All these tracks are featured on our specially curated Halloween playlist over on Spotify! Whether you’ve got a Halloween party planned for this weekend, or you’re just hanging at home handing out candy to your neighborhood boys and ghouls, we’ve got you covered with the best of the best Halloween Horror-themed metal tracks to make your night even more terrifying!

What are your favorite tracks? Leave a comment here below, or over on our posts on Facebook or Instagram. Read ahead… IF YOU DARE!

Erik T

Cradle of Filth – “Halloween II”.

I have to admit, I kind of struggled here. Even with metal generally being about all things spooky, bloody, gory, and scary, I had a hard time finding something that was literally ‘Halloween-y’ that fell in my wheelhouse. Especially stuff that wasn’t super cheesy. However, I settled on a cover song with ‘Halloween’ actually in the name, from a band I love, who is recently saw live, and is releasing an album this very Halloween, and went with Cradle of Filth, and their cover of The Misfits “Halloween II”, a song in Latin that talks about turning into a wolf. Perfect!

Acid Witch – “Sabbath of the Undead”.

My second song was a little easier, going with a ‘Witch’ theme, and it turns out underrated Stoner doomsters Acid Witch have a few  songs specifically about All Hallows Eve, but I went with “Sabbath of the Dead”, and it’s a loping, smoky, doozy of a number. “On the eve of Samhain On All Hallows’ Eve Disguise yourself as a corpse To ward off the harmful dead”.  Indeed.

Frank Rini

Bathory – “Call from the Grave”.

From their third album, from 1987, Under the Sign of the Black Mark (My fave Bathory album).  So many songs conjuring up Halloween imagery.  A few other ones almost making it to my list were songs from Helloween, Mercyful Fate and King Diamond.  Bathory have always conjured up dark and evil images for me and since their debut album I always find myself listening to them a lot around Halloween.  Under the Sign of the Black Mark is one of my favorite blackened death metal albums, ever and “Call from the Grave”, for me is the perfect song in creating a Halloween vibe.  The ambience with the opening eerie keyboards and then the opening plodding evil riff, as the song stays in neutral, never getting fast.

But the brooding music is reminiscent of an old school 70’s slow burn horror movie.  Quorthon’s guitar tone on this album is spectacular, original and evil as crap.  The lyrics make it even more akin to something evil happening on Halloween.  Some snippets: God of heaven hear my cries of anguish, I’m in pain.  I’ve suffered a thousand deaths but I live on in vain…  I tear at the lid I’m suffering. In a cold and nameless grave. If hell is what awaits me. I feel no fright.  C’mon-how does some of those lyrics not conjure up some evil and frightening imagery?? Do not forget the creepy ending guitar solo, where Quorthon throws in the famous funeral death march melody…. The perfect Halloween song to quench your bloodthirsty appetite.

Steve K

Hellripper – “Blood Orgy of the She Devils”.

For me – Halloween is all about campy fun. Being serious about not being at all serious. It’s the one time where we can all collectively find delight and joy in the darker, bloodier, more evil aspects of life that I generally want to celebrate most, if not all of the 365 days in a year. After all, if you can find fun in thee inevitability of death, it makes bearing the horrors of life in general much easier, right?! Right.

As such, I tend to gravitate to those bands out there gleefully sharing in that campy, blood-soaked, devil-worshipping and demon-summoning fun. One of the best young bands today carrying that torch is Scotland’s Hellripper. Front man and mastermind James McBain has been churning out some truly fun and inspired speed metal riffs with this project since 2016’s Complete and Total Fucking Mayhem, but last year’s The Affair of Poisons really turned the riffs and mayhem up to 11 with a total celebration of everything heretical horror and gore. The whole album itself makes for a fantastic Halloween playlist, but “Blood Orgy of the She Devils,” named after the outrageous 1974 cult classic, is maybe the most fun of the bunch. Give ‘er a rip and rage!

Witchery – “Witchery”.

But of course, the new school can’t carry the torch without the old school lighting the flame, and one of of the best of the best to celebrate the tradition of all-out-camp, in my opinion, is eternal-side-project to  Sharlee D’Angelo, Patrick Jensen and Richard Rimfält: Witchery.

I know I’m in a minority here, but aside from D’Angelo’s work with  Mercyful Fate, I’d take Witchery‘s body of work over any of the current or former band member’s collective back catalogue (an illustrious list including legends like The Haunted, Seance, Arch Enemy, Opeth, Bloodbath and Marduk). I guess it just comes down to a stylistic preference for me, but it always seemed like whoever was involved with this band at any given time were having A LOT more fun with Witchery than they were with any of their other jobs. Of course, this band was also built on a foundation of tongue-in-cheek horror tropes – so that helps. Images of murder, graveyard mayhem, a little necrophilia thrown in just for kicks – this was not a band to be taken too seriously. But that doesn’t mean the band weren’t capable of putting together some seriously fun songs and riffs! The band’s self-titled anthem serves as a perfect example of the kind of high-speed fuckery this talented gathering of musicians is capable of, and it the perfect compliment to all your Halloween shenanigans.