If there are two things Vincent and I enjoy, they are Halloween and Metal.  So it goes that right here and now am inventing a new sub genre of metal called Halloween Metal.  This will be the first of several posts about bands that bridge the gap between vanilla metal and horror metal.  Let me explain.

Lamb of God is metal as shit, but they don’t necessarily espouse thoughts of zombies crawling the earth or decapitation via chainsaw etc. 

On the other end of the spectrum lay bands like GWAR or Mayhem, who bring the blood and guts and costumes right on stage with them and make horror a part of their persona.  Good in their own right, but you need to be in the right frame of mind to listen to and enjoy that.

Then, you have the bands who through their imagery/logo/cover art/tone/overall sound atmosphere generate a dark and sinister image in your head.  You know, something not too sinister, but something that will make you smile and recall scenes from Army of Darkness or the feeling you had creeping around during Halloween as a kid, maybe riding around town stealing street signs or egging the mayor’s house.

At the same time, you want to punch the next person in the face who walks by.  It’s the best of both worlds!

I think this feeling is something one immediately associates themselves with, or thinks is absolutely insane.  I am of the former, and I hope you are too.

One of those said bands is Whitechapel.  One of my favorite death metal bands out right now, they successfully pull in elements of grindcore/melodic/black metal into very tight songs, each with their own uniqueness which is rare I find these days. 

Phil Bozeman’s voice is what I imagine the creature from the black lagoon’s singing voice sounding like.  Half crazed monster, half rotting corpse.  All metal.  

These guys only have 2 albums out, but so far I think they are well on their way to being included on the soundtrack for the entryway to Hell.

Tags: animal, gwar, mayhem, metal, whitechapel

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Culture, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.