As Halloween approaches, forget the usual “Monster Mash” and dive into a curated collection of truly chilling songs. This playlist ventures far beyond typical spooky tunes, exploring the depths of musical terror with vintage murder ballads, unsettling classical compositions, mind-bending psychedelic freak-outs, shocking rock anthems, gloomy Southern gothic alt-rock, and desolate art-noise soundscapes. Prepare yourself for a listening experience that will linger long after the last note fades.
Carolina Buddies, “The Murder of the Lawson Family” (ca. 1930)
This haunting murder ballad, later popularized as a folk standard by the Stanley Brothers in 1956, recounts a chilling true crime that transcends folklore. When the Carolina Buddies, a struggling string band, first performed “The Murder of the Lawson Family” in 1930, it was a raw, immediate story ripped from the headlines. Just the year before, on Christmas Day, Charlie Lawson committed a horrific act: murdering his wife and six of their seven children. He then laid their heads on pillows of stone before taking his own life. (The seventh child was spared, being out on an errand at the time.) The Buddies deliver the narrative with a detached Appalachian resignation, acknowledging the terrifying potential for violence lurking beneath the surface of everyday life without resorting to sensationalism. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the song’s implication that even the sanctity of family could not offer refuge from the pervasive economic despair of the era becomes profoundly tragic, making it one of the truly Scariest Songs rooted in real-life horror.
Louvin Brothers, “Knoxville Girl” (1956)
Perhaps the most well-known Appalachian murder ballad, “Knoxville Girl,” provides a chilling first-person perspective from an ostensibly ordinary man in Tennessee who, for reasons left disturbingly unexplained, brutally murders his sweetheart with a stick during a casual walk. Despite her desperate pleas, he commits the heinous act. In their rendition, recorded for their 1956 debut LP Tragic Songs of Life (which later became a country hit), Ira and Charlie Louvin’s close harmonies are delivered with a grim, almost righteous tone, set against a brisk and deceptively easy waltz rhythm. This musical juxtaposition amplifies the fatalistic air of the song, culminating in a crisply moralistic conclusion where the violent perpetrator is imprisoned. Yet, even behind bars, the murderer’s lack of remorse is palpable, sounding no more penitent than he did while callously disposing of his victim’s body in the river before returning home to sleep. While the song’s recognizable modern form emerged in the 1920s, its origins stretch back centuries, possibly to a 17th-century killing in Wittam, England. The victim’s town name has shifted across versions, from Oxford, England, to Wexford, Ireland, suggesting a terrifying ubiquity of such acts, implying almost every locale had its own tale of a bloodthirsty woman-slayer to be sung about, making “Knoxville Girl” a timelessly scary song.
Krzystof Penderecki, “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” (1960)
Music scholars might categorize this groundbreaking 20th-century classical piece as an exemplary instance of “sonorism,” but for the listener, Krzystof Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima” is more accurately described as controlled sonic anarchy. This dark and oppressive soundscape, created for 52 string instruments, unleashes a torrent of unconventional techniques. Instruments are struck percussively, bows are dragged across parts of the instrument not intended for bowing, and the entire orchestra swells and vibrates with a menacing hum, akin to a swarm of enraged bees. Unsurprisingly, the Polish composer’s work has become synonymous with psychological tension and suffocating dread in cinema. “Threnody” has been used effectively in films like The Shining and Children of Men, and Penderecki’s compositional style profoundly influenced Jonny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood and Mica Levi’s score for Under the Skin. Penderecki himself noted the demanding nature of the piece, stating, “For some pieces, like the ‘Threnody,’ I prefer young people to perform it, because they are still open to learn… Some notation that I invented at that time is now common, but there are still some special techniques, different types of vibrato, playing on the tailpiece of the bridge, playing directly behind the bridge. These things are unusual, even after 50 years. With so-called normal symphony orchestras, sometimes I refuse to have this piece in the program, because it takes too much rehearsal. Some older orchestra musicians don’t want to learn anything new.” The sheer sonic terror and historical weight make this piece one of the most profoundly scary songs ever conceived.
