"Mary Turner, Mary Turner" by Xiu Xiu is one of the few songs I've listened to that I would genuinely describe as not only disturbing but actually scary, especially since it's recounting something that actually happened.
From what I’ve heard from Xiu Xiu, they aren’t afraid of making people uncomfortable. Support Our Troops OH! barely feels like a song but more of somebody talking over noise. Fabulous Muscles sounds like it’s about someone who is attached to an abuser.
Most of the songs on A Promise and Fabulous Muscles are, so far as I am aware, based on stories either from Jamie Stewart's own life or those of people he'd met, friends and family members. "Blacks", "Brian the Vampire" and "Nieces Pieces" are especially dispiriting in this light.
This!!! As a long term xiu xiu devotee ive listened to so much of their music. So many periods of my life have been covered by a few choice albums by them. I've adored their ability to capture complete and utter fear, helplessness, and genuine despair in some of their bops but NOTHING made me feel as sick as Mary turner. Its definitely huge reccomend from me, i was surprised to see it not on May's list! Thank you for making this comment, literally took the words from my mouth!
You’re absolutely right. I was very surprised to not see it mentioned on here, since it’s probably the most vile, awful and disturbing piece of music I’ve ever heard (and this is coming from a harsh-noise and death industrial enjoyer). When I was listening through Girl With Basket of Fruit for the first time, it was not until I had listened through “Mary Turner, Mary Turner” that I wanted to turn the music off and go throw up. The lyrics is what got me, as well as the haunting voice of Jamie Stewart sounding like a tortured spirit haunting an old cassette tape. I absolutely adore Xiu Xiu and all of their projects - and I am of course happy that they raised awareness on an actual event that happened in our so-called “Land of The Free” - but I haven’t listened though that album in about five months solely because of that song. I’ll stick to my noise ‘till I’ve recovered enough to listen through it again.
"Daddy" is still the most disturbing song to me, not just because of the subject matter, but because of Jonathan Davis' breakdown at the end. You can hear the pain in his voice when he's cry-screaming at his abuser, "I fucking hate you! Fuck you! You fucking ruined my life!"
I totally understand why people find the song disturbing - for me it was hugely cathartic in helping me cope with my own abuse from childhood. The rawness of it is very visceral, very moving and very validating. I feel for Davis. Quick edit because I had to go give it a listen again, and the part that I found the most uncomfortable about the whole track was at the end, after his breakdown and the silence of the track, there is a recording of who I assume is his dad yelling and being harsh. It reminds me of my abusive stepdad, and that is the hardest bit to get through. While the rest of the content is emotionally taxing, it is cathartic in the sense of Davis finally getting to express the hurt he as a child endured (as pretty much most content on the list, ha). That last little bit on the track after the silent stretch has a tendency to catch me off guard, too. I'll be lost in thought after the main song, wont notice the silent stretch then I'll be startled out of disassociation by someone being an asshole. Ah, trauma songs. Sorry for the ramble.
@@Crithosceleg I totally get it. Like even though I was never abused like that as a child, I can still hear the voice of my trauma through Jonathan Davis's scream.
@@SOBEKCrocodileGod Thanks for the insight, I was really unsure if it was related to him or not. It strikes me every time it sneaks up on me, ignites that child-like fear when step-dad would get on his bullshit, that tape was my normal. I'm sure there are a few arguments recorded of my parents somewhere, not that the intent was to capture the argument, they just crop up because assholes are always looking for one. Whew! Fuck that recording, though xD
The group I hung out with in high school didn't know I was being abused by my mother's friend's son and one of the guys put on Daddy by Korn, thinking it was just a creepy song he was gonna spook us with. Then I started having a panic attack and one of the other guys turned it off for me. Also I was high at the time, having smoked some pot. So not sure if that made things better or worse 🤔 🙃
Korn's "Daddy" is the most disturbing thing I heard... And the least played song in concert because Jon Davis said it was too distressing for him. It has the merit to have raised awareness that boys can be abused too.
God I first heard it at around thirteen- not knowing what it was I was already not doing well at the time and it hit a bit too close to what the initial trigger of the depressive period was
That song absolutely destroyed me when I first heard it because I didn't know other people were suffering like me. It both made me feel seen and made me feel horrible.
I listened to it the other day and it was really upsetting to hear, especially knowing what he had gone through. It also puts Freak on a Leash in a new light(even if you know it's about someone struggling with life)
I need to suggest Uboa and her album "The Origin Of My Depression", lyrically it tackles themes of gender dysphoria, the objectification of trans people, and the loneliness and suffering that's attached to it. The instrumentals are very dark, abrasive, and sorrowful, and downright terrifying at times; listening to this album is difficult, but you’d be missing out if you didn’t. I find it kind of sad that when people find out about noise, they immediately get directed to acts like Merzbow and Vomir, and not gems like this.
Uboa is great, but one thing I do want to say is that her work is from a very different tradition from Merzbow or Vomir, so comparing the two seems… odd to me? Her work is more relevant to the more melodic end of power electronics and death industrial, such as later Sutcliffe Jügend or Theologian, whereas Merzbow's kind of an institution in his own right but has more in common with certain other eclectic Japanese noisers like KK Null, and Vomir is the quintessential wall noise guy, which is completely different from either of them and is almost more a conceptual art thing. They're part of different conversations. That said, there is actually a fair number of trans noise artists, which isn't so shocking all things considered. :P Niku Daruma (and by extension burnt-feathers), Turned Into A Girl, Scorpion Sound Source, Ragk and Winter Rose come to mind.
Not me being nit picky but "Daddy" by KoRn isn't about a family member doing it but a close family friend and then his despair when his parents didn't believe him... it doesn't change a fact about it being disturbing and his screams and cries while the rest of the band awkwardly plays is haunting Also love the list, I have a weird fascination with weird music and just generally music that is hard to listen too( Death Grips is legit one of my favorite bands of all time)
13:37 Jon Davis broke down for real when recording the vocals, and someone can be heard opening the door to the vocal booth and checking in on him near the end of the song. Also yeah, back in 1999, Korn's debut album was the hot LP to spin at parties and we all agreed we would never play "Daddy", the final track. One time we forgot to switch CDs beforehand. It was Not Fun!
Polly is such an intense song, it was actually based off the real life kidnap and torture of a girl which adds to the fucked up ness of it. Huge fan of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, I actually got my first tattoo with the Nirvana smiley and the song title come as you are underneath.
The girl got away by pretending she loved it and was falling in love with rapist, but needed a break cause her back hurt and she was thirsty, he bought it, she bolted and got away
I think Xiu Xiu is a goddamn treasure-trove of disturbing songs especiaally ones with a good dose of realism and empathy. I guess for ones with more narrative edges to their horror, Fabulous Muscles and the classic Sad Pony Guerilla Girl come to mind first.
Ale is a fucking banger and beating, too. And SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, OH!, too, like what a raw and harrowing examination of American war crimes and the way we lionize cowards who make themselves feel big by hurting the weak. It will fucking stick with you.
I think “me and a gun” by Tori Amos is one of those songs that just genuinely shook me to my core, when I heard it for the first time I just had to let out a long and very loud sigh after it was done because I needed to almost physically shake that song out of my brain. It’s just such a haunting and upsetting piece of music
I always thought Bela Legosi’s Dead was just a fun goth track and never really thought it was disturbing. Stigmatyr Matyr was introduced to me through Night of the Demons. ‘Hello’ by Poe I found through the end credits of Stir of Echoes.
The song 'In a Lonely Place' by Joy Division is one of the most disturbing songs I've ever heard. It was recorded 3 days before Ian died and the lyrics are all about his mental state at the time and about how he is scared that when he dies, he will miss the people that loved him and about how he is crying for help but no one is listening. It feels like you shouldn't be able to listen to it
I like how you're making disturbing shit of all art forms kind of your brand but like, coming from an actually sane and cool perspective: You're really out there rehabilitating edgelords everywhere
Tiny Tim was a sweet clown man who was a true blue weirdo, and people really give him creepy cred just because of how his songs are used. I've been watching all of these videos (and listening to your music) and it's been wonderful!
I watched a documentary that someone made about him recently, here on youtube. I highly recommend anyone that thinks of him as a "Sweet" man, go give it a watch. He's not the worst guy ever, but he uh... Certainly did some strange things and had some strange thoughts that he'd share...
A song that’s always fucked me up is Sad Pony Guerilla Girl by Xiu Xiu. There’s a profound sadness in it, an unsettling hint of a character’s resort to violence, and an audio jump scare like 2 minutes in that still gets me.
Here in my country (Philippines), it's probably "My Way" by Frank Sinatra. People refuse to sing it during videoke/karaoke activities as, for some reason, it often results to deaths. There were many instances of murder, killings, etc. that took place after "My Way" was sung.
This is such a weird phenomenon. I learned about it from a podcast that isn't the greatest in the world, but the hosts were hypothesizing that maybe it's because it's a really confident song, I guess bordering on smug, and that can set people off. Maybe after the first time or two, people who were already out to kill decided to hit up a karaoke night and wait. It's like a super dark meme.
I always feel very uncomfortable listening to "What's He Building In There?" by Tom Waits. I dont know if I'd call it disturbing on the same level as any of these, but narratively and musically I find it unsettling.
I love that song so much. It's super creepy. And my upstairs neighbour has been making weird sounds and my mind keeps going 'what's he doing up there' in Tom Waits' voice.
oh i actually love it, its part of his more narrative songs that really highlight his really good storytelling voice. i feel kommienezuspadt is more aggressive and unsettling, but tbh its all an issue of what ppl find personally disturbing 🤔
@@casir.7407 The oompa vibes in Kommienezuspadt really do it for me. So good. Edit: I meant ragtime I guess. You know what I mean, it gets in my bones and makes me want to dance.
All of Caligula by Lingua Ignota certainly qualifies for this list, but DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR most definitely....ouch. The whole album is essentially about an abusive relationship, but more specifically the traumatic aftermath of those you love denying said abuse.
Please, please make a part 2, May. I could honestly listen to you talk about disturbing music for hours. Or hell, disturbing media in general, I'm not picky.
I listened to Hamburger Lady, genuinely made me uncomfortable and it literally made me struggle to sleep at night. What was terrifying is that it went from being cool to scaring the shit out of me slowly.
This one isn’t usually considered “disturbing”, at least not the traditional sense, but the song “Good Morning, Captain” by Slint is perhaps the most chilling rock song ever made. Lyrically, it’s pretty terrifying on a few levels. The entire piece builds to a climax that gives me goosebumps every time.
I worked at a haunt that had Tiptoe Through the Tulips on repeat right behind me. I was also working in a blacklight vortex tunnel. I was the only one who could stand the spinning and Tiny Tim for 5 hours a night. That song is about 2 minutes long meaning I heard it about 150 times a shift. By some miracle (or loss of brain cells) I never threw up and I don't hate Tiptoe either.
I love Skinny Puppy too. The weirdest thing was when they randomly made a basically electronica album in 2004 (and it fuckin' slaps), and then went right back to making weird experimental industrial shit. What a band.
I love that the "Weapon" LP was allegedly the songs the government played to prisoners at Guatonimo (sp?)....I mean imagine being from that side of the world--the Middle East-- ahhhhnnnnd, MAYBE you're even innocent, like young and stupid (as we all once were or are now), but the government skips 'due process' because christ the stakes are just so high, the towers traumatized us all so badly afterall, and pressure is intense to make the f-ers pay, and so in an effort to 'crack you,' the feds pipe SKINNY PUP into your isolation cell at unreal decibels, and you're a fundamentalist Muslim...well you might just think your are in actual hell....yeah I think they even unsuccessfully sued the US government for unpaid royalties for such "public broadcast," but it was dismissed as a "weapon" of war, not a work of art......umm, OK.
Honestly for me, The Spider and the Kitsune-Like Lion is one of the most distressing songs, probably mainly because I listened to it when I was like 12 and the uncanny valley vocaloid toning and kind of ugly higurashi style artwork freaked me out so much
Not to be a "erm well IM not scared by it 🤓" but it has a special place in my heart along with Fear Garden and Love Love Nightmare as certified young weeb bangers
Was wondering if that would be mentioned. Vocaloid in general is absolutely ripe with songs about horrible terrible things. Obviously, Kikuo's 'Gomenne Gomenne' needs a mention as probably one of the most well-known disturbing songs in that sphere. Though imo the worst one I've heard would be Dark Fairy TaleP's 'Caroll In Wonderland' - it's an awful, nasty song speculating on the whole 'Lewis Caroll was a p*do' rumor that I'm not sure was entirely responsible to create. 'Gomenne Gomenne' is more or less about the same subject matter (if actually more gruesome with the metaphor of being literally eaten,) but I afford it more lenience because I don't believe it's about a specific event or real people - though correct me if I'm wrong. I really could go on about all the nasty songs that are out there but this comment is way too long already.
