Billy Cobb

Halloween X   Digital EP

(Please Sign Me)

In but a clawed handful of fortnights, Jack Pierce willing, All Hallows Eve's shadowy silhouette will fall across our thorny paths. Composer/producer/multi-instrumentalist Billy has issued trick-or-treat discs in past years, and this crispest unfurls characteristically macabre pleasantries. ("Vampire Girls" suggests that Teen Angel might have had pointed ears all along.) SEE misshaped aberrances lurch at dusk! HEAR Rock'n'Roll agitate gravel as materializes the orgy of the dead! THRILL as vampire girls undulate mesmerizingly!

Recommended: "13 Knocks," "The Werewolf Feeds," "Vampire Girl," "Psycho," "Mysterious Mose"

Videos: "13 Knocks"   "Vampire Girl"   "Mysterious Mose"

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The Phantom A.D. - Torment or Treats (and Torment)                        

In a months-long spree only just begun, the Phantom A.D.'s Horrorween Tour will storm its maliciously lunatic way across Norman Rockwell's placid states. (Have a care, square ones: Attending these sinister soirees may well bring premature persishment to the unhip.) 

Included on the invasion itinerary are Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Oregon, Washington, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the rocker-from-beyond's own California.

For the monsterman, every night is All Hallow's Eve. It's like 1993 movie Groundhog Day, but if it had been scripted by Curt Siodmak.

A chill gust chases off twisted and spindly tree branches' remaining withered leaves; witching-hour streets are barren, save for ghosts busying themselves with grotesque diversions; a pale blood-moon shines unforgiving glare on the innocent orb mortal men call Earth...

And The Phantom A.D. couldn't be happier -- in the cruelest of manners. As a composer, he cleverly interlaces forbidden poetry and charging Rock'n'Roll birthed in some netherworldly jukebox. His frenzied guitar summons forth a remorselessly-lashed, phantasmagoric creature stitched from fret-stranglers who preceded, and who knew how best to contrive raucous infectiousness. 

To all that, he ladles on idiosyncratic maneuverings that ring precisely right.

And in his guttural intonations, one hears the testimony of a man who not only sat through innumerable drive-in scare-flicks, but probably dove into the screen to gleefully abet the deviance.

As this writer puts quill to parchment, crazed acolytes in slated environs will soon revel in the straight-from-the-fridge madness he unleashes at perilous volumes. Finger-popping bizzaritude can be reliably predicted to ravish ears, whether they dig it or not. 

 

His crusade of the freakish has sordid history. A part-time substitute teacher, Harley Isaac Rother intuits his destiny is to tear apart temporal distance from eerie dimensions uncharted, through Rock'n'Roll that respects no reasonable stricture. 

Albums documenting his dire mission include 2015's The Unspeakable Horror of Isaac Rother and the Phantoms and The Terrifying Return of Isaac Rother and the Phantoms. Later assuming his rightful title, The Phantom A.D., he issued The Phantom A.D. Plays Ghoulish Rock'n'Roll and this year's Revenge of the Phantom. (All were released by Rock N Rhythm Records.)

As ever, in that latest wax, The Phantom A.D.'s cobwebbed, latex-monster hood features darkness as a 24/7 proposition. Splenetic chords race like risen-from-beneath, demolition terrors, hip to the ways of lost avenues Rock'n'Roll. Swirling his cape while surfing atop a saucer, The Phantom A.D. growls enunciations that bespeak horrors good men know not. 

Martin Milner scrambles for exit, though Mickey "Bip Bop Boom" Hawks and Shadowman Link stick around where the action is.

In 2025, he greeted creature cognoscenti, shared his swinging hideousness, and mongered merch at the Famous Monsters of Filmland convention in Pennsylvania. That costumed spectacle befit a man whose prodigious lurkings amidst midnight spook-show haunts feature catchy songs suited variously to mausoleum exhumations, TV cathode rays, and beach party bingo. 

In a Facebook post at the time, the caped archfiend said: "This is such an honor to be included, given the incredible legacy of Famous Monsters. In the pre-internet world, Famous Monsters Of Filmland was THE place to learn about horror movies. Its legacy is unmatched."

