While many topics are explored through heavy metal lyrics, the genre has a very long history of dwelling the depths of horror. Whether artists are writing their own fantastical horror fiction or writing songs based on real-world atrocities, there is no shortage of shocking and grotesque lyricism to be found in metal.
That said… what are the most chilling and graphic lyrics in the genre? The kind of songs that not only make you winch but can get your stomach to turn, maybe even grossing you out to the point that you need to pause the song and take a breather.
Similar to our “10 Grossest Metal Album Covers of All Time” feature, we combed through loads of tracks and compiled a list featuring the 10 most disturbing songs in heavy metal. Accompanying each song on this list is a small sample of the lyrics that make up each respective track. For those who would like a heads-up, a general content warning regarding the following being mentioned: graphic violent details, gory details, sexual violence, mutilation, necrophilia, and bodily fluids.
“Hacksaw Decapitation” – Cannibal Corpse
“Sawing the neck I am engulfed in fantasy / Chew the esophagus, cannibal delicacy / Utterly exacerbated, forever deleterious / Slicing through skin, sundered larynx, veins spraying blood / Tattered windpipe, facial carvings, another head to abhor / Beheading sustains my desire / Enhancing my primitive mind / Annihilation without reprieving”
“Menstrual Envy” – Sanguisugabogg
“Parasites infect my rod / My cramps grow harsh, it leaks / Smiling big all day and night / I wish it’d always bleed / Stuffing gauze down in my pants / To soak up my discharge / Holding back embarassment / She thinks I’ve went too far”
“Skin Milk” – 200 Stab Wounds
“Ferment your excrement, I crush your skull / Chop off the top, I make my bowl / The next day I awake to my cereal / Top it off with your skin milk, ethereal / Skin milk, epidermal filth / Smiling, for my next kill”
“The Lonely Deceased” – The Black Dahlia Murder
“No words have been spoken / No reprimand said / Concealing so carefully / My lust for the dead / Their insides are glistening / Curiosities fed / Forensically frolicking / While god is in bed / Have I gone mad? / Gruesome kingdom so lurid / Hidden so convincingly / They’d have my head / Morbid morgue of malpractice / I envy each death / Are they finally free?”
“Vomited Anal Tract” – Carcass
“Your vagus implodes as nausea strikes / Savaging your body in terminal retch / Violent spasms and decaying enzymes / Engulf your throat as you belch / Intestinal disturbance, your ileum turns inside-out / Your duodenum is thrust up towards your mouth / Your pancreas excretes stale septic pus / Your whole digestive system is now a sticky mush”
“Gristle Licker” – Cattle Decapitation
“Skinned alive and left there dangling / Being cured by the heat of the sun / Attracting flies depositing their larvae, a caviar like garnish to / The dehydrated rump / Obsessing myself with the meat / Caressing the threaded striations / Tonguing the smeg form the nose to the feet / Death tastes so sweet to a gristle licker”
“A Lesson In Pathology” – Exhumed
“A lesson in pathology / Embalming fluid sprays all over me / Making a mess of your necropsy / Just another lesson in pathology / This is a medical atrocity / Screams echo in mortuary / Extracurricural necro-sodomy / A painful lesson in pathology”
“Phobophile” – Cryptopsy
“In the kitchen / With a screaming triple amputee… / Its completion depends solely / On my needs… / Said amputee’s stumps / Are my way of saying… ‘Thank you / Just for being you.’ / Its fear tastes better than its limbs”
“Eaten” – Bloodbath
“I have one desire since I was born / To see my body ripped and torn / To see my flesh devoured before my eyes / Only for you I volunteer as a human sacrifice”
“Bearing The Serpent’s Lamb” – Job For A Cowboy
“This virgin churns on the back of her own indisposed and throbbing body / Nauseated she chokes on her own vomit Emitted from her distended and desiccated throat / Weak and obscured this woman’s body / Begins to convulse and twitch / In her now soiled sheets / With an abdomen beginning to flourish as her ribs now unhinge and shift”