Goth Artists Reveal Their Choices for the Scariest Music Ever Made

Through a intriguing exploration into spine-chilling sounds, various renowned rock and heavy performers talk about the compositions that give chills down their spines.

An Experimental Artist

The Master Composer – The Murder (The Sixties)

While scary tunes frequently thrills this artist, the piece that really induces chills is the bathroom sequence music from Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Psycho. Despite countless watchings, the slashing knife paired with Herrmann's score always induces fear.

More recently, the artist experienced a period of viewing Asian scary movies. Sadly, I had to stop watching them due to a heart condition, yet not one impacted me like the Hitchcock shower scene. Music set to visuals intensifies the experience, holding you in a state of heightened anticipation for the surprising.

Sunn O))) Founder

Abruptum – Evil (1991)

The notorious seven-inch was acquired from a friend in 1992. We didn't know what this was or the correct rotation to listen, slow or fast. It's truly disturbing, deranged, spontaneous doom/black metal filled with pain and torture.

Stories spread about the late frontman the vocalist, known as IT, with some allegations later validated. At that time, it was said the audio documented an individual called IT being abused and electrocuted during vocal sessions.

Negative comments frequently surface when the genre is exposed to the mainstream, but in my view darkness is infinitely more profound in the open, and the popular culture is far more messed up today than that obscure dungeon community was in the early 90s.

Witch Fever Member

Sloppy Jane – Jesus and Your Living Room Floor (Recent Years)

I was drawn to this band's album Madison because it was made in a cavern. This track is open to interpretation, but I think it's a piece about isolation and desiring to be recalled after passing away. Some lyrics describe death in gruesome ways, while others include ordinary descriptions like a toy figure.

Having been brought up in a religious group – basically a cult – until I was 16, I can relate to the spiritual themes. I find therapeutic. It's a ballad, essentially, but dark, gothic and melancholic, and the artist adores the unusual, alternative vibe.

Stephen Mallinder

A Children's Performer – Sparky’s Magic Piano (The Forties)

This was part of a collection of mini musical plays starring a little boy, Sparky, who was learning to play the piano. I heard it when a young age, years after its release. A radio station used to run a kids' program on weekend radio, playing music that adults felt kids would like, frequently mid-century quirky tracks, which I found very unsettling.

The recording intrigued and frightened the listener. When Sparky’s mother was away, the piano would start talking to him in a voice produced by a Sonovox, a primitive voice modulator. I think that was the catalyst for an lasting fascination with altering sounds, but as a five-year-old, I was convinced it was a small boy imprisoned inside a piano for eternity.

TheOGM

Herbie Hancock – Paint Her Mouth, from the Death Wish soundtrack (1974)

The artist's father was a big fan of action films, so the viewing of Death Wish happened in youth. We lived in an city setting that was kinda like the New York shown in the movie, with gangs, muggings and home invasions, so the connection was real. To me, that was much scarier than slasher films or horror classics.

Later on in life, I stumbled across the soundtrack happened, and if you listen in alone, it's truly chilling. The musician's a genius but the impressive aspect is he gets so much out of minimal elements – like a little snare drum note or minimalist electronic sound, an reverberation or some strings. It just feels like gloom, or like being stalked, so you need to clutch your purse or have your keys out when you approach your home.

Jinjer Vocalist

A Russian Band – Опиум для никого (The Nineties)

In childhood, animated horrors or movies failed to frighten the listener much. Then, after a sibling introduced me to the genre, I listened occurred one afternoon in cold weather when my parents had gone to work and truly felt scared. It's Russian darkwave. The title means Opium for No One. It's more gothic and sad than horrifying, but the lyrics are very dark. “Dark makeup with black substance … the stars shine beautifully at me and hell looks attractive.” Then: “Kill me, kill yourself, you won’t change anything.”

As a child, understanding was lacking the meaning, and imagined scenes in the mind. Birth in the country but raised in a neighboring nation, and in those countries in the nineties the music got quite depressing. Currently, I live in the US. Everyone have left the country, and when contacting family, occasionally I hear explosions.

Taylor Momsen

The Composer – Main Title, Theme From Jaws (The Seventies)

I was 10 or 11 when I first saw Jaws and the movie would not be what it is without John Williams's score. In my view, it's the king of scary music because of its minimalism. With just a simple motif and slightly varying the velocity, it creates incredible anxiety. You sense that something is coming, and the two notes replicate the primal simplicity of the shark’s mind.

What sets it apart between the shark film and zombie or monster movies is that the danger – a shark attack – is actual. I love to swim. For a period, there was a house in Maine and would swim in the sea for extended periods. God forbid, if that music's in your mind and something touches your foot, you panic. You can’t not think: “Shark!”

William Von Ghould

A Legendary Band – A Dark Ballad (1996)

I remember bringing the Murder Ballads album home in young adulthood and my housemate telling the listener to turn this track off because it was frightening him. The song is essentially an reinterpretation on an traditional tune, but it's very different from the first version. It's very graphic, but the scary aspect is that the villain is human. The singer is inhabiting a murderous character, but is very believable.

Includes that shocking, violent line: “I’ll crawl over 50 good pussies just to get a specific target” – it's likely more shocking now than it was back then. Similar to scary movies, the song leaves you stunned. We play with a lot of dark, spooky groups but nothing’s as convincingly scary as this.

Cassyette Artist

Ethel Cain – {Perverts