György Ligeti, “Volumina for Organ” (1962)
Hungarian composer György Ligeti explored the boundaries of sound masses, crafting immersive sonic textures characterized by chaos and movement. His “Volumina,” a composition for solo organ, famously begins with the performer placing their forearms directly across the keyboard – an action that reportedly caused the motor of the Göteborg organ to catch fire during one performance. While “Volumina” prioritizes sonic “colors” over traditional melodic notes, it generates a remarkable sense of unease and anxiety. This unsettling effect stems from its extended passages of dense dissonance and its duration, which typically stretches to around 15 minutes or longer. The sheer sonic immensity and unpredictable nature of “Volumina” make it a truly scary song experience, challenging the listener’s expectations of musical harmony and structure.
The Doors, “The End” (1967)
Clocking in at nearly twelve minutes, The Doors’ epic track “The End” is a sonic descent into a nightmarish psychedelic trip, culminating in an insane and unexpected climax. Jim Morrison’s sprawling rock epic has been widely interpreted as a symbolic farewell to childhood innocence, a sentiment Morrison himself has confirmed in interviews. The song begins calmly, with the singer bidding adieu to his “only friend,” the end itself, before spiraling into increasingly wild and disturbing lyrical territory, urging the listener to “ride the snake” and “ride the highway west.” The final section of the song shifts into a spoken-word narrative, a chaotic retelling of the Oedipus myth. In this disturbing climax, the narrator declares his desire to murder his father and commit incest with his mother, before dissolving into a chaotic barrage of primal screams and guttural “fuck”s. “The End” evolved during The Doors’ residency as the house band at the Whisky a Go Go. One fateful night, under the influence of LSD, Morrison improvised the song’s tumultuous and shocking ending. The band was promptly fired the following day. This raw, unhinged, and Oedipal journey makes “The End” a truly scary song, pushing the boundaries of rock music and lyrical content.
Pink Floyd, “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” (1969)
The psychedelic movement of the 1960s frequently translated horrific fantasies into swirling, ominous soundscapes, echoes of bad trips that delved into the listener’s subconscious. Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe, Eugene,” particularly in its definitive live rendition on the Ummagumma LP, transcends the typical rock jam freakout. It becomes a lysergically conjured haunted house, presenting a series of sonic doors that the listener is compelled to open, despite a sense of foreboding. The song begins with Richard Wright’s delicate organ improvisations and Nick Mason’s fluttering cymbals, accompanied by soft, distant moans that foreshadow impending doom. The title is then whispered, and before the implied danger can fully register, Roger Waters unleashes a series of bloodcurdling screams, filled with horrific derangement. David Gilmour’s guitar responds with a frenzied outburst, but the music soon reverts to the hushed, eerie calm that preceded the violent interlude. Something terrible has undeniably occurred, and the listener is left to grapple with the horrifying implications, making “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” a masterclass in suspenseful and scary song creation.
Bloodrock, “D.O.A.” (1971)
One-hit wonders Bloodrock achieved improbable Top 40 success with “D.O.A.,” a gruesome, eight-and-a-half-minute first-person narrative of dying. The hard rock band’s music evokes the piercing wail of a British ambulance siren, setting the stage for lyrics that vividly depict the gory aftermath of a plane crash from the perspective of a dying man being attended to by an EMT. He recounts feeling “something warm flowing down [his] fingers,” and in a state of confusion, attempts to move his arm, only to discover, “there’s nothing there.” He searches for his girlfriend and finds her face covered in blood, her gaze distant and vacant. Towards the song’s conclusion, he delivers a chilling couplet: “The sheets are red and moist where I’m lying/God in Heaven, teach me how to die.” The track ends with the unsettling sound of American sirens. Keyboardist Steve Hill reflected on the song’s impact in a 2010 interview: “I guess maybe just the whole thing as a package [music and lyrics] is what freaked people out, and on top of that the sirens. The FCC banned ‘D.O.A.’ A lot of stations didn’t play that because people were pulling over in their cars because they thought there was an ambulance behind them.” The visceral lyrics combined with the jarring siren sound effects make “D.O.A.” an undeniably scary song, blurring the lines between music and a terrifying real-life emergency.
