Hymns From The House of Horror III
This Month
“B-Movie Monsters"– SWAMP THING
What you missed
November 2012
“Sasquatch Ocean" – TROGLODYTE"'RISE! Flooding through your city streets, we RISE! Your streets run red with blood.' This was one of the first songs I penned for the new disc. An army of Bigfoot, overrunning a city like a crypto-tidal wave of knuckle-dragging death." – singer Jeff Sisson
October 2012
“Night Shift” – THE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE"This instrumental track will open our live set when we tour behind the new album. It's an homage to '80s John Carpenter movie soundtracks. This is the stuff we grew up with and it has inspired our band since we first started." - Falcore, TBM guitarist
September 2012
“Night of the Demon” – 45 GRAVE“I’ve always written on the darker side of life. For me, horror and music are fuelled by your imagination and can you give your monster life. Live horror 24/7? Yes, I do. 45 Grave did [this for] the Night of the Demons movie soundtrack and just like “Party Time,” the song we contributed to Return of the Living Dead, it’s our mini-horror movie, with all the elements that make us live. Enjoy the song because every day is a party somewhere. Come on out and party with the dead.” – Dinah Cancer
August 2012
“Dogshit” – SKINNY PUPPY“Blue stupid thaw / Cuts the jaw / Hell piss fuck head / Rest pure acid hell
Filthy word mutation / Laughing hound hereafter” – Nivek Ogre
Back in ’88, the studio version of Skinny Puppy’s “Dogshit” was released as a single under the title “Censor” (for all you kids at home scratching your heads over this one, all we can offer in the way of explanation is that it was a different time…) during the promotional campaign for the band’s fourth album, VIVIsectVI, which, as you may notice, combines the Roman numerals for 666 with vivisection. Hey, it was edgy stuff for ’88. This version, which appears on SP’s new live album, Bootlegged, Broke and In Solvent Seas (out now from Metropolis), is reported to have been recorded straight from the soundboard with “no editing magic or trickery” at a 2010 performance in Warsaw, Poland. The band (read: original members Nivek Ogre and cEvin Key, and some hired guns) lays down some seriously old-school mechanized repulsion, with Ogre spewing his stream-of-consciousness nightmare memoirs with every drop of the clenched venom that made the industrial innovators notorious. Download this month’s hymn, then pray at the altar of skinnypuppy.com.
July 2012
"The Hunters & The Preys" - NEON RAIN“The movies of George A. Romero (especially those with zombies) have been part of my life for more than 25 years, from when my mother managed a video rental shop in the ’80s. The first movie that I watched over there was Dawn of the Dead. It was a revelation, and I became a zombie addict.” – Serge Usson
More than five years ago, French composers Serge Usson and David Delwichie – otherwise known as Neon Rain – hatched the idea of creating an alternative soundtrack to Dawn of the Dead. Before long, it became obvious that they couldn’t simply stop there, so they ambitiously expanded the project into …Of the Dead (available now from Steelwork Maschine), a three-disc set of drones, noise, beats and static in tribute to each film in Romero’s original zombie trilogy, which the duo only recently completed. One of our favourite cuts is “The Hunters & the Preys,” an industrial creepy-crawler that epitomizes the claustrophobic tension experienced by the scrappy band of survivors in Day of the Dead. There’s even a limited-edition version of the album that comes packaged in a metal film reel canister, which includes More of the Dead (a bonus disc of lo-fi noise folk tunes based upon Romero’s second trilogy: Land, Diary and Survival of the Dead), an exclusive T-shirt, and stickers. Wanna know more about Neon Rain? Check out neonrain.org, Bub.
July 2012
"Another Bad Dream" - BLOODSHOT BILL“I love the tradition of monster songs that have them doing all sorts of silly things, like doing the twist. Ya know, real “non-monster” kinda business. Scenarios like the Blob wanting to light a cigarette or the Bride of Frankenstein kissing the Invisible Man are just too ridiculous not to put to music. Be thankful it’s only a dream...” – Bloodshot Bill
Toronto “one man banned” Bloodshot Bill is a spectacle that needs to be seen to be believed. Sure, other solo artists have been known to add accompaniment with sampling pedals and other such gadgets, but Bill keeps things real and raw by playing drums and guitar simultaneously as he growls, snorts, hiccups and pants through songs about trashy women, the devil’s brew and movie monsters like some unleashed rockabilly beast from another time and place. In this grizzled little ditty that he composed for us all special like, Bill ghoulishly roll calls all of the classic Universal monsters as if they were all hanging out together in one big distorted dream sequence set in a dive bar. Catch the madman of multitasking if you can at bloodshotbill.com.
