LimeWire Music Blog

Halloween, my favorite holiday of them all, is just a day away, and I’m particularly jazzed that it falls on a Saturday, allowing for an ample dose of mischief and macabre outside of the typical work week.  I’ll be hitting the town, dressed as the late, great Frank Tovey, covered and smothered in feathers and raising hell in the deepest, darkest corners of Williamsburg.

Otherwise, I’ve compiled a list of ten darker tracks for this year’s festivities, each invoking the more sinister and supernatural elements of Halloween. With that in mind, this playlist is certainly not for the faint of heart. Click below the cut at your own risk!

1. Goblin – “Suspiria“
Let’s kick this playlist off right, with the main theme from Italian director Dario Argento’s most cherished film.  Goblin, an Italian prog/synth rock band, are best known for providing the eerie, disco-laced soundtracks to the majority of Argento’s movies, and this track perfectly sets the tone for the atmospheric, nightmaresque Suspiria, a bonafide horror classic.

2. Skinny Puppy – “Assimilate” (live)
Canadian synth provocateurs Skinny Puppy have made an entire career out of the macabre, twisting copious amounts of blood, bile, and guts into both their music and their live performances.  Though several of their videos (including the likes of “Testure” and “Worlock“) are horror films in and of themselves, I’ve decided to include my very favorite Skinny Puppy track, the driving “Assimilate,” which appears here in live form.

3. Sonic Youth feat. Lydia Lunch – “Death Valley 69″
Though the slow, Kim Gordon-sung “Halloween” is arguably a more appropriate (and well, obvious choice), I choose this particular Sonic Youth track over any other.  Beginning with a loud screech and a powerful riff, this song strikes fear into the heart as soon as Lydia Lunch and Thurston Moore’s vocals rise over the din in a commanding wave of no-wave fury.

4. John Carpenter – “Main Theme from Christine”
It may not be as cherished as the ominous piano line from Halloween, but this particular theme is both heartbreaking and eerie, plucked from John Carpenter and Stephen King’s classic tale of love and romance under the hood of an automobile.  A childhood favorite, this underrated film gets me every time.

5. Suicide – “Ghost Rider”
If there’s one band that forever scares the living shit out of me, it’s Suicide.  With their self-titled debut, the band careened through layers of synth madness, lacing each track with an ample dose of blood-curdling terror.  Though “Frankie Teardrop” is easily the album’s finest and most chilling moment, “Ghost Rider” is no slacker in itself.  Trading epic storytelling for amphetamine laced rhythms, this track set the stage for a decade of experimentation to follow.

6. Concrete Blonde – “Bloodletting”
Like it or not, vampires are all the rage right now, and the blood-sucking craze doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing.  However, though the genre was less ubiquitous in the nineties, several musicians invoked the more romantic edge of the seductive vampire.  Some, like Annie Lennox, contributed tracks to prominent film soundtracks.  Others, like Concrete Blonde, penned entire records about these creatures of the night.

7. Ministry – “Every Day is Halloween”
A Halloween classic, one would be amiss to neglect this particular new wave gem.  It’s often hard to separate Ministry’s synth-pop roots from the industrial/metal sludge they perfected throughout their later career, but this one’s just pure, seasonal fun.

8. Das Kabinette – “The Cabinet”
This particular English trip recorded one of the very best minimal synth tracks of all time, full of pulsing keyboards, steady drum clicks, and ominous atmosphere.  Inspired, as their name implies, by the silent German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, this track was thought to be their only release, until a reissue uncovered a slew of lost and unreleased tracks.

9. Chrome – “Zombie Warfare”
Hailing from the band’s fantastic Half Machine Lip Moves, this particular track sounds more menacing than its title implies.  It’s not as “spooky” as one might expect, but is in actuality a psychedelic mess of a track that derails several times over the course of six hellish, but satisfying minutes.

10. Bauhaus – “Hollow Hills”
Though they’d hate to admit it, UK post-punk pioneers Bauhaus are one of the most quintessential Halloween bands.  One could easily make an entire playlist of appropriate Bauhaus tracks, including the likes of “Stigmata Martyr,” “The Man With the X-Ray Eyes,” “Dark Entries,” and, of course, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”  Let us then conclude this particular playlist with one of my personal favorites, the slow and sinister “Hollow Hills.”  This particular version is plucked from the band’s first reunion tour in 1998, and is arguably better than the studio cut.