Spectre - The Illness (1995)

Horror-flavored instrumental hip-hop/dub/illbient, a microgenre that I should probably know more about. Downtempo beats, dub-y bass-lines, and hella samples.

Track listing:

1. Mayday/Nightstalker

2. Megablast

3. Spectre Meets the Psycho Priest in the Temple of Smoke

4. The Sound

5. The Other Side

6. Evil Dub

7. 9th Secret Rule of the Order

8. Danse of the Dead

9. Minions of Set

10. The Illness

11. Intermezzo

12. Elephant, Mosquito

13. Crooked

I've heard strange things happen around here

You'd probably also enjoy:

The Bug - Tapping The Conversation (1998)

Phil Western - The Escapist (1998)

Alan Lamb - Original Masters: Night Passage (1998)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Sarah Hopkins & Alan Lamb - Sky Song (1985)

Alan Lamb - Archival Recordings: Primal Image / Beauty (1995)

Three unsettling, at times oppressively harsh experimental sound pieces. The first two pieces were recorded on what Lamb called the Faraway Wind Organ, which actually amounted to ten miles of abandoned telegraph wires that he purchased for dirt cheap, while the third was recorded on a specially built, smaller (but still very large) set of wires. Metal wires humming, scraping, and clanging against each other makes for a somewhat terrifying, if surprisingly musical listening experience. Thanks to the commenter who recommended this album to me like four and a half years ago.

Track listing:

1. Night Passage

2. Last Anzac

3. Meditation on Spring 8

I am the final silence

The last electrician alive

Similar listening:

KTL - 2 (2007)

Anthony Pateras - Chasms (2007)

Antoni Maiovvi - Shadow of the Bloodstained Kiss (2009)

Synthwave before they were calling it synthwave. I know it's weird to gatekeep a genre that's so blatantly referential, but it's gotta count for something that Maiovvi was doing this shit before Stranger Things turned everyone into synth fanatics a few years ago.

Track listing:
1. Nightmoves
2. Witchcraft
3. They Return
4. Interstellar Space Exploration
5. Velocity Central
6. 6000SEX
7. Plymouth Fury
8. Future Space Love Party
9. The Chase, Part 1
10. The Chase, Part 2

What's the boogeyman?

If you like this, listen to:

Umberto - From the Grave... (2009)

Pentagram Home Video - Who's Out There? (2014)

The Black Heart Procession - Amore del Tropico (2002)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

The Black Heart Procession - 1 (1998)

Fourth and first non-numbered album by The Black Heart Procession. Amore del Tropico is a two-fer -- a breakup album and a concept album -- and marked a turn towards a more sonically rich, diverse, uptempo (not, mind you, upbeat), and yes, accessible sound. While I wasn't sure what to make of it when it first came out, it's become my favorite BHP record. It's also been a rich source of tracks for my Halloween playlists over the years.

Track listing:

1. The End of Love

2. Tropics of Love

3. Broken World

4. Why I Stay

5. The Invitation

6. Did You Wonder

7. A Sign on the Road

8. Sympathy Crime

9. The Visitor

10. The Waiter #4

11. A Cry for Love

12. Before the People

13. Only One Way

14. Fingerprints

15. The One Who Has Disappeared

Remember, remember

No one leaves

You'd also like:

The Dead Science - Submariner (2003)

The Paper Chase - Now Your Are One of Us (2006)

Wooden Stake - Dungeon Prayers & Tombyard Serenades (2011)

US doom/death. A seamless fusion of cavernous sludge, sluggish death metal, and melodic occult doom, with an ever-so slightly blackened finish. The master's kinda quiet or the production's kinda distant or something, so turn it up.