The song that haunts me the most is "Pretty" by Korn. Musically it's not really upsetting, but the backstory and the lyrics genuinely make me nauseous. It might sound dramatic but I think that song gave me secondary trauma
My favorite thing about disturbing music, though, is how conditional it is. Like, it depends entirely on environment and personal experience. One time in AP Lit back in highschool a student came in high af so the teacher sat him down at his desk and made him listen to A Day In The Life by The Beatles with a pair of big headphones, and I watched that teenage baseball boy have his very first anxiety attack at 2 pm on a thursday.
"DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR" by Lingua Ignota gets an honorable mention from me. If an honest to god witch prayed to the devil to curse her ab*ser, this is what it sounds like. "Satan fortify me, I don't eat, I don't sleep, I let it consume me"... Genuinely harrowing stuff.
It's not even the lyrics or sound on Traitor that get me, it's the genuine panicked hyperventilation in between those gut-deep screams. If you've been there, you've heard those before, and then realised after a few minutes they were coming from you Banger of an album from a hugely talented vocalist tho, Fragrant Is My Many Flower'd Crown is one of my favourite tracks of all time
Immortal Technique's "Dance with the Devil" at 14 blew my mind with how dark music could be. I had never heard anything remotely real like that (even though the story may not be real, idrk) and left me with audible gasps and shock at the second half of the song. What a wild song.
personally one of my fave “disturbing” songs is King Park by La Dispute just the story, how it’s told, and the emotion you can just feel radiating; esp at the last part. (it’s a song going over a shooting and how they hit the wrong target, killing a child, and living with that guilt) it gives me chills every time. it’s not scary but those emotions dude
I’m surprised Gomenne Gomenne didn’t get a mention here. The whole song is just very graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse and cannibalism. It’s in Japanese so it’s less disturbing when you aren’t watching the music video with subtitles on but still. It’s apparently a very accurate depiction of what goes through the minds of csa victims.
Half of all vocaloid songs could be on here. I find the Albert Fish one to be much more disturbing as it’s a true story of pedophilia and cannibalism, with someone reading the letter he wrote to the victim’s parents about how she tasted at the end.
I have some generally disturbing song recommendations; The Man Who Watches Me Sleep by Salvia - an absolute banger, frequently discordant and has a suffocating vibe. The lyrics center around being trapped in a house by a captor, and build a narrative of absolute hopelessness. Salvia's visual art, drag, fashion, and image manipulation, is absolutely beautiful too and is worth checking out Bacterial Contamination by Kanimiso-P - considerably creepy in its sound, the lyrics tell the story of a person who is going through very harsh bullying, to the point of losing any outlet for safety. The lyrics could be interpreted in different ways, but there is definitely a theme of the cycle of abuse, the bullied becoming the bully, with a possibly more violent end than that. A vocaloid song Gomenne Gomenne by Kikuo - very disturbing tune, is a creepy banger but becomes blatantly distressing once you learn the lyrics. The lyrics are so disturbing that they are not allowed to be shown on the song's page in the vocaloid wiki. They tell the story of a girl being sexually abused by her father, and are very triggering. Also a vocaloid song. Kikuo is an absolutely amazing musician, and their other music is absolutely worth a listen. Hitogawari, also by Kikuo - a very passionate, desperate, vocal song. It's about a girl's inability to be able to recover from abuse, finding herself unable to accept a normal, non-abusive form of love from her significant other. The singer's performance in this song is absolutely amazing, oozing with desperation
when i first listened to Hitogawari, i had my autoplay on and i was like "oh yeah ok this is nice" and then there's just this total tone shift and it scared the hell out of me i'd heard about gomenne gomenne from a video and i was really curious bc they didn't actually discuss the lyrics and i wanted to see it for myself should've stayed curious
oh boy when it comes to vocaloid music that Sucks To Hear i feel like i have a lot of like, uncommonish picks. mentioning scary vocaloid music without mentioning MASA DESIGN WORKS is i feel a bit of a crime, he's Very known for his tracks "the fox's wedding" and "the spider and the kitsune-like lion". most of the horror comes from the fact that he writes about terrible horrible crime murder r*pe cannibalism like everything. he can think of and girls do that to each other and sing about it over the fucking most banger instrumentals of all time. if u want something that bangs but isn't scary from MASA i recommend "bunker buster" it's one of my favorite songs of all time period. another one of my all time favorite songs of all fucking time is "thirsty" by hikkie-p. again, very noisy but especially with this static in the background? once again the MV for this one is kinda scary (to me) but soooo so fucking cool. it's noisy from the beginning but just fucking keeps building until the final chorus and MAN. MAN ITS SO COOL. also probably about having an eating disorder which is not scary to me but that is because I Have One. daijoubu-p is pretty well known for being somewhat of a massive troll, all of his music is really noisy and discordant and usually about spooky scary things like murder. i think it's kinda funny but i also realize daijoubu-p is rather A Lot for people who don't listen to music like that. also the art featured in a lot of his MVs scare me very badly but this is because im very frightened by images and theyre probably not That scary. my favorite track by him is "the face" and i forget what his other tracks are called im sorry
@@maizie3921 Masa's music is good, but to me it is a bit repetitive in both theme and in production. It really doesn't disturb me, especially because the songs lyrics are largely based off of (Japanese) folk tales, stuff that just isnt real. The themes of the songs that I mentioned above, especially Gomenne Gomenne, are in my opinion a lot more personal, realistic, and unfortunately relatable, which is what makes them disturbing to me. I have been exposed to horror and gore for a large part of my life though, so I am desensitized to themes like the Fox's Wedding that are mostly surface level gore horror. Thirsty by hikkie-p is pretty good, but the lyrics are kind of too vague to disturb me, which is almost definitely just from an iffy translation. daijoubu-p's music is kind of hit or miss ofc, but over all the production of the songs and definitely the manipulation of the vocaloid's voices works very well to make a disturbing song, the lyrics just really need something more, except for tracks like the face which are pretty well off in that field. its okay to be scared of things, that just means you arent desensitized by the internet and media which is good lol
Was lucky enough after being a fan for a long time to catch the last TG gig. S/he changed my life! Always found it somewhat symbolic that lockdown/covid started in the UK within 2 days of he/r death, a new reality began and things have never felt the same since.
@@bluehole6019 OMG I am in complete agreement. Sophie's death ruined me and still does. My tastes are about as niche as they come but I'm convinced she was the future. Another level entirely. XXXX
Diamanda Galás "The Divine Punishment" really set me off like it starts with some spooky funny halloween atmosphere and at some point BRUH this is so SO much more unsettling than I thought
Plague Mass is pretty scary too. I used to play it very loud late at night and was accused of conducting Satanic rituals by one of my neighbours! Her voice still gives me goosebumps.
Really, this one should have been at the top of the list. I saw Plague Mass live, and the base disrupted my girlfriend's pacemaker, and we ended up at the hospital. Worth it.
I find it odd that so many people suggested “Red Right Hand” as opposed to I guess literally anything on “The Murder Ballads”. My suggestion would be “Song For Joy”, which my brother used to play a lot when he was a teen and I was a kid and, thanks to some distinctly not mumbled lyrics, fucked me right up.
“Do You Love Me (pt 2)” holds the distinction of being the song that has made me the most viscerally uncomfortable ever and the only song that my partner has asked specifically to never play anywhere they can hear ever again.
A song that always comes to my mind when I think of disturbing definitely has to be Lisa Germano's "A Psychopath". The lyrics alone make you feel paralyzed and helpless. The use of an actual 911 call from a woman screaming in terror about a man breaking into her home (before supposedly raping and murdering her from what I've read about the backstory) always pushes it over the edge when I hear it. I remember when I first heard it, I immediately had my older sis listen to it (we both like darker songs) and she honestly went around the house locking the doors after it ended.
A disturbing track I could recommend is "the child-catcher" by Patrick Wolf on his debut album Lycanthropy. It's kinda folk-tronika pop about child abuse. Also 4st 7lbs by Manic Street Preachers which is sorta goth grunge about anorexia. Very "Noise-like" inspired lead guitar with a ballad as an outro as the victim achieves 4st 7lbs the weight at which an adult person will apparently die.
Oof! seconding these! The Child-Catcher is A LOT! Especially because the atmosphere and within Patrick Wolf's general work it's just such... ugh a gut punch >_
@@nikolaideponeo6795 that's weirdly nice to hear. Even my hardcore music nerd friends haven't heard of these track. It's so foreign to me that anyone else knows they exist.
"Warm Leatherette" literally triggered the start of a legendary British indie label (Mute), in the early _1980's._ It's a pretty cool 'If you build it, they will come' story imo. Grace Jones did a cover as well.
To add to people's fear of Tiny Tim - he released an album produced by David Tibet of Current 93, and it ends with a long form rant of Tiny Tim talking about the antichrist and end of days over spooky C93/Nurse With Wound sounds. Highly recommend. The rest of the album is off kilter in the much more expected way. So yeah go look up "Songs of an Impotent Troubadour"
22:56 the original version of Marilyn Manson's Smells Like Children album included audio from the VHS tapes he would film of him doing Bad Things to women; while promo copies exist, those tracks were replaced on the retail version. Also, a snippet of one of those videos was included at the end of a tour video and yeah, holy crap it is the best way to ruin your day.
You couldn’t be more wrong about it. That clip that was on the end of DTTW is a clip from Groupie, a short film he did with his girlfriend at the time. It was nothing more than a piece of art he strategically released in part to sustain his image of being a controversial figure. Manson is actually a very down to earth person and delves into darker recesses of life to make statements. (Also fuck Frankie isn’t so straight forward nor is it actually Manson who is “torturing” these women in the audio, it was a tour manager)
@@caryssoper considering recent allegations of Manson's predatory behaviour, Groupie sounds much less like a collaborative film project and a lot more like forced s.a. being passed off as 'art'. glad it was never released.
@@birchwwolf Unfortunately for you, it’s been proved it was an art project. Don’t start that crap. Do a bit of research before running your mouth on something you obviously don’t know much about :)
Definitely! This is one of those "Thank You for suggesting this, now I don't have to" moments. Even if you somehow just 'happened upon' this album without a clue as to what it's about, you still get this really powerful sense of something incredibly important just slipping away from you and, it's vital that you can catch hold of a bit of it while you can still remember what it was about it that was so terribly precious in the first place..! Admittedly, I don't know _all_ of the songs mentioned here, and if I'm honest there's a few of them that I'm unlikely to seek out because I'm more psychologically in a place right now of "Really, do I even _need_ this sh|+ in my head, even - or especially - if it's stuff that's 'genuine' in its intent, and not Beavis & Butthead level "guts 'n' maggots all up in your face, dude!" kinda crap?! However there is something about Everywhere at the End of Time, an album about someone suffering the inexorable onset of dementia, which employs effects like '50's 'tea dance' type music becoming increasingly garbled and getting 'lost in the noise' like a distant radio station heard at night 'fading into the unknown'× which unsettled me considerably more than waking up in 'the horrors' from alcohol withdrawal in a pitch black room with Throbbing Gristle's 'Zyclon B. Zombie' and Crass' 'Reality Asylum' playing back - to - back was able to do! A _lot_ more - like, Existential~F%&kin'~Dread, literally..! There are worse things than losing one's mind (even as you're aware you're losing it) - being skinned alive, say, or the murder of one's child, but if you are someone who would find oneself simultaneously touched and terrified, as I was, by a story such as I heard a while ago of an elderly married couple that had been 'placed' in a nursing home suffering from Alzheimer's who barely knew who they even _were_ anymore, let alone who they were to each other, but who would sit out every day in the Day Room, fiercely gripping each other's hand because their love had, at least as yet, outlasted their actual memory of each other - they still knew, at the core of their being, how vital each was to the other..! (I should think one would feel like a monster prizing them apart for bed and so on, as per the rules and procedures of the facility!) then while this is not an album that will be on the playlist in many Goth crypts and would, without doubt, result in the venue being burned down if played at a Grindcore club, it will resonate _deeply_ with you, even if you can't bring yourself to play it more than once or twice a year. It's not like it's hard on the _ear..._ but it's a challenging listen! Even if I had the power, I would hesitate to make it 'prescribed listening' - I'm not trying to drive people _away,_ after all(!) but I would strongly, _strongly_ recommend this to anyone considering going into the field of Gerontology. Or to anyone who can bear to take a long look into the dark... [EDIT] ×For anyone living in the British Isles or much of Europe younger than, say their mid - 40's, this simile (metaphor?) is probably pretty meaningless, but hopefully it'll evoke recognition for those living in North America where AM radio is still 'a thing'!
maybe not the most disturbing music out there, but alice glass's (formerly of crystal castles) "FAIR GAME" deeply unsettles me as a very raw retelling of the long-term emotional abuse she experienced at the hands of her former bandmate. the lyrics feel very real and almost like direct quotations, and the chorus line "where would you be without me?" cuts deeply both in the voice of her abuser and equally in alice's own voice, throwing his words back at him.
