DISCLAIMER: These won’t be proper reviews -as if I could write those- or have interesting technical tidbits on them. These are more of a “ah, that song reminds me of…” thing. Like the part you skip on a recipe. So it goes.

Album: Darkest Days.

Release date: April 7th, 1998.

Track: 11.

Moods: Melancholy, hopelessness.

Stabbing Westward was, in my experience, one of the few cases where cheap marketing ploys like “albums inspired by the movie” actually resulted in a cool discovery. It was 1997 and my dad bought me the Spawn soundtrack, which had an electronic vs industrial/hard rock genre mashing thing going on. Kinda/sorta the Judgment Night soundtrack from 1993.

Some duffers on that Spawn OST, and don’t get me started on the flick, which I do have some nostalgia for. Stabbing Westward, however, not only do I have nostalgia for, but it’s been a part of my life for so long I can’t remember of a single month in the last almost 30 years not listening to at least one of their tracks on repeat. Sometimes for an entire day.

Come 1998, a pretty bad year on a personal basis. By late autumn, I was an emotional mess and my dad, once again, surprising me with a special combo of Darkest Days with a t-shirt (which I wore until it fell apart). I was coming out of a relationship I pretty much messed up and Darkest Days’ concept of the four stages after a break up synchronized so well with what I felt and what I was writing at the time that it ingrained itself with my life. A couple of short stories and whichever unfinished novels I was writing back then had bits and pieces heavily influenced by Stabbing Westward. It kept me writing. It kept me sane. It helped tears and emotions flow outside, like osmosis, freeing from thoughts that were guiding me to a terrible choice.

Any time I needed it, I would go back to one of their songs. From any of their albums, like the ominous technonightmare of ‘Can’t Happen Here’, the cathartic ‘Crushing me’, or their cover of ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’, Stabbing Westward was always there for me.

‘Desperate now’ is in the “hitting rock bottom” cycle of the break up, and you feel it in the five minutes plus song. A lonesome guitar, a nesh bass rearing its head, a steady beat from the drum and Chris Hall’s sorrowful voice conveying so much. It’s far from their heavier industrial fare, but it’s a much needed moment of solace before the storm. The eerie ending, which you can appreciate even with mid-level earphones, is haunting. All hope is abandoned.

Darkest Days becomes nightmarish after this, not in a bad way, but the raw emotions on display are as hopeless as they come, and I can’t lie, I’ve been there too many times. More than I want to accept.

But still, we move on. Because inertia.

There’s nothing bad with letting these dark feelings simmer for a while. Human emotions take the highs and the lows. Even at our lowest, there’s a glimmer of hope. It might be pretty obscured right now, though.

2025 wasn’t a good year at all. An ailing close relative, a dog of 12 years now gone, and general money problems. Hoping for 2026 to be a better year, but right now, ‘Desperate Now’ fits the mood. I’m feeling as crestfallen and waking up, writing, the normal routine, is overwhelming, but just like this song, I’ll keep on, despite hopelessness.

I’ll pick a happier song a memory tomorrow. Soz. Hugs to you and your loved ones.

—Sam J. Valdés López