The Night:
Black Ops is a classically-trained punk/goth/industrial dance night that takes place every other month in the AWOL Barracks. The Music:
It's about the darker side of dance music, that's all. It originally just meant anything with banging, clanking sounds as percussion. Art of Noise was considered industrial at one point, and I guess we'd have to put them in the adult contemporary throwb
ack category now. Punk is just the large umbrella under which we group Industrial, Goth, Darkwave, EBM, Futurepop, etc. There's no single way to describe the instrumentation. Some bands are wholly synthetic. Some are analog guitars and drums. Some cross back and forth at will. The through-line that connects all of these genres and makes them "punk" is a social awareness and overall dissatisfaction with the status quo, along with a darker, harder beat. The music is not upbeat and happy. The music follows themes of isolation and social justice much like the protest music of the 60's but with less hand-holding and more barrier-burning. It has something to say, and it's going to say it forcefully. The Culture:
Like the music, punk/goth/industrial culture is a push-back against the evils of an overly conformist society. Punks don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils and hope for the best. They want to change the world for the better. They don't want to listen to the same top 40 music as everyone else, or dress just like them in order to fit in. They want their overall aesthetic to purposefully and forcefully say "I'm not like you, and I don't have to be". Conversely, they don't expect you to be just like them. The Invitation:
Wear whatever you're comfortable in, be whoever you're comfortable being, and just come dance with us.
