Teen Angst: Coming of Age With Ukraine’s Warzone Goths

This story is from the spring 2025 edition of VICE magazine: THE ROCK BOTTOM ISSUE. To subscribe to receive 4 print issues of our newly relaunched magazine each year, click here.

“I first realized I was in love with my boyfriend when he was neutralizing a BM-21 Grad rocket right in front of me. Knowing that any careless movement could annihilate us both in an instant made me feel very close to him.”

—Anna, 18, from Kyiv

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In the summer and fall of 2024, I wandered around Ukraine, meeting teenage goths. I met them in town squares, mosh pits, playgrounds, and parks; on Instagram, trams, and supermarket aisles. For the most part, these teenage goths were like those I’d encountered anywhere else in the world, bar one crucial detail: their kohl-eyed coming-of-age stories were framed by the looming specter of war, and conscription into the fight against Vladimir Putin’s meat grinder.

What this does to the psyche of those already infatuated with the beauty of death is hard to say. Perhaps Anna herself put it best when she told me that she and her boyfriend, a military sapper, spend most of their time “having sex, smoking weed, and thinking of new ways to kill Russians.”

There’s a notion that teenagers didn’t exist until the 1950s, when cynical ad men in the U.S. decided to invent a new type of person to sell face wash to. This idea seems strange to me; teenhood is a phase of life that feels so utterly distinct from what comes before and after it, a time of pure crisis. As such, teenage goths are perhaps the most teenage teenagers of all, though parts of the experience are universal; you spend 12 years following your adult referents through blinkered childhood, only to emerge into adolescence and find you’ve been duped—and what’s more, must now deal with the Cronenbergian body-horror of puberty. Alarming physical changes that arrive daily; a horniness that doesn’t know what to do with you; existential ennui; a newfound distrust of adults; and increasing harassment from the cold, hard facts of reality gang up to alienate these awkward, braces-wearing creatures from whoever they thought they were yesterday, while mocking their attempts to become who they want to be tomorrow.

The intensity of this phenomenon, of becoming teenage, is much harsher in a country at war.

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I first arrived in Ukraine in early August and stayed a month. When I returned in early October, for two months this time, the war had intensified. Bombardments were much more frequent and they were reaching their targets more often. One night in Kyiv, I fell asleep to the sound of explosions and machine-gun bursts while tracer bullets were lighting up the sky outside my window. I lived like this for three months in total. For Ukrainians, this has been the reality for over three years (or ten, for those living in Donbas). At the time of writing, estimates put the Ukrainian death toll since 2022 at more than 45,000, with Russia’s war dead topping 100,000.

Most of the teens I interviewed struggled to remember their lives before the full-scale invasion, which broke out shortly after intense Covid lockdown restrictions were lifted. The sanitary curfew was replaced by a martial one; fear of contamination replaced by fear of drones and shelling. For the youth of Ukraine, life last had a semblance of normality five years ago—an eternity in teenage time. “I can’t imagine my life without war any more,” says Paulina, aged 14. “It feels like my memories were erased before 2022…¹ Life felt different when we thought that Coronavirus was the most dangerous thing that could happen to us.”

Paulina hails from Irpin, a small city just outside Kyiv that was hit heavily during the 2022 offensive on the capital. “The first day of war was horrific; we were too scared to leave the basement,” explains Paulina. “Eventually, our house was destroyed by a missile.”

Paulina’s family moved to Ternopil, 265 miles west of Irpin, to make a new home for themselves. Yet their slate is far from blank. “The war broke everyone’s enthusiasm and started a war inside people’s minds, too,” she says. “I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression.² Luckily, we’re now used to explosions, and thanks to antidepressants I haven’t harmed myself in 70 days. Hopefully, my sister will not try to hang herself any more.”

