The Goth Club

Normally I wouldn’t be so trite as to put two club nights into a single post… except for the fact that these are basically the same club… just at different venues and on different nights. Same DJs + same music + same promoters = same club.

SKOL! is on Thursdays at the Amber Lounge featuring punk, metal, nu-metal, alt.rock, grunge & hardcore being put on by DJs Bowie, Lady London, Feral et al. Where as Dirt is on Saturdays at Escobar featuring punk, metal, nu-metal… you know what? Just re-read the previous sentence.

A review of Dirt, at the very least, will be coming shortly as one of the promoters is my erstwhile Doppleganger and I can’t let him continue to besmirch my good face.

SKOL’s Drink Specials:

• $2.50 pots
• $4 basic spirits
• $5 Smirnoff Reds

Dirt’s Drink Specials:

• $2.50 pots
• $5 basic spirits
• $6.50 Coronas
• $15 for 2 Jager Bombs – although why you’d waste good Jaegermeister like that when I’ve given you so many great recipes in my Drinks section is beyond me.

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Gulag is Melbourne’s only free goth club, running the first Friday of every month.

It also happens to be the only goth club in the country that actually looks like the sort you see in movies, a point that has been spoken about in a previous Gulag review.

There are several positives to Gulag: It’s free, the drinks are fantastic as well as being reasonably priced, there are random drink specials until midnight, and even the bar staff are goths. This is all wrapped up in a friendly atmosphere and a projector that will blind you if you dare attempt to go to the toilet.

The downsides are that the DJs play what they want to listen to, presumably because they don’t have 1.2kilowatt speakers at home, and a lack of doorbitch means that regular people often come in after 1am when the upstairs part is closing, stewed as prunes and assuming that being dressed like a goth means you’re a slut (for women), gay (for men) or a whore (for the people that dress ambiguously). It also tends to get a little cramped as there aren’t really any larger rooms.

Gulag is located in the basement of the Great Britain Hotel, 447 Church.st, Richmond (VIC) and conveniently opposite East Richmond railway station.

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Even Free-er entry with flier!

Taking place on the first Saturday of most months and featuring the more Robert Smith end of Goth, with 80s, Punk and New romantic, Ascension is Enmore’s assurance that it does indeed have everything a goth needs to never have to leave a single suburb (except maybe for top end videography equipment).

Entry into Ascension is free. This leaves more money to be spent on the things of importance in a Sydney goth club: Poppers!

Yeah, I went there. I made that joke. What are you going to do about it, Sydney?

Ascension is located at the Sly Fox Hotel, 199 Enmore.rd… which, surprisingly enough, is in Enmore.

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Discounted entry with flier - click for full size

How could anyone that speaks German be evil?

Die Maschine is one of Australia’s longest running goth clubs (no folks, you don’t get to claim you’re the longest running if you keep changing names and venues), pumping out the kind of music that one rightfully expects to hear at a goth club, giving it that “I wish this had movie goth club decore, with some flames and a couple of bondage cages” type of atmosphere… You know, the EBM, dark electronic, Industrial stuff that makes Trent Reznor go “Hey, I can remix that and make 18 more tracks!”

They don’t have flames or bondage cages, unless things have changed since I went last. Perhaps someone in Sydney can give me an update…

Die Maschine is located at Tailors on Central, 84 Mary.st, Surrey Hills (NSW)

Entry is $10, with various drink specials.

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