BLESS ME, DARK FATHER
This week’s mix is all about being spooky. Hope you had a wonderful Samhain. I’m going to avoid speaking about the real horrors that await us Tuesday night (and possibly the weeks/years that follow). Just remember it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s going to get weird before this nightmare ends.
AFI - Fall Children
Rob Zombie - Dragula
21 Savage, Offset & Metro Boomin - Ghostface Killers (Feat. Travis Scott)
Alkaline Trio - Hell Yes
Gerard Way - Baby You’re a Haunted House
clipping. - Say The Name
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - John Carpenter’s Halloween
The Misfits - Halloween
Phoebe Bridgers - Halloween
Metallica - Enter Sandman
It was important to kick off this playlist with “Fall Children” because of the sheer drama. AFI were the kind of band that had a genuine mystique even if half their 90s schtick was being The Misfits but *faster.* But they always delivered—slightly more metallic than their peers while benefitting from Davey Havok’s macabre romanticism. Though they eventually settled into a glam by way of post-punk malaise after Decemberunderground, “Fall Children” is an electric salvo and one of the capstones of the band’s Nitro era, full of churning drumming and slashing guitars as Havok gathers the coven. If this doesn’t get you pumped for witchy stuff, I don’t know what will.
Name all the other songs about demon cars. Go on, I’ll wait. And even if you compile the list, they aren’t as badass as “Dragula.” Rob Zombie’s take on death disco is too much fun, a Frankenstein’s monster of free wheeling electronics and growling guitars. Every time I hear this song I want to punch through a wall. Make it the national anthem.
There’s a fog of war than hangs over “Ghostface Killers,” a slow creeping phantasm against the distant church bell samples, deep 808s, and relentless murder raps. Offset and Travis Scott trade lines over the coldness of street justice while 21 Savage is just there (rapping about pasta, which is fine, but it’s not scary). I included this song because Offset and Travis Scott channel a particular brand of confidence about killing that is terrifying. It’s all theater, of course, but with music this rich and dark you could get lost in it.
The push and pull from Matt Skiba and Dan Adriano is what makes Alkaline Trio exciting, but sometimes, you need a Matt song about the Devil where the guitars sound like rusted furnaces. Hell yes.
I almost included a My Chemical Romance song here but “Baby You’re a Haunted House” is one that I can only bust out during spooky season. One of the more underrated aspects of Gerard Way’s song writing is how he’s able to channel the veneer of wholesomeness into something twisted. This is essentially a 50s power pop sugar rush until you realize Way is probably in love with a ghost, or at the very least, someone who isn’t alive. The fuzz though…those tones are thicc.
I know I just featured clipping. but the robotic refrain of “Candlesticks in the dark / Visions of bodies being burned,” was too perfect to pass up. While most beat makers are pushing a maximalist agenda, clipping.’s minimalist approach gives a foreboding edge to these open spaces. The nightmare shifts perspectives multiple times throughout the song’s running time but what interesting is that the music doesn’t need to do much to leave an impact. For a group that loves to play with noise, clipping. never comes across harsh, or abrasive, but it’s blood chilling all the same.
I remember being terrified of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme music when I was a kid. Back when commercials were a thing, I remember the hype in October for Halloween movie marathons, which typically amounted to large blocks of time reserved for films 1 through 4, and occasionally that strange one with LL Cool J. This is a very long way of saying that the theme music was always present at our house in October, and the busy keyboard line made quite an impression on me as I watched Michael Myers mess people up. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross remain faithful to the original score (because it’s certainly not broken) but their rendition is twitchier and dryer by comparison, even with the big synth stabs. There’s also a gauzy haze that floats through the electronics, right before swirling back with an almost ravey big beat. I guess it’s true what they say—evil never dies, it just gets remixed.
You could really put any Misfits song here (I almost picked “Skulls”) because all their skeleton-fueled, b-movie sci-fi stories are Halloween-ready. I had to go with the OG though, a disgusting display of strangled distortion and twisted images. The “candy apples and razorblades” line always struck me as the perfect way to think about Halloween—innocence masking terror, all of it as insane as Glenn Danzig’s Elvis from Hell vibe.
And again, I know I included the same Phoebe Bridgers song in a previous list but it’s perfect. We can be anything.
Back when I was just getting into music, somebody burned me a CD copy of Metallica (The Black Album). I remember exactly where I was when I pressed play on “Enter Sandman,” walking in the middle of Golden Gate Park on a sunny day, the very center of my being, shook. It was an experience I will never forget. The main riff is beyond iconic, building from haunting acoustics and exploding into to charging, demonic sleaze. And the chorus, maybe the most famous in metal history, features James Hetfield growling “Exit light, enter night” from his futuristic death dungeon. I couldn’t believe there was a song that could sound this grim, this evil. I firmly believe that metal, as a genre, is about exploring power—what it feels like and who exploits it. Listening to “Enter Sandman” some 15 years later, it still inspires the same sense of dread, that something you can’t control will take your very personhood, simply because it can. All you have to do is take its hand and you’re off to Never Never Land.
Originally published November 1, 2020 as part of Hella Vibes.