I'm a scardey cat, so the scariest 'music' I've ever heard is The Beatles 'Number 9'. For those that don't know, it's a sound collage that's super weird. I hate it. I can't recall if I've ever sat through the whole song. If I have, my brain blocked it. That may be mild, but it distressed the heck out of me when I've tried to listen to it. Nope, no thank you.
As Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds go, "Skeleton Tree" has to the most disturbing, gut punch of an album in their catalog. It was written and recorded, mostly prior, but during the period of Cave's 15 year old son's death. What was written before his accidental passing from a fall sounds almost prophetic and what added after just applying the most harrowing of effects. It is an album about death and loss that a good majority of was completed before Cave suffered, what is likely, the most catastrophic loss of his life. On it His fairly consistent style sees radical changes into electronics, ambience, discordant notes, and a vibe that just wraps you a blanket of disquiet. Do yourselves a favor, if you want to hear an amazing album by an amazing artist while just getting all the joy dragged out of you in the best and worst of ways then listen to "Skeleton Tree." It reminds of a live performance from probably 20 years ago where Cave comes onstage and says, "tonight there are no happy songs," before launching into his band's set. The album can feel much like that because, even at the few high points, there are no happy songs.
Skeleton Tree is rough. the title track is one of the most gently beautiful songs I've ever heard tho. such a sad track, but also kinda comforting. probably my favorite song of the 2010s
Choices for disturbing albums: Buyer’s Market - Peter Sotos Venereology - Merzbow Hi, How Are You? - Daniel Johnston Superflat - C’est La Key Giles Corey - Giles Corey I Have a Special Plan for This World - Current 93 A Promise - Xiu Xiu The Origin of My Depression - Uboa My Teenage Dream Ended - Farrah Abraham Caligula - Lingua Ignota Filth - Swans Livestream Death Compilation - Birds Fear Death A Sucked Orange - Nurse With Wound Circle Thinking - I Hate Sex An Empty Bliss Beyond this World - The Caretaker Everywhere at the End of Time - The Caretaker Divorce Lawyers I Shaved My Head - Jordaan Mason Slow Burn - Old Gray The Ghost~ Pop Tape - Devon Hendryx
upvoted for _I Have a Special Plan for This World_ alone! Thomas Ligotti is one of my favorite authors, and his lyrics on this contain his usual dark, nihilistic wit and imagery that is unmatched.
Watm Leatherette is actually from 1978!! Great to see it shouted out here The Normal was a one man group made up of Daniel Miller who helped sign Depeche mode to their label and has worked with them since their inception Speaking of DM, not a disturbing song but a song that i put high up on my list for being really depressing is ‘Blasphemous rumors’ by Depeche mode Its a great song and the sound itsef isnt even frightning but the content of the song is just so sad Great vid as always may🦔💚
The most disturbing experience with music I’ve had was when I was at school doing A level music, our teacher played us a string quartet piece by Shostakovich which was about being a composer during the Russian revolution. When it finished we all just sat in silence for a good few minutes.
Slightly surprised to hear that Wiener Blut by Rammstein, which is about the Josef Fritzl case, wasn't on the honorable mentions list. I guess it's understandable, though, since all of the tracks on the list seem to be in English anyway.
I like when you said to not play nine inch nails songs around you’re parents, because my dad is actually the one that introduced me to nine inch nails lol, he plays their songs in the car all the time
The last time I saw Skinny Puppy live they started the set with Convulsion. And the throng of bodies at the front of the stage didn't so much dance or mosh, but instead seemed to hypnotically shift across the floor as a single unit. One of the odder experiences I've managed to get out of a live show!
13 Angels Standing Guard 'Round The Side Of Your Bed by Silver Mt. Zion. Personally, I think of it as one of the purest, most raw depictions of despair and sadness ever composed. That fucking violin, I swear to god.
Is this that song going around tik tok or ig rn where they say “you may think it’s angels but it’s not?” Or is there just something problematic with my algorithm 😂
Regarding Swans, I personally think their early no-wave albums like Filth and Cop are genuinely quite disturbing. In a similar vein I would also highly recommend Sonic Youth's first two albums, Confusion is Sex and Bad Moon Rising. Confusion is Sex in particular has some genuinely quite creepy songs like Protect Me You, Shaking Hell, and Early American. "I Love Her All The Time", "Ghost Bitch", and "I'm Insane" from Bad Moon Rising are also quite unnerving as well.
Burzum is a great litmus test of critical reasoning. It is impossible to separate Varg's bigotry from his music, no matter how important it is to the black metal canon. Even his instrumentals are tinged with wyt supremacist ideology based on their titles and surrounding context ("Jesu død" comes from the album Filosofem, which is named after a wyt nationalist zine/magazine, for pity's sake.) But it is still possible to critically engage with -- and even enjoy -- challenging material like this. The opera world has done this for over a century with Richard Wagner, who was a notorious published (!) antisemite that also gave us "Here Comes the Bride"* and "Kill Da Wabbit"*, two songs that are just Normal And Unquestioned now. Horrible people can still produce good things, just like how a broken clock can still be right twice a day. It's how we engage with the material that is the most important. The Soft Pink Truth, a gay noise project and one half of Matmos, made a black metal covers album called Why Do The Heathens Rage? that analyses this very idea, and he wrote a lengthy essay/interview for Pitchfork expressing his concerns with and reasoning behind being an open queer and black metal fan -- very much worth the read and the listen. *these are not the real names of course but you can hear them in your head, eh?
Legit question do you see any distinction between enjoying art made by ppl who commit monstrous/criminal acts in their personal life that are mostly independent from their artistic output (eg jimmy page, David Bowie, and Pete Townsend being alleged sex creeps/pedos to some extent, Phil Spector murdering people) and bands that make explicitly ideological art and are associated with reprehensible political movements (burzum/mayhem, grand Belial's key and the 4 million other nsbm bands)? Personally I don't have a hard stance aside from "pirate their music so you don't give money to Nazis", even if I avoid a lot of that shit myself
@@dickdingus775 If someone's done something wrong or reprehensible, what have they done to correct the situation? Are they a repeat offender and show little interest in being a better person? One can make an ethical conclusion from there. In terms of using edgy/obscene things to make art, it's best to keep in mind that it's possible to attract people who truly believe in that stuff and if that artist don't shut them down, they're complicit in making things safer for hateful ideologies. Comments that they make in public re: their usage of offensive material can pull favour towards or away from them in that regard. There is a difference in that the former group actually did a bad thing, while the latter can enable people who do bad things to think it's okay to do so. James Gunn fixed his problems; Louis C.K. never did nor cared to and is still in the doghouse for it. :wumpscut: has pulled the "just jokes" card too many times while coating his work in pro-fash ideology; ICP repeatedly speak out against bigotry. By analysing the work and asking these questions, one can choose whether they want to continue funding or even just supporting on artist, or not. The free option is always available.
I would say part of it is that there are aspects to Varg's early music and lyrics which resonate beyond the more troubling aspects of his persona even if they are enmeshed within them, in particular the clear spiritual significance of nature and very real isolation and despair in those words. It's a sentiment which he took to incredibly ugly, cruel conclusions, but there are lines along which connection is available. And I think that a lot of people don't like to admit that, that the art of someone who they find repulsive can touch something deep inside them, as if it says something repulsive about them because it acknowledges that shared humanity. Varg Vikernes is a pretty hateful human being, but his hatefulness does not erase his humanity even as it may obscure it.
I was introduced to the song Warm Leatherette in the most cursed possible way. The first time I herd it was on an episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and they played a clip of the movie Me Without You (2001) that had the song in it. I remember it being very striking to me at the time but I was also 10 years old and had no real taste in music. For the cherry on top I very specifically remember Gerardo Rivera leering and looking like a nonce after the clip played because the scene involved two teen girls smoking cigarettes with their toes and jumping on a bed. It's so dumb how certain memories become so perfectly preserved in your memory forever.
I don't get disturbed by music very easily, both instrumentally and lyrically, but the only song that genuinely disturbed me was "Only Acting" by Kero Kero Bonito. I mostly knew them for songs like Flamingo and Trampoline at that time, so when I stumbled on the song one night, I gave it a listen thinking it'd be like those. I was very, very wrong. The sudden noises caught me incredibly off guard and left me feeling greatly unconfortable, and when I found the music video later, it didn't make it any better.
Same lol. I just wanted to vibe to some pop in the car, so I put on the KKB playlist, and then the cursed noise began lol. It's nothing too bad, but if you are expecting something bright and cheery, it will catch you off guard. Supposedly they created that album (Time n Place) during a time when the band members were experiencing loss (e.g. Sarah Perry's budgie had passed away, and she learned her childhood home in Japan had been demolished), so it was kind of a "loss of innocence" album that had some more experimental/edgy stuff in it.
What i love about Frankie Teardrop is that Frankie's story ends- but the song doesn't, it keeps going. As awful as such events are, the world keeps turning, so the song keeps going and, wouldn't you know, it keeps happening
The only song that still genuinely freaks me out today (I only listen to Vocaloid and Voice synth adjacent stuff oops) is Cotten Candy by Kikuo. It’s by no means got an as disturbing message as other Kikuo songs or other songs from producers like Maretu and Masa. But the fact it genuinely sounds so horrific and creates the feeling of a mental breakdown so well. Great song.
Cotton candy is just very unsettling to listen too. Masa’s more erratic horror songs are oddly calming to me and I’m not exactly sure why. There’s a producer called Babu-Chan who has quite a similar style to Kikuo in some songs. Their songs are very dark as well.
'Scotomized' by Uboa is genuinely frightening, the lyrics and the production are equally terrifying. Also 'Catheter' and 'Lay down and rot' by Uboa are terrifying. (these 3 songs mentioned r 3 of my fav songs ever)
was really hoping you would mention ...a psychopath by lisa germano. it's one of the most upsetting songs i've listened to, if only because part of the backing track is a real 911 call. it was inspired by germano's own experience with being stalked, and how law enforcement/everyone ignores how women feel. i think germano's voice is very pretty but also, it's uhhh a difficult thing to listen to, especially if you have. any sort of trauma.
I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned this but the “mom?” moment in Haunted happens in the song House of Leaves, not 5 1/2 Minute Hallway, as far as I can tell. But yeah that entire album is obviously totally haunted as told by the title, not by spiritual ghosts but by actual voices of her mom and dad and by their influences in Anna and Daniel’s work.
I used to run trivia for a local brewery, and a big part of that job was playing the music for the bar. But, like, they did not have any kind of restrictions on what I could play, so I had a massive "Goth Music" playlist that I'd bump constantly, and both Bela Lugosi's Dead and Red Right Hand were always in there. Maybe I'm just desensitized or something, but I always thought those songs was a lot of fun. It never occurred to me that others would take issue until one of my regulars came up to me after a set like "Dude, what the fuck." At least the other goths in the room got a kick out of it lol. And at least I did have the foresight to remove Romeo's Distress by Christian Death from the list before it got a chance to play.
No, I agree. Both Bela Lugosi's Dead and Red Right Hand are amazing songs, neither of which are disturbing. Personally I find "Where the Wild Roses Grow" to be Cave's most disturbing song, as it's literally about murdering his lover and goes into detail about bashing her head in. Bauhaus's is probably "Three Shadows" which is just a weird song. That said, I think like half of Christian Death's stuff, and especially Rozz's Premature Ejaculations stuff, is more disturbing than anything Bauhaus or Nick Cave ever did.
It might be becouse i was raised by metalheads and all of our familly frienda are into metal, goth and/or punk but i can see the problem with Romeos Distress? Its just a sexy song about ghosts
i think loverman is way more disturbing than red right hand lmao. martin gore really did it justice and that was my first exposure because i was into dm first and will probably always be partial to them no matter what i'm into. the growls at the end of martin's though 🙃
Ian Curtis Wishlist by Xiu Xiu. There are more viscerally fucked up and horrible Xiu Xiu songs, but hearing someone fail to find reasons not to commit suicide in the form of bizarre noise music just gets me every time.
Tiny Tim wasn’t gay, or at least not entirely so. It is well known that he had one homosexual relationship back in the ‘50s, but the rest of his relationships, including his three marriages were all with women. His third wife is quoted as referring to him as “half gay,” so either he was bi and just never explored that beyond one partner, or he explored the possibility he was gay and discovered it wasn’t his jam. I don’t think he deserves all the cursedness that people associate with his music nowadays, honestly.
to me, one of the most disturbing and sad songs is Tunic (Song for Karen) by Sonic Youth. It's about the real story of Karen Carpenters downward spiral of anorexia
Idk if Red Right Hand would be anywhere near the top of Nick Cave's most disturbing songs. From Her To Eternity, The Mercy Seat, Do You Love Me Part 2, Song Of Joy and Jesus Alone are very haunting. Also his songs from The Birthday Party are pretty disturbing, 6 Inch Gold Blade is probably the most extreme. Glad to see Frankie Teardrop on here!
