Various Artists: A Life Less Lived: The Gothic Box

They start with familiar classics from the bands who turned out to be goth's godfathers-- Joy Division, the Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie & the Banshees-- but the heart of the thing remains England's 1980s goth heyday, where the urge to dance comes out in grim, grinding, relentless music for the fake undead: Look to the Sisters of Mercy's steamroller "Temple of Love", or Tones on Tail's "Christian Says". They sprinkle in darker tracks from the pop bands who filled out goths' record collections: Echo & the Bunnymen, the Cocteau Twins, the Jesus & Mary Chain. They follow the aesthetic as it comes to North America (Christian Death), reunites with punk (the Misfits), meets up with electronic dance music (Skinny Puppy), and starts to become "industrial" (Ministry), and then they glance back at the acts who were the godfathers of that (Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten). They stop in on the kind of arty, spooky goth that was more likely to have women singing (Dead Can Dance, Miranda Sex Garden), and close off with a nice past-meets-future moment: Modern-day band AFI covering the Cure's "The Hanging Garden".

Within all that is a rich vein of terrific pop music, from bands whose more over-the-top impulses seem-- 20 years down the road-- less silly and more brilliantly daring. Between the steady, clanging beat and the dark energy they're working to summon, the best of them genuinely shred: See Red Lorry Yellow Lorry's "Walking on Your Hands", which channels Joy Division for people who wish they'd rocked steadier. It's just as striking to sort through how much these bands contributed to the sound of modern music, with their cavernous, trebly productions helping pioneer the whole use of hard, ugly sound-- every time you love a track for how happily brutal it is, some small credit is owed in goth's direction. (Some acts here take that to bold extremes; the most notable example comes from 1991: Daniel Ash's "Coming Down" is 12-bar blues, only tinny and echoing and with the most curdled vocal treatment possible.) There are also plenty of reminders of goth's other side, the atmospheric, psychedelic spook that descended from Joy Division and the Cure.

Spend enough time with this box, and it just might turn you into a closet goth. The timing is perfect, too, and not just because My Chemical Romance sell lots of records. Some songs have a nervy energy that reflects against today's dance-rock; some have a ludicrous screech that reflects against today's noise bands. And all of it-- the spooky atmospheres, metallic productions, keening voices, dark drama-- has more than a little in common with this site's favorite record of last year, the Knife's Silent Shout. Best of all, it's the rare box set a person can buy to sink into a world that-- unless you've been a serious goth all along-- feels alien and new: These acts have been stuck in the goth ghetto so long that you might be amazed how much they have in common with their better-remembered peers.