“It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black“. Spın̈al Tap had a good laugh at the alternative and metal proclivity for the use of black, and just recently, the blackest black ever is used at the Hayward Gallery as part of the new Anish Kapoor exhibition.

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/amodelofcontrol.com now has a Patreon page, at this stage purely as a potential way of helping to cover the running costs of the site. There is absolutely no compulsion to do so: if you feel you can chuck a small amount to the site each month, that would be appreciated.

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This is the first of a few posts in the /Tuesday Ten series based around colours over the next month – with the usual break for /Tracks of the Month next week.

The suggestions thread for this one goes back nearly three years, to September 2023. Thanks to everyone who took time to suggest songs – this is proof again that I don’t forget about them, and every suggestion will be considered for use at some point.

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A quick explanation for new readers (hi there!): my Tuesday Ten series has been running since March 2007, and each month features at least ten new songs you should hear – and in between those monthly posts, I feature songs on a variety of subjects, with some of the songs featured coming from suggestion threads on Facebook.

Feel free to get involved with these – the more the merrier, and the breadth of suggestions that I get continues to astound me. Otherwise, as usual, if you’ve got something you want me to hear, something I should be writing about, or even a gig I should be attending, e-mail me or drop me a line on Facebook (details above).

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/Johnny Cash
/Man In Black
/Man In Black

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Could I really do a /Tuesday Ten on this subject without featuring the Man in Black? One of his signature songs, this, and the one where he explains (long after he gained the nickname) why he is the Man in Black. As the song explains, he wears black as a form of protest and remembrance: for those fighting to survive, for the poor, for those unjustly imprisoned, and of course, for those that were dying in Vietnam at the time. In other words, it’s Cash standing up for what was (and is) right, a constant reminder to keep fighting.

The Man in Black stuck to his principles his entire life, and remains an icon and beacon of a singer that always tried to do the right thing for others, and this song has the snarl of someone who genuinely believed in what he sang.

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/Depeche Mode
/Black Celebration
/Black Celebration

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The beginning of DM’s most-lauded phase – the series of albums in the late-80s and into the early-90s – was fraught with inter-band tension around recording and composing the songs (not to mention the influence of producer and label owners, too), but all of the difficulties were worth it in the end.

The majestic title track of the album that began this phase at least obliquely references what they’ve got through. The Black Celebration here is a grim nod to troubles past, that while it was terrible at the time, they got out the other side, and the light has been let in again. Not too much, mind – DM were very much in their Goth phase by this point…

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/Soundgarden
/Fell On Black Days
/Superunknown

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As is, sadly, so often the way, the signs were there all the long. One of the many, many highlights from Soundgarden’s magnum opus (yes, I know Badmotorfinger is also exceptional, but it didn’t turn into a world-straddling behemoth like this did) is a song about descent into unexplainable, deep depression. Those dark – some might say black – periods where it feels like there is no escape, no way of making colour appear in your life once again. The song has that weary resignation, and that feeling of “no end to this” exudes from every second.

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/Rico
/Big Black Sea
/Violent Silences

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The late Rico Capuano (he passed away a few years ago) was an artist that released two much-loved albums, then retreated back to his native Glasgow, working with youth music programmes – in some ways, helping to ensure that the next generation had the skills and the knowledge if they chose to make music, to not get burned like he did.

Not all of his songs were fully decipherable in their meanings – Rico was never one to make things easy for his listeners – but a good many of his songs were extensions of his emotional and mental state, and this song always felt like one of those. It appears that a relationship has broken down, and this song appears to depict the spiral into black despair that follows it. The song bursts into an intensity that even Rico rarely reached, as the live video on the YouTube playlist demonstrates. I saw that tour (and the one for his first album), and he was an astonishing, formidable presence onstage. He’s still deeply missed in this house.

