Heavy metal and Halloween—on paper, this aggregate seems obvious. And yet, for some reason, they don't consistently mix well. Often Halloween's baby acceptable times aren't quick to allure disorderly headbangers to the party, while metalheads are so bent up in the calmness of their "lifestyle" that October 31st is accounted a agglomeration of babble for babies who don't apperceive what absolute angry is.
But there's a candied spot, area the awakening aesthetics and adventuresome anguish of these two cultural traditions appear calm in an access of skulls, bats, and aloft blades aged with blood. A absolute place, area Halloween is taken one footfall darker and metal's avant-garde gravitas is laughed at and traded for its aboriginal obsessions with monsters, witchcraft, and the party. This candied atom is Abundant Metal Halloween, the ultimate announcement of bedlam in the face of Death.
For best metal fans, Abundant Metal Halloween comes naturally; like their adulation of the music in the aboriginal place, they aloof go for it, never animate why. But this shouldn't exclude those who haven't taken The Oath from abutting in on the fun. The adorableness of Halloween is that you can be whoever you want, and if Satanic Rocker is your monster of best (we'll get to that), again you should feel chargeless to go for it.
Here, submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, is Noisey's adviser to accepting the ultimate Abundant Metal Halloween. Acceptable luck, accept fun, and don't abhorrence the Reaper.
Illustration by Chris Krovatin
I'm abiding some of you accept you charge to buy that "Crazy Rock Star" wig and chaplet bottomward at Spirit Halloween to go abounding metal, but that's a mistake. Abundant Metal Halloween was built-in of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, during the acme of the delineation of metalheads as monsters. If you appetite to dress up as article specific, you can, but the adorableness actuality is that actuality a metalhead is enough. Actuality are some go-to apparel to get you started.
Black batter accessory and mask: Start with the go-to accessory of a Satanic thrasher—leather jacket, covering pants or atramentous jeans, brindled belt and bracelets. Top this all off with a store-bought Halloween mask. Now you're accessible to anguish parents all over town. Plastic machete optional.
Metal academic wear: Given that Halloween is a aerial anniversary for those committed to darkness, and that the Gothic attitude is all about adorned dress, some askance or adapted formalwear is allowed. A cape with no sleeves, blood-soaked with blood? Great. A atramentous angel dress with bags of fishnets? Super.
Too-small kids' costume: This attending absolutely drives home that we're demography a kid's anniversary and authoritative it askance and dark. Booty a baby kid's apparel and put it on. Appear on, clasp into it, there were go. Now, stretch—touch your toes, twist, and lunge. Either the apparel is ripped in all the appropriate places, or now you apperceive area to breach it to accomplish it fit. Add a abominable hat or affectation for color. Works best if you've got a ton of tattoos.
Bondage gear: Aloof fucking go for it. Tonight's a night to animate out your weirdest fantasies, and annihilation says "Good times for bad people" like a brindled covering harness. They can adjudicator you the added 364 canicule of the year.
Illustration by Chris Krovatin
Obviously, you can't bless Abundant Metal Halloween after chilling metal arrant out of the van you're active to the abode area you'll absolutely be murdered. Actuality are some bands that altogether abduction the brash anatomy of metal's alliance to the Sabbath Of The Undead.
Acid Witch ability be the ultimate avant-garde Abundant Metal Halloween band, and maybe the alone accurate one of all time. Their consciousness-expanding doom-death complete alloyed with their adulation of slasher movies, atramentous magic, and edger creates an atmosphere that hails aback to the acceptable ol' 1980s, back abhorrence movies were aureate and the Satanic Panic was in abounding swing.
Too abounding bands booty Satanism too seriously, but King Diamond and Co. accepted the inherent theatricality bare to adoration the Aphotic Lord. The Fate's consummate falsetto vocals and guitar diabolism accomplish them metal abundant for opera claws but amusing abundant for putting on capes and facepaint.
"But Alice was coolest as a awe-inspiring 70s sex fiend!" you beef in hipster fury. Well, yeah, exactly. Halloween's not a night to anguish about actuality cool. It wasn't until he went abounding metal that Alice went absolute Hammer Horror. Listen to Alice singing about actuality eighteen the blow of the year; tonight, it's all about referencing Vincent Price.
While Acid Witch is all about the Eighties, Electric Wizard is authentic Seventies horror, abounding of satin-lined coffins and Lovecraftian rituals beheld through billowing candle smoke. They're aloof austere abundant to accomplish you accede devoting your activity to the Devil, and again they sing a song about Count Drugula. Awesome.
Halloween is a night of carelessness and Dionysian frenzy, and few bands actualize that like White Zombie. Their adequate agro metal broadens the cultural palette of our Halloween from archetypal abhorrence to all address of awe-inspiring bits like bazaar performers and aerial saucers. Sometimes, back dancing about the blaze in the graveyard, demography your shirt off is the alone option.
Creepsylvania or bust! Borrowing from all corners of the abhorrence genre, the masked thrashers of Ghoul accompany amusing activity and pants-shittingly fun batter riffs to the Halloween party. Think of them as the low-budget crank flick that break up the asleep vampire cine marathon.
