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Aah, Halloween, the time of year when everybody suddenly decides that this planet isn't scary enough yet. People are pumped over their costumes, their make-up, the trick-or-treat candy and the music they will play at their Halloween-parties. Of course, such a playlist is easy, according to many websites I visited for my research. Throw in Danny Elfman's 'This Is Halloween', Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' and 'Zombie' by The Cranberries and your party will be a spooky halloween blast. But will your guests be scared? Maybe, but this year, let's go for "terrified" instead of "scared". Here are fifteen nice tunes to scare the shit out of your guests and get that party started.
Jim Johnston - The Undertaker Theme Song
Based on Chopin's 'Funeral March', WWE home musician Jim Johnston has created an absolute classic for all wrestling fans. The tune has been going through several changes over the years but the opening bell has always been a constant. Whenever that sound appeared, you knew you were in for something epic, something dark. Shortly after, there he was, an imposing figure, ready to put his opponent through hell. Even if you don't like wrestling, I think this would make a good intro for your party.
Theatres Des Vampires - Morgana Effect
What good is a horror-themed party without vampires? Enter Italian gothic metal band Theatres Des Vampires, who have recently released their new album 'Candyland' and this video for the song 'Morgana Effect'. This will definitely attract a bunch of headbangers to your party, and, as everybody know, metalheads are good for your alcohol-consumption.
Cadaveria & Necrodeath - Monduscuro
A blood pact between two diabolical entities, a dark and wicked cooperation between Cadaveria and Necrodeath, two bands who have been adding horror themes to heavy guitars for years. Be sure to place this somewhere in your playlist and add a bunch of gloomy projections to top off the atmosphere. Success guaranteed.
Death SS - Eaters
There are many horror themed metal bands in the world and I'm not going to add them all on this list, but we simply can't ignore Death SS. They're simply a must-have classic in the metal scene. Hailing from Italy, Death SS was formed in 1977 by Paul Chain and Steve Sylvester. The band combined elements of horror and the occult and heavy metal to become a pioneer in black metal and thrash metal.
Abysmal Grief - Cultus Lugubris
Italy is a great country for occult, dark metal, so it seems. Abysmal Grief has been a constant for twenty years now and an absolute favorite in the world of doom metal. That eerie organ will haunt you for a long time, that's for damn sure. Like many bands, Abysmal Grief is rooted deeply in the seventies horror sound and has been influencing a lot of bands, including Moonspell, Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats and The Vision Bleak (three other recommended names for your playlist by the way).
Elend - Eden (The Angel in the Garden)
A long time ago, I volunteered as a monitor at a camp where parents could dump their kids during summer. Each year, the oldest children (14-16) engaged in an overnight theme game. Guess who got to choose the theme? That night, we corpse-painted ourselves, rattled with chains in the forest, blinded the kids with flashlights and blasted Elend through the speakers whenever the kids were near them. Oh man, such fun. We ended that night with a cup of hot chocolate and a few kids' underwear on the clothesline.
Diamánda Gálás – The Litanies Of Satan
With lyrical topics such as AIDS, depression, mental illness and social injustice, American-born avant-garde artist Diamánda Gálás is a favorite of people who like it scary and haunting. With her extremely unnerving vocal performances and her appetite for the dark side of life, she has left audiences in terror and goths in awe for decades. 'The Litanies Of Satan' is a creepy piece of music, certainly recommended for summoning demons at your party.
Mz 412 - Act I: Begravning
"Wenn weiß die Farbe des Todes ist, dann ist schwarz die Farbe des Lebens", a sentence that every single Cold Meat Industry fan will immediately recognize. I often played this song on my so called goth-parties and people actually managed to dance to it. For others, it was the ideal soundtrack to start crawling home, back into their caves. Of course, dark ambient is an ideal genre for your horror parties, but I have to admit, Swedish act Mz412 really tops it off with this creeper.
Skinny Puppy - Who's Laughing Now?
The industrial scene has been widely known for its dark, pounding sound, filling dancefloors everywhere. Canadian groundbreaking act Skinny Puppy have been a huge success in this scene for a long, long time now. In this song, they use samples from 'Evil Dead II', which, along with Nivek Ogre’s demonic vocals, makes this song a perfect one to unleash the dancing zombies on your party.
Bollock Brothers - Horror Movies
Speaking about dancing, here is a song that opens with a list of horror movies, which are actually quite good suggestions to beam at your party. Although this song by British punk act The Bollock Brothers isn't that scary, it should be a decent dancefloor filler in the early hours of that Halloween extravaganza, don't you think?
Drokz & Sadisk - Satans Visit To Stellwerk
With this one, we dive deeply into a world most Merchants Of Air readers will not be familiar with. Hardcore techno music sure has its creepy songs, although their listeners usually are a lot scarier. I discovered this gem when I was looking for something dark and heavy yet electronic. Before I realized, I was being dragged into a genre named "darkcore". Most of it is onnesssausage(*), but this track certainly is a spooky sensation.
(from the Dutch word 'Eenheidsworst' which translates as 'it all sounds the same')
(from the Dutch word 'Eenheidsworst' which translates as 'it all sounds the same')
Whitehouse - Cut Hands Has The Solution
If you think that previous one was over-the-top noise, well, welcome to a world where you are no longer a listener, you are a victim. In the deepest regions of the musical industry, there is a scene named 'power electronics', fronted by acts like Nicole 12, Genocide Organ and these guys from Whitehouse. Here, music translates as pure aggression, hatred, dark emotions and torture. Blast this one through your speakers and I'm sure a lot of your guests will run like hell.
Necro - Creepy Crawl
In the hip hop scene, there also seems to be a sub-genre, named 'horrorcore', which is something slightly different from the hip hop people usually encounter. Necro is a rapper from Brooklyn, New York who has been heavily influenced by death metal, as well as all things gory and haunting. On this song, he uses a sample from Charles Manson while on another one, he raps over blastbeats by Suffocation drummer Mike Smith.
Coil - Hellraiser Theme
English experimental masterminds Coil created this masterpiece in 1985. It was the proposed soundtrack to the film Hellraiser, however was turned down because it was not considered commercial enough. Other sources claim that the music wasn't used because it was too scary. Anyway, Coil released 'The Unreleased Themes for Hellraiser' in 1987 before once again embarking on a huge amount of other projects and experiments.
Camille Saint-Saëns - Danse Macabre
And for a cool-down after all this dark and horrifying bombast, we reach back to classical music with this beautiful piece of work by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. Written in 1874, the piece was initially a song for a text by the poet Henri Cazalisis, based on an old French superstition. Back then, this might have been one of the scariest pieces of music ever written.
Well, we could go on and on with this list, but we got other stuff to do today. If you have more suggestions for Halloween parties, comment below...
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