List of Dark, Depressing Metal Music Albums, Bands and Songs

This is a list of depressing metal music albums, bands, and songs categorized by subgenres of dark metal music. I compiled it of items that I personally like. If you know more dark metal music bands with sad and beautiful songs and albums, share them in the comments.

If you are also interested in different shades and genres of dark music, here are my other lists:

 

List of Depressing Electronic Music
List of Dark and Creepy Electronic Music
List of all dark music-related posts

Now let’s cut to the cheese.

 

1. Dark Doom Metal

When I think of sad metal music, doom metal is the genre that comes to my mind first, so I will start with it. I’m not talking about the doom metal that is closer to stoner metal and is built around the blues scale. It’s the depressive doom metal—the one between death metal and gothic metal.

 

Band: Lacrimas Profundere (Germany)

Album: Memorandum (1999)

This is a very beautiful gothic doom metal album by the German band. And the only one that I like of their all discography.

Overall, it’s an exquisite work with a depressive, pessimistic mood. I would say, it has a ‘feminine’ feel to it: acoustic instruments such as guitars, piano, chellos and orchestral strings synthesizer imitation, as well as female opera-style and clean male vocals are combined with the standard dark metal basis, including idiotic screaming and growling.

Even though there is a large amount of instruments combined all together, the production sound stays very clear and enjoyable. I wish this album came out a few years earlier, before the start of the loudness war, though.

 

Band: Empyrium (Germany)

Album: A Wintersunset (1996)

Another classic highly valued by many dark metal music fans. It’s a beautiful and melancholic gothic doom with European medieval feel given by the incorporation of synth orchestral strings, acoustic guitar arpeggios, and beautiful low male vocals (combined with screaming).

I love another album of the band too—Where at Night the Wood Grouse Plays (1999)—an acoustic guitar-based sad folk music with clean vocals and no drums. It’s not metal though, so I haven’t included it in this list.

 

Band: Anathema (Great Britain)

Everyone knows Anathema, so I’m not going to say much about them. This is probably the darkest depressive doom metal band (formerly) that I know of: their minor dual guitar harmonies and ingenious melodic use of feedbacks create a very special atmosphere of sorrow and hopelessness.

The first two albums sound pretty much the same—closer to death metal. The next two have a transfer to a more reverberated sound that makes you feel even lonelier and more miserable.

Album: The Crestfallen (EP) (1992)

Album: Serenades (1993)

Album: Pentecost III (EP) (1995)

Album: The Silent Enigma (1995)

 

Band: Tiamat (Sweden)

Album: Wildhoney (1994)

This classic album gradually transfers the listener from the darkest and heaviest mood to a peaceful and otherworldly one (without becoming happy and cringy).

Album: 1992 - Clouds

Clouds is pretty dark, but the overall mood is more creepy and mystical than depressing. However, these two songs sound sad and beautiful enough to include them in this list.

Featured Song: Undressed

Featured Song: A Caress Of Stars

 

2. Depressive Death Metal

Death metal is normally supposed to be scary and aggressive. It’s pretty difficult to find really sad death metal songs, and moreover bands. However, I know a few.

 

Band: Sunterra (Austria)

Album: Lost Time (2002)

Often overlooked album by a not so well-known band.

Some say it’s “gothic metal”, but as for me the guitars on this album sound too heavy to put this album in one line with standard gothic metal (unlike their next album—Graceful Tunes, 2005). It’s a very unique combination of death metal sound with flute, tender female vocals, and orchestral synth strings. The second song is not that depressing though, but it’s the only one like that on the album.

 

Band: Hypocrisy (Sweden)

Featured Song: The Final Chapter (from The Final Chapter, 1997)

I’m not a fan of this band, but I like the song. It’s from the conceptual album about the arrival of extraterrestrials (they have many albums on this subject). The song is telling about the main character’s emotional exhaustion, despair, and wish to take his life, which is caused by numerous painful experiments put on him by the aliens throughout the years.

The production sound is bad, but I still like the song.

