Saviour Machine - Eric Clayton on Goth

I’m very familiar with the goth scene. I was around the scene a lot when I was young, so I understand the culture and what it’s all about. I was into a lot of things like Bowie and Bauhaus, Siouxie & the Banshees, and that sort of thing. So the eighties goth scene, I was definitely around. As a scene itself, there’s quite a mood about it. It’s intriguing. It smells interesting, because there’s a lot of perfume and incense. There’s a certain kind of vibe that goes along with it, but in most cases, it’s not what I would call a truly satanic vibe, as much as it is a very twisted vibe on a lot of levels.

There’s a very interesting kind of, let’s say, subculture involved, and it has to do with a certain amount of gloom and doom. It’s really pathetic on a lot of levels, and I don’t mean to criticize the scene. I’m just being honest. And anyone who’s in the scene knows that it’s true, and people hold it sacred for what it is. And the thing is, it’s a scene that, like all scenes, it has its drug problems. It has its sexual promiscuity and its very ambiguous kind of sexual scene. There’s a tremendous amount of bisexuality that runs in this scene, that sort of thing. And these are all things that I couldn’t get into back when I was in high school, when I was in this scene. I always liked the black clothes and the idea of makeup and black hair and this kind of gloom and doom vampire kind of thing. It always looked cool and felt cool, but the fact is, most of the people that I knew were just so sad. They were hurting so deeply, and it was so tragic. They were people with no hope and no ambition, in many cases, they were just kind of, like, not even alive — like, dead and empty, bodies with empty shells. There was so much confusion, and confusion is kind of a key word. Confusion in all things. When I was involved in the drug culture back in high school, it had strictly to do with drugs. The drugs were what was keeping me in that scene, and drugs controlled my life for a few years. There were five or six years where drugs were the most important thing in the world to me. You get wrapped up in it, and that sort of counter culture, and a lot of things come with that. And that’s when you begin to see the true satanic side about what’s happening, and the twisted morality, and corruption of the soul; just so much confusion. As a scene itself, yeah, it looks cool. Yeah, there’s a cool vibe about the whole thing. But the fact is, drugs kill. That’s as simple as it is. They rot your head, and if you’re involved in the drug culture, and you’re in the scene, get out. Get out, run, get away. It’s like a slide straight to hell. I hate to use that metaphor, but I mean hell on earth. You make your own existence what it is, and the drug culture is bad, bad news. And as far as the other things, like rampant bisexuality, and things like that, these are things that each person has to deal with on his own, but a lot of the times, drugs themselves have a lot to do with these sort of things. And that sort of confusion, that sort of thing is a will to be weird. That’s where a lot of it comes from, the will to be weird, a will to be progressive. With the whole persona of Saviour Machine, we’ve been ridiculed by really conservative groups. I think this is one of the biggest problems we have in the U.S.: ‘How can they look like that? How can they be Christians?’ And what’s funny is we took this metaphor right up in concert. The mask itself has always been a representative metaphor of the flesh, and how quickly people judge flesh, instead of what’s beneath it. A great deal of time and thought went into coming up with this original look, this original feel and concept. And it all has relevance. It all has purpose. My makeup has always represented the mask itself. And it just shows very clearly how quickly people judge a book by its cover. There are a lot of people out there that still can’t see past, or see beyond the horizon, and see what lies behind the mask. If people could just stop judging a book by its cover and seek what’s within, we might be able to step closer to the truth.

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