Gothsicles: Industrialites & Magic

Mocking Hanzel und Gretyl: 8-bit loops and Front Line Assembly-esque trance.

This Chicago duo-or-however-many-some invented Tosh.0 for the goth scene before there was a Tosh.0; they can be forgiven, then, I suppose, for fixating on old NES games and internet memes the way 12-year-old boys worship virus-riddled free-porn sites.

Singer Brian DarkNES (that right there is an adorable little jab at Skinny Puppy, in case you’re new) sounds like Weird Al trying to mock Hanzel und Gretyl, his voice cracking as he yells his impotent geek-fetishes from the rooftops, whether the loops be 8-bit (“Save That Mermaid,” in which he discovers that the Goonies video game is difficult), disposable hardfloor (“Voicebox Botox”) or Front Line Assembly-esque trance (“My Guy Died”). So there you have it, cool techno and (honestly hilarious) jokes, its scope limited to the goth kids, whose collective sense of humor, as you may know, would lose most comedy-club battles to any given crew of accountants.

And thus it is doomed, though certainly fun (and long, long overdue) while it lasts.

By Eric Saeger

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