As Halloween fever sets in to replace the seasonal plague of midterms, it's time to feed the autumnal soul with some truly spine-chilling and ghastly songs. Let's overlook the easy targets, the likes of the Friday-obsessed Rebecca Black, "rather dead than Red" Taylor Swift, and ear-beating Bieber. Instead, let's focus on the following thrillers, which rise above the rest in unlistenability. As you sacrifice the nearest pumpkin to Hecate and get up to no good this October, take a listen to the following horrors.
1) Kate Bush—"Wuthering Heights"
What would Halloween be without some oddball Gothicism? Florence & the Machine does pre-Raphaelite gothic with romantic gilder and panache, but Kate Bush puts the truly weird in "Wuthering Heights." Brace yourself for some witch caterwauling (without the Macbeth), tai-chi prancing, and necrophilic love between Cathy and Heathcliff. So Halloween, it hurts.
Amerika, according to guttural German heavy metal band, Rammstein, is wunderbar and in the holy heat of All Hallow's Eve, what could be further from the truth? Rammstein, meaning 'ramming stone' in Deutsch, is just as it sounds – a German chain-smoking and sawing monster between Scylla and Charybdis that just isn't as wunderbar as Amerika, the land of Coca-Cola, Wonderbra and WAR.
3) Cannibal Corpse—"Rancid Amputation" (to enjoy alongside a parody version by the Australian comedy group The Chasers)
The aptly named American death metal band Cannibal Corpse makes Rocky Horror Show look like Mitt Romney's beloved Big Bird. The theme of violent death and crazed morbidity is best served with a slice of the crème de la crème of Australian comedy—The Chasers' War On Everything. Here, they give a light-hearted, lounge music rendition of a song about "limbless cadavers" and "decomposing remains."
4) Right Said Fred—"I'm Too Sexy"
Sex and sluttiness (its lesser version) seem to be the playlist obsession of Americans come Halloween. Among the repeat offenders that need to be consigned to the naughty list, Right Said Fred's stripper song is particularly horrid. "I'm Too Sexy" sounds like a narcissistic, nymphomaniac zombie/Shwarzeneggar but like all terrors, you just can’t look away.
We begin and end with a Bush. Kate Bush's "The Dreaming" is meant to evoke the Australian Dreamtime with Rolf Harris making breathy bird and sheep sounds in the distance. Four minutes of bird-flapping, zombie yoga and clone-trooper-style body-con, completed with haunting smoke and fog, make for a visual feast you probably don’t want to sink your teeth into this Halloween.
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