Aussie-born and LA-based singer/songwriter Dolly Dagger (named after the Hendrix song, natch) is reanimating a …
Halloween is upon us once again, and the spookiest time of the year requires the most frightening songs. Monster Mash won’t cut it, either.
Start a new playlist or add these songs to your current one for riffs and lyrics guaranteed to raise the dead cos it’s a FREAK NIGHT!
Rob Zombie – American Witch
What’s Halloween without zombies and witches? I’ll tell you – Not even remotely scary. Bring the two together and you get a chilling song about the horror of the Salem Witch Trials.
The Black Dahlia Murder — A Shrine to Madness
“A night so black as Satan’s hide/When we ghouls do come alive,” Named after a notoriously violent murder in 1947, the Black Dahlia Murder never fail to unnerve. A Shrine to Madness, the opener from Ritual, features a slow build into a guttural tale of Halloween night.
Iron Maiden – Fear Of The Dark
“Have you run your fingers down the wall/And have you felt your neck skin crawl/When you’re searching for the light?” It’s the oldest fear, built into us. The idea that we’re not alone in the dark.
Helloween – Halloween
Duh.
Marilyn Manson — This is Halloween
Maybe you need something a little more fun. Halloween isn’t all about being scared. Marilyn Manson’s cover of This is Halloween, from The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a bit more lighthearted. It’s even synced up to the original video!
Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
The story behind this song is as off-putting as the song itself. The story goes that bassist Geezer Butler had just received a book on occultism (written in Latin and decorated with pictures of Satan, no less) from Ozzy Osbourne. That night, Butler awoke to a massive black figure standing over him, which vanished he noticed it. When Butler went to check on the book, he found it was missing. Osbourne wrote the lyrics based on Butler’s experience. “What is this that stands before me?/Figure in black which points at me.”
Ozzy Osbourne – Bark at the Moon
Speaking of Osbourne, no Halloween is complete without a mysterious creature haunting a small town. The music video seems to be a Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde situation, but the lyrics sing of a beast that is finally killed before returning from the dead to stalk the living.
Type O Negative – Black No. 1
This doom-pop track was never actually released as a single, but earned Type O Negative a cult following for the black and white music video released for it. The singer meets a strange, frightening woman on Halloween who “has a date with Nosferatu,” because no Halloween is complete without vampires.
The Misfits – Halloween
There’s just no saying otherwise. This song needs to be in your Halloween playlist.
Alice Cooper – Dead Babies
Alice Cooper invented horror rock; and whenever Alice rocks up it’s Halloween within a 20 mile radius. Always one to out-creep the creepster, Dead Babies funereal, cloak-and-dagger sound was likely inspiration for most of the bands on this list (that arpeggio – Hallowed Be Thy Name, much?) It’s a song you can’t have Halloween without.
Wednesday 13 – Bad Things
If a line like “I wanna kill you, dig you up and do it again” doesn’t inspire comic-horror revulsion, I don’t know what will.
Cannibal Corpse – Hammer Smashed Face
One of Jim Carrey’s favourite songs (it features in Ace Ventura, with the band playing it), Cannibal Corpse’s Hammer Smashed Face is the song normies point to when they think of “death metal.” So why not celebrate it in true Halloween style?
Darkcell – Hail to the Freaks
Australia doesn’t HAVE Halloween. Go to AMERICA if you want HALLOWEEN. Ugh, shut the hell up. (As you write from your iPhone, proudly designed in California.) Darkcell’s goth styled horror rock mixes it up with the best of them on this list, and Hail to the Freaks will cement them as one of our best scare-inducing exports.
BONUS! Starcadian – Freak Night
Because 80s mock-horror never sounded so 80s since the 80s. Star child Starcadian chisels his ear-movies out of the finest Yamaha DX7s and LinnDrum machines. It’s like Danny Elfman joined Morris Day and the Time for the ultimate spooky jam. Yeah. It’s that good. You can’t help but feel a shiver as the robot voice warns: Radio, radio, they’re coming from the radio…
Did your favourite make the list? What are your go-to Halloween songs? Tell us on Facebook and Twitter!
