Halloween Playlist

It's Halloween! What am I listening to today, hmm?

NECROVORE: UNRELEASED EVIL
To start things off today, I picked Necrovore. Not a terribly frightening band or album, although it is extremely aggressive, powerful, and deals with death and the occult. Necrovore is the original Texas black metal band and has influenced countless other bands, including Thornspawn, Averse Sefira, Absu, and other gritty, dirty sounding bands from the state. The band also had a huge influence on the development of death metal and American black metal. Not bad for a band that only released one demo made up of four songs. This is a potentially unofficial bootleg of that demo and the band's rare recordings and live performance.

DANZIG: THRALL-DEMONSWEATLIVE
In my car, I have the EP from Danzig playing. Danzig has always been one of my favorite more ghoulish metal acts. The occultism in his lyrics is clear and the music is dark and forbidding. This EP featured the live version of "Mother" which turned out to be Danzig's biggest hit in mainstream music. It's not his best song, but it definitely won over a ton of fans. Many of whom remain fans today. Unfortunately, Danzig was never really able to match that success again and his music has declined a bit since his first three albums.

GWAR: RAGNAROK
Metal's ultimate costumed fiends. Gwar has built up quite a story behind their stage show and characters. The band even features frequent celebrity "executions" on stage, including Paris Hilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The band seldomly appears in public out of character. Good stuff.

MERCYFUL FATE: MELISSA
I had to get this one in, it had been awhile since I have had a chance to listen to it and it is one of the ultimate scary albums to listen to this time of year. I've written about it earlier this week, so I will refrain from going much further into it.

DANZIG II: LUCIFUGE
Again with Danzig. As mentioned earlier, this is pretty much perfect music for Halloween. Dark sounding with Danzig's trademarked vocals which sound like a demented, evil Elvis or Jim Morrison. Plus the occult lyrics fit in well.

FORCE OF EVIL: BLACK EMPIRE
This was discussed at length on Sunday. The horror movie references are too much to pass up.

MAYHEM: DE MYSTERIIS DOM SATHANAS
This was also discussed last weekend in my post on frightening albums.

THORNAFIRE: VOREX DECONSTRUCCION
This one's new. Death metal the way it should fucking be. Thornafire is one of my favorite newer bands and they play old school death metal in the vein of Morbid Angel, Incantation, Immolation, and Death. The dark atmosphere and frightening album cover make this a must-play on Halloween.