are among the best. The former is desolate and sad, the latter is romantic and moving, and the melody is moving. In addition, there are some orchestras that pay attention to creating atmosphere, such as Dunwich and Autumn Crown, which are full of medieval feeling, among which Dunwich used medieval instruments and monks' choirs.
As for other European countries, there are also representative orchestras, such as Sirrah in Poland, Even Song in Hungary, Ontho in Romania and I Lay. , the two styles are completely different.
However, Gothic metals began to show a trend of polarization in the late 1990s. On the one hand, it continued the Gothic death route or increased the symphony sense, but on the other hand, it returned to the electronic sound, industrial flavor and even the early new wave route. This phenomenon is particularly obvious in some large groups. For example, in addition to the above-mentioned parties, even the album musique & gt almost faded the color of Gothic death and became an industrial electronic rock band. At the same time, some former doom metal bands have slowly added electronic music to their music.
From the above introduction, we can know that Gothic metal music has been fully developed and is no longer limited to a single style. Goth is not only a musical style, but also an attitude towards life. Goth is a fantasy world that people can escape from reality and enter, a dark and romantic world. Gothic spirit can be manifested not only in music, but also in clothing, art and literature. There are a lot of lace clothes, roses symbolizing romance and graves. Of course, as far as music is concerned, metal fans who generally strongly and directly like it may find it difficult to accept Gothic metal with slow speed and emphasis on atmosphere. However, if we can fundamentally understand the background and artistic conception of this music genre and adjust our mentality appropriately, we may be able to experience a different kind of listening experience and fun.
[Gothic metal] is a new genre of heavy metal music that began to form after the mid-1960s. The appearance of gothic metal can be said to bring new impact and inspiration to the original rigid and standardized metal music, such as the heroic music arrangement of guitar. Let the world experience that the original metal music can also have such a gentle expression that emphasizes the creation of atmosphere, which opens up another new possibility for metal music.
Before introducing Gothic metal, let's talk about the word "Gothic". Gothic (Art) was first used to classify the artistic styles of medieval Europe [[Medieval, 5th-65438+5th century]]. The Gothic art that most people are familiar with is probably the Gothic Cathedral which appeared after12nd century and is famous for its pointed arch structure and stained glass. At the beginning of19th century, Gothic literature began to appear in the territory of novels, and themes such as darkness, eccentricity, mystery and sexual delusion became the themes that Gothic writers were keen to describe.
Time came to Britain in the1980s, following the gloomy and low-key rock music style in the late 1970s, gothic darkness, mysterious charm, death, religion and other elements began to enter rock music, which opened the era of [gothic rock]. Later, through the development of Gothic music, Gothic spirit gradually formed a sub-literary generation, and spread throughout Europe and America. Gothic spirit is practiced in all aspects of music, painting equipment and even lifestyle. Abandoned cold castles, dark basements, pure and beautiful girls decorated with gallows and torture devices, etc. , is a common accessory and role in Gothic music. However, the weird behavior of the Goth ethnic group in the eyes of the world has shocked and misunderstood the general public.
Gothic rock is dominated by music, characterized by darkness and low-key, and uses electronic rhythm and keyboard synthesizer to create a dark and deep aesthetic feeling. Later, Gothic Rock gradually developed into electronic music, and then became a genre of dark wave music. Gothic culture materials were also adopted by metal bands in the early 1990s. Paradise Lost, a famous British doomsday metal orchestra, can be said to be the pioneer of Gothic metal. In its album Gothic & gt 1993, I tried to add a little female vocal music to the work, so this album < Icon & gt was further represented by Gothic images in the design of American editing. Subsequently, the Norwegian Tragedy Theatre completely integrated Gothic elements with destruction/death metal, and formally established a new genre of Gothic death metal, and Toth can also be said to be one of the first heroes who brought Gothic style into metal music. TOT's success made this Gothic metal trend spread rapidly in Europe.
However, compared with the above-mentioned Gothic Rock, for the Gothic metal music schools in Europe, most of them just absorbed the darkness and aestheticism of Gothic culture and integrated it into the performance of music or visual aesthetics. They still emphasize the essence of music, which is different from the so-called Gothic music as an extension and practice of Gothic spirit. There is actually a big difference between the two.
Gothic metal has a history of less than ten years and has accumulated rich characteristics. In terms of style and characteristics, it can be roughly divided into the following categories, but this is not an absolute classification, because the boundaries between different categories are sometimes not obvious, and some orchestral works may cross different categories at the same time.
(a) Darkness and light//Gothic doom/death
Gothic death metal can be said to be the most mainstream Gothic metal at present, with the most orchestral works. The first album of the same name published by Tragedy Theatre 1995 can be said to be the most influential Gothic Death Metal album. The musical elements, such as the duet between the lead singer and the Chamber of Death, and the extensive use of keyboards, strings and pianos, will become the most basic elements of Gothic death metal in the future. The duet between the weak female voice and the brutal dead cavity is like the contrast between the angel and the devil. The dark atmosphere and the melody with a good feeling are all defined by TOT for Gothic metal.
Unfortunately, TOT is on the third album
Lacrimas Profundere of Germany is the best interpreter of Desolate Gothic Doom, and inherits the spirit of My Dying Bride, the founder of Desolate School. His music style is extremely sad, with violin, flute and harp playing as a major feature, with black dead voice+crooning male voice+vocal female lead singer. Unfortunately, from the album