As American society continues its slide into a tribalistic dystopia, we’ve grown increasingly enthusiastic about Halloween. I’m not saying there’s a link between sociopolitical polarization and the intense, bewildering need to buy a 12-foot skeleton from Home Depot; but if there’s one thing Americans can agree on in 2022, it’s 1) the other side is wrong about everything, and 2) we need more Halloween decorations, stat.
My personal theory is that we just want to have one long, three-month holiday season, a full quarter of the year devoted to anticipation of something magical or fun or at least distracting. Given the past six years, I 100% understand.
This growing enthusiasm for Halloween carries over into music, of course. While Christmas remains the undisputed champion of all holiday music, those songs tend to be sentimental or schmaltzy. Halloween music tends to be campy and silly, probably because of the trail blazed by “Monster Mash” 60 years ago.
Not all of it, of course. Even a cursory look through Bandcamp turns up dreadfully serious stuff like by the end of tonight, i’ll be gone by mopey British artist aehnt, featuring this cover art:
There are four volumes of “orchestral vampire music” called Lament of the Vampires by a group called Heretic Orchestra. Each volume is like 18 tracks—I defy you to find more vampire lamenting this Halloween season!
Heretic Orchestra hails from Croatia, which is only a 12-hour drive from the Transylvania region of Romania, and surely faster if you can fly. Bat!
Obviously this is a special time of year for Band Name Bureau’s favorite trying-too-hard genres of black metal, death metal, and grindcore. On Halloween a few years ago, Maryland’s Cryptic Sludge—bio: “Death is near”—released Where Corpses Rot Forever, a three-song romp featuring “Necrotic Stench of Cadaveric Secretion,” “Rotting Corpses Float in Pools of Vomit,” and “Death is Your Only Escape.” Boris Pickett himself couldn’t have said it better!
(Naturally, you can find Cryptic Sludge at crypticsludge420666.bandcamp.com.)
You don’t have to talk about corpse secretions to take Halloween seriously. Why not go the fantasy route and, say, name your band Sprites of the Wood and release an album called Goblin Sorcery the day before Halloween?
“This album is a reflexion of the mischievous and perilous goblins found in The Dark Dungeon,” say the album notes.
That’s all fine, but Sprites of the Wood’s Bandcamp profile pic may cross over with Eyes Wide Shut and haunt my dreams:
Though honestly that nose has me thinking more about Gonzo from the Muppets.
Some bands straddle the line between serious and goofy, like self-described “funeral band” Cadaver Club, who look like this…
…and release albums like A Fate Worse Than Life with songs like “Vampires Ain’t What They Used to Be.”
Actually, with Cadaver Club, it’s less about straddling the line between serious and goofy than opting for something simpler: fun. Their songs owe a whole lot to Misfits and early AFI, which means they’re hooky sing-along punk about dark stuff.
Speaking of fun, there’s the song “8 Legged Asshole” by Texas group Occult Character.
I was cleaning out my closet
it had gotten pretty bad
junk piled high with dust and cobwebs
I stuck in the swifter and gave it a pass
but what I saw then made me poop my pants
What was it?
it was an 8 legged asshole from hell
he lept on me and I fell
rolling on the ground i yelled
get this spider off me please help!
The last couple lines rhyme “dessicated” with “underated” [sic x2], which feels like a bit of a stretch, but that suits the song’s warbliness.
Bandcamp also boasts an endless number of Halloween-themed compilations, such as Allehelgensaften from Brown Bear Records, straight out of the Chicago suburbs. These kinds of compilations are gold mines for Band Name Bureau.
For example, Allehelgensaften features tracks by Beelzebukkake, Cocaine Zombis, Friskie Morris & Friends, P. Pilate and the Nailers, Ronald McFrostbitten, Obsesionado Con el Asbesto, and the obvious-but-still Naughty By Nurture. I’m partial to “Dry Humping in a Haunted House” by Sniff Test and Davey Dynamite’s “I Really Love Ghosts But I’m Really Fucking Scared of Them.”
That’s the kind of holiday spirit I can get behind.
POST-SCRIPTS
Bandcamp is a treasure trove. Not a fit for BNB, but fun regardless, is this comp called That Spooky Rag II, from Indianapolis’ Angel Lobotomy Records. It collects Halloween-themed songs from the 1910s and 1920s, which just goes to show Halloween music didn’t start in 1962.
BNB pals Middle Aged Queers have a new album, Shout at the Hetero—and as usual, their merch game is on point: