Scary/disturbing bands
 

Coil
The Fall of certain phases.
Throbbing Gristle (in their prime).
Certain phases of Sly Stone.
The Suicide of the first album.
White Light White Heat-era Velvet Underground, plus mid-seventies Lou Reed.
The Joy Division of Unknown Pleasure.


There are plenty of black metal bands that I enjoy, but I can't help seeing the comedy factor in them, plus the whole thing of dressing up like that really doesn't help. If anything, Black Sabbath at their blackest had a certain amount of subtelty about them that was more sinister. Coil are by far one of my favourite bands, and one that truly pushed themselves more and more into the human psyche with fantastic results. Blah blah blah. Yours?

slip knot

No comedy, please.

insane clown posse

I forgot that you are a girl, therefore you are more susceptible to the sight of spiders and the like.

John Coltrane - I'm not kidding. To me there something very dark in his music, disturbing beautiful and frightening. Just listen to Ole, it hurts.

Certain stuff of Einstürzende Neubauten (ala Hören mit Schmerzen, Autobahn, Schaben, Hospitalische Kinder etc)

You mentioned TG and Coil, i agree.

there are many more

Coil absolutely.
Death in June
Der Blutharsch
The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud
Early stages of Current 93 ("Nature Unveiled" especially)

Coil actually scares me that much that I basically don't listen to their music at all, although it's a high quality and strangely beautiful one.

I found Current 93 deeply disturbing when I first heard them (Swastikas For Noddy) - Tibet's voice sounded like a vomiting demon.

I was going to say Death in June too, but compared to Current 93 they were a walk in the park.

Sexist! :)

Nurse with Wound
John Zorn's Naked City
GG Allin and the Murder Junkies < His nihilistic point of view.

early suicide
tricky's "angels with dirty faces"
some badalamenti
early SY too
stigmata martyr ha ah
goblin maybe?

I know it's silly to get freaked by R.E.M. (they're such gentile boys) but there is a live version of "Turn You Inside Out" that scares the shit out of me. When Stipe sings I can turn you inside out into the bullhorn, he does it with such passion that I can't help but think he's serious.

Early Butthole Surfers could scare the shit out of me if I were in that scene. Gibby Haynes is fucking mad.

Swans live up to Children of God could be disturbing. Very loud, pummelling and slow and Gira's onstage performance a bit, shall we say, intense.

Whitehouse - I only have one LP but there's a whiff of unpleasantness about their imagery and subject matter.

frankie teardrop is one of the most disturbing tracks i have ever heard.

there's a guy (asshole) in the brian jonestown massacre that calls himself Frankie Teardrop. But he's a real asshole.

I'm trying to think the name of that act i think from the eighties... There was two guys, presumably german, maybe not. But one of them used to play the keyboards and have a little hitler mustasche... That dude really used to freak me out.

^
Sparks?

Yello? I thought that they were Swiss.

Sparks are one of the most surreal bands that I have ever seen live. Truly strange stuff, both visually and aurally.

even more kudos to you. those guys should know better and their name sucks to death, quite literally too.

Gwar and Emperor

The Bomb 20 of 'Flip Burgers Or Die!' is another one that springs to mind. Racist prick that goes by the username of Glice will probably agree with me on this one.

i've got a bomb 20 album, but it's too long and monotonous to be scary

although, I don't find them really scarey now, at one time:

Skinny Puppy and most of it's side-bands (Download, Rx: Ritalin [ok, one song still scares me])

Ministry (the people in it ARE scarey [IRL][SRSLY])

Butthole Surfers (don't listen to Cherub under the influence)


I'm too tired to think of anything else, but I'm sure anything that I listened to religiously from 17-25 years of age...





I laughed (really hard) at this, but unfortunately, for the last few weeks, I too have been scared by the sight of spiders. I jump when I see little bits of black fuzz. :(

for the record: I wouldn't want to meet a juggalo in a dark alley (they might steal my wallet).

einsturzende neubauten lustmord throbbing gristle are pretty.. uh. unpleaseant.

