Barak Palmer – Lucious
Most people would like to inspire respect in those around them. They’d like to be asked to do things and get greeted with a “Hello” when they walk into a room. That’s natural! The majority of people dream of making it big and having success for precisely these reasons.
There are many even who push this idea further. They want people to respect them and fear them. Why? Well, if they fear them, that’s a good enough guarantee that they won’t try to hurt them, stop them from their plans, or, overall, mess with them. In a perfect sense, that wouldn’t make sense, but, alas we don’t live in that kind of place.
The music world is filled with the second category of people. Most of them are busy with making gangsta rap and death/black metal. They load their lyrics with violent imagery. They paint their faces and pyro to their live shows. But most of them aren’t scary. The ones that are wouldn’t be able to hide it if they tried.
Brazil’s psych-rockers Barak Palmer are terrifying on their single “Lucious.” It’s not only because the song is structured like a pop fever dream. It’s not only because hooks are avoided so that the tension can be brought to its extreme. Barak Palmer benefits from one of the best and most naturally evil-sounding singers I’ve heard in a while. Part Sparky Philipps, part Johnny Cash and part The Devil himself, the singer of Barak Palmer and his ill-tampered psych-rockers sound like the real deal.
Spooky Bambina – Werewolf from Hell!
The thing about Halloween is that not only is it everywhere nowadays, it involves all of the straight, boring people you’d like to avoid on the holidays. Sure, you won’t be able to do that on Christmas. That would just paint you as a weirdo who hates people. Yeah, if you live in one of the countries where Easter is a big deal, you’ll have to reply to some kind of card.
But Halloween was taken from the Irish precisely because it seemed to be the kind of holiday best enjoyed by the strange, the eccentric and the mentally unstable. It was loads of fun for a while. You could hear it in the music. All Halloween songs were novelty tunes about monsters, ghouls, and creeps sung by people who seemed to belong to the same category as the people they sang about.
I’m glad to report that weirdness and beauty still exist in the Halloween spirit. Spooky Bambina’s “Werewolf from Hell!” Is the kind of ghostly tune that best represents the spirit of, for example, Roky Erickson and his demonic visions. Spooky Bambina’s werewolf is dangerous, foul-smelling, and might be involved in organised crime. But it’s a love song nonetheless and, equally, one meant to scare the children. Right on time!