@@Gingersnaps1978 I think a episode of Spongebob used that song and I immediately had to turn it off because that song always sounded creepy to me as a kid (even now I find it pretty creepy)
For disturbing songs, and something I find very bittersweet are musicians like Mili (songs like Bathtub Mermaid about destroying yourself for someone else with horror imagery), Lorn (Songs like Ghosts(s) 2 are mostly audio like all their songs but has a grand existential horror like many of their songs), White Ring (Songs like King, especially with the visuals from a certain German movie, make me cry), and Alice Glass (I love her music, and she has a lot of songs about her abuse. As someone who can relate, and grew up in the techno-punk/ witchhouse scene, songs like Forgiveness hit hard).
My disturbing song favourite is probably 'Dark Delight' by Sopor Aeternus. It's written in the perspective of François Bertrand, aka the Vampire of Montparnasse, who was the person the term 'necrophilia' was coined for. The lyrics are already very creepy (though a bit more poetic and ambiguous) but the instrumentals and shrieks in the beginning of the song make it sound even more disturbing.
Based on what you've said you like, I'd like to recommend Fairytale of Slavery by Miranda Sex Garden. I used to lie on the floor in the early AM and listen to that as a teen. They used to do madrigals and ended up using their classical training to do some fascinating dark wave stuff. It's really powerful and interesting.
It's actually Marilyn Manson himself moaning and saying "Fuck Frankie" in "Fuck Frankie", not a woman. Frankie was the name of a former manager or something he wanted to call out with the track. Don't get me wrong, Marilyn Manson is an abuser (to the point where I cant listen to him anymore, which is awful- I was obsessed with the guy as a teen) and all around bastard, but you're mistaken about that track in particular.
The entirety of "The Second Annual Report" by Throbbing Gristle is some of the most disturbing music one will ever hear. For anyone that hasn't heard of it, just listen to all of the variations of the song Slug Bait, on the album. One is a detailed first-person pov of a stalker breaking into a young couple's house, and torturing them in the middle of the night (Slug Bait Live at the ICA). Another uses a sickening audio sample of a serial killer talking about how he bashed in a 10 year old girl's head (Slug Bait Live at Brighton). Listen to the entire album in the dark at 3:00 a.m. and you won't be able to go to sleep for the rest of the night, due to total paranoia lol
I think why Nurse With Wound is so unsettling is because they are performing within the genre of Dark Ambient. Especially with stuff like the Soliloquy for Lilith album. Dark Ambient is made purposefully to make you feel unsettled and anxious. I don’t like Apple Music’s dark ambient playlists though because I don’t consider most of the songs as unsettling. Like not to be a snob or sound pretentious here, but considering I’ve been compiling the most disturbing Dark Ambient albums I can find on Apple Music into a playlist since pre-2016 (Currently 2,345 songs equaling 294 hours and 4 minutes granted I haven’t updated and added to the list in a while), I feel I have at least a little authority on understanding this stuff. P.S.- My personal favorite DA bands are Protou and Flowers for Bodysnatchers (which was the band that got me into the DA genre with their Aokigahara album). Sadly one of my favorite FfB albums had to be downloaded off RUclips naughtily because I don’t use Bandcamp. But if you don’t want to buy any songs/have an Apple Music subscription, I recommend checking out Atrium Carceri’s youtube channel, they seem to be one of the biggest Dark Ambient labels (plus they have the background lore behind albums in the description which is really cool for getting into the vibe and understanding why the tracks are named what they are).
The most disturbing song I've ever heard is Mary Turner, Mary Turner by Xiu Xiu which is about the absolutely depraved lynching of a pregnant Black woman in the south. I love love Xiu Xiu and they make a ton of extremely disturbing music but this is their only song that I've only listened to once bc it made me physically nauseous and I can't bring myself to return to it. I highly recommend checking them out but it's a stark and horrific song about how depraved the racist conservative American south is
If you wanted to reach back into historical folk music there’s some pretty groovy stuff like SO MUCH RACISM and “that murder that happened last week, but in rhyme!”, and “butterflies will eat my infant’s eyeballs if they don’t go to sleep right fucking now”. I have a book of folk songs written about train accidents and boy can a steam engine kill you in a lot of very unpleasant ways and boy do we ever know that from experience.
WAIT, just realized that afaik (and I..... am In The Loop for the east-coast US folk song reenactors, so....) there ISN'T a folk song featuring Phineas Gage, which is! He blew a hole through his head and LIVED, but CRAZY??? There's MATERIAL???
I think you’re talking about the song House of Leaves not 5 & 1/2 minute hallway, both great songs but the narrative about the mom happens in house of leaves.
I'm glad you listed Hamburger Lady. I would talk to Blaster Al Ackerman, who wrote the words, at his book store in Baltimore and one day he talked about the song. He said every city with a burn unit has a Hamburger Lady, and that makes it so much worse.
@Time Baby He really was a great writer and his work was all over the place, some of it really dark. I got to see him do spoken word and he was hilarious. He would get up at poetry readings or right before a weird band, and it always worked.
My favorite disturbing song is Iowa by Slipknot. It's just so raw and genuine like knowing that Corey was as unhinged as he sounds is so. Augh. The ending is so good too like after that whole Experience you're left with the last droning note from the base for what feels like a little too long. Scissors is also really good too and I like how it goes backand forth from melodic to just noise.
As a teenager, I was actively terrified of "TV Set" by the Cramps, a song about someone who cuts off their girlfriend's head, puts it atop the TV set and watches TV while it slowly rots away. In retrospect, there's an element of campy over the top-ness, but what the song describes is so objectively disturbing and gross (and Lux sounds so unhinged) that it still gets to me.
Sooooo stoked to see Scott Walker on here. I was ready to obnoxiously get in the comment section like "WHAT ABOUT SCOTT WALKER?" but you already had him included. ❤️ Excellent taste.
Hi May, great list! I love Nurse With wound, and Nine Inch Nails are one of my favourite bands. Have you listened to Everywhere At The End Of Time? That's the most disturbing album I've ever heard. It's many hours long, and is designed tk simulate the experience of having dementia and the long, slow decline. Listening to this made me feel sad, anxious, gave me a mild panic attack, and yet it was utterly beautiful. If your mental health is in a strong enough place to handle it, ibhigjly recommend...but please don't don't if you arein a bad place. I don't want it it break you. (Apologies if you have already made a video about this, I'm rediscovering your channel after a break away from RUclips).
its so interesting to read what people find scary or unsettling, because everywhere at the end of time just feels so calming to me. its like lo-fi, its calm and peaceful and just the right amount of a little bit off. i totally get why people find it scary or disturbing tho
@@casir.7407 it's interesting that you say that. I was playing this in my office recently (the first part) and a colleague walked in and said "oh what lovely relaxing music ". I've always found it unsettling and upsetting. But I think that's because I used to work in dementia care, and my grandmother died with dementia, so it has a lot of emotional resonance. I agree with you, it is so interesting to see what disturbs some people, and what there find enjoyable or relaxing 😊
I haven't been able to finish Everywhere At The End of Time...last time I tried, I got to point where the song cuts off really abruptly and it shook me so much I had to stop 😥 hit me harder than any lyric could
I listened to Everywhere at the end of time when my mental health was NOT in a good place and 0/10 do not recommend doing that I just sat in bed with headphones in and listened to the whole thing start to finish, alone in the dark It was horrible and horrifying and incredibly sad and uh yeah Very much agree it belongs on a list of disturbing music
@@erodingshell omg, yeah. The choir, growing with sound and the strings is super emotional. The break down is then just, the saddest thing. One that gets me is "Alone All The Way". Euthanasia is a very personal subject to me, and that song makes me super emotional. Great band, but my therapy bill took a hit from them lol
@@ZijnShayatanica I love the concept they have, the art, etc, but I have to admit I almost never listen to them. I need to be in a certain headspace for that I think lmao. But, as musicians, they are skilled! So all love here
for those who have listened and are now wondering: House of Leaves is the track on the Poe album with the "mom" moment, it isn't on either 5 1/2 or If You Were Here
Guest House by Daughters should be on here, but with the recent accusations against the vocalist maybe we shouldn't advertise their music. That song is genuinely scary though
maybe it was because i first listened to it when i was kinda young, but 'secrets of wisteria' has to be one of the most disturbing songs ive ever heard. sometimes it creeps into my mind to this day and sends chills down my spine.
Oh my god same! I had forgotten the title but every now and then I’ll get the words “counting 10, 9, 0 fingers” on repeat in my head. What really fucked me up was the backwards message. I wasn’t ready for that at age 11
I’m a high femme juicy couture wearing pop music loving bitch. I have no idea what any of these songs are but I love watching your videos and learning about stuff I had no idea existed lol
TW A very disturbing intro track is rape by dislabia. It has news reports which talks about women being raped and abused and near the end of the song there a man calling a women awful thing then killing her while she begs for her life ,it’s only a minute but if not a fun listen.
I know they might not be as intense as some of these, but "Lonesome Organist Rapes Page-Turner" or "Slide" by the Dresden Dolls really shake me. Amanda Palmer sure loves to get into some gross material
"Mary Turner, Mary Turner" by Xiu Xiu is one of the few songs I've listened to that I would genuinely describe as not only disturbing but actually scary, especially since it's recounting something that actually happened.
From what I’ve heard from Xiu Xiu, they aren’t afraid of making people uncomfortable. Support Our Troops OH! barely feels like a song but more of somebody talking over noise. Fabulous Muscles sounds like it’s about someone who is attached to an abuser.
Most of the songs on A Promise and Fabulous Muscles are, so far as I am aware, based on stories either from Jamie Stewart's own life or those of people he'd met, friends and family members. "Blacks", "Brian the Vampire" and "Nieces Pieces" are especially dispiriting in this light.
This!!! As a long term xiu xiu devotee ive listened to so much of their music. So many periods of my life have been covered by a few choice albums by them. I've adored their ability to capture complete and utter fear, helplessness, and genuine despair in some of their bops but NOTHING made me feel as sick as Mary turner. Its definitely huge reccomend from me, i was surprised to see it not on May's list! Thank you for making this comment, literally took the words from my mouth!
You’re absolutely right. I was very surprised to not see it mentioned on here, since it’s probably the most vile, awful and disturbing piece of music I’ve ever heard (and this is coming from a harsh-noise and death industrial enjoyer). When I was listening through Girl With Basket of Fruit for the first time, it was not until I had listened through “Mary Turner, Mary Turner” that I wanted to turn the music off and go throw up. The lyrics is what got me, as well as the haunting voice of Jamie Stewart sounding like a tortured spirit haunting an old cassette tape. I absolutely adore Xiu Xiu and all of their projects - and I am of course happy that they raised awareness on an actual event that happened in our so-called “Land of The Free” - but I haven’t listened though that album in about five months solely because of that song. I’ll stick to my noise ‘till I’ve recovered enough to listen through it again.
Yeah, this list is lacking in Xiu Xiu and Current 93. Slipknot could've gone in the honorable mentions for the song "Iowa" too
"Daddy" is still the most disturbing song to me, not just because of the subject matter, but because of Jonathan Davis' breakdown at the end. You can hear the pain in his voice when he's cry-screaming at his abuser, "I fucking hate you! Fuck you! You fucking ruined my life!"
I totally understand why people find the song disturbing - for me it was hugely cathartic in helping me cope with my own abuse from childhood. The rawness of it is very visceral, very moving and very validating. I feel for Davis.
Quick edit because I had to go give it a listen again, and the part that I found the most uncomfortable about the whole track was at the end, after his breakdown and the silence of the track, there is a recording of who I assume is his dad yelling and being harsh. It reminds me of my abusive stepdad, and that is the hardest bit to get through. While the rest of the content is emotionally taxing, it is cathartic in the sense of Davis finally getting to express the hurt he as a child endured (as pretty much most content on the list, ha). That last little bit on the track after the silent stretch has a tendency to catch me off guard, too. I'll be lost in thought after the main song, wont notice the silent stretch then I'll be startled out of disassociation by someone being an asshole. Ah, trauma songs.
Sorry for the ramble.
@@Crithosceleg I totally get it. Like even though I was never abused like that as a child, I can still hear the voice of my trauma through Jonathan Davis's scream.
@@SOBEKCrocodileGod Thanks for the insight, I was really unsure if it was related to him or not. It strikes me every time it sneaks up on me, ignites that child-like fear when step-dad would get on his bullshit, that tape was my normal. I'm sure there are a few arguments recorded of my parents somewhere, not that the intent was to capture the argument, they just crop up because assholes are always looking for one. Whew! Fuck that recording, though xD
The group I hung out with in high school didn't know I was being abused by my mother's friend's son and one of the guys put on Daddy by Korn, thinking it was just a creepy song he was gonna spook us with. Then I started having a panic attack and one of the other guys turned it off for me. Also I was high at the time, having smoked some pot. So not sure if that made things better or worse 🤔 🙃
@@loki1456You are stronger than me cause if someone put that on while i was high and made me felt that horrible i would have thrown hands.
