Rewind album: Junkyard, by The Birthday Party (1982)
Every cult has its cornerstones and for gothic punks The Birthday Party's Release the Bats is chapter one in the movement's scripture.
Junkyard
The Birthday Party
Missing Link/Virgin
With frontman Nick Cave camping it up in one of the Australian post-punk band's most celebrated tracks, the song - originally released as a single in 1981 - is more rockabilly romp than ghoulish growl. But it helped set a benchmark for a burgeoning scene that revelled in the darker side of life.
The song is gloomy, brooding and menacing - everything we've come to expect of Cave, an artist who made malevolence a genre of its own as the lyricist and singer of the Melbourne-formed Birthday Party and later as a solo artist and with his southern gothic project The Bad Seeds.
It takes the schlock aesthetic of 1950s horror movies and welds it to the aggression of punk to produce what the New Musical Express magazine calls one of the key tracks of goth. Bats, vampires and night-time shenanigans, all central to the track, became part of goth lore, adopted by kohl-eyed devotees the world over, and still one of the more recognisable youth subcultures.
But while goths are renowned for their grim seriousness, lurking in the shadows of Bats is a heavy dose of Cave's trademark dark humour. Although it wasn't originally on The Birthday Party's seminal Junkyard album from 1982, it is now included as a bonus track as its sinister wit fits well with the irreverent tone of the album.