GOTHIC METAL

Female gothic metal is direct part of wider style: gothic metal, but attention! When we say that is gothic metal, the band has to have neither female vocalist.
Because this book is mainly about female gothic metal (women sing in other metal genres also / for me significant other metal genres with female are stated in the list also), we can realize, what gothic metal is in fact.

Gothic metal is style which is subgenre of heavy metal, I suppose that doesn’t tell much to metal newcomer. It’s enough to know that there is also used distorted sound of electric guitars. Genre developed from mixture of aggressive heavy metal and melancholic gothic rock.
Gothic metal has come from heavy metal indeed, but not directly. From heavy metal came death / doom metal (hoarseness, slow and fast tempos), from it gothic metal evolved directly also. It began to divide on the beginning of 90s of 20th century. Bands like Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Anathema began to play at first death / doom and lately they have played gothic, mainly Paradise Lost, who changed your style from grunted death – doom to gothic metal with clean male vocal.

Lyrics of goth. m. are quite various. Most often it is sung about death, romance, lost, unfulfilled or unreturned love, misfortune, lies, personal experiences / feelings, interpersonal relationships, but also fantasy or vampires.


Hardness of guitars depends from band, mostly hard riffs are preferred as well as in other genres of contemporary metal.

By vocals gothic is various enough also. I divided into sets:
1 – beast – male growling (growling only)
2 – beauty and beast – slow-pacing female vocal and male growling: this style has been adapted by a lot of previous gothic metal bands mainly
3 – female - slow-pacing clean female vocal (it can be soprano / operatic also)
4 – male – male clean vocal
5 – pair - – slow-pacing female vocal and clean male vocal
6 – trinity - slow-pacing female vocal and clean male vocal and beast
7 – schizo – one man or two singers sing grunts and clean vocal also

Regional scenes:
England, Finland, Norway, Germany, Italy, Netherlands