10 Darkest Rock Albums Of The 90s

Throughout every single phase of their career, Radiohead has always used the darker side of the emotional spectrum as their calling card. Even when they were cribbing notes from bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam on records like Pablo Honey, you can still hear them getting a lot more cynical about their place in the pack on tracks like Anyone Can Play Guitar. Life on the road can change a man though, and Thom Yorke was looking outward a lot more during the sessions for OK Computer.

Arriving right as the digital age was starting to take over the world, a lot of the tracks on this album have to do with just how much mankind has to rely on machines to keep them going through their daily lives. Though there are definitely some practical songs on here about surviving horrific accidents like Airbag and Lucky, the tone of an interlude track like Fitter Happier feels a lot more forward thinking, imagining a world that is driven by computers right after the last track Karma Police is swallowed up by the sounds of digital noise.

When they're not talking about the horrors of technology though, Thom is dwelling on the dark souls of the Earth, like the disastrous night out where he witnessed "subhumans" in Paranoid Android or Climbing Up the Walls's horrific atmosphere of never being quite alone. It could just be a stalker song, but it could also be a little voice inside your head pushing you towards danger.