The one dark/bleak album in a band's catalogue

Some bands have this one sudden step in darker direction where their newest album sounds more melancholic or depressing than their earlier albums, and the albums after that take a step away from that so the band is back doing stuff they did before they decided to experiment with gloomier and doomier stuff.

What bands have an album like that?
Which ones are your favorites?
If a band doesn't really have an album exactly like that, which album of that band could be said to be closest to that?


To start this off, a few albums come to mind:

Flotsam & Jetsam - The Cold
-This actually was the album that made me think of this subject. Man, this album is depressing! Great stuff!

Helloween - The Dark Ride
-I don't know if it's just the black cover and the title, but I've always thought this album was way heavier and gloomier than their other albums. Now checking out Escalation 666, I think I'm not completely wrong.

Iron Maiden - Virtual XI
-To me, this album clearly has a more melancholic tone to it than what their other albums are.

Tourniquet - Pathogenic Ocular Dissonance
-While this is not an album that clearly sticks out as the bleak experimentation form their whole catalogue, it has always felt much darker and heavier than their other albums. If I imagine all their albums next to each other, it seems to have bleaker tone to it as a whole.


I kinda also feel that Halford's Crucible is also notably darker than Resurrection or the rest of the albums.

It's pretty difficult for me as a lot of what I like is pretty dark/melancholic but I'll give it a go.

Alcest - Ecailles de Lune This was significantly more melancholic than 2008's  Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde which had an almost joyous feel, just as beautiful though.

Devin Townsend Project - Sky Blue Very similar in sound to Addicted but way more sombre and introspective.

Celtic Frost - Monotheist - Never a band that you could describe as light hearted but this album is in a darkness league that they hadn't entered previously.

Corabi Crue

VH Balance (some would say Fair Warning)

For Dream Theater it never got darker than Awake (maybe heavier).

Skid Row--well, they just kind of went two shades of dark in.

Wasp Headless Children

Dokken Dysfunctional

Queensryche Promised Land

More I can't think of because autocorrect on mobile is the worst.

I was going to peg Promised Land for this because that's both a really good example of a band kind of doing an about face and really grinding the dissatisfaction pretty hard AND a band that was still writing quality stuff really nailing the vibe on an album that's great listening when you happen to be grinding the dissatisfaction pretty hard in your own life.

Here's a weird one: how about Opeth's Damnation? Even though Deliverance and the other albums immediately before and after were heavier and Opeth was always a pretty "dark" band, when you get to the sonics and lyrics of Damnation, it doesn't get much more capital "m" MELANCHOLY than that.

KISS - Carnival Of Souls It's got that whole 90s "alternative" vibe to it

Dark Angel- Time Does Not Heal

Tales of sexual trauma and psychopathy, accompanied by dark, crushing riffs, and Ron's stoic vocals.

Nevermore- Dreaming Neon Black

Just about every album in this band's catalogue is suicide-inducing, but this one, especially so. It's based on Warrel Dane's girlfriend being kidnapped/murdered by a cult; and the dreams and depression that followed. Even though I've always got a gimmick vibe from that backstory, the emotion delivered vocally is undeniably authentic.

Anacrusis- Manic Impressions

Extremely depressing/introspective lyrics, and an icy production that gives everything a clinical feel.

Metallica- ...And Justice for All

Here you have the band at their most pessimistic, following the death of Cliff. Not to mention the bizarre sterile production and songs like "One" and "To Live is to Die."

Rami Airola wrote:

Iron Maiden - Virtual XI
-To me, this album clearly has a more melancholic tone to it than what their other albums are.

You must be thinking of the X-Factor. Now that's a dark, brooding album. Virtual XI was more like an attempt to get back to more typical Maiden-sounding songs.

Testament-Low

Slayer has always been dark, but South of Heaven was likely one of their darkest albums (You could say the same thing about Divine Intervention, Diabolus in Musica, and Christ Illusion as well actually).

I think Strypers No More Hell to Pay is a little darker than their earlier stuff.More minor key stuff.
Also Forbiddens Green and even Distortion are darker than the first two.

Metallica- The Black Album
Anthrax-Sound of White Noise
Slayer-Seasons in the Abyss
Cinderella-Heartbreak Station

Completely forgot about Overkill. Some would say Horrorscope but I Hear Black was certainly a move in a more bleak direction.

"(Music From) The Elder" by KISS

Going from singing about your penis (stuff you can do with it or would like to have done to it) to a good versus evil conceptual endeavor is quite the contrast. Some of the tunes touch base on the premise of the topic. For the most part, I'd call it melancholy.