 

Band: Gorement (Sweden)

Album: The Ending Quest (1994)

Another album that is normally not on any “best death metal albums” lists. While the sound here is closer to regular Swedish death metal, there are pretty sad and beautiful melodic elements here, and the lyrics on this album are about loneliness, suffering and other related things. So I decided to include it here.

 

3. Post Metal

Band: Gigantic Brain (The USA)

Gigantic Brain was a one-man bedroom project of John Brown, and later (on the last album) his former friend Mastin Simmons. It’s a drum machine-powered grindcore mixed with post-metal, ambient and other electronics, drugs, and John’s personal problems.

Normally, the songs were sci-fi-themed—about alien invasion. But some of them are about John’s personal troubles (and you can tell that they must have been really bad).

Very unique music. Dark and sick. My favorite album is “They Did This to Me”. And my favorite song is “Birds”.

Album: They Did This to Me (2010)

Featured Song: Birds

Album: I Swallow 16 Red Planets (2016)

Featured Song: I was Molested

Album: World (2009)

Featured Song: He Became the Machine

 

Band: Les Discrets (France)

A French post-metal band with beautiful clean male vocals in French and equally beautiful melancholic music.

Album: Septembre et ses dernières pensées (2010)

Album: Ariettes oubliées… (2012)

4. Black Metal (True, False, and Depressive Suicidal)

I’m not very knowledgeable about black metal, so this list is pretty short. I will start with the least obvious band.

 

Band: Amesœurs (Amesoeurs) (France)

Album: Amesoeurs (2009)

Amesoeurs was a side project of Neige—the leader of a more famous French band—Alcest. In Amesoeurs he and his bandmates mixed elements of black metal, shoegaze, post-punk, and added female vocals by Audrey Sylvain (both singing and screaming).

This resulted in a somewhat poppy but ingenious music. It’s not what black metal fans call “true black metal”, but it doesn’t matter to me.

Some of their songs sound completely like black metal, some of them are more like pop rock or shoegaze or post-punk. But what’s important is that the mood is consistent throughout the entire album, and it’s extremely sad.

An important point is that Audrey sings in French, which is beautiful and very unusual for heavy metal music. I also love her screams: hysterical, desperate, probably even sincere.

Album: Ruines Humaines (2006) (EP)

 

Band: Silencer (Sweden)

This is the most well-known DSBM (depressive suicidal black metal) band, and the only one whose name I remember and whose music I listen to occasionally.

Although depressive suicidal black metal is probably the darkest subgenre of depressing metal music, I’m yet to explore it in more detail, so for now there is only Silencer on this list.

Album: Death, Pierce Me (Demo) (1998)

Album: Death - Pierce Me (2001)

 

Band: Burzum (Norway)

Interestingly, Varg Vikernes is one of the last people who would come to my mind if I had to remember someone depressed and pessimistic. He always promotes fighting for certain ideas and not giving up. But if you listen to the following two albums, they sound like the opposite. Maybe not the lyrics, but musically they are extremely nice and sad.

Album: Hvis Lyset Tar Oss (1994)

Album: Filosofem (1996)

 

5. Gothic Metal

Band: Tiamat (Sweden)

Tiamat again, because they changed style from death metal to something else.

Album: Skeleton Skeletron (1999)

It’s not your standard gothic metal, but I don’t know where else to put it. This album has more melancholic feel to it than really depressive. Some of the songs, like ‘Brighter than the Sun’ are even pretty upbeat. Some are moderately sad. The closing song—Lucy (refers to Lucifer)—is really dark, which is a good ending, in my opinion (though it’s not really a metal song—it’s synthesizer-based), and it’s one of the best ones on the album.

Overall, Skeleton Skeletron is among my favorite ones, it’s technically heavy metal music, and it’s dark enough, so I decided to share it here too.

