The Community
ROCK AND ROLL! => All Them Other Guys => Topic started by: Zzzptm on January 29, 2025, 01:39:36 PM
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... horror songs! That's what this list is about!
My first offering...
Anthrax - A.D.I. / The Horror of It All
Always nice to dig up a live version of a classic track, hope you enjoy!
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That's a great track!
Number one out of the gate for me is Nosferatu by Blue Oyster Cult.
So much atmosphere in this song, you'd almost think it was a musical documentary!
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I may pick more than one track by some groups.
Pick number 1.... RATS!!
Jello Biafra and NoMeansNo - Chew
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I'm gonna kick things off with Jon Oliva's Pain and a song called FESTIVAL
This is about a nightmare Jon saw while writing the album about a fairground run by monsters and ghouls and all sorts of nasty things.
The guitar riff in this one is one of the weirdest ones I've ever heard and it fits the song perfectly!
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I am going to have to start playing the songs from this thread later in the day. I now have the strangest morning vibe... yeeeks!
But I'll still put in my second entry.
The "Freebird" of Goth Rock, as one comment noted: Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus.
And, yes, the singer is suspended bat-like for nine minutes and delivers an amazing performance.
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Love that song by Bauhaus
Pick No. 2 Let's go with a little more goth...
The Damned - Twisted Nerve
It's the first Damned choice, I will do another at some point. Taken from the 1980s Black Album. Haunting and atmospheric.
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No. 2:
Green Hell by the Misfits.
No doubt Glenn made bank when Metallica covered this song!
Twisted Nerve is one of the creepiest tunes.
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My second pick comes from the godfather of Horror rock mr. ALICE COOPER himself....
This is the final song on his fantastic Serial Killer concept Album ALONG CAME A SPIDER which tells the story of a serial killer who kills and dismembers people to make a human spider.
My favourite tune from the album and over all this ranks pretty damn high on my all time favourite Alice Cooper tunes!
I reserve the option to do another one from Alice as well he IS the master of Horror!
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Chilling stuff!
My day three offering is a hymn of agony...
Motorhead - Orgasmatron
Horror need not be a matter of imagination or conjecture. It can be that which confronts us, the pervasive evil we have little choice but to live through.
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No. 3:
Damien by non other than those chilly planet dudes, Iced Earth!
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Didn't even consider Orgasmatron....
Thankfully Horror Show has several songs that can make my list...Damian was one of them but I can adjust. :)
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Damian was the obvious choice from Horror Show, I'll need to remind myself what else was good, it was a little patchy if I remember.
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Pick Number 3
Metallica - Creeping Death
I don't think I need to say anything about this song... it's a top 3 Metallica song for me.
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Out on a date, at a stop light. Someone pulls up next to us and Creeping Death is playing. Light changes and we leave. My date states that she wished the light stayed red longer because she loves that song and asks if I have that Metallica tape. Why, yes, yes I do. She digs it out of the glove box and we listen to it.
I married her.
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I too was considering Creeping Death but it didn't quite make the list...glad it made the thread after all!
My 3rd pick's gonna come from another Big 4 band.
This is from the album Endgame by Megadeth and it's about a rather horrific torture device from the middle ages.
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For my fourth pick, come with me back to the 1950s for one of the scariest damn songs I know...
Chuck Berry - "Down Bound Train"
The rockabilly rhythm, stripped back sound, minor key, lyrics, it's all metal, decades before the genre existed.
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Number 4:
Judas Priest singing about the Night Crawler. And nope, not the kind you pay to spend time with...
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Bugger... crosses JPs Night Crawler off my list! ;)
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Pick number 4
Black Sabbath - Buried Alive
A vastly underrated song by the boys. Probably another act that might get a second pick.
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Oh I had completely forgotten about Night Crawler! Good thing it got onto the list.
For my number 4 I'll venture to the Horrow Show album with my favourite track...Honestly though Tim sung this song to perfection but I could not find a good quality version of it so gotta go with Matt's studio version.
This is about DRACULA
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Number 5:
Been waiting for someone to scoop this up, but I can't wait any longer.
Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath
First time I heard this was on vinyl, and I was blown away, right out the damn window and into the street.
Guaranteed to bring the spooky feeling regardless of time of day or locale!
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I have been purpously avoiding Sabbath tunes on these ones as much as possible...trying to maybe bring some song that not everyone is super familiar with.. :)
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Yeah, I was too, but that one is just too much of a ringer.
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Pick Number 5... and some post apocalypse musings...
Megadeth - Dawn Patrol
Too short in my opinion, it's always been a favourite of mine!
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^^ Didn't even think about that one! Love that little song!