Those souls thronging to The Phantom A.D.'s Horrorween Tour 2026 appearances may snap cell-phone photos, but should not be flabbergasted when they later find that his image has not been preserved.

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Videos: live in San Francisco (2025, 10:50)   "Chainsaw Rock"  "I Go Where the Party Takes Me"   "The Brain that Wouldn't Die"   "MK Ultra Rock"   "Even Sasquatch Wants to Rock"

The Coffin Fits

There's a Snake in My Boot(leg)   Digital 

(Self-issued)

Cooked up in an Enzed Garage, spookiness rides the wild surf. Triple-time snare hustles, while ominous acoustic negotiations explore long-desolate and spider-webbed manses. Voices suddenly pounce; the lead is surly, the chorus ones, spectral. 

Recommended: "Crankenstein," "Baby I've Changed," "Werewolf Island," "Poltergassed," "Mortal Acoustic"

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Novelty horrors broke cold ground

(Why was this piece, perhaps more suitable to All Hallows Eve season, dropped now? Because every day is Halloween in the icy hearts of the wrecking undead.)

In decades prior to Psychobilly's malevolent sculptings, such horror songs as existed tended to be of the innocuous trick-or-treat ghosties rank. 

They were a far piece from modern morbitities thrashed by, say, Daniel deLeon or Rene D La Muerta. (Closer to contemporary monstermen was obscure-in-own-moment Hasil.)

But collectors hip to the spectral tip -- whether they be gatherers of vinyl obscurities or Lux / Ivy compilation CD hoarders -- know well that some bygone-lagoon creature ditties offered merits.

Besides playing on macabre themes (even if in jest), they drew creatively on classical ominous airs and, it could be argued, turned sod from under which P. Paul, Sparky, and a gallery of amped aberrances eventually took legs. (Then, too, there's the chortle factor.)

Pay no heed, then to the innumerable exhumations of "Monster Mash" and Purple People Eater" that seem ubiquitous every October (delightsome though those novelty prancings be). 

Because six feet down, you'll locate waxings beyond the mundane. Here are but a few:

"Graveyard" Larry Bowman

Did you ever take a walk on a pale-moon night through a deserted cemetery? / Spooks all around. Shadows on the ground. Didn't know it could be so scary.

The dirge supporting that 1958 query (which is voiced with echoed somberness) falls to piano-juiced get-up that rollicks elatedly. Initially undertoned, Larry flares into celebration of "Ghost Rock'n'Roll!"

"Graveyard Rock" Tarantula Ghoul and Her Gravediggers

Portland horror-film hostess Tarantula ("Taranch" to fans) was Suzanne Waldren, and her Gravediggers were actually band the Starlighters. "GR" was the flipside of 1959 "King Kong" (on Meadows Records). It bopped animatedly, vocalized in good humor by a male R&B shouter and further vivified by knockaround sax. Taranch's contributions existed solely of sporadic, breathy intonations of the title.

"Rockin' in the Graveyard" Jackie Morningstar

"Now, you've heard of the Purple People Eater, and you've heard about the Witch Doctor too. Well, both those songs sold a million copies. Well, I got one to sell a million too..."

This is perhaps the best-known side included here, not only because Jackie's uncanny marble-orchard scenario is still marketed, but owing also to numerous reinventions by various successors. Among endangered souls who've aped Morningstar's initial scare-giggle are the Guana Bats, Ghostriders, Smell of Kat, Full Moon Cherry, Niteshift Trio, and Roy Loney and the Phantom Movers. 

"Wait a minute, boy. Wait a minute, wait a minute before you run away..."

"Screamin' Ball (at Dracula Hall)" The Duponts

The coolest kind of vintage, which one reflexively augments with handclaps. There's a party all over the place. Finger-poppin', hip-dippin', plasma quaffin'. Only listeners will know the deflating conclusion. 

"Igor's Party" Tony's Monstrosities

Sinister soirees were common occurances in this eerie splinter-genre. Squeaky harpies inquire "Igor, Igor, funny little man. Standin' there grinnin' with a shovel in your hand...what's your plan?" To which the malshaped miscreant retorts "Goin' out tonight and dig a Rock'n'Roll band!" Across the song's skippy (though subtle) trajectory, structure is lent by either claves or fibula on skull.

