Nightmare Fuel / Hadestown

Keep your head, keep your head low,
Oh you gotta keep your head low!
If you wanna keep your head...

— The Workers, "Chant"

• The concept album's version of "Wait for Me" has Hermes as a soft, sinister Radio Voice as he lectures Orpheus on the dangers in getting to Hadestown, with the casual, whispery way he describes what could happen to him being creepier than later versions.
• "Chant" shows us Hadestown's hellish conditions and the poor workers chanting as they toil away, clearly terrified of Hades and what he could do to them.
  • Zachary James, the West End Hades, headcanoned that the "fossils of the dead" line in "Chant" doesn't only refer to fossil fuels, but also the Workers, who go to their deaths and their bodies are used to fuel Hades' enterprises.
• "Way Down Hadestown (Reprise)" shows the fate of the workers in Hadestown: they are doomed to build the wall and work in the factories forever, forgetting their past lives and even their own names. They are empty shells...and since Eurydice signed her life away to Hades, this will happen to her someday.
• The Fates "singin' in the back of your mind" may just sound like a nuisance at first, but they get more menacing as they drive people into making bad and even dangerous decisions by constantly casting doubt and feeding into their insecurities.
• Hades is easily the most terrifying character of the show thanks to his menacing deep voice and the iron fist he rules Hadestown over.
  • In "Chant", he presents all of the machinery built by slave labor as romantic gestures for Persephone, uncaring of the welfare of his workers and the Upperworld that is dying from the industrialization. When Persephone flat out tells Hades she doesn't want that, it goes completely over his head and he calls her ungrateful.
  • Him luring Eurydice into slavery in "Hey Little Songbird". Although he mainly preys on her fear of poverty and Orpheus not being able to provide for her, his tone of voice and the way he comes onto her when she's in a vulnerable position makes it sound like he's about to take advantage of her in a different way.
  • "Why We Build the Wall", which sounds like a political rally, a tent revival, or a cult leader preaching to his followers. It's a pretty chilling reminder of Hades's power under the ground, and Persephone and even the Fates sing along with Hades and the workers. The NYTW and London staging had Eurydice singing the last verse, showing that Hades is brainwashing her as well, and the Broadway recording has her join in on the final line while she and everyone else salutes Hades onstage.
  • The sweet reunion of Orpheus and Eurydice takes a darker turn when Hades suddenly appears. He takes a sadistic pleasure in revealing to Orpheus that Eurydice willingly signed herself away to him and then demands that his slaves beat the boy up to make an example out of him. Even when Persephone tries to intervene Hades snaps at her to stay out of it.
  • Hades' part in "Chant (Reprise)" is surprisingly unnerving, as his polite demeanor just barely hides the vicious shark underneath. His talk of "keeping" a woman by imprisoning her with gifts and riches is pretty unsettling, as is his Badass Boast to Orpheus.
  Do you hear that heavy metal sound?
  The symphony of Hadestown,
  and in this symphony of mine,
  of power chords and power lines...
  Young man, you can strum your lyre;
  I have strung the world in wire!
  Young man, you can sing your ditty;
  I CONDUCT THE ELECTRIC CITY!
  • And then it gets even worse as he threatens to kill Orpheus. "Since I'm going to count to three and put you out of your misery..."
  • Even after getting genuinely moved by Orpheus's song and rekindling his love for Persephone, Hades is still worried about looking weak in "His Kiss, The Riot." In the Broadway version his chance is fair while still politically motivated, but in the concept album he plots to let Orpheus and Eurydice think they've won by letting them go, only to set them up to fail so that he could appear to be benevolent while really still keeping his "children" in line. The song itself has haunting instrumentals, especially at the beginning, and Hades almost sounds like he's been Driven to Madness as he sings.
  • The first time we meet Hades (outside of his introduction in "Road to Hell"), he goes to Persephone to bring her back to Hadestown telling her "I've missed you" when she asks why he's shown up. It's also stated in the musical that he's been showing up earlier and earlier every year to bring Persephone back, causing winter to become longer and starvation to become a serious problem (which is why Eurydice agrees to Hades' deal in the first place). How much longer would it have been until he forbade her to leave at all?
• The staging of when Orpheus turns around too early. He and Eurydice have a mutual Oh, Crap! as he realizes he messed up. Then the stage platform she's on lowers, giving the impression that she's being Dragged Off to Hell. Orpheus can only fall to his knees and watch her go.
• It's hinted at several times throughout the show that all of this has happened before and will happen again; no matter what Hermes or anyone else tries, Orpheus and Eurydice are doomed to be separated for eternity.

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