Horror and music is not a new thing. There's an entire sub-genre of metal rooted deep in horror. Then there's death metal sub-genre which can contain some very morbid stuff. And of course there's no shortage of rockers dabbling on the fringe of horror. Acts like Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson, Slayer, and Danzig have all had notable, mainstream careers. Hell there's even some horror themed country songs. Just listen a few Johnny Cash lyrics someday. He sings an awful lot about murder ("I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die).
But Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is something very unique. It was released in 1996 and gained a surprising amount of success the video "Where the Wild Roses Grow" on MTV. The album starts of strong with Cave's deep voice and banging drums on "Song of Joy", probably my favorite on the album. It keeps the listener engrossed through all other tracks which alternate between softly sung "Lovely Creatures", to the torturous "The Curse of Milhaven", to the epic rage of "O'Malley's Bar", until the end with the appropriate "Death Is Not the End". Some of the lyrics are so vividly gruesome that it can make you cringe, all behind the croner's voice of Nick Cave.
A classic album that might bit be for every person's taste but it blows my mind away.
Actually there is a sub-genre of music called murder ballad which is traditional ballad form music that uses a series of recognizable formulas, structures and language forms along with the lyrics of each song forming a narrative about murder.
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