"I Was a Teenage Creature" Lord Luther

The first-hand relation of monster sprees (and ensuing atrocities) is offset by Luther's odd whimsicality. He sounds unconcerned -- even amused -- about the inhuman trompings to his credit. Behind him scampers jitter-onward musicianship that digs how to rock and shakes moneymaker with jazz stank.

"Haunted House" Cris Kevin

A Virginny DJ, Warren Miller recorded for United Artists under his given name, and as Cris for Colt 45 Records. For the latter, he issued 1959 single "Have Gun Will Travel" with this spookish cut on the flip. Howling rain-storm gusts lash in opening seconds; what ensued was a guitar/voice cautionary message set to a tune so jaunty that it (and "goblins" forecastings) impress that the titular creep joint was raised by some Fisher Price precursor.

"The Mummy"  The Naturals

Free-from-leash honking sax and big, bold drumwork leap from the line, joined within moments by a manic storyteller whose every pronouncement skids in unhingedness. After untombing a Ho-Tep hepcat and adding the wrapped attraction to his band, the protagonist is thunderstruck as crazed fans "tear him in half!" The mummy croaks the grunted demand he'd repeatedly voiced throughout: "Put me back in my tomb!" (The Naturals later adopted new name The Honeydrops.)

The Kings of Outer Space

The Things That Make Us Strange

(Western Star Recording)

"Imagine somehow combining an observatory telescope with a Criswell Ouija board, then hooking the whole thing into a monster amplifier" was this writer's description of the Kings' 2019 Ghost Radio. Those words serve in equally good stead for portraying the disc now before us, though a fitting addition would be to observe UK tailors must straightaway sew up silver aluminized nylon spacesuits/straitjackets with velvet lapels.

(Tracks 1-6 first appeared on 2022's Last Exit to Spaceville, while 7-14 are taking first steps.)

Recommended: "Test Pilot," "Moonbuggy Baby," "Doomsday Surf Club," "Big Ol' Monster," "Outa This World," "Nature or Nurture (live at Western Star)," "Life's Too Short"

Videos: "Moonbuggy Baby"   "Big Ol' Monster"   "Nature or Nurture"

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Ghoultown: Death ain't nothin' but a thing

Tidings that recently emanated from BadlandsBeyond revealed Ghoultown -- a Texas Count Lyle production that last perpetrated wax some six years ago -- is again stalking studio passageways.

"We are in the process of recording our new album titled TOO BAD TO DIE," read a June 2 Facebook message. "This will be our 6th full-length studio release and 13th overall release.

"We are working hard to bring you the best collection of Ghoultown songs yet, offering a familiar yet amped-up group of songs that take you on a dusty and dangerous journey into our strange landscape of gunslinging Rock'n'Roll. No release date has been set, but rest assured it will be worth the wait!"

The group features on Facebook numerous behind-curtain photos of their studio activities, disclosing to all how sausage is made in spurred-monster kitchen.

During such time as will transpire until new grooves-of-the-macabre materialize, consideration is appropriate.

Few bands have accomplished that which distinguishes Ghoultown: the formulation of a truly singular persona. In the group's slap-leather milieu populated by shambling and hollow-eyed hombres from below, no string goes un-thrashed, and all poundings are doomsday ones.

Ghoultown's thunderous Tales of the Crypt transmogrification of Zane Grey's dusty-stampede world has never assumed deserved position in chart highlands. But that only illustrates Legs McNeil's dictum that cool music seldom enjoys mass popularity. 

In the group's darkside rowdiness, guitars gallop like wild stallions with tone settings. Poundings-times-ten collude, lending animation against which spectral host Count Lyle's dead-man's drawl scrawls jaggedly.

Eyes wide and ears a-ring, slack-jawed townsfolk marvel at the spectacle: Sinister invocations so resolute as to force all bearing stunned witness into tonic-clonic floorshows. 

Even Wyatt and Doc fall to their knees in sybaritic paroxysms. 

It's been years since I stopped puzzling how the men who comprise Ghoultown developed staggering musical proficiency, when all around stank of human decay and lead-slingers from the netherworld sprang like wicked phantasms in midnight moments.

