Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear...

"there's nothin' strange
About an axe with bloodstains in the barn,
There's always some killin'
You got to do around the farm"

- Tom Waits, "murder In the Red Barn

Cohen Owns This Thread
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.
The Future

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Democracy

And he gave you a German Shepherd to walk
with a collar of leather and nails,
and he never once made you explain or talk
about all of the little details,
such as who had a word and who had a rock,
and who had you through the mails.
Now your love is a secret all over the block,
and it never stops not even when your master fails.
The Masters Song

The door it opened slowly,
my father he came in,
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
his blue eyes they were shining
and his voice was very cold.
The story of Isaac

I came upon a butcher,
he was slaughtering a lamb,
I accused him there
with his tortured lamb.
He said, "Listen to me, child,
I am what I am
and you, you are my only son."
The Lamb Why don't you try to do without him?
Why don't you try to live alone?
Do you really need his hands for your passion?
Do you really need his heart for your throne?
Do you need his labour for your baby?
Do you need his beast for the bone?
Do you need to hold a leash to be a lady?
I know you're going to make, make it on your own.
Why Don't You Try

There is a war between the rich and poor,
a war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war
and the ones who say there isn't.
Why don't you come on back to the war, that's right, get in it,
why don't you come on back to the war, it's just beginning.
There is A War

And where, where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight
I've heard all the wild reports, they can't be right
But whose head is this she's dancing with on the threshing floor
whose darkness deepens in her arms a little more
Where is my Gypsy Wife Tonight

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your father's gone a-hunting
Through the silver and the glass
Where only greed can enter
But spirit, spirit cannot pass

Your father's gone a-hunting
For the beast we'll never cannot bind
And he leaves a baby sleeping
And his blessings all behind

Your father's gone a-hunting
And he's lost the guardian heart
That keeps the hunter from the harm
The Hunters Lullaby

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
First we Take Manahttan...

And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
Everybody Knows

If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you
I'm YOur Man

Jazz police are looking through my folders
Jazz police are talking to my niece
Jazz police have got their final orders
Jazzer, drop your axe, it's Jazz police!
Jazz Police

Or on a completely different tip, there's a bit in "Get off the bandwagon" where Erick Sermon just says "sucker" after a slight pause which just oozes menace. Sends a chill up my spine every time - 's a perfect moment, he only needs one word because he says it perfectly.

"nyeeurGHHRH!!!!"

'Frankie Teardrop' - Suicide.

Ice Cube: "'Have you ever been convicted of a felony?' 'Yes.'"

Ed's Redeeming Qualities: "Bob's been having one bad day/Giving all his stuff away."

You shouldn't do that / don't you know you'll stain the carpet?

"if you're such a badass / why haven't I seen any blood?" - Smart Went Crazy, 'Con Art'

How come every time Cohen's lyrics are quoted they sound completely rub?

Reading this thread it strikes me that if the menace in a lyric can be expressed by writing the lyric down, that lyric isn't doing its job properly, i.e it's too unsubtle. If I wanted the 15th Pan Book Of Horror Stories I'd buy it.

Y'all know who I'm gonna quote for this thing, right? Problem is, the song in question is too long to quote in its entirety. The best bits: Slime and rot, rats and snot,
and vomit on the floor.
Fifty yoogly soldiers, man,
holdin' spears by the iron door.
Knives and spikes, and guns and the likes
of every tool of pain.
And a sinister midget, with a bucket and a mop,
where the blood goes down the drain.
and ...
Flies all green and buzzin',
in this dungeon of despair.
An evil prince eats a steaming pig,
in a chamber right near there.
He eats the snouts and the trotters first.
The loins and the groins is soon dispersed.
His carvin' style is well rehearsed.
He stands and shouts:
All men be cursed!
All men be cursed!
All men be cursed!
All men be cursed!
And disagree?
Well, no one durst.
He's the best, of course, of all the worst.
Some wrong been done, he done it first.

Cohen's lyrics are not the rub, they're the nub and the hub. Certainly not the pub, anyway.

I was just thinking about this this morning. There's a much darker line in 'The Threepenny Opera' than the Mack The Knife one: 'Someone should take an iron crowbar and stave their ugly faces in'. There's also the Canon Song: 'If they should meet a fellow / Whose skin is black or yellow / They quick as blinking chop them into beefsteak tartar'. The jaunty melody just makes it worse.

Or how about this, by one Momus: 'He laid a frock coat flat on the floor and began positioning me there / Laid me back almost tenderly and flourished a butcher's cleaver / I shouted past him into the dark 'We're prepared to make concessions!' / But the blade he twisted in my heart ended my profession'. ('Last of the Window Cleaners'). Actually I've done lots of doom, but it tends to the comic-macabre. Guignol and grotesquerie.

The reason I was thinking about it this morning is that I was reading Japanese mangas, which can be incredibly psychopathic, and thinking I should do more gore.

There's a couplet in Knife Slits Water, already a very nasty title, which goes something like: 'Who sold the knife to Light Fingers? / Bring it home to me / It glistens dear.' The production gives me the willies, anyway.

"Next, next, oh never to be next"

By the way, is Mack the knife just the bitchingest collest song about slaughter that everyone has covered or what...

Menace is much harder than melancholy, isn't it?

How's this for a theory: We all know what it feels like to be wistful and plaintive. We can tell when somebody's being honest about it. Menace, one hopes, is more imagined. Few of us know what it feels like to be capable of inflicting some terrible act on another or to have such an act visited upon us (or if we do know these feelings, we certainly don't nurture them in ourselves the same way we do with melancholy).

So, by necessity maybe, menace generally comes off as kind of cartoony (manga, as Momus notes)in art. Funny how movies do menace so often and generally pretty effectively, while songs don't do it so well and vice versa with melancholy.

Not sure if I buy this completely, but hopefully some of our resident geniuses will have a go at it and straighten me out.

has any song ever done genuine menace as well as "straw dogs" f'rinstance?

Polly wants a cracker
Think I should get off her first
I think she wants some water
To put out the blow torch

-Nirvana, "Polly"

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you.

Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I'll be watching you.

Oh can't you see
You belong to me?

/shudder

this supports my theory above, as sting's career has proven he is comfortable with inflicting terrible acts on others

At this point I should link to the Randy Newman thread of a week or so back, in particular the message which consisted of the lyric to God's song. But I don't know how.

For the Least Menacing "Menacing" Song Award, I nominate Paul McCartney singing "Run for Your Life" on Rubber Soul.

esp as it's sung by lennon

What does rub mean tom ?

'a candy-coloured clown they call the sandman...'

'before the sun comes up...' CLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANG the cockfighter by Scott Walker

It was so close there was no room/we bled inside each other's wounds/we all had caught the same disease= Melanie-"Lay Down".

Maybe not what she intended, but it always sounded creepy to me.

shit, i always thought it was a paen to lesbianism...just goes to show i guess.

esp as it's sung by lennon

Good point. That makes it slightly more menacing (somehow the image of McCartney in a homicidal rage is just about impossible to conjure).

oh they are NOT ALL RIGHT