How I discovered goth and metal

This is a biography-memoir about my discovery of goth and metal cultures. This is personal, quite long, and full of musical references. Nonetheless, my aim is not to tell you my entire evolution as a goth and a metalhead, but to tell you how I discovered these cultures and how I evolved in them in the first years.

The story of how I discovered goth and metal

In primary school, I used to barely listen to music. I was (and still am) a big fan of Indochine and t.A.T.u, and I loved a few songs by Priscilla (a French teen singer), as well as Shakira, Britney Spears or the Disney Channel trio, namely Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. But that was all. My generation grew up with MTV-like channels, but unlike the other schoolkids, the MTV-like music didn’t appeal to me. Thus I was barely listening to music. Until I found goth and metal.

It all began when I was in my last year of primary school. 

I was 10 years old (9 when the schoolyear began, being born in October). With my friends, we liked mangas. I don’t remember whether it was on the school’s bookshelves or whether a friend lended it to me (I somehow feel it was more probably the first option), but I read Death Note. I was in hypnotised by the cover of the 4th volume. And on this cover it's Misa Amane, a key character of this manga. I immediately felt attached to her and identified to her: we were both tiny blondes with blue eyes.

I am from these first generations to have IT class at school. I was learning very fast how to use a computer, so I always quickly finished the tasks we had to do. Thus I had some free time, which I killed by searching for Misa Amane wallpapers. One word was often linked to these wallpapers : ‘gothic’. What did it mean? I looked that up, and the results led me to a neverending love story.

My primary school memories are rather blurry, but what’s sure is that once I had discovered the word ‘gothic’, everything I read about it appealed to me. Whenever I could, I read blog articles and forums, and I was spellbound by what I saw on Google Images. I was already recognising myself in a part of what’s been described to me as being goth (attraction to literature and poetry, to solitude, calm, relfexion, writing), and the other part (music, visual aesthetics, cinema), I already liked without knowing it yet. I had this bruning dersire to know more, to learn, to discover.

As I said, my primary school memories are rather blurry. So what I remember next is that, when arriving in middle school, I was already a big fan of Diva Destruction (which my best friend of that time hated because ‘they sound like ghosts’) and of London After Midnight (whose music accompanied me on the English motorway in 2012 - a beautiful, clear yer nearly oneiric memory). These two gems of darkwave and goth rock, I deeply cherish them to this day, eleven years later.

At the begining of middle school, so proud of the glove my friend gifted me...

My 2010 diary, 11 years old.
I was planning my concert outfit, wishing I could find
 or borrow to a classmate a 'gothic bracelet'.

In parallel, I had discovered metal. Goth and metal are two different cultures, but I can’t separate one of the other, as I love both at the same level, and as I had discovered both at the same time.

The memory of my discovery of metal doesn’t exist. I feel like I’ve been living with it forever, I don’t have any clear or precise memory of when and how it happened. But still, from the very beginning of middle school, Evancescence were my kings and Amy Lee was my goddess. I also loved Lacuna Coil, and the brainwashing caused by my Christian family made me shameful of liking overly death-devil related bands like Therion (or, on the goth side, like Blutengel). I remember being madly in love with and drowning myself in Whispers of Wonder's Plague of the broken-hearted. I was also (for around a year) quite a fan of the Black Veil Brides, that I was supposed to see live with a school friend (‘supposed to’ is the word).

And then came Draconian. At the junction of the music of metal and the poetry of goth, Draconian was fascinating me. Which is strange, as I didn’t listen to them that much, since I didn’t really like growl yet. At the very beginning, in my playlist, there was only Morphine Cloud. Then came The Cry of Silence. And then (or was it before, or did I discover them on the same day?) there was Theatre of Tragedy, with their captivating Siren, their Rose for the Dead and Der tanz der Schatten, which was similar to the Cry of Silence. I was living with the cliché that the German language was as horrible as a poorly played violin, but on this song, it was fine (it’s later, in high school, that Staubkind’s Kleiner Engel changed my mind for good).

My taste in metal was all over the place, I didn’t have much knowledge about music genres yet. If I liked a song, I downloaded it and put in my mp3, without paying attention to the rest of the artist’s genre or discography. And that’s how you could find in my playlist Evanescence, Draconian and metal anime openings.

