Header photo credit: Xaq Fixx
As Mostly Mesh, Zena Toxine crafts bass-heavy post-punk darkwave dripping in macabre imagery and BDSM-tinged lyricism. Her reference points are as specific as they are telling: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Evil Dead, the kink and leather scenes that helped birth goth in the first place. The result is something she describes as macabre love songs drenched in lust, sarcasm, and corn syrup blood. In other words, campy and cathartic.
She’s also one of the busier people in Greensboro’s underground. Zena organizes BLACK CAT Goth Nights at DIY collective etc., a recurring event she started simply because she wanted it to exist. Two years later, the goth scene she’s worked to support has become more deeply interconnected: bands know bands, friendships form on tour, and a no-gatekeeping ethos that she sees as specific to North Carolina’s goth community.
What’s become clear is that the music and the community work feed each other. As Zena tells it, Mostly Mesh wouldn’t exist without the scene around her.
What have you been listening to lately?
Zena: I just got off a run of shows with my friends Ships in the Night and Solemn Shapes, so they’ve been constantly on my mind. I just keep wanting to keep listening to them. Those have been my back-to-back constants at the moment.
Beyond that, I’ve mostly been listening to my friends’ projects. I have a Corpse Dust shirt on right now. He’s based out of Asheville and is fucking sick. I love Nathan. He put out an album recently called Suffer, and it’s fantastic. I’ve been blasting the fuck out of it on this old stereo with a 15-CD changer.
When you were first getting into music, what was the first artist or band you remember falling in love with?
Zena: I’ve always been kind of an obsessive person, especially when it comes to music. I have an older sister whom I just followed around and wanted to copy endlessly. So as a little kid, one of my first musical obsessions was actually the Spice Girls. I was head over heels fucking obsessed. I still have a coffee table book of them, the albums, even the PlayStation game they put out in the 90s.
But I had a very eclectic musical upbringing. I’d have my cassette tape of the Spice Girls, and then also this compilation CD of Louis Armstrong that was always in my Discman. As a tween I was really obsessed with KISS. I saw them live a bunch of times, which I think plays a lot into the theatricality and aesthetics I’m drawn to. Then I was a little monster on Tumblr, reblogging every possible picture of Lady Gaga.
From there, I started finding more of myself within the goth community and digging back into things I’d heard in the background as a kid. My parents listened to all kinds of stuff; my mom was really big into Nine Inch Nails and The Cure. Those were always in the background to the point where I didn’t pay much attention until I was a teenager and dove in on my own. That really set me on a more definite path.
At what point did you feel the drive to start making music yourself?
Zena: That was always there really early on. I used to sit in my closet with one of those little field-recorder cassette-tape guys and record a fake radio show where I’d do a bunch of different voices. Most of the time, it wasn’t even a mixtape situation where you’re recording a song. It would just be me singing the song to the tape. That’s me at like six years old.
I also used to play like I was doing gigs on the playground at recess. I was a weird little loner kid, just off by myself, pretending I was playing to a crowd. Without imagining I’d ever actually do that, because I’m also a very shy person. So it’s kind of an interesting 180.
As a teenager, I was on my laptop making really shitty stuff on GarageBand and never finishing it. I put out a song on SoundCloud when I was 18 and then didn’t revisit it for a very long time. About four years ago, I started experimenting more in earnest and thinking about putting stuff out. I released a few EPs with a side project called loose grief tea that was more lo-fi, rough around the edges, kind of grungy sounds.
And then this current project really fell into place on its own as I started doing Goth Nights. Leading up to the first one, I put together a couple of songs kind of as a joke to perform, and then it steamrolled from there.
How did you get connected with doing the Goth Nights, and how do those two roles of organizer and artist inform each other?
Zena: I started getting more involved with etc., which is a DIY venue and artist collective here in Greensboro. I do Zine Club there monthly, my partner does Poetry Circle, and we’re friends with everybody there. As I got more involved, I thought I would really love to see a Goth Night here. And since it’s such a DIY space, the ethos is: if you want to see something, you’re going to have to do it yourself.
My first plan was to do it quarterly, just to see if anybody showed up at all. There were some cool local bands that fit the bill, and I thought it would be fun to experiment with them. So I did the first one, and it was fantastic. People showed up. I was so surprised. I’m endlessly shocked and amazed by how hungry the community here is, especially for Greensboro, which seems so unassuming.
That really informed Mostly Mesh. I put a few tracks together, and it came together so effortlessly. My first performance was only about three months after I’d started performing live at all at open mics. I got a good reception, and it was energizing, so I just committed to it. I actually recorded the first album entirely on the clock at my work-from-home corporate job. It came out a few months later.
Because I put so much effort into curating the Goth Nights, and the scene is so closely connected, everybody ends up knowing each other. You meet one band, and they’ve played with another band, and suddenly you’re all friends. Then they go on tour, and you start hearing from people in other cities. I’ll get hit up by bands coming through from Colorado, and we’ll figure out how to make it work. I’ve met some really amazing, really close friends through all of it.
I’ve been someone who’s searched for community my whole life, and this is one of the places where I’ve really found it. Both at ETC among the DIY weird artist freaks, where we’re almost all neurodivergent and just weirdos, and among all the goth bands, where we’re also just a bunch of weird fucking freaks who are awkward and strange and love silly, goofy, dark stuff. We come together and just have a fantastic time. It’s been really, really fulfilling.
You’ve mentioned Lady Gaga, KISS, and 80s horror. Do you look to particular artists, films, or other mediums that influence the vibe you’re going for with Mostly Mesh?