Korn's "Daddy" is the most disturbing thing I heard... And the least played song in concert because Jon Davis said it was too distressing for him. It has the merit to have raised awareness that boys can be abused too.
It's a rough one. It really is.
God I first heard it at around thirteen- not knowing what it was
I was already not doing well at the time and it hit a bit too close to what the initial trigger of the depressive period was
Yer it's a very distressing song. I can only play it sometimes. Thankfully Jon is doing better now and that to me is the best outcome.
That song absolutely destroyed me when I first heard it because I didn't know other people were suffering like me. It both made me feel seen and made me feel horrible.
I listened to it the other day and it was really upsetting to hear, especially knowing what he had gone through. It also puts Freak on a Leash in a new light(even if you know it's about someone struggling with life)
I need to suggest Uboa and her album "The Origin Of My Depression", lyrically it tackles themes of gender dysphoria, the objectification of trans people, and the loneliness and suffering that's attached to it. The instrumentals are very dark, abrasive, and sorrowful, and downright terrifying at times; listening to this album is difficult, but you’d be missing out if you didn’t.
I find it kind of sad that when people find out about noise, they immediately get directed to acts like Merzbow and Vomir, and not gems like this.
uboa 😍also puce mary and pharmakon for more women to make yr ears bleed
Uboa is great, she also sometimes responds to comments that you leave on her tweets, she responded to mine and was quite pleasant.
Yessss uboa is amazing
THIS. I listened to the album once after finishing lingua ignota... it's so painful to even think about listening to it again.
Uboa is great, but one thing I do want to say is that her work is from a very different tradition from Merzbow or Vomir, so comparing the two seems… odd to me? Her work is more relevant to the more melodic end of power electronics and death industrial, such as later Sutcliffe Jügend or Theologian, whereas Merzbow's kind of an institution in his own right but has more in common with certain other eclectic Japanese noisers like KK Null, and Vomir is the quintessential wall noise guy, which is completely different from either of them and is almost more a conceptual art thing. They're part of different conversations.
That said, there is actually a fair number of trans noise artists, which isn't so shocking all things considered. :P Niku Daruma (and by extension burnt-feathers), Turned Into A Girl, Scorpion Sound Source, Ragk and Winter Rose come to mind.
Not me being nit picky but "Daddy" by KoRn isn't about a family member doing it but a close family friend and then his despair when his parents didn't believe him... it doesn't change a fact about it being disturbing and his screams and cries while the rest of the band awkwardly plays is haunting
Also love the list, I have a weird fascination with weird music and just generally music that is hard to listen too( Death Grips is legit one of my favorite bands of all time)
13:37 Jon Davis broke down for real when recording the vocals, and someone can be heard opening the door to the vocal booth and checking in on him near the end of the song. Also yeah, back in 1999, Korn's debut album was the hot LP to spin at parties and we all agreed we would never play "Daddy", the final track. One time we forgot to switch CDs beforehand. It was Not Fun!
did everyone cry???
Polly is such an intense song, it was actually based off the real life kidnap and torture of a girl which adds to the fucked up ness of it. Huge fan of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, I actually got my first tattoo with the Nirvana smiley and the song title come as you are underneath.
The girl got away by pretending she loved it and was falling in love with rapist, but needed a break cause her back hurt and she was thirsty, he bought it, she bolted and got away
Yes the song becomes a lot more disturbing when you know the backstory of it
Literally went to the comments to say what Polly was about, same as you and also my first tattoo was the Nirvana smiley. Friendo 4lyf
@@SOBEKCrocodileGod like when they play Born in the USA during American Independence Day parties
I think Xiu Xiu is a goddamn treasure-trove of disturbing songs especiaally ones with a good dose of realism and empathy. I guess for ones with more narrative edges to their horror, Fabulous Muscles and the classic Sad Pony Guerilla Girl come to mind first.
..fabulous muscles kills me
I did not hear of them until girl with basket of fruit. Fun time that was.
mary turner is never not horrifying
Mary Turner Mary Turner was the first piece of music I ever heard that made me feel sick to my stomach.
Ale is a fucking banger and beating, too. And SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, OH!, too, like what a raw and harrowing examination of American war crimes and the way we lionize cowards who make themselves feel big by hurting the weak. It will fucking stick with you.
I think “me and a gun” by Tori Amos is one of those songs that just genuinely shook me to my core, when I heard it for the first time I just had to let out a long and very loud sigh after it was done because I needed to almost physically shake that song out of my brain. It’s just such a haunting and upsetting piece of music
I always thought Bela Legosi’s Dead was just a fun goth track and never really thought it was disturbing. Stigmatyr Matyr was introduced to me through Night of the Demons. ‘Hello’ by Poe I found through the end credits of Stir of Echoes.
Yeah, Bela Legosi's Dead is just a creepy bop
Hollow hills by bauhaus always creeped me out
Wasp is the track that kinda unnerves me, even though it's just 20 seconds.
Bela Lugosi's Dead is just a spooky reggae song
The song 'In a Lonely Place' by Joy Division is one of the most disturbing songs I've ever heard. It was recorded 3 days before Ian died and the lyrics are all about his mental state at the time and about how he is scared that when he dies, he will miss the people that loved him and about how he is crying for help but no one is listening. It feels like you shouldn't be able to listen to it
I like how you're making disturbing shit of all art forms kind of your brand but like, coming from an actually sane and cool perspective: You're really out there rehabilitating edgelords everywhere
Tiny Tim was a sweet clown man who was a true blue weirdo, and people really give him creepy cred just because of how his songs are used. I've been watching all of these videos (and listening to your music) and it's been wonderful!
He was a great treasure with his insane, encyclopedic memory of early 20th century songs, too.
@@drij thankyou
i think the creepy cred was justified when he married a 17yo when he was 37yo
One of his relatives on TikTok said he wasn’t a good person
I watched a documentary that someone made about him recently, here on youtube. I highly recommend anyone that thinks of him as a "Sweet" man, go give it a watch. He's not the worst guy ever, but he uh... Certainly did some strange things and had some strange thoughts that he'd share...
A song that’s always fucked me up is Sad Pony Guerilla Girl by Xiu Xiu. There’s a profound sadness in it, an unsettling hint of a character’s resort to violence, and an audio jump scare like 2 minutes in that still gets me.
Here in my country (Philippines), it's probably "My Way" by Frank Sinatra. People refuse to sing it during videoke/karaoke activities as, for some reason, it often results to deaths. There were many instances of murder, killings, etc. that took place after "My Way" was sung.
This is such a weird phenomenon. I learned about it from a podcast that isn't the greatest in the world, but the hosts were hypothesizing that maybe it's because it's a really confident song, I guess bordering on smug, and that can set people off.
Maybe after the first time or two, people who were already out to kill decided to hit up a karaoke night and wait. It's like a super dark meme.
That's super surprising to me since it's such a happy song to me. I'm sorry the song has such a disturbing story for you guys
What about the Sid Vicious cover? Is it the song or who sang it?
Well thanks for...spreading the news...
I always feel very uncomfortable listening to "What's He Building In There?" by Tom Waits. I dont know if I'd call it disturbing on the same level as any of these, but narratively and musically I find it unsettling.
Check out his album Bone Machine. It’s great.
I love that song so much. It's super creepy. And my upstairs neighbour has been making weird sounds and my mind keeps going 'what's he doing up there' in Tom Waits' voice.
oh i actually love it, its part of his more narrative songs that really highlight his really good storytelling voice. i feel kommienezuspadt is more aggressive and unsettling, but tbh its all an issue of what ppl find personally disturbing 🤔
@@casir.7407 The oompa vibes in Kommienezuspadt really do it for me. So good.
Edit: I meant ragtime I guess. You know what I mean, it gets in my bones and makes me want to dance.
@@arilith504 yeah, once the german yelling winds down a bit and the instruments come in its less unsettling and just a good old bop
All of Caligula by Lingua Ignota certainly qualifies for this list, but DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR most definitely....ouch. The whole album is essentially about an abusive relationship, but more specifically the traumatic aftermath of those you love denying said abuse.
I fucking love Lingua Ignota. I second the recommendation.
Came to the comments to post this. 🥲
lingy is a fucking queen
Please, please make a part 2, May. I could honestly listen to you talk about disturbing music for hours. Or hell, disturbing media in general, I'm not picky.
I listened to Hamburger Lady, genuinely made me uncomfortable and it literally made me struggle to sleep at night. What was terrifying is that it went from being cool to scaring the shit out of me slowly.
This one isn’t usually considered “disturbing”, at least not the traditional sense, but the song “Good Morning, Captain” by Slint is perhaps the most chilling rock song ever made. Lyrically, it’s pretty terrifying on a few levels. The entire piece builds to a climax that gives me goosebumps every time.
YES!!! I second this!!
This song it one of my favorites ever!
🤦♂️
I worked at a haunt that had Tiptoe Through the Tulips on repeat right behind me. I was also working in a blacklight vortex tunnel. I was the only one who could stand the spinning and Tiny Tim for 5 hours a night. That song is about 2 minutes long meaning I heard it about 150 times a shift. By some miracle (or loss of brain cells) I never threw up and I don't hate Tiptoe either.
I listen to short songs on loop to lose time when I’m doing something boring or repetitive, maybe I should try Tiptoe.
I love Skinny Puppy too. The weirdest thing was when they randomly made a basically electronica album in 2004 (and it fuckin' slaps), and then went right back to making weird experimental industrial shit. What a band.
I love that the "Weapon" LP was allegedly the songs the government played to prisoners at Guatonimo (sp?)....I mean imagine being from that side of the world--the Middle East-- ahhhhnnnnd, MAYBE you're even innocent, like young and stupid (as we all once were or are now), but the government skips 'due process' because christ the stakes are just so high, the towers traumatized us all so badly afterall, and pressure is intense to make the f-ers pay, and so in an effort to 'crack you,' the feds pipe SKINNY PUP into your isolation cell at unreal decibels, and you're a fundamentalist Muslim...well you might just think your are in actual hell....yeah I think they even unsuccessfully sued the US government for unpaid royalties for such "public broadcast," but it was dismissed as a "weapon" of war, not a work of art......umm, OK.
Skinny Puppy for the TGWOTR tour is still the best show I've ever been too.
The Pro-Test video was kind of a meme with my friends that liked industrial back in high school. I still love it
Love Skinny Puppy too. Last Rights is probably their most disturbing album imo.
I saw Skinny Puppy live last month! been one of my favorite bands for many years!
Honestly for me, The Spider and the Kitsune-Like Lion is one of the most distressing songs, probably mainly because I listened to it when I was like 12 and the uncanny valley vocaloid toning and kind of ugly higurashi style artwork freaked me out so much
Not to be a "erm well IM not scared by it 🤓" but it has a special place in my heart along with Fear Garden and Love Love Nightmare as certified young weeb bangers
Was wondering if that would be mentioned. Vocaloid in general is absolutely ripe with songs about horrible terrible things.
Obviously, Kikuo's 'Gomenne Gomenne' needs a mention as probably one of the most well-known disturbing songs in that sphere. Though imo the worst one I've heard would be Dark Fairy TaleP's 'Caroll In Wonderland' - it's an awful, nasty song speculating on the whole 'Lewis Caroll was a p*do' rumor that I'm not sure was entirely responsible to create.
'Gomenne Gomenne' is more or less about the same subject matter (if actually more gruesome with the metaphor of being literally eaten,) but I afford it more lenience because I don't believe it's about a specific event or real people - though correct me if I'm wrong.
I really could go on about all the nasty songs that are out there but this comment is way too long already.
*tuning
@md I absolutely love “Love Love Nightmare”
Those two go sooo hard fr
The song that haunts me the most is "Pretty" by Korn. Musically it's not really upsetting, but the backstory and the lyrics genuinely make me nauseous. It might sound dramatic but I think that song gave me secondary trauma
My favorite thing about disturbing music, though, is how conditional it is. Like, it depends entirely on environment and personal experience. One time in AP Lit back in highschool a student came in high af so the teacher sat him down at his desk and made him listen to A Day In The Life by The Beatles with a pair of big headphones, and I watched that teenage baseball boy have his very first anxiety attack at 2 pm on a thursday.
"DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR" by Lingua Ignota gets an honorable mention from me. If an honest to god witch prayed to the devil to curse her ab*ser, this is what it sounds like. "Satan fortify me, I don't eat, I don't sleep, I let it consume me"... Genuinely harrowing stuff.
She is dead can dance level of entrancing, amazing.
Was shocked to not hear her on this list. The whole album is soul crushing
It's not even the lyrics or sound on Traitor that get me, it's the genuine panicked hyperventilation in between those gut-deep screams. If you've been there, you've heard those before, and then realised after a few minutes they were coming from you
Banger of an album from a hugely talented vocalist tho, Fragrant Is My Many Flower'd Crown is one of my favourite tracks of all time
Immortal Technique's "Dance with the Devil" at 14 blew my mind with how dark music could be. I had never heard anything remotely real like that (even though the story may not be real, idrk) and left me with audible gasps and shock at the second half of the song. What a wild song.
