Best Song Ever: The Scariest Songs Ever

by Jeff Terich; photo by Candice Eley

10.29.2007





There's no holiday quite like Halloween. You get to dress up in costumes, ask strangers for candy, throw parties, watch scary movies and generally revel in mirth and mayhem. If you're the misanthropic type, you might also throw some eggs or toilet paper houses, but we're not advocating that. We are, however, all about this strangest of evenings. Its celebration of all things spooky is a one-of-a-kind event, and will soon be eclipsed by turkey, mashed potatoes, eggnog and candy canes. For this one night, however, we will revel in all things ghoulish and ghastly.

In honor of Halloween, we have compiled a playlist of genuinely spooky music. We could have gone with sillier Halloween songs, such as "Monster Mash" or "Thriller," and that would have been all well and good. But that just didn't seem sufficient. Rather, we put together the scariest songs around. As much as a scary movie can give you a restless night, a scary song can be even more troubling, as the sound alone can make your imagination run amok, making you picture the ghastliest or most disturbing things. We wanted to find songs that actually haunted, that had ghosts of their own. Some of them are subtle, and let the eeriness seep in over time. Some of them might require you to stop in the middle due to their sheer audible terror. We certainly wouldn't blame you if you came down with a case of the heebie jeebies.

That said, these songs are quite good, and making something actually frightening out of sound alone is a rare talent. We wish you a good scare. Happy Halloween!


The The - "Good Morning Beautiful"

Normally, Matt Johnson, the central figure of The The, wrote some fairly pretty songs such as "Kingdom of Rain" or "Love is Stronger than Death," but with "Good Morning Beautiful," he depicted a world torn between good and evil and headed for apocalypse. Mind Bomb is one of my favorite, most underrated albums of all time. Johnny Marr, the guest guitarist on the album, has stated that it's one only a handful of albums he's worked on that he considers genius (the others including The Queen is Dead and We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank). Johnson uses vocal distortion to go between the voice of good and the voice of evil, and that evil voice is bone chilling. Ultimately, Johnson's message seems to be that religion is the true evil, as he questions whose influence causes such evil within the human heart. He wraps up his sermon by letting us know 'the only path to heaven is via hell.' - Terrance Terich

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Wire - "Practice Makes Perfect"

Though Wire's debut Pink Flag was all snot and art school sneer, the legendary British punk band eventually penned a number of complex and creepy songs that found them abandoning their overtly "punk" attitudes and descending into abstraction. The more obvious examples of this trend make up about a fifth or so of their third album, 154, but even that album's oblique and icy sound couldn't compare with the post-punk horror of Chairs Missing opener "Practice Makes Perfect." Drums and guitar chords plod like a limp, slow climb up a creaky staircase, as Colin Newman plays the demented guide toward macabre curiosity, notably the severed hand of an actress: "please dress in your best things/ this course was unplanned/ 'cause you see up in my bedroom/ I've got Sarah Bernhardt's hand." As the long and nervous trudge nears the top of the staircase, the song gets louder and thicker, the insane laughter begins and Newman grows madder and madder, insisting that "Sarah's waiting...waiting, waiting, waiting for us..." - Jeff Terich

Joy Division - " Warsaw "

It's not easy to fully understand Joy Division's early, more overt flirtations with fascist imagery and Nazi terminology, with the exception of the band name itself, it all disappeared just as quickly. One of the remnants of this early era was this Pinterization of the '77 punk anthem structure and presentation. The band's flawless rhythm section was not yet the lucid core it would come to be, so, in classic punk fashion, all depended on the guitarist and frontman. Bernard "Albrecht" Sumner's guitar epitomizes the tension and iciness that would be replicated by countless post-punk bands thereafter. Ian Curtis' vocals are more frantic and nasal as opposed to his ghost-of-Jim Morrison death drone. The lyrics themselves are as dismal as ever, but it's Curtis' cryptic numeral chants that make for a great deal of eeriness. Apparently 31G and 350125 were part of Rudolph Hess' prisoner ID number. While the song is no less manic than most of what was being played at that time, the bombast is stifled significantly to what seems like a series of nervous ticks, teeth gnashing and the kind claustrophobic dizziness that would likely come from within the overcrowding of the song's namesake. - Chris Morgan


Elliott Smith - "Roman Candle"

The first song off of Elliott Smith's first effort sounds like the sweetest, but is also the most aggressive and tense. With only his lightly strummed acoustic to back him up, Elliott both literally and metaphorically loses his cool in the face of certain oppression. Despite the fact that his lyrics are filled with allusions to overt violence, it's Smith's gentle, angelic voice that is the most unnerving part. Whereas someone like Chris Carrabba could sing a song based on a scene from Goodfellas and his audience would be too busy swaying to the melodies to pay attention, every time Smith's vocals crack or faintly whimper they convey a certain reality in the emotion and that he, or the person he's singing about could unhinge at any moment. - Chris Morgan

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The Black Angels - "The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven"

