Top Ten Darkest Metal Subgenres

The Top Ten
1 Black Metal

Black metal definitely deserves its place at the top of the list. Not only for truly being the darkest sound but also because black metal artists are very dark themselves. Just go read the story of the band Mayhem and inform yourself on the gruesome things some of them did on stage.

Death metal can have pretty grotesque lyrics (just look at Cannibal Corpse), but they are mostly done for shock value. The Norwegian black metal movement, on the other hand, actually commits to their music and performs acts that can be way over the top.

2 Doom Metal

I do not agree with doom metal being in 3rd place because sub-genres like deathcore, goregrind, and dark ambient are all darker.

Doom metal is what plays whenever you know that death is near.

The riffs are pretty much the definition of "ominous."

3 Death Metal

The darkest music genre of all time is Black Metal. Listen to Death's Individual Thought Patterns, Cannibal Corpse's Tomb of the Mutilated, and Morbid Angel's Gateways to Annihilation.

With sub-genres like Grindcore, Deathcore, Pornogore, Brutal Death Metal, Blackened Death Metal, Deathgrind, Noisegrind, Goregrind, and even Pornogrind, Death Metal wins the crowning achievement of the darkest metal sub-genre.

4 Gothic Metal
5 Death/Doom
6 Depressive Suicidal Black Metal

It's literally black metal but darker.

7 Thrash Metal Thrash Metal is a Heavy Metal subgenre developed during the early 1980s and an early precursor of Extreme Metal. Thrash Metal features a faster and more aggressive guitar work than Traditional Metal with shredding and double-bass drums and can range from melodic singing to loud shouts... read more
8 Funeral Doom
9 Drone Metal
10 Symphonic Metal
The Contenders
11 Dark Ambient

Truly terrifying. Google Dark Ambient albums, "Ambient 4" by Brian Eno. Get that album, listen well, and don't listen to it when it's dark.

12 Technical Death Metal
13 Heavy Metal Heavy Metal music is a sub-genre of rock music that originated in the late 1960s-70s, featuring more distorted and heavier instrumental work and darker lyrical themes. Heavy Metal broke into mainstream success with bands such as Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Metallica... read more
14 Deathcore

I actually think black metal is the 'darkest' one, but I voted for deathcore because this should be third, instead of doom metal. Deathcore is pure screams of anger. You go compare deathcore with all the sub-genres under death metal (because I do think both black and death metal are 'darker' than deathcore).

15 Blackened Death Metal
16 Symphonic Black Metal

Keyboards make it one of the darkest types of music.

17 Industrial Metal
18 Satanic Metal

This is not a genre. I guess that it can be used to classify some bands whose lyrical themes revolve primarily around Satanism, but it is not an actual sub-genre of metal.

It is called Satanic Metal. I'm not sure you could get any darker.

19 Alternative Metal Alternative metal is a music genre that infuses heavy metal with influences from alternative rock and other genres normally associated with metal.
20 Pornogrind

It's called Pornogrind, for goodness' sake!

21 Post-Metal
22 Nu Metal

Nu metal isn't the scariest, but it can get you going.

This can be very dark, actually.

23 Goregrind
24 Grindcore
25 Dark Metal

Bands like Darkthrone and Gorgoroth write riffs to make the songs dark and colorless.

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