What is the darkest/hardest music you like?

never could get into grindcore and the like.

and it's become pretty standardized by the indie community, but i often wonder what outside people would think of Spiderland, or even any Slint. i bet most people would think i was kinda fucked for digging it.

no.

I used to listen to a lot of death metal but even that wasn't so extreme,[...]

then you need to listen to gorguts' _obscura_, goddamit.

as an aside, this marks the fifth time today i've seen someone say that"(x free jazz album) is MORE INTENSE than (whatever metal they listened to in high school)."

i really like dark stuff, though. cave's murder ballads leaps to mind as does most stuff by johnny dowd. johnny cash and other practicioners of the classic american lyrical style have the murder ballad thing doen, too.

a good thread might be top 100 murder ballads.

But for dark/difficult, I'd say J. S. Bach. It drove Glenn Gould near insane.

Of guitar bands, I once had a tune on a mix-tape I'd been given called 'Wild Couple' that was extremely noisy and enraged. (I'd appreciate knowing who the band was if someone knows. I remember the recurring line 'Don't they make a wild couple!' It may be a band familiar to indie kids .. the rest of the mixtape was stuff like Sonic Youth, Lou Barlow, Pavement, Palace Bros.)

(Another good really "dark" Wu Tang-affiliated album is the Ghost Dog soundtrack.)

I used to listen to a lot of death metal but even that wasn't so extreme,[...]

then you need to listen to gorguts' _obscura_, goddamit.

as an aside, this marks the fifth time today i've seen someone say that"(x free jazz album) is MORE INTENSE than (whatever metal they listened to in high school)."''

hahaha!!!

yeah...there's not too much that's hard abt good ol' heavy metal (doesn't mean its bad or anything but a lot of heavy metal is sold on the 'its so hard' but there I am being bored by it all) but some free jazz stuff can really split heads and they were prob not even trying to do 'be hard' or any of that crap. oh, the ironing.

I don't think a lot of music that could be classified as 'hard' is 'hard'. its not abt difficulty in listening or anything. a lot of music presents a challenge and i try to engage with it and even if it appears unlistenable on the surface isn't really.

Dark (in the heavy by borderline goofy way): Sleep, SLEEP'S HOLY MOUNTAIN; JERUSALEM

Dark (in the reflecting the tormented human soul) Johnny Cash, take yer pick

Actually the most intense thing about it was probably that it made me annoyed counting out time signatures the whole time.

---Oh, i also get into a bit of George Crumb's work; it's like descending into hell -- try that you nihilistic bastards.

Can it be?...

A thread on "dark" and "hard" music, and we've made it this far without one mention of the man often referred to as "the Prince of Darkness", Mr. Miles friggin Davis?

One of the only musicians whose music has honest-to-God SCARED me, that man is.

the riffs and the hair, man.... (actually I really like the sounds rhythms and textures, they could have been called Hawkwind Division)

Siouxsie's "Nicotine Stain" also one of the scarier tunes I've ever heard; brilliantly sampled by Mad Professor on his remix for Massive Attack's "Superpredators."

one of the darkest albums i know is 'turn loose the swans' by my dying bride.
that said, i think certain songs/albums by say swans or ministry are pretty dark on that stripped back, nihilistic level.

i'm always looking for dark/depressing stuff. who am i kidding?

Swans.

HAHAHA I'm listening to DARKSPACE III right now!!!! Like, before I saw this thread!

There's your answer.

don't know them. do you recommend?

It's absolutely stone-dead phenomenal. In my decade top 20, probably, once I get my head round it all. You'll go mental for it.

(III is the album, btw)

cheers man. jumping on the case right now...

am going out now but do chronicle your amazement for posterity

just listened to 'dark 3.14' off that record. astounding. builds up incrementally over 4 minutes, then settles into a kind of groove, then gets unexpectedly fast, then segues into my favourite bit - the atmospheric outro, which benefits as much from its repetitiveness as its sense of epic vacuousness ... what a journey. fantastic stuff :)

You sure you weren't listening to the new Muse by mistake.

hahaha. no, but those guys have disturbingly similar formula, it's true.

only time i've ever expressed any interest in muse was when i had to feign it in order to keep things on solid ground with the missus.

Don't people get burned out going down this path eventually? You end up collecting perverse shit like.....Little Marcy or records by primitives who clearly lack talent.