Leonard Cohen, “Avalanche” (1971)
Songs of Love and Hate is arguably Leonard Cohen’s most somber and disturbing album, a considerable statement given his consistently melancholic oeuvre. While tracks dealing with suicide (“Dress Rehearsal Rag”) and infidelity (“Famous Blue Raincoat”) certainly deliver a poignant sting, the 1971 LP’s most unsettling moments arise with the opening track, “Avalanche.” Here, Cohen embodies his quintessential persona of the stygian bard with chilling perfection. Set against a backdrop of rolling flamenco guitar and swelling strings, he portrays a hunchback dwelling in the depths of a gold mine, sneering, “Your laws do not compel me/To kneel grotesque and bare.” As the song progresses, it delves into themes of dark obsession and escalating horror (“It is your turn, beloved/It is your flesh that I wear”), yet Cohen’s vocal delivery remains remarkably composed and trance-like. It’s no surprise that Nick Cave, the poet laureate of gloom-rock, has been covering this deeply unsettling song for over three decades. The lyrical darkness and Cohen’s hypnotic delivery solidify “Avalanche” as a profoundly scary song, exploring the depths of human depravity with poetic precision.
Alice Cooper, “I Love the Dead” (1973)
Shock rock icon Alice Cooper could populate an entire list of truly frightening songs – consider “Dead Babies” (a chilling commentary on child neglect), “The Ballad of Dwight Fry” (an unnerving glimpse into madness), and “Sick Things” (a celebration of all things depraved). However, it’s one of Cooper’s multiple odes to necrophilia, “I Love the Dead,” that remains his most chilling and disturbing creation. There is an unsettling, almost unnerving frankness to the recorded version of “I Love the Dead” – the gothic and occasionally majestic closing track from Billion Dollar Babies – that transcends mere satire. Lyrics like, “While friends and lovers mourn your silly grave/I have other uses for you, darling,” are delivered with a disturbing matter-of-factness. It is only in the live performance context, where the song traditionally serves as a prelude to Cooper’s theatrical nightly beheading by guillotine, that it veers into camp. In a 2014 Rolling Stone interview, Alice Cooper downplayed the song’s shock value, stating, “To me, anyone taking it that seriously … yeah,” before trailing off. “I don’t think you can shock an audience anymore [today]. If I cut my arm off and ate it, OK, that would be shocking. But you can only do it twice.” Despite Cooper’s attempts to diminish its impact, “I Love the Dead” remains a deeply disturbing and scary song, exploring taboo themes with unsettling directness.
Suicide, “Frankie Teardrop” (1977)
Suicide’s Alan Vega introduces the titular character, Frankie Teardrop, a struggling 20-year-old factory worker desperately trying to provide for his family, in breathless, fragmented phrases, as if yearning to break into the carefree energy of “Be-Bop-A-Lula” but trapped in a world too bleak for such lightheartedness. Barely halfway through this nearly ten-and-a-half-minute threnody, Frankie commits the unthinkable: he murders his family and then takes his own life. But even death offers no escape – “Frankie’s lying in hell,” Vega insists repeatedly. And there is no escape from Suicide’s claustrophobic no-wave sound either. Vega’s screams are not cathartic; initially, they are stifled and shame-ridden, then they erupt into full-throated bursts that collapse into sobs or are fractured into infinity by delay effects. The narrative of Frankie Teardrop would be mere melodrama if set to the slashing guitars and driving rhythms of Suicide’s CBGB contemporaries. Instead, Martin Rev’s stark electronic backdrop, churning and grinding with the unsettling hum of a household appliance that becomes an obsession during bouts of insomnia, paints a uniquely modern vision of damnation. This is not the fiery hell of biblical descriptions, but a gray, wearying static of perpetual despair, making “Frankie Teardrop” a terrifyingly scary song that captures the anxieties of modern urban life.
