page_title: Dark wave
section_title: 1990s: The 2nd Generation
hierarchical_section_title: Dark wave / History / Origins in Europe / 1990s: The 2nd Generation
caption_attribution_description: English: Italian darkwave band The Frozen Autumn.
context_page_description: Dark wave or darkwave is a music genre that emerged from the new wave and post-punk movement of the late 1970s. Dark wave compositions are largely based on minor key tonality and introspective lyrics, and have been perceived as being dark, romantic, and bleak, with an undertone of sorrow. Common features include the use of chordophones such as electric and acoustic guitar, violin, and piano, as well as electronic instruments such as synthesizer, sampler, and drum machine. The genre embraces a range of styles including cold wave, ethereal wave, gothic rock, neoclassical dark wave, and neofolk.
  In the 1980s, a subculture developed primarily in Europe alongside dark wave music, whose followers were called wavers or dark wavers. In some countries such as Germany, the movement also included fans of gothic rock.
context_section_description: After the new wave and post-punk movements faded in the mid-1980s, dark wave was renewed as an underground movement by German bands such as Girls Under Glass, Deine Lakaien, Love Like Blood, Love Is Colder Than Death, Diary of Dreams, The Eternal Afflict, and Wolfsheim, as well as Project Pitchfork and its offshoot Aurora Sutra. Ataraxia and The Frozen Autumn from Italy, and the French Corpus Delicti also evolved from this movement and became the leading artists of the west Romanesque scene. All of these bands followed a path based on the new wave and post-punk music of the 1980s.
  In the 1990s, a second generation of darkwave bands became popular, including Diary of Dreams, Deine Lakaien, and The Frozen Autumn... The German band Deine Lakaien ... is audibly influenced by the dark synthesizer sounds of Depeche Mode.
  — Isabella van Elferen, Professor of Musicology
  At the same time, a number of German artists, including Das Ich, Goethes Erben, Relatives Menschsein, and Endraum, developed a more theatrical style, interspersed with German poetic, metaphorical lyrics, called Neue Deutsche Todeskunst (literally New German Death Art). Other bands, such as Silke Bischoff, In My Rosary, Engelsstaub, and Impressions of Winter combined synthesizers with elements of neofolk and neoclassical dark wave.
caption: The Frozen Autumn
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