Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[TrueNeutral]

Or - the album to use to convince drug addicts to stop.

[Joey JoJo]

Whoops, clicked submit before I wanted to, bad n00b.

Anyway, this album tells one hell of a sad story.
In short, an outcast banished from his village returns for his love, Melinda, fifteen years after being shunned. He convinces Melinda to run away with him, if only for one night. The Council of the Cross finds them, takes Melinda and cuts her throat. In blind rage, he kills as many of the townspeople as he can before them pull him down. He is hanged, and sees Melinda waiting for him as he dies.

[Trollstormur]

Leviathan - The Tenth Sub-level of Suicide


sad album is saaaaaaad

[Injektilo]

I See A Darkness - Bonnie "Prince" Billy

That's got my vote for most miserable and depressing album I know.  Nothing like track after track of distant, haunting lyrics and guitar.  The first track, "A Minor Place," doesn't betray the true misery of the album either, which makes the subsequent tracks all the more poignant.

[Praeserpium Machinarum]

You know, while Will Oldham can be miserable, there is just too much black humour on I See A Darkness for me to find it truly depressing. I mean Death to Everyone has some, albeit chilling, black humour - just look at the chorus.
In fact on the contrary I think it is uplifting in parts, what with ending it all on a sweet note like Raining In Darling. Will Oldham usually spice up some of the songs with humour(A King At Night, Hard Life, Beast for Thee etc.) which is one of the reasons I find him so interesting. The compelling thing is that it isn't all that depressing despite the subject matter.

[KharBevNor]

...If I think a song is depressing, that means it strikes a chord with me, which makes me feel good - it makes me feel happy. In this way I don't find any music depressing. I get depressed by bad music, though.

I don't actually get all down when I listen to any of the albums I've listed. Maybe 'Most depressive albums ever' would have been better.

I would have to go with Nada! by Death In June

Good call. I was going to mention DI6, but I honestly couldn't think of what album to put. I was thinking of going with Rose Clouds of Holocaust, also my favourite DI6 album, but in a way it's quite a warm record, and I didn't think it quite fitted.

DI6 always has that depressing tone, but I think it's when you really start to analyse the meanings of the songs that the true weight of it comes in. Like 'C'est Une Reve'. We all have a Klaus Barbie in our hearts, and "Liberte c'est une reve". There's a fantastic bleakness about the whole neo-folk aesthetic, on which note:



SOL INVICTUS - THE HILL OF CROSSES

All Sol Invictus albums share a maudlin and morbid atmosphere, replete with harsh, nihilistic reminders of human stupidity and mortality, tales of murder, rape and madness, off-set with a brilliant sense of pagan mysticism. Hill of Crosses, however, really is probably the saddest thing Tony Wakefords ever done, with strong competition. It paints a bleak, war-ravaged European landscape, but unrelieved by the tinges of gallows humour that relieve albums like 'Death of the West' and 'The Devils Steed'. And of course, 'Black Dawn' and 'December Song' are two of the most depressing songs of all time.

"This is the longest road to nowhere
Although it's shorter than you think
When the shutters comes down
When the chain breaks its link

Can love triumph
Will hate fall
Can good win?
Probably not at all

The tide will go out and not return
The flame will die and never again burn
I will fall asleep and never awake
The next page of the diary won't have a date

Can love triumph
Will hate fall
Can good win?
Probably not at all

With vile defeats
I limp towards December
Full of vile deceits
But destined not to be remembered"

[Johnny C]

This needs like subthreads. "Most Depressing Metal Album." "Most Depressing Folk Album." "Most Depressing Nick Cave Album." And so forth. Depression spans all genres, guys.

[The Eyeball Kid]

Eels- blinking lights and other revelations

[TrueNeutral]

Blinking Lights is not depressing? It has a couple of sad, poignant tracks but it sure isn't depressing. It's life-affirming if anything.

[FeralCats]

Ready for the House, by Jandek. Wow.

[Inlander]

In fact on the contrary I think it is uplifting in parts, what with ending it all on a sweet note like Raining In Darling. Will Oldham usually spice up some of the songs with humour(A King At Night, Hard Life, Beast for Thee etc.) which is one of the reasons I find him so interesting. The compelling thing is that it isn't all that depressing despite the subject matter.