Dance with the Devil is such a good song and I recommend everyone at least listen to it once in their life
Immortal Technique has so many better tracks.
personally one of my fave “disturbing” songs is King Park by La Dispute
just the story, how it’s told, and the emotion you can just feel radiating; esp at the last part.
(it’s a song going over a shooting and how they hit the wrong target, killing a child, and living with that guilt)
it gives me chills every time. it’s not scary but those emotions dude
i was just about to comment this
La Dispute really has a knack for channeling raw anger/sorrow. "Edward Benz 27 Times" also hits me hard.
I’m surprised Gomenne Gomenne didn’t get a mention here. The whole song is just very graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse and cannibalism. It’s in Japanese so it’s less disturbing when you aren’t watching the music video with subtitles on but still. It’s apparently a very accurate depiction of what goes through the minds of csa victims.
I was thinking the same thing, I remember showing the song and its lyrics to my younger sister and making her cry lol
Oh hey, I brought that one up! :D
But yeah, Kikuo's not exactly a cheery musician in general, but that one is *rough.* Made me genuinely nauseated.
Half of all vocaloid songs could be on here. I find the Albert Fish one to be much more disturbing as it’s a true story of pedophilia and cannibalism, with someone reading the letter he wrote to the victim’s parents about how she tasted at the end.
Honestly I’m surprised that no vocaloid stuff got on the list
Like there’s a really heavy English bias here
@@phoenixfritzinger9185 lmao get over yourself weeb
I have some generally disturbing song recommendations;
The Man Who Watches Me Sleep by Salvia - an absolute banger, frequently discordant and has a suffocating vibe. The lyrics center around being trapped in a house by a captor, and build a narrative of absolute hopelessness. Salvia's visual art, drag, fashion, and image manipulation, is absolutely beautiful too and is worth checking out
Bacterial Contamination by Kanimiso-P - considerably creepy in its sound, the lyrics tell the story of a person who is going through very harsh bullying, to the point of losing any outlet for safety. The lyrics could be interpreted in different ways, but there is definitely a theme of the cycle of abuse, the bullied becoming the bully, with a possibly more violent end than that. A vocaloid song
Gomenne Gomenne by Kikuo - very disturbing tune, is a creepy banger but becomes blatantly distressing once you learn the lyrics. The lyrics are so disturbing that they are not allowed to be shown on the song's page in the vocaloid wiki. They tell the story of a girl being sexually abused by her father, and are very triggering. Also a vocaloid song. Kikuo is an absolutely amazing musician, and their other music is absolutely worth a listen.
Hitogawari, also by Kikuo - a very passionate, desperate, vocal song. It's about a girl's inability to be able to recover from abuse, finding herself unable to accept a normal, non-abusive form of love from her significant other. The singer's performance in this song is absolutely amazing, oozing with desperation
when i first listened to Hitogawari, i had my autoplay on and i was like "oh yeah ok this is nice" and then there's just this total tone shift and it scared the hell out of me
i'd heard about gomenne gomenne from a video and i was really curious bc they didn't actually discuss the lyrics and i wanted to see it for myself
should've stayed curious
Hitogawari, Gommene Gommene and bacteria contamination are really sad to me.
Hanatan really did a great job putting the emotion into Hitogawari.
the onibi series alone would take up 7/10 of the list if vocaloid was included
oh boy when it comes to vocaloid music that Sucks To Hear i feel like i have a lot of like, uncommonish picks.
mentioning scary vocaloid music without mentioning MASA DESIGN WORKS is i feel a bit of a crime, he's Very known for his tracks "the fox's wedding" and "the spider and the kitsune-like lion". most of the horror comes from the fact that he writes about terrible horrible crime murder r*pe cannibalism like everything. he can think of and girls do that to each other and sing about it over the fucking most banger instrumentals of all time. if u want something that bangs but isn't scary from MASA i recommend "bunker buster" it's one of my favorite songs of all time period.
another one of my all time favorite songs of all fucking time is "thirsty" by hikkie-p. again, very noisy but especially with this static in the background? once again the MV for this one is kinda scary (to me) but soooo so fucking cool. it's noisy from the beginning but just fucking keeps building until the final chorus and MAN. MAN ITS SO COOL. also probably about having an eating disorder which is not scary to me but that is because I Have One.
daijoubu-p is pretty well known for being somewhat of a massive troll, all of his music is really noisy and discordant and usually about spooky scary things like murder. i think it's kinda funny but i also realize daijoubu-p is rather A Lot for people who don't listen to music like that. also the art featured in a lot of his MVs scare me very badly but this is because im very frightened by images and theyre probably not That scary. my favorite track by him is "the face" and i forget what his other tracks are called im sorry
@@maizie3921 Masa's music is good, but to me it is a bit repetitive in both theme and in production. It really doesn't disturb me, especially because the songs lyrics are largely based off of (Japanese) folk tales, stuff that just isnt real. The themes of the songs that I mentioned above, especially Gomenne Gomenne, are in my opinion a lot more personal, realistic, and unfortunately relatable, which is what makes them disturbing to me. I have been exposed to horror and gore for a large part of my life though, so I am desensitized to themes like the Fox's Wedding that are mostly surface level gore horror. Thirsty by hikkie-p is pretty good, but the lyrics are kind of too vague to disturb me, which is almost definitely just from an iffy translation. daijoubu-p's music is kind of hit or miss ofc, but over all the production of the songs and definitely the manipulation of the vocaloid's voices works very well to make a disturbing song, the lyrics just really need something more, except for tracks like the face which are pretty well off in that field. its okay to be scared of things, that just means you arent desensitized by the internet and media which is good lol
genesis p-orridge was a real one, their aesthetic is inspiring and they made some absolute bangers
Was lucky enough after being a fan for a long time to catch the last TG gig. S/he changed my life! Always found it somewhat symbolic that lockdown/covid started in the UK within 2 days of he/r death, a new reality began and things have never felt the same since.
Other than Sophie, I’ve never been more upset by a celebrity death than theirs. Absolute fucking legend.
@@bluehole6019 OMG I am in complete agreement. Sophie's death ruined me and still does. My tastes are about as niche as they come but I'm convinced she was the future. Another level entirely. XXXX
Diamanda Galás "The Divine Punishment" really set me off like it starts with some spooky funny halloween atmosphere and at some point BRUH this is so SO much more unsettling than I thought
Plague Mass is pretty scary too. I used to play it very loud late at night and was accused of conducting Satanic rituals by one of my neighbours! Her voice still gives me goosebumps.
Really, this one should have been at the top of the list. I saw Plague Mass live, and the base disrupted my girlfriend's pacemaker, and we ended up at the hospital. Worth it.
@@roberthradek7100The live version of "This is the Law of the Plague" is a fucking nightmare. *UNCLEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAN.*
I find it odd that so many people suggested “Red Right Hand” as opposed to I guess literally anything on “The Murder Ballads”. My suggestion would be “Song For Joy”, which my brother used to play a lot when he was a teen and I was a kid and, thanks to some distinctly not mumbled lyrics, fucked me right up.
“Do You Love Me (pt 2)” holds the distinction of being the song that has made me the most viscerally uncomfortable ever and the only song that my partner has asked specifically to never play anywhere they can hear ever again.
A song that always comes to my mind when I think of disturbing definitely has to be Lisa Germano's "A Psychopath". The lyrics alone make you feel paralyzed and helpless. The use of an actual 911 call from a woman screaming in terror about a man breaking into her home (before supposedly raping and murdering her from what I've read about the backstory) always pushes it over the edge when I hear it. I remember when I first heard it, I immediately had my older sis listen to it (we both like darker songs) and she honestly went around the house locking the doors after it ended.
A disturbing track I could recommend is "the child-catcher" by Patrick Wolf on his debut album Lycanthropy. It's kinda folk-tronika pop about child abuse.
Also 4st 7lbs by Manic Street Preachers which is sorta goth grunge about anorexia. Very "Noise-like" inspired lead guitar with a ballad as an outro as the victim achieves 4st 7lbs the weight at which an adult person will apparently die.
Oof! seconding these! The Child-Catcher is A LOT! Especially because the atmosphere and within Patrick Wolf's general work it's just such... ugh a gut punch >_
@@itsmarthai oh wow someone else who has heard of it! I usually get blank stares haha
@@B_dizzy-l5v theres three of us!
These two songs have been so formative and comforting for me and I’m so taken aback to see someone mention them both together ngl
@@nikolaideponeo6795 that's weirdly nice to hear. Even my hardcore music nerd friends haven't heard of these track. It's so foreign to me that anyone else knows they exist.
"Warm Leatherette" literally triggered the start of a legendary British indie label (Mute), in the early _1980's._ It's a pretty cool 'If you build it, they will come' story imo.
Grace Jones did a cover as well.
To add to people's fear of Tiny Tim - he released an album produced by David Tibet of Current 93, and it ends with a long form rant of Tiny Tim talking about the antichrist and end of days over spooky C93/Nurse With Wound sounds. Highly recommend. The rest of the album is off kilter in the much more expected way. So yeah go look up "Songs of an Impotent Troubadour"
22:56 the original version of Marilyn Manson's Smells Like Children album included audio from the VHS tapes he would film of him doing Bad Things to women; while promo copies exist, those tracks were replaced on the retail version. Also, a snippet of one of those videos was included at the end of a tour video and yeah, holy crap it is the best way to ruin your day.
Oh you must mean Dead To The World, the secondhand VHS I got as a teen and still feel uneasy thinking about that last minute........... ;________;
@@taijaripatti8711 yyyyup that's the one 😬
You couldn’t be more wrong about it. That clip that was on the end of DTTW is a clip from Groupie, a short film he did with his girlfriend at the time. It was nothing more than a piece of art he strategically released in part to sustain his image of being a controversial figure. Manson is actually a very down to earth person and delves into darker recesses of life to make statements.
(Also fuck Frankie isn’t so straight forward nor is it actually Manson who is “torturing” these women in the audio, it was a tour manager)
@@caryssoper considering recent allegations of Manson's predatory behaviour, Groupie sounds much less like a collaborative film project and a lot more like forced s.a. being passed off as 'art'. glad it was never released.
@@birchwwolf Unfortunately for you, it’s been proved it was an art project. Don’t start that crap. Do a bit of research before running your mouth on something you obviously don’t know much about :)
The first piece of music that came to mind was The Caretaker's Everywhere at the End of Time. Still haunts me
Definitely! This is one of those "Thank You for suggesting this, now I don't have to" moments. Even if you somehow just 'happened upon' this album without a clue as to what it's about, you still get this really powerful sense of something incredibly important just slipping away from you and, it's vital that you can catch hold of a bit of it while you can still remember what it was about it that was so terribly precious in the first place..! Admittedly, I don't know _all_ of the songs mentioned here, and if I'm honest there's a few of them that I'm unlikely to seek out because I'm more psychologically in a place right now of "Really, do I even _need_ this sh|+ in my head, even - or especially - if it's stuff that's 'genuine' in its intent, and not Beavis & Butthead level "guts 'n' maggots all up in your face, dude!" kinda crap?! However there is something about Everywhere at the End of Time, an album about someone suffering the inexorable onset of dementia, which employs effects like '50's 'tea dance' type music becoming increasingly garbled and getting 'lost in the noise' like a distant radio station heard at night 'fading into the unknown'× which unsettled me considerably more than waking up in 'the horrors' from alcohol withdrawal in a pitch black room with Throbbing Gristle's 'Zyclon B. Zombie' and Crass' 'Reality Asylum' playing back - to - back was able to do! A _lot_ more - like, Existential~F%&kin'~Dread, literally..! There are worse things than losing one's mind (even as you're aware you're losing it) - being skinned alive, say, or the murder of one's child, but if you are someone who would find oneself simultaneously touched and terrified, as I was, by a story such as I heard a while ago of an elderly married couple that had been 'placed' in a nursing home suffering from Alzheimer's who barely knew who they even _were_ anymore, let alone who they were to each other, but who would sit out every day in the Day Room, fiercely gripping each other's hand because their love had, at least as yet, outlasted their actual memory of each other - they still knew, at the core of their being, how vital each was to the other..! (I should think one would feel like a monster prizing them apart for bed and so on, as per the rules and procedures of the facility!) then while this is not an album that will be on the playlist in many Goth crypts and would, without doubt, result in the venue being burned down if played at a Grindcore club, it will resonate _deeply_ with you, even if you can't bring yourself to play it more than once or twice a year. It's not like it's hard on the _ear..._ but it's a challenging listen! Even if I had the power, I would hesitate to make it 'prescribed listening' - I'm not trying to drive people _away,_ after all(!) but I would strongly, _strongly_ recommend this to anyone considering going into the field of Gerontology. Or to anyone who can bear to take a long look into the dark...
