Dark Juan’s Halloween Playlist
Dark Juan’s Halloween Playlist
Unsurprisingly Written by Dark Juan
Hello fiends and fellow creatures of the night. It is I, Dark Juan, and I am here to regale you with a list! A list of ghoulish and creepy music (perhaps surprisingly a bit light on Metal), for the spooky season is upon us. However, Crow Cottage is rather less Halloweeny than usual for Mrs Dark Juan and myself have purchased a house and our entire lives (and VERY extensive library. I love books until I move house and then I hate the heavy paper bastards) are currently in about five million boxes scattered around the house. There’s also over a hundred model aircraft I cannot face packing right now because I will have to fucking repair them all when we get to the new house, which is already named Hare House. I have left my pooter out, though, so in my spare seconds I can write an occasional thing when what’s left of my intellectual capacity is functioning. Like tonight. This list has been fuelled by half a bottle of bourbon, a two-hour nanna nap on the sofa accompanied by a video (so Mrs Dark Juan tells me when she woke me up) on the dispositions and manoeuvres of Saladin and Richard The Lionheart in the Third Crusade’s siege of Acre in the 12th Century.
Fuck me, what an astonishingly exciting man I am. That was at around 6:50pm. Anyway, this list has absolutely nothing to do with quality and every thing to do with stuff that I find creepy and unsettling in this time when the veil between the living and the dead is so thin that we risk the two worlds joining, and then the subsequent reality closely resembling my slaughterhouse imagination.
Shall we get on with it then?
We will start off with God Module and ‘Corpses (A Zombie Love Story)’. It is well known that Dark Juan is a massive fan of early Aggrotech and this is a fine example of how electronics can create atmospheres that guitars and more traditional instruments can’t capture. I was going to go for ‘Let’s Go Dark’ but that was an obvious choice. Although I do love it. Anyway, this scores highly on the creep-o-meter because of the subject matter and the swoopy, ethereal electronics that send shivers up the spine and have you looking into corners to make sure the undead aren’t waiting to eviscerate you…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG-PkmoTxWQ
Next up is my favourite piece of classical music. It’s probably a really popular choice but this is my list and I don’t give a shit what people think so next it is Bach’s ‘Toccata and Fugue in D Minor’. A church organ is a powerful instrument at the best of times, but when a truly talented player is bashing this monster of a tune out of it, it is impossible to not be moved, and to be fucking creeped out by those first few bars. Absolutely, insanely powerful music that rips the soul right out of you and leaves you sweating and trembling on the floor, soon to be a victim to whatever stalks through the shadows of your subconscious.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erXG9vnN-GI
To complete change the increasingly macabre nature of this list so far, we are going to orient ourselves to the comic book famous monsters that are the Misfits and their version of ‘Monster Mash’. Yes, I know the Misfits appear to be a Jerry Only vanity project of late, and this cover is frankly a bit shit – however, it does convey a sense of silly fun around the cartoonish aesthetic of the Misfits and to be perfectly honest with you Dark Juan appreciates kitsch and showmanship and imagery that is as amusing as it is ghoulish.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLSa8hwMWug
Next up, we are returning to music that scares the living shit out of you, from Lankum, and ‘Dig My Grave’. This is a droning, achingly slow piece of the blackest of black Neo-Folk that lays bare the nerves of the listener and drags you into the appalling cold world of depression and misanthropy caused by grief. The last two minutes of this song are of note because nothing much happens apart from a howlingly painful drone that just builds and builds until it is fucking overwhelming in its intensity. You cannot hide from this music. It overpowers you and drags you into realms that no person should ever have to visit, let alone have to live through. It’s not blood-soaked and gruesome, it rends emotions and reduces you to absolute passivity in the face of unimaginable horror.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhqpQiXnFx0
This list would not be complete without the concrete, cold sound of Joy Division and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ is the song I have chosen, mainly because it is a haunting, hideous journey through mental illness and how it destroys relationships and love in the face of the absolute powerlessness of the people involved to stop it, because mental illness is one of the most pernicious monsters humankind has ever had to face, and it claims victims even from the people who are not afflicted by it. It’s a monster that causes colossal collateral damage and is absolutely indiscriminate in who it harms. This song is like looking into Ian Curtis’s soul and the roiling darkness that consumed it and his marriage and ultimately his life. This is why it is my favourite song of all time.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=674KGKRQBPE