Illustration by Chris Krovatin
Two attempt charge to be acclimatized during Abundant Metal Halloween. The aboriginal is allowance in academic metalhead behavior. You can altercate about amusing alertness and save the fucking whales the blow of the year; tonight, get aphotic with it. The additional is foolhardiness. Tempt fate and abstain grave warnings. Worst-case scenario, you end up a told-you-so apparition back the Horrible Thing murders you for your trespasses.
Exhume a corpse: I don't apperceive back digging up a asleep anatomy nestled in my apperception as the ultimate metal act, but to this day it charcoal my criterion for accurate metaldom. Go to a graveyard, dig up a animal body, and booty photos with it while accepting formed on whiskey. The added rotten, the better. It's not like the asleep is activity to aback appear animate and grab you by the throat… right?
Dabble in the occult: Emphasis on "dabble"—If you're activity to accurately accomplish an absolute abracadabra ritual, you charge to be sober, practiced, and accessible with the sage. For Abundant Metal Halloween, mix some of your claret with high-proof liquor and discharge it into a candle abutting to a Oujia board. Read The Grand Grimoire in an capricious articulation at midnight. Play with admiral above your understanding.
Exploring that awe-inspiring old abode that anybody tells belief about: Every boondocks has that house—that aged old abode area addition got ax-murdered, or that anybody claims is inhabited by an barbaric creature. Hell House, the Marsten house, the Myers house—you know, the accursed places. Get some flashlights and a boombox and go accept a affair there. Listen for choir bottomward the anteroom back all your guests are in the room.
Arson: Alone for the avant-garde metalhead, and alone in alone barrio (Noisey does not disregard bedlam berserk while watching a farmhouse bake continued into the night).
Heavy Metal Drawlloween: Drawlloween (also accepted as Inktober) is for the Remedial US History doodler in us all. Every day of October, you draw a altered Halloween-themed picture. For Abundant Metal Drawlloween, aloof alter your acceptable Halloween capacity with abundant metal songs or albums. I've absorbed a calendar of my own conception to appearance you how this bits is done.
Illustration by Chris Krovatin
Illustration by Chris Krovatin
Horror movies are an built-in allotment of any All Hallow's Eve, and Abundant Metal Halloween is no different. The requirements are simple: gore, anachronous references, and amusing portrayals of metalheads.
Trick Or Treat: The standard. After dying in a fire, abundant metal psycho Sammi Curr visits his better fan as an electricity-fueled Satanic ghost. The blur appearance a archetypal soundtrack by Fastaway and cameos by Ozzy and Gene Simmons. No wimps! No apocryphal metal!
Fright Night: Horny horror-obsessed Charlie Brewster discovers his affable new acquaintance is a vampire. And not some beautiful goth either—the absolute deal, an age-old evil. The best appearance in this flick, though, is Charlie's headbanger pal Angry Ed, who after becomes a abominable Nosferatu. You're so cool, Brewster!
Friday The 13th Allotment VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan: The alarm of Crystal Lake haunts a Big Apple-bound address in this absolute cheese-fest. The glam metal banty actuality murdered with her blush Aerial V is the actuality of accurate legend.
Motel Hell: What's absolutely in Farmer Vincent's best sausage? Among added things, Ivan & The Terribles, a weed-smoking metal bandage in a barbarian-painted van. If you appetite a absolute avant-garde lo-fi classic, attending no added than this gem.
Dethgasm: While not necessarily retro, this New Zealand splatterfest abundantly captures the atmosphere of avant-garde metal—and additionally involves a arena area a demonically-possessed Christian brace gets baffled to afterlife with sex toys. Yeah, it's like that.
Illustration by Chris Krovatin
While "ready for anything" is a all-important mantra for Abundant Metal Halloween, assertive behaviors charge to be larboard at home. Actuality are some things to abstain if you don't appetite to ruin the heaviest of holidays.
Serious cultural criticism: No religion, no politics. Abundant Metal Halloween is all about accepting fun, and the minute you get your abiding claimed attempt involved, fun dies, quick. You can absorb the blow of the year continuing up for what you believe—tonight, your alone calendar should absorb booze, candy, and atramentous magic.
"Kvlt" atramentous metal: Sorry, Lord Mopesalot, no one cares. Your humorless depressive examinations of the affliction one feels at actuality trapped in the bourgeois Hell of the Christian apple is, well, cool boring, and you can't ball to any of that shit. Tomorrow, you can resume the amaranthine winter. For now, it's the harvest.
Cruelty appear children: Kids apperceive what's up—they're all about accepting a acceptable time and pissing off ascendancy abstracts on Halloween. As such, fuck anyone who charcoal Halloween for a kid. There are affluence of metalhead stereotypes account all-embracing on this day—the shitty annoyer ain't one of them.
"This is my costume" because "every day is Halloween": UUUUUNGH, AREN'T WE DARK! I get it, tonight is abecedarian hour and everyone's arena at what you do for real. If that's the case, your job is to up the ante tonight. If they get spooky, you get spookier. If they scream, you wail.
For Chris Krovatin, every day absolutely is Halloween—but abnormally today. He's addictive Twitter.
