Gothic were formed in September 1989 in Genoa, Italy, as a two-man studio project comprised of a very young James Jason and M.C., who is now guitarist/leader of a wide successful Italian ska-punk band. Initially, the project went under the title Cryptic Sanctum, but after two months of activity, Gothic finally assume their definitive title just before their first demo tape is released in December 1989. The resulting release, “Into The Gothic Gloom” (December 1989/January 1990), although badly recorded due to an extreme lack of whatever means and skill, is the manifesto of Gothic’s naiveté. However, the unbelievably poor sound quality displays even better the evilness of Gothic’s early musical aspirations. Drawing influence from extreme and minimalist Bathory-like death metal bands, Gothic, now reduced to a one-man band led by James Jason, express their rage in a very original way. By combining very fast, chaotic riffs with very slow, grim musical interludes, they embrace a genre redefined and re-baptised as “death-gloom metal,” performing guitar and drums by keyboards, without bass, which is deemed useless to express their breaking wrath.

Less than a year later, Gothic release their second and most brutal demo to date, “Into The Deep Tartarus” (September 1990), bringing the satanic thread clearly evident in “Into The Gothic Gloom” to a desperate climax through a grinding deathcore. Already expanding upon their first release, the rhythm is faster, the music is more aggressive and gloomier, and the texts are not publishable. With the release of “Into The Deep Tartarus”, the technics is near to zero and the recording skill is reminiscent of a grindcore band’s live bootleg of the 1980s.

With the next fiendish demo, “Into The Cave” (June 1991), Gothic bring the terrible “Satan’s Trilogy” to a conclusion. “Into The Cave” marks a notable improvement in song writing, with the most well balanced songs based on outrageous Mephistophelian lyrics. While this release remains faithful to Gothic’s grinding/deathcore/gloom style, the songs are enriched by some epic passages and more articulated sounds. “Into The Cave” is the first release to feature bass lines, and although the recording skill is an improvement upon earlier releases, the quality is still far from acceptable. In the last two songs on “Into The Cave”, Gothic are expanded into a three-pieces band, with James Jason supported by guitarist/songwriter Davy Jones and drummer Chris Joint.

Chris Joint, 1992	James Jason, 1992	Davy Jones, 1992

A year later, Gothic release their fourth and most presentable demo, “Whispers From The Grave” (June 1992), which becomes one of their most well-known releases thanks to improved recording facilities and more mature song writing. This release utilises live stereo recording (although not yet track-recording), and Gothic is occasionally expanded from a three-piece band into a five-piece band, with Tom and Ander added as session guitarist and bassist for a few songs. “Whispers From The Grave” outlines Gothic’s “trademark” blasphemous references, and also shows notable change of style. Their death metal has become awesomely slow, better composed and performed, and while the fast songs remain powerful, they are less brutal than they were in the early days. Heavy Metal influences enrich the death metal roots, combined with a more “classical metal” attitude, and illustrates Gothic’s continual search for a more mature sound.

The bizarreness that ruled the previous Gothic releases, only hinted at so far, finally begins to overwhelm on the fifth mini demo, “...And From Hell Came The Revenge” (February 1993). The songs and arrangement of this release are vastly improved upon thanks to the use of a four-track analogue mobile recorder. The three-piece, led by a more and more eclectic James Jason, attempts to mix a primitive but effective punk-death metal with more cold-art/dark-epic sounds by the use of synthesizer. The result is a strange demo representing the final chapter of Gothic’s first incarnation, and, despite of the demo title, the occultist references are reduced to a sheer sparkle.

As a result of the growing musical eccentricity of James Jason, the band split up and James Jason, denying the current voices about the demise of the Gothic project, decides to continue Gothic on his own. This stage is the beginning of a new era for Gothic, marked by almost unknown demos or even just ghost demos never dealt out. From the relative underground success of “Whispers From The Grave”, Gothic fall again into their early glooms... and their originality can definitively overwhelm.

Late 1993 saw the release of “The Pestilence... Post Contagium” (December 1993), which marks an important turning point in the history of Gothic. The songs are extremely slow, oppressive and heavy, combining claustrophobic doom metal originality, with synthesizers and keyboards often in place of electric guitars. Bass lines are now introduced into all the songs, which support the heaviness of Gothic’s new style. The lengthened, extended song writing on “The Pestilence... Post Contagium” resembles a huge medieval picture with many different images, combined together by a renewed dark spirit that replaces the old and worn-out occultist thread previously offered by Gothic. However, despite the revolution of style, the most forbidding song ever to be released by Gothic is released on “The Pestilence... Post Contagium”, and is a testament to Gothic’s fundamental self-contradiction. The recording facilities utilised on this release include a six-track analogue mobile recorder, which marks an improvement on Gothic’s previous releases. A more cured sound finally boosts the more skilled, complex and long arrangements, which are ruled by a tragic sense of doom.

