Top 3 Best Angry Music, Dalton’s Take
So I am typing out this list with essentially one hand. I broke a finger on my left hand, which apparently is very debilitating to the efficacy of the rest of the hand. Due to the injury, I will be brief this week, for the sake of time and the pain.
I like this subject matter, as music is such a broad category, meaning anything from bands, to songs, to albums, etc. In this case I am going to focus on individual songs, considering that I have a fairly large collection of mainstream angry music. Let’s get to it.
3. My Own Summer, Deftones – This song is just anger at its core, both in lyrics and delivery. My Own Summer is rather cryptic in its lyrics, leaving much of its meaning up to interpretation. One valued opinion is the lead singer’s hatred for this one really hot summer during the year in which this song was written. In this interpretation, you can see the downward spiral of the human mind, that something as minutely inconvenient as a hot day can set you off on a tangent of anger in your own mind. You just want a cloud to shove the sun away, to blame God for the pain of the world, and just see everyone go away. Yeah, we can escalate quickly in our hate and anger and completely forget or fail to acknowledge the actual catalyst. Take that anger and SHOVE IT, SHOVE IT, SHOVE IT.
2. Aenima, Tool – Similar to My Own Summer (but far less cryptic in its delivery, while remaining just as poetic), Aenima is a song essentially about wishing for the end of the world, in particular, an individual’s perspective of the world. Seeing the end of a variety of societal issues that demean a valued perspective of humanity, particularly in this song, is a demented way of saying, “I wish the world was better”. Unfortunately, the hope of the song is focused on the hope of a destroyed world, not on hope of the world improving. But, you are listening to Tool, so what did you expect? This song definitely does an excellent job of getting you into his perspective. Yeah, a lot of those types of people annoy me too, but I rarely wish for a world-ending apocalypse over an idealogical change of culture.
1. Vermillion, Slipknot – A song as cryptic as My Own Summer, Vermillion opens itself up to a plethora of interpretations. The most obvious interpretations involve a stalker lusting for a woman or a man attempting to manifest the perfect woman in his mind in an attempt to console his loneliness. I believe one of these two interpretations are the most accurate, though others I have seen feed off the ambiguity of certain lyrics well. I just find certain lyrical strings in this song to be some of the most poetic anger I have ever heard. Referring to love as an “aphid attraction” and a “pheromone cult”, they are beautiful metaphors for a soul jaded and hopelessly lost in the concept of love by either their lack of experience in it or a loss of it, both resulting in the perspective from loneliness. Love from loneliness often appears to be a cruel, evil thing, and can lead to a downward spiral this song seems to depict.