Dark rock

Dark rock (also known as dark alternative) is a broad style of music that (to varying degrees) generally displays the same musical and lyrical tones as gothic rock, alternative rock and heavy metal, but is not directly considered a part of the subcultures of any of these genres. Popular dark rock bands include Katatonia, Paradise Lost, HIM, Scream Silence, and The Rasmus.

Characteristics
Dark rock draws heavily from alternative rock. The music accompanies a variety of concepts and musical styles, though its fundamental characteristics include morose and romantic lyrics often dealing with the subjects of love and death, as well as haunting and gloomy musical atmospheres. Dark rock uses more gothic and alternative rock elements than heavy metal, and compositions use more electronic nuances (especially synthetic pianos) without abandoning metal entirely.

Dave Thompson, in his book The Dark Reign of Gothic Rock, sums up the vagueness of dark rock as follows: If Dark Rock, Gothic Rock, call-it-what-you-will rock, can be summed up in any single phrase, the music, its makers and its story have never heard it. In twenty years of development, and two decades beforehand of antecedents, the only common thread is surely the individualism that any artist, in any field, must strive towards.

Origins
The term "dark rock" has been in use since at least the early eighties, at first to describe some negative aspect of rock and roll. For instance, The Mass Media: Opposing Viewpoints journal reported dark rock as "popular music that promotes violent and sexually explicit messages in the lyrics." Despite this previous usage, Paradise Lost is sometimes credited with creating the genre of dark rock in the mid-1990s, as the band members often described their music as dark rock in interviews. In the second half of the 1990s, heavy metal groups like Secret Discovery and Paradise Lost expanded their repertoire with modern elements, producing a more melodic, gloomier sound that currently is typically classified as dark rock.

In Finland at the same time, a very similar dark rock style was developed by bands such as HIM who from the early 1990s fused the haunting and romantic themes of gothic rock with the heavier musical qualities of gothic metal, most prevalent on their 1995 EP 666 Ways to Love: Prologue, and their 1997 debut album Greatest Lovesongs Vol. 666.