Forget about the rest. Flip Burgers Or Die! is the only one that you need to own. I'm not even sure if it was meant to be an album or just an EP, but then I am generally confused by DHR's packaging.

Jesus Lizard, nothing more scary than a naked lead singer jumping on you

Frankie Teardrop as stated several times above; played it to friends once; it worked really well; played them SY's Burning Spear too and the result was the same.

Les enfants, by the Young Gods; I heard that song on the radio once and the melody stuck. I bought the album a few weeks later probably, just for that track, about kids playing various instruments to make noise, disturb earth and start wars. I never played that album much, but the whole thing can't be erased from my mind.

I've been disturbed by Nick Drake (Know) and the Waitresses (ska? disturbing? well yeah, for a few lines on a song).

I've been deranged by the Boredoms, and by USSA by Butthole Surfers (this one had made me laugh out loud; I had dropped a PKDick book after a long read to throw myself into the arms of those persons who turned out to be as mad as the writer I was trying to escape for my own sanity).

Buzzcocks' last album before reformation quite scared me. I used to put it on when I was feeling disturbed. The problems induced by the music would make me forget about my own by the end of either side I was playing.

Liars have something oddly disturbing about them on their coool pieces. The relief of giving up to spleen and letting it rule your world for as long as you feel good about it.

Edit : Jesus Lizard, yes; I never knew how to dwell with Blockbuster; the music is excellent, but lyrics are...

What I find really sinister about Coil in general is the fact that I never seem to be able to pinpoint what it is, but a general feeling of wrongness pervades their music and you fail to grasp it. I love that feeling of ambiguity that seems to float in the air when I put their records on. Suicide's Frankie Teardrop is a prime example of human degradation, even more so because you know that the characters in the song happen to exist for real.

Good call on the majority of bands that have been posted in this thread.

blockbuster's lyrics are hilarious!

I will agree wholeheartedly with the mention of Nature Unveiled/Dogs Blood Rising era Current 93. Even their more recent LP, "I Have A Special Plan For This World," has a pretty high creep factor. Some Coil is pretty disturbing, but some is actually very relaxing to me.

SPK had it for some time
Korpses Katatonik
Some (and I stress some) Psychic TV
Hybryds

I used to find Psychic Tv's cover of 'Good Vibrations' disturbing, but purely because I had seen this interview carried out in his flat just before that came out, and Genesis P Orridge freaked me out. It's not a disturbing version of it at all. The video is hilarious.

That video is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I love that they did that back when people still thought of them as "severe" people with cult/military uniforms and haircuts and scary abrasive ritual music, and then in the video they're dressed in bright colors and smiling and driving around town in a convertible while lip-syncing to a Beach Boys cover!

jesus lizard aren't scary; they're funny@! boredoms aren't scary; they're godlike. butthole surfers in the old old days, fried by acid.. yeah. that was kinda scary..

Youtube doesn't seem to have it, but I wouldn't mind watching that video again. The sight of Genesis P Orridge having fun in a conventional way is a scary thought in itself.

Die Tödliche Doris is another one

Ronald has gotten even scarier over the years, what with them wrinkles of his.

I never really thought that Psychic TV was scarey. :confused:

I have lots of old Psychic TV on vinyl, but it was never really scarey, just weird.

they really got kind of dance-y toward the end of the 80's too. I was one of maybe 20 people that saw them in Dallas for the Towards Thee Infinite Beat tour, and again, it was weird, but nothing like seeing Ogre from Skinny Puppy disembowel himself on stage.

I think I might be jaded.

old Swans
old Butthole Surfers
Joy Division

Picastro
early Cat Power
early Xiu Xiu
Haunting and sad.

I'm surprised nobody has said Bauhaus

King Volcano is a fucking scary song.

Everything else I would have said has already been mentioned (swans, joy division, neubauten, early sonic youth)