Throbbing Gristle, “Hamburger Lady” (1978)
Ever fascinated by the grotesque and the fringes of human experience, English noise/art collective Throbbing Gristle reached a peak of body horror with their standout track “Hamburger Lady,” from their 1978 album D.O.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle. The lyrics are directly derived (and spliced together) from a written account by artist Blaster Al Ackerman, who served as a medic in Vietnam and later in a burn unit at a hospital. There, he cared for a woman severely burned from her waist to her face. “Hamburger Lady,” Genesis P-Orridge repeats in a detached, deadpan monotone, “She’s dying, she is burned from the waist up.” Even more unsettling than the starkly clinical lyrics is the ominous, mechanical whir of a motor, suspended against a backdrop of sterile white noise. The combination of graphic imagery and cold, industrial sounds makes “Hamburger Lady” a deeply disturbing and scary song, pushing the boundaries of musical discomfort.
The Birthday Party, “Dead Joe” (1982)
“Welcome to the car smash,” howls a ferocious, 25-year-old Nick Cave in “Dead Joe.” This scuzzy, chaotic track paints a grisly scene of a car wreck, likely around Christmas (hinted at by Cave’s sardonic “ho-ho-ho-ing”), so horrific that “you can’t tell the girls from the boys anymore” – a darkly ironic metaphor for the blurring lines and chaotic energy of London’s post-punk scene at the time. The song, co-written by Cave and his then-girlfriend Anita Lane, blends tonal elements of American Southern Gothic with raw, cartoonish art-rock. Although The Birthday Party disbanded just a year later, their incorporation of blues and rockabilly elements into an eerie, unsettling sound significantly influenced the development of gothic rock. The raw energy and morbid imagery in “Dead Joe” make it a powerfully scary song, capturing the chaotic and unsettling spirit of post-punk.
Bruce Springsteen, “Nebraska” (1982)
Just another Springsteen song about a boy, a car, and a girl – except this time, the driver offering to whisk his “gal” away from her town of “losers” is Charlie Starkweather, the infamous real-life spree killer who terrorized the American West for two months in the late 1950s alongside his “pretty baby,” 14-year-old Caril Ann Fugate. Bruce Springsteen had previously given voice to the desperate and downtrodden, but these were typically good people facing hardship. He had never before inhabited the persona of such remorseless tramps. In “Nebraska,” his drawl takes on a chillingly sociopathic edge, while his harmonica wails like a rusty weathervane atop a dilapidated barn, adding to the desolate atmosphere. When Charlie’s captors demand to know the reasons behind his brutality, the song arrives at a moment familiar to horror movie aficionados – a psychotherapeutic explanation attempts to surface. Starkweather’s chillingly flat and dismissive rationale: “There’s just a meanness in this world.” This bleak and unsettling portrayal of a real-life killer makes “Nebraska” a profoundly scary song, stripping away any romanticism often associated with outlaws and exposing the chilling banality of evil.
Metallica, “One” (1989)
While Metallica had been underground pioneers throughout the early 1980s, they catapulted into mainstream consciousness in 1989 with “One,” a single depicting the desperate plight of a quadriplegic soldier pleading for death. “When we were writing the Master of Puppets album, James [Hetfield] came up with the idea – what it would be like if you were in this situation where you were sort of a living consciousness, like a basket case, where you couldn’t reach out and communicate with anyone around you,” Lars Ulrich once explained. “You had no arms, no legs, couldn’t obviously see, hear or speak.” They revisited this harrowing concept in the fall of 1987, after their managers introduced them to Dalton Trumbo’s anti-war novel and film Johnny Got His Gun. The story recounts the agonizing experience of Joe Bonham, a patriotic American soldier in World War I who awakens to find a landmine has robbed him of his limbs, eyes, ears, and most of his mouth – yet he remains conscious, able to think and feel. He eventually resorts to headbanging Morse code on his pillow, desperately signaling his doctors to end his life. For Metallica, this grim narrative – set against a backdrop of machine-gun thrash riffs for nearly eight minutes – transformed into an unlikely Top 40 hit. Accompanied by an unforgettable music video incorporating footage from the film and a Grammy win, “One” became a landmark track. The combination of its powerful anti-war message and the horrifying depiction of human suffering makes “One” a deeply scary song, resonating on both a visceral and intellectual level.
