I searched back a full year just to make sure I wasn't wasting bandwidth when there was a perfectly good thread to be bumped, though going any further back than a year felt tacky.

Exactly what it says on the tin: what are some real evil-sounding tracks from bands that are not metal? This is, of course, entirely subjective— for most, a creepy set of chords is all that's needed for a song to feel evil. In my opinion, after metal, jazz holds the record. And jazz artists were doing it before metal artists were even born.

Like this track from 1938: Artie Shaw - Nightmare

Theatrics can also add to the whole atmosphere of something feeling dark. Here's Screamin' Jay Hawkins with a song from 1956, "I Put A Spell On You"


And then there's freejazz. It's the musical equivalent of the uncanny valley, and it evokes the most primal sense of dread. Ornette Coleman has this track that makes me genuinely uncomfortable. This is schizophrenia in musical form, and I can listen to it all day.

Early Memphis hip hop takes the cake for me. Lyrics almost entirely focused on murder, drug dealing, robbery, etc; lo-fi, horror-influenced eerie beats; and an occult aesthetic to top everything off. Most of this stuff was also initially issued on cassette tape only, so you can keep building comparisons to the early black metal scene.

I bet you already know about the 'suicide song' Gloomy Sunday, since you're a jazz fan. Not evil so much as incredibly morbid and depressing, especially for its time.



Venetian Snares is kind of like your third example, just pure aural chaos. His inspirations are jazz, allegedly.

One really evil non-metal is "The Litanies of Satan" by Diamanda Galás. That shit's really scary.

Elend's "A World In Their Screams" is pretty scary:

Ancient VVisdom is an occult rock band with some pretty evil sounding shit.

You cant really talk about having the whole "sense of dread" thing without going into Industrial,noise, neo-folk etc.

Much of the stuff that came out on the Cold Meat Industry label in the 90's is a winner in this race. In Slaughter Natives, Brighter Death Now, MZ.412, Puissance.....80's stuff like Current 93, Coil, Einsturzende Neubauten....could make a meaningless list post detailing this style going back into the 70's with throbbing Gristle.

Stalaggh. Their "vocalists" are demented people on an asylum, essentially
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8rU5QTUGxWw

Holy shit. I've always been interested in dark atmospheric beats found in the few hip hop tracks I've listened to, and so I found horrorcore, thinking I would like it, but it ended up disappointing me (though, to be fair, I've only heard Necro; not sure how representative of the genre he is). This is amazing though, thanks.

I think some martial industrial can be super evil, and can end up being a sonic representation of the most depraved aspects of totalitarian regimes. Early Laibach, for instance, used harsh vocals, dissonant orchestration and metal percussion in their music, and the effect is pretty damn similar to watching concentration camp footage sometimes.

Laibach - Nova Akropola

Turbund Sturmwerk is also similar (at least on Sturmgeweiht), although it's instrumental, uses samples and is generally more noisy than Laibach.

Turbund Sturmwerk - I

There are hundreds of punk/hardcore/industrial/noise bands that are somewhat closely related to "heavy" music or metal. But some others that come to mind:


I find Nick Cave's music to be generally dark. A lot of murders and awful characters. He's one of my overall favorites.
Scott Walker's catalog is littered with nightmares.
Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska album is full of murder ballads, songs of dread and despair. The title track is specifically haunting.
And of course, there is a plethora of "HorrorCore" Hip Hop around. Stuff like Tech N9ne, Nerco, Gravediggaz and more.

As Scorny said, some martial industrial is evil as hell. In particular, the In Slaughter Natives album Resurrection: the Return of a King is especially evil, and what little I've heard of Karjalan Sissit has been evil as well.

In general I think the most evil-sounding music outside of metal is going to lie within the broad field of dark ambient/ambient industrial. Now, there's a fair amount of garbage here, chock full of cheap synthesizers and clearly made effortlessly without any inspiration. Perhaps this will offend some people here, but I would place Mortis here easily. I'm generally very wary of anything labeled "dungeon synth" for precisely this reason.

When done right, however, dark/industrial ambient eclipses 90% of metal in terms of darkness, and can even be quite difficult to make. Lustmord can't be left out here, and in particular I recommend his albums Heresy and Carbon/Core if it's evil you want. He has other albums just as good but their mood isn't necessarily evil.

A fair number of the releases on the Aural Hypnox record label (aka the Helixes.org collective) out of Finland meet the criteria as well. The Halo Manash albums Am Kha Astrie and Syoma; the Zoät-Aon album The Triplex Bestial; and pretty much anything by Aeoga. Most of the "bands" associated with the Aural Hypnox label is the same four or five people in different arrangements, so a lot of the music ends up being similar. This song is a good representation of what to expect from the middle period (2004-2009) or so, I'm not sure what these bands sound like now:



Someone mentioned Elend. Forget evil, the album A World in Their Screams should be essential listening for anyone interested in contemporary classical of any kind, regardless of mood. It's what can happen when classically trained metal musicians get a hold of a chamber choir and chamber orchestra, just stunningly evil:




There are a whole host of very "dark" ambient composers I could list who make music in various shades of black, but who aren't "evil." Depressing, ominous, spacey, melancholy, etc. I've left them out for this reason, though some of them have made my favorite albums.

I second Elend. Also Chaostar.

