Horror Metal
Located in 2 routes
Metal built explicitly around B-movie, slasher and creature-feature horror: shrieked or croaked theatrical vocals, sing-along graveyard choruses and riffs that swing from galloping heavy metal to grinding death-metal chug. Defining traits are spoken horror-film samples, splatter-comic lyrics about zombies, killers and monsters, and a campy carnival-of-fright presentation in corpse paint and gore makeup. Tempos range from mid-paced theatrical stomps to blasting brutality, the mood gleefully macabre — Halloween-as-lifestyle horror worship rather than serious occult dread.
History
Horror metal traces to King Diamond, whose haunted-house concept albums 'Abigail' (1987) and 'Them' (1988) fused falsetto theatre with full narrative horror after his Mercyful Fate work. The 1990s split it into two streams: gore-and-sample death metal led by New York's Mortician ('Hacked Up for Barbecue', 1996), drenched in horror-film dialogue, and Chicago's Macabre with their 'murder metal' true-crime songbook. The 2000s horror-punk-into-metal wave — Wednesday 13 (ex-Murderdolls) with 'Transylvania 90210' (2005) and 'Fang Bang' (2006), plus Calabrese and the splatter-thrash of Ghoul — cemented the campy slasher aesthetic that thrives at horror conventions and Halloween tours.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Metallum (metal-archives.com): King Diamond, Mortician, Macabre, Wednesday 13
- Wikipedia: 'Abigail' (King Diamond), 'Hacked Up for Barbecue' (Mortician), 'Transylvania 90210', 'Fang Bang'
- Band biographies / Discogs: Wednesday 13, Calabrese, Ghoul