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I first met Anna outside Volume Club in Kyiv, a Stalinist-era Palace of Culture since converted into a rock venue. Like the vast majority of youngsters I spoke to for this article, Anna hates Russia. The loss of family and friends, the constant fear of dying in the rubble of your own bombed-out home, and the more nebulous but acutely galling idea of your youth being stolen away from you make every Russian an enemy to these kids, a point made clear inside Volume Club as chants of “Fuck Ruzzia!” echo those coming from the band onstage.

Despite the trauma and regular rocket fire, Ukraine’s teen goths still love to hang out, if not outside gigs then in parks and courtyards. They drink and vape as much as they’re able to before the military-imposed midnight curfew ruins their fun. Their doomy make-up means they’re easy to spot; after a while I know where to go to find roaming cliques of corpse-painted teens.

As far as subcultures go, goth is a notoriously robust perennial; many of its key components feel almost as old as war itself. Long hair, sad eyes, Norse words; sewn-in patches on vests bearing band names that read more like curses or prophecy. Many here are besotted with the same bands that mothers everywhere hated in the 1990s: Marilyn Manson, Type O Negative, Anthrax, Mayhem. The more obscure the ensembles, the more flamboyant the names: Suicide Commando, Cattle Decapitation, Purulent Spermcanal.

Hyper-categorization has always been serious business to alt kids seeking to carve out their own identities in life. Ukraine’s teen goths go to bat for a wild array of niche subgenres; those I speak to cite death grind, aggrotech, cybergoth, and groovy hardcore as faves, while others say they’re into nu metal, abstract rap, and Christian emo hardcore.³ One young woman introduces herself to me as “an esoteric neo-folk goth bimbo”; others proudly rep the infamous NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) scene, whose most famous band M8I8th⁴, it must be said, have sold T-shirts to a lot of kids at concerts here in Kyiv.

Whether on teenagers’ T-shirts or soldiers’ patches, Nazi symbols are a big thing in Ukraine. As big as actual Nazism? Well, that’s the million-hryvnia question. Out here, it can be difficult to determine where provocation starts and ideology begins; items bearing Third Reich insignia are for sale on the same shelves as Israeli flags, while in hip clubs people play dress-up with totenköpfe. When I tried to pin anyone down on the Nazi thing—which felt important, given the Kremlin has long insisted that Ukraine is riddled with far-right extremists as a way to justify the war—they were generally a bit vague in their answers. The owner of a flat with SS symbols on the walls assured me it was simply “post modern” and not to be taken seriously. Many said they liked that the Nazis fought against the Soviets during World War Two, but they didn’t have any ill feeling towards Jews. They were less effusive when it came to LGBTQ+ people and Muslims.

At one rock show I attended, yells of “Slava Ukraini (Glory to Ukraine)!” and “Heroyam slava (Glory to heroes)!” were met with not just devil-horn salutes but a sprinkling of sieg heils. It was there I met Artem, an M8l8th fan who offered up a rather bizarre analogy about fascism and motherly love that sounded a bit like a beauty pageant speech as delivered by Joseph Goebbels. “People say Nazism is against all races,” he begins, “but in fact, racism is no more than the love of your own race. It’s the same as your relationship with your mom—you will always love your mom more than any other. Nazism should not instill hatred of all races, it should only instill love for your race, the history of your ancestors, and the love for your country.”

I was about to counter that this isn’t how Nazism has tended to work when Artem was subsumed into a heaving mass of sweaty, bouncing bodies, and carried away.

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Hate and violence is a regular part of life for Ukraine’s young goths. Not just because of the Russian bombs, but also the many tribal quarrels they spend their days, nights, and data allowances nursing. Despite there being a very clear and present common enemy, the feuds in Kyiv’s alternative scene approach Game of Thrones levels of complexity, even in wartime.

“I am a Christian, so I will quote the Bible here: ‘I did not come to bring peace but the sword.’”

