To the manor died

Band: Various
Album: The Spooky, Swingin’ Sounds of Kreepsville Manor
Genre: Halloween
Label: Headless Spectre Records/Kreepsville Industries
Street Date: 2006
Website: www.kreepsvilleindustries.com

Some mad scientist has mixmastered 60’s monster kid records with searing zombie surf to build a creature that can creep while it rocks! This CD combines horror-drenched music by a number of bands with sound effects and spooky stories to make for a seamless sonic journey through a Halloween night at Kreepsville Manor. Many of the best ghoulish bands from the surf, rock and hipster genres are represented here, including The Fuzztones, The Moon-Rays, and The 3-D Invisibles.

There have been several releases in recent years of this type of compilation album of horror-themed bands. The Rob Zombie-produced Halloween Hootenanny (which features a couple of bands also on this CD: The Legendary Invisible Men and Davie Allan) is probably the best known. This CD is as good or better. It has obviously been produced with a love and understanding of what made those old horror records great. Along with some nods to the vinyl era – listing side one and two, noting on the cover that it is a “long playing record” – the CD includes glorious artwork by Pigsnoot and David Hartman of Sideshowmonkey.com that is worthy of a full-sized album cover. The lush paintings portray a plethora of ghouls and luscious ghoulettes posing, partying, and practicing perverse experiments.

The CD opens like a record as well with the sound of a needle skipping over the disk and finding its scratchy groove. Then spooky sound effects accompany an invitation to enter the haunted house. These sound effects of wind, chains, screams, howls, growls, creaks, and more, repeat between each song – what we used to call the “bands” on records – and sometimes give an intro to the following song’s subject.
The album is divided evenly between instrumentals and lyric songs. I have a great love for the novelty horror rock n roll records of the late 50’s and always want to hear more. Of the songs included, a high point is “Headless Man” by The Legendary Invisible Men. Riffing on the story of Sleepy Hollow, the band has two front men singing lead vocals in harmony along with a raucous garage-band sound and a blistering lead guitar. Another standout track is “Return of the One Percenter” by Psycho Charger, which with its lyrics about alienation and minimalist trip-hammer guitars has a Joy Division vibe. Of the instrumental tunes, “Escape From Castle Wolfenstein” by Monsters From Mars is amazing. It is a surf-style band but the organ is foregrounded as much as the guitar, giving it a creepy, cinematic sound that evokes Ennio Morricone. Also stunning is “The Unknown” by Davie Allan and The Arrows which is a raunchy surf number with a rarely used wah-wah effect on the guitar solo making it sound like it’s straight out of Woodstock.

With a number of other bands and several extras, this CD is packed with sound and definitely a great value. One of the extras is a brief spooky story called “The Haunted House: A Tale of Terror” which is an homage to the kind of story albums Boris Karloff and Vincent Price used to put out. The album also has some extended sound effects mixes at the end called “Mad Monster-Making Laboratory”, “1313 Abomination Breaks Loose”, and “Victim in The Torture Chamber.” This baby is more fun than a barrel full of shrunken heads!

by Nemo Swift
reprinted from BOFFM #3