I was listening to Twin Tribes without my headphones one day and my sister asked me what band it was and then said it sounded very Depeche Mode to her.

That made me wonder, as a person who's only recently started getting into goth, how do you determine when a musical genre is 'goth' when there are a variety of sounds to it? This is without even going into the fact that there are bands that don't call themselves goth but are celebrated and enjoyed by goth as staples of goth music. That's nothing bad in any sense of the word, not at all, but it does make me wonder when am i listening to goth music? Is it a 'you know it when you hear it' kind of deal?

Because when you compare Fields of the Nephilim with any other band with a more electronic post-punk sound, they're worlds apart, yet both are considered goth, while an electronic New Wave band might sound very similar to post-punk/goth, it is not considered goth.

There's also bands like Inkkubus Sukkubus which to me doesn't really sound much like goth and more like just pagan rock (as someone put it, it sounds like if Fleetwood Mac became pagans) and yet it is considered goth and many goths enjoy it.

None of this is bad because genres and subcultures aren't stagnant and there are many styles and sounds to choose from, but i guess i wanna learn exactly how to identify them.