Death rock

Death Rock (also spelled Deathrock) is a term used to identify a playfully spooky offshoot of Punk Rock which first appeared in Los Angeles during the late 1970s.

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Earliest Influences

Some of the earliest influences for Death Rock can be traced to late 1950s/early 1960s with novelty music acts such as Bobby ?Boris? Pickett and the ?Monster Mash? and Screamin' Jay Hawkins and ?I Put a Spell on You?, as well as the visual, auditory and thematic influence of B-movie horror films and their horror film scores shown at drive in theaters.

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Additional influences include the 1960s TV shows the Addams Family and the Munsters and the frequent TV showings of Universal horror films, Hammer horror films, B-movie horror films which were oftentimes accompanied by spookily clad horror movie hosts.

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These darker themes and images would re-appear some 10 to 20 years later by the generation which grew up listening to and watching these pop culture staples when they began to apply these influences to a new form of music called Punk.

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Death Rock in Los Angeles

Death Rock (sometimes referred to as Death Punk) first appeared on the American West Coast in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and centered around the Los Angeles bands Voodoo Church, Burning Image, 45 Grave, Kommunity FK, Christian Death, the Superheroines, etc.

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These Los Angeles Death Rock bands were influenced by first wave UK Punk bands such as the Damned, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, etc. and East Coast Punk bands such as the Ramones, the Misfits, the Dead Boys, etc. as well as the more theatrical Glam acts such as David Bowie, Alice Cooper, the New York Dolls, etc.

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However, these Los Angeles Death Rock bands took the pre-existing base of Punk and Glam and added a large amount of dark yet playful images and themes from borrowed from pop culture. Later, this type of Punk and Glam fused with Horror and horror film scores would be identified as Death Rock. However, at the time, these bands were not immediately identified as part of a new sub-genre of Punk; they were simply considered a darker flavor of Punk or maybe even Horror Punk. These bands would play at the same venues as other Punk bands.

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The Batcave in London

Around the same time as Death Rock was emerging as a spooky offshoot of Punk in Los Angeles, another extremely similar spooky offshoot of Punk was developing independently at a London club called the Batcave

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Initially, the Batcave was envisioned as a club which would specialize in Glam and New Wave musical acts. However, the bands which most frequently performed at the Batcave, Specimen, Alien Sex Fiend and Sex Gang Children, were also strongly influenced by Horror in British pop culture. These bands developed their own darker sound which began to set them apart from the Glam and New Wave scenes. Initially, this new Batcave inspired sound was referred to as positive punk to help differentiate it from Punk's more anarchistic and sometimes violent tendencies.

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Transition to Gothic Rock

Sometime during early 1980s, the Death Rock scene in Los Angeles and the Batcave scene in the UK became increasingly aware of one another, especially after Christian Death and the Gun Club began touring in Europe. This growing awareness resulted in them exerting a mutual influence on each other, and eventually these two spooky Punk offshoots merged into what would later become known as Gothic Rock.

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During the second wave of Gothic Rock in the mid 1980s, the playful, tongue in cheek nature of the music would be replaced with a more serious approach to the dark themes, and the tempo of the music would be slowed down and become more mechanical with the widespread use of drum machines instead of live drummers. This more serious approach was evidenced by the influence of the Sisters of Mercy . While technically a first generation Gothic Rock band (they released their first single in 1980), their sound had far more in common with second wave Gothic Rock bands like Fields of the Nephilim and The Mission than they did with the prominent first generation Gothic Rock bands Bauhaus, Siouxsie & the Banshees or The Cure.

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Later, during the third wave of Gothic Rock in the mid 1990s, Gothic Rock would begin to incorporate many elements of the harsher, factory inspired sound of Industrial music, and the more repetitive and electronic and sound of EBM. These new influences alienated many in the Goth scene who preferred the livelier, punkier Death Rock and Batcave sound. Their growing dissatisfaction with the new direction of Gothic Rock lead some to seek out their earlier Death Rock/Batcave roots.

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Punk Rock: Punk Rock is an anti-establishment music movement that began about 1976 (although precursors can be found several years earlier), exemplified by The Damned, The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and The Clash. The term is also used to describe subsequent music scenes that share key characteristics with thos...

Los Angeles: United States...

1970s: This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1970s. For an in-depth article on the cultural and social trends of the decade, please see The Seventies...

Death rock related Images and Photos (experimental)

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