We return to classical music now and Hector Berlioz’s ‘Symphonie Fantastique’, which is a far darker, more mental piece that you might give it credit for, considering that the entire piece is based on the obsession of the composer towards Harriet Smithson. Berlioz turned this into a musical story of a gifted person having poisoned themselves with opium and the entire piece is based upon the hallucinations of the person as they expire. Which is scary as fuck, especially the movement entitled ‘Songe d’une nuit du sabbat’ (Dream of the Night of the Sabbath) where the protagonist’s drug-fuelled madness is at its height – the piece also uses an idee fixe throughout all the movements, representing the adulation and obsession of the protagonist.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HgqPpjIH5c
Next is ‘Sweat Loaf’ by the Butthole Surfers – not a Halloween tune by any stretch of the imagination, but it is one of the most unhinged songs I have ever heard and it is still frightening to this day, from the desperate screaming and refrain of “SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN” for no real reason, and the sheer wide-eyed intensity of the whole song. Everything about it sets the nerves afire and has you looking over your shoulder, desperately hoping that a drug-fuelled Gibby Haynes is not behind you and bearing down on you with murder in his eyes…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akhuHYih8Mo
‘Vamp 69’ by Pist.On is next on my list – in a case of art imitating art, the Brooklyn Gothic bruisers told a tale about a vampire in Staten Island in New York, before What We Do In The Shadows was even an idea in Jermaine Clement’s head. It’s a haunting piece that gives the listener a real sense of unease and dread because of Henry Font’s tortured vocals – the man struggles with the pitch he uses throughout the song and this adds to the stress and hunger of the performance, even though it is by no means the best work Pist.On ever did.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GLyzYwdlFQ
No Halloween playlist would be complete without the absolute apogee of terror in Electronic music that is the Pappy Mix of ‘Come To Daddy’ by Aphex Twin. This is a horrifically chaotic piece of claustrophobic Drum and Bass, only rivalled in intensity by Ultraviolence’s ‘Electric Chair’. It is a punishing and relentless piece of music, this, demonic in aspect and disturbingly powerful. It is the sound of being hunted by a monster augmented with biomechanical pistons, a metal combat endoskeleton and big massive fuck off claws and it wants your blood.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ827lkktYs
This list would not be comprehensive without mention of “Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls” by Coven. Everything about this album is scary, given its weird psychedelic vibe and heavily Satanic imagery, tales of witchcraft and murder by supernatural means and culminating with an unintentionally hilarious Satanic ritual with the immortal line, “KISS THE GOAT!” uttered with such British stage actor conviction and enunciation that Dark Juan still titters when he hears it. However, that moment of unintended levity aside, “Witchcraft…” is an opium-driven psychedelic race through the darker parts of man and ritual and is actually, when you think about it, pretty fucking shocking.
So yeah, that’s my list of music that scares Dark Juan. None of it is Metal really. I do not care. An honourable mention was Unter Null’s ‘Zombieboy’ but I thought it was a bit too similar to God Module, being as it is an Aggrotech track which involves zombies and love. Zombie Girl’s ‘Blood, Brains and Rock and Roll’ was also discounted because I thought it was too lightweight and Poppy and also involved zombies, Dark Juan is lazy but having three songs involving zombies is a zombie too far for me. That is why there’s none of Rob Zombie’s pyrotechnic, technicolour imagery and music in there as well. Mrs Dark Juan suggested Aurora’s ‘Boxes’, which I considered but discounted as it is a really sweet Pop song – ABOUT CHOPPING UP LOVERS AND LEAVING THEM IN BOXES UNDER YOUR BED SO THEY NEVER LEAVE YOU. Not so much scary as much as something Dark Juan finds charming and attractive. There’s also ‘Night Owl’ by Gerry Rafferty – a song about a man being driven out to find companionship by his own isolation and loneliness and being deeply unsatisfied by it when he gets to civilisation and retiring hurt, back into his own seclusion and keeping repeating the pattern to his own emotional harm… Another song that was considered was ‘Love Lost In a Hail Of Gunfire’ by Bleeding Through, because of the insanely committed, vein-bulgingly furious vocal performance from Brandan Schieppati on that song. Those vocals sound a mere millimetre away from murder. When you think about it, there’s lot of fucking frightening music and people out there. I am locking myself away for a bit.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNEGgtgPbXU
Goodbye, and maybe (assuming the fucking buyer of my house stops being a massive, wide-open arsehole) I will speak to you next from Hare House. Happy Halloween.
Disclaimer: This article is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