Somewhere in the dark heart of Austin, Texas, the hypnotic menace and sinister apprehension of The Black Angels lurks, waiting to strike the unsuspecting. Drummer Stephanie Bailey's tribal wallops invoke a trance-like state broken only by Alex Maas' nocturnal monotone and sporadic shouting. With guitars dipped in leftover sunshine acid from Haight-Ashbury, "The Sniper At The Gates Of Heaven" is one unsettling trip indeed. Jennifer Raines and her "drone machine" antics may recall '60s psychedelic staples like 13th Floor Elevators and The Velvet Underground, briefly, but any comparisons are soon submersed in humming tones that undulate beneath bruising guitars. "What is it like when hell surrounds you?" Maas calls out, his damning finger extended from the pulpit. But just as the flames seem to lick at our feet, he is quick to include himself in the lake of fire, "How hot does it get/ I think I've already felt it." It's comforting to know that at least we'll have company for our eternal damnation. - Mars Simpson

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M83 - "Don't Save Us From The Flames"

Inside the sweaty construct of Before The Dawn Heals Us, which smeared mechanized phobia across a Batman sky, "Don't Save Us From The Flames" is no particular revelation. It's tightly-wound yet off-the-rails, sinister but cool, slotting perfectly with all the other recently-orphaned tracks about losing it. By itself, somehow it becomes like nothing you've heard-unless you've been fortunate (unfortunate?) enough to emerge from a crashed car relatively intact, then it's like something you've heard. Crunched metallics and starring windshields aren't pretty in your ears and are scary enough without a theme song, but this is it. Frantic drums hurl themselves to their deaths. Skittering synths burn like spilled fuel. Voices ramble, skid, and form cacophonies. "A piece of brain in my hair" is the second line and it's delivered so calmly it's almost a comedown, a stunned survivor marveling at the suddenness of things. Ultimately "Don't Save Us From The Flames" rotates inside that sort of adrenalized aftermath, but there are moments when it's so terrifying you can feel yourself crumpling in your little metal shell. - Anthony Strain

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Radiohead - "Idioteque"

One of the advantages of not closely following Radiohead is that the release of a new album takes me by surprise as If it materialized from some variation of logical consciousness. Do I think Thom Yorke is that magical/insane? Not really, but he is, to me, the most cherubic-and therefore the most dire-downer I've ever had the honor of hearing. "Idioteque," combines serene electronic ambiance with chilling undercurrent of disaster as it approaches. Classic utterances of "women and children first" with screeches of "Ice Age coming!" accentuate sheer panic and disaster in the hypnotic way that only Radiohead can produce. - Chris Morgan


Concrete Blonde -"Bloodletting"

Concrete Blonde wrote and recorded the first song that I ever personally remember mentioning New Orleans. "Bloodletting" is the song that brings to life what the city is like during Halloween. New Orleans has a Southern Gothic spirit that comes alive during this time of the year. Just walk down the streets near Jackson Square and you will hear the opening chords to this powerful sound playing this soundtrack in your ears. When I finally saw Concrete Blonde in concert at The House of Blues in New Orleans, as they played this song, the whole place sang along, in honor of the city that we knew and loved so dearly. - Adrian Cepeda

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Brainiac - "Strung"

The melody of Brainiac's "Strung" is subtle and nearly serene, yet its arrangement is anything but. A diversion from the band's trademark robotic spazz punk, this track is almost ballad material, drums curiously absent and frontman Timmy Taylor oddly unaffected. Ah, but surrounding that too-subtle sound is a choir of screams. And suddenly one is pulled into the devil's waiting room, the muffled shrieks and cries of pain coming from the next room over while pleasant, if distorted, melodies pipe through the PA. It's a harrowingly long two minutes, but it's best to enjoy them. Your number could be next. - Jeff Terich

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Sixteen Horsepower - "Phyllis Ruth"

No band better captured Southern Gothic ambience as perfectly and as darkly as Sixteen Horsepower, fronted by David Eugene Edwards, who now records as Woven Hand to a similar but more subdued degree. "Phyllis Ruth" isn't as intensely mired in religion as many of their other songs, but its titular character carries a strange weight of her own: "what my little girl sees from the sill/ nobody knows/ as one with the spirit yeah/ she goes where it goes." Both in subject matter and in melody, "Phyllis Ruth" houses many ghosts, which unsettlingly seep in during the chorus' lonely, icy piano lead. - Jeff Terich

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Bauhaus - "Bela Lugosi's Dead"

This one can easily be criticized as a little too 'nail on the head,' but if there were any band in existence that exemplified the creepy nature of Halloween, it's Bauhaus. And when we're talking about Bauhaus, the first song that comes to mind is "Bela Lugosi's Dead." Lugosi is the most well known portrayer of Dracula in the history of film and Bauhaus capture like no other band the slow, creaky, forbidding nature of those old dark films. The best and creepiest moment is probably frontman Peter Murphy's repeated chant of "Undead." Recently, with Bauhaus reuniting, "Bela Lugosi's Dead" was performed with Murphy hanging upside down above the stage like a bat. I've heard of getting into your work, but that's ridiculous. - Terrance Terich

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My Brightest Diamond - "Gone Away"