[EDIT] ×For anyone living in the British Isles or much of Europe younger than, say their mid - 40's, this simile (metaphor?) is probably pretty meaningless, but hopefully it'll evoke recognition for those living in North America where AM radio is still 'a thing'!
maybe not the most disturbing music out there, but alice glass's (formerly of crystal castles) "FAIR GAME" deeply unsettles me as a very raw retelling of the long-term emotional abuse she experienced at the hands of her former bandmate. the lyrics feel very real and almost like direct quotations, and the chorus line "where would you be without me?" cuts deeply both in the voice of her abuser and equally in alice's own voice, throwing his words back at him.
I'm a scardey cat, so the scariest 'music' I've ever heard is The Beatles 'Number 9'. For those that don't know, it's a sound collage that's super weird. I hate it. I can't recall if I've ever sat through the whole song. If I have, my brain blocked it. That may be mild, but it distressed the heck out of me when I've tried to listen to it. Nope, no thank you.
Damn. This video must seem like a whole other can of worms by comparison
As Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds go, "Skeleton Tree" has to the most disturbing, gut punch of an album in their catalog. It was written and recorded, mostly prior, but during the period of Cave's 15 year old son's death. What was written before his accidental passing from a fall sounds almost prophetic and what added after just applying the most harrowing of effects. It is an album about death and loss that a good majority of was completed before Cave suffered, what is likely, the most catastrophic loss of his life.
On it His fairly consistent style sees radical changes into electronics, ambience, discordant notes, and a vibe that just wraps you a blanket of disquiet.
Do yourselves a favor, if you want to hear an amazing album by an amazing artist while just getting all the joy dragged out of you in the best and worst of ways then listen to "Skeleton Tree."
It reminds of a live performance from probably 20 years ago where Cave comes onstage and says, "tonight there are no happy songs," before launching into his band's set. The album can feel much like that because, even at the few high points, there are no happy songs.
Skeleton Tree is rough. the title track is one of the most gently beautiful songs I've ever heard tho. such a sad track, but also kinda comforting. probably my favorite song of the 2010s
Yes, that is an amazing album, though I personally like Ghosteen even more.
Literally came here to mention Skeleton Tree. I love that album, but fuck is it hard to listen sometimes.
Choices for disturbing albums:
Buyer’s Market - Peter Sotos
Venereology - Merzbow
Hi, How Are You? - Daniel Johnston
Superflat - C’est La Key
Giles Corey - Giles Corey
I Have a Special Plan for This World - Current 93
A Promise - Xiu Xiu
The Origin of My Depression - Uboa
My Teenage Dream Ended - Farrah Abraham
Caligula - Lingua Ignota
Filth - Swans
Livestream Death Compilation - Birds Fear Death
A Sucked Orange - Nurse With Wound
Circle Thinking - I Hate Sex
An Empty Bliss Beyond this World - The Caretaker
Everywhere at the End of Time - The Caretaker
Divorce Lawyers I Shaved My Head - Jordaan Mason
Slow Burn - Old Gray
The Ghost~ Pop Tape - Devon Hendryx
Up vote this list!!!! So good!!
upvoted for _I Have a Special Plan for This World_ alone! Thomas Ligotti is one of my favorite authors, and his lyrics on this contain his usual dark, nihilistic wit and imagery that is unmatched.
Watm Leatherette is actually from 1978!! Great to see it shouted out here
The Normal was a one man group made up of Daniel Miller who helped sign Depeche mode to their label and has worked with them since their inception
Speaking of DM, not a disturbing song but a song that i put high up on my list for being really depressing is ‘Blasphemous rumors’ by Depeche mode
Its a great song and the sound itsef isnt even frightning but the content of the song is just so sad
Great vid as always may🦔💚
One of my favourite versions of Warm Leatherette is the Grace Jones one, really gives it a cold funk edge.
@@liamjay6844I LOVEEE THAT VERSION💚💚🦔
ive never understood tiproe through the tulips bring scary personally, I’ve always thought it was really cute mainly cause spongebobs use of his music
My guess its like a music box or childrens laughter. Not scary. Unless you are alone at night.
The most disturbing experience with music I’ve had was when I was at school doing A level music, our teacher played us a string quartet piece by Shostakovich which was about being a composer during the Russian revolution. When it finished we all just sat in silence for a good few minutes.
Do you remember what it was called? I’m a big fan of Shostakovich and I’d love to hear it
Yeah me too!
was it like the bits of stuff they played during the wyoming incident??
Slightly surprised to hear that Wiener Blut by Rammstein, which is about the Josef Fritzl case, wasn't on the honorable mentions list. I guess it's understandable, though, since all of the tracks on the list seem to be in English anyway.
I like when you said to not play nine inch nails songs around you’re parents, because my dad is actually the one that introduced me to nine inch nails lol, he plays their songs in the car all the time
The last time I saw Skinny Puppy live they started the set with Convulsion. And the throng of bodies at the front of the stage didn't so much dance or mosh, but instead seemed to hypnotically shift across the floor as a single unit. One of the odder experiences I've managed to get out of a live show!
god i wish that were me
13 Angels Standing Guard 'Round The Side Of Your Bed by Silver Mt. Zion.
Personally, I think of it as one of the purest, most raw depictions of despair and sadness ever composed. That fucking violin, I swear to god.
Is this that song going around tik tok or ig rn where they say “you may think it’s angels but it’s not?” Or is there just something problematic with my algorithm 😂
Regarding Swans, I personally think their early no-wave albums like Filth and Cop are genuinely quite disturbing. In a similar vein I would also highly recommend Sonic Youth's first two albums, Confusion is Sex and Bad Moon Rising. Confusion is Sex in particular has some genuinely quite creepy songs like Protect Me You, Shaking Hell, and Early American. "I Love Her All The Time", "Ghost Bitch", and "I'm Insane" from Bad Moon Rising are also quite unnerving as well.
Burzum is a great litmus test of critical reasoning. It is impossible to separate Varg's bigotry from his music, no matter how important it is to the black metal canon. Even his instrumentals are tinged with wyt supremacist ideology based on their titles and surrounding context ("Jesu død" comes from the album Filosofem, which is named after a wyt nationalist zine/magazine, for pity's sake.) But it is still possible to critically engage with -- and even enjoy -- challenging material like this. The opera world has done this for over a century with Richard Wagner, who was a notorious published (!) antisemite that also gave us "Here Comes the Bride"* and "Kill Da Wabbit"*, two songs that are just Normal And Unquestioned now. Horrible people can still produce good things, just like how a broken clock can still be right twice a day. It's how we engage with the material that is the most important. The Soft Pink Truth, a gay noise project and one half of Matmos, made a black metal covers album called Why Do The Heathens Rage? that analyses this very idea, and he wrote a lengthy essay/interview for Pitchfork expressing his concerns with and reasoning behind being an open queer and black metal fan -- very much worth the read and the listen.
*these are not the real names of course but you can hear them in your head, eh?
Legit question do you see any distinction between enjoying art made by ppl who commit monstrous/criminal acts in their personal life that are mostly independent from their artistic output (eg jimmy page, David Bowie, and Pete Townsend being alleged sex creeps/pedos to some extent, Phil Spector murdering people) and bands that make explicitly ideological art and are associated with reprehensible political movements (burzum/mayhem, grand Belial's key and the 4 million other nsbm bands)? Personally I don't have a hard stance aside from "pirate their music so you don't give money to Nazis", even if I avoid a lot of that shit myself
@@dickdingus775 If someone's done something wrong or reprehensible, what have they done to correct the situation? Are they a repeat offender and show little interest in being a better person? One can make an ethical conclusion from there. In terms of using edgy/obscene things to make art, it's best to keep in mind that it's possible to attract people who truly believe in that stuff and if that artist don't shut them down, they're complicit in making things safer for hateful ideologies. Comments that they make in public re: their usage of offensive material can pull favour towards or away from them in that regard. There is a difference in that the former group actually did a bad thing, while the latter can enable people who do bad things to think it's okay to do so. James Gunn fixed his problems; Louis C.K. never did nor cared to and is still in the doghouse for it. :wumpscut: has pulled the "just jokes" card too many times while coating his work in pro-fash ideology; ICP repeatedly speak out against bigotry. By analysing the work and asking these questions, one can choose whether they want to continue funding or even just supporting on artist, or not. The free option is always available.
I would say part of it is that there are aspects to Varg's early music and lyrics which resonate beyond the more troubling aspects of his persona even if they are enmeshed within them, in particular the clear spiritual significance of nature and very real isolation and despair in those words. It's a sentiment which he took to incredibly ugly, cruel conclusions, but there are lines along which connection is available. And I think that a lot of people don't like to admit that, that the art of someone who they find repulsive can touch something deep inside them, as if it says something repulsive about them because it acknowledges that shared humanity. Varg Vikernes is a pretty hateful human being, but his hatefulness does not erase his humanity even as it may obscure it.
I was introduced to the song Warm Leatherette in the most cursed possible way. The first time I herd it was on an episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and they played a clip of the movie Me Without You (2001) that had the song in it. I remember it being very striking to me at the time but I was also 10 years old and had no real taste in music. For the cherry on top I very specifically remember Gerardo Rivera leering and looking like a nonce after the clip played because the scene involved two teen girls smoking cigarettes with their toes and jumping on a bed. It's so dumb how certain memories become so perfectly preserved in your memory forever.
Leatherette is definitely influenced by the novel Crash. The Cronenberg film adaptation of it is fantastic.
Shoutout to this video for introducing me to Bauhaus, Nine Inch Nails, and Skinny Puppy. Great stuff 👍
I don't get disturbed by music very easily, both instrumentally and lyrically, but the only song that genuinely disturbed me was "Only Acting" by Kero Kero Bonito.
I mostly knew them for songs like Flamingo and Trampoline at that time, so when I stumbled on the song one night, I gave it a listen thinking it'd be like those.
I was very, very wrong.
The sudden noises caught me incredibly off guard and left me feeling greatly unconfortable, and when I found the music video later, it didn't make it any better.
i just finished listening to it right now, i was not expecting all of that from them lol
Same lol. I just wanted to vibe to some pop in the car, so I put on the KKB playlist, and then the cursed noise began lol. It's nothing too bad, but if you are expecting something bright and cheery, it will catch you off guard.
Supposedly they created that album (Time n Place) during a time when the band members were experiencing loss (e.g. Sarah Perry's budgie had passed away, and she learned her childhood home in Japan had been demolished), so it was kind of a "loss of innocence" album that had some more experimental/edgy stuff in it.
What i love about Frankie Teardrop is that Frankie's story ends- but the song doesn't, it keeps going. As awful as such events are, the world keeps turning, so the song keeps going and, wouldn't you know, it keeps happening
The only song that still genuinely freaks me out today (I only listen to Vocaloid and Voice synth adjacent stuff oops) is Cotten Candy by Kikuo. It’s by no means got an as disturbing message as other Kikuo songs or other songs from producers like Maretu and Masa. But the fact it genuinely sounds so horrific and creates the feeling of a mental breakdown so well.
Great song.
Video game wise there’s a ton of tracks from Yume Nikki, Omori and the Mother franchise that get me too
Cotton candy is just very unsettling to listen too.
Masa’s more erratic horror songs are oddly calming to me and I’m not exactly sure why. There’s a producer called Babu-Chan who has quite a similar style to Kikuo in some songs. Their songs are very dark as well.
'Scotomized' by Uboa is genuinely frightening, the lyrics and the production are equally terrifying.
Also 'Catheter' and 'Lay down and rot' by Uboa are terrifying. (these 3 songs mentioned r 3 of my fav songs ever)
Polly is about a girl who was held hostage and seduced her kidnapper so she could escape. That's why it's disturbing.
was really hoping you would mention ...a psychopath by lisa germano. it's one of the most upsetting songs i've listened to, if only because part of the backing track is a real 911 call. it was inspired by germano's own experience with being stalked, and how law enforcement/everyone ignores how women feel. i think germano's voice is very pretty but also, it's uhhh a difficult thing to listen to, especially if you have. any sort of trauma.
girl you are feeding us
I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned this but the “mom?” moment in Haunted happens in the song House of Leaves, not 5 1/2 Minute Hallway, as far as I can tell. But yeah that entire album is obviously totally haunted as told by the title, not by spiritual ghosts but by actual voices of her mom and dad and by their influences in Anna and Daniel’s work.
Well Haunted as an album is a sister project and based on her brothers book House of Leaves so I think the mommy cry is a reference to the book
I used to run trivia for a local brewery, and a big part of that job was playing the music for the bar. But, like, they did not have any kind of restrictions on what I could play, so I had a massive "Goth Music" playlist that I'd bump constantly, and both Bela Lugosi's Dead and Red Right Hand were always in there. Maybe I'm just desensitized or something, but I always thought those songs was a lot of fun. It never occurred to me that others would take issue until one of my regulars came up to me after a set like "Dude, what the fuck." At least the other goths in the room got a kick out of it lol.