From 1994 to 1997, a thick black curtain falls down on Gothic’s underground theatre. This deliberate isolation is due to James Jason’s desire to seek out new unexplored fields in the land of experimentalism, without any compromise with the underground music market. The uncompleted fruit of this research is “Dreaming The Apocalypse” (November 1994), an eclectic composition of different styles, ruled over by a more and more recognisable sour doom-gothic-metal mark, with some rough speed-punk metal as a reminder of Gothic’s early work. The result is a searched disharmony not only among the songs but also among the parts of the songs themselves, reflecting an imbalance in the dark mind of James Jason, which is emerging more and more tragically. The depression that accompanies the release arises from the James Jason’s desire to not corrupt the purity of the music, transcendent soul’s mirror, with the use of the words, symbol of earthly transiency. So, unlike previous Gothic releases, most of songs are completely instrumental.

Davy Jones, 1995	James Jason, 1995

The endeavour of recomposing this “schizophrenic theatre” was carried out by “Dark Dimension” (September 1995), Gothic’s eighth release, which saw the return of former member Davy Jones, much improved in his role as a guitarist. After months of rehearsal with a new line-up, and after the change of bass-player (Dr. D.), Gothic goes out from their splendid isolation to become again a real band. Composed of James Jason (vocals/keyboards), Davy Jones (lead/rhythm guitar), Jordan (bass) and Ricky F. (drums, who is currently the expert drummer of a local U2-like rock band, together with Davy Jones), occasionally supported by Mr. R. on rhythm guitar. However, this union lasts only few months and breaks up during the demo’s rehearsals because of musical disagreements, leaving James Jason to produce the demo alone, again. This event has a deep influence on the demo’s style. Proceedings for “Dark Dimension” began as a “raid” in the mainstream power-speed metal genre, but finally turned out to be harsh and powerful gothic metal, ruled more by the guitar-keyboard sound than by the string-keyboards or synthesizers. The song writing is both well planned and well balanced, and although the songs are still complex and even longer than before, they are arranged with a notably improved skill.

While “Dark Dimension” is considered as the most mainstream and “classical” Gothic release to date, then the follow up is deemed the most experimental and dark of Gothic’s career, the utterly grim “Cold Winds Of Suicide” (January 1997). The song writing, more unforeseeable than ever, scatters into many little fragments, representing an eulogy of a funeral madness leading to the final act of a impenetrable sorrow: the suicide; told in its delirious mental progression through an ensemble of untitled fragments, in order to underline the deliberate anonymous character of the suicide. Like the previous three “ghost demos”, “Cold Winds Of Suicide” is totally instrumental except for two songs, one of which is the first James Jason’s poetry ever transposed in music. The song writing definitively goes beyond the metal’s boundaries, and it reaches new frontiers of the dark-art music, with only some few hints of gothic metal to remind you of Gothic’s musical roots. As with the previous three releases offered by Gothic, “Cold Winds Of Suicide” pays homage to the feeling of depression, and to a general carelessness for the form, a sign of opposition to every kind of timeserving or commercial idea of the music. As a result, the recording is purposely hardcore sound-like, only in two stereo tracks (except for few songs recorded in six analogical tracks), and this formal minimalism widely clashes against the complicated plots that have recently characterised Gothic’s song writing.

Soon after the recording of “Cold Winds Of Suicide”, Gothic feel their carelessness for the “form” of their music-work doesn’t fit the improved skill of song writing. At the same time, the radical choice to express only through music without words turns out to be a too rigid limit for the lyrical maturity showed in the last few vocal songs, and in the concept of “Cold Winds Of Suicide”. Therefore, Gothic try to carry out a difficult but inevitable turning point caused by a new aim: to go out from their limiting total isolation and, as it happened for “Into The Cave”, “Whispers From The Grave” and “...And From Hell Came The Revenge”, to meet a larger audience in order to spread the utterly original musical and lyrical conceptions of Gothic. Of course, without any purpose of degrading marketing, which is and remains incompatible with Gothic’s ideals and approach to creating “art”.

In the beginning of 1997, Gothic make an effort to go beyond the boundaries of music and, approach a wider artistic project of “multimedia lyrical description of the inner-darkness.” The original and visionary illustrator, David Bosch, begins working together with James Jason on the Gothic project by redesigning the covers to Gothic’s previous demos (from “...And From Hell Came The Revenge” to “Cold Winds Of Suicide”). David Bosch also agrees to design and create the artwork and layout of Gothic’s future releases.

James Jason, 2000

In line with this hard choice, the approach to the release of the final product becomes, without any comparison, more professional than in past, especially the recent past. The song writing aims more to a studied balance between the single riffs of the longer and more complex songs, and bass lines get recorded in all of the rhythmic parts. The arrangements are cured in their little details and that’s the reason why the working process last three years. The songs are no longer instrumental, with few little exceptions, and the lyrics reflect a deep maturity never shown before, expressing their reflective attitude by tales or poetry. The lyrical content is full of allegories and metaphors on the inner clash between the search for a light, in the shape of illusion, love and faith, and the encounter with the darkness, in the form of oblivion, loneliness and pain. The recording level, for the first time, is at least acceptable, thanks to the uniform eight tracks analogue recording on every single song of the release.