There is no question that Shara Worden has a gorgeous voice, but there is also a haunting aspect to it that gives her songs a gothic edge. It also helps that many of her songs are brooding and obsessed with the ephemeral. When I first heard "Gone Away," I was immediately taken with it. There is something so romantic, so dramatic and haunting that made me think of the gothic romances of the Bronte sisters. If there was ever a song to imagine Heathcliff pining over the moors with, it was this. - Jackie Im

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Pearl Jam - "Dirty Frank"

Though playful in spirit with its irreverent funk rock tone, the horror within "Dirty Frank" lies within the garbled lyrics. A bonus track to both the German and UK versions of PJ's seminal debut Ten, "Dirty Frank" pays homage to the Jam's tour bus driver who happens to be a cannibal with a hunger that can't be satisfied on per diem wages alone. With his "recipe for Anglo-Saxon soup" and a knack for chopping up groupies in the back of the bus, Frank instills sleep deprivation and fear in the hearts of all the members of the band, and even manages to bag their then fresh faced guitar virtuoso ("Where's Mike McCready?/ My god, he's been ate!"). Complete with rusty bone saw sounds and the terror shrieks of Eddie Vedder, "Dirty Frank" is certainly a bad mother...SHUT YOUR MOUTH! Hey, I'm just talkin' bout Dirty Frank. - Kevin Falahee


Throbbing Gristle - "Hamburger Lady"

The experience that entails listening and bearing witness to Throbbing Gristle cannot easily be written off as "entertainment." Indeed, if you were not writhing in tremors and cold sweat, by their standards they weren't doing their job. With "Hamburger Lady," Genesis P-Orridge & Co. used transgressive sound experimentation and subject matter to launch industrial music and revolutionize experimental art. With terror that roughly equates to a grainy, slow-motion snuff film, instruments are fashioned to replicate hospital ambiance: a slow, rhythmic heartbeat, a vacuum cleaner, the sirens of an ambulance outside. Over all this, the clinical, echoed and distorted narration of Genesis reads off a medical report of a female burn victim, separated by ghostly whispers of "hamburger laaaaadyyyy." The vocal distortion doesn't clarify the entire narrative, only some of the details can be easily heard which, intentionally or unintentionally, entices our morbid arousal to keep listening as TG calmly lectures to you what pain really is. - Chris Morgan

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Mountain Goats - "In the Hidden Places"

Unable to find a song that truly scares me in my library, owing possibly to my extreme macho-ness, possibly to my skimpy selection of Xiu Xiu, I've come across a song that conveys a certain type of fear, not exactly a startling or grotesque fear, but more of a nervous fear, a debilitating social fear that The Mountain Goats exemplify greatly in their song "In the Hidden Places" on Get Lonely. The lyrics describe a somewhat bored person who wanders around town barefoot, thinks of his past, and suddenly sees an unnamed "you" that makes him turn his head, shut his eyes tight, and dream about the flowers, "that hide from the light on dark hillsides...in the hidden places."

The song describes someone who is unable to calibrate himself to certain social rules. He wants to call out to "you," but is afraid of what "you" might think of his manner, his eagerness, what sort of messy knots "you" might construe him into. This fear has led him to close up, shut his eyes, and hide away in the middle of a crosstown bus. He goes home, thinks about "you / like a desperate policeman / searching for clues." When he feels like he almost passes out, he shuts his eyes again, "headed for the dark hillsides, in the hidden places." He is not only afraid of the social situations he gets himself into, but is also afraid of himself. He knows that he is weird, just as much as "you" know he's weird, and he "wished I were someone else," because he can't face what he does, how he hides, always hiding. This apt description is sung in a tone fraught with timidity, uneasily trying to keep itself strong and standing on the edge of violin strings drawn taut, tense; feelings of ineptitude, awkwardness, all pull tight around "the hidden places," everything capitulating to a fear that has become the entire world, even "the hidden places." When I first heard this song, I felt my own fears replicated. I don't feel so twosome when I hear the song now, but the song still irks me along the edge, reminding me of fears I once had, of bogeymen who lived everywhere, in all "the hidden places." - Paul Bozzo

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Metallica - "One"

Back in the good old days, when MTV used to actually show videos, I would often stay up late and catch the latest from Pearl Jam, Snoop Dogg and Adina Howard. Though among these pop favorites, there was one video that continues to give me the heebie-jeebies to this day-"One" by Metallica. Using clips from Johnny Got His Gun, the video relies heavily on the plot in which a man suffers catastrophic injuries and remains immobile and confined to his hospital bed. The cold detachment in which the hospital staff refers to the patient always creeps me out, and it gives me the same anxiety that I get from hospitals. The song alone does not creep me out, in fact it's one of my favorite Metallica songs, but the combined aspect of the song and video just gives me the willies. - Jackie Im

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Liars - "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack"

Man, what the hell is that sound? Is it a guitar? A bass? A keyboard? The prevalent sound that drives "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack," the second track on Liars' Drum's Not Dead, is akin to the amplification of an extremely large dental drill, or perhaps the wrath of an angry god with EQ treatment. The latter seems more appropriate, given the tribal nature of the song, the band member's beginning the song with howling in unison before the primal beats begin. But that sound, it grinds and it grates, it gets into the psyche and it digs and digs. Yet that sound, that fearsome, impenetrable sound, remains constant, a linear thread upon which the rest of the song begins to build, voices building, drums clanging with vicious intensity. As it comes to an abrupt stop and "A Visit From Drum" takes over with minimal simplicity and calm, the fiery rush subsides, but it might take a minute or so for your heart rate to drop to a normal level. - Jeff Terich

