As I've written before, the Halloween season is my favorite holiday season. And nothing gets you in the spirit better than some seasonal music!
I'm assuming you already own the essentials, which is to say Roky Erickson's The Evil One and one of the Misfits collections. If this is not the case, please stop reading this post and go obtain both things immediately.
I'd like to shine the spotlight on a couple of lesser-known purveyors of seasonal tunes today. So, without further ado, here's my list of
THREE REALLY GOOD HALLOWEENY ALBUMS:
First, Harley Poe. These Indiana lads are kind of the mutant love child of the Violent Femmes and the Misfits. They have many many good songs, but the album of theirs I like the best is the most recent one, entitled Wretched. Filthy. Ugly. It features songs about vampires, werewolves, and a sick one-eyed murderous ghoul who gets what he deserves. Here's their wonderfully nihilistic take on the zombie apocalypse entitled "It's Only the End of the World." (lyrics NSFW)
I'm also a big fan of Zombina and the Skeletones. They make melodic rock with a horror bent. My favorite of their records is Taste the Blood of Zombina and the Skeletones. It features songs like "You Can't Break a Dead Girl's Heart," "Horror High School," "Brain Dead," and this tale of the travails of being a zombie, entitled "Nobody Likes You When You're Dead." (lyrics NSFW)
Finally, we turn to Balzac. Not the French novelist, but, rather, the Japanese horror punk band. The album of theirs I enjoy the most is called Beyond the Darkness in English. I get the sense that Balzac's oeuvre has been somewhat sliced and diced for English language consumption, but, nevertheless, this is a great album featuring all kinds of heavy Misfits-inspired horror punk. Sure, I can't usually understand the words, but that's often true on Misfits tracks as well. I listened to this all the time while writing Terror at the Shore, which by the way is excellent and is available as an ebook on Kindle and Nook, and is coming soon to Kobo! Here they are in a live video with crappy sound and video but sounding punk rock as hell doing "The Day the Earth Caught Fire." (Lyrics probably SFW. Maybe. Actually I have no idea.)
