I suppose getting closer to Halloween, it's time to dust off our ideal soundtracks to a night of nightmarish horror......

So, time to have some fun, and feel free to add in albums of any genre, not just metal or related stuff.

What are the darkest, most haunting, disturbing, frightening, creepy, morbid, fucked up, or just plain melancholic and dismal records in your collection, or that you've heard??

Personally one of my favorite dark pieces is Aghast - Hexerei im Zweilicht Der Finsternis. Few records have that utterly ghostly feeling that record has, save maybe some of Moevot's stuff.

Another one would be Current 93's Nature Unveiled. One of the best ritual industrial records of all time!! The opening track is perfect listening just before sleep.

Lustmord's Paradise Disowned is always a welcome listen...... those wailing horns make my hair stand on end every time!!!

Finally, Kerovnian's From the Depths of Haron is probably the closest thing to a "perfect" dark ambient album I can find. Not just background noise, but a twisted voyage into a Lovecraftian nightmare realm, with tons of diversity and all sorts of disturbing sounds and voices coming at you from all angles.

Anyhow, what about everyone else???

Leviathan's "Sillhouette In Splinters" is ghastly, definetly the most haunting I own in physical form and one of the most in my overrall collection. Lurker of Chalice is another one.

Enemite's Wuyuan is very morbid too, great for night listenining. Zhurong, another chinese dark ambient band, is also good stuff, not so as morbid, but definetly haunting.

Nicole 12 is fucked up, I think I'd be arrested if I played it too loudly.

When it comes to melancholy, nothing beats Lebensessenz for me, but I wouldn't call it a soundtrack for a nightmarish horror, it's more like a deeply bittersweet sadness.

Phurpa, for that ritualistic, void-like, trance feeling.

When it comes to metal, worthy mentions are: Celtic Frost's Monotheist, which is filled to the brim with negativity; All of Urfaust's stuff leans heavily to haunting and ghostly side, but the album Verratesricher takes the cake, it's dark as the abyss; Planet AIDS, Corrupted, Noothgrush and Khanate are all utterly dismal and ugly.

Another one who knows Corrupted
Chew is a good friend of mine.
Too bad that album they were going to do with Taiki never took off

Llenandose de Gusanos is my current favorite of theirs.

For metal, anything by Nortt would suffice, but the tracks "De Dodes Kor" from Gudsforladt and "Vanhellig" from Ligfaerd are standouts for me......

The Sunken Threshold by Wreck of the Hesperus
It's about an hour long, and the atmosphere that it creates is truly malevolent and drudging. The last 2-3 minutes are absolute insanity and worth the wait. It's the culmination of all the hate, terror, and self-loathing that permeates the album.

A couple of years on trick-or-treat night, I've played Sunn O))) out the front window of my house to set the mood. The right mindset really creates a dreary landscape.

I'd say Busse Woods by Acid King... I only have a few LPs in my collection anymore, but it is my absolute favorite. LSD, angel dust, and murder are pretty dark in my book.

Darkest album in my collection? Metallica, "The Black Album." ark yark yark yark.

seriously though, I used to love cranking NME "Unholy Death" at full volume to fuck with people at Halloween (and at other times as well, not just for that reason, but also because I love the album, too!!) Something about the ultra-noisy, heavy, primitive vibe about that album has always resonated with me.

There is some dark experimental ambient black-metal related music I have heard, and really enjoy, when in the right mood, but the albums are not easy to find (so I can't really say they are "in my collection.")
(edit) I just realized that the OP mentioned Moevot- perfect example of what I mean. That band, along with a lot of those mid-90s French bands with the weird fucked up names, played some truly disturbing music, which has always affected me in ways that most typical/trendy black metal never really could- hence I always admired it. But- it's not like you can actually go buy any of that music at your local record shop.

The LLN dark ambient (TLAK/Moevot/etc) certainly is very unique and fascinating. There is a certain charm and vibe to the minimalism, where it's very lo-fi stuff that's only two, sometimes three tracks. I love how amateur and explorative it is - it's like when two young guitarists first jam together and they realize how cool simple guitar lines harmonized in thirds and fourths sound. It's as if someone found a brief explanation of classical counterpoint then decided to experiment with dissonance rather than consonance with only a keyboard, a guitar, and a tape recorder. Aakon Keetreh does some really simple, cool sounding stuff that comes together very well, and "Dans la Foret" feels like an old video game, wandering through a forest and having a tragic encounter. I think old NES video games had a huge influence on how those guys made their music.

