After an undead intermission, this week, we return to our spooky spell casters with a tune from the genesis of psychedelia. For our Spooky Season, I give you Donovan's "Season of the Witch" (1966). This song, released on the album Sunshine Superman , features a steady guitar riff alongside foreboding and paranoid lyrics, a groovy omen of oncoming devastation. Could this foretold disaster be the work of the supernatural? Well, in the context of the song's creation, the lurking danger is something a little more earthly. "There was a feeling...that all was not perfect in the Garden of Eden," Donovan spoke in Mojo magazine about this Season when the song was born. He called "Witch" prophetic, referring to the marijuana bust soon to occur within the countercultural community. Not long after, these busts seized Donovan as well. "Season of the Witch" has appeared on the soundtracks of numerous Halloween-appropriate films, including Season of th...
Let me first start off with a jubilation: At last! October has graced us with its presence once again! Now that that moment of silliness is out of our systems, let us proceed with the music. One band that I find always plunges me into the Halloween spirit is Type O Negative. Anytime in the year when I find myself longing for this special season, I can simply play a Type O track, and I am instantly transported back to the crisp, pumpkin-fraught weeks of October. So appropriately, this band is the centerpiece to start off the month of honour. Also, as this is the first Shuddersome Soundscape post of October, I shall grant you two songs rather than just the one. Thusly, here are two featured tunes, both from the album World Coming Down (1999): "Creepy Green Light" and "All Hallows Eve." Type O Negative can be described as gothic metal, or "Gothedelic," in frontman Peter Steele's words, as their sound fuses classic gothic metal with 1960s psychedelia. As...
For the past two Shuddersome Soundscape installments, I've let witches take center stage. This week, however, I'd like to showcase another star of the Halloween screen: the zombie. And here to present this popular monster is the horror punk band the Misfits with their song " Night of the Living Dead." The song, of course based on George Romero's film Night of the Living Dead , was released on their third EP (of the same name) in 1979. Its lo-fi quality typical of many punk bands stood alongside horror-based lyrics, strong backing vocals, and Danzig's lead voice to create the signature Misfits sound that would carry on through their next albums. Along with this sound came their quintessential look, which came into its full, iconic fruition around this time. "Night of the Living Dead" later returned for the band's first full length album Walk Among Us in 1982 (they had recorded two other LPs before this, but Walk Among Us was the first to be rele...
Comments
Post a Comment