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Brutal Truth - "Dementia"

It seemed for a time, in the wake of Napalm Death-or at least their most groundbreaking lineups-that grindcore and death metal were barreling down on the bullet train to self parody. But Brutal Truth's seminal Sounds of the Animal Kingdom, from the frighteningly aggressive cover art of the half-man/half-gorilla to the noise experiments, proved that they at least dealt in serious matters. What makes "Dementia," its opener, such an appropriate title is that Bill Anderson's production makes it sound like it was coming from a padded cell and comes off as restrained rage. This is grindcore for the fourth world, after all development, sensibility and civility have been effectively nullified and everyone, as Keven Sharp so poetically puts it at the end of the disc, is prey. - Chris Morgan

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Scott Walker - "Jesse"

Once a romantic British crooner in the '60s, Scott Walker turned to extremely disturbing sonic and lyrical fields on Tilt and merely took them to their illogical extremes on 2006's The Drift. Any track on either of these albums would do fine for psychological damage, but "Jesse" takes it that much further. Walker combines themes of 9/11 with a fictional conversation between Elvis Presley and his stillborn twin brother Jesse over horror movie strings and cold sweat-inducing pockets of silence. He sings of "six feet of fetus flung at sparrows in the night" and hopelessly moans "I'm the only one left alive" over and over again in his own tragic madness as the music falls away into a crippling nothingness. - Jeff Terich

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Radiohead - "Climbing Up the Walls"

OK Computer may be one of my all time favorite albums, but that doesn't stop me from having to skip over "Climbing Up the Walls" every now and then. From an artistic standpoint, the song is beautifully done and marks as a major turning point in Radiohead's sound-built even more strongly on synthesizers than any other song on the album. However, the foreboding and disturbing nature of the song comes through, sometimes making it difficult to listen to. Thom Yorke commented on the song saying, "this is about the unspeakable. Literally skull-crushing." The intense lyrics were in part inspired by Yorke's stint working at a mental hospital and he more than captures the experience. - Jackie Im


Deerhunter - "Dr. Glass"

Perhaps only Deerhunter, a band whose aesthetic has shifted from raw, abrasive noise to gauzy shoegaze-inflected pop in merely two albums and one EP could make handclaps sound creepy, and yet, never have I been so discomforted by the rhythmic slapping of hands as when I heard "Dr. Glass." The keyboard drone coils itself around loosely strummed guitars, a woozy extraterrestrial emerging from a helium haze. Leave it to frontman Bradford Cox to unfurl equally nerve-tingling lyrics, broody dystopian fantasies and morbid observations about the state of civilization. Strangest of all may be the nonchalance with which the words are delivered, as if the line "In the world/ so many/ useless bodies/so much traffic" could sound more bizarre. But the song is tranquil. So much so that to later hear Cox utter "The children missing/ the corpses rotting/ in the cities/ spotting the globe," comes much less like a shock and more like a gentle psychic caress, reassuring the listener that in spite of all this death and destruction, the inevitable societal decay, everything will be just fine. - Mars Simpson

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Entrance - "Silence on a Crowded Train"

When you consider that more people have a phobia of public speaking than of death, one wonders if the final sail into the great beyond isn't as scary as it seems. Yet the impression that one would take from Entrance's Prayer of Death is that it's inevitable, perhaps peaceful, and that it's one thing that all human beings have in common. Still, it sounds even scarier in this context, because Guy Blakeslee bellows and moans with the soul of a Delta Bluesman and the fire of Hell rising beneath. "Silence on a Crowded Train" finds his bluesy, Eastern-influenced locomotive chugging into the depths, his own howling seemingly coming from another plane while Paz Lenchantin's violin adds just the right supernatural touch to push America's number two fear up to that top spot again. - Jeff Terich

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Suicide - "Frankie Teardrop"
Bruce Springsteen - "State Trooper"

Of all the songs I've heard that I would deem fit for a genuine scare, "Frankie Teardrop" is the one to which I have the most trouble returning. With little more than the perpetual shake of a drum machine and Alan Vega's voice, it's a descent into the most horrifying domestic situation imaginable. Frankie has a job, working 7 to 5 to support his family. But he can't make ends meet. His paycheck isn't enough. They can't eat, they're getting evicted, and Frankie turns to violence, killing his children and his wife, the narration of which is sickening on its own, but made far worse by the pained, ear-piercing screams from Vega. This could very well be the most frightening song in existence.