The first page of the diary I had when I was 13.
Likes : Evanescence, books, goth, metal, friends, black, red, amethyst, English
Dislikes : pop and rnb in general, math, clichés and ignorance about goth.
Description : Goth. Dark. Cool. Melancholic. Intelligent. Serious. Calm.

It’s during the middle of my middle school, which means around 12-13 years old that I started to learn more about the roots of traditional goth music : Joy Division, Siouxsie, Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy. It’s also at that time that I discovered the novel Alexia, when were dead (by Francesc Miralles, never translated into English, sorry - but then again, the second and last volume didn’t get a French translation either...). This book definitely made me love goth music even more, and it also made me love cemeteries, which prior to that I feared. I remember that, instead of spending my lunch time outside in the playground, I was (illegally) staying in the school corridors, this book under my eyes...

While we’re at it, let’s talk a wee bit about literature. I had been writing poetry for as long as I can remember. But my discovery of the goth culture made me discover Charles Baudelaire, who quickly became the most important author of my entire life. So there I was, 12 years old, reading my Flowers of Evil in pdf, without fully understanding them, but still understanding way more than your average 12 year-old (I guess, at least). This led me to a strong need of writing poetry more seriously than I did before. At night, in my room, I would light up candles, and armed with my eternal fountain pen and Adrian von Ziegler’s dark instrumental music, I would write (terrible) poems.

During my middle school years, I loved to invest myself in the goth culture. For example, I made a small booklet in which I wrote what goth was and what it wasn’t. Of course, with time, I realise that some of the stuff I wrote there were not complete or nuanced enough - but it still had a lot of good points, and in any case, it’s with progressive experience that you learn, isn’t it? So I had this handmade booklet, and I would hand it to whoever pissed me off at school with their ignorance.

The cover of the booklet, which reads "everything about the goth culture"

I got my first computer (with internet) when I was in my second year (out of four years) of middle school. I was 13 years old. I remember having signed up to a French goth forum, but they quickly kicked me out, because 1. I was refusing to upload a photo of myself due to my young age, and 2. they didn’t believe me when I was saying I was 13, because, to them, my writing was too good for a 13 year-old (I have that clear memory of someone telling me I write like a 28 year-old... ironically, to this day, I am still not 28). And it’s true, 13 year-old French kids write with many mistakes, hate punctuation, love to shorten or modify words, use a lot of swear words and emojis (and all of that is way worse nowadays). But still, that was the reason why they kicked me out. So I opened my blog. Not a proper blog like this one, no, it was a Skyblog full of useless articles about how my day went. But I remember having recommended The Crow (that I watched as soon as I had my computer, and that, through a fan video, made me discover London After Midnight).

Middle of middle school, age 12-13

My middle school years are also my manga club years. My love for Death Note, Love Hina or episodes of Naruto led me to sign up to the manga club, which was led by one of my French teachers and the school librarian. I was curious of Japan’s music, so I looked that up, and found a video called ‘my favourite Japanese bands’. This video (and the researches that followed) made me discover bands such as X JAPAN,  Sadie, Kiryu, the GazettE, Alice Nine, NEGA. I immediately fell in love with the three last ones, and these bands became a massive part of my gradual discovery of extreme metal, with more organisation in my approach to the artists and their discographies as a whole.

With the manga club, we also did cosplay - and my Misa Amane cosplay (see photo) was my first ever ‘goth outfit’. I then (or was it before that?) tried to do some DIY, in which a spiked collar... with real spikes made from nails (it was obviously a bad idea - but was it really worth being called ‘a child with psychiatric problems’ by my psychologist?). DIY was a thing, and my "transition" to goth clothing had already begun (my favourite outfit at that time was a black-purple tartan top and jeans with a fake chain that was actually a necklace chain), but my Misa cosplay was my first step towards more elaborate goth clothing, and more than that, it was an escape to it, t my dreamt clothing. While portraying Misa, I was also wearing clothes that I wish I could wear everyday, something I was able to do more or less freely when I entered university.

                                                                                                       

And I think that this is how, in the two last years of middle school, that it was clear that I was a passionate goth and metalhead - a passion that never stopped growing, far from being a simple teenage phase. I knew, from that day during IT class at 10 years old, that this is where I belong.

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And that's how this story ends. I hope you enjoyed reading it!
And you, how and when did you discover the world of goth and/or metal?

~ Nephy