Halloween is upon us!
Cue trick or treating, horror film marathons and buckets of fake blood and gore as party goers celebrate all things ghoulish, ghostly and bone chilling.
With Halloween parties and fancy dress gigs taking place across the UK, here’s another Musicroom Top 10 playlist to get you in the All Hallows spirit.
We present to you ten of the spookiest, scariest and creepiest songs ever recorded!
Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells
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Even without its association with classic horror flick The Exorcist, Tubular Bells exudes a chilling, haunting atmosphere fit for any slasher film readying its viewing victims for a shock. Turn this on for a suitable freaky soundtrack while you ready your costumes for the fright night ahead!
Shakespeare’s Sister – Stay
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Stay is a vintage pop classic but with its tense, sustained synth chords and echoing vocals it’s also surprisingly haunting. The ideal spooky Halloween song for those who want to hear audible terror with a pop melody.
Leonard Cohen – A Thousand Kisses Deep
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Another alternative suggestion to creep you out this Halloween, A Thousand Kisses Deep‘s ability to spook is a product of Cohen’s unconventionally deep and croaking voice, the slow, deliberate pace of the track and the oddly sparse texture of the instrumentation.
Mogwai – Hunted By A Freak
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One of the most effective ways to spook through songwriting is through creating a dark, foreboding atmosphere, and Mogwai’s Hunted By A Freak is an excellent example of how to set a faintly disturbing tone that leaves the rest to the listener’s imagination. The flecks of harmonic pleasantness, instead of setting your ears at ease, only adds to the unnerving sense of dystopian bleakness.
Dead Kennedys – Holiday In Cambodia
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From Jello Biafra’s eery vocal delivery to the strangely major vibe that lifts its chorus, Holiday In Cambodia feels ever-so-slightly unhinged and threatening – the ideal recipe for three musical Halloween minutes.
Misfits – Scream
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It wouldn’t be Halloween with Misfits and horror punk! Scream is one of the band’s later tracks but possibly their most haunting, although almost every track from their back catalogue of three-minute nightmares could possibly argue its way onto our list.
The Monks – I Hate You
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Could it be the scratchy, bones on wood guitars, steady, heavy footed beat, or groaning, lurching bassline that gives I Hate You such a thoroughly spooky feel to it? The wailing vocals certainly don’t harm The Monks’ spooky credentials either. There’s something altogether dark, cooky and worryingly inevitable about this track that conjures up images of early black and white silent horror films and shuffling hordes of undead. Maybe that’s just our imagination!
Plaid – Zeal
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Even without the freaky steam-punk-meets-Saw video, Zeal by Plaid would be worthy of our list thanks to its meandering, creepy intent to take the listener away from their harmonic comfort zone. Complex, intricate and ever-so-slightly alien.
Slayer – Raining Blood
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Raining Blood: it’s the brutality, the scene setting intro and the fact that it’s Slayer’s ultimate calling card that makes this the ultimate metal Halloween track.
Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights (Ultra slow)
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As if Kate Bush’s original, unearthly Wuthering Heights wasn’t already able to put the frighteners on some listeners, this slowed down version of the quirky pop classic – extended to 35 minutes using a programme called PaulStretch! – sounds faintly terrifying at times. Like an unsettling, ambient score to a psychological horror, or some subversive Chris Morris sketch, Wuthering Heights at 35 minutes long is utterly unnerving.