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/Saul Williams
/Black History Month
/The Inevitable Rise And Liberation Of Niggy Tardust

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Like many others in our scene, I suspect, I came to the work of Saul Williams thanks to Trent Reznor, who produced this album, and did a great deal to help promote it as well as inviting Williams to support Nine Inch Nails on tour. A ferocious three minutes that pays tribute to the struggles of those that have come before him, bringing us to the then present, with Saul Williams able to be accepted as a politically-charged polymath – poet, rapper, musician, actor and writer.

Black History Month has its origins 100 years ago, when the historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) announced the second week of February to be “Negro History Week” – the period chosen as it contained the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and early civil rights leader . The period was later expanded to a month – and while in the UK and Ireland, it is marked in October, and started in 1987 to mark the 150th anniversary of Caribbean emancipation and the centenary of Marcus Garvey’s birth.

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/Skunk Anansie
/Intellectualise my Blackness
/Paranoid & Sunburnt

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The first Skunk Anansie album was a scorching missive from a black singer (and mixed-race band) in a very white scene that made a hell of a splash. And too right, too – they were a ferocious live band, and as we found out last week in Margate when they played with Garbage, absolutely still are.

Sadly this absolutely furious song wasn’t played last week – it was teased at the end, but then they chose to toss away the planned end of the set and play a cover of Highway to Hell instead. The song is a mighty stomp that I’m presuming is based on Skin’s own lived experience, with someone treating their racial status as an intellectual curiosity, rather than actually trying to fucking understand.

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/Behemoth
/Blackest ov the Black
/Zos Kia Cultus

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It is easy to forget sometimes just how long Polish Blackened Death Metallers Behemoth have been around. First formed in 1991, this album from 2002 was already their sixth. You’ll either love Behemoth or hate them, though, their fiercely anti-Christian focus may be a turnoff for some (although you need to understand the context of a band like them existing in a deeply Catholic country like Poland), and their pummelling sound isn’t for everyone either.

But anyway: here, the black is absolute darkness, absolute power, the manifestation of chaos, the black at the heart of the universe. The darkness that absorbs all.

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/Tiamat
/Brighter Than The Sun
/Skeleton Skeletron

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“Any colour you like as long as it’s black”

Oh yes, Swedish Death Metallers Tiamat completed their shift towards Gothic Rock on this album, one that as I recall deeply divided fans of their earlier material. I adored this album when it came out, particularly this track, a song that more than anything owed an awful lot to the bombast of The Sisters of Mercy – particularly their use of a female vocalist as a foil for Johan Edlund’s baritone growl.

The line quoted above, though? That’s something I can get behind. I rarely wear much that isn’t black, and if it isn’t, it’ll be a band T-shirt or a Hythe Town FC shirt. I’ve not worn a white shirt for work for as long as I can remember, either: those are almost all black, too…

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/Mind.in.a.box
/Into the Night
/Crossroads

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The beloved electronic group mind.in.a.box mark 25 years active next year, having formed in 2002, and released their still-extraordinary debut album Lost Alone two years later. Their ninth album Retaliation was announced this last week (released 18-Sep 2026), and will presumably continue the story that has stretched over seven of their albums so far.

The early albums tell the story of an initially unnamed person, in some cyberpunk world where they appear to be struggling to control their own destiny, and are so utterly alone, isolated by technology.

Crossroads is by some distance the band’s best album, too, and the one where the story begins to unfold further. And the first time you hear the protagonist’s name, as I recall, comes as the glorious Into The Night concludes: “My name is… Black.“. He has struggled and fought with his memory as he heads to The Pi nightclub to try and find answers, and something finally triggers the memory of his own name.

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/(hed)PE
/Blackout
/Blackout

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Nu-Metal-funk-punks (hed)PE have different issues with memory, as on the lead single from their fourth album (and probably their last truly great song, if I’m being honest), Jared just wants to forget what he heard. From fake people, from people who will only believe what they are told, rather than questioning anything: so he just blacks it out, as if he never heard it and didn’t waste his time over it. Whether that’s the right way to go about it, I’m going to leave to others to make that decision…