PANTY RAID! MR OCTOBER IS….JAYSON OF TOELEVEN.NET!

I’m Jayson, some of you have heard of me. I’m the guy that did the logo here. I’m also one half of To Eleven. The good half.

Anyway, it’s October and that means Halloween. That means it is time for my Halloween mixtape. Years ago I was trapped in a car with some hippie friends listening to their ‘Halloween mixtape’ which was some 290 minute long song about someone’s cat dying and the frequency of love. It was a long drive and obviously I am still not over it.

I don’t think that metal does a really good job with Halloween though. Sure there are a shitload of gory songs, evil songs and what have you, but despite being the most ‘metal’ holiday, metal just isn’t Halloweeny. So there’s not much metal on there, but it’s like… metal-related or something.

This is my Halloween mixtape. I picked these songs because they’re either spooky sounding, about something spooky or because I needed to pad out this list:

Samhain - “All Murder, All Guts, All Fun”
There are a lot of days where I blame Danzig for ruining music. The Misfits were super good and everyone loves them, but they also represent some basically unachievable ideal. Everyone thinks horror rock was an awesome idea; and it is in theory, but in practice you get stuff like AFI, Necromantix and Horrorpops, all of which kind of make me embarrassed for all of humanity when I hear them. Samhain gets the nod because it’s not the Misfits and Initium represents the last recorded instance of Danzig having a sense of humor.



The Devil’s Blood - “The Heavens Cry Out for The Devil’s Blood”
The Devil’s Blood are a band from the Europe that sounds an evil version of Jefferson Airplane. If you’re not sold on that description, nothing will sell you. They’re super serious about Satanism, call their shows rituals and are generally over the top. Or maybe this is one of those things that so serious we’re meant to think it’s a big wink to the audience? Too meta for me to figure out. With lyrics like ‘nightshade and devil root, wolfsbane and eye of newt’ they’re more Sabrina the Teenage Witch than heralds of the apocalypse.



Fantomas - “Spider Baby”
This one is so obvious; I almost felt bad putting it on here but since it’s the perfect Halloween song, how could I not? The whole album is perfect for the season really. Mike Patton is such a creep. He’s like the John Waters of music. I love him.



Ramones - “Pet Sematary”
I ain’t need to explain this one. You’re fuckin’ up if you’re not cranking this during Halloween. I will say that the live version of this song totally houses the one on Brain Drain.



Gravediggaz - “1-800-Suicide”
It’s a shame that in 2k10 if someone says horror rap, you immediately think of ICP and the 2 billion acts they’ve inspired. Everyone forgets about the Gravediggaz, which is a shame since they were a legit supergroup of top notch MC’s. Old people who remember the mid-late 90s trend of movie soundtracks being a big deal might remember this one. It was on the Demon Knight soundtrack along with Biohazard and Rollins band. The 90s peaked with the Demon Knight soundtrack.



Schoolyard Heroes - “Dawn of Dead”
I don’t know anything about this band and don’t care to. They’re horror rock. I don’t want to hear anything else they ever did. This song comes up on my Pandora all the time. This is a cute song; let’s not ruin it by exploring the rest of the band’s catalog.



[I couldn’t find the actual song, so I’m embedding a Japanese band covering it instead. YAY ASIA! -Ed.]
Balzac - “Beware of Darkness” [2004 Version]
Balzac are one of the few bands that can do horror rock without making a travesty out of it. They’re also maybe the only band to be able to write several albums of great songs with lyrics that are mostly go, whoa, or whoa-oh. The 2004 version of this song is the pick because of the horror movie intro.


[I couldn’t find this either. I suck :( -Ed.]
Huntress - “Hollow Hills”
This band is totally not cool to like because the singer’s profession is ‘hot chick.’ Huntress keeps it fast and fun though so I cannot front. Hollow Hills would be the perfect Halloween song if she wasn’t singing about November 11th. So basically it’s almost perfect.



Dr. Dooom - “Run For Your Life”
Kool Keith is the best MC.



Saint Vitus - “Return of the Zombie”
Ok, so after systematically destroying my credibility with this whole thing, I’ll throw this some Saint Vitus in the mix to try and win it back at the end. This is another perfect Halloween track. Saint Vitus were really way better at being Black Sabbath than Black Sabbath ever was.


I was gonna throw some King Diamond on this, but everything he does is a whole narrative concept album and it’s hard to pick a song off of Abigail or Them and listen to it by itself without going ‘Who the fuck he talking about?’ Likewise I thought about putting some Electric Wizard on, but honestly I think their songs about drugs are better than their songs about spooky stuff.

Download the entire mixtape at this location.

That’s it.

- Jayson

To Eleven


[Attention citizens of BOY LAND! Think you’re worthy of a Panty Raid?? Send your stuff to reigninblonde@gmail.com. You just might be Mr. November!]