Content Creator KB Explores Goth Music in Latin America

Since its experimental beginnings in the UK in the early 1980s, the goth subculture has sprouted and spread across the globe. Goth music can be heard and enjoyed in all sorts of languages, from German to Spanish. In fact, there’s been a thriving goth scene throughout Latin America for some time and content creator KB is spreading awareness about it with their YouTube channel, Goth Music Latin America.

To commemorate Latinx Heritage Month, I thought it’d be a wonderful idea to highlight the scene in Latin America, and there’s no better individual to talk to about this topic than KB who’s becoming a fantastic resource on the subject. They’ve been approached by various bands who are interested in being featured on Goth Music Latin America, plus KB has been a guest on the popular goth podcast Cemetery Confessions.

KB, who’s Salvadorean-American, started their YouTube channel a few years ago and has covered bands from countries like Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Mexico, to name a few. They do informative album reviews and create videos focusing on specific areas, such as one zeroing in on all-female Latin American goth music groups, which I found really interesting. I’ve been following KB on social media for a while and found them to be a great reference for learning about the Latino goth movement.

So, I wanted to know more about how KB got started and what their thoughts were on what differentiates Latin American goth music from goth music being produced in other parts of the world. We talk about these topics and more in the following interview.

Q: Your YouTube channel highlights goth music in Latin America. Before we get into that, how were you introduced to the goth subculture?

A: A mix of factors. My dad liked a lot of new wave and alternative music from the 1980s, with which there was some crossover with goth, so I heard some of it growing up, like Siouxsie or The Cure or some goth-adjacent new wave bands, like Depeche Mode. While I was vaguely familiar with “goths” as a concept from general pop culture as a child in the 1990s, I remember what truly piqued my interest in the subculture was actually seeing goths at Disneyland of all places. Like a lot of Southern California families, especially with a Disney enthusiast mom, my whole family had Disneyland passes back in the ’90s and early ’00s (when those things were actually affordable to common people) and one of the days we happened to attend was literally the first ever Bats Day at the Fun Park. I was so intrigued by these people. A few years later, I would see a swarm of goths at Disneyland when Haunted Mansion Holiday became a thing.

At this point, my family had an Internet connection (so weird to think that wasn’t the case for everyone back in the early 2000s!) and I started looking into this subculture of people. I was the ultimate “Wiki-goth” as people now say, trying to learn everything I could via the Internet, as I was a tween who couldn’t exactly go to events yet aside from Bats Day at Disneyland. I relied on my local library to find the bands that I didn’t already have access to via my dad’s music collection. Fortunately, being from a big city, the library music collection had all the classics.

Q: What inspired you to start a YouTube channel dedicated to goth music in Latin America? Why do you feel it’s important to raise awareness about it?

A: I got into Latin American goth bands specifically when I was at Release the Bats event and a song by Mekrokiev came on. I realized that I had never heard a goth band from Mexico or anywhere else in Latin America and started looking them up. I found there was a veritable bounty of Latin American goth bands out there, but I couldn’t find too many goth influencers on the Internet, where most young goths get their information from, talking about them. I figured starting a YouTube channel was a good way to get the word out there about some of these bands. Given the big Latino goth scene in SoCal and other parts of the US, as zeroed in on in those many “why Latinos are so goth” think pieces across the Internet, I knew that there would be a market – not a big one, but one, nonetheless.

Q: Goth music is a special and unique genre, but in what ways do you feel Latin American bands have enriched it? Are there any characteristics, besides the language, that you find are distinctive to Latin American goth music that aren’t present in the genre elsewhere?

A: I have noticed certain trends that appear to have popped up in certain countries that carried on elsewhere. I noticed there was this trend specifically among central Mexican acts of these weird, horror-themed electro projects (such as Zezaree or Skeletal Bats), which within a few years, started popping up in other Spanish-speaking countries and I have started seeing in the US. While there has always been some crossover between goth and shoegaze, I noticed some Chilean bands really distilling them both in a way that I hadn’t seen before (such as Seatemples or Dead Serpent). Also, while folk influences in goth and rock genres have also been a thing for some time, Latin American bands were the first I saw using indigenous Latin American influences, such as in Ariel Maniki and the Black Halos from Costa Rica, La Reina de los Condenados from Peru, or, most recently, Huapangotico from Mexico.

Q: Since we’re commemorating Latinx Heritage Month, what do you appreciate about your Latin American heritage?