That said, Diamanda Galas is pretty bone-chilling. At least she has chops too. Fear the chops!

You end up collecting perverse shit like.....Little Marcy

If you came up with that reference before reading my first post way back when I salute you.

(My current real answer is probably Yanni. Wait...)

Hardest: Swans
Darkest: Stephen Jesse Bernstein's Prison, when one considers his poetic persona wasn't a character, but unmediated.

"dsrk" and "hard" are different qualities.

"Hard" but not "dark": Hecker (florian, not tim), Liturgy, Xenakis, Sciarrino

"Dark" but not "hard": Leonard Cohen circa "Songs of Love and Hate", Death in June, Blood Axis

"Dark" and "Hard": Khanate, Burning Witch, Sutcliffe Jugend, Maurizio Bianchi

The "darkest" record i know is Thee Last Supper, an LP of field recordings released by T.O.P.Y. of the night of the mass suicide at Jonestown. You can hear Jim Jones hectoring and lecturing people to commit suicide and in the background you can hear cult members (and their infants) screaming in distress and panic as they die.

Hecker (florian, not tim)

Haha, I was about to say!

http://www.epsilonminus.com/darquedungeon/dd_7.gif

posted this on the noize board the other day. still can't get over this record:

listening to this nonesuch album for organ from 1971 and HOLY TOLEDO BLEW MY MIND. never heard it before.

new music for organ
william bolcom - black host
william albright - organbook II

william albright, organ

sydney hodkinson, percussion

SERIOUSLY SATANIC NOISE ORGAN ALBUM.

wow, so great. and seriously scary!

Yikes. That Jonestown recording is a stunning document (and is at archive.org). It an end-of-the-world gospel revival, with all the celebratory mood inverted.

creepy organ on Black Host (which alternates from fear and dread to near silence) suddenly EXPLODES into pure noise of organ, drumming, and awesome tape loop action. just unbelievable.

opeth, probably

Darkest: Diamanda Galas/Throbbing Gristle/Antony & the Johnsons/Khanate/Univers Zero
Hardest: Marduk/Rebaelliun/Immolation/Slayer/Eyehategod/Sissy Spacek

Whenever asked about dark music in my collection I always think of Massive Attack's Mezzanine I don't know why I think of it as a dark album. Something about it reminds me of tar. Also I recall Golden Palominos 'Dead inside' and Recoil's 'Liquid' have some dark lyrics courtesy of Nicole Blackman but I haven't listened to them in years. Musically speaking they're not very attractive.

Hardest and favorite that I have in my collection are probably:

Paul Dolden - L'ivresse de la vitesse
Li Jianhong - 三生石
Rashied Ali & Le Roy Jenkins Duo - Swift Are the Winds of Life
John Coltrane - Ascension

xpost - Scott, where can I hear that? I have some Olivier Messiaen but Black Host sounds amazing from your description.

i don't know if its on cd. i have a vinyl copy. one just sold on ebay for five bucks, so it's not sought after or anything. maybe keep an eye out there. very very cool.

Yikes. That Jonestown recording is a stunning document (and is at archive.org). It an end-of-the-world gospel revival, with all the celebratory mood inverted.

― Drove away his head. (Derelict), Saturday, September 26, 2009 4:54 PM

link?

is it this??

http://www.archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16

that seems to fit the bill.

Agree on the Stephen J Bernstein.

Swans' Cop gets my vote here. It's been punishing me for 20 years now, and I still love to come back for more. I probably have more extreme stuff in terms of both harder music and perhaps darker lyrics, but this LP combines the two perfectly.

Haven't downloaded that file, but from the context of the discussion I'm guessing that it's that. There are Lps of the People's Temple gospel band playing straight up gospel, but this is different, it's just a field recording of the event of the mass suicide itself. I'm guessing that the T.O.P.Y. LP (which claimed to be released by The World Satanic Network System) is just culled from the recording identified on that site as the FBI tape.

"... nothing we could do, we can't, we can't separate ourselves from our own people. (pause, children crying in background) ... For twenty years laying in some old rotten nursing home ... (pause) ... taken us through all these anguished years. They took us and put us in chains and that's nothing. ... (stuttering) ... there's no comparison to that, to this. They've robbed us of our land, and they've taken us and driven us until we tried to find ourselves ... we tried to find a new beginning, but it's too late. You can't separate yourself from your brother and your sister. No way I'm gonna do it. I refuse. I don't know who fired the shot, I don't know who killed the Congressman. But as far as I'm concerned, I killed him. You understand what I'm saying? I killed him. He had no business coming. I told him not to come. ... (long pause) ... die with respect, die with a degree of dignity. Lay down your life with dignity. Don't lay down with tears and agony. It's nothing to death, just like Max said. It's just stepping over into another plane. Don't, don't be this way. Stop this hysterics... This is not the way for people who are socialistic Communists to die ... no way for us to die. We must die with some dignity ..."