Wiser, I concluded, to unquestioningly dig the merging of remorseless metal and zombie-caballero airs that alternately hyper-pulse and unfurl in teasing ominousness, as ghastly swinging-saloon-doors-in-Twilight-Zone sagas bore into cerebra, never to be erased.

Mesa-looming wraiths etch Ghoultown's hard-lashed menace, Bone-cold determination is a core surrounded by echo-clad desolateness.

"We have 11 new tunes polished up and ready to record," reveals a Facebook Ghoultown message. "We can say the recording is coming along very well!"

Whispered words telling of Ghoultown's impending disc are no doubt passed down the bar from gunhand to apparition to saddle tramp to bloodsucker. 

The barkeep polishes a glass, hoping to see sunrise.

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Videos: "Bullets Don't Argue"   "I Am the Night"   "Drink With the Living Dead" (live)   

The Psychodelics

Small But Mighty   EP

(Psychodelic Records)

Rising from the lab tilt-table is a creature stitched from outsider stylings. Punk, Psycho, and Rockabilly flesh are joined in crazy-quilt calculations that couldn't seem more torpedo-savory to quiffed wrecking-pit grapplers who have mail delivered to all-night monster-movie marathons.

Recommended: "Small but Mighty," "We'll Never Die," "Talk To the Dead," "Shut Up and Drive," "Good Kitty"

Videos: "Small but Mighty"   "We'll Never Die"   "Good Kitty"

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X (Erik Hinderer, lead guitarist/songwriter)

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The Darts (US)

Halloween Love Songs

(Adrenalin Fix Music)

Singer/keyboardist Nicole Laurenne: "During a 2024 interview with Rock n Folk magazine in Paris, I jokingly mentioned that the world needed some new Halloween songs...So I got to work..."

The result? When the mystery hearse smashed into the joint, assorted kicks-junkies dropped glasses to the floor. And when the ebony corpsemobile plowed into the blinking juke, and sounds at once ghastly and seductive roared forth, all surrendered to magnetism of unknown birth... 

Back to Nicole (who also wields a glockenspiel): "So, side A is chock full of tasty, candy-colored Halloween kitsch, to be played while trick-or-treating as the sun sets...But side B is for after dark, when the bonfire is raging. It's for sweaty, middle-of-the-night dancing, making out on a bed of empty candy wrappers, and spinning through an all-nighter apocalypse."

Recommended: "Midnight Creep," "Zombies on the Metro," "Blood Run Cold," "Dream Ghost," "Every Night is Halloween," "Apocalypse," "Darkness," "Shadow," "Late Drive"

Videos: "Midnight Creep" (official video)   "Zombies on the Metro" (Now Dig This TV performance)   "Every Night is Halloween" (lyric video)   "Apocalypse"

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Nurse's Dead Bodies

Roll a Die   digital album

(Self-issued)

Understand that I'm being complimentary when I aver the singer seems to have downed a heaping spoonful of crunched windshield glass. And that observation holds equally true for the players. This is among the most brutal and velocitous Psycho-Punk to have shredded auctorial ears in seasons. And that, too, is high praise.

Recommended: "We'll Be Dead," "Ignorance," "Back," "Scarecrows," "Fight," "La Partida"

Videos: promo clip   "We'll Be Dead"   live (France 2025, 43:15)

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Ghoultown

Double set: Life After Sundown and Ghost of the Southern Son

(Zoviet / Angry Planet Enterprises)

It's been long years since I stopped puzzling how these men developed staggering musical proficiency, when all around stank of human decay and gun-hands from the netherworld sprang like wicked phantasms in midnight moments. Wiser, I concluded, to unquestioningly dig the merging of remorselessly lashed metal and arched Morricone airs that alternately hyper-pulse and unfurl in teasing ominousness, as ghastly Old-West-in-twilight-zones sagas bore into cerebra, never to be erased.

(This double-disc set is available directly from Blackburn's Monstro Merch, which is linked below.)