Lots of interesting picks here! I'm having fun listening to samples of the albums I don't already know and trying to hear how much bleaker they are.

007 wrote:

KISS - Carnival Of Souls It's got that whole 90s "alternative" vibe to it

Oh yeah, I remember lending it from the local library, and it certainly had this strange feeling to it. I think I got the same feeling from Skid Row's Subhuman Race. I remember being disappointed by both of the albums though. They sounded too much like the bands that MTV played after Headbanger's Ball was replaced by Superock. That show rarely had anything interesting in it, but I watched it regularly in hopes that from time to time there would be a video of some more interesting band. It would be filled with stuff like Soundgarden and from the heavier style something like Coal Chamber, but sometimes they would surprise by playing Slayer's Dittohead or Serenity in Murder (those two songs I remember taping on VHS from that show).

Carnival of Souls really sounds like it could've been on that show. And probably was. It was their "alternative groove metal" album.

That's also something that many bands have done in their career. They have their dark gloomy album. And they have their heavy down-tempo groove album. That would be another interesting subject to discuss about.

Lari wrote:

You must be thinking of the X-Factor. Now that's a dark, brooding album. Virtual XI was more like an attempt to get back to more typical Maiden-sounding songs.

I guess the whole Bailey-era was the dark hour of Iron Maiden. I guess one of the reasons I picked Virtual XI was that I have always liked it more than The X Factor. It's true that Futureal as an album opener sounds more like older Maiden, and The Angel and the Gambler has a happier tone to it, but songs like Lightning Strikes Twice, When Two Worlds Collide and Como Estais Amigos have Maiden as its most melancholic.

James B. wrote:

"(Music From) The Elder" by KISS

Going from singing about your penis (stuff you can do with it or would like to have done to it) to a good versus evil conceptual endeavor is quite the contrast. Some of the tunes touch base on the premise of the topic. For the most part, I'd call it melancholy.

Great pick! I hadn't actually heard this album before, and now as I'm checking it out on Youtube, it really sounds way different than their other albums. I'm not sure if this is really "that one bleak album" from them, but it sounds quite like "the one experimental album", which could be a whole another topic to discuss. That album sounds like David Bowie at times, and has this "rock opera" feeling I thought Kiss wouldn't be capable of doing

Alice In Chains - Dirt

Danzig III - How the Gods Kill (maybe just slightly)

Dirt I would agree with.

Dogman by King's X is another one.

Helloween - dark ride.

I truly think it is their best. Very heavy and dark.

Not a single album but Pink Floyd's Animals started a dark trend that would continue to get darker with The Wall and The Final Cut. Once Waters was out the door they lightened up again.

Alice Cooper-Brutal Planet, Dragontown, and Along Came a Spider.

S.D. wrote:

Not a single album but Pink Floyd's Animals started a dark trend that would continue to get darker with The Wall and The Final Cut.  Once Waters was out the door they lightened up again.  

I don't know if you can ever say that the Floyd really "lightened up." Then again, when you consider a song like "Remember a Day" off the second album with lyrics like "Remember a day before today, a day when we were younger," written by a bunch of early 20-somethings, I don't think they were ever going to end up going slapstick on us.

For my money, as much as I love the album, The Final Cut is probably what I'd put down as the solid, monolithic slab of MISERY in their catalog. There isn't a bright spot to it. At least Animals had "Pigs on the Wing."

Hadley wrote:

Alice Cooper-Brutal Planet, Dragontown, and Along Came a Spider.

Good call on those. Especially Brutal Planet. Alice has always been dark, but he always managed to balance it with some humor. Not on BP though. That album's just dark.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

Hadley wrote:

Alice Cooper-Brutal Planet, Dragontown, and Along Came a Spider.

Good call on those. Especially Brutal Planet. Alice has always been dark, but he always managed to balance it with some humor. Not on BP though. That album's just dark.

Easily one of my favorites, but then it was also the first Cooper album I bought that was "new" at the time.

Angel Dust - Enlighten the Darkness

The theme of the album and the vibe was darker than their previous albums

I'm tempted to say Warrant's Ultraphobic, but I suppose the albums on either side of it also have some darker elements.

KISS - Elder
WASP - Headless Children
LA Guns - Vicious Circle
Metal Church - The Dark
Circus Of Power - Magic and Madness
The Cult st ( 6th cd )

Crowbar - Odd Fellows Rest

Most of their albums mix the dark/depressing stuff with uptempo hardcore songs. This one was just sad, dark and heavy all the way through.