Of A Mesh - Broken

Before gothic rock hardened into a recognizable formula, bands like Of A Mesh occupied a stranger space between post-punk, art rock, psychedelia, and the theatrical darkness spreading through New York’s underground. Broken preserves that sound in all its shadowy eccentricity.

Released in 1986, Broken was the debut album from Of A Mesh, a New York group whose music emerged from the fertile downtown alternative scene of the mid-1980s. Although frequently associated with gothic rock, the band approached the style from an unusually eclectic angle, incorporating post-punk tension, psychedelic guitar, dramatic vocals, and an almost cabaret-like sense of theatricality.

The album’s sound is immediately distinctive. Guitars twist between chiming atmosphere and jagged bursts of noise, while bass and percussion provide a restless foundation underneath. The vocals push further into the dramatic, giving the songs a decadent quality that separates Of A Mesh from both the more austere British post-punk of the period and the increasingly standardized goth-rock sound that followed.

That unpredictability is one of Broken’s greatest strengths. Songs can shift from brooding introspection into psychedelic agitation without warning, with arrangements that often feel deliberately unstable. There are recognizable echoes of the darker underground of the era, but Of A Mesh never sound particularly interested in adhering to genre boundaries.

In retrospect, Broken also provides a fascinating glimpse into American gothic and post-punk culture outside the better-documented Los Angeles deathrock scene. New York produced its own network of bands exploring darker music during the decade, often drawing equally from punk, performance art, glam, and the city’s experimental traditions. Of A Mesh belonged squarely within that world.

This original 1986 LP remains a compelling artifact from that underground. Rather than offering the polished grandeur associated with later gothic rock, Broken feels wiry, strange, and genuinely idiosyncratic.

For listeners willing to venture beyond the canonical names of ’80s goth, Broken rewards the trip: an overlooked piece of New York post-punk where psychedelic unease, theatrical decadence, and gothic atmosphere meet at wonderfully odd angles.