Track listing:

1. Cadaverum Caecorum Liber

2. Salem, 1692

3. Tortured into Eternal Repose

4. Die Rache der Hexen

5. Six Feet of Earth... and All It Contains

6. Cemetery Closes at Sundown

7. Skullcoven

8. Anguished Atonement

9. Bleeding Coffin

Blood on Satan's claw brings Him back

You'd probably also enjoy:

Horrors of the Black Museum - Gold from the Sea (2008)

Brulvahnatu - Menstrual Extraction Ceremony (2011)

A Gethsémani - Âme Triste (1987)

French lo-fi, synth- and drum machine-powered darkwave. A haunted, slowburning trip through a desolate, nocturnal cityscape.

Track listing:

1. Real Life

2. Liverpool Night House

3. Totenstill

4. Impressions

5. De l'autre coté du miroir

6. Carrousel

7. Spasme

8. Cheree

9. Cithyse

10. Mangereva

To mourn the death of color

More like this:

Snowy Red - The Right to Die (1982)

Sixth Comm - A Nothing Life (1987)

Nora Orlandi - Il Dolce Corpo di Deborah (Colonna Sonora Originale) (1968)

A pretty great soundtrack for a giallo film that I've never seen and doesn't seem to get the best reviews, which tend to center on the idea that the plot makes no sense, despite that being pretty much a given for Italian horror. Eerie, smoldering, late-night jazz with some hints of exotica and other weirdly perky diversions.

Track listing:

1. Marcel-Deborah

2. Night Story

3. Intimità

4. Ossessione

5. Il Valico

6. Molto Tempo Fa

7. Musica Bionda

8. I Robot

9. L'Imprevisto

10. Ginevra

11. La bandita

12. Croisette

Shallow breathing

Also consider listening to:

Bruno Nicolai - Tutti i Colori del Buio (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1972)

James Clarke - Mystery Movie (1974)

Merknet - Nigra Diaconia (2014)

Russian occult black metal. Dense, labyrinthine songs with a strong presence of ritualistic dark ambient. Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?

Track listing:

1. Rising Gehenna

2. Litany

3. Io Pan (Malefica)

4. Seven Spirits ov Dishonest

5. Funeral ov Heaven

6. Baphe Metis

7. Nia

Heed the voices of black abyss flame

Similar listening:

Wind of the Black Mountains - Sing Thou Unholy Servants (1996)

Dead Reptile Shrine - Isth Narai Ja (2002)

Burial Hex - Wall of Zombies (2007)

Misanthropic industrial noise/dark ambient. Knob-twiddling harsh noise, tape loop drones, disturbing samples, drum machine, ear-annihilating high-frequency feedback, stuff like that.

Track listing:

1. Anthropophagus Awaken

2. For Love of Brother

3. Malkuth Rant

4. Rekne LL

5. Erase Risen

6. Torture Child

7. Wall of Zombies

The truth is in the gas chamber.

Also listen to:

Ramleh - Hole in the Heart (1987)

Megaptera - Near Death (1991)

Judecca - Beyond, What the Eyes Can't See... (1996)

US death metal. Brutal and weird, just the way you like it. Judecca apparently didn't get the memo about douching being ineffective and, in fact, often harmful, so those of you getting your information about vaginal health from 90s death metal records should be careful.

Track listing:

1. The Undead

2. The Stench of an Undouched Cunt

3. Beyond, What the Eyes Can't See...

4. As We Fuck

5. May You Find Peace

6. Trauma Induced Coma

7. Consume the Soul

8. Forensic Pathology

9. The Black Blood of Christ

I've dissected the brains of six month old children

More like this:

Horror of Horrors - Sounds of Eerie (1994)

Infester - To the Depths, in Degradation (1994)

Mephisto Walz - Immersion (1998)

American gothic rock with a gauzy, and (yes) immersive atmosphere. Put this on the next time you're eating Xanax at a graveyard dance party.

