Australian goth / post-punk is the body of work made between roughly 1978 and 1990 by bands that came out of Melbourne's St Kilda scene — The Boys Next Door (which became The Birthday Party), Dead Can Dance, The Moodists, Hunters & Collectors. Early records were metallic noise-rock with dissonant blues, sounding like Captain Beefheart dismantled at punk energy. The Birthday Party moved to London in 1980 and Berlin in 1982, split in 1983, and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds formed in 1984 in Berlin. The Bad Seeds' subsequent catalogue rewrote the vocabulary of goth and alternative rock outright — long, low-register narration; biblical and Old-Testament imagery; a piano ballad tradition running parallel to a violent atonal tradition.

The Boys Next Door formed in 1978 (Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Rowland S. Howard, Tracy Pew, Phill Calvert). Renamed The Birthday Party on moving to London in 1980, they produced 'Release the Bats' and 'Nick the Stripper' — records that redefined the outer edge of British post-punk. After Berlin and dissolution in 1983, The Bad Seeds formed the next year. Parallel to this, Dead Can Dance (Lisa Gerrard, Brendan Perry, formed Melbourne 1981, moved to London 1982) fused medieval, North African, and classical-Greek modes with electronic processing, expanding what 'goth' could mean.

Rowland S. Howard's tremolo-heavy dissonant guitar on The Birthday Party's 'Nick the Stripper' became the template for post-punk lead guitar in the 1980s and 90s. Nick Cave's low-register narration turns hymn structure and Old-Testament imagery into contemporary songwriting; 'Into My Arms' (1997) is a piano ballad in which the narrator, who does not believe in God, nonetheless prays — a conditional prayer that stands as one of the deepest religious lyrics in late-twentieth-century pop. Lisa Gerrard on Dead Can Dance sings in glossolalia (invented, non-verbal syllables) — a technique that would later carry her into Hollywood work with Hans Zimmer.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds 'Into My Arms' (1997) for the songwriting summit. 'Red Right Hand' (1994) for the narrative baritone form (later Peaky Blinders theme). The Birthday Party 'Release the Bats' (1981) for the violent early sound. Dead Can Dance 'The Host of Seraphim' (1988) for the ambient-devotional side. Late night, low light.

Nick Cave has lost two sons — Arthur, aged 15, in a 2015 cliff fall, and Jethro, aged 31, in 2022 — and his 2019 album Ghosteen is shaped entirely by that grief. The Birthday Party's bass player Tracy Pew died aged 28 in November 1986 from an epileptic seizure fall in Melbourne, after his 1984-85 sentence for firearms possession. Rowland S. Howard died of liver cancer in Melbourne on 30 December 2009 aged 50; his tremolo playing was directly inherited by PJ Harvey, Cat Power, and much of the subsequent alt-rock guitar tradition.