Through a intriguing exploration into fear-inducing audio, various well-known goth and metal performers discuss the compositions that give chills down their spines.
An Experimental Artist
The Master Composer – The Murder (The Sixties)
While scary tunes often thrills this artist, the composition that most induces chills is the bathroom sequence music from Alfred Hitchcock's iconic movie Psycho. Even after countless viewings, the slashing blade paired with the composer's score always induces fear.
In recent times, the artist experienced a period of watching Japanese and Korean scary movies. Unfortunately, it became necessary to cease watching them due to a heart condition, yet not one impacted me like the Hitchcock shower scene. Music set to visuals intensifies the experience, keeping you in a state of elevated expectation for the unexpected.
Sunn O))) Founder
A Dark Band – Evil (1991)
The infamous seven-inch was purchased from a friend in the early nineties. The listeners were unsure its nature or which speed to listen, slow or fast. The track is really disturbing, deranged, improvised doom/black metal filled with pain and torture.
Stories spread about the late leader the vocalist, referred to as IT, with some allegations later validated. At that time, it was said the recording documented an individual named IT being tortured and shocked during vocal sessions.
Negative comments frequently surface when the genre is introduced to the wider world, but in my view the sinister is infinitely more profound in the open, and the mainstream is much more disturbed today than that obscure dungeon community was in the early 90s.
Amy Walpole
Sloppy Jane – A Haunting Song (2021)
The artist felt attracted to Sloppy Jane's record Madison because it was recorded in a cave. This track is subject to analysis, but it seems it's a piece about loneliness and wanting to be recalled after you die. A few lyrics depict death in grotesque ways, while other parts include ordinary descriptions like a plastic horse.
Raised in a charismatic Christian church – essentially a cult – until I was 16, the connection is strong to the religious aspects. The song feels therapeutic. It's a slow song, essentially, but gloomy, gothic and sad, and I love the unusual, alternative atmosphere.
Cabaret Voltaire Icon
Henry Blair – A Creepy Recording (The Forties)
This was part of a series of short audio dramas starring a little boy, Sparky, who was trying to master the piano. I heard it when a young age, years after its release. The BBC broadcast Children’s Favourites on weekend radio, playing songs that grownups felt children would like, often 40s and 50s quirky tracks, which proved very unsettling.
The recording intrigued and frightened me. When Sparky’s mother was out of the room, the piano would begin speaking to him in a voice generated by a early device, a primitive voice modulator. In my opinion that was the catalyst for an ongoing fascination with altering sounds, but as a child, the belief was it was a small boy imprisoned inside a piano forever.
Ho99o9 Artist
A Jazz Legend – Paint Her Mouth, from the Death Wish soundtrack (The Seventies)
My dad was a big fan of thrilling movies, so the viewing of Death Wish occurred in youth. We lived in an urban environment that was kinda like the metropolis shown in the movie, with gangs, robberies and home invasions, so the connection was real. Personally, that was more frightening than Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street.
As an adult, the discovery of the soundtrack happened, and if you hear it in alone, it's truly eerie. Herbie Hancock's a master but what I love is he achieves a lot out of so little – like a small snare drum note or simple synthesiser, an echo or string instruments. It just feels like gloom, or like someone’s following you, so you feel compelled to clutch your purse or have your key ready when you approach your door.
Jinjer Vocalist
Agatha Christie – Opium for No One (1994)
In childhood, animated horrors or films didn't scare the listener much. Then, after a sibling introduced me to the genre, the hearing took place one day in cold weather when family had gone to work and truly got the chills. It's Russian darkwave. The title means A Lonely Drug. It's more gothic and melancholy than horrifying, but the lyrics are very dark. “Dark makeup with shoe polish … the celestial bodies shine beautifully at me and the underworld looks appealing.” Then: “End my life, take your own, you won’t change a thing.”
At nine years old, understanding was lacking what it was about, and imagined scenes in the mind. Birth in Russia but raised in a neighboring nation, and in the region in the nineties the songs got quite depressing. Now, I live in the US. Everyone have left the country, and when contacting family, occasionally the sound of explosions.
Taylor Momsen
The Composer – Main Title, The Shark Music (1975)
I was 10 or 11 when I first saw Jaws and the film would not be what it is without John Williams's score. In my view, it's the king of scary music because of its simplicity. With just a simple motif and changing the intensity, it creates incredible anxiety. You sense that something is coming, and the two notes mirror the basic simplicity of the shark’s mind.
The difference between the shark film and zombie or monster movies is that the danger – a shark attack – is actual. The artist enjoys to be in water. For a period, there was a house in a state and would swim in the ocean for hours. God forbid, if that music's in your mind and a contact occurs, you panic. You can't help thinking: “Shark!”
William Von Ghould
A Legendary Band – Stagger Lee (1996)
The recollection bringing the The Album album home in my 20s and my housemate telling the listener to stop the song because it was scaring him. The song is sort of an reinterpretation on an American folk ballad, but it's nothing like the first version. It's extremely explicit, but the scary thing is that the antagonist is human. The singer is inhabiting a violent character, but is very believable.
It’s got that crazy, aggressive lyric: “I’ll crawl over many individuals just to get one fat boy’s asshole” – it's probably more shocking now than it was originally. Like a great horror film, the track takes your breath away. Performances with a lot of gothic, Halloween-type groups but no other as truly frightening as this.
Cassy Brooking
Ethel Cain – {Perverts