Track listing:

1. Immersion

2. The Garden of Proserpine

3. Great Expectations

4. Age of Nothing

5. The Tyger

6. Elegy

7. Icarus

8. The Falcon to the Falconer

9. Heaven

10. Kings

11. Ode to the West Wind

This labyrinth of vales to wander

Similarly spooky vibes:

Nosferatu - Prince of Darkness (1996)

Autumn - The Hating Tree (1997)

Vetala - The Lord of Eternity (2014)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Vetala - Demo I (2008) + Demo II (2009)

By request, here's more raw filth from Vetala. Caveman beats, discordant guitars, and agonized shrieks of misery. The craziness definitely picks up steam as the record goes on, so don't let your short attention span make you miss out on the fun.

Track listing:

1. The Lord of Eternity (Part I)

2. From the Dungeons of Our Souls

3. Vampyric Black Evil

4. Night Perversions

5. The Lord of Eternity (Part II)

6. Pissing Terrorism

7. Day's Unbound

8. The Mist of Miseries

Sodomy with the dead

If you like this, listen to:
Brenoritvrezorkre - Vèrmyaprèb (1995), Nèvgzérya (1995), + Vasagraèbe éakr vatrè brenoritvrezorkre (1996)
Pillar Tombs of Aku - I (2014) + II (2014)

Mons Veneris - Vastlands of My Decayed Realm (2009)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Mons Veneris - Inferno (2005)

Mons Veneris - ...To Rape the Nazarene (2006) + Abismo a Céu Aberto (2006)

Mons Veneris - As 4 Submersões No Corpo Diabólico (2013)

Maybe my favorite Mons Veneris record. Vastlands of My Decayed Realm finds them in black metal mode, but it's a frightening, dissonant take on the genre that feels just as fucked-up as the project's more overtly experimental releases. You'd be forgiven for mistaking this for a lost LLN classic.

Track listing:

1. The Cremation of Light

2. Vastlands of My Decayed Realm

3. Darkmoon of the Vampire

4. Cursed and Tormented for All Eternity

5. Return to Chaos and Void

Misery lurks in the catacomb of the master

More like this:

Vetala - Demo I (2008) + Demo II (2009)

Wormsblood - Mastery of Creation (2009)

Atra - Up-Turning the Curse (2011)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Atra - In Reverence of Decay (2011)

Y'all. This year has been fucking trash. Every day has sucked an entire ass. Here in Portland, things have been particularly wretched. Surveillance helicopters circling overhead at night, sound cannons booming day and night, Patriot Prayer driving into town talking about "cleansing" the city (hey great job guys we always feel MUCH safer when you're in town jumping random people in broad daylight) and more recently, a thick haze of smoke that turned the air sour and made everything look brown and sickly.

I'm not sure if I have a point. Maybe it was gonna be something about how we can try to have fun getting distracted by Halloween? Let's give it a shot. Here's some eerie black metal with a bunch of reverb and some spooky cemetery organ. I wish Atra would make another record. Bag it and tag it, boys, another great post in the books!

Track listing:

1. Invocation of the Departed

2. Wander the Absence

3. Up-Turning the Curse

4. Harbinger (Part II)

5. Graveless Apparitions

6. Possession

Horizons eclipsed with burning witchery

Also listen to:

Onirik - Songs for the Apocalipse (2005)

Drowning the Light - Catacombs of Blood (2011)

Supermax - Supermax Meets the Almighty (1981)

Related:

Supermax - World of Today (1977)

London Aircraaft - Rockets (1984)

More excellence from weirdo disco great Supermax, this time with a more abstract, psychedelic bent. For the A-side, this lands us in 80s Eloy-ish territory at times, while on the flipside, it's more like a very plastic form of reggae -- one that entails chanting "Viva la ganja" and "Natty, natty, natty dread." Though these moments are questionable at best, the whole package is just so fucking weird, I can't help but love it.

Track listing:

1. As Long as There Is You

2. Tonight

3. Hammer

4. Today I Fall in Love Again

5. Madness

6. We Are the Gang

7. Aya Jah Jah

8. Superdub

9. Sunshine People

Woke up this morning and saw myself

In a completely different life

I saw some things I can't explain

You should also listen to:

Adrian Gurvitz - Sweet Vendetta (1979)

Change - The Glow of Love (1980)