#i'm neither a full goth nor a hardcore BT fan (just a regular fan lol) so i am probably less qualified to speak on this

[electrosquash]

I think with a lot of Visual Kei it's important to make a distinction between genre (as in musical category and history thereof) and scene (as in label environment, the production conditions, the musicians they work with and inspiring each other, the media and festivals and concerts and venues they appear at, fan culture, and such) because Vkei is a music scene without an underlying music genre tying it together, that's what makes it so hard to define musically.

Like yes a bunch of them play straight up dark wave and goth rock and post-punk, but have no points of contact to the goth scene, they're fully embedded in the vkei scene instead so i don't consider them goth. And then others are so very clearly visual, but have barely any contact to the vkei scene and are therefore not - Soft Ballet is in here, they're coming from a New Romantics background iirc.

It's not that easy with Buck-Tick though. Whether they can be considered vkei is muddy at best - very influential of course, but are you part of the scene you helped inspire? Andrew Eldritch would like a word with you.

And the ties to the goth scene are very clearly there. Not only because of Sakurai, Toll is also well connected (just watch his interview with Genet about this very question, even if i have a low opinion of that guy you can't deny Auto-Mod is central to the Japanese goth scene). And probably lots via Imai, though i don't know enough to continue here.

And sure some Buck-Tick albums have the goth sound, but not all. But then again, neither do The Cure.