If you’re like us, then you just know that heavy metal and horror go hand in hand. It’s a pairing like the sun and the sky, like butcher knives and torsos, like chainsaws and dead skin masks.
If you’re unfamiliar with this match made in hell, just look at a portion of the track record:
-The Italian progressive rock band Goblin and their work on various soundtracks for Dario Argento and the European version of George A. Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead, Richard Franklin’s Patrick, and many, many more.
-Speaking of Argento, his 1985 film starring Jennifer Connelly, Phenomena, featured music from Iron Maiden, Motörhead, Bill Wyman, and Andi Sexgang, in addition to some original music from Goblin, again.
-Alice Cooper’s roles in such films as Prince of Darkness, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, Horror in the Attic, and Dark Shadows. And don’t forget his music appearing in movies like Shocker, Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI , The Faculty, Prince of Darkness, Scream, Halloween, and a ton more.
-Dokken’s “Dream Warriors” in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. The success of the single led the franchise to include heavy metal on the following soundtracks.
-The use of heavy metal as thematic point in 1987’s The Gate
-And then there are guys like Andrea Ferro from Lacuna Coil who openly proclaim their love for horror.
They closed our damn soup kitchen!
This could go on and on, and I think the point has been made without mentioning the four guys who served as the genesis for this article.
Recently, RevolverMag.com has published a series of articles in which Slash, Rob Zombie, Phil Anselmo, and Kirk Hammett have horror-related top-five lists. Both Slash and Zombie got to list their favorite horror movies, Zombie also got to list his least favorite horror movies, Anselmo listed his five best horror cult classics, and Kirk listed his favorite zombie movies.
Why these guys? Because in one way or another they’ve made the crossover to horror: everyone knows Zombie directs horror movie, but he also does his Great American Nightmare haunted house/music event for Halloween. Slash has started his own horror film production company called Slasher Films, Anselmo has written a column for BloodyDisgusting and started his own music/horror film festival called Housecore Horror Film Festival, and Hammett is an avid horror collector, which has led to his book Too Much Horror Business and to Kirk’s Crypt, where he shows off his collection at Metallica’s Orion festival.
So, let’s see these lists. Click on through to the next page, there’s no menacing evil waiting for you there, I promise…
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