Anger, Hate, Rage: Music Best Suited to the Moment After Getting Fired

You show up to work every day, dressed appropriately, on time, and do your job to the best of your ability. Your jerk coworker, Bill, shows up late, never shaves his scraggly, ugly half-beard, and slacks off all day long. Despite your clear status as a superior employee, your boss decided that it was you they were letting go when the company had to downsize - and that they were going to give Bill a raise.

There’s only one thing to be done in this situation: get in your car, turn up the music really loud, and drive home at the fastest possible speeds (er, that, uh, are legally permitted. We do not endorse the breaking of any laws, traffic or otherwise.). But here’s the ultimate, most significant, and most important question you will have to answer that day: it isn’t why you got fired or why that prick Bill kept his job, but what music you’ll be listening to en route to wherever you decide to go.

Although I haven’t been fired in quite awhile (one of the perks of working on a freelance basis), I keep a CD in my car for exactly just sort of a situation. It’s handy for not only when fired, but also when you arrive at McDonald’s five minutes too late to order a McGriddle, for when you find out that your mother threw away all of your old SNES games you’d been keeping in her basement, or learned that the reason your ex-girlfriend left you was for your older brother.

While the tracks that you put on your “Hate-Death-Destroy-Rage-Anger” mix CD will be different from anyone else’s, I thought I’d share some of the tracks that helped get me get through days of murderous, hate-fuelled rage without actually hurting anybody.

The Sword: How Heavy This Axe

From The Sword’s excellent second album, “Gods of the Earth,” How Heavy This Axe is a 1970’s-sounding, aggressive, loud, and angry story of a man charged with killing other mens by the thousands with a weapon given to him from a god. Just like the title claims, the axe is probably pretty damned heavy - but when a god gives you an axe of epic awesome and tells you to lay waste to the population, you get to swinging.

Amon Amarth: The Pursuit of Vikings

Arguably one of the best melodic death/viking metal bands of the last decade (and certainly one of the most popular), Amon Amarth captures the anger, frustration, and rage of murdered and oppressed viking people’s better than any saga by Snorri. While you might find bands that are more pissed off, bands that cling more closely to the viking ethos, or bands that actually sing in their native language, none compare to the unified talent of Amon Amarth. Pursuit of Vikings contains not only one of their best riffs, but is an angry, murderous song- perfect for channeling your energy into instead of devising how you plan to destroy Bill.

Tool: Aenima

You don’t need me to tell you that this is one of the best-ever angry day songs ever recorded. I mean really, the whole song is about a man praying, begging, yearning for the armageddon to come - to see everything washed away, to see everything destroyed. This is one of those songs that can be listened to regardless of the circumstances - if something pissed you off, then Aenima needs to be on your playlist.

Bone Thugs feat. Tupac: Thug Love

Alright. Maybe, just maybe, a rap song featuring two of the biggest names in the gangsta rap movement may seem somewhat out of place on an angry-music songlist with a bunch of metal bands. But seriously, follow to link, and listen to it:

Do you hear that beat?

That’s a shotgun.

If that’s not angry, if that isn’t as bad as hell - as mad as hell - then I don’t know what is.

But it’s more than just the gunblast, badass beat. It’s the furious, supercharged yet still liquid flow of Bizzy Bone, and the gruff, haggard, and enraged-but-resolved sound of Tupac. Even if you’re not a rap fan, Thug Love is an incredible angry day track, and should be placed on any pissed-off mixtape.