Bauhaus : Stigmata Martyr
On November 3, 1980 Bauhaus released their debut album In The Flat Field on 4AD Records. The album, which sounds like a soundtrack to your worst nightmare, has achieved legendary status as the first true goth album. On "Stigmata Martyr" Peter Murphy, raised a Roman Catholic, recites "In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit" in Latin. On stage, lit starkly for dramatic purposes, he would act as though he were being crucified.
Red Starr of Smash Hits was not impressed with the album:
Mostly it just sounds like Banshees reject material - dark, edgy songs of soulless waffle posing as tortured imagery with hardly any melodic content- and no amount of self important vocals, shrill guitars or pounding drums can inject life where none belongs.
NME described the album as "nine meaningless moans and flails bereft of even the most cursory contour of interest, a record which deserves all the damning adjectives usually leveled at grim-faced 'modernists'." Reviewer Andy Gill then ultimately dismissed them as "a hip Black Sabbath". Dave McCullough of Sounds was also negative: "No songs. Just tracks (ugh). Too priggish and conceited. Sluggish indulgence instead of hoped for goth-ness. Coldly catatonic."
Bauhaus would have the final say. Any Goth seeking inclusion in that dreary world apparently needed this album as a passport.
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