The Bloodborne soundtrack is also pretty ominous and evil sounding.
Omen
The Night Unfurls
The Hunter
Cleric Beast

In Slaughter Natives is usually really good for the ultimate creep factor. I posted this video here once before and found out that another M-A user had actually made it and uploaded it

Not evil, but insanely dark, would be that song Failure by Swans. Actually, Swans in general would apply here.

I made that video!

Maybe not outright "evil," but some of Scott Walker's later stuff creeps me out. Not the early Walker Brothers stuff, stuff like on Tilt. Maybe Soused, Bish Bosch and The Drift, too, I have those but I haven't listened to those in a while. I think it's a mixture of his voice and the (often slow) tempo and weird noises and minimalism. I always found the song "The Electrician" a bit creepy, too, in a weird way.

The devil is all over this track:

Two people mentioning C93? Apart from "Dog's Blood Rising" what album is supposed to be scary? Most of it is rather relaxing, don't you think?

Not even their experimental albums qualify as "evil" in any way and it's good that way. They are one of the most deeply positive bands in the world and that's what they are loved for.

Dark cabaret artist David E. Williams has some deliciously evil stuff, though. I wish the song "Seizure Dream Believer" was on YouTube, it's an all time favourite.

Honestly this is entirely subjective and devoid of a trajectory. Some people find Disney's Fantasia "dark and evil", while others think "Jeepers Creepers" and "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?" are demonic recordings. Not to crap on your parade. Carry on.

It took twenty posts for the stereotypical "emotion x in music is subjective"-post? A sign that the forum is improving. One day it'll take till page 2.

That said, Thergothon being darker than Edguy is entirely subjective, too. Not to crap on your parade, but it's true.

see also: the early west coast underground scene: Brotha Lynch, Doomsday Productions, Lunasicc, Blue Ragg, etc.
Ekypss from Doomsday has the greatest voice ever.

back in high school this song seemed so perfectly made to me, and 15 years on I still fuckin' love it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yper5OKGpMQ

You could say Blues has some evil vibes to it especially in the early days. Of course, the godfather of Blues... Robert Johnson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A

And make no mistake, the Blues is one of the foundations to the sound of metal... so, it's gotta sound dark and somewhat evil especially the things that were happening in that time period.

volutetheswarth always says stupid shit like that that is irrelevant and adds nothing to the conversation, you can easily ignore any of his posts and your forum-going experience will improve ten fold.

man, that's one I haven't heard in awhile. I think Doomsday Prod was maybe the first lesser known hip hop group I got into.

Evil is definately the wrong word for C93, nature unveiled/dogs blood rising excepted, but a lot of it is certainly unsettling particularly if you take the time to examine the lyrics.

The collaborations with Thomas Ligotti are legit evil sounding though.

dark ambient/dungeon synth/industrial is one of the more obvious answers here, and some have already brought it up. As for which ones specifically, I'd say these are pretty good.

Lamentation - Whispers from Carmilla's tomb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qf0DEeGlXY

Shadowcaster - Ereshkigals Gift (the Descent of Inanna, the Ascension, Pt II )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYhOI9ojW80

Lord wolf - The Ravendusk Up the Crypt Forever
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bwMc8BOPys

^Yeah, dungeon synth can also be quite evil, too. Like watching black and white silent horror movies. There's a lot of shit out there, but good pick on Lamentation and Lord Wolf. Haven't heard of Shadowcaster, though.

Seconding Diamanda Galas and dungeon synth. Let's also not forget about Zeuhl - Shub-Niggurath and old ones such as Jacula (Italy)

ohshi! never knew that was a thing!

With my martial industrial project, Soldat, I was going for a dark, brooding, "evil" sound and I think I achieved just that. Perhaps this will be to your liking. It ranges from pounding drums to dark ambience, some piano work, blah blah blah.

https://soldatmartial.bandcamp.com/releases

Joy Division, anyone?

It might seem odd to suggest that a bunch of Tibetan Monks are evil. 3'10" in this vid, they let you know about it.

Nah. Depressing yes, evil no.

I find a lot of Blind Willie Johnson's recordings incredibly eerie. He's got this really gruff sounding voice that occasionally breaks through with his true voice which is just really really sad and tired sounding. Not evil though.

The song Die Eier Von Satan from Tool's Aenima album always sounded really evil to me, even though its just a guy in German reciting a recipe for hashish cookies without eggs. It's got this horrible driving industrial sound to it and samples of what sounds like a nazi rally. It's odd.

Samples in general creep me out. There's a really simple sample at the start of Souls At Zero by Neurosis with this guy just saying "I'm cold, cold..." and it always prompts shivers down my spine. I think it's something to do with the unknown. If a sample is out of context its content can play on your mind, which creates its own context.

I'd second industrial music as being one of the most evil sounding forms. Some of the stuff of off NIN's Downward Spiral is pretty harrowing e.g. Eraser, Reptile and The Becoming.

There's also an artist called Gilli Smyth who was in a psychedelic rock band called Gong in the 70's. She did an album called Mother with a song on it called Taliesin which always freaked me out as a kid. Still does to this day although it may just be due to childhood memories!

You do realise that song is a piss take/ pastiche of Laibach dont you? Talking about NIN being industrial but not recognising that that track is a joke at the expense of 30 years of Industrial music (ie not Ministry and NIN) does your argument no favours

What argument? What? Your post makes no sense whatsoever.

No, they are not. It's just a big gimmick that ridiculous sounding at most.

Alright, calm your knickers lad. I don't really know much about the industrial genre tbh. I just know that some of the stuff I've heard from it is creepy.