Each Friday in October, Giant Electric Penguin will bring you a selection of Horror, Horror-friendly, and Horrible music fit for listening to during this, the 31 Days of Horror.
Outcast "Dracula's Wedding"
Andre 3000's 2003 funky solo record (basically) was pretty uneven, and so is this song, but it's funky and funny and mentions peanut butter (and jelly) sandwiches which just HAS to be a reference to the Amazing Mumford, who isn't even a vampire or anything. It just HAS to be. And if it is, it's so dumb it's awesome.
Donovan "Season of the Witch"
"Season of the Witch" isn't really scary in itself, but in George A. Romero's 1973 film of the same name, it becomes more appropriate. I mean, witches paying for their witchy ingredients with credit cards, people staring at each other through nic nacs, and people speaking Italian are damn scary in my book. Damn scary.
Warren Zevon "Werewolves of London"
Another "classic" Halloween song that's really not traditionally scary. Look, I don't know what this song is really about. I mean it's about impeccably dressed werewolves ordering Chinese food, drinking pina colladas, and ripping out lungs, and that's not really all that scary, but there's something about the song that's really creepy. I just don't know exactly what it is. Maybe it's the gleeful admiration the narrator seems to have for the titular werewolves--the way Zevon warns Jim that the werewolf will rip his lungs out, but then confesses he'd like to meet his tailor. Or maybe I'm just reacting to that damn Kid Rock song that samples the opening riff.
And speaking of Kid Rock, "All Summer Long" would be a good candidate for this list as well if only for its horrible mutilation of concepts like rhyme and metaphor. Take a line like "Nothing seems as strange as when the leaves begin to change" for example. Or how about the following horrifying non sequitur: "We didn't have no internet, but, man, I never will forget the way the moonlight shined upon her hair." Chilling.
45 Grave "Evil"
45 Grave were one of those bands that did everything they could to shock the "normals." I mean, their singer adopted the name Dinah Cancer for crap's sake; how much more over the top can you get? That being said, this song isn't that bad, and we are talking about Halloween music after all, so here you go. I could have chosen several other songs from 45 Grave (or any one of a number of other early deathrock bands for that matter), but I chose this one because I love--LOVE--how the announcer introduces this song as "music that Christians don't have to play backwards," referencing how some Christians tend to read evil messages into the incoherent noise of records played backwards. But the lyrics to this song are actually pretty (and by "pretty" I mean almost completely) benign. So she thinks some dude's evil. So what? I could see singing this song in youth group and saying it was directed towards Satan. The backwards masked messages crazy Christians jizz all over are more in the vein of "Master Satan," "We love Satan," and "Some of us smoke marijuana." So there you go.
Carman "Satan Bite the Dust"
Carman? Again? Well, you might as well get used to a Carman song on every one of these things. In this episode Carman gets his Halloween costume jones on again by challenging a saloon full of evil demons that look they were designed by Disney's Imagineering department. Did you think alcoholism was a disease? Nope. It's a demon. What about infirmity? I mean, that has to be a disease right? Or at least a sickness? Or sickness in general? Nope. Demon. And Carman kills 'em all with the power of the word or something…and bullets. My only question is why does he have to sing to him before he kills him? I mean, I see exercising restraint on human perps, but when your enemy is PURE EVIL, why not just shoot him right away? Why wait until he tries something? Also, this song is awesome if only because it includes a reference to the score of every classic Western you can possible think of.
