Scream

Following Tiny Dancer’s introduction to the quite frankly disturbing world of Angels Of Light during our recent podcast and also to coincide with Halloween, I have been brooding over the number of songs that can be said to truly upset me. I’m talking about the sort of songs that leave you feeling slightly less comfortable with the world than you were before you’d heard them. There probably aren’t that many around but I reckon these three just about hit the spot.

Public Image Ltd had the obvious head start of having Johnny Lydon’s bizarre wailing voice, which was put to particularly unsettling effect on Careering from their 1979 album Metal Box. The lyrics aren’t especially creepy but god knows they aren’t exactly cheerful either:

There must be meaning
Behind the moaning
Spreading tales
Like coffin nails

And the whole affair leaves me needing a good strong drink.



Public Image Limited – Careering


Wire, genius post-punk art-rock lunatics that they were, managed to capture something of the same feeling on their 1978 album Chairs Missing on the track I Feel Mysterious Today. It all starts off quite jauntily, but soon kicks in with some good old fashioned paranoia.

I feel mysterious today
Everyone is coming this way…



Wire – I Feel Mysterious Today


However, the cream of the crop when talking about bands who produce disturbing music – and I use the term 'music' loosely here – has to be Throbbing Gristle. Stepping back one year further to 1977 (what was it with the late seventies that produced all this at the same time as disco?) The Gristle released their album Second Annual Report. It’s quite hard to describe, but I think a taster can be found in Slug Bait (Live at Brighton).



Throbbing Gristle – Slug Bait (Live At Brighton)


As far as I can tell, it’s a sample of an interview with a man who has killed a 10 year old girl, played over TG’s customary tape-splice art noise attack. For years I’ve tried to hold on to the idle dream that it is not a real interview, but unfortunately I think it might be. Of special horror is his admission that he had originally intended merely to rape her and only strangled her because he ‘flipped out’. Nice bloke.

Pretty much the rest of the album has this sort of stuff going on, including the cheerful tune Zyclon B Zombie, which deals with the Zyclon B gas used to kill Jews in the concentration camps of World War 2. If you really want to pursue this further you can buy the album here - but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So, top marks for freakin’ me out definitely go to Throbbing Gristle. If anyone can beat that I’d love to hear it...


Crisp Debris


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