At last, the Halloween season is upon us. People are firing up their Ouija boards, black cat adoptions are at their seasonal peak, and pretending to be goth while hanging out at cemeteries has briefly taken hold of human civilization.
But does your Halloween playlist reflect your desire to look like you spend time sitting upright against a stranger’s tombstone while reading Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and wearing fishnets? If not, be sure to check out the top 30 goth songs to put on your spooky playlist to make your friends think your third place is a crypt. (Listen to the playlist, click here)
30. Suspiria “Allegedly, Dancefloor Tragedy” (1998)
If you’re not naming your band after a famous 1977 Italian supernatural horror movie directed by Dario Argento that was later remade in 2018 where Tilda Swinson plays a 75-year-old man and one of the actresses is literally named Mia Goth, can you even claim to sleep in an unused grave on the first and third Thursday of the month?
29. The Danse Society “Heaven Is Waiting” (1984)
Don’t be fooled by the “heaven” part, this song is best experienced while you are still alive, albeit while daydreaming about what death must be like. Maybe not the heaven part of post-life, but purgatory sounds dope. At least you get to be a ghost and haunt a house. That’s goth as hell.
28. Specimen “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (1997)
Specimen was highly influential in goth culture. Adding them to your Halloween playlist will make people think you know how to get to the secret cemetery where they have the best headstones and the kinds of crows that perch on loose skulls for decorative effect.
27. She Past Away “Durdu Dünya” (2019)
A lot of what is considered modern goth is more on the darkwave and cold wave spectrum, despite often using macabre imagery. But hey, we’re not here to gatekeep. We’re here to use all of these genres to our anthropologic advantage and strictly score social points during the Halloween season.
26. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry “Head on Fire” (1979)
The Lorries often denied their inclusion in the goth genre. But if that was the case, why is the local graveyard always playing “Head on Fire” over their PA? And why does a cemetery have a sound system to begin with? Some things just fit.
25. Bat Nouveau “Funeral Eyes” (2015)
Gothy band name? Check. Gothy song title? Hell yes. Capable of tricking the guests at your party that you frequently Google “cemeteries near me” on a gloomy Sunday afternoon? Without a doubt.
24. Mephisto Walz “Dear Familiar Phantoms” (1994)
In the future, we’re all going to be composting dead bodies, which will make cemeteries obsolete. In that case, listen to Mephisto Walz and spend all your free time at the gravesite of your choosing while you still can. Or at least pretend to.
23. Paralysed Age “Bloodsucker” (2009)
There’s just something about the sound of the drums and the overall spooked-up feel of this track that makes you want to dig up a corpse just to see if they decompose the way you pictured them to. Damn it, goth bands. Stop compelling us to unearth dead bodies on our day off.
22. Killing Joke “Love Like Blood” (1985)
If you’re going to write goth music you have to have badass song titles such as “Love Like Blood.” Sure, on the surface it doesn’t mean anything, but neither does “All I Want For Christmas Is You” and that one doesn’t even make sense in a graveyard.
21. Light Asylum “Dark Allies” (2011)
The opening of this track is actually perfect as your alarm sound for when you want to fantasize about waking up early in the unused tomb you slept in last night. Even goths have to go to work in the morning.
20. Corpus Delicti “Twilight” (1993)
If this song doesn’t inspire you to hang out at a mausoleum, it will surely make you want to socialize with your other goth friends at the food court at your local mall and talk about Corpus Delicti. Mall goths gradually blossom into graveyard goths. Gothdom is never just a phase.
19. She Wants Revenge “Tear You Apart” (2005)
You might remember this band if you were sentient in the 2000s. You might actually remember this track forever if you’re ever turned into a vampire, which would be sweet because you would be condemned to listen to goth music for eternity. Hell yeah.
18. Christian Death “Burnt Offerings” (1982)
As the official theme song for bats, you can’t get much more cemetery-friendly than Christian Death. The Jane Goodall of bats actually uses this song to attract them so she can study their goth-like qualities.
17. London After Midnight “Spider and the Fly” (2005)
Pretending to hang out at graveyards is what the Halloween season is all about. It’s also about putting bands like London After Midnight on your Halloween playlist to impress that one guy dressed up as Edward Scissorhands at your costume party.
16. The March Violets “Snake Dance” (1993)
For a genre that’s all about giving you the creeps, many of the songs are quite dancey. You could easily host a dance party at your local necropolis and no one would bat an eye. Except for the normies, but they’re going to do that anyway.
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