After Suicide released their self-titled debut, they found a fan in none other than New Jersey's favorite son, Bruce Springsteen, who drew influence from the New York punk duo on his acoustic, home-recorded Nebraska in 1982. His song "State Trooper" seems almost his own take on "Frankie Teardrop," though about seven minutes shorter and far less explicit. Springsteen still lets out a startling yodel amidst the relative silence, just like Vega, but instead turns his subject matter toward internal paranoia instead of murderous events. As the song's protagonist prays that the trooper doesn't pull him over, he confesses, "maybe you got a kid/ maybe you got a pretty wife/ but the only thing that I got's been botherin' me my whole life." - Jeff Terich

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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "Red Right Hand"

The fact that this song appears in the X-Files TV show, then becoming the impetus for creating a soundtrack for the show, shows up in all three Scream films, as well as being covered for the movie Hellboy is reason enough to consider it 'scary.' But, the truth is out there, "Red Right Hand" is scary enough all on its own. The story is like Stephen King's The Gunslinger meets Harry Powell from Night of the Hunter. Again, what's scary in this tale is the unknown. Who is this man with the long black coat? A murderer? A demon? Either way, "you're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan / Designed and directed by his red right hand." - Terrance Terich

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Sonic Youth - "Mildred Pierce"

Despite having the terrifyingly pretentious face of Sofia Coppola in the song's video, "Mildred Pierce" still stands as one of the more confrontational and brilliant tracks off of Sonic Youth's major label debut. The name of the song itself is derived from noir writer James M. Cain's short novel of the same name-it's also the sole lyric. The song starts off as a Lollapalooza-ready groove with Kim Gordon's fuzzed bass and the echoing guitars following in tow. The song is not that long, but it's the last few seconds when the steady beats and melodies erupt into a flurry of feedback and screaming. Typical twists and turns of their provocative flare to the trained ear. However, to the converted, an unexpected turn for the worst, one of the rare acts of artistic discomfort fronted by a major label. Whereas the first half of the song is a harmonized escape like most pop music with a good beat that you could dance to, the Youth pulls things back to reality with the bluntness of a swinging ball-peen hammer-or something else that really hurts. - Chris Morgan

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Sufjan Stevens - "John Wayne Gacy, Jr."

It's not really that this song is scary. As with most of Sufjan Stevens' songs, it's extraordinarily delicate and meticulously arranged. It's the subject matter of the song, and the absolutely chilling and emotional way in which Stevens delivers it. Gacy is famous as the 'killer clown,' a serial murderer who resided in Illinois, taking the lives of 33 young men in the '70s. Stevens relates his own secretive nature to that of Gacy, which may seem outrageous, but somehow works. The most goosebump-inducing aspect of the song happens when he delivers the falsetto 'Oh my God,' after invoking the memory of the victims buried under his floorboards. As if clowns weren't scary enough already, this song absolutely gives me the willies. - Terrance Terich

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Genius/GZA - "Gold"

Anyone who ever accused rappers of glamorizing drug dealing and violence obviously never heard "Gold," a gritty and grimy crime monologue from GZA's Liquid Swords. There's nothing glamorous about this track in the slightest. Though Genius wasn't so much a gangsta rapper, from time to time he could tell a story so dirty and fucked up you could practically smell the smoke from the barrel. Genius narrates from the perspective of a drug dealer, with an outlook extremely harsh and bleak. He plans his strategy: "under the subway, waiting for the train to make noise, so I can blast a nigga and his boys/ for what?" Meanwhile, the RZA provides an eerie backing, screeching synths, ominous basslines and one repeated, cinematic minor chord, painting a backdrop as dark as the subject matter scattered across it. - Jeff Terich

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Pissed Jeans - "Scrapbooking"

Undoubtedly one of the creepiest songs I've ever heard, Pissed Jeans' "Scrapbooking" turns the latest rosy-pink pastime of American housewives into a sadistic metaphor for memory obsession. Now these sentimental soccer moms have a puppetmaster complex, willing to manipulate their loved ones as they see fit and literally gouge out any trace of a blemished past.

I bought a special pair of scissors
to cut out a nice design ...

More than just a condescending poke at hollow suburbanites in the vein of punk thrasher "I've Still Got You (Ice Cream)," and the hilarious stoicism of "The Jogger," this particular track drops the flailing guitars that dominate most of the album for a slow bass line and stripped piano ballad, somewhat reminiscent of Pretty Hate Machine-era Trent Reznor. When Matt Korvette groans about how he arranged his old friends' "heads on different bodies/ to chase sad thoughts for everyone"-then hacks out a single, "Happy!" before letting loose a guttural yelp-I can't help but be reminded of the crazed vivisectionists in Hostel. These sweet old women suddenly seem capable of slashing your heels open and taking a blowtorch to your face...metaphorically, of course. As long as it helps them remember the past a little brighter. - Dustin Allen

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Iggy Pop - "Mass Production"

It's been said that Iggy Pop's The Idiot is one of the most depressing albums ever recorded, the fascination with such notoriety only intensifying with the fact that it was Ian Curtis' final listen. But more than that, it's a disturbing and ominous record, one without a blatantly bleak world view, but rather, mere glimpses of terror. The album closes with its most overtly sinister track, the eight minute "Mass Production," which somehow combines empty sex with a Stepford dynamic, the 'mass production' of cookie-cutter human beings. Slowly and steadily, the melody and beat grind like a rusty factory machine, with its "smokestacks belching." The guitar leads get woozy and swirl, veering in and out of harmony, as the machine malfunctions, struggling to spit out its misshapen product, doling out rejects and mangled, deformed cast-offs. And remember, this factory is manufacturing people. In the end, the low rumble of synth bellows like the closing whistle, and the machine shuts off, long after the reminder that "I'm almost like him...yes, I'm almost like him." - Jeff Terich

