Ever since Black Sabbath rose out of the British heavy blues scene with their horror inspired name and eerie sounds, the genres of Heavy Metal and Horror films have been inextricably linked. This link persisted throughout the 1970s, albeit in a muted fashion but come the 1980s…
Once the “slasher” boom began in earnest after both Halloween and Friday The 13th scored big at the box office, it seemed that almost every horror film had some kind of heavy metal/hard rock/punk song attached to it. Not entirely uncoincidentally, this timed in perfectly with the rise of So-Cal punk and the L.A. “glam” metal scenes. Iconic L.A. shock rockers W.A.S.P. got the ball really rolling for metal in horror films with their appearance in “The Dungeonmaster”, showing the band in all their over the top, leather and spikes glory. Indeed, if any band were to lead the charge into horror films, W.A.S.P. were the perfect pointmen: clad in leather, spandex, spikes, chains, and buzzsaw blades, they looked like they lived in a grimy, twisted underworld.
After this, you saw plenty of other films use the growing mainstream popularity of metal, and the underground cool of punk, to spice up their soundtracks. 1985s Return Of The Living Dead built it’s entire non-score soundtrack around the coolest punk bands in the US scene of the time: The Cramps, T.S.O.L, The Flesheaters, and more. In 1986, Trick Or Treat based not just it’s soundtrack, but it’s entire concept around heavy metal and horror. The music was performed by Fastway (formed by former Motorhead guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clark), and the film featured cameos by Gene Simmons of Kiss and Ozzy Osbourne (as a priest!). It’s lead villain was also a resurrected demonic metal singer. Soo while it celebrated metal with it’s music and icons, it also played up the 1980s panic that metal was satanic.
W.A.S.P. once again took up the mantle with their cover (yes, it’s a cover, the original can be hear din Trick Or Treat, trivia fiends) of Scream Until You Like It for Ghoulies 2. This gave them an unexpected chart hit in the UK, and helped cement their status as the kings of 80s shock rock. Glam icons Dokken provided the incredibly catchy theme song for A Nightmare On Elm Street part 3 (Dream Warriors). Thrashers Anthrax appeared twice on the Return Of The Living Dead Part 2 soundtrack. And one of the original icons of shock rock, Alice Cooper began his post rehab comeback by contributing 3 songs to Jason Lives: Friday The 13th Part VI. Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson provided an early version of Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter, later reworked into a UK number 1 by the band, for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5.
And that’s just the mainstream films. Plenty of the smaller, independent horror films featured smaller scale metal & punk bands on their soundtracks. The genres just seemed to have a natural crossover.
And this continued for decades. Throughout the 1990s & early 200s, metal and horror went hand in had together. And it wasn’t just a 1 way street. Horror films influenced bands. Rob Zombie/White Zombie based their entire careers around horror movie themed music and imagery. Resurrected horror punk icons the Misfits created albums of new metal tinged material that openly featured songs based on popular horror films (much as they had during their late 70s-early 80s heyday). Indeed, horror punk became a fairly substantial sub-genre, with bands such as Balzac, Blitzkid, AFI, etc mining the horror genre ever deeper for influence and inspiration.
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