After reading ShadowCrow's post in this thread. About their being "no such thing as gothic metal." I went back and did a search on the board to look for some other previous discussions you guys may have had on the subject but didn't turn up anything.

So I have to ask you guys, why doesn't Gothic Metal exist? I'm not trying to start some forum argument, but I have to disagree, Gothic Metal does exist. I can see how some people are so embarrassed by it that they want to deny it's existence, but nevertheless, it still is.

For example: When someone mentions "Gothic Metal," my mind automatically snaps to Lacuna Coil (as I've mentioned before, not the best example if you're looking for quality), what do they lack that Gothic music has? Everything is there.

It follows the same trend as Industrial Metal; when Godflesh and Fear Factory were inventing the genre they took industrial, sped it up and replaced all the electronics with distorted guitars and triggered drum blasts. Gothic Metal does the exact same thing: it takes Gothic music, speeds it up and replaces the keyboards and drum machines with actual humans. I don't know about you, but I could imagine Andrew Eldritch writing most of the music and lyrics on "Thornography."

As I've said before, I can see why people from both camps (Gothic and Metal) would like the genre to be buried and forgotten for it's lack of quality, but that doesn't change the fact that it does indeed exist, for better or worse.

I really want to see some of the responses and conversations I get from this, so uhh, get started.

Anything I've seen described as Gothic Metal is usually Symphonic/operatic Metal

I for one love gothic metal, but only in it's ideas and SOME bands. As you said before, most of it is pretty bad, but a few bands do make some excellent music (Draconian being the first that comes to mind). I'm just waiting for the day when I find a band that really makes music that gothic metal has the potential to be.

This is true, many bands are commonly mislabeled as Gothic Metal when they aren't.

Nightwish is a good example of this, they're Symphonic Metal, but they're classified as Gothic Metal by many people for their aesthetic and having a female lead singer.

Bands like Within Temptation, Tiamat, Poisonblack and Paradise Lost aren't mislabled, however. They have everything Gothic music has in their works, along with the aesthetic.

What many people also don't realize is that many Doom Metal bands are often categorized as Gothic Metal for reasons many people don't understand (including myself).

It's my understanding that Gothic Metal does exist and that it's a subgenre of Metal, not Gothic. That doesn't mean you can't have Gothic themes. My favorite Gothic Metal band is Projekt: It's dark, it's creative, it's intense.

I think the hatred comes from the fact that it further muddies a rather large genre distinction that mainstream pseudo-metal bands like Marylin Manson and Slipknot have confused a very large number of people about. I'm not going to debate about whether or not a certain genre exists, because that's pointless. Genres exist only to organize music, and if someone would rather not acknowledge a genre I acknowledge for whatever reason, it really doesn't bother me that much.

Most things labelled "gothic metal", have really nothing to do with goth, period.
Most of it sounds like symphonic power metal with female vocals, or in Lacuna Coil/Beseech/Evanescene`s case, romantic hard rock.

There are some exceptions, however: Devil Doll, Dreadful Shadows, early Moonspell, mid-era Tiamat, Virgin Black, some Tristania, Within Temptation(Mother earth), the 3rd and the Mortal, ASP, Umbra et Imago, early Lacrimas Profundere, Rotting Christ, and Mandragora Scream all have a good synthesis of gothic elements within their music.
Also, some of the doom/death bands like My Dying Bride, early Anathema, Argentum, early Amorphis, etc.

I thought Rotting Christ was pure black metal ???

They`re "gothic black metal", as far as I`m aware. Thy Mighty Contract was "pure" black metal, but most black metal has gothic overtones.

Rotting Christ went from Grindcore to Black and now they're Melodic Black. Gothic Black Metal really is an oxymoron, as there's no room for subtlety in Black Metal like there is in Goth Music.

Then again, I'm being an over-categorizing jackass right now, so I digress.

I beg to differ: Summoning, early Dimmu Borgir, Rotting Christ, early Nokturnal Mortum, Burzum, Graveland, Kataxu, Osculum Infame, Sort Vokter, Drudkh, Vordven, Abruptum, Nortt, Celestia, Darvulia, Mutiilation, early Limbonic Art, Emperor(In the Nightside Eclipse), Ulver, etc. etc. etc. all have more in common with gothic/industrial/ambient/neofolk/darkwave than they do with metal.
In fact, black metal as a whole is more of a "dark music" genre than a genre of metal.
For example, Darkthrone, Immortal, and Mayhem have more in common musically with Bauhaus than Iron Maiden.

I was looking at it from a lyrical perspective, so from that respect I think you can see what I'm trying to say about subtleties, compare "Dominion/Mother Russia" (I still have no idea what that song is about) to "Wall of Water." One's very abstractly written while the other one is leading you through an "on rails" experience of the world ending, but I can see what you're saying about the song structure, etc.

In that way Black Metal does have more in common with Goth music than Metal. I mean hell, Mayhem's "Ordo Ad Chao" could be classified as a Dark Ambient record in that respect and "Grand Declaration of War" (the best album they've ever done, IMO) could be easily classified as an Industrial album.

Well, not all goth music has lyrics like Sisters of Mercy.
Diary of Dreams, for example, can be downright nihilistic and apocalyptic at times, Sopor Aeternus also cover some rather misanthropic themes, Christian Death and Das Ich have a few rants against christianity, and Fields of the Nephilim tend to delve into the occult on more than one occasion.

Mayhem`s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas was a very goth-friendly album. Their later albums got more into crunchy metal guitars and whatnot, though indeed there is an added industrial influence. One of the few pure black metal bands to play Wave Gotik Treffen.

The WGT 2000 line up: one of THE best music festivals.... ever!!
Too bad I missed it. I really like how WGT and similar events do their best to bring fans of ALL dark music genres together.

Another band I forgot to mention in my first response was Lacrimosa.

Rather than a metal band infusing gothic elements into their music, they`re more the other way around, an operatic/symphonic gothic rock band experimenting with metal guitars.

As I said before in the CoF post, I'm one of the people that agrees that it exists. Goths seem to have really specific ideas about what's goth(ic) and what's not, but there's nothing really complex about it. I can't think of any gothic metal bands that doesn't mix male and female vocals and deals with "alternative" themes. For me, that's pretty much the defining point of Gothic Metal.

How about this:

Listen to say, Death Come Near Me by Draconian. That's Gothic Doom Metal.

Now listen to some My Dying Bride. That's just DOOM metal. My Dying Bride has some pretty dark lyrics but quite frankly they don't use female vocals enough for them to qualify to be gothic.

Who knows where the label gothic came from. Does it really matter though? It doesn't to me as long as I like the music. There are SO many bands that MIGHT qualifiy as gothic but really everyones opinions will be split on the matter. So many bands fit into so many categories.

Anyway my main point is here is that I think it's kind of obvious that gothic metal does exist. I don't really know how anybody could have an argument against it. It's one of the more obscure genres but if it didn't exist, we wouldn't be talking about it.

As Monet said:
"People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love."

I try to apply that same concept to music.