What is the darkest/hardest music you like?

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 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.