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Big Black - "Bad Houses"

Bashing Reagan's America was the toast of '80s punk. However it was the scrappy malcontent of Steve Albini that made a real nightmare out of it. "Bad Houses" tells a story of the kind of compulsive misbehavior and amorality that neither the conservative establishment nor mainstream liberal opposition were willing to acknowledge as prevalent among the masses. The cavernous and screeching guitars are reminiscent of the doom-chanting of Killing Joke. Albini's spoken vocals are low and ominous. One can't help but picture a long drive on a stretch of highway outlined by post-industrial ruins and a few exits that lead to neighborhoods with garbage-strewn yards and boarded up windows. Most drivers would hardly even think of venturing out that way. Albini was perceptive enough, on all of Atomizer, to know that some people can't seem to control the worst aspects of their base desires, and they act on it with such abandon that not even they know what they're getting into. - Chris Morgan

This Heat - "Radio Prague"

The most terrifying thing in the world is the unknown. We fear what we cannot see and what we cannot understand. This Heat's "Radio Prague" plays upon this human weakness by constructing a sound collage that's glitchy and skittish, without melody and without explanation. While an insistent, though occasionally sped up beat resembling a troubled human heart remains the backbone, minute sound bursts from Czech radio phase in and out, like the phantasm (or homicidal maniac) in the corner of your eye. Though many of their other songs were pretty unsettling as well, this one eliminates every other element, leaving only the essence of fear. - Jeff Terich

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10,000 Maniacs - "Jubilee"

I know most of you wouldn't expect Natalie Merchant to perform anything remotely scary, but "Jubilee" is uncharacteristically frightening for a 10,000 Maniacs song. The central figure is Tyler Glen, who is described thusly, "Though simple minded, a crippled man, to know this man is to fear this man, to shake when he comes." Tyler, in his feeble-mindedness, is a religious zealot. He often listens to the preacher and the Sunday School students, then uses these teachings to take it upon himself to take action against sinners. When he sees the young people of the town drinking and engaging in bi-racial relations, he sets fire to the Jubliee with the kids inside. The frenetic chamber orchestra adds a taste of heightening paranoia, but ultimately, there's nothing scarier than a disturbed religious nut. - Terrance Terich

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Dälek - "Spiritual Healing"

Noise coupled with religion can only equate to sheer terror. Newark hip-hop duo Dälek have long outdone their peers, if one can honestly say they have any, by opting for the most distorted, noisy, abrasive samples DJ Oktopus could pull from his crates. "Spiritual Healing" has just such a sound, metallic and shredding, tearing through the atmosphere with a jagged fierceness, while Dälek proposes the question "Who you pray to, my god, the brown god?/ who you pray to, my god, the white god?" Even as the song's suspense and furor dies down, you know it's lurking just around the corner to rise up again. - Jeff Terich

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Pink Floyd - "Jugband Blues"

There are surely countless songs out there that try to convey a sense of madness that borders on the exotic without having to truly probe the intensity and numbness that comes with a complete breakdown of all logic and emotional stability. To have any additional songs by Syd Barrett than "Jugband Blues" on Saucerful of Secrets would have seemed downright disturbing, and that's apparently what Roger Waters thought as well since he rejected a song or two for that reason. A Barrett-led Pink Floyd was a boundary-burning experience that tested the senses. Yet Barrett seemed to be the most tested. His LSD use caught up to him and his antics became stranger-to the point that he put cream on his face before a TV appearance to make it look like his skin was melting off. "Jugband Blues" is a display of true loss of stability. Barrett's voice wanders, the further the song goes in, the more nonsensical are the lyrics. The song rises with a festive big band section in the middle until abruptly shifting back to Syd and his guitar as he drones questions he'll never get proper answers to in complete isolation. - Chris Morgan

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Recoil - "Jezebel" (Filthy Dog Remix)

My most vivid memory of this song revolves around trying to find a place to park in the heart of the French Quarter during Halloween, with this song blasting through my car stereo. I remember how I passed a swarm of termites, which seemed like locusts that covered my front windshield. With the wicked tribal beats of "Jezebel," this late night drive through the French Quarter seemed like a scene straight from a horror movie. This remix perfectly reflected the authentically eerie atmosphere that truly was the darkened streets of the Quarter past midnight. - Adrian Cepeda

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Shannon Wright - "Heavy Crown"

Two versions of Shannon Wright's "Heavy Crown" exist, the dense, organ driven version on Maps of Tacit and the sparse, piano version from Flightsafety. The latter has a decidedly more fragile and tragic sound. While the take on Maps of Tacit has Wright moaning in her own primal way, her frail, soft-spoken vocals on the original make it far more sad and far more disconcerting. There are only eight lines to this song, but the chorus "I float around, with my heavy crown" seem to say enough, anticipating a delicately horrifying melody to score a slow motion fall down a long and creaky staircase. - Jeff Terich