Recommended from Life: "Dead Outlaw," "Against a Crooked Sky," "Werewolves on Wheels," "I Spit on Your Grave," "Thunder over El Paso," "Find a Good Horse," "Drink With the Living Dead," "Under the Phantom Moon"

Videos: "Dead Outlaw"   "Against a Crooked Sky"   "Find a Good Horse"   "Drink With the Living Dead" (visualizer)   "Under the Phantom Moon"

Recommended from Ghost: "Southern Son," "Ghost of the Past," "I Am the Night," "Black on Black," "Blood, Bullets, and Whiskey," "Stick to Your Guns," "Tombstone," "Vanishing Riders"

Videos: "Southern Son"   "Ghost of the Past" (lyric video)   "I Am the Night"   "Stick to Your Guns"   "Vanishing Riders" (animated video)

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The Cramps

Smell of Female   CD or digital

(Big Beat Records / Ace)

Big Beat loosed anew several of the cellar-discotheque ghouls' back platters, 1983's Smell of Female being one twistedly alluring specimen. Kid Congo had by this juncture thrown in with caclcified cryptkeepers Lux, Ivy, and Nick Knox (scarred and gaunt Bryan Gregory having taken his axe beneath ground). Reverential reinventions of Roky Erickson, Hasil Adkins, and a notorious, curvy  cult flick invaded. Six tracks taken from a Peppermint Lounge spectacle the original release offered are here joined by bonus slices "Beautiful Gardens" and "She Said," recorded in the same witching hours. Additional extra song "Surfin' Dead" was the scare-cell's contribution to 1985 flick Return of the Living Dead. 

Recommended: "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love," "You Got Good Taste," "Faster Pussycat," "I Ain't Nuthin' But a Gorehound," "Psychotic Reaction," "Beautiful Gardens," "She Said," "Surfin' Dead"

Videos: "Thee Most Exalted Potentate of Love" (live)   "Faster Pussycat"    "I Ain't Nuthin' But a Gorehound" (live)   "Surfin' Dead" (official video)

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The Vampires of Kopenhagen

Last Train to Copenhagen   EP

(Sleaszy Rider Records)

Supreme ghastliness breathes (or not) within ebony cover, majesty apparent. Dignified passages present sinister splendor, chamber music a blood-tide that buoys otherwise unspeakable imaginings. 

Recommended: "Last Train to Copenhagen," "Lullaby"

Video: "Last Train to Copenhagen" (abbreviated)

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Nekromantix

Three Decades of Darkle

(Cleopatra)

What distinguishes Cleopatra's steaming-from-oven reissue of their 2019 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD compendium will be instantly apparent to anyone with an eyeball in the center of their brain (to quote Lux): On offer is a two green-vinyl version, in addition to more orthodox formats. (This 30-year anniversary concert was filmed at California's Observatory Theater.) Kim thrashes his coffin-doghouse, as is his infamous wont, while allies Franciso Mesa (foamingly rabid guitar) and Brain mogul Rene D La Muerte (bashing skins beyond recognition) toil at his elbow. Soil-turning morbidness, plus humor dug only by those of bent disposition, ricochets to Saturn's haunted handies, Skelton Knaggs' Universal shooting stages, and climes in which grim ghouls ply deviltries.

Recommended: "Struck by a Wrecking Ball," "Night Nurse," "Demons Are a Girl's Best Friend," "Nekrostatic Extacy," "Gargoyles Over Copenhagen," "Subcultural Girl," "Brought Back to Life," "Horny in a Hearse," "Haunted Cathouse," "Who Killed the Cheerleader"

Video: trailer   "Struck by a Wrecking Ball"   "Demons Are a Girl's Best Friend"   "Gargoyles Over Copenhagen"   "Subcultural Girl"   "Horny in a Hearse" (official video)

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Eddie and the Afterburners

Cellar of Your Soul

(MechTocracy Records)

It's in eerie mid-range, that three malefactors ply their chord-fisted ominousness. Class this as clawed opera for evildoers. Punk and Psycho escapees from padded-wall snakepits creep amidst decaying foliage, a blood moon o'er head, as unsuspecting passersby whistle past the graveyard. Suddenly, hands seize from behind.

Recommended: "Cellar of Your Soul," "Familiar Phenomenon," "The Mausoleum." "Room 13," "Liminal Business Trip," "Demonic Invasion"

Videos: "Cellar of Your Soul" / "Familiar Phenomenon" (live   "The Mausoleum" (live)   

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