And at least I did have the foresight to remove Romeo's Distress by Christian Death from the list before it got a chance to play.
oh Romeo's Distress ❤
No, I agree. Both Bela Lugosi's Dead and Red Right Hand are amazing songs, neither of which are disturbing. Personally I find "Where the Wild Roses Grow" to be Cave's most disturbing song, as it's literally about murdering his lover and goes into detail about bashing her head in. Bauhaus's is probably "Three Shadows" which is just a weird song. That said, I think like half of Christian Death's stuff, and especially Rozz's Premature Ejaculations stuff, is more disturbing than anything Bauhaus or Nick Cave ever did.
It might be becouse i was raised by metalheads and all of our familly frienda are into metal, goth and/or punk but i can see the problem with Romeos Distress? Its just a sexy song about ghosts
i think loverman is way more disturbing than red right hand lmao. martin gore really did it justice and that was my first exposure because i was into dm first and will probably always be partial to them no matter what i'm into. the growls at the end of martin's though 🙃
Shocked to see Peter Sotos’ layered interviews of survivors of severe abuse and torture looped into rhythmic loops didn’t make the cut
Ian Curtis Wishlist by Xiu Xiu. There are more viscerally fucked up and horrible Xiu Xiu songs, but hearing someone fail to find reasons not to commit suicide in the form of bizarre noise music just gets me every time.
Tiny Tim wasn’t gay, or at least not entirely so. It is well known that he had one homosexual relationship back in the ‘50s, but the rest of his relationships, including his three marriages were all with women. His third wife is quoted as referring to him as “half gay,” so either he was bi and just never explored that beyond one partner, or he explored the possibility he was gay and discovered it wasn’t his jam. I don’t think he deserves all the cursedness that people associate with his music nowadays, honestly.
Coil's Horse Rotorvator is also worth a listen for disturbing sounds.
to me, one of the most disturbing and sad songs is Tunic (Song for Karen) by Sonic Youth. It's about the real story of Karen Carpenters downward spiral of anorexia
Idk if Red Right Hand would be anywhere near the top of Nick Cave's most disturbing songs. From Her To Eternity, The Mercy Seat, Do You Love Me Part 2, Song Of Joy and Jesus Alone are very haunting. Also his songs from The Birthday Party are pretty disturbing, 6 Inch Gold Blade is probably the most extreme. Glad to see Frankie Teardrop on here!
Stagger Lee, Zero is Also a Number...
Tiny Tim married a 17 year old when he was 37, so that could contribute to his creepiness
His voice activates my fight, flight, freeze or fawn response
@@Gingersnaps1978 I think a episode of Spongebob used that song and I immediately had to turn it off because that song always sounded creepy to me as a kid (even now I find it pretty creepy)
@@greenfroppy212 literally the Pilot episode.
For disturbing songs, and something I find very bittersweet are musicians like Mili (songs like Bathtub Mermaid about destroying yourself for someone else with horror imagery), Lorn (Songs like Ghosts(s) 2 are mostly audio like all their songs but has a grand existential horror like many of their songs), White Ring (Songs like King, especially with the visuals from a certain German movie, make me cry), and Alice Glass (I love her music, and she has a lot of songs about her abuse. As someone who can relate, and grew up in the techno-punk/ witchhouse scene, songs like Forgiveness hit hard).
Have you heard 'The Last Piece of Cake' by Hannah Fury? You might like that.
Also I can’t believe you talked about warm leatherette without mentioning the banging disco version by Grace Jones
My disturbing song favourite is probably 'Dark Delight' by Sopor Aeternus. It's written in the perspective of François Bertrand, aka the Vampire of Montparnasse, who was the person the term 'necrophilia' was coined for.
The lyrics are already very creepy (though a bit more poetic and ambiguous) but the instrumentals and shrieks in the beginning of the song make it sound even more disturbing.
Based on what you've said you like, I'd like to recommend Fairytale of Slavery by Miranda Sex Garden. I used to lie on the floor in the early AM and listen to that as a teen. They used to do madrigals and ended up using their classical training to do some fascinating dark wave stuff. It's really powerful and interesting.
It's actually Marilyn Manson himself moaning and saying "Fuck Frankie" in "Fuck Frankie", not a woman. Frankie was the name of a former manager or something he wanted to call out with the track. Don't get me wrong, Marilyn Manson is an abuser (to the point where I cant listen to him anymore, which is awful- I was obsessed with the guy as a teen) and all around bastard, but you're mistaken about that track in particular.
Thank you for not playing snippets! I am weak but love to be spooked out from a distance. This is perfect.
The entirety of "The Second Annual Report" by Throbbing Gristle is some of the most disturbing music one will ever hear. For anyone that hasn't heard of it, just listen to all of the variations of the song Slug Bait, on the album. One is a detailed first-person pov of a stalker breaking into a young couple's house, and torturing them in the middle of the night (Slug Bait Live at the ICA). Another uses a sickening audio sample of a serial killer talking about how he bashed in a 10 year old girl's head (Slug Bait Live at Brighton). Listen to the entire album in the dark at 3:00 a.m. and you won't be able to go to sleep for the rest of the night, due to total paranoia lol
I think why Nurse With Wound is so unsettling is because they are performing within the genre of Dark Ambient. Especially with stuff like the Soliloquy for Lilith album. Dark Ambient is made purposefully to make you feel unsettled and anxious. I don’t like Apple Music’s dark ambient playlists though because I don’t consider most of the songs as unsettling.
Like not to be a snob or sound pretentious here, but considering I’ve been compiling the most disturbing Dark Ambient albums I can find on Apple Music into a playlist since pre-2016 (Currently 2,345 songs equaling 294 hours and 4 minutes granted I haven’t updated and added to the list in a while), I feel I have at least a little authority on understanding this stuff.
P.S.- My personal favorite DA bands are Protou and Flowers for Bodysnatchers (which was the band that got me into the DA genre with their Aokigahara album). Sadly one of my favorite FfB albums had to be downloaded off RUclips naughtily because I don’t use Bandcamp. But if you don’t want to buy any songs/have an Apple Music subscription, I recommend checking out Atrium Carceri’s youtube channel, they seem to be one of the biggest Dark Ambient labels (plus they have the background lore behind albums in the description which is really cool for getting into the vibe and understanding why the tracks are named what they are).
The most disturbing song I've ever heard is Mary Turner, Mary Turner by Xiu Xiu which is about the absolutely depraved lynching of a pregnant Black woman in the south. I love love Xiu Xiu and they make a ton of extremely disturbing music but this is their only song that I've only listened to once bc it made me physically nauseous and I can't bring myself to return to it. I highly recommend checking them out but it's a stark and horrific song about how depraved the racist conservative American south is
If you wanted to reach back into historical folk music there’s some pretty groovy stuff like SO MUCH RACISM and “that murder that happened last week, but in rhyme!”, and “butterflies will eat my infant’s eyeballs if they don’t go to sleep right fucking now”.
I have a book of folk songs written about train accidents and boy can a steam engine kill you in a lot of very unpleasant ways and boy do we ever know that from experience.
If that kind of music appeals to you, I highly recommend The Handsome Family. They're INCREDIBLE.
WAIT, just realized that afaik (and I..... am In The Loop for the east-coast US folk song reenactors, so....) there ISN'T a folk song featuring Phineas Gage, which is!
He blew a hole through his head and LIVED, but CRAZY??? There's MATERIAL???
I think you’re talking about the song House of Leaves not 5 & 1/2 minute hallway, both great songs but the narrative about the mom happens in house of leaves.
I'm glad you listed Hamburger Lady. I would talk to Blaster Al Ackerman, who wrote the words, at his book store in Baltimore and one day he talked about the song. He said every city with a burn unit has a Hamburger Lady, and that makes it so much worse.
@Time Baby He really was a great writer and his work was all over the place, some of it really dark. I got to see him do spoken word and he was hilarious. He would get up at poetry readings or right before a weird band, and it always worked.
My favorite disturbing song is Iowa by Slipknot. It's just so raw and genuine like knowing that Corey was as unhinged as he sounds is so. Augh. The ending is so good too like after that whole Experience you're left with the last droning note from the base for what feels like a little too long. Scissors is also really good too and I like how it goes backand forth from melodic to just noise.
As a teenager, I was actively terrified of "TV Set" by the Cramps, a song about someone who cuts off their girlfriend's head, puts it atop the TV set and watches TV while it slowly rots away. In retrospect, there's an element of campy over the top-ness, but what the song describes is so objectively disturbing and gross (and Lux sounds so unhinged) that it still gets to me.
Sooooo stoked to see Scott Walker on here. I was ready to obnoxiously get in the comment section like "WHAT ABOUT SCOTT WALKER?" but you already had him included. ❤️ Excellent taste.
Hi May, great list! I love Nurse With wound, and Nine Inch Nails are one of my favourite bands.
Have you listened to Everywhere At The End Of Time? That's the most disturbing album I've ever heard. It's many hours long, and is designed tk simulate the experience of having dementia and the long, slow decline. Listening to this made me feel sad, anxious, gave me a mild panic attack, and yet it was utterly beautiful. If your mental health is in a strong enough place to handle it, ibhigjly recommend...but please don't don't if you arein a bad place. I don't want it it break you.
(Apologies if you have already made a video about this, I'm rediscovering your channel after a break away from RUclips).
its so interesting to read what people find scary or unsettling, because everywhere at the end of time just feels so calming to me. its like lo-fi, its calm and peaceful and just the right amount of a little bit off. i totally get why people find it scary or disturbing tho
@@casir.7407 it's interesting that you say that. I was playing this in my office recently (the first part) and a colleague walked in and said "oh what lovely relaxing music ". I've always found it unsettling and upsetting. But I think that's because I used to work in dementia care, and my grandmother died with dementia, so it has a lot of emotional resonance.
I agree with you, it is so interesting to see what disturbs some people, and what there find enjoyable or relaxing 😊
I haven't been able to finish Everywhere At The End of Time...last time I tried, I got to point where the song cuts off really abruptly and it shook me so much I had to stop 😥 hit me harder than any lyric could
I listened to Everywhere at the end of time when my mental health was NOT in a good place and 0/10 do not recommend doing that
I just sat in bed with headphones in and listened to the whole thing start to finish, alone in the dark
It was horrible and horrifying and incredibly sad and uh yeah
Very much agree it belongs on a list of disturbing music
Also, if anyone is into metal, I cannot recommend The Body and PORTAL enough. Those two bands are my favourites when I want to creep myself out a lil.
YES, PORTAL.
10 Times a Day, Every Day, a Stranger by The Body give my brain the big sad
@@erodingshell omg, yeah. The choir, growing with sound and the strings is super emotional. The break down is then just, the saddest thing. One that gets me is "Alone All The Way". Euthanasia is a very personal subject to me, and that song makes me super emotional. Great band, but my therapy bill took a hit from them lol
@@ZijnShayatanica I love the concept they have, the art, etc, but I have to admit I almost never listen to them. I need to be in a certain headspace for that I think lmao. But, as musicians, they are skilled! So all love here
To Carry the Seeds of Death Within Me was the 1st track I heard from The Body and was.. _intrigued_, you could say. Uneasy, yet intrigued!
for those who have listened and are now wondering: House of Leaves is the track on the Poe album with the "mom" moment, it isn't on either 5 1/2 or If You Were Here
Infant Annihilator has probably the most PURELY DEMENTED lyrics I've ever seen from a band HIGHLY RECOMMEND
Guest House by Daughters should be on here, but with the recent accusations against the vocalist maybe we shouldn't advertise their music. That song is genuinely scary though
I got to see Poe live. A show I’ll never forget. Looking forward to reading Fluids this weekend!
I love youuuu ❤️I’m having a hard week and I’m watch your videos to feel better
maybe it was because i first listened to it when i was kinda young, but 'secrets of wisteria' has to be one of the most disturbing songs ive ever heard. sometimes it creeps into my mind to this day and sends chills down my spine.
Oh my god same! I had forgotten the title but every now and then I’ll get the words “counting 10, 9, 0 fingers” on repeat in my head. What really fucked me up was the backwards message. I wasn’t ready for that at age 11
I feel like "The Holy Bible" by Manic Street Preachers certainly deserves a mention. One of the darkest albums ever outside of the world of metal.
This, especially since Richey Edwards went missing right after its release.
I find it interesting that people find that nick cave song disturbing, cause "The Carny" is for sure more off putting, imo. Great list !
I’m a high femme juicy couture wearing pop music loving bitch. I have no idea what any of these songs are but I love watching your videos and learning about stuff I had no idea existed lol
TW
A very disturbing intro track is rape by dislabia. It has news reports which talks about women being raped and abused and near the end of the song there a man calling a women awful thing then killing her while she begs for her life ,it’s only a minute but if not a fun listen.
Tiny Tim is a treasure. Now I want to go watch Blood Harvest, even though it's not great, he's great in it.
I know they might not be as intense as some of these, but "Lonesome Organist Rapes Page-Turner" or "Slide" by the Dresden Dolls really shake me. Amanda Palmer sure loves to get into some gross material