Here is one of the best songs from the album:

Featured Song: As Long as You Are Mine

Album: A Deeper Kind of Slumber (1997)

‘A Deeper Kind of Slumber’ (1997) came right after the legendary Wildhoney (1994), and it’s the weirdest album by Tiamat with a lot of electronic sounds involved. It’s far less heavy than the previous works, and maybe doesn’t have a lot to do with heavy metal. It’s influenced by Pink Floyd—Johan Edlund’s favorite band. Though this influence isn’t obvious at all—the album is psychedelic in its own way.

Not all of the songs on it are my favorite, but overall, it’s a very original work that deserves more love than it gets.

Especially I like that the last three songs are slow and sad, so the album leaves me with a nice melancholic feeling after listening to it.

Featured Song: Mount Marilyn

Album: Prey (2003)

I like this album, even though it’s pretty standard and commercially-sounding (except for the last song—The Pentagram, which sounds like Pink Floyd and is probably the most interesting song on the album). Despite the commercial sound, on Prey Johan Edlund still managed to preserve Tiamat’s signature feeling of permanent darkness always dwelling somewhere within.

Featured Song: Carry Your Cross And I'll Carry Mine

 

Band: Lucyfire (Sweden)

Album: This Dollar Saved My Life At Whitehorse (2001) (Selected Songs)

Lucyfire was a project of Johan Edlund—the leader of Tiamat. For Lucyfire he made less serious music, using regular ‘rock and roll’ cliches. And the whole thing sounds like commercial mainstream pop-heavy metal music as it was in the early 2000s (but only at the first glance—in fact, this album is much more than that).

But there are a few sad heavy metal songs on it too.

Featured Song: The Pain Song

Featured Song: Annabel Lee (This Dollar Saved My Life At Whitehorse 2001)

Featured Song: Thousand Million Dollars In The Fire

Featured Song: U Can Have All My Love 2nite

 

Band: Kreator (Germany)

There was a period in the 90s when Kreator sounded more like a mainstream gothic metal band. But it was still pretty good.

Album: Endorama (1999)

The whole album gives me a feeling of melancholy, even though it’s not openly or extremely depressive.

Album: Outcast (1997)

Outcast is less sad, but the two songs have the same mood as most songs on Endorama.

Featured Song: Black Sunrise

 

Band: Theatre of Tragedy (Norway)

Album: Theatre of Tragedy (1995)

A well-known masterpiece of gothic metal that has become a standard. You’ve probably heard it before, so I don’t have much to say.

Album: Aegis (1998)

This one is less heavy and, in my opinion, more unique and a bit darker than the first one. Aegis is dedicated to mythical women, as it’s visible from the song names. It seems to be full of sad heavy metal songs if you consider the mood of the music, but I can’t tell it from the lyrics, as they are all written in old English that I don’t understand.

It’s a wonderful album, but the only drawback is that I wish Liv Kristine had more vocal parts on it.

 

6. Heavy Metal

Band: Iron Maiden (Great Britain)

Album: The X Factor (1995)

This is the most underrated album by Iron Maiden and one of my favorite ones. Very dark and sad metal music. It probably reflects personal problems of the bass guitarist and leader of the band—Steve Harris—who was divorcing during that period. Moreover, Bruce Dickinson had left, and from the commercial point of view it was a bad period for the band.

I love everything about this album, including Blaze Bayley’s low-range voice that ideally fits the depressive mood of the music. Interestingly, the bass is almost more prominent than the guitars. And the guitars are underdistorted. It’s a weird sound for Iron Maiden, but very enjoyable.

 

Band: Gene Willow (Ukraine)

Album: Tornado Dreams (2017)

This is my own album. I recorded it during a period of my life when I didn’t feel good. I don’t know what genre it is (this doesn’t sound like any other band I know), but it features heavy metal guitars, programmed drums, and a lot of synthesizers inspired by the genre of witch house (including synth strings as bass instead of a bass guitar) and cute electronic sounds I could find in FL Studio.

The lyrics are mostly moaning about my personal problems. But there is also a humorous cover of a song by Gigantic Brain and a more serious cover of another depressing song by Iron Curtain.

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