PJ Harvey, “Down By The Water” (1995)
Imagine a tale narrated by a bog witch of the highest order. In “Down By The Water,” the lead single from her 1995 album, To Bring You My Love, PJ Harvey transforms into an alluring yet sinister, filicidal mother emerging from a swampy underworld, beckoning her daughter back from the river where she drowned her. The music video intensifies this unsettling imagery, featuring Harvey undulating to a menacing cha-cha rhythm and thrashing underwater in a red satin dress. Harvey herself recounted to Spin the genuine struggle she faced in surfacing during filming, weighed down by her massive black wig. The chorus chillingly subverts the otherwise innocuous children’s rhyme “Salty Dog Blues,” an American standard originally recorded by New Orleans legend Papa Charlie Jackson. Harvey whispers, “Little fish, big fish swimming in the water, Come back here and give me my daughter.” This dark twist on a familiar tune, combined with Harvey’s unsettling performance, makes “Down By The Water” a truly scary song, tapping into primal fears of motherhood and the supernatural.
Scott Walker, “Farmer In The City” (1995)
The low, ominous drone that opens Scott Walker’s 1995 track “Farmer In The City” merely hints at the profound horror that is about to unfold. Walker, the former pop idol turned experimental miserablist, possesses a vocal instrument that transcends simple descriptors like “haunting” or “funereal.” His is a precisely calibrated moan, imbued with a distinctive vibrato, and his increasingly bleak and experimental music of the past two decades has utilized his voice and worldview to arresting effect. “Farmer In The City” might be the closest he has come to releasing a pop song in his later period, though it remains profoundly harrowing. Set against a tense, sparse arrangement by the Sinfonia of London, Walker wails his abstract interpretation of the final thoughts of Italian film director and intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini (who was murdered in 1975). “Paulo take me with you/It was the journey of a life,” he murmurs near the song’s end, a fleeting moment of regretful self-reflection that speaks to the underlying horror of the unknown and the inevitability of death. The somber atmosphere and Walker’s haunting vocals make “Farmer In The City” a deeply scary song, exploring themes of mortality and artistic legacy.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Song of Joy” (1996)
Nearly every song in Nick Cave’s extensive catalog could be considered scary; few artists have dedicated themselves to exploring the grim and macabre with such unwavering intensity as the Australian Bad Seeds frontman. In the mid-1990s, he embarked on the ambitious project of writing and recording the aptly titled album Murder Ballads, whose songs collectively claimed the lives of countless hapless fictional victims. The album’s lugubrious opening track, originally conceived as a sequel to Cave’s Milton-inspired soundtrack favorite “Red Right Hand,” recounts the unflinching story of a man who meets a “sweet and happy” woman named Joy. They eventually marry, but one day he discovers her brutally murdered: “she had been bound with electrical tape, in her mouth a gag/She’d been stabbed repeatedly and stuffed into a sleeping bag.” The killer also claimed the lives of the narrator’s three other daughters. By the song’s conclusion, it becomes chillingly apparent that the narrator may possess more knowledge than he initially reveals. “They never caught the man,” Cave sings ominously. “He’s still on the loose.” The graphic violence and unresolved mystery make “Song of Joy” a truly scary song, embodying the dark heart of Cave’s murder ballad project.
Diamanda Galás, “25 Minutes to Go” (1998)
Diamanda Galás’ legendary four-octave vocal range is just the starting point of her unsettling artistry. On her 1998 rendition of Shel Silverstein’s 1962 novelty song “25 Minutes to Go,” her voice penetrates in far more nuanced and disturbing ways. Johnny Cash, in his 1965 and 1968 Folsom Prison recordings, approached the song about a death row inmate with a sense of dark humor and ironic detachment. Galás, in stark contrast, evacuates all levity from the cell, seemingly channeling the spirit of Mary Surratt. Her meandering piano accompaniment is almost feline in its unsettling quality, beginning the song’s 25-minute countdown with a jarring, circus-like stomp that gradually devolves into a slow, skeletal tinkling of keys. Galás illuminates the song’s more forlorn and tragic lines, singing “Now here comes a preacher to save my soul/With 13 minutes to go,” as if her lungs are filling with liquid. Eschewing the campy ending found in folk versions (“One more minute to go/And now I’m swinging and here I go!”), Galás’ voice plummets to a ghastly whisper in the final moments, emphasizing the inherent tragedy that the comedy originally attempted to mask. As made evident on her blues covers album Malediction and Prayer, Galás draws as much inspiration from Maria Callas’ tormented arias as from the tradition of stark murder ballads. This transformation of a darkly humorous song into a harrowing lament makes Galás’ “25 Minutes to Go” a profoundly scary song, revealing the raw terror beneath the surface.