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Radiohead - "We Suck Young Blood"

Consider this the general gestalt of Thom Yorke's erudite weirdness. His fascination with, or irrational fear of (if you like your coffee black) the aging process dates as far back as "Bones" but "We Suck Young Blood" sounds as if it was made entirely inside a rotting pancreas. It starts with a creepy piano line and a bass that heaves a sigh as Yorke, tongue fully extended, blathers "are you sick?" He keeps on like he's sick, sick, sick himself and a system of ghoulish, bone-in-the-throat vocalizations blow behind him like bats' breath. Three minutes in comes a teetering, spastic, tin-panny slam of piano that puts a pocket-encased finger in your back and goes 'where were you when the lights went out, silly.' Picture malevolent miniature geriatrics inching under the doorsill, Mulholland Drive-like, then try not to cringe when grandma asks for your cheek. - Anthony Strain

Slayer - "Raining Blood"

Realistically, one could place Slayer's entire catalog into the realm of frightening and dreadfully sadistic but for the sake of brevity, I shall choose the classic, often imitated but never duplicated thrash masterpiece, "Raining Blood." Complete with requisite rumbling thunder and steady precipitation laden sounds, the song unfolds a story of hell on earth, demonic overtakings backed by blindingly lambasted guitar torture and flagellate drumming. An acronym for Satan Laughs As You Eternally Rot, knowing that the satanic antics of Slayer were nothing more than stage fodder and synthetic mystique was hard to decipher in the early goings of the his hell bent bunch, and this ignorance naturally lent to the terror they instilled in the hearts of mothers and WHAM! fans nationwide. - Kevin Falahee

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Joy Division - "Dead Souls"

"Someone take these dreams away/ that point me to another day." Tortured desperation, cathartic release, elegiac contemplation. Call it what you will, the words of the late Ian Curtis echo as powerfully now as they did over 25 years ago. Bathed in otherworldly revelations that seem to reach from beyond the grave, his stark lyricism alluded often to painful memory, real or imagined, recent or, in the case of "Dead Souls," ancient. Stephen Morris charts a course through vast corridors of time with robotic precision and ever methodical drumming while Peter Hook's throbbing skeletal bass launches Bernard Sumner's pulsating guitar riff across that impossible distance. Acting as a conduit of sorts for troubled spirits, Curtis relives historical atrocities as if he himself bled alongside those lost: "Imperialistic house of prayer/ Conquistadors who took their share." Curtis channeled psychic pain as no other artist ever had or will, haunted by memories somehow suspended through the ages and, as revealed by the final chilling coda, "They keep calling me/ keep on calling me," which he simply could not escape. - Mars Simpson

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Depeche Mode/ Rammstein - "Stripped"

There was always a sense of danger and impending doom in Depeche Mode's "Stripped," but when Rammstein covered the track for For the Masses, the DM tribute album, this German tanz-metal band added a whole new dimension of monstrosity to this sexy yet dark track. Instead of 'come with me into the trees' acting as a seductive lure, it's more of a demonic threat. I won't even get started on the line, "Let me see you stripped down to the bone." Singer (if he can be called that) Till Lindemann becomes more of a rapist / murderer in this scenario than lovers in a technological and industrial wasteland. Martin Gore has always had a dark side, but I don't know if he ever envisioned anything this terrifying. - Terrance Terich

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Cable - "She is Here"

Though not well known in the near decade in which it's existed, Gutter Queen is, to me, the last great stand of so-called "pig fuck" music. The entire album is a throat-reddening journey from one dysfunctional personal catastrophe to the next. "She is Here" is the final official song on the album. As opposed to the all-out aural assault of screeching vocals, Shellac-on-steroids guitar and violent Bukowskian lyrics, "She is Here" is a bleak but unsettlingly calm affair with plodding bass, gentle, but hardly cherubic guitar strumming and spoken vocals that are muffled over the more oppressive music. Listening to this whole album is tiring, and even in the end it's not pretty. The song is like the oncoming numbness that follows a full-on breakdown, an ambiguous end to a long struggle or a feeling of being metaphorically-or even literally-crippled. - Chris Morgan


The Knife - "Silent Shout"

A bass thrum heartbeat leads inevitably to a quickening of the pulse. Like a nightmarish vision of impenetrable darkness, yet irrevocably alluring, the chill of vocoder threatens to overwhelm the most wary of listeners. It's elevator music for the ride down through all seven circles, courtesy of mask and cape wearing Swedes. Enchanting in a way that finds you awake in the middle of the night paralyzed by a cold sweat, "Silent Shout" operates in paradoxical flux, possessed of a magnetic supernaturalism. Both detached and dance-y, The Knife's sinuous synthesizer extravaganza leads to manic paranoia as often as rapture, and the chance of attaining either makes the listen worthwhile. The distorted lyrics buzz like downed power lines flicking tongues of forked copper against the asphalt, all high-voltage schizophrenia. Try to discern the meaning of it all, or, better yet, let it lull you into a fitful unease, where pleasant dreams remain on some elusive horizon and ever out of reach. - Mars Simpson

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Pere Ubu - "Sentimental Journey"

Honestly, you can pretty much take your pick from anything in Pere Ubu's discography and call it their scariest song, and you'd likely be close, primarily because David Thomas' voice alone is awfully creepy, even in their most straightforward sounding punk songs. Funny, then, that their absolute most disturbing moment from debut The Modern Dance, "Sentimental Journey," finds Thomas' intense warbling at a startling minimum. It's his unintelligible muttering and mumbling that makes this song even more unsettling. Even before he utters a word, however, glass bottles smash on the floor, white noise hums, a sickly saxophone wails like the merciless torture of a stray animal. But then Thomas begins his low murmurs, which are met with more broken glass, more squealing saxophone, a little guitar, and a bassline that creeps along the outer edges, waiting to strike at the right moment.