“The different subcultures all hate each other,” says Stanislav, 18, “and within each subculture, people are divided into different groups that all hate each other, too. The hooligans hate everyone, except for the skins and offniks [also known as ‘boneheads’]. Once, I saw a Karlan [a Ukrainian word describing a kind of novice skinhead poseur] get his head busted in on Maidan Square for not having the right haircut.” Stanislav winces at the memory, briefly. “It’s the same with the goths but they’re less violent; they just talk behind each other’s backs.”

For many, the knuckle fights over hair length and fealty to differing sartorial codes will be a mere introduction to the serious shit that awaits. To be a young man in Ukraine today is to live beneath a hanging sword; for three years, they’ve grown up losing their fathers, brothers, and friends at the hands of the Russian army. The age of conscription dropped from 27 to 25 in April 2024, and it may well be lowered again and extended to women as Ukraine seeks more soldiers to carry the fight. Those who are so inclined can choose to enter the military voluntarily from their 18th birthday onwards. At the moment, 16-year-old Roma doesn’t envisage joining them.

“The intensity of this phenomenon, of becoming teenage, is much harsher in a country at war.”

“I feel horrible about it,” says the moody rap-metal kid on the possibility of being called up. “Like I am just a piece of meat for the country. Now, people are being fished out and sent to slaughter without having a thing to say about it. I hope with all my heart that war will be over before my 25th birthday, although they may take me sooner…

“On the one hand, I love my country but on the other, I realize that it has no future,” he continues. “No matter what the outcome of this war will be, we will keep on being fucked over by Russia for the next hundred years.”

Others, like Yana—lead singer of Ioanna Volchyok, a dark, neofolk music project influenced by Nico and Death in June, but also by Russian⁵ punk legends like Yegor Letov and Yanka Diagileva—have a more resolute outlook on things.

“I got engaged to my husband⁶ at 19, when he got engaged in the Army,” Yana explains. “It was the only way I could get the right to see him while he’s deployed, or to bury him if he dies. He’s been fighting for two years and if the government starts engaging women I would join him in combat with no hesitation. I feel indebted to my country on a metaphysical level; my country is my family, my friends, and the places I care for. I am willing to fight for them but not the state.

“I am a Christian, so I will quote the Bible here: ‘I did not come to bring peace but the sword.’”

To an outsider, the future for these kids seems as somber as Matthew 10:34 and their favorite lyrics. They live surrounded by death and they dress the part. Yet on the streets at night they respond to the deafening explosions and the missile alerts⁷ with loud music and hysterical singing. They don’t remember most of their past and they don’t have much leisure to think about the future, so they remain trapped in a present that is forever fatally shifting around them.

1. While it may seem like a simile, this phenomenon is something I encountered many times. Most of these teenagers claim they don’t remember their life before the war. ↩︎
2. Such diagnoses are common among those I speak to, as are razor scars on the arms. ↩︎
3. In the galaxy of Ukraine’s goth-adjacent subcultures, there are also the Drain Gang-adoring drain nyashkas (cuties), the ghouls, and baby bats. Some of these subcategories are not linked to music at all but rather to anime. ↩︎
4. M8I8th’s leader, Alexey Thuleseeker, is notorious for having fled Russia after being linked to three racially motivated murders, and is now fighting in the Russian Volunteer Corps. ↩︎
5. This proclivity for Russian singers is an exception. Usually, people in Ukraine reject all things Russian, from Dostoievski to Vysotsky. ↩︎
6. The Ukrainian rapper, podcaster, and orthodox mystic, Ek Nekron. ↩︎
7. Think of bombardment scenes from World War II movies and you’re on the right track. Usually, this nagging siren goes off multiple times in 24 hours, throughout the day and night. ↩︎

Follow Nicolas Dykmans on Instagram @nicolas.dykmans and find more of his photographs for this story below.

If you or someone you know is considering suicide, help is available. Call 1-800-273-8255 to speak with someone now or text START to 741741 to message with the Crisis Text Line.

This story is from the spring 2025 edition of VICE magazine: THE ROCK BOTTOM ISSUE. To subscribe to receive 4 print issues of our newly relaunched magazine each year, click here.