Rozz Williams - Every King a Bastard Son (1992)

In case you haven't noticed -- and I wouldn't put it past you, you're dumb as hell -- it's Halloween season. And we at OPIUM HUM HQ couldn't be more full of grim, skull-fucking, spine-stabbing excitement. So please enjoy this and the rest of this month's selections the way they're intended to be enjoyed: extremely loudly, in the dark, while gurgling your last breaths through a slit throat.

With that said, here's one of the more bizarre, disturbing records I've heard. It's Rozz Williams (Christian Death, Premature Ejaculation) reciting cryptic and violent poetry over noisescapes of detuned guitars, warped piano and organ, samples, loops, and electronics. The other night, for reasons I still can't comprehend, I tried to go to sleep to this shit. It didn't work.

P.S. Please understand, those of you that have knee-jerk reactions about this kind of thing, that swastika up there does not indicate that this is a pro-Nazi album, any more than the crucifix indicates that it's a Christian record. It's there to make you feel uncomfortable.

Track listing:
1. Whorse
2. Mind Fuck (Soundtrack to a Murder)
3. The Beast (Invocation)
4. Currents
5. To He Who Shall Come After (Mystic Fragments)
6. The Evil Ones
7. No Soldier (Cloak of Shit)
8. Walls/Voices

Once it has your attention, it exploits you
Amen

Ruth White - Flowers of Evil (1969)

Electronic music pioneer Ruth White reads/moans/half-sings a translation of Charles Baudelaire's classic Les Fleurs du Mal over sparse, dissonant, primitive electronic compositions. Although I have yet to confirm this, I am pretty sure that playing this album under the correct conditions (midnight, no lights, various other factors) will awaken a curse that will, eventually, lead to the listener committing some type of high-profile suicide.

Track listing:
1. The Clock
2. Evening Harmony
3. Lovers Wine
4. Owls
5. Mists and Rains
6. The Irremediable
7. The Cat
8. Spleen
9. The Litanies of Satan

When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid on the spirit aching for the light
And when embracing the horizon it pours on us a black day which is sadder than any night
When the earth is turned into a gripping dungeon in which hope like a bat flutters blindly and bruises its timid wings and tender head against the walls and rotted ceilings
When the rain stretching down its long streaks of water imitates the bars of an enormous prison
And a silent throng of loathsome spiders come and weave their webs inside our brains
And suddenly, the bells swing angrily and hurl their hideous uproar into the sky like a band of wandering spirits who wail relentlessly
And long hearses without drums or music move in a slow procession through my soul
And defeated hope bursts into tears
And the fierce tyrant, Anguish, sets his black banner on my bowed head