10 Darkest Rock Albums Of The 90s

10. One Hot Minute - Red Hot Chili Peppers

For all of the different sonic avenues that the Red Hot Chili Peppers have gone down in their career, they have never really tried on their darker side that often. Even when some of their lyrics have some grizzly stories behind them about Anthony Kiedis's struggling with drug addiction, there's always an optimistic undertone behind it, as he remains thankful to be on the other side of his demons. Things seemed a lot clearer after Under the Bridge, but the loss of John Frusciante made for the big bad relapse album.

During most of the recording sessions for One Hot Minute, most of the band was getting back into hard drugs, with Anthony falling off the wagon after being prescribed Valium as a painkiller at a dentist appointment. From the first few songs on the record, you can hear the pain in the riffs they're playing, especially a song like Warped which talks about Anthony descending all the way back down and throwing his sobriety out the window.

For all of the harsh sounds behind this songs, it's not like this is a bad album by any stretch. If anything, having Dave Navarro behind the fretboard is a welcome substitution and the band really let their teeth out a lot more on songs like Transcending and the title track. The Peppers were never ones to confine themselves to just one genre, but this might be the closest to a metal album that they would ever release.