Halloween Music Recommendations 2022

 I have neglected this blog this year, mostly due to focusing on music and just daily stuff like work.

Still, I wanted to get some Halloween music recommendations out there for this year.  I think I will do this a little differently this time, with most of these being releases I discovered through Bandcamp.

    Fleshrot- Unburied Corpse

First up, we have a new band that is putting together some pretty old-style death metal.  Nothing groundbreaking, in general, but it is just plain good.  This isn't a band preoccupied with being technical and playing faster than anybody else.  This is a band trying to make some good, old-fashioned, memorable death metal, which I think the band succeeds at.

Hailing from Lubbock, Texas, Fleshrot released a demo on Bandcamp, which also was released as a cassette and a 7".  This was the release that introduced the band to me.  When the album came out, I snagged a copy and have been enjoying it quite a bit.  The album is only seven songs and clocks in at under a half hour.  That may bother some, but I like that the band chose to not get carried away and make a ridiculously long album just to make it long.  The old Deicide albums were pretty much all around 30 minutes, sometimes under that, and they out-and-out classics.

This release also has two different covers to choose from or you can get both if you are into collecting as well as just listening to metal.

 

    Massacred- Human Extermination

 

Next up, we have another band that isn't exactly rewriting metal, but is still enjoyable.  In this case, we have a band showing its love for horror and the band Mortician.  Massacred released a couple of demos and then apparently stopped, but then became active again, mostly due to the attention the demos were getting, I guess.  Then, out comes this album, Human Extermination.

Yes, this sounds pretty much just like Mortician, but it is still enjoyable and the lyrics are based on the Resident Evil series.  I am a longtime fan of the games (in fact, playing Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2 was the reason I first got a Playstation back in the '90s).  The samples on this CD all come from the games and the movies.  Even the cover art has familiar things from the games.

This album is also pretty short, being just slightly over a half hour.  So again, this is an album that doesn't overstay its welcome.  It is brutally heavy and fun, then it gets in and gets out before you get tired of it.

 

    Merciless Savagery- Demo 2020

This is the band on this list that I found out about the most recently.  This one is a two-piece from Houston, Texas.  The music is raw, ugly, and intense.  The lyrics deal with dark stuff, which is also reflected in the artwork, which features things like angels hanging above flames.  The song titles are also equally in-your-face: "Bleeding for Satan", "Incest", and "Catching the Scent of Putrefaction" are just a few.  I heard of this band due to the band playing a show with Abigail (Japan) recently.  The band's demo, which had been available on Bandcamp has also been released on LP by Nuclear War Now! with the LP release coinciding with the show itself.  After seeing the band (which featured a substitute drummer as the band's regular drummer was not able to be at the show), I bought a copy of the LP from vocalist/guitarist Hellbitch Kommando.

If you want some black/thrash metal with some early death metal influences and you want it to be noisy and nasty, check this one out.  

    Necrophagia- Holocausto de la Morte

Okay, this one I first heard long before there was such a site as Bandcamp.  However, it remains a classic to this day, in my opinion and also recently got a CD re-release through Hell's Headbangers, after being out-of-print for a bit.  An LP version should also be on the way.

This album, with its somewhat Italian title, kicked off the second part of Necrophagia's existence, which had originally started back in the '80s before splitting after releasing one of the first death metal albums, Season of the Dead, which was included in a previous Halloween Music Recommendations post.  This second part of the band's existence would continue until main man Killjoy's death.  

The songs on this album are not trying to be like all the other death metal that was out at the time, but just went off into a different, but still heavy and aggressive direction.  This lineup featured, in addition to Killjoy, Phil Anselmo (using the name Anton Crowley), Dustin Havnen, and Wayne Fabra.  The result is an album that just sounds like its own thing and is memorable.  The guitars sound ugly and nasty, with the signal crackling up a good bit, but they remain clear and audible, not muffled and muddy.  Honestly, everything seems to be pretty well balanced on this one without the overall recording being overly polished.  This one retains that rough edge, which works to the benefit of the music.

Interspersed with the metal aspects are some moody and atmospheric bits, which add to the horror-themed feel of the band.  The cover art is inspired by the films of legendary Italian director, Lucio Fulci, who had died a couple years before this album.  The album is also dedicated to him.

As I stated previously, this one just recently got a pretty damn nice re-release, so it is a good time pick this one up, if you haven't already.  I still have my original digipak that I got in the late '90s, but I still also picked up this CD reissue.  Just as Season of the Dead seems to be often overlooked when people talk about early death metal albums, this one seems to be overlooked in regards to '90s death metal, which is a shame, as it is great.  So, pick up a copy and blast it for the trick-or-treaters this year.

                            Happy Halloween