For my 5th pick I'll go with the other horror rock legend, mr ROB ZOMBIE and this one comes from the SUBERB Hellbilly Deluxe 2 album and it's about the diabolical plans of Hitler to create an army of super women...WEREWOLF WOMEN OF THE SS!
And this goes with a movie trailer:
Sadly there wasn't an actual movie to go along with it...
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My pick #5 is Deadbolt's "Last Time I Saw Cole". This one's chilling in the portrait it paints of Cole... lots left unsaid, making it that much more haunting of a tale...
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No 6:
Hopefully Cole didn't run into Grandma as described by King Diamond in his tune Welcome Home!
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For pick number 6... lets head off to a WWII death camp...
Foetus - Enter the Exterminator
A sparse, percussive song for the most part, it picks up after a while and even goes into a piece of Peer Gynt's In the Hall of the Mountain King. It's not a song to "love".
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For my #6 let's talk about VAMPIRES again!
As Slayer very well knows AT DAWN THEY SLEEP!
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Some things make us think of horror... other songs *are* horror!!!
Steve Martin - "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"
Because Martin can't sing, he delivers it as a "patter song", which makes it even worse. :smug:
Just to think that it will get you wanting to listen to Slayer or even King Diamond to get the tune out of your system, yes, I *know* this one's a true horror classic!
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Now for a proper rock horror song...
Metallica - "Trapped Under Ice"
Dude. It's about being trapped. Under ice. Dude!
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Pick number 7. My list would not be complete without a Hawkwind track...
Hawkwind - Angels of Death
I had hoped to include Virgin of the World as the first part of a 1:2 punch. They are adjacent to each other and run into each other... that song deals with being "undead"! Anyway I can;t find YT video which combines the two.
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No 7:
Cthulhu Dawn by Cradle of Filth. Really, though, the entire Midian album would fit this list.
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My 7th will be about horror that can come upon sailors if they venture near the wrong island.
This is from the very first SAVATAGE album, that was called SIRENS and the song...oddly enough is also called SIRENS!
There's quite a lot going on for such a short song...with a lot of tempo changes and soft vs hard parts. Love it!
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Heading back to the mid-80s and METAL CHURCH... "Watch the Children Pray"
Chilling song that gives me the chills every dang time I listen to it
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Pick number 8
Iced Earth - The Phantom Opera Ghost
3rd song - so far - on this list from IEs Horror Show. I was thinking about Maiden's similarly themed song but then listened to this again and realised it's pretty much as good as the other two songs we've had earlier. This song has co-lead vocals by Yunhui Percifield as "Christine"!
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No 8:
Horrorscope from Overkill.
I had stopped paying attention to these guys for a while when they came out with the album from which this song comes from (and is named for). Decided to give them a listen since I heard they had a new guitar lineup going on.
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For my 8th pick it's all about ZOMBIES!
And Anthrax knows as well as anybody that you need to FIGHT 'EM TIL' YOU CAN'T!
I'm throwing in this killer live version from Wacken few years back!
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Love the live stuff...
My 8 is Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Spellbound"
Pure 1981 Goth Rock. Heavy and aggressive and ample clues that things aren't right in the upstairs bedrooms...
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My No 9 may not qualify. No doubt it fits the rules, but I cannot find a vid of this thing. I guess Glenn Danzig really doesn't want it online anywhere.
Anyway, the second song from Samhain's first LP Initium is called Black Dream. I can't pipe the tunes from my home to this messageboard, but here are the lyrics:
Murder, all guts, all fun
All murder, all guts, all fun
A kick in the head, a gouged out eye
Your intestines explode and your eyeballs pop
And the taste of your blood will drive me on
You see I get what I want, and I want when you bleed
'Cause the things I can cause have the seal of the dead
In humanity's fading glow
All murder, all guts, all fun
Whose little arms encircle me to make me think of love
Whose supple body aims to be a limbless bloody stump
Do you, do you, do you realize
That I like this thing I am
All murder, all guts, all fun
Because I like when chests are torn apart
The way that heads come off
And the way that art starts to imitate life
At the end of a gun
At the edge of a knife
And all murder, all guts, all fun
Go
Whose little arms encircle me to make me think of love
Whose supple body aims to be a limbless bloody stump
Do you, do you, do you realize
That I like this thing I am, come on I'll kill you
All murder, all guts, all fun (x8)
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^^^
I had something like that on an earlier thread, fortunately I had alternatives
Pick number 9 - what's the scariest time of the year!!!
Helloween - Halloween
Probably the only Helloween song I *really* like!
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My second to last one is another song from the master himself mr. ALICE COOPER!
I am and always have been arachnophobic....when I see a spider it needs to go...splat...squash...DEAD! So songs about spiders always create some special horror for me...and this is about one of the deadliest of them all...THE BLACK WIDOW!!
