Andrew Eldritch

The Five Most Disappointing Goth Albums: Sisters of Mercy, Vision Thing

All this week we're going to look back over albums from undeniable goth icons and talk about their failures. I have a feeling this one is going to get me into trouble, but hear me out, OK? Both music editor Chris Gray and I agreed that the debut Sisters of Mercy album First and Last and Always wa ... More >>

The 5 Most Important Years In Goth Music: 1986

Over the course of the week Rocks Off will be looking at the biggest years for goth music and exactly what they meant for the genre. Goth history does not have a lot of supergroups, unfortunately. Robert Smith briefly played guitar for Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Peter Murphy occasionally works ... More >>

Craig's List

Our Hlavaty's Top 10 local albums of 2012.

Is Funding Your Album on Kickstarter Insulting and Wrong?

I do a monthly Kickstarter round-up on Art Attack because I really do think that crowdsourcing is a great way to get projects off of the ground that might otherwise never see the light of day. Some wonderful independent video games, for example, exist because of crowd-funding, and it is certainly th ... More >>

Is a New Poe Album Finally on the Horizon?

In 2000, Poe released Haunted, an album that is simply one of the absolute greatest things ever recorded. It was a critical smash success on the pop charts despite that fact that it was more or less a surrealist counterpart to one of the most disturbing and difficult-to-read horror novels of all tim ... More >>

10 Songs That Will Pack Your Wedding Reception's Dance Floor

The 10 Best Songs That Were Never Released (So Far)

Not every song an artist writes sees the light of day, not officially at any rate. For one reason or another, a host of tunes by very talented individuals either don't make it onto albums or remain stubbornly available only in live formats while fans clamor for a studio track. Today we celebrate th ... More >>

Study: Free Press Summer Fest Brought Houston $14 Million

The 20 Greatest Goth Albums: The Complete List

BY JEF WITH ONE F AND CHRIS GRAY 20. Marilyn Manson Antichrist Superstar (Interscope, 1996) So squalid and deeply unpleasant it's mesmerizing, Antichrist Superstar is such an intricate dissection of how to become a "rock star" it could have come from a biology lab. Then 24 or 25, Manson gets so fa ... More >>

The Top 20 Greatest Goth Albums of All Time, Nos. 10-1

BY CHRIS GRAY AND JEF WITH ONE F Rewind: The Top 20 Greatest Goth Albums of All Time, Nos. 20-11 10. Rosetta Stone The Tyranny of Inaction (Cleopatra, 1995) In 1995, Porl Young used a nice-sized record advance to purchase a multitrack digital recorder that changed Rosetta Stone's sound considera ... More >>

Gothic Council vs. Marilyn Manson

I was in high school when Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar came out, and yeah, I played it until everyone around me begged me to stop. Though I've grown to appreciate deeper and better artists, Mr. Warner has always had a place in my heart for introducing me to a darker world. I still think he ... More >>

All The Gothic Council Wants for Christmas is Its Two Front Fangs... And Monster High Dolls

​"Yo," hollered Ramon Medina at us from his El Camino as we were quietly walking down the street listening to Iggy Pop's Preliminaries. "Is there such a thing as a goth Christmas tree?" Then he laughed and sped away. The answer is yes, Medina, there is a goth Christmas. Every October we put u ... More >>

Gothic Council Mutinies Over "This Corrosion" Cover

We still haven't gotten around to setting up our iTunes account on the new phone yet. Since we mostly listen to the NPR live stream in the car anyway it's not a big deal, but every once and a while we get a sudden urge for a certain tune. Usually YouTube solves the trick nicely, and it was during a ... More >>

Gothic Council Remembers Their First Dance

​Gothtopia has spent the better part of our free weekends over the last decade hanging out at Numbers whenever DJ Mina hosts Underworld. It remains the hub of all things goth in Houston, and Mina's dedication to the institution doesn't earn her nearly the praise it deserves. We'd like to take ... More >>

Which Goth Heroes Deserve Their Own Action Figures?

​Gothtopia has been spending some time working a few shifts at Houston's most excellent new comic shop, 8th Dimension Comics. Mostly it's a way to fund our crippling Magic: The Gathering addiction. As we basked in the glory of geekdom and capitalism on a recent shift, we noticed that the shop ... More >>

Gothic Council Nominates 2012 Presidential Candidate

​The Gothic Council has few real duties, you understand. The role of the group is largely ceremonial. Wearing black and judging people isn't really a full-time job unless you somehow end up as a judge on American Idol. However, each election cycle we are obligated to nominate a candidate for ... More >>

The Seven Ages Of Goth

​This is not meant as a complete history of goth, as that would be a huge book. Instead, we're aiming to give a simple overview of the musicians, songs and albums that have most defined the genre. Many deserving artists have been left out, and some that we're sure some people feel are not wor ... More >>

Edgar Allan Poe, Still Wicked After All These Years

​Today we celebrate the birthday of one Edgar Allan Poe, a man whose influence on music simply cannot be overstated. In fact, Rocks Off is going to go on record and say that Poe's writings have influenced more music than any other written work except the Bible, and when you're second place to ... More >>

Five Musicians Who'd Make Better Vampires than Those Sparkly Twilight Douchebags

​New Moon, the second movie in the Twilight series, hits theaters this week, and even though the trailers alone have us ready to put it on our "Worst of 2009" lists ("Jake! NOOOO!"), there's no denying the movie is going to make more money than an underaged prostitute at a Promise Keepers conventi ... More >>

Election Eve With Fred

Retro Active: 1987, Here We Come