Something that makes those bands feel really special is how poor a lot of those who worship them are - amateurs who don't have the same spark, rather seem wholly derivative and unexplorative. Even as shitty DSBM labels shovel dark ambient projects onto the public like coal into a locomotive, the imitators always lack the creativity that came with that group whose limitations were their means, not their influences.

I didn't like Aakon Keetreh, but Moevot and Amaka Hahina were very cool.

Spot on with the description of the vibe these projects give off. Always admired Moevot a great deal, particularly Abgzvoryathre. Wolken, Ma Vie is a great little tune.

Throbbing Gristle

or, if you meant sad, Jackson C. Frank

Grief's first two... pure anger, though I prefer the second album to the debut. Also, Bethlehem's Dictius Te Necare.

^
I'd say Dark Metal iis, well, darker.

I'd say its darker in a much more subtle way, really. The OTT factor of DTN is one reason I love that album.

Another more disturbing recording is To the Quiet Men from a Tiny Girl by Nurse With Wound.

A true ode to the self-mutilating art of Rudolf Schwarzkogler!!

Gnaw Their Tongues - All the Dread Magnifience of Perversity

It's one of the more uncomfortable cds in my collection, not a hard thing to do since it's mostly occupied by death/thrash/NWOBHM stuff. And at over an hour long, it seems like this whirling corridor of pain, depression and infinite darkness will never stop spinning. Epic stuff.

I'd have to say it would mainly be stuff in the Noise/Dark Ambient genres stuff like Diagnose: Lebensgefahr and Drone Razors through Flesh Sphere as well as Sutekh Hexen. Finally one of my favourite albums is "A Banishing Ritual" by Blood of the Black Owl. This album especially the third track is ridiculously unsettling.


I think Velvet Cacoon's music is among the darkest music there is too. Very suffocating. Paysage D'Hiver can sometimes give off a really dark feeling but I only find that when I listen to it in the dark. I think its the pervasive harshness to the music. Nocturnal Depression's Soundtrack for a Suicide Opus II in particular are among the darkest of DSBM albums I have heard. Neige et Noirceur's Seigneure de Loups is a rather dark album with a very chilling final song.

Scott Kelly's solo work especially his first album is rather dark as well. Very simple but dark DARK folk ahha.


I listed a bunch of albums just so that in case anyone is interested in looking into them they have some ideas. All of it is HIGHLY recommended.


Happy Halloween! Or should I have a Grim, terrifying Halloween? aha

Hmmm there are a few that I find specifically fitting for Halloween, namely:

Leviathan - The Tenth Sub Level of Suicide. This is just dark, crushing music. One of my favourite albums of all time.
Xasthur - Subliminal Genocide. Although not my favourite Xasthur album is among the darkest, the atmosphere is completely suffocating.
Skitliv - Skandinavisk Misantropi. I think this is an extremely dark album, very slow crawling doom/black metal with a haunting feeling.
Forgotten Tomb - Songs to Leave. My favourite album by them, the whole album has this very misanthropic atmosphere, the album is among the best in the dsbm/doom genre I think.
Hypothermia - Kold. Most of what Kim Carlsson does is very bleak but this is among the bleakest.
Axis of Perdition - Deleted Scenes From the Transition Hospital. Another bleak album, a perfect mix of ambience and BM, also the band are influenced by Silent Hill which is always a good thing!
Khanate - Khanate. One of the most crusing, brutal albums I've had the pleasure of hearing and among my favourite albums.

Well these are the only ones I can think of straight away but most of my music is pretty dark. If anyone wants to listen to any dark/bleak albums all I've mentioned would be worthwhile.

I just remembered the highly unsettling soundtrack(s) to the horror survival video game Fatal Frame and the sequels that came afterward.......

"Pornography" by The Cure is a pretty bloody dark album. Hell, the opening lyric is "It doesn't matter if we all die".

I really liked "Cold" and the title track!!!

I'm surprised there hasn't been a doom metal or straight goth rock cover of either track.

For goth rock, Christian Death's Catastrophe Ballet and Ashes were some pretty twisted pieces of work, though even those pale in comparison to that Dream Home Heartache album Rozz Williams did with Gitane Demone.