I don't really like hard or dark music at all. The darkest music I really like is probably goth-era The Cure (80-82) and some of Depeche Mode's more depressive moments ("Blasphemous Rumours") while the hardest music I really like is probably Dream Theater.

the hardest piece of music i own is nadja - the bungled and the botched. although i like hardness and darkness they aren't things i want to listen to very often, so this one album satisfies me pretty good on the heaviness side. the moment when the main riff hits actually produces a physical reaction in me every time i listen to it, and i often can't make it through the entire record it's so powerful. i'm sure there are plenty of albums that have this kind of effect on you guys, but this is the only thing that has ever done it for me. like any metal review will brag about "PULVERIZING RIFFS" but metal so far has not pulverized me; it's just made me want to rock out. this album has pulverized me.

blech dream theater.

That should be their real name.

most of what i like is dark and/or hard ... i'd have an easier time trying to figure out what lightest/softest music i like is, because there is significantly less of it.

Los Campesinos

You end up collecting perverse shit like.....Little Marcy

Little Marcy as in "Little Marcy sings to $1.98 children"?

Hardness sort of wears out, doesn't it, as it gets familiar? And darkness gets cozy and comforting rather than intoxicating. These sounds to have a bit of the unexpected to work their magic. Which is why darker, harder, faster and so on is a pursuit rather than a destination. Gotta find a new record to rattle you cage. I put away the Swans for long stretches so they can get their shock back. A friend just sent me this Ufomammut track, "Blotch" that doing some serious battery on my while some classics are recharging.

Hardness sort of wears out, doesn't it, as it gets familiar? And darkness gets cozy and comforting rather than intoxicating. These sounds to have a bit of the unexpected to work their magic.

that's assuming you're listening to things for "hardness' or darkness' sake," as opposed to listening to it because it's good music.

Darkest: Black One, the new Lokai record
Hardest: Dopesick

as opposed to listening to it because it's good music.

Sometimes, for sure. That's not to say a lot of it doesn't stick as great music.

I guess the trouble for me is that "hard" can just seem like a macho posture (dull, aesthetically obvious, conservative in its taking up of earspace with chest-thumping display behavior) if you're not moved by it as art- i.e. there's lots of metal that is "hard" but not interesting in its hardness, and so it turns "soft" at the level of ideas.

The same issue can apply to "difficulty" in high modernist 20th century classical composition such as New Complexity composers, or "difficulty" in power electronics- personally the endurance contest aspect of stuff like Sutcliffe Jugend, Whitehouse, The Grey Wolves, Prurient and Intrinsic Action is what makes it "hard", but in a "hard to listen to" way that feels more phenomenologically challenging rather than just "macho", tho obviously most power electronics is also macho in that way too. I guess ultra-high pitched sine wave compositions are "hard" without being "macho"- I'm thinking of really piercing stuff from 0, Ikeda, Chartier, etc.

Sometimes you don't feel up to that kind of hard work, no? Also, bendy very much on OTM about the way that certain kinds of hardness can go soft with familiarity. I now listen to some black metal and noise records and I have heard them so often that they are a kind of ambient music for me rather than some kind of traumatic or troubling encounter.

black metal is the new new age.

Sunn0)))'s career summed up.

everyone needs that gnaw their tongues album on crucial blast. what a record. just everything that dark and unsettling should be. stunning, really!

http://burningworldrecords.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/12inch_gatefold_klaph_outs.jpg

you can listen to stuff here:

http://www.myspace.com/gnawtheirtongues

Those guys, I swear. Or that guy, considering it's just one dude mostly. (I like 'em but they're a bit much except in small doses.)

I have that Gnaw Their Tongues record but haven't checked it out yet. What makes me laugh about it though is that it's the second album I've seen with that photo of the woman's mouth being stretched on its cover. The other one was some pornogrind thing.