Tom Waits, “What’s He Building?” (1999)
This dramatic monologue, delivered from the perspective of a nosy and increasingly paranoid neighbor, unfolds against a backdrop of eerie sound effects – subdued metallic clangs, cheap-sounding electronic flutters – that would be the envy of any haunted house designer. Tom Waits, already a master of the macabre (famously cast as the bug-eating Renfield in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula), wheezes and whispers here as if shining a flashlight under his chin to frighten a group of nervous scouts around a campfire. The repetitive, almost obsessive way he intones, “What’s he building in there?” – emphasizing the word “building” with each increasingly worried iteration – gradually casts the narrator himself in a far more suspicious light than the eccentric loner he is spying on. This unsettling ambiguity persists until the final coda, where the listener is finally allowed to hear the whistling emanating from the mysterious builder’s home, leaving the true nature of his project shrouded in chilling mystery. The suspenseful atmosphere and Waits’ masterful vocal performance make “What’s He Building?” a uniquely scary song, tapping into primal anxieties about the unknown and the unsettling nature of our neighbors.
Tori Amos, “’97 Bonnie And Clyde” (2001)
Eminem’s original “’97 Bonnie And Clyde” was a disturbingly upbeat revenge fantasy where the bleached-blonde rapper detailed a father-daughter trip to the beach, with unsettling hints that “Mama,” located in the trunk of the car, was not a willing participant. Tori Amos’s reimagining of the song for her 2001 covers album Strange Little Girls amplifies the American-gothic horror elements with chilling horror-movie strings, minimalist synth beats, and a crucial shift in perspective. Amos’s strangled vocal delivery and almost maternal tenderness make the monologue sound as if it originates from the victim herself, as life is slowly ebbing away. “’Bonnie & Clyde’ is a song that depicts domestic violence very accurately, right on the money,” Amos told MTV in 2001. “I did not align with the character that he represents. There was one person who definitely wasn’t dancing to this thing, and that’s the woman in the trunk. And she spoke to me. … [She] grabbed me by the hand and said, ‘You need to hear this how I heard it.'” This inversion of perspective, combined with Amos’s haunting musical arrangement, transforms “’97 Bonnie And Clyde” into a profoundly scary song, giving voice to the silenced victim of domestic violence.
Eminem, “Kim” (2000)
One of rap music’s most chilling and disturbing tracks comes in the form of Eminem’s brutally graphic, rhyme-for-rhyme recreation of the moment an abusive relationship escalates into deadly violence. Written and released during a particularly toxic period in his relationship with his now ex-wife Kim Scott, the rapper vividly depicts murdering Kim’s husband and stepson while simultaneously unleashing a torrent of verbal abuse upon her, from her home to a car, and finally to the secluded location where he ends her life. Eminem screams virtually the entire song, even mimicking Kim’s voice in moments where she attempts to refute his enraged statements. “If I was her, I would have ran when I heard that shit,” mentor Dr. Dre told Rolling Stone in 1999. “It’s over the top – the whole song is him screaming. It’s good, though. Kim gives him a concept.” The sheer intensity and graphic violence depicted in “Kim” make it an undeniably scary song, pushing the boundaries of lyrical content in rap music and exploring the darkest corners of human relationships.
