During this autumnal, candy-corned season of Samhain, I like to dim the lights and listen to all the “graveyard smashes” that I grew up on. But I also indulge in some horror rock. Not to be confused with gothic rock or "goth," (although it should be noted that some of today’s goth bands like Vision Video are really stepping it up, horror-wise), horror rock has existed nearly as long as rock 'n' roll has. Inspired by horror films and comic books as well as by the Halloween holiday, horror rock is often regarded as "shock rock" and many music historians credit Screamin’ Jay Hawkins as the very first shock rocker. He had a hit in 1956 with “I Put A Spell on You” and he would emerge from a coffin during his live performances that included smoke bombs going off as he howled into a skull-shaped microphone.
This inspired other early horror rockers like Screaming Lord Sutch and Bobby "Boris" Pickett who had a hit in 1962 when he and his band the Crypt-Kickers recorded the spooky fun song “Monster Mash,” replete with Pickett performing a Boris Karloff imitation. What people are just now realizing about this Halloween hit is that the song “Monster Mash” isn’t the actual Monster Mash. It’s a song about the Monster Mash, which is not itself heard on the track, and is fundamentally unknowable to us.
As the 1950s werewolfed into the 1960s, it wasn’t uncommon to find a few garage rock bands dabbling in horror rock. 13th Floor Elevators frontman, the late, great Roky Erickson, was perhaps the most haunted of all these rockers in that he made many recordings that took on themes of demons, vampires, the Necronomicon, and the devil himself. Other artists of this era dabbling in themes of the macabre include Arthur Brown who used to wear face paint on stage, years before it became a thing with a few 1970s hard rock bands and some 1980s metal acts. Back then, it seemed like everyone wanted a piece of the horror rock pumpkin pie, even Sonny Bono, who appeared as the schmaltzy shock rocker Deacon Dark on a 1979 episode of The Love Boat. And Donny Most, famous for playing Ralph Malph on the television series Happy Days, appeared as the demonic glam rock icon Moloch on a 1982 episode of CHiPs – both fictitious characters’ face paint bore a striking resemblance to Arthur Brown.
Of course, you can’t talk about Horror Rock without mentioning Black Sabbath. Hailing from Birmingham, England, the band’s moniker was inspired by the 1963 Mario Bava directed horror film Black Sabbath, starring the aforementioned Boris Karloff. But here was something different than the kooky, ghoulish, garage rock of the 1960s (so different, that the band is often credited for pioneering a genre known as doom metal). Musing on themes of the occult and satanism, Black Sabbath’s early songs were so scarry, that many people believe that the phenomenon known as satanic panic started here. Despite the fact that the band’s lyrics served to warn their listeners of evil, a small population of overly concerned parents looked right past the lyrics and wrongfully deemed Black Sabbath as Satanists.
Sabbath paved the way for the dark theatrics of Alice Cooper, who helped inspire horror rock titans, KISS. By then, satanic panic was freaking out legions of protective parents, some who started a false rumor stating that KISS was an acronym for Knights In Satan’s Service. Of course, this became a hard propagandic pill to swallow for any young KISS fan who had heard the band dabble in disco and watched them appear on corny television shows. Ironically, rather than frightening their own children out of listening to this music, some of the more talented kids of this generation were inspired to start ghoulish groups of their own like Misfits, Gwar, White Zombie, Marilyn Manson, and many more horror rocking legends including much of the black metal genre... but that’s an entirely different can… er… casket of worms for another time.