The great novelties are two: the death-vocals are replaced in all the songs, except one, with a high tone vocal of neo-classic power metal style, and after the rehearsal, the demo gets transposed in CD-R format for the very first time. Finally, the distribution of the album is wider than ever before. Gothic are always an ultra-underground band, but at least a successful one!

Released as a double CD, divided in four acts, “Fleeing The Rainland” (October 2000) is a big step forward, and it shows, more so than in the past, a bewildering, eclectic way to interpret the concept of “gothic music.” This release combines together not only gothic-power-speed metal, in homage to the historical Gothic trademark, but also neo-classical, symphonic, dark-punk, doom metal, heavy rock, free jazz metal, hard groove and soundtrack-like music, all of which are described by the band through the simple but challenging denomination of “gothic prog metal”.

James Jason, 2004	David Bosch, 2004	Davy Jones, 2004	John Ruin, 2004

Unexpectedly, “Fleeing The Rainland” turns out to be the final chapter of Gothic’s old identity, and represents a transitional album, the first step to a new professionalism. The big leap to a totally new identity and artistic approach to creating art is by the following album, to be released after good four years of working process. This breakthrough album is titled “Grim” (May 2004), and is the first of a trilogy dedicated to the different faces of dark, avant-garde, heavy and extreme music. This multimedia “border-project” is an attempt to express the darkest and most forefront, experimental “black core” of the gothic art, and involves not only music but also poetry and figurative arts. The genres of darkwave and avant-garde have all passed through Gothic’s musical roots, heavy metal, the influence of which is a testament to a past that can never be abolished, even if Gothic’s music aims to be in the van for concepts, words and sounds, supported by pictures. Many peculiarities make “Grim” an utter revolution in Gothic’s history.

• The music style and song writing is stranger to the goth-prog metal style that characterised the second version of Gothic, from 1993 to 2000, and is based on a dark avant-garde pattern peculiar to Gothic’s new musical identity. The Gothic project enters into another gothic dimension, no longer within the dimension of the metal universe but within that of the darkwave, interpreted in an experimental way to feel and to create gothic art. If “Cold Winds Of Suicide” was the first Gothic release where most of the songs transcend beyond the cannons of heavy metal, then “Grim” is actually the first Gothic release that is not a heavy metal album (at least in its traditional sense) but also features elements from electro-goth, acid techno, trip hop, trance, EBM, industrial, apocalyptic ambient, esoteric and IDM, grounded with the trademark Gothic post-metal style.

• As for the lyrical content, for the very first time, all vocal songs feature poetry adapted to music and not tales in prose form as with previous releases. The ground lyrical inspiration is really very close to the most extreme concept of the idealistic “dark thought” and the poetic style is an echo of different influences: “Ermetismo” (early 900 Italian school of obscure poetry); the new Anglo-American free association of words; the poetry of the “crepuscolari” (late 800 Italian school of poetry of pain), combined with Gothic’s classical influences coming from the “cursed French poets”. Also a particularly strong influence is the post-futurist movement, in its different expressions generally forming what is known as “the avant-garde literary movements.” In homage to the new multimedia concept of the Gothic project, all these lyrical influences are “translated” in images and pictures by means of an artistic way, through Dadaism, cubism, nu-expressionism, nu-surrealism, abstractionism and symbolism, all of which are passed through Gothic’s ultra-dark idealistic filter.

• Davy Jones returned to the Gothic fold in 2001 as stable member. His support in the song writing and arrangement has proved invaluable, but above all, his high knowledge of musical theory, together with his guitar solos and massive guitar riffs have definitively made “Grim” an album able worthy enough to blow away listeners’ minds.

• As far as recording is concerned, all songs are arranged, engineered, mixed and mastered by means of a professional 128 track digital workstation, supported by digital synthesizers, beat boxes, drum machine samplers, bass and percussion samplers and digital fxs. Of course, no midi files were used. Since 2003, Gothic have featured a new member, John Ruin, who is not only the exclusive sound engineer and co-producer of the band, but also the webmaster of the Gothic’s website as well, which was created by him in April/May 2004. The website is another step towards a more mature and professional way “to live” the Gothic project. Thanks to his ability and dedication, Gothic have been able to make this “big leap” in order to get a wider international audience.

All these factors have contributed to the miracle that has enabled Gothic to go from local, “amateur” band status to a professional project, whilst still remaining faithful to its early choice of total independence from any label or temptation to fall in the gorgeous commercial vortex of the music business. “Grim” has been delivered in Italy, Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Finland, Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia & Montenegro, Slovakia, Hungary, Macedonia, Greece, Israel, Philippines, Morocco, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. From their very humble origin, Gothic are now representative of the pinnacle of that “huge controversial iceberg” known as the sub-underground darkwave, located half way between international, professional and cult-underground bands and local, amateur and unknown bands.

Between purgatory and hell, the morbid taste of the lurking limbo is called as “Gothic”.