Various

Hiring crabby goth author Mick Mercer (Hex Files: The Goth Bible) to collect 16 songs that have importance to the goth scene was a stunning idea for K-Tel. He does a decent job detailing the reasons why certain songs were chosen in the liner notes. While traditionalist probably own copies of Alien Sex Fiend, Christian Death, Bauhaus and Fields of the Nephilim albums, the Nosferatu children just created by Manson and Coal Chamber probably do not. This album is for them, according to the introduction, “because the Goth audience never dies out and new devotees always appear in regular burst of activity and awareness.” Alien Sex Fiend’s punked up goth, “Dead and Buried,” has nothing musically in common with the soft, elegant sounds of Black Tape for a Blue Girl’s “One Last Breath,” yet both have been tagged as goth music for their sense of despair. This is the only tie that binds every song on Goth and at one time this was all that was needed to enjoy the many sub-genres. Leave the snickering about the relevance of various sub-genres in the coffin and awake to the diversity that goth music has.