Darkest Days
Stabbing Westward · 1998
68 min · 17 tracks · alternative rock
Industrial textures collide with emotional rock anthems, creating a haunting soundscape that explores themes of despair and longing.
Top tracks — play these first
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Save Yourself — This track combines an infectious chorus with themes of self-empowerment, contrasting sharply with the album's overall darker tone. Its catchy melody helped it gain significant airplay on alternative rock stations.
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How Can I Hold On — This song showcases the band's ability to blend raw emotion with industrial influences, featuring evocative lyrics that explore feelings of hopelessness and desperation.
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Everything I Touch — With its driving beat and introspective lyrics, this track encapsulates the album's exploration of personal turmoil and existential dread, making it a standout moment.
Elevation
Our rating, out of 100 — and why.
AI-generated from five scored dimensions. An opinion, not a measurement.
The album combines industrial textures with emotional rock, creating a solid but uneven listening experience.
What we noticed
- The first half of the album features driving rhythms and layered industrial sounds, while the second half shifts to more melodic and introspective tracks.
- Several songs incorporate electronic elements, such as synthesized beats and samples, blending them with traditional rock instrumentation.
- Lyrically, the album explores themes of despair and longing, often using vivid imagery to convey emotional struggles.
- Composition 25% of the score
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6/10
- Craft 20% of the score
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7/10
- Durability 25% of the score
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6/10
- Distinctiveness 18% of the score
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6/10
- Sequencing 12% of the score
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5/10
the writing — melody, harmony, structure, lyrics
production, performance, arrangement
whether it rewards returning to it
whether it sounds like itself
running order, pacing, length
Known within its scene. Reported but not counted — how far a record travelled describes its reception rather than the record, and a newer release has had less time to travel than an older one.
Is this for you?
Good fit if you like
- dynamic emotional journeys
- long, immersive listening sessions
- wave-like pacing throughout
- brooding, contemplative moods
Where this album fits
- Career context
- Released in 1998, Darkest Days was Stabbing Westward's third studio album, following their breakthrough record Wither Blister Burn & Peel. At this point in their career, the band was transitioning into a more polished sound while grappling with the pressures of commercial success after their previous hit singles.
- Stylistic neighbors
- Nine Inch Nails· Ministry· Filter
Tracklist
Best experienced from track one — press play and let it unfold.
- 1 Darkest Days 3:51
- 2 Everything I Touch 3:23
- 3 How Can I Hold On 4:29
- 4 Drugstore 4:58
- 5 You Complete Me 4:06
- 6 Save Yourself 4:13
- 7 Haunting Me 3:36
- 8 Torn Apart 3:24
- 9 Sometimes It Hurts 3:40
- 10 Drowning 3:28
- 11 Desperate Now 5:25
- 12 Goodbye 1:56
- 13 When I’m Dead 3:04
- 14 The Thing I Hate 3:37
- 15 On Your Way Down 4:40
- 16 Waking Up Beside You 6:36
- 17 Hopeless 4:03
Reference: Wikipedia · MusicBrainz · Wikidata
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