Zena: It’s very much an amalgamation of so many different things. I was always a kid obsessed with horror movies. Schlocky 80s horror was my jam, and I was terrorizing the neighborhood children with them constantly. I think those informed a lot. In terms of visuals and energy, I draw a lot from Evil Dead because it’s just so fucking insane. I also really love old silent horror films ; those visuals are forever pulling at me.
Cinema is one of those things I pull from a lot, both in songwriting and in the mood I want to create. Have you seen The Colour of Pomegranates? It’s this really beautiful arthouse film, and every single frame should be framed as a photograph. I need a photo book of this movie. It’s not even in the horror realm, but it tiptoes around the macabre in a way that really speaks to me.
Musically, I’m endlessly drawing from late 70s, early 80s post-punk and the burgeoning goth scene, and how they intermingle with a lot of the kink and leather scene. Just the way those two worlds have ebbed and flowed and woven together in aesthetics and values. Siouxsie and the Banshees, forever. And then Rocky Horror is a huge inspiration. I’ve actually realized that the way I do my makeup most of the time is a very clear blend of Siouxsie, Frank-N-Furter, and Jareth (David Bowie’s character in Labyrinth). That’s just how I show up.
And then getting to meet so many fantastic bands in the scene. I’m endlessly inspired by my friends. It’s so cool to know talented people doing things in all these different aspects and showing you different ways of playing with sounds, aesthetics, and performance. It’s hard not to just be an amalgamation of all the shit you’re endlessly taking in.
You mentioned processing trauma as part of your creative expression. How do you navigate the line between art that’s cathartic for you and art that connects with an audience?
Zena: I put a lot of me into everything I make. I also do weird mixed media painting, and historically people come up and say that’s so vulnerable and raw, and I’m like — it’s actually so chill to me. I wear my heart on my sleeve about a lot of stuff, so it makes sense to put that into the work and talk about what I’m working through and feeling.
Luckily, I’ve come across a lot of people who resonate with that, more so than me ever thinking about it purposefully to resonate with whoever is on the other side of the headphones or the record. I think a lot of us have these shared experiences and feelings. Even if it’s not the same specific experience I’m talking about, there’s something in the emotional value of it that resonates with other people who have also been outsiders, weirdos, neurodivergent, dealing with trauma, pushing through shit, and still trying to show up and live as their whole self.
Image credit: Xaq Fixx
You’re finishing up your next album. How has that process been going, and does it feel different from making your first record?
Zena: I feel like I’ve been finishing up this album forever. I’m a chaotic DIY gremlin, very hands-on, and I do it all myself. I don’t fully know what I’m doing with mixing, so it’s very much trial and error, and I’ve learned a lot since the last record in terms of production that I’m trying to apply. I’m being kind of a stickler and a perfectionist about how I want things to sound, especially after having had the opportunity to road-test a lot of these songs live, which has shaped how I want them to feel on the actual recording.
It feels different this time because there are eyes on it now. Last time it was like I popped up, I’m really proud of this thing, I actually finished a music project for once, I’m putting it out, and I’m being stupid and using a credit card to press it on vinyl because that’s a lifelong thing I needed to achieve. And then it was received really well, which was otherworldly. But this time, because people are paying attention, it feels like the pressure is on. I need to get it where not only I want it, but where I want other people to hear it.
I’m hoping to get it out in the fall and start getting some singles out soon. I’m trying to really put my ass to the flame and finish the mixing instead of just procrastinating and telling myself I don’t know what I’m doing.
Who are some of your favorite Greensboro or North Carolina artists and bands right now?
Zena: Within Greensboro, I fucking love THNG. They’re like a gothy doom metal band, dear friends, and I find them so inspirational. They’re just so, so sick.
Then going broader to North Carolina in general: Feyleux, I’m obsessed with them. They’re this ethereal, transcendental, fucking beautiful darkwave project, and I feel so lucky to know them. Brighter Than a Thousand Suns makes sick-ass synth pop. It’s so meticulous. I will jump around, scream every lyric at them, and walk away looking like an absolute wreck because I’ve sweated everything out of me.
Secret Shame out of Asheville is so good. Solemn Shapes, forever obsessed. Corpse Dust and Idol Talk are amazing. Violent Institution out of Durham. And I have friends in a Cramps cover band called The Gramps, and I fucking love them so much.
There’s no way I’m not forgetting like 80 people because there’s just so much good shit happening here. I think people outside of North Carolina don’t really think about it, but even when you niche down into the broader goth and dark music scene, there’s so much good shit happening. Once you find the pockets, you just keep getting endlessly amazed.
What I love about this scene specifically is the way people operate because it’s so much about uplifting each other. It’s very much a no-gatekeeping vibe of: I’m connecting you to this person, this person, and this person. I know they would love you, we need you all to talk. I don’t always see that in other niched-down scenes, and I’m really glad to see it as a broad North Carolina thing.
The Flat Iron has felt like a recent example of both the fragility of local music venues and how community really shows up for the things it loves. What does that venue mean to you?
Zena: Small venues are things we really need to protect. That’s my favorite type of venue, where it’s more intimate, you can actually connect with people, you know everybody there. It’s where people come together and commune in a way that bigger venues just can’t replicate.
The Flat Iron was one of the first places I saw live music when I moved to Greensboro. It’s been really sick to see the way people showed the fuck up for them. The response was so quick. I love to see the scene not only acknowledge something and see it, but actually try to do something about it.
I played there and had a really great time. And a friend of mine who touched me a lot in music, who passed a few years ago, Maddie Sheets, used to do open mics there. So that space feels really sacred in that way. It’s that kind of community touchstone. Seeing people show up for it is beautiful and inspiring, especially in a time when we’re constantly being fed narratives of wanting to be suspicious of our neighbors and not look out for each other. Seeing people actually show up for a space that feels important gives me hope.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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