Your Goth Teen Is Trash

Illustration: SHALTMIRA

Read parts One and Two in our horrible goth parenting guide.

Remember that scene in Home Alone where Kevin spills the soda because Buzz Your Girlfriend Woof ate his cheese pizza and the mean uncle says “Someday you’re going to play a drug addict murderer (he screams this part right in Kevin’s face) and then start a band about pizza that everyone who isn’t a really sad person will hate, ya little jerk”? That’s your teen when you walk by their room and hear them playing Combichrist, loudly and with the door locked. They’re Kevin, who is a selfish child. Joe Pesci was right to hang Kevin on the door and threaten to eat him, though were it me I’d have bound Kevin firmly, of course. That way, even whilst in the throes of agony, I’d have him under my complete control as I devoured him. He’d almost certainly beg for mercy, but to be honest it would only serve to make me hungrier. Pesci blew it (twice!) but that doesn’t have to be you. Your teen needs to be taught a lesson, and the best way to teen-teach is through the power of music, and not with needles. Not again.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as the parent of a goth teen, it’s that I’m not one, and that I don’t have one. That’s why I’m the perfect person to teach your teen: I am them. Way older but just as gross. I know the best way to turn a wayward teen away from the music that isn’t like the music that you like to like, so lick that lousy lout-about-town, tell them to turn that upside-down frown around, stop dressing like a sad clown and get with the program. You stick with me about your kid, kid, and I’ll have ‘em listening to the good Ministry albums in no time.

Youth Code is a great first taste for your teen. Anger speaks to the young; they’re a mean and spiteful breed, just the most horrible people basically every single second of the god damned day. Show them you care as you nonchalantly drive them to school with this playing. Turn the volume increasingly louder whenever they speak. At the end, make sure to play a clip of Rob Schneider saying “Oh-HOO, that’s not right” because it’s wrong to “Rob” a teen of the childhood joys of laughter. “Oh-HOO, that’s not right!”

3 TEETH are basically the prime-era Wu Tang of Industrial right now. Their debut LP hilariously beat James Blake on the digital sales charts, and with good reason. It’s one of the best takes on aggressive industrial rock I’ve heard in ages, and your teen will say the same thing when you play it for them if they want to rest well tonight. So-called “laws” erected by society crumble like cake in my fat mouth as I chews the right tracks for your teen. I’m the Barf Man.

Bruxa’s latest EP might be their best yet, a bumping club-killer of evil, heavy beats spawned from the ashes of witch house. The hip-hop elements might be a bit much for DarqDaddy to drop right from the get-go (that’s the next step), so instead of opening up a can of worms, play this one and watch the worm turn. It’s a real ear worm!

I wouldn’t necessarily refer to M¥rrĦ Ka Ba as witch house, but there’s definitely a witchy presence about it. This remix is a perfect bridge to bring you to my next point: I grew up listening to a lot of Aaliyah. Hip-hop played a formative role in my childhood, and I hear the same kind of darkness in much of it that drew me to stuff like Einstürzende Neubauten or The Virgin Prunes. Your Modern Goth Teen should one hundred percent be aware of this kind of stuff, because it’s 2014 and music is all about genre-blending and social networks. Play this while you look into their eyes to try to find any sort of emotional connection, anything to justify the seemingly needless amount of energy you put into raising them. “Oh-HOO, that’s not right!”

https://soundcloud.com/myrrh-ka-ba/float-ft-aaliyah

Replace all the names of the sexy anime characters in your teen’s fan-fiction with these: Blvck Ceiling, HTRK, ∆AIMON, Blush Response,  Tri Angle‘s entire catalog except for AlunaGeorge.

Replace the name of the obvious self-insert with Nerd Turdington. After your teen discovers the betrayal, refer to them repeatedly by this name. Be sure to hold your nose and say PEE-YEWWW, who let the NERDS out! Clown on that teen.

“Now hold on, I like the techno. Me me; and I’ll have a techno teen like my papa before me, somehow.” Well guess what: I did this, me me, to please your teen. This guide is over. ~

Published August 15, 2014. Words by Daniel Jones.