Khanate, “Commuted” (2003)
Within the metal genre, the term “extreme” has become a subgenre label rather than a true measure of intensity. However, the music created by the now-defunct NYC quartet Khanate in the early 2000s genuinely lived up to that descriptor, achieving rare levels of oppressive bleakness. “The music is pure structural experimentation and blatant attempts at uneasy mood alteration through dissonance and temporal slack,” explained guitarist Stephen O’Malley, also of Sunn O))), in 2001. In practice, this translates to a soundscape of metal stretched and distorted into agonizingly tense epics like “Commuted,” a 19-minute behemoth of sonic dread. O’Malley’s dissonant chords toll with a funereal slowness, and Tim Wyskida’s bass drum thuds with a measured, unsettling calm as vocalist Alan Dubin shrieks what sounds like a real-time unraveling of sanity: “My God/The smiles/The sneezes/The talking. …” When the full band finally erupts into a series of blunt, stumbling climaxes, the shock is akin to Danny Torrance’s horrific glimpse of the ghostly twins in the Overlook Hotel hallway in The Shining. The sheer sonic weight and psychological intensity make “Commuted” a profoundly scary song, pushing the limits of sonic endurance and exploring the depths of mental disintegration.
Sufjan Stevens, “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” (2005)
Sufjan Stevens’ ambitious album Illinois delves into various facets of the state’s history, including the chilling story of 1970s serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Jr. – infamously known as “the Killer Clown” – who buried the bodies of 26 teenage boys he sexually assaulted and murdered in the crawl space beneath his home. “I felt insurmountable empathy not with his behavior but with his nature, and there was nothing I could do to get around confessing that, however horrifying that sounds,” Stevens explained in an interview around the album’s release. He further noted that Gacy served as a dark counterpoint to the more optimistic Illinois figures he explored on the album, such as Abraham Lincoln and Carl Sandburg. Stevens’ characteristically subdued musical style – his gentle vocals delivered over the muted plucking of a guitar – makes his almost tender empathy for Gacy all the more unsettling and chilling. The juxtaposition of gentle music with the horrific subject matter makes “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” a uniquely scary song, forcing listeners to confront uncomfortable questions about empathy and the nature of evil.
Haxan Cloak, “Miste” (2013)
Under the moniker Haxan Cloak, Bobby Krlic has garnered critical acclaim for music that pulsates with the energy of underground techno but possesses the tense, nail-biting, and stomach-churning textures reminiscent of slasher movie foley work. While his breakthrough album Excavation is replete with ominous slurps, rumbles, and throbs, “Miste” stands out as the scariest track of all, primarily due to its (spoiler alert!) opening with a classic “jump-scare.” The piercing scream that erupts at the song’s outset immediately loops and echoes, embedding itself deep within the track’s sonic texture before giving way to alarm-like sonic waves. “I don’t find darkness depressing. Actually, I find it quite uplifting and cathartic,” Krlic told The Quietus. “There are certain points where I challenge myself and try and make myself feel as uncomfortable as I possibly can. And that doesn’t come down to me being a dark person; it’s like a kind of adrenaline rush.” This deliberate creation of sonic discomfort, particularly the jarring jump scare, makes “Miste” a powerfully scary song, designed to elicit a visceral reaction from the listener.
Wolf Eyes, “Asbestos Youth” (2015)
Detroit-based noise terrorists Wolf Eyes have spent the better part of two decades unleashing scorched-earth distortion, throat-shredding screams, and shovel-dragging slasher noise across over 250 releases. However, with their most recent album for Third Man Records, I Am a Problem: Mind in Pieces, they reached a new level of homegrown terror. They have dialed back the full-throttle yowl in favor of a more dead-eyed, haunting, and desolate atmosphere, characterized by unsettling scuzz and whining woodwinds. As John Olson explained to Pop Matters, “It’s not as dystopian as our other records… We’re older guys and Jim [Baljo], the newest guy in the band, is a laid back rocker and you know we’re all hippies by heart. We didn’t feel the need to annihilate everything in our path as much. You say more with less, you know? You get older and you observe more and attack less.” While “Asbestos Youth” may not overtly “attack,” it uneasily creeps and crawls, evoking the unsettling atmosphere of a John Carpenter soundtrack score accompanying a scene of hiding in a derelict toolshed. The subtle yet pervasive sense of dread makes “Asbestos Youth” a uniquely scary song, proving that less can indeed be more when crafting sonic terror.