Darkest goth albums would be:

Dead Can Dance - Within the Realm of the Dying Sun
Sopor Aeternus - Ich Tote Mich.....
Lacrimosa - Angst
Samhain - Final Descent (yes, I consider Samhain goth)
Diary of Dreams - pretty much anything up to and including One of 18 Angels
Fields of the Nephilim - Elizium (more epic and melancholic than truly dark, but being an emotionally moving masterpiece, I'll include it)

.......and as Skinny Puppy (in my view) is just as much a goth band as an industrial one,
Skinny Puppy - Last Rights

Gothic music is dark not in the same way as dark ambient, industrial, experimental music, or extreme metal, in that "overpowering sense of menace" way, but more in how it truly emotionally disturbs the listener.

Sopor Aeternus' work is some of the most tear-wrenchingly heartbreakingly disturbing material ever put to tape!!!

I can't really rank these. Most are ambient.

Aeoga: Triangle of Nebula Devourers---tribal/ritualistic, shamanic, scary
Axis of Perdition: Deleted Scenes from the Transition Hospital---scary, unsettling
Darkspace: Dark Space II---unknown space, voids (and really, any album will do)
Halo Manash: Am Kha Astrie---ritualistic, shamanic, scary
In Slaughter Natives: Resurrection: the Return of a King---apocalyptic, Book of Revelations end-of-days sort of music
Lustmord: Heresy---creepy, scary, unsettling
Lustmord: The Place Where the Black Stars Hang---unknown space, voids
Raison d'Etre: Requiem for Abandoned Souls---extremely depressing
Zoät-Aon: Star Autopsy---this......sounds like waking up in a flying saucer to the sight of some creepy alien wearing tribal tattoos giving you an anal probe



There's others I can't remember. There's also some that I wouldn't necessarily describe as dark so much as I would depraved. Khanate's first two albums and whatever the name of Wormphlegm's debut was all spring to mind.

Alice in Chains' tripod or self titled album is a worthy inclusion to this thread. It's not particularly Halloween kind of dark and scary but it's full of gloomy and ominous sounding hymns. Layne and Jerry's harmonization accompanied with Cantrell's droning guitar work invokes a blatantly eerie atmosphere.

Celtic Frost's Monotheist is downright foreboding as mentioned previously.

Type O Negative's World Coming Down is as much as dark as sentimental. Paradise Lost's Icon perfectly melds the elements of The Sisters of Mercy/Bauhaus and doom metal to craft their most mature and darkest sounding record since their transition from death/doom to gothic/doom. Mourning Beloveth's Dust is a worthy mention in this category as well. Last but not the least is Danzig's third How the Gods Kill. I've got plenty of doom records circling in my head but it would take an entire day to list all of those.

As far as simply gothic rock goes The Nephilim by Fields of the Nephilim and The Sky's Gone Out by Bauhaus.

Just upon reading the thread title Disembowelment's "Transcendence Into The Peripheral" comes to my mind. It's an early type of funeral doom ('93) that mixes death metal, doom metal and probably some grindcore as well. The resulting album is one fucking scary piece of music that you probably shouldn't listen to when drunken or high (or do it, if you are out for the maximum creeps).

I also second Celtic Frost's "Monotheist". Dark, hateful, distorted.

Another outstanding album in the darker regions of metal would be Evoken's "Antithesis of Light". It has a ridiculously high score here. While I don't like it that much, it's still a great and very atmospheric funeral doom album. However, I'd rather put it into the "mounful-and-sad" category, so I don't know if it fits here.

That list is what this thread is all about, brotha!!!

Not a dog among them!!!

Interesting choice with that Aghast. haven't listened in a while but I remember thinking exactlyt eh same thing about it. I don't own it, but Current 93's Dog's Blood Rising should probably be a candidate as well. THere's one track on there in particular that's one of hte most harrowing things I've ever listened to...

Endura's The Dark is Light Enough ... very otherworldly, strange, barely human except when the odd goth rock influence comes through loud and clear. Otherwise it's ritualistic drones, repetitive martial synth lines, chanting voices and strange noises all the way through...really evocative.

Going to have to mention the soundtrack to the movie legend of Hellhouse too. It was composed by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson, two of the original masters of early electronic music, who did music for Doctor Who and other series/movies as well as their own stuff through the sixties and early seventies. That soundtrack is very creepy indeed!!! Definitely must be one of the precursors of "ritual ambient" music.

Ulver's Teachings in Silence EP is hard to go through for me without becoming horribly depressed. I think it's beautiful, but I haven't had the courage to listen to it in years.

Akitsa's early demos have some pitch-black content, mostly the ambient/acoustic tracks. It's hard to explain but the mood is just filled with dark industrial hate. Or whatever the fuck.

