“Get Out” director Jordan Peele called music the only difference between comedy and horror. With Halloween right around the corner, The Daily Texan put together a list of five albums for the morbidly curious to check out this spooky season.
Dead Man’s Party – Oingo Boingo
In October 1985, Oingo Boingo gave their wonky style of new wave a Halloween-inspired makeover with an album full of costume party anthems. Dead Man’s Party gives the grim goth movement a comic foil, combining catchy grooves built for the dancefloor with allusions to Frankenstein and full moons. Lead vocalist Danny Elfman, who composed the scores for “Beetlejuice” and “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas,” reinforces the lighthearted tone with a ghoulish vibrato, singing “leave your body and soul at the door.”
6 Feet Under – Gravediggaz
Six Feet Under blends theatrics and violence into a gory satire with a slasher aesthetic. De La Soul’s Prince Paul and Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA share production duties, looping blood-curdling soundbites over fat drum breaks. On “1-800 Suicide,” the Gravediggaz recommend increasingly gruesome, and often cartoonish, methods of self-immolation before acting out a murder trial on “Diary of a Madman.” Six Feet Under, like an old low-budget horror film, crawls with nightmare fuel and crackles with lo-fi camp.
Seventeen Seconds – The Cure
Before charting with pop smashes like “Friday I’m in Love,” The Cure defined the gothic rock movement of the early 1980s with their medieval twist on post-punk. Seventeen Seconds kicks off the UK band’s black-haired, red-lipped era with a sound suited for a torchlit walk through a haunted castle. Frontman Robert Smith’s distant wails pair with heart-pounding progressions to conjure an atmosphere of doom and despair that screams Halloween.
Earth A.D. / “Wolfs Blood” – Misfits
Glenn Danzig and The Misfits made careers out of dressing in black and detuning their guitars. On their 1983 LP, New Jersey’s original princes of darkness thrash their way to one of punk rock’s most menacing releases. Just nine tracks and 14 minutes long, Earth A.D. billows with searing tempos and macabre symbols. “Wolf’s Blood” paints an uncomfortably intimate picture with a first-person perspective of a man’s metamorphosis into a werewolf, underscored by Danzig’s howling vocals. Simultaneously blistering and bleak, Earth A.D. portrays a hellish Halloween at the crossroads of horror and hysteria.
Portishead – Portishead
Coming out of England’s alternative scene in the early 1990s, Portishead pioneered trip-hop, a genre fusing dark jazz motifs with dusty hip-hop breakbeats. The trio’s 1997 self-titled sophomore release plunges into a more sinister sound than its predecessor, with grimy production prioritizing low-ends and tense guitar leads shrouded in feedback. Lead singer Beth Gibbons gives the project a shadowy allure, especially on sultry standouts like “Only You” and “All Mine.” Witchy vibes and a neo-noir aesthetic make this album a contemporary spooky season standard.
