At journey's end, our doom-laden dreamers contemplate the fate of goth at the passing of its first golden age.

Finally, our misbegotten heroes arrive at their final podcast, calling upon a special guest to help them explore the fate of goth and alternative in the 1990s.

Continuing their grab-bag of oddities and outlier tracks, our diminutive weirdos hold up Flesh for Lulu, Leonard Cohen and, dare I say it, even a track by Ultravox for special mention. In the stories of their lives, the year of 1991 saw dreams begin to fade and new ideas take their place, as the horizons of adulthood loomed more solidly into view.

Our trad-goth raggedy men turn their attention to that miscellany of one-off favourites that helped complete their constellation of beloved goth and alternative tracks. From unsigned bands with nothing to lose, to uncharacteristically dark offerings from otherwise uncool mainstream bands, the list is refreshing, revealing and not a little controversial.

Our nocturnal seekers of solace turn their thoughts to two very different albums, one a reverb-drenched rock-inflected anthemic classic, one an otherworldly choral journey thru the strangest recesses of the human soul. Along the way they find a (more or less) definitive answer to the question of the ages: what is goth?

As a decade comes to a close, Nick's band plays their biggest London gig, but on the other side of the mountaintop a painful descent awaits. Simon heads back to his hometown for a year out, finds himself a soul-crushing job in the infamous hive of drudgery atop the hill, but finds a way of piecing together life's fragments in his first recorded songs.

Patti Smith's revolutionary rock is in the air, as is the smell of Nick cooking bacon in Simon's vegetarian-only frying pan, this week. We discover how our weedy heroes found their dream flat in Camden High Street, only for it to be plunged into darkness and nightmare as the skylight went out. A goth hothouse was born, burned for a little while, then puttered out. Oh, the merciless scourings of time!

Moving into a flat across the road from the legendary Camden Palace club in London, heady days of smoke, noise, intense discussion and musical exploration ensued. An unforeseen windowless darkness descended from above. O Lord, were these headless, heedless pilgrims prepared? Does a goth where any colour except purple?

From a glorified shed on an allotment in Brighton, UK, our simpering heroes try to make the best of life during the pandemic, getting straight into the featured albums - Nick experiences his first spiritual flight via the haunting melodies and choral majesties of Dead Can Dance.

The wildest year of our simmering heroes' saga of heartache, triumph and disaster arrives. Simon finds himself in the forest of the London night, partying, protesting and writing essays under the influence. Nick plays a showcase gig in Covent Garden, hoping for every talent scout and A&R man in town to beg Felo de Se to sign with their label.

Turning 18 is a big year for anybody, and for our spikey-haired protagonists it was no different. Coveting the analog delays and stomp box phasers of others reached fever pitch, as did the partying, the posturing and the panicking.

Our maladjusted heroes finally come of age, leave home, learn to cook pasta and embark upon nearly-adult pursuits.

Yes, local goth club The Crypt is now the only place to be, and in the belly of this murky beast can be heard the sound of Bauhaus and The Glove, and this week our oddball heroes tackle these two classic outfits, finding within them the old bones of long-dead French avant-garde actors, half-digested alphabetti spaghetti-induced nightmares, and an inescapable time vortex otherwise known as a 'delay trap'.

Our lovable, fluffy-haired misfits finally look old enough to creep into Hastings' only goth club, The Crypt. And what a time they have! A tribe is discovered, a new band crystallizes around Nick, takes on a very strange Latin name, and friendships deepen over the music they start making. Simon finds a comforting anonymity-and-belonging in the midst of the dry ice, the noise and the unholy, beautiful confusion.

Our daring young alternatives get deeply embroiled in the sounds of 80s goth, as The Sisters and the Batcave album mark the point of no return for our poor little lost ones, our willing victims of the terminally weird. Will they ever learn? Not likely, not if this week's breakdown of the almighty Andrew Eldritch's lyrical ouevre is anything to go by...

As our unlikely, small-town heroes reach the age of 16, they make a revelatory discovery: there's a goth club in town! Attempts to sneak in may be less than successful, but Nicky and Simon's discovery of a scene filled with misfits and marvels begins in earnest with their knowledge of The Crypt. Girls and booze also loom into view, with all the inevitable consequences...need I go on?

Completing week 2, we hear how dreams of freedom grow from the dark visions of the Banshees' Hyaena album; its similarities to David Lynch's excavation of the wild urges and violent drives beneath the surface of suburban life are drawn out.

We join our brave young alternatives for the conclusion of their debut week. We've seen them narrowly escape injury at the disco at the end of the pier, and we've heard Nicky's paean to the inspirations of Breaking Glass, now check out Simon's exploration of what made Cocteau Twins so important to his life as a 14-year-old becalmed in the doldrums of the everyday world in small-town suburbia, England, in the early 1980s.

Week 1 introduces our alternative heroes. At the tender age of 14, they meet as one is escorted out of the disco at the end of the ramshackle seaside pier, after being threatened, as the other is on his way in, with two hungry-for-action sociapaths riding shotgun. After meeting, Nicky and Simon find they share a love of alternative music and culture, and take their first steps into a darker world of creativity, fascination and doom.