Elend's A World in Their Screams is simply the most terrifying thing I have ever heard. Only Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima can come close to it.

Rather shocked it hasn't been mentioned yet, actually.

How did I forget this one, of all albums. Yes, I heartily second this. "Boree" in particular is a pretty unsettling track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXl-kTbtmFU

The Umbersun also contains some suffocating, powerful stuff. Well I remember the feeling I had when I finished that CD for the first time. I think I must have sat there in my room with the headphones on in utter silence for ten minutes afterwards. Felt utterly draining, yet full of beautiful moments, too.

On Dog's Blood Rising, you must mean "Raiu no Terrasu (Jesus Wept), which was done live. The thing that always creeps me out about that song is the looped monk chants in the background that seem to consistently "cut off" before the loop ends, as if they were played backwards, but they aren't.
Not as terrifying as "Ach Golgotha (Maldoror is Dead)", but a great pick nonetheless!!
Listening to early Current 93 (and a healthy dose of Diamanda Galas), you can really hear where Skinny Pupy got their inspiration for those creepy improvised live intros like "Walking on Ice/All Eyes"

I suppose I should include Diamanda Galas, as most "normal blokes" find her terrifying.
However by the time I got around to hearing her stuff I was so desensitized to dark and creepy music, that I could only feel a rush of euphoria.

I don't know about throwing Ulver in here, but I still have difficulty listening to "We Are the Dead" at night. It rings too much of my own personal childhood experiences with haunted radios and disembodied voices.

Good call on "Legend of Hellhouse". I'd probably put David Lynch and whoever did the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" soundtrack as candidates for early dark ambient as well.
Japanese horror movies such as Ringu, and that collection of "true ghost stories" I saw once, sure as hell know how to make good creepy dark ambient soundtracks.
Honestly though, I think my first encounter with dark/ritual ambient as a kid was the entrance music for WWF wrestler Papa Shango
Laugh if you want, that guy and his music creeped me the fuck out when I was 12.

Some awesome albums coming up on this thread, let's keep it going!!

Because Halloween is about having fun with darkness, I'll go for Dopethrone by Electric Wizard. The PSA bits alone are brilliant.

I guess Electric Wizard would fit with The Damned or the Misfits

Good call on the early Current 93 stuff. That's some of the most genuinely unsettling music I own (original LashTal vinyl pressings!).

I think the early releases on Cold Meat Industry are almost all a good bet: Brighter Death Now - "Pain in progress", "Slaughterhouse" and "Necrose Evangelicum". All the In Slaughter Natives albums. Deutsch Nepal "comprendio! Time stop". The Aghast album. CMI between 88 and around 97 was pretty much untouchable.

I'm sitting here listening to COIL - "Horse Rotorvator" as I just picked up some cool vinyl bootlegs of this one, Scatology and Loves secret domain. Certainly has it's horrifying moments.

Some of the more electronic pieces on certain Death in June albums have always given me the creeps pretty hard. The track "headhunter" on CAPO! in particular comes to mind. "Wall of Sacrifice" as an entire album is one of the most desolate sounding pieces of music.

SWANS certainly have their black as pitch moments. "Raping a Slave", "Cop" and the pre-psychedelic era of that band are some of the most self-loathing and punishing records ever.

I could go on and on - about half of my collection is made up of various post-industrial wierdness.

I would have to go with the Wood of Belial S/T compilation I have.
It is the disturbing stuff I have by far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDegxjyrpu0

If you want a semi creepy super Halloween themed album/demo you can't go wrong with
Ouija Ouitch - Halloueen

Rotting Christ - Sanctus Diavolos is probably the darkest album I own, the atmosphere is so haunting on that album. Most of their albums have a real dark atmosphere to them. The song Nemecic from Theogonia is hauntingly beautiful too.

not a good one, but dark and disturbing it is and somehow find it's way to my collection (out of interest and the cover) some
years ago:

Dead Man's Hill "Esoterica Orde De Dagon"
some really sick/strange/fucked up Death Industrial... and to my ears completly boring now
Really, I can't tell why I ever thought I would even like this to the slightest...

Because in Germany all you guys ever listen to is industrial music well that's what Rammstein has led me to believe

I guess it rather came from my then high interest in martial industrial and erotica from the 1920s (hence the cover issue), def. not from Rammstein

Nonsense you're German therefore it must be related to Rammstein