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Music Monday – This Is Halloween!

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All Hallows Eve is almost upon us, and since our very own Halloween party is almost here too, we figured we’d let two of our writers (Ross and Anto) construct a party playlist for the occasion. See if you can guess who wrote what!
Misfits – Halloween
This is a very obvious one, but it just wouldn’t be Halloween without it. The Misfits spawned an entire genre based around their eccentric visual style, their love of cheesy 50’s horror films and their furious punk riffs, and influenced a ton of bands to the point of there being a full Wikipedia article listing every Misfits cover version ever recorded, most notably by the legendary Metallica. They’ve directly inspired a bunch of bands, including another band on this list, whose singer was at one point asked to take over the reins from Michael Graves.

Marilyn Manson – This Is Halloween

If your Halloween playlist doesn’t include a cut from Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, you’re doing it wrong, frankly. The oingo boingo score put Danny Elfman on the map, and solidified the Burton/Elfman pairing for years to come. For the Nightmare Before Christmas 3D re-release, they got a bunch of alternative artists who were popular at the time to do their own versions of the soundtrack, and Manson’s slab of neo-goth put a wonderfully twisted edge onto this celebratory number. Singing along is mandatory.


AFI – Totalimmortal
At one point in their endless genre roulette, AFI were a pretty good horror-punk act, and released the appropriately-named All Hallow’s EP containing four tracks. Fans of the Tony Hawk series may recognise “The Boy Who Destroyed The World”, and “Halloween” is very obviously a cover of our previous track, but the lead single is a blistering punk track with a great bassline and skilled guitar work, wrapped up in a gang vocal chorus which’ll get stuck in your head for days.

Ozzy Osbourne – Hellraiser
The gamers among you will know this one from the best car-stealing simulator known to man; Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The metal fans among you will know it as one of the best tracks from Ozzy’s incredible No More Tears album, the second studio effort to feature Zakk Wylde and one of the pairings finest hours. Hellraiser is one of those metal tracks that has everything a good piece of heavy metal needs – a classic riff, a head-bobbing rhythm, a huge chorus and manages to be both accessible and still just loud enough so as to not put off the ‘real’ rockers. Play it loud or don’t bother.

Dir en grey – The Final
For a horrifying musical experience, it doesn’t get much better than Dir en grey. Dark, chaotic and often lyrically abhorrent (and that’s to say nothing of their music videos, which have been known to cause lawsuits simply by being played publicly), they’re most definitely one of the most interesting music acts out there. I went with The Final over some of their harsher works for a few reasons – mainly that the music video is fairly tame by their standards and I wouldn’t be causing anyone to feel queasy by recommending it, and because of the organ sting at the start which never fails to send a shiver down my spine.

Cattle Decapitation – Forced Gender Reassignment
It’s a party playlist, and no party playlist is complete without at least one song to clear the dance-floor all for that one guy whose a bit drunker than everyone else and won’t stop asking for something that’s ‘a bit heavy’ and ‘not sh*t’. The progressive deathgrind (yes, that’s a real thing) group Cattle Decapitation’s 2012 opus Monolith of Inhumanity is a defining record in extreme circles for what it did to mesh death metal and grindcore sensibilities into something fresh and crushingly visceral. Top to bottom, you’d be hard-pushed for a more compelling and megaton-heavy hour’s entertainment. The lead single, Forced Gender Reassignment, has got some nice groove, with some well-paced blasting and quick, jaunty riffing that shows how unflinchingly unconventional the band are in their approach to writing. The slam at the end is a head-bobber, and bringing the band up is a good way to either weird someone out or seem incredibly cool, depending on who you’re chatting to. Chances are its the former.

Elena Siegman and Kevin Sherwood – The One
One of the things that Treyarch’s Call of Duty games did right was the zombies mode, and one of the thing that did very right was the soundtrack (right up until they replaced Elena with Avenged Sevenfold and then just got rid of her, anyway). “The One” is a haunting track with some creepy whispered vocals and an ending that stirs a strange mix of feelings with its heavy, atonal guitar riffs that fade away into nothing.

Ulver – Silence Teaches You How To Sing, Part II
The term ‘experimental’ was made for the band Ulver. Norwegian in origin, the band have gone deep and far in their exploration of noise and music, and some of the results, like this little ditty, have been incredible, as well as distinctly alarming. Utterly beautiful, and completely and totally terrifying.

The Birthday Massacre – Blue
A great track which combines heavy guitars, creepy gothic synth and two very different styles of musical delivery. Chibi’s vocals fluctuate between a girly, singsong lilt to a rasping growl, contrasting brilliantly against each other. The music video is creepy as balls too, and contains a hefty amount of mind-screw into the bargain.

Stalaggh – :Projekt Misanthropia:
Gotta end on something mental, am I right? How about the sound of a load of people from a mental asylum just screaming endlessly in a church in a surreal form of primal scream therapy? I’m not kidding. This is best heard with no further description, and googled afterwards.

What would be on your Halloween playlist? And what are you dressing as? Let us know in the comments! And Happy Halloween!

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