Ten Halloween Songs that Won't Send You Crawling Back to Your Coffin in Shame

It's October, and frankly I'm afraid to turn on the radio. From "The Monster Mash" to the shameless abuse of 9/10ths of the Bauhaus back catalog, most Halloween mixes stink like an unexpected corpse in a hall closet, and not in good ways. What we need, friends, is a good jolt of lightning into this old corpse. Fortunately, there's plenty to choose from.

10. Within Temptation, "The Howling"

Before I begin, a confession: I distrust modern operatic metal.

Anything that sounds too much like Evanescence makes me whinge. It's not that the genre is necessarily bad, exactly. Creating this kind of music requires a degree of musicianship and production value that most people can't bang out in their garage without substantial investment and skill, and I respect that. It's just that it all seems a little bit...well, obvious, doesn't it? Sweeping themes accompanied by swoopy, orchestral keyboard rock feels less like getting your chocolate in my peanut butter than just leaving your Jif next to my Peter Pan. Plus, thanks to my Sisters of Mercy and Alien Sex Fiend-loving roots, I generally prefer my spooky-sounding music to be a little more Virgin Prunes than Dream Theater.

And yet, for all its obviousness, "The Howling" is downright chilling. The lyrics read like a disjointed first person account of some wretched communal lycanthropy or possession - fear of outside forces matched only by the loss of self "when we start killing" - and it's good. Really good. It makes me want to watch Ginger Snaps again. It makes me want to write a book. It makes me want to buy this textbook example of proggy banshee wailing on iTunes instead of just refreshing YouTube over and over. Frankly, that's pretty terrifying on it's own...

9. Shivaree, "Goodnight Moon"

Remember being little and scared of the things that go bump in the night? Remember hiding under your blanket, careful to make sure nothing stuck out over the edge of the bed because if you wrapped up tight enough in the middle of the mattress the things in your closet or under your bed couldn't get you?

Imagine having that feeling all over again, except now you know your blanket can't protect you from the things that want to find you in your house, or the "footsteps loud and strong coming down the hall," and the only thing that can save you is daylight.

Oh, and you have a gun.

"Goodnight Moon" captures that madness with a completeness that only grows on you with repeated listening, and is innocuous enough to go on most office playlists.

8. Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, "Shh"

We all slip up from time to time, right? We say the wrong thing, or trip over ourselves at a party. We do little things we regret, and when we do we apologize to our loved ones and promise to make good. And if those things should happen to involve a dead body, well, that's kind of a big mistake, but we know a little place where we can take care of that, don't we?

Yes we do. Go take care of the kids, honey. I'll just move this guy out of our den...

The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets are probably best known for their treatment of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, with songs like "The Innsmouth Look" and "Goin' Down to Dunwich." They approach the material with enough wit and fun to make them a must-own, especially if you love classic horror.

7. Say Hi, "Blah Blah Blah"

At first glance, an indie rock concept album about vampires might not sound like a good idea. A listen to Impeccable Blahs from Seattle-based Say Hi (formerly Say Hi To Your Mom) demonstrates how the right blend of pop culture and left-field humor can make the most absurd notion into something fresh and listenable.

Eric Elbogen's understated vocals and Atom And His Package-style instrumentation make the vampire's invitation in "Blah Blah Blah" feel strangely accessible, as if it could happen over coffee in your local Denny's. Before this album I couldn't really picture myself driving to work singing "and I-I-I am gonna drink your blood." Now I wonder how I ever went without.

6. Shriekback, "Nemesis"

Shriekback is another group that I feel like I need to qualify a little bit before I recommend them. Most of their back catalog and I don't get along. They seem to occupy an uneasy territory just past Dali's Car (or really anything Peter Murphy's been involved in since Bauhaus) where I don't quite get the appeal.

"Nemesis," though, manages just the right blend of lush darkness and sexy danceability. With lyrics that evoke an underground lifestyle somewhere between the court of Caligula and 1990's Nightbreed, it's hard to justify leaving it off the list. If nothing else, it's hard not to love a song with the word "parthenogenesis" in the chorus.

Advice: iTunes this one on its own for your party mix, and then try them out on Pandora. Worst case, you'll probably get to listen to a lot of Depeche Mode.

5. Future Bible Heroes, "I'm a Vampire"

Stephen Merritt is a genius. Even better, he's a genius who doesn't appear to sleep. With a musical project for every occasion and an ability to wed his flair for pop sensibility with a truly powerful capacity for snark, he deserves far more credit than commercial radio could ever give him.

Case in point, "I'm a Vampire." Addictive, danceable, and shamelessly fun, this song features Claudia Gonson touting her immortality in ways that manage to be both brutal and perky. Her character is at once over-the-top and immanently believable. "I survived the Inquisition, been a harlot, been a queen / Survived for seven hundred years and I still look seventeen"?

Honey, I am in your pocket. Bonus points if you can get a hot drag queen to rock this one on stage.

4. Jonathan Coulton, "Re: Your Brains"

Between September 2005 and 2006, ex-programmer and comedy-inclined singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton did something crazy. He committed to (and mostly succeeded in) recording a song a week for his website. The project, aside from creating a reasonable viral buzz on the Internet, resulted in a surprising number of great songs, including this one.

Told from the perspective of executive-cum-zombie Bob ("from the office down the hall"), this folk anthem blends professional jargon with the catchiest (and arguably most cogent) argument for turning yourself over to the undead mob I've ever heard.

After all, Bob says, "We're not unreasonable. I mean no one's gonna eat your eyes..."

3. Rasputina, "Transylvanian Concubine"

It's hard, I think, not to find the idea of an all-cello (or at least mostly-cello) band charming, at least conceptually. It's the sort of thing that shouldn't work, and yet with five studio albums since the mid 1990's, Rasputina makes it happen.

"Transylvanian Concubine," which appears on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack, is another great vampire song that skates past bloodlust and anachronism into modern neurosis ("you can never be too rich or too thin"). Melora Creager's vocals are just the right combination of uneasy and confident, and the effect is delightfully creepy.

Bonus: if you don't dig heavy strings, there's a Marilyn Manson remix.

2. Voltaire - "When You're Evil"

Want an alternative to Charlie Daniels and Screamin' Jay Hawkins? This is your song. A gleeful, stompy, gypsy dance, "When You're Evil" reads like a checklist of merry badness, or at least a better version of Alanis Morissette's "Ironic." From the fear that keeps us up at night to the dagger in our collective backs, our happy protagonist revels in our misery.

Or does he? "It gets so lonely being evil," he tells us, but prepare for that sentiment to ring false. After all, "Your tears are all the pay I'll ever need."

1. Oingo Boingo, "Dead Man's Party"

When you dig beneath the candy, plastic pitchforks, and short skirts, Halloween is basically about the dead. Ghoulies and ghosties, various beasties, and scary movies of questionable quality assault us all from every quarter. Need a full-sized cardboard coffin? Done. Light-up plastic headstones? Done. Goofy cartoon mummies to tape to your door? Done.

But it didn't get this way by accident. Halloween comes to us via European festivals for the dead, and in recent years is only bolstered by the Mexican Day of the Dead. Something about autumn reminds us of those who've gone before, and might just have a mind to drop in now that it's getting darker again...

"Dead Man's Party" is a classic, and not by accident. The lyrics merge in all of those cultural influences, from the way we dress our dead, to our fear of the unknown and the inevitability of death, with rich instrumentation. Oingo Boingo make that last ride on the hearse sound downright appealing. "Everybody's coming," after all, "leave your body at the door."