I always laugh a little when I'm listening to "Death to Everyone".  It's because when I saw him play in Canberra years ago (supporting the Dirty Three) he stopped in the middle of the song to explain the chorus to the crowd: he asked if anyone knew what "hosing" was ("Death to Everyone is going to come/And it makes hosing much more fun") and when nobody answered, he explained: "A man hoses a woman".  Everyone laughed, the song continued.

And while we're on the subject of Will Oldham's sense of humour, see also the way he adopts an Elmer Fudd accent to rhyme "void" with "word" ("woid") in "Grand Dark Feeling of Emptiness", which to this day I maintain is a send-up of his reputation for bleak and depressing subject matter.

[StrikeThePostman]

[Praeserpium Machinarum]

I always laugh a little when I'm listening to "Death to Everyone". It's because when I saw him play in Canberra years ago (supporting the Dirty Three) he stopped in the middle of the song to explain the chorus to the crowd: he asked if anyone knew what "hosing" was ("Death to Everyone is going to come/And it makes hosing much more fun") and when nobody answered, he explained: "A man hoses a woman". Everyone laughed, the song continued.

I didn't know that, I thought that it refered to another meaning of "hose", namely to shot someone. And, in a way, I suppose I was right...

[GuitarJunkie]

And not just because it was the straw that broke Ian Curtis' back. That is a thoroughly depressing but excellent album.

[Pierre the Poet]

Well, as someone already mentioned, Nick Cave is an easy call, but I'll try an unusual album choice:



Yeah, "Kicking Against the Pricks" and "Murder Ballads" are more traditionally depressing.  In fact, "Boatman's Call" is probably his quietest most comforting record.  Still, coming right on the heals of the rage, insanity, and self-assertion of "Murder Ballads," I find the restrained melancholy of BC much more depressing (in an addictive sort of way).  He just sounds so spent and broken. . .

[E. Spaceman]

The Saddest Album


Close to the above (though tommy may beg to differ)


pretty damn sad too.

[Thrillho]

Well, as someone already mentioned, Nick Cave is an easy call, but I'll try an unusual album choice:



Yeah, "Kicking Against the Pricks" and "Murder Ballads" are more traditionally depressing.  In fact, "Boatman's Call" is probably his quietest most comforting record.  Still, coming right on the heals of the rage, insanity, and self-assertion of "Murder Ballads," I find the restrained melancholy of BC much more depressing (in an addictive sort of way).  He just sounds so spent and broken. . .

That is a very depressing album. However I think it's depressing in a beautiful way, it's so skeletal and sparse. It's like Nick Cave solo, no Bad Seeds most of the time. I think 'Into My Arms' is one of the best songs he's ever written (bizarrely, it talks about not believing in an interventionist God or angels and yet its melody sounds exactly like a Christian song) and I also think that the glimmer of hope 'Far From Me' shows in the bit where he talks about 'a world where everybody fucks everybody else over' makes it all worth it.

[books_out_loud]

american nightmare - background music

[Pierre the Poet]

That is a very depressing album. However I think it's depressing in a beautiful way, it's so skeletal and sparse. It's like Nick Cave solo, no Bad Seeds most of the time. I think 'Into My Arms' is one of the best songs he's ever written (bizarrely, it talks about not believing in an interventionist God or angels and yet its melody sounds exactly like a Christian song) and I also think that the glimmer of hope 'Far From Me' shows in the bit where he talks about 'a world where everybody fucks everybody else over' makes it all worth it.

Agreed.  I've noticed too that a lot of the songs sound hymn-like or vaguely Christian, but that just makes a nice dissonance with the lyrics, some of which are as dark as any he's written ("where do we go now but nowhere" for instance).  Also, the sparse piano arrangements sort of remind me of "Goldrush" era Neil Young.  Great album. . .

[Thrillho]

I don't just mean that they sound hymnal like 'There Is A Kingdom', I mean that 'Into My Arms' has a chorus melody EXACTLY like a chorus melody of a Christian song. I forget its name, but the lyric is 'this is my desire, oh Lord, this is my desire.' Cave might even have based it on that like he based a lot of Murder Ballads on traditional songs.

[amok]

Caul - Whole

it's a 57 minute CD of dark ambient stuff. so ambient that you can barely hear it at times for several minutes. but goddamn if it isn't hauntingly depressing.