First, a warning: This article is not about “Gothic metal” but about Gothic as a literary genre and metal as a music genre. In this post I explore their interconnection, with the concept of the unspeakable as a bridge.
In simpler terms, picture that there is something connecting, say, Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Jinjer’s “Pisces”. This something is what I refer to here as “the unspeakable”.
Two disclaimers before we begin:
- the unspeakable is only one possible link between Gothic and metal. There can be several ways to connect them, but I choose the unspeakable as a neat “umbrella term”, in a way.
- I’m not breaking any new ground here. Literary criticism has analyzed these concepts extensively. At best, I might be just popularizing these analyses.
And with these out of the way, let’s see how Gothic and metal might be siblings – and, more importantly, why we should care.
