The Gothic-Punk gets the Goth from David Bowie and the Punk from Ian Curtis

There is no good answer to the question "What is Gothic Punk?"


I claim that the "goth" comes from David Bowie's "Station to Station":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY77zDzNmYw


and further the "punk" comes from Joy Division:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dBt3mJtgJc

Bowie's ceremonial-magickal song "Station to Station" suggests that he's aspiring to something Romantic, Byronic, other-worldly.  Bowie links up to the original literary Goths of England, and there is a hint of the death-obsession and morbidity there.  Gothic horror fiction always had a lot of morbid themes.

Joy Division, on the other hand, embodied Ian Curtis' suicidal tendencies, at least until Curtis killed himself.

In the 1980s, there was a lot of gothic music that was on the radio, such as Siouxsie and the Banshees.  Siouxsie was described as a "gothic pixie," and to my ears, a lot of her songs are like Doors songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amR6-neQBPE

The lyrics are just as morbid as any Doors song, but Siouxsie is a tremendously feminine voice, and so she gets a very different effect than Jim Morrison could ever have produced when she sings:

This is the happy house, we're happy here in the happy house
Oh, it's such fun, fun, fun
We've come to play in the happy house
And waste a day in the happy house, it never rains, never rains

We've come to scream in the happy house
We're in a dream in the happy house
We're all quite sane, sane, sane
This is the happy house-we're happy here

There's room for you if you say "I do"
But don't say no or you'll have to go
We've done no wrong with our blinkers on
It's safe and calm if you sing along, sing along, sing along

This is the happy house, we're happy here in the happy house
To forget ourselves and pretend all's well
There is no hell

I'm looking through your window
I'm looking through your window

 


By contrast, Ministry's song about wearing black clothing comes across as comparatively mainstream - the music is very much 1980s techno, the vocals are complaining about being trapped in mundane reality.  It is as though Siouxsie has escaped into some kind of shamanic astral plane, and Jourgensen is bitter about being left behind with the lame normal mundanes who jeer at his black clothing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFPI9b9N6CQ