It’s Halloween! Enjoy loads of candy and good scares! Here are 15 songs perfect for your spooky night!
King Khan and the BBQ Show- Zombies
So, not all Halloween songs have to scary and make you want to ball up in your bed and hide from the monsters. King Khan and the BBQ show are masters of making fun of and turning anything into a comedy show. In this tune, the duo is singing about how they are just gonna say f**k it! and just go and walk with the zombies, because it’s just better than being alone. A short but sweet tune, it might just convince you to go and hang with the zombies tonight! Zombies are pretty cool. Once you get past the whole decaying thing…
The Kills- Superstition
Alison Mosshart is the most badass rocking babe and her voice in this song are truly in Halloween spirit. It’s creepy, majestic and completely spine chilling. The guitar in that song is stunningly graceful, and terrifying beautiful at the same time. A perfectly chilling Halloween song for all you punk kids going out tonight and getting into all kinds of nonsense.
Radiohead- A Wolf At The Door
There are plenty of Radiohead songs that are fairly creepy, but “A Wolf At The Door” seems most appropriate and quite possibly the most grotesque song on this occasion. Thom Yorke calmly sings, “Knives you in the neck/Kicks you in the teeth.” York sporadically throughout the songs goes much higher and it makes it sound like he is a mad man trying to escape from something, but in the end he can’t…DUN DUN DUN!
Dead Kennedys-Halloween
The first thing that happens with this song is that you get punched in the face with a bass line, and moments after you get one more punch by Jello Biafra’s voice. Of course with Dead Kennedys you get a little side of philosophy and the song discusses how Halloween in a sense is fake, and that by putting on these masks and costumes is the only time we will actually admit to putting on an “act.” Philosophy aside. This has been one of my favorite Halloween songs for many years and now, and I’m glad I can share it with all you punks out there!
The Flaming Lips- Halloween On The Barbary Coast
This tune is truly mind boggling and the guitars in the very beginning will make every single hair on your skin raise. Wayne Coyne’s crooning voice is very befitting when it comes to Halloween songs. It’s soft and nurturing, but there’s a little tinge of something scary there. The song talks about all the “weirdos” that come out on Halloween and embraces them and welcomes them into the riffs and grooves.
The Danse Society – There’s No Shame in Death
The creepy chants in prayer within the opening bars of portend the terror that lied ahead in the British Post Punks’ sprawling 1981 track. A doomed bassline and drum beat waltz through a veritable wall of chilling synth noises and echoes throughout until the pace picks up and you can feel the haunted energy as Stockhausen-esque musique concrete guised as post-punk sweeps through the despair-ridden sonics of this immeasurably evil tune. Listening through will make you want to sleep with the lights on, or surrender to darkness.
Bauhaus – Double Dare
Peter Murphy is the boogeyman or at least the goth version. This terrifying cut from Bauhaus’ seminal debut, In the Flat Field, really crawls up your spine, which you can easily say about their classic single “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” or the equally haunting “Stigmata Martyr” but “Double Dare” really gets under your skin with its simplicity: just a bass, guitar feedback, drums and an ever harrowing Peter Murphy. Whether it’s the distorted bass guitar crunching with every downstroke or Murphy at his most mercurial, this song will scare the s**t out of you when the instrumental tears itself apart and the only thing that rings in your ears is Murphy’s animalistic shrieks. No self-respecting child of night can’t start their All Hallows Eve without playing a great Bauhaus record.
Misfits – Halloween II
What is Halloween without the Misfits? A Halloween not worth having. At a time when meathead hardcore reigned supreme, these New Jersey meatheads carved out their own unique brand of punk, horror punk that is! The Danzig era of Misfits had true reverence to the B horror movies they grew up on, transforming the spooky tales of ghouls and goblins into four-chord wonders. But the sequel track to their classic “Halloween” takes things into a whole darker realm, slowed down and here Danzig is using his best Latin to read off chilling imprecations to the creatures of the night. Punk legends waxing Necronomicon will be perfect for any planned grave dancing this fine Halloween.
Rudimentary Peni – Rotten To The Core
The progenitors of death rock, a subgenre of punk that revels in the macabre, abandoned the anarcho-punk of their earlier releases for the more nefarious songs in their 1983 debut album Death Church. The eerie distorted guitar at the beginning of “Rotten To The Core” alone is emblematic of Nick Blinko’s penchant for menacing riffs, the instrumental suggests horror movie but the ever enigmatic Blinko’s lyrics are really an incendiary diatribe on John Lydon and Joe Strummer only being rapacious rock stars who happily fed lies to their fans, “these rockstars deal in money, not truth,” Blinko sneers, very potent words in a very diabolical track.
Behemoth – Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel
You know you’re doomed when the guitars come in on this insanely brutal track from the Polish metal legends critically acclaimed LP, The Satanist. Pure evil lies in Adam Darski’s lyrics, “nations fall prey, hail my return” Darski (widely known as Nergal, like the Babylonian deity, get it??) channels the antichrist in this fusillade of blast beats, guitars tearing through any shred of good within you. Behemoth’s brand of death metal feels akin to a theater play, a tale of mortality, fall of the civilized world and leviathan bringing armageddon, all of that fun stuff. Just because this is metal doesn’t make it scary, the aesthetic and lyricism is what really gets you, to paraphrase Dante, abandon all hope… ye who enter here.
Ethan Goodman
Nouvelle Vague – Bela Lugosi’s Dead:
Making a career out of bossa nova covers of classic 80’s tunes, Nouvelle Vague strike gold with their vibey rendition of the Bauhaus classic, which celebrates the morbid life of film’s classic Dracula, AKA Bela Lugosi. It’s perfect for dark skies, pumpkins, and creeping shadows.
Death of the Neighborhood – The Murd’ring Started Early:
In 2008, 90’s oddball Babybird (Stephen Jones) made a mad turn into dark, experimental grooves with this Death of the Neighborhood project, releasing a 32-track double disk crammed with all sorts of insanity ranging from gentle ambiance, electro grooves, and this track right here. His simple lines of “I’ve been drowning puppies” and “what do you want to be when you grow up?” is more than enough to give a sane person a nightmare.
Radiohead – Climbing Up The Walls:
With OK Computer, Radiohead blew listeners away with hard rockers (Airbag and Paranoid Android) and modern pop classics (Karma Police, Let Down, No Surprises), one of the biggest trademarks of the record were the creepy atmospherics and the spine-tingling textures. Reportedly inspired by Thom Yorke’s time working in an insane asylum, the lines in “Climbing Up The Walls” “Anywhere you turn/I’ll be there/Open up your skull/I’ll be there” are enough to give anyone chills.
Gravediggaz – Diary of a Madman
Horrorcore supergroup Gravediggaz takes their production know-how and dark grooves to weave the tale of possession and murder. When you need your Halloween to get heavy, it’s best to turn to Gravediggaz.
The Cramps – I Was A Teenage Werewolf:
Equal parts kitsch and cool, The Cramps inhabit a swampy twilight of washed out rockabilly guitars and classic horror movie imagery, making the ultimate in cool for when the whiskey makes your party go a little slow motion.