10 Darkest Hard Rock Albums Ever Made
1. The Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails
Coming off of Nine Inch Nail's first album Pretty Hate Machine, Trent Reznor wasn't exactly in the best frame of mind. After going through a slew of dark industrial beats, the tour had shown him going down a much darker path, which we got to see on the EP Broken through songs like Wish. If Broken was the first taste, than The Downward Spiral was Reznor's portrait of Hell.
Being a concept album of sorts, most of the track listing follows a protagonist named Mr. Self Destruct, whose is on a quest of oblivion through every hedonistic way he knows how. Across songs like Heresy and March of the Pigs, you can hear Reznor about to veer off the edge of sanity, putting in everything from electronic glitches to heavy metal breakdowns to tell this incredibly disturbed story of de-evolution. While we do get some respite from songs like A Warm Place, those are only means to set you up for even more deranged things happening on the title track and Reptile.
By the time you get to the end of Hurt, it's almost like you're watching this man pick up the pieces of his shattered mind, whether he's even deciding to continue living or lost completely. There's probably a lot darker albums than this, but if there is a soundsystem in Hell, probably half of the track listing is going to make the playlist.