Though many bands may have darker, more overt horror-driven themes, I don’t think ANY have captured the essence of a gothic sense of horror better than Bauhaus. From the angular, vampire’s strut and croon of Peter Murphy to the dark and often sparse artistic vistas of their instrumentation to the gothic thematics of their lyrics, it’s all here and it’s all awesome.
Sticking with yesterday’s Bela Lugosi theme…
Who can forget the band’s inclusion in Tony Scott’s lush vampire masterpiece “The Hunger?” An incredible example of the band’s power and one of my fave credit sequences of the era.
( PS — All of you haters of that film can go home, because I think very few films captured the vampire story in as interesting a way as “The Hunger.” RICH and stylish as hell. Tony Scott definitely had a look here and Stephen Goldblatt was DP on this as well. Awesome look. )
Honestly, that legendary song, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” would be enough to earn them a permanent place in the annals of horrordom, but it was the total package here that carried so much appeal. All of it.
This is “Kingdom’s Coming,” another tour de force from the band that was included on the soundtrack album for “The Blair Witch Project.”
So gorgeous, so gothic with that dark sense of foreboding communicated in only the best works of horror of any kind.
I know the band might sigh at a tribute on a dark blog like this as so much of their output was about love and more hopeful themes (and I loved that work as well), but they have given lovers of the gothic a body of work that stands alone in so many ways. My only hope is that the youth of today will look back occasionally to see a band like Bauhaus for what it has given to shape the music of today’s dark edge.
(I found the above band pic on this blog about the goth scene of the golden age. Check it out. Really amazing site.)
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