Hair Police, Demons/Wolf Eyes, Prurient

I also listen to drone/doom metal shit but more on the psychedelic side like Sunn O))) or Aluk Todolo. I don't consider either especially dark.

My Darkspace answer came because I was listening to the album at the time I saw this thread and thought it approximated an extreme of hard darkness/dark hardness; the two terms were intrinsically yoked in my moment of consideration. 'Intensely dark' maybe.

what does you all know of dark and hard?

you know not a thing until your ears haved bathed in aural blackness. of wolfen type.

become lycanthrope, and you shall see into the dark as if it was a new breed of air for you cancerous lung.

fear not the darkness, better yet fear but embrace the darkness. and the hardness. embrace it.

conner Djifrens

I swear that some out there jazz wigs people out more than crazed metal. I used to play some out there Sun Ra and it would totally freak out a roommate I had. Frankie Teardrop by Suicide also would freakout a room mate I had.

I don't get deep into the real barky metal, but I listen to plenty of old punk. I think the most intense and dark stuff that I like is really early Swans and Through Silver in Blood by Neurosis. I like em both, but I have to be in the mood.

Through Silver in Blood by Neurosis

^^^

XP: What's even funnier about Gnaw Their Tongues is that Maurice also plays in the band fronted by his younger sister, which is an indiepop-band in the style of The Breeders!

"... nothing we could do, we can't, we can't separate ourselves from our own people. (pause, children crying in background) ... For twenty years laying in some old rotten nursing home ... (pause) ... taken us through all these anguished years. They took us and put us in chains and that's nothing. ... (stuttering) ... there's no comparison to that, to this. They've robbed us of our land, and they've taken us and driven us until we tried to find ourselves ... we tried to find a new beginning, but it's too late. You can't separate yourself from your brother and your sister. No way I'm gonna do it. I refuse. I don't know who fired the shot, I don't know who killed the Congressman. But as far as I'm concerned, I killed him. You understand what I'm saying? I killed him. He had no business coming. I told him not to come. ... (long pause) ... die with respect, die with a degree of dignity. Lay down your life with dignity. Don't lay down with tears and agony. It's nothing to death, just like Max said. It's just stepping over into another plane. Don't, don't be this way. Stop this hysterics... This is not the way for people who are socialistic Communists to die ... no way for us to die. We must die with some dignity ..."

So is this music? And, as the thread title says, do you like it? I've heard it and find it a bit snide. Without redeeming features even perhaps. A bit lame as well - comparing this to a TG album is a bit like comparing Faces Of Death to The King Of Death. For starters it's not a field recording, is it? But whatever helps you justify owning it, I suppose . . . I'm not having that much of a go either because some of the subject matter dealt with on some of the music I like, leaves a lot to be desired really. It's an arbitrary line to draw but my line's drawn before recordings of people committing suicide.

Current dark listening: Admiral Angry, Gnaw, SunnO))) (Black One), Khanate (Things Viral), TG (Third Annual Report), Burial Hex, Switchblade (ST 2009)

XP: What's even funnier about Gnaw Their Tongues is that Maurice also plays in the band fronted by his younger sister, which is an indiepop-band in the style of The Breeders!

― Marty Innerlogic, Sunday, September 27, 2009 11:05 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lawl I love the shit out of this guy and didn't know that, nice - he used to make jungle/breakcore type stuff as well

there is an early skepticism ep called 'ethere' that is pretty dark in the depressing sense. i don't actually find it depressing at all, but it probably meets the definition for a lot of people.

The thrashier, more melodic end of Death Metal - Carcass, Death, Entombed etc

slipknot

Though I do own Scum by Napalm Death. That's pretty fucking unpleasant sounding.

this is the cuetest thread i ever did start

slipknot

― ☞ ☹ (markers)

lol @ u

Napalm Death is totally mainstream now. I go to houses where people have a lot of money and they have expensive tattoos and Napalm Death on their shelf like a fashion accessory! Totally goes with wine now.

That's why I started buying records by retarded children and the like, we need to find new levels of discomfort!

http://i39.tinypic.com/24g7rm0.jpg

lol @ u

― ilxor has truly been got at and become an ILXor (ilxor)

http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/de-jayca/avril-lavigne-101-n21396.jpg

all markers teenage faves are coming out now

Avril's great

current 93 stuff always seems like crazy dark like i can't even listen to it but i like it in theory

I like Current 93 they don't really have talent just great ideas, major turnoff for people who think they know what talent is.

i dont listen to hard or dark music

There is plenty of dark / hard funk and r + b. "Dark" isn't just for whitey.

