Being an industrial band just like Throbbing Gristle and Chrome, it's no surprise that this influential band has some songs which are downright terrifying, considering they predate dark ambient acts like Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada.
- The entirety of their '1974-76' demo album, which contains a series of nightmarish songs which range from Lucid to downright terrifying. For particular ones, there's the dreamy and paranoia-inducing 'Ooraseal', the threatening and ominous 'Venusian Animals', and the paranoid nighttime trek of 'The Outer Limits'. Lastly, the bizzare serial killer-esque cover of 'She Loves you' by the Beatles takes the cake of a complete deconstruction of what can only be described as madness.
- Their earliest demos are also no different, with 'Oh Roger' being about serial rapist Roger Geavesnote , and Dream-Sequence 1-3 being eerie Synthi AKS Pieces made by Chris Watson.
- Talkover, from their debut EP, is an otherworldly song about a replicant killer, sung in Burroughs-Like fashion. From the same EP is 'Do The Mussolini', which concerns the subject of Mussolini's upside-down death.
- On the Mix Up, there's 'Kirilian Photograph'note , 'Fourth Shot', and 'Heaven and Hell', with the jarring synthesizers and Mallinder's distorted screaming in 'Heaven and Hell' sounding particularly terrifying.
- From the B-side of 'Nag Nag Nag' is the slow-paced 'Is That Me Finding Someone at the Door Again', a nightmarish track consisting of slow synth-stabs and muttering which only gets faster.
- Voice of America has even more of it, with songs like Partially Submerged, Premonition, and 'This is Entertainment' becoming a Madness Mantra for the entire album. Doesn't help that the music video for the latter ends up looking like a brainwashing tape.
- Red Mecca is probably the least scariest album from their Industrial Era (being more dub and post-punk inspired), but the odd cover of 'A Touch Of Evil' feels sparse and rather sinister compared to the other songs on the record. Of a similar degree of Nightmare Fuel is the 10 minute dirge of "A Thousand Ways", which ends on a rather unsettling note.
- Black Mask, compared to the more upbeat Red Mask, is a paranoid dub-piece with distorted arabic radio chatter and backwards voices from the band members themselves.
- Diffusion is probably the belle of the ball in this regard: from the Creepy laugh sample, the violin scratching noises, and the barely intelligible lyrics which seem to have something to do with someone getting kidnapped and having no memory of how he got there. Even the video is like some kind of fever dream or bad trip.
