Behold, the Flaming Pablum family jack'o'lantern, lovingly carved by yours truly. Nice, eh? It's it pity that he's already started to stink up the apartment. Oh well.
On this day in the past two years, I'd compiled lists of scary songs for Halloween. I'd fully planned on compiling a third list, but never got around to fully writing my extrapolations for each. Both of the previous lists (2006 and 2005) have been getting Googled like mad, so I figured I may as well cite my next ten choices. Seek them out and hear for yourself why I think they're scary. Some are more self-explanatory than others. Listen with the lights off.
10. "Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Donovan - I know the more obvious choice from Donovan is "Season of The Witch," but in the wake of this song's placement in a key scene in last year's "Zodiac," "Hurdy Gurdy Man" seems a thousand times creepier. Also check out the Butthole Surfers' cover of it from their 1991 album, Pioughd
9. "Halloween" by The Misfits - A bit of an obvious one, I'll grant ya. The original Misfits always walked a thin line between campy and creepy, but this track was a successful marriage of both.
8. "Country Death Song" by The Violent Femmes - From the band's decidedly off-putting second album, Hallowed Ground came this grim yarn of a father inexplicably pushing his youngest daughter down a dark, dank well in the cold, dead of night. It's as stylistically far from "Blister In The Sun" as you could possibly get.
7. "Walking In The Rain" by Flash & the Pan - I don't really have too much to say about this one, other than that I'd always found it endearingly creepy. Seek it out.
6. "Song of Joy" by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - The darker cousin of the `Femmes' "Country Death Song," "Song of Joy" is another ploddingly gruesome tale of familial murder from the perspective of the (guilty?) father. Grim, grim, grim.
5. "Fodderstompf" by Public Image Ltd. - I'm sure many people would argue that this track is more annoying than scary, but I've always found the thirteen minutes of relentless, squealy chanting ("WE ONLY WANTED TO BE LOVED!") to be somewhat disturbing.
4. "Helter Skelter" by The Beatles - Sure, U2 stole it back from Charles Manson and all that, but the original is still drenched in blood and still reeks of abject violence. No cover of this song -- with the possible exception of Siouxsie & the Banshees' -- has ever been able to match the dizzying insanity of the original.
3. "Orphans" by Teenage Jesus & The Jerks - Again, possibly more annoying than scary, but there's something about Lydia Lunch screaming "LITTLE ORPHANS RUNNING THROUGH THE BLOODY SNOW" over a pounding caveman beat and a shrieking one-note guitar that still paints a decidedly nightmarish image.
2. "Cop" by Swans - Even if you can stomach the relentless, churning slave-ship rhythms and the deafening caterwaul of tuneless guitars, Michael Gira's bleak lyrics of abject humiliation ("Nobody rapes you like a cop with a club") surely ought to put you off your food for a while.
1. Plague Mass by Diamanda Galas --- All of it. I'd feel remiss in citing a single track off this amazingly disquieting sonic document. Suffice it to say, you'll never want to hear it twice. Truly, truly disturbing stuff.
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