Top Ten Darkest Songs of 2017

The darkest album of the year is likely "Lang lebe der Tod" by Casper. This genre-bending German musician, hailed as one of the greatest German poets and musicians of his time, has released an album that seeks to capture the tense atmosphere in Europe where everyone fears something terrible is about to happen from different sources.

Casper portrays contrasting characters on the album, which blends industrial, indie rock, and hip-hop tracks to perfectly represent diverse people. The industrial "Sirenen" announces the apocalypse in an almost euphoric tone, as someone just waits for the world to burn.

I love Bushido's new album, "Black Friday." Germany's most successful rapper hasn't sounded this energetic in years. There was a time when his music was too poppy and another time when it was too controversially forceful.

Now he has released a dark, atmospheric album filled with sinister beats, fitting lyrics, and a menacing vocal performance. "Sodom und Gomorrha," built around looping string fragments stitched together, is the most apocalyptic track on the album.

ApeCrime aren't great rappers. They try to emulate DatAdam but lack the lyrical talent and authentic, diverse emotions, which explains why they don't achieve the same success and positive reception as their idols. It's as if they said, "Let's create hip-hop criticizing modern superficiality," but they execute it in a very superficial way.

That being said, "Zombie" is awesome, the one song on the album done right. It's about a girl who loses her naturalness for internet fame, and it features a macabre, bittersweet violin sample looping throughout the verses.

JuliensBlog, host of the popular JuliensBlogBattle rap tournament that brought us SpongeBozz and Entetainment, is back to rapping. He last made music four years ago and produced intentionally tasteless comedy rap that combined long rhymes with dark humor, which many didn't like. They preferred it in his videos rather than his music.

To prove this phase is over, he changed his stage name and rapped as aggressively as possible over the most bombastic, thundering choir-and-orchestra beat he could find. No more humor - this time, he kills.

Even though I basically covered the album in the "Sirenen" item, I wanted to elaborate a bit. If you examine the lyrics to this song, it almost reads like a translation of B.O.B.'s "Flatlines." The song is narrated from the perspective of a conspiracy theorist preparing for the apocalypse at home.

While Casper performs in character as the theorist, he just portrays him since the album features different roles that, when put together, offer an overview of archetypes found during significant crises. The song mentions isolation and living in a bubble. Casper is intelligent and subtle, leaving clues that the man continually feeds his paranoia by filtering out information that fits his theories.

I had a lot of fun with this movie. It featured some of the most beautiful aesthetics of recent years, particularly if you love cyberpunk as much as I do. There are too few movies in this genre, especially on such a grand scale. Although the story differs from the anime version, it maintains a similar feel.

American movies rarely capture the Asian vibe. So far, only Quentin Tarantino and the Wachowski sisters have succeeded. This movie does too.

The song from the soundtrack sounds so oddly off and broken that it becomes unsettling.