I used to play any of these records whenever I had parties at my house and it was getting too late.

Aksak Maboul - Un peu de l'âme des bandits
Residents - Duck Stab
Roger Payne - Songs of the Humpback Whale
Lamborghini Crystal - Dial: 747 Creepozoid
Luasa Raelon - Automatic Satan
Luasa Raelon - Season of the Witch

Nurse With Wound / Whitehouse - The 150 Murderous Passions

Yah I guess Wolf Eyes or Pan Sonic or something like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vId0KOlY6V8

dunno if i mentioned it on this thread already, but i found this alb really pretty upsetting:

http://terrornoiseaudio.blogspot.com/2009/01/runzelstirn-gurgelstck-asshole-snail.html?zx=f79e409a8a5ca892

not too interested in clicking on a link that includes the phrase asshole snail in it

links to a wilco bootleg, go for it

miles davis - black beauty: live at filmore west

deep n hard psychofunk

xp: ow my eyes.

i know i've listened to asshole / snail dilemma but i can't remember it! dark n hard is techno / dub for me these days, something with a lot of structure.

metal if i listened to any

I like Current 93 they don't really have talent just great ideas, major turnoff for people who think they know what talent is.

o_O ??

links to a wilco bootleg, go for it

― Ward Fowler, Monday, September 20, 2010 2:17 PM

<3

New Order - Sunrise is as hard as i can handle.

bleakest album:

Peter Sotos "Buyer's Market"

it's a collage/cut-up of personal, first hand testimony sourced from mainstream TV, radio and documentaries in which victims of abuse talk about being sexually molested, raped, exploited; prostitutes describe violent and awful experiences; crying children narrate their own sexual abuse; and family members sob about the torture and murder of their loved ones.

what makes it especially disturbing is the way that the collation/editing/presentation of it seems to conjure up the question of whether or not it is used by Peter Sotos to get off on these descriptions of violence and cruelty, and in order to work that out, your own imagination gets fired up with "would this thing turn me on if I was some kind of pedophile creep?", and *that very structure of vicarious participation* is, I think, what the record is supposed to be about- the "Buyer's Market" is the mainstream media feeding frenzy for authenticity/realness, hypocritically tsk-tsk-ing about the very atrocities it serves up

and yet (and here's the second twist) the claim that this record is about media seems like a convenient pseudo-intellectual / falsely "critical" fig-leaf to cover up a pretty basic and super fucked up enjoyment in other people describing pretty unimaginably horrific experiences.

So, i would say, hands down, this is the darkest/hardest-to-listen-to record I own.

You feel disgusted with yourself after you listen to it, like you need a shower or something.

rammstein

oh, just noticed that thread title is "music you like", not "record you own"

diff question.

I'd say the darkest *music* would be:

Brainbombs "Urge to Kill"
Sutcliffe Jugend "When Pornography Is No Longer Enough"

which take the Sotos-style scenarios of rape, murder, molestation, kidnapping and abuse and set them to heavy post-Stooges psych rock (Brianbombs) and Whitehouse-style power electronics (Sutcliffe Juged) respectively. They are both *great* as completely demanding, powerful, un-ignorable musical experiences. and yet also beg a lot of the same questions of intent / moral complicity / false-critique that the Sotos does, while actually being, you know, "music".

I would like to say something obscure and hip but realistically it's just Slayer.

hahahaha thank god you've allowed me to retract that rather stupid joke - would listen to those records! my favourite foetus song is narrated from a paedophile's POV - sometimes this stuff is highly compelling psychological engagement rather than exploitative trash

xp

my actual answer to this question? tough - would probably say something like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mf0qaIzaYDc

or this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkh2W0Le4Mo

^^^^^^^so, so, so, so, so, so good

ARGH here's a version that DOESN'T chop off the last 30 seconds

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

Xasthur can play too but I'm not linking any of his stuff tonight.

Carcass, Esoteric, Harvey Milk, dälek, Nattens madrigal

ok I really like three of those and would probably dig the other two so yeah that post can be added to my own tentative list

dälek is probably my favourite discovery of 2010 and their stuff kills like little else...esoteric's last album was a terrifying, overwhelming blinder, nattens madrigal is fury on tape

Harvey Milk are probably mine too.