June 2012
"Amaranth" - WINDHAND"‘Amaranth’ is loosely based on our affinity for ancient culture, nature, and select occult groups. Amaranth is a plant/herb that was mythically revered due to its un-withering form, and was believed to have special healing properties and symbolically represent immortality, as it was used to decorate the tombs of the dead." - vocalist Dorthia Cottrell
Turn the lights down (except for the lava lamp - get that sucker goin’), burn some incense (or some of that sweet leaf we’ve been hearing so much about *cough*) and give your ears over to the monstrous, black waves of Sabbathy doom that this five-piece from Richmond, Virginia, slothfully rolls in on. Seriously, if this track wasn’t recorded in a dank basement covered in wall-to-wall purple shag carpet, then please god tell me it was put to tape in a mobile studio built inside of a Boogie van with a tinted teardrop-shaped window and an awesome painting of a vanquished demoness airbrushed on the side. Or that a time machine was somehow involved. However they did it, the good eggs in Windhand recorded this one specifically for Hymns Vol. III and it’s currently not available anywhere else. So if you wanna hear it in your basement or Boogie van or time machine, you’re gonna have to click on the link below to download it. Then go to windhandva.bandcamp.com, where the band’s entire debut album is posted for your warm and fuzzy listening pleasure.
May 2012
“Human Monster” - THE KILLCREEPSBefore the rise of Ghoultown, there was The Killcreeps. ‘Human Monster’ was one of my favourite songs from that era. I wrote the song on New Year’s Eve 1995 in literally five minutes. I started strumming out the riff and looked over at a VHS copy of the Bela Lugosi movie by the same name. Bam, there it was!” – Count Lyle
Ghoultown's recent rarities release, The Unforgotten, is an absolute treasure trove of dark Tex-Mex, but leave it to Count Lyle – the pistol-packin' leader of the five feral banditos – to find one more shady track laying at the bottom of his mud-crusted rucksack. Before the band became seasoned sharpshooters, they fired off this punky, saddle-blazin' little number that's exclusive to Rue Morgue, meaning you won't find it anywhere else, no matter where the trail leads you...not even at ghoultown.com.
May 2012
"Set Flames" - AUTHOR AND PUNISHER“Sometimes to get across the feeling of a certain part of a song, it is necessary for me to imagine scenarios where you are enveloped in darkness or sadness or maybe love. As far as the lyrics, I make music that expresses emotion and an overall mood of devastation.” – Tristan Shone
On this previously unreleased live recording of Ursus Americanus’ “Set Flames” from last October’s Fall Into Darkness Festival in Portland, Oregon, one-man band Author and Punisher (a.k.a. Tristan Shone) manages to scare the bejeezus out of a room full of people all by his lonesome. You can actually hear Shone – a mechanical engineer who uses custom heavy machinery he calls drone/dub machines to create colossally heavy industrial doom – sonically level some Talkie McTalkersons in the audience roughly around the 1:28 mark. After some rumbling, murky tension, he puts the pedal to the metal and it sounds as if he’s just opened the mouth of Hell. The immeasurable force produced by one solitary man easily puts the whole man vs. machine debate to rest. If you can’t beat ’em, do as Shone does: conjoin with ’em. No, really...visit tristanshone.com.
April 2012
"Hands of the Ripper" - SHE'S STILL DEAD"One of the best known true-to-life figures in horror is Jack the Ripper. He wasn't some zombie, or vampire, or werewolf. He was an actual serial killer that brutally slayed his victims. We tried to convey the brutality of the murders in the lyrics to 'Hands of the Ripper.' They can be viewed as graphic, but the facts of Jack the Ripper's murders are grounded in truth." – guitarist Kevin Dredge
Composed entirely in one night at ex-White Zombie guitarist J. Yuenger's Graveyard Studio (appropriately located between two large cemeteries) in New Orleans, She’s Still Dead’s "Hands of the Ripper" epitomizes the grizzled punk and bloodthirsty thrash the damned quintet serves up cadaver-cold on its independently released debut album, Immortal, Eternal. Apparently if you listen closely, there's even a track of atmospheric guitar feedback buried deep in the mix to mimic the spiraling emptiness and nerve-shattering tension of the Ripper’s favourite killing time: the dead of night. If you ever stop headbanging, follow the trail of blood to still-dead.com.
March 2012
"Olivia (Object of My Infection)" - HARLEY POE“Within my four walls I have everything I need to be happy. I have my comic books, movies and records. I have Olivia. She has big blue eyes and luscious lips, wavy blonde hair, cute bouncy breasts, and legs that go all the way up. She can’t speak, but I can hear her thoughts of adoration.” – Joe Whiteford
On the eve of their fantastic third full-length, Satan, Sex and No Regrets (available April 1 from Chain Smoking Records), Harley Poe returns to Hymns (you’ll recall they contributed “It’s Only the End of the World” to our first comp…see RM#100) with a track they graciously kept aside for our third album. A slower, organ-driven version of “Olivia (Object of My Infection)” has appeared on a couple of split releases in the band’s history but this previously unreleased take – which turns down the volume and ramps up the tempo and adds harmonica, banjo and handclaps to the party – is the one founding singer/songwriter Joe Whiteford considers to be the definitive version. It gives us great psychologically deviant pleasure to have this contagious ode to the inanimate object of an introverted weirdo’s desires kick off Hymns Vol. III. For more on Harley Poe, please visit joewhiteford.blogspot.com.