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The Damned performing "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" from A Night of a Thousand Vampires
Verrrrrrrrrrry disturbing, and it works well with how the lads have aged. Brilliant performance and stagecraft.
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No 10 on this cold Friday is compliments of the band Pentagram.
The song is When the Screams Come
It has a YouTube video, like 99% of music these days. Except Samhain, and the Paul Chain song I was going to post. Bastards.
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Pick number 10. And I changed my mind on what it is going to be. I was think of Wake the Dead by the Damned but instead I went with...
Wiseblood - 0-0 Where Evil Dwells
Technically this is a second pick from Foetus as it's JG Thirlwell in another of his personas! The song seems to suggest random murder perhaps in the name of satanism!
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My final pick will also be about Zombies! I like zombies!
This comes from the magnum opus of the swedish Power Metal legends HAMMERFALL and it's the opening track of the album Infected and it's called PATIENT ZERO
It's about the beginning of a Zombie virus outbreak from the point of view of the Patient Zero. Killer tune from a suberb album!
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I almost...ALMOST...dropped that Hamerfall song in place of my Samhain choice. But I'm stubborn.
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Well thank you for not doing that! Not sure what I would have chosen for my final one then! :D
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Time for my last pick for the topic, what shall I go for?
Two songs, most likely. :smug:
Slayer - Chemical Warfare (Live 1985)
When I think of mass murder, I think of clouds of mustard gas rolling over the trenches in France... toxins exploding over Kurdish villages... nerve agents working their way through the Basra marshes... I've read the stories of horror, from soldiers desperately clawing for their masks as they stop breathing in a panic reaction to the poisons around them. To me, this is a most terrifying song.
For the next one, a song about realizing the horror from within...
Black Sabbath Heaven and Hell - "Falling Off the Edge of the World" (Live)
Ronnie James Dio, what a legend. Able to reach so deep from within when he knew, as the lyrics mentioned, he was running out of time.
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Great choices there!
I don't think I would have even thought of Falling Off The Edge Of The World even had I been considering Sabbath tunes.... Solid pick there sir!
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It makes me realize that horror can come to us from many angles and the music itself is a means of coping.
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Indeed.
I'm gonna throw in a couple of extra mentions here.
Iced Earth - FRANKENSTEIN
Always loved the guitars in this one....the song itself isn't among the best ones but the guitar work here is great...and ofcourse one of those essential horror stories
Savatage - HOUNDS
I was kind of torn between this and Sirens but ended up going with Sirens...stellar guitar solo from Criss on this one about killer Hounds roaming the moors.
Rob Zombie - MEET THE CREEPER
Had I done another one from Rob this would be it...the riff is great and well it's not just about a creeper it's about THE creeper!
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Some honourables from me!
I didn't double up on any bands in the end. If I had I might have included:
The Damned - Wake the Dead
The story is they always heard of these songs that get played at funerals... so they thought they would write one!
Black Sabbath - Too Late
Meddle with things you don't understand...
Hawkwind - Virgin of the World
They're undead folks!! As stated earlier I would have included this with Angels of Death if I could find a video which reflected that they run into each other on the album.
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Somebody requested this for my show.
Won't play it for several reasons.
1. Recorded outside the time span my show deals with.
2. It's about a guy decapitating a lady he seems to live with on account of her complaints about hot dogs.
It's not his only song about decapitation, either... :twitch:
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Had never heard of the dude. Sounds like he either has a weird fetish or is trying to write a musical autobiography...or both!
What is the year range your show deals with, Z?
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1948-1964, Golden Age of Rock and Roll.
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1948-1964, Golden Age of Rock and Roll.
Awesome, I bet that's a lot of fun!
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Even more fun when I'm not typing a response on my phone. :)
It's great being able to trace all the elements that came together to make rock and roll and how that genre then went went on to merge into just about everything else. The power of the syncopated beat is not to be underrated!
Now, enforcing the rules is easy most of the time, but we occasionally get someone who's pissed off that we won't play the McGuire sisters because they're not rock'n'roll. "But they were big in the fifties! Don't you play fifties music???" We play rock and roll, Sally. :smug:
My favorite parts are discovering rarities and doing Rock and Roll Football, where I play two versions of the same song and score them like a football game. I like doing close matches, as the idea came to me when I was playing Beatles BBC sessions from 1963 and the original artists and it was like University of Alabama taking on Cupcake Tech... Beatles just didn't have good production on those recordings and, even on their LP releases, just lacked a certain something. When I played the Stones from the same timeframe, night and day. The Stones could stand up to the original artists and play a hard, close game almost every time, and that was way more fun. For this Saturday, I'll be doing Land of 1000 Dances, there's a few great versions to choose from, but I plan to pit one of those against Little Richard's re-hot version from 1968.