Yeah, listening to GY!BE in the middle of the night or while trying to sleep is usually a bad idea.
- F♯ A♯ ∞, which is an album ruminating about the apocalypse.
- The first track of the album, "The Dead Flag Blues" has the following monologue spoken in a sombre monotone, which, whether it is a Dying Dream, drug-induced hallucination, or an actual Apocalyptic Log, is oppressingly dire:
The car is on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blowsThe government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawnWe're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death [...]The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies
Picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hairThe skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze...- That drone underneath said monologue is creepy in and of itself.
- The monologue is from a screenplay that Efrim Menuck was writing at the time.
- The second song, "East Hastings," was used extensively in the movie 28 Days Later, whose director claimed that he had the song in mind when making it. The end of the track, "Drugs in Tokyo / Black Helicopter," is particularly unsettling.
- The initial, sudden sawing entry of the strings in that song is a Jump Scare. As for what follows though..
- "Providence" gives some horrific unsettling vibes, in particular the incredibly surreal and haunting nursery rhyme at the beginning of "Kicking Horse on Brokenhill" and the transition between "String Loop Manufactured During Downpour", which consists of a creepy repeating line sampled from the musical Godspell as captioned above. And if you have the original 1997 vinyl version, the album ends with a locked groove (hence the title "F♯ A♯ ∞").
- One of the variations of the album's cover is a definition of Nothing Is Scarier, as it features a black and white photograph of a blurred road sign standing still ominously (it's also used as the cover for the 1998 CD release).
- Lift Your Skinny Fists is the band's brightest album as a whole, but the track "Static" deserves to be here. To hear a woman babbling on about seeing the face of God and dying over a beautiful, somber violin solo creates a Soundtrack Dissonance that is quite disturbing. And then there's the second half of the track, "World Police and Friendly Fire / The Buildings They Are Sleeping Now," whose eeriness can't be easily described in words.
- "Sleep" is mostly more on the Tear Jerker side, but "Monheim" ends with a Last Note Nightmare of dissonant guitar feedback before some more dissonant chords are played and the chaos subsides a bit.
- The opening to "Antennas to Heaven" may qualify for some with the jaunty Lyrical Dissonance of "Baby-O", particularly given how much it comes out of nowhere, and how quickly everything goes back to normal afterwards.
- Any time the guitarists start playing with screwdrivers, this trope is sure to ensue.
- "George Bush Cut Up While Talking" consists of a strange buzz-like noise, a high-pitched voice reciting "It is a predominant question: Why am I here, and what can I do to make it better? How can I do what is right?" on a loop, and George Bush giving a speech, cut up into random excerpts punctuated by quick, short bursts of applause that sound like static. The combination is terrifying.
- "Mladic" is named after war criminal Ratko Mladić, and suffice it to say it has a suitably imposing build-up. Though by the time the song proper starts, most listeners will likely feel more like rocking out than cowering in a corner.
- "Lambs' Breath" is basically ten minutes of Drone of Dread, and "Asunder, Sweet" could be one of Nine Inch Nails' creepy interstitials.
