Some scare-tacular listening for All Hallow's Eve 2014

Even though I'm focusing on my movie blog right now, I had to come back with some scary albums for Halloween. Some of these are actually kind of frightening, but most are just silly. They're all out of the Obscuro! radio program vaults, from my numerous Halloween theme shows.


1. Anton LaVey - 'Strange Music' EP

The founder of the Satanic Church (and author of the Satanic Bible) is also, hilariously, fairly proficient on the pipe organ. He has another album of mostly instrumental stuff called 'The Devil Takes a Holiday,' and it's pretty funny to me that this dude obviously can poke fun at himself. Anyhow, the majority of these tunes are his versions on old standards (i.e. 'Gloomy Sunday.') It's not great, but it's totally the type of thing you can throw on at a Halloween party.


2. Lucifer - 'Black Mass'

Electronic music pioneer Mort Garson did this album under the Satanic pseudonym, presumably because it's darker music than his other stuff. If you like the horror-movie synth soundtracks of the 80's, or the library music stuff I've posted here, you'll probably dig this. I did feature it in a previous Halloween post, but the blog I linked to for a download is apparently long-gone, so I re-uploaded it myself.


3. The Elm Street Group - 'Freddy's Greatest Hits'

Of all the dumbed-down horror movie merchandise to come out of the 80's ('Toxic Crusaders,' anyone?) this might take the cake for stupidest. Some no-name studio musicians concocted these run-of-the-mill synth-pop tunes (many of which are covers of 50's and 60's novelty songs) and somehow got Robert Englund (aka Freddy Krueger) to lend his voice to them. It's all pretty bad, but 'Do The Freddy' at least has novelty appeal. I guess by '87, the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' franchise was pretty much a joke anyways.


4. Moevot - 'Ézléýfbdréhtr Vépréùb Zùérfl Màzàgvàtre Érbbédréà'

Okay, THIS is genuinely scary. An anonymous 'black metal' musician, whose music sounds more like recordings from inside a long-buried tomb than actual metal. I guess it's not to dissimilar from the ambient tracks on Burzum albums, just....way more poorly recorded. And it's got these weird groaning vocals that sound like a ghost. I dunno. It's fascinating, if nothing else.


Happy Halloween, y'all....

2 classics of 'incredibly strange metal'

Here are a couple relics from my days as a metal radio guy. Hopefully I will put some other stuff like this up here in the near future.

First up, an experimental death metal band from Italy called Trifixion. Apparently they only put out this one album, in 1995, although there is at least one other band with the same name.

It's way more varied than pretty much any other death metal release out there...atmospheric keyboard passages lead to psych-rock jams, which lead to trebly black metal guitar and psychotic screaming. I'm not really sure what kind of audience these guys were going for, and maybe that's why they only did one album.

I guess some of the experimentation could be called similar to Voivod (my favorite metal band) but basically if those guys were death/black metal instead of thrash. It isn't particularly well-recorded, but all the musicians are super-talented so you never really notice. The artwork is fairly creepy, too. Probably more out there than most experimental metal fans can tolerate, but outsider/weirdo music appreciators will dig this.

Trifixion - 'Abschurfungepoch'

Tracklist:

1. Fear, Is All That I See
2. Col Heaven
3. Litanie
4. World Called Truth
5. Immortal
6. You Breed
7. Abschurfungepoch

DL

Next is a release that isn't nearly as challenging or intelligent. Actually, it's not intelligent at ALL. You may remember me posting about Killer Fox and the awful Metal Enterprises label. Click that link, please, so I don't have to recap.

This is another outing from the producers of the second Killer Fox album, and it's just as awful, if not more so. There are some very distinct (and completely out-of-place) reggae influences, and it also has the WORST Beatles cover I've ever heard. The female vocalist who is present on the Thrash Queen album is on this quite a bit. Also, it seems like they included some demos by the original Godzilla band, as if the album wasn't inconsistent enough already. Just terrible, stupid, and entertaining.

Godzilla - 'II'

Tracklist:

1. Ingoz
2. Helter Skelter
3. Ass of the Prophet
4. I Followed the Zombie
5. Cinderella Rockefella
6. Halfbreed
7. Killing Joke
8. Foul
9. Outgoz

DL

Striborg - 'Embittered Darkness'

A few whiffens past, I posted a mixtape that pretty prominently featured some of the metal stuff I was getting into (and subsequently playing on Forte.) I did you all an injustice by not posting this entire album then, so I'm doing it now.

If you aren't too familiar with the black metal genre, it's pretty cool. I got into Burzum in high school, then inevitably saw the 'Until the Light Takes Us' film and started listening to other shit. Hipsters have been kind of ruining it lately (what with 'blackgaze' n' all...c'mon guys...does EVERYTHING need a stupid fucking label? It's basically people who like the idea of metal but still have this stigma of it being lame and shit, so they don't really respect it and try to make it like My Bloody Valentine.) but there's still a lot of interesting shit coming out.

Striborg is apparently all one dude, and he's from Tasmania. I heard he lives in the woods like a hermit, but I'm not sure if that's legit. It might as well be. This, to me, is a really good introduction to black metal...it's not quite as 'evil' or whatever as Beherit...definitely stranger than Burzum, but not sissy or French enough for hipster kids to dig it. Actually, it's kinda scary. This fella sounds much more likely to cut some fuckers up than Varg on record.

The music is pretty lo-fi, which is common in the genre, but it's got this weird, organic, but somewhat hollow feeling...I dunno...I listened to it while walking around in the woods (like you're supposed to) and I was feeling it for about half the record, then got too creeped out and went home.

Tracklist:

1. Protagonist of Misanthropic Virtues
2. Wrapped in a Cocoon out of Harm's Way
3. Race of Apathy
4. In the Eerie Pre-Dawn Silence of the Cold
5. Embittered Darkness
6. Digging a Ditch to Die In

NOTE: The actual CD version of this includes the 'Isle De Morts' EP, which isn't as impressive at all. Really kind of subpar traditional black metal. Sorry if you're a completist, but that's the world of free music sharing. I liked his album 'Perceiving the World with Hate' much better than the 'Isle' EP...more similar to this stuff.

DOWNLOAD