Top Ten Darkest Metal Subgenres
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.
I do not agree with doom metal being in third place because subgenres 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."
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 subgenres 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 subgenre.
It's literally black metal but darker.
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
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.
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
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 subgenres under death metal (because I do think both black and death metal are 'darker' than deathcore).
Keyboards make it one of the darkest types of music.
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 subgenre of metal.
It is called Satanic Metal. I'm not sure you could get any darker.
Alternative metal is a music genre that infuses heavy metal with influences from alternative rock and other genres normally associated with metal.
It's called Pornogrind, for goodness' sake!
Nu metal isn't the scariest, but it can get you going.
This can be very dark, actually.
Bands like Darkthrone and Gorgoroth write riffs to make the songs dark and colorless.