With its gloomy lyrics and gray-scale tones, goth is as much an aesthetic as it is a musical approach. That’s largely because late-’70s genre originators The Cure, Siouxsie & The Banshees, and Bauhaus leaned into post-punk’s darkest tendencies without sugarcoating the bleakness. However, goth has never been cloistered from trends—fashionable fans and bands alike soaked up inspiration at London’s Batcave club night in the early ’80s—and its black moods aren’t monolithic. Grinding noise rock, pulsating synth-pop, operatic vocals, haunting world music, and even greasy blues riffs—they’re all considered goth in the right hands.