...then all hell breaks loose. - Jeff Terich

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Celebration - "Good Ship"

The wind-howl of banshee guitars, the creak and groan of piano keys caught in the violent squall, a chorus of lost souls, wailing against the onslaught of the tempest. A sea chantey that would make Poseidon himself shiver in his scaly skin, "Good Ship" conjures a doomed voyage like only Celebration can. Ever the illustrious siren, Katrina Ford lulls men to their final resting place on the ocean floor. Dave Bergander's spray of typhoon-like percussion stirs the swirling waters a turbulent shade of electric blue as a militant march of cymbals cascades into the deep. For authenticity multi-instrumentalist Sean Antanaitis casts somber accordion drones against the burgeoning storm while Ford's low bellow churns the waves frothy. A pervading sense of hopelessness is strung through the rigging as she laments the journey, "Then I shall veer into the tide/ soul free and death with pride." Being shipwrecked never sounded so sweet. - Mars Simpson

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The Cure - "Subway Song"

Alfred Hitchcock knew that there was no more frightening thing than what could be imagined by the human brain. That's why with Hitchcock, fear was built in the anticipation, never the boogeyman that jumps out of the closet. Early on in The Cure's career, they knew it as well. "Subway Song" was included on Three Imaginary Boys, the band's UK debut. The song is a narration of a woman coming home late night from the subway. It's only eight lines long, but the fear comes with the fading bassline and the anticipation of what is to come. The first time I heard this song, I wasn't expecting the ear-piercing scream and, when it came, it made me jump out my skin. "Subway Song" is not recommended for late night listening on headphones. - Terrance Terich

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Hammerhead - "American Rampage"

For reasons that are both fairly obvious and fairly esoteric, the foreign music world can't help but be attracted to the grittiest, most grotesque aesthetics of American rock. The best kind of band from the States is one that's primal, unrefined, acne-scarred and not a complete hindrance to one's refined taste. For a time, Amphetamine Reptile records was more than stoked to provide such sonic delicacy, of which there were many flavors. Hammerhead isn't exactly an exalted noise rock band compared to Unsane, and though they were just as loud, the back-alley urban waste of Unsane appeared comforting compared to the repressed Midwestern rage of Hammerhead's debut Ethereal Killer. "American Rampage" opens up the peculiar album with inverted indie guitar melodies that are further corrupted into hollow wails as opposed to the sawed-off shotgun blast brutality of Unsane's riffs. Paul "Interloper" Sanders' vocals are fierce but also like that of someone whose anger is unfocused and misdirected, it starts with a psychotic war-cry and whines and hollers hoarsely throughout, all the while singing lyrics that conjure up imagery not unlike Ted Bundy's bloody roadtrips and various other sociopathic fantasy land. - Chris Morgan


Slint - "Nosferatu Man"/ "Good Morning, Captain"

The legends surrounding Louisville, Kentucky's Slint and their second album Spiderland lend their already eerie songs a sense of mystique, making for great rock 'n' roll mythology and even icier chills down one's spine. Supposedly, the process of creating the album led to mental breakdowns and subsequent institutionalization of one or more of its members. Whether or not this is true has never been confirmed, and it likely isn't, yet Spiderland still yields some of the most haunting and haunted sounds of the last few decades. "Nosferatu Man" and its vampiric imagery, coupled with insistent, shrieking guitars crashes like lightning atop a Transylvanian castle, while "Good Morning, Captain" builds to an even more chilling climax. Inspired by "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the song finds Brian McMahan retelling the tale of the sea's spirits taking revenge upon the lone sailor ("I'm the only one left, the storm took them all..."), and at a brief interlude McMahan's reverbed voice lets out a whisper, "I miss you," only to be repeated as a startling, blood curdling scream of madness and desperation. - Jeff Terich


Nurse With Wound - "Homotopy to Marie"

To call this thirteen-minute percussion and found sound composition a 'song' is a bit misleading. There's very little in the way of melody, merely clanging cymbals, open space and suspense, and the sound of a young British girl met with her mother's sneer, "Don't be naïve, darling." It's more or less an audio tour of a mental hospital, flickering lights and dark corners, odd sounds coming erratically from every direction. That young British girl soon becomes more disturbing than the woman she appears to be talking to, as she mentions "there was a funny smell" and something about people who "want to know what your guts look like." Try getting a good night's sleep after hearing this. I dare ya... - Jeff Terich

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