SITTING ON A DAPPLED TERRACE sipping a Fernet Branca and admiring a glimmering river view is nice enough. Tooling around in a swan-shaped pedal boat can be a giggle. But incessant pleasantness gets dreary.

Sometimes you feel like dressing all in black, heading to the type of club your mother has never been to and is still afraid of, and descending some pockmarked staircase into Stygian depths where fierce guitars, tattooed women and wanton chaos reign.

Yes, for all its delicious regional wines and cheeses, for all its ingenious, blippy electro beats, Europe still needs rock bars. And thankfully it has some really, really good ones. If you're ready to kick out the jams, try one of these places.

8mm, Berlin

A small, dark, smoky dive bar lit by candles, red bulbs and films projected onto the back wall, 8mm is especially popular with touring American musicians—the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio and the Kills have all hung out there.

DJs play fundamentals like the Stooges, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Sonic Youth. Every couple of months, live shows next door showcase underground Berlin rock bands on associated label 8mm Musik, plus psych-rock group Brian Jonestown Massacre, whose lead singer, Anton Newcombe, lives upstairs and records nearby.