Dueling with Depression: Morose Melodies

I remember having a conversation at a bar with a friend. We were sipping on craft beers (like a proper Colorado resident), sitting under those fashionable naked bulbs that hang from the ceiling by a single wire. We had only known each other for a few months, and we started chatting about music.

Now, music is an absolute necessity in my life. I listen to music when I write. I listen to music when I sleep. I plan on listening to music when I’m cremated, a pair of headphones clamped over my purple, stiff ears, blasting Cash’s Ring of Fire as the coffin is rolled into the oven.

Anyhow, taking a pull from my beer, I mentioned to my friend that I sometimes listen to depressing, f*cked-up music. Songs that slice deep into the flesh and into the heart, bleeding with experiences of emptiness and bleakness, that caustic anguish that is captured and sculpted by talented musicians into this jagged, sonic landscape blanketed with falling ash.

He replied with, “Well, no wonder you’re depressed — you listen to depressing music.”

Yeah, that’s not how it works … at least not for me. So I came to the defense of these melancholic albums that populate my musical library. Talking over the cacophony of conversations and the increasingly crowded bar, I replied that listening to dark, depressing music can actually make me feel better. At the very least, I can drown out those voices in my head trying hard to convince me to swallow the barrel of a high-caliber rifle.

Back when I was in the Air Force, I couldn’t come forward about my depression (the military turns a blind eye to military members struggling with their mental health) and I certainly couldn’t tell anyone I was gay at the risk of being dishonorably discharged from the military.

I was lonely, severely depressed, and frequently imagining my own suicide (the bullet from an M-16 would do the trick, leaving a Pollock-style brain painting on the wall).

Then I came across an industrial band called Front Line Assembly. I played their album, Implode, so often, I’m surprised I didn’t burn a hole in the CD. (This is back when people actually bought CDs.)

The music was despairing, suffocating, nihilistic, and forebodingly melodic. Most importantly, it made me realize for the first time that I wasn’t alone in all this darkness.

I soon expanded my library with other f*cked-up bands such as the industrial forefathers, Skinny Puppy; the doom metal magi, Morgion; and malevolence incarnate, Velvet Acid Christ.

Lustmord has often been called the father of dark ambient, creating these eerie soundscapes that envelope your mind like an obsidian fog, cultivating the sensation of falling into a black hole — never to return.

I yearn for these ominously auditory experiences because the music mirrors so perfectly (and creatively) how depression can make me feel. Sadly, my friend at the bar wasn’t convinced, arguing I should listen to more up beat music (some of which sounds incredibly phony and trite to me).

I’ll admit that I sometimes take a spin with more “happier” albums. Madonna’s True Blue is a proud part of my collection (so I get to keep my gay card).

But depressing music is truly a bastion for those dark days when you feel so empty your chest feels like it’s about to implode. Despondent albums are a wonderfully creative and dynamic means of cultivating perseverance and solidarity in those who constantly duel with that fickle fiend, depression.