13 Songs That Make You Feel Like You're Having a Panic Attack

By Confusion & Constant Gardner

Music can be therapeutic, but it can also be an alarming, stressful experience. Some songs can literally make your heart rate skyrocket, and it's sometimes exactly what you need, especially if you've been listening to too much James Taylor lately. Here are some of the best songs out there that make you feel like you're having a panic attack.

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2. Prodigy - "Firestarter (Death Grips Remix)"

The original track, with its monochrome video featuring an eerily deranged physical performance by Liam Howlett, is enough to raise your pulse and make you want to smash shit up. The Death Grips remix, however, replaces that anger and aggression with a pervasive paranoia and lack of sanity. From the pitched down vocals to that ripping bass to Zach Hill's polyrhythymic drumming madness, nothing is left untoched in this blistering, terrifying, mind-fuck of a remix.

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3. Danny Brown - "Blunt After Blunt (3:33 Remix)"

Danny Brown's music is pretty manic as it is, but this 3:33 remix of "Blunt After Blunt" really does make your brain feel 10 pounds heavy, and will induce heart palpitations in no time. With rib-rattling bass bringing out even more menace in Brown's deranged vocals, "Blunt After Blunt" turns from a rowdy celebration of getting high into the soundtrack to a violent axe murder. Lock your doors, and bar your windows. You are not safe.

4. Burial - "Spaceape"

Although most of Burial's productions reflect a certain urban sadness, a gritty late night/early morning sense of loneliness, very few are outright menacing and terrifying in the way that "Spaceape" is. Burial's stark, minimal production lays the backdrop for Spaceape's panic inducing vocals, which, like the arm that he says he'll slide round your neck, wrap themselves around your mind and start to squeeze. Dread-inducing sounds.

5. The Horrorist - "One Night In New York"

"Hello, my name is Oliver, and I'm going to tell you a story..."

Everything starts off pretty innocently and calmly in this story, but as that raw, dark bassline kicks in and the oppressive, omnipresent snares drill ever further into your mind, you start to feel apprehensive. The narrator's overly smooth voice, and the stark black and white video make you feel uncomfortable but you keep watching, wondering what will happen, until the song reaches its shocking conclusion, and all you want do to is curl up in a ball and get those weird images out of your head.

6. Black Eyes - "Deformative"

"Deformative" starts off with a drumset and a screechy, hyper guitar. At six seconds, another drum set comes in. Eventually, you will have a menacing caucophony of sounds that may be working with and against eachother at the same damn time. In less than two minutes and thirty seconds, the experimental DC punks have you feeling like you need to drink a glass of wine and take a Xanax.

7. Aesop Rock - "Zero Dark Thirty"

Just this instrumental on its own with those hard drums and that subtly glitching background melody would be enough to creep under your skin and push you towards panic, but add in Aesop's dense, verbose delivery and the flickering, skeleton-filled video and this is surefire panic attack territory.

8. Crystal Castles - "Alice Practice"

The intensity of the jagged, at times painful sounds of Ethan Kath's twisted, tortured 8-bit production is matched only by the raw intensity of Alice's screamed vocals. Together the combination is enough to make the calmest, coolest, most collected of individuals feel as if their life is shattering to pieces around them and they're losing control with each passing second, and with each deranged wail and manic synth stab. And as anyone who has seen Crystal Castles live will attest, watching Alice Glass perform, especially this song, is like watching a microcosm of a mental meltdown live on stage, all in under three minutes.

9. Geto Boys - "My Mind Playin' Tricks On Me"

Sonically, "Mind Playin' Tricks On Me" is pretty smooth and lighthearted. But lyrically, few songs in the history of music capture paranoia and a fucked up mentality as well as Geto Boys' 1991 classic.

10. Death From Above 1979 - "Romantic Rights (Erol Alkan's Love From Below Re-Edit)"

Mystery man Erol Alkan's remix of Canadian duo Death From Above 1979's "Romantic Rights" is an unforgiving, pummeling, often disorienting sonic assualt of rapid-fire percussion and scratchy vocals. The track ebbs and flows over it's six minute plus length, but for every moment of comparative calm there's more craziness to come, with the final minute and twenty seconds of the track really tipping you over the edge.

11. Salem - "Asia"

"Asia" is a different kind of panic attack. It's not that heart-racing, heavy-breathing type of hysteria. It's trying to sleep with a pit deep in your stomach. It's that overwhelming crushing sickness. It's pure terror.

12. El-P - "Deep Space 9mm"

So much of El-P's music is marked out by an overwhelming sense of paranoia. Whether it's the jarring, industrial soundscapes that he produces, or his politically aware lyrics which warn of a dystopian present (and future), listen to too much El-P when you're sat at home on your own, in the nighttime, and you'll start to be certain that someone—probably some sort of evil secret police force—is watching you. Never is this more true than on "Deep Space 9mm," an electrifying journey through El-P's mind and the ills of modern society.

"Thank god for the drugs and drums/Tell history that I'll be right here hiding from guns."

13. Fatima Al Qadiri - "Vatican Vibes"

Fatima Al Qadri's father was taken by the Iraqi military as a prisoner of war when the Kuwait-born artist was nine years old. Her inspiration comes from a very real place and reflects some of the heaviest things the human experience has to offer. Exploring ideas like religion and technology with music and video, she captures the madness of the world around us, but even without knowing the backstory, you're made to feel tiny and helpless listening to a giant track like "Vatican Vibes."

14. Justice - "Stress"

Probably more in line with epilepsy than anything else, "Stress" stays true to its titular promise right off the bat with a huge hyperventilating synth. Things spiral downwards into hysteria for the French dance icons as the song goes on, reaching a level of panic and gloom with screwdrivers and white noise matched only by Romain Gavras' video for the track. Invoking the classic Vincent Cassel urban rage vehicle "La Haine," Gavras' video follows some hoodied Justice-ites fucking shit up in the streets of Paris.

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