Dark Prog

BebieM wrote: New one: Discipline, excellent, in the vain of VDGG GY!BE is great too, so is A Silver Mt. Zion

Glad to see someone else suggest Discipline. Unfolded Like Staircase will take you on on a very dark journey indeed.

...and I must agree with those opinions on VdGG...Godbluff and Pawn Hearts are extremely dark.

tremulant wrote: Plastic Man wrote: i know exactly what you mean about 'southside of the sky', i had a fairly distrubing dream about that song recently. Oooh! I'd like to hear about it! Okay, here goes.  My schedule right now is set up so that I have to wake up really early for a class, and when that class is over, I come back home and sleep for about 3 hours and then go to my next class.  These mid-day naps have led to some of the weirdest dreams I've ever had.  So here's what happened, I slowly fell asleep and then started to dream.  In this dream, I was laying in bed, listening to Southside of the Sky.  Then I drifted off to sleep (in the dream! It was a dream within a dream...My theory is that this exponentiated the dream experience!).  So in this dream within a dream, Southside was running through my mind.  But it was as if I was hearing something completely new in the song.. It got to the middle section, but before all the vocal harmonies, there were words being said really mysteriously from all around the stereo spectrum, much like the weird and scary talking that appears all over 'Dark Side of the Moon' and also at the beginning of the second part of 'Thick as a Brick'.  They were describing like a big structure of some kind with a big hallway, it seemed like it might have been the halls running through a football stadium or something.  But the voices were really scary.  Well anyway, I woke up, looked at my clock and it said something like 4:00 AM.  Then I woke up again (remember, it was a dream within a dream) and it was like 1:00 PM, and I was like "Wow, that was weird." It's really hard to explain how disturbing it was to me at the time.  But I later realized that what could have triggered this odd dream was an actual part of the song in which a mysterious vocal part does occur.  It's around 1:15 on the song, during the line "To somewhere we could lie".  If you listen really closely, there is some other vocal being said during that line, it's impossible to tell what it is.  But I think that's what does it for me on that song, moreso than the music, it's the vocals that are especially haunting.  The way that, when Anderson says "eternityyyyyy" and then it pans way over to the left side and, if you imagine a really fast game of Pong, the "ya" goes back and forth really quickly, that's kind of scary.  I could go into even more depth about some of these parts and more stuff in the song and how scary it is to me, if anyone cares to hear it. van der graff generator's "Pawn Hearts" is incredibly dark, and takes a long time to get into, but when you do, believe me, its amazing (its their only album i have right now, but thats only because im broke). Yeah, I really should listen to VDGG more, maybe I will get into it... Believe me, and everyone else here when we say that you MUST listen to this band! I've got another story about that album actually, if you want to hear it.  I listened to "Pawn Hearts" like 3 or 4 times when I first got it, and I thought it sucked.  Then a few months later, I listened to it again, 3 times in 3 days in a row and on the 3rd day it hit me (that's what that story is about). [quote] king crimsons first album is also really dark and disturbing, and of course "dark side of the moon". im really interested in the darker side of things myself. Awsome, I'm like that too, there's just something about that sort of stuff that just draws me in and interests me highly.

"In the Court of the Crimson King" scares me so much that i wet myself when I hear it...Well, not really, but again, if you want me to go into detail about that particular album I would like to, but this post is alreay so long.

King of Loss wrote: If you want some Dark Prog Metal, Try Evergrey, it will blow your brains out

Yes, especially The Inner Circle.

Other great dark and melancholic prog metal albums:

• Green Carnation - A Blessing In Disguise
• Noekk - The Water Sprite
• Opeth - Still Life
• Tool - Lateralus
• Fantomas - Fantomas

 

I think that every Prog band has had dark moments. I'm not sure what this post is asking. Are you talking about the key of the song? Minor keys are quite dark. Or do you mean the lyrics? With issues such as suicide or death? Or do you mean both? I am guessing you mean both.

Anyways, here are some bands with dark moments:
Pink Floyd(The Wall)
Genesis(The Lamb, Trespass)
King Crimson (I haven't heard all of the albums, but what I have heard here, it's dark)
Porcupine Tree(The song Waiting Phase One(which you can listen to here) is dark)

There are countless other bands that have dark moments. Only Marlyn Manson that I know is completely dark and depressing. Unless you can prove me wrong.

Geck0 wrote: I can't find any Discipline on Amazon, any ideas where I can obtain some of their albums? Hmm, the same as what everyone else says really... King Crimson, Anekdoten, Van der Graaf Generator, Anglagard... not forgetting Comus of course (just "First Utterance" though), they are dark prog-folk.

Gecko, try again...I found it on amazon pretty effortlessly...If you are using the UK's amazon, try the USA's version instead.

You cannot get it used, so it is a tad pricey at $17.99

Edited by gdub411

I adore Dark Music.I was listening to Doom-Metal Bands before I was involved in Prog
So..
LACRIMOSA.They're not Prog (IMHO),but they're VERY dark(maybe.the darkest band on Archives)
Surely ,early MARILLION.I like them for this Darkness
Any Doom band - I'd recommend you ESTATIC FEAR,OPETH,KATATONIA,MY DYING BRIDE...
See ya in Darkness! Enjoy!

gdub411 wrote: BebieM wrote: New one: Discipline, excellent, in the vain of VDGG GY!BE is great too, so is A Silver Mt. Zion Glad to see someone else suggest Discipline. Unfolded Like Staircase will take you on on a very dark journey indeed.

Have you heard any of their other two albums (Push and Profit, Into the Dream ... Discipline live)? I'm curious about their sound but I can't find them anywhere .....

genesis24601 wrote: I think that every Prog band has had dark moments. I'm not sure what this post is asking. Are you talking about the key of the song? Minor keys are quite dark. Or do you mean the lyrics? With issues such as suicide or death? Or do you mean both? I am guessing you mean both. Anyways, here are some bands with dark moments: Pink Floyd(The Wall) Genesis(The Lamb, Trespass) King Crimson (I haven't heard all of the albums, but what I have heard here, it's dark) Porcupine Tree(The song Waiting Phase One(which you can listen to here) is dark) There are countless other bands that have dark moments. Only Marlyn Manson that I know is completely dark and depressing. Unless you can prove me wrong.

The key of the song contributes alot, but really it's just Prog music that gives of dark, eerie, evil moods... I don't know hoe else to explain it. Also I guess it's the colour of the song, different songs make me imagine different colours inside my head, dark music gives of black, reds, crimsons, dark browns etc.
The lyrics can contribute a fair bit too, but the music gives off this mood the most...

Some excellent points tremulant.

I class Comus as dark too then, the music and lyrics certainly make me think about troublesome things.

King Crimson should be dark to me, but they just are not.  I agree they have dark lyrics, but they do affect me in the same way.  The ending of "Easy Money" is quite weird though and so is Gordon Haskell's maniacal laughing on the end of erm... (brain seizure) ... Games the third track off the Lizard album.  Oh and the marching drum sound on "Epitaph" is also dark and reminds me of soldiers marching through the killing fields.

Van der Graaf Generator are also dark lyrically.  I think pH's lyrics are misunderstood by people, or cannot be fathomed.  Once you are aware of how it all fits together, your listening experience is so much more satisfying.

Some of Par Lindh Project is dark too, some of the instumental stuff sounds like Nubuo Uematsu (he of Final Fantasy fame) a lot of the time.  In fact, the middle section of "Baroque Impression No. 1" reminds me a lot of Kefka's March, or whatever the piece is called.

er, Anekdoten.....actually, I think you're fairly safe with anything that comes out of Sweden... must be the long cold nights..