A: There are many things I like about my Latin American heritage, but, because this is a goth page, I really appreciate the way my people aren’t afraid to be emotionally expressive and put a lot of effort into aesthetics, especially in this era of minimalist indoctrination. People say we’re gaudy and dramatic, but to them I say, maybe you’re just boring and repressed?

Q: Which Latin American goth bands would you recommend to anyone who’s new to the genre?

A: It really depends on one’s sub-genre preferences. I feel like you can’t go wrong with Chilean duo Diavol Strâin, a post-punk darkwave mesh, who has actually gotten so big that they’ve toured in the US and Europe. For people more into more general post-punk/new wave type bands, Hoffen and Prismatic Shapes, both from Mexico, are great. People more into rocking goth music should look into Deliverance or Lúcida Fila from Mexico or Ariel Maniki and the Black Halos from Costa Rica (the lead man of the latter is currently also involved in a project, The Waning Moon, with Zac Campbell of The Kentucky Vampires, for any fans of theirs out there).

Deathrock fans should look into Angustia Espiritual or DYSTT from Costa Rica, Tamas from Colombia, or Desahuacidos from Puerto Rico. Ethereal goth fans need to look into Red Apple Cvlt from Costa Rica or Scarlet Leaves from Brazil. Dancey-electro-goth fans should look into Calaverx from Mexico (who is currently touring, including in spots in the US), SCHMERZ from Peru, or Depresion Radikal from Argentina. People into super gloomy, sad post-punk should look into Memory Drops or Guerra Fría, both from Guatemala.

Q: Where do you think the future of Latin American goth music is headed? What are your hopes for it?

A: Musically, I think a lot of the bands are already doing good things and I like how diverse many of these countries already are in terms of subgenre, so I wouldn’t give them any advice there. I hope that there is a Salvadorean goth band someday, as a proud Salvadorean-American. Whoever runs Meldamor’s Instagram page (whether it’s Dave, Mel, or some social media assistant, I do not know) actually messaged me once asking if I knew any and I had to sadly inform them that I had searched many times and fallen short every time.

As a bigger perspective on the goth scene as a whole, I really hope that more Latin American goth bands are included into the official goth music canon across the world. It feels like some people, even people who aren’t exactly “Western” themselves, don’t take goth bands from anywhere as seriously if they don’t tour in certain parts of the US or Europe and, while I hope that more of these bands get those opportunities and am happy for the ones that have on a “career milestone” standpoint, I hope that we also as a scene start to let go of the idea that that has to happen for them to be respected or that the scene is more “valid” in some places than others. I am glad to see that some of the big goth music events in Latin America, such as Lima Gothic Wave Festival and the various goth fests in Mexico, are getting bigger and I hope to see them getting the same amount of attention that events like Whitby Goth Weekend and Wave Gothic Treffen. I want to see the big goth influencers from the US or Australia or wherever clamoring to travel to Chile or Peru to go to the goth fests there instead of just the ones in Central Europe and the UK. I just want to see the scene over there as being respected as its own thing.

Q: Before we part, what do you have planned next for your YouTube channel and other projects?

A: With me being in grad school right now, my posting is not going to be as frequent (at the moment, I am aiming for once a month), but I do, as always, have some album reviews lined up, including a special one for Halloween season. I have recently made two videos on various goth single releases from throughout Latin America and I was thinking of making a few country-specific ones, starting with Mexico because it has such a massive scene.

In addition, the videos my followers appear to get the most excited about are the band list videos and two that I hope to have out before the end of this year are one on Latin American ethereal goth bands and another on Latin American deathrock bands with female singers. The former is because I have noticed, with the ’90s/early 00s being stylish again, that has also impacted the goth scene and I have noticed a renewed interest in ethereal-type goth music, so of course I want the ones from Latin America to get some attention. The latter is because 1) I had considered both a “female fronted bands” video and a “deathrock bands” video, but both lists were way too massive on their own, so I’m combining those two ideas, and 2) who doesn’t love deathrock girls? I also have plans to make a video on the bands from the 1980s post-punk boom in Uruguay, but I probably won’t be able to work on that one until my winter break, if not next summer, as part one of my Peruvian goth bands duology, which focused on bands from the 1980s and 1990s, showed me, it will require a lot of research. As for outside of YouTube, I am focusing mostly on finishing up my Master’s Degree.