Question of the Week: Name the scariest band or solo artist you’ve ever seen or heard and why they’re so terrifying

Local Spins’ Question of the Week (Oct. 21, 2021)

It’s Halloween week. Name the scariest band or solo artist you’ve ever seen or heard and why they’re so terrifying.

This week’s winner: Email subscriber Dean Madonia, who responded to the Question of the Week and was entered into a drawing for a Local Spins gift pack. Sign up for email updates and the weekly newsletter here: https://localspins.com/subscribe-local-spins-mailing-list/

THE READER RESPONSES:

Question of the Week:

Julio Gómez – Animal Collective is a terrible fever dream of a band they sound like psychosis and are incredibly horrifying.

Richard B. Kelley – Alice In Chains, with a hollow eyed, pin pupiled Layne Stanley on vocals delivering his lines like a possessed zombie or ghost. He upset my wife so much we left early.

John Olszewski – King Crimson

Eric Albertson – When the Kraken that is Mariah Carrey comes out of the sea every November to put All I Want For Christmas on repeat at every store and restaurant in the Country. “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”- William Butler Yeats.

Chad Michael Wedeven – Scott Walker’s albums “Tilt” and “The Drift.” Atonal anti-music with disturbing lyrics and jump scares.

Stephen Aldrich = Chad Michael Wedeven beat me to it…

Jack Clark – I’m from the 80’s so the wave of industrial rock like Skinny Puppy, Ministry, etc., always creeped me out.

Eric Ch – I took mushrooms and tried to listen to “Delirium Cordia” by fantomas. That was absolutely horrifying.

Ross Morgan – That early Manson shit was pretty creepy. I saw White Zombie when I was 11 and that was freaky to me then.

Paul Wyatt – Walking into a dark room as a kid with the end of Black Sabbath’s Children of the Grave” playing.

Mike Dodge – Hearing “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa” while sitting in my basement when I was about 5 or 6 years old. Kent Community Hospital was in my backyard. It was called Sunshine Hospital back then, and was used as a pseudo mental/psychiatric ward. When people would escape, the sirens would start blasting and doctors and security would be all over the place. It never really hit me as being freaky until I heard that song and it all sounded so creepy. I remember hearing that song the first time and running upstairs.

Bob Yokabitus – Mike Dodge: I know that place. Freaky man!

Lee Chase – I saw Detroit with Mitch Ryder in the very early 70s. At the time they were the ugliest meanest looking band I’d seen. We could literally smell them from our third row seats in Jenison Fieldhouse. Honorable mention: The Stranglers.

Andrew Ogrodzinski – Scariest? Grateful Dead Deer Creek 95. Not because of the band but the riot from gate crashers that ensued a few songs into set 1. Tear gas, dogs, cops in riot gear.

Chuk Light – Kid A. It’s bleak.

Eli Kahn – A tie between sunn O))), which felt like a satanic summoning and Dillinger Escape Plan – so much blood.

Dan Lynn – Lords of the New Church, “Dreams and Desires”

Kevin Matthews – Air Supply

Jacob Thomas Filarski – GG Allin, cuz he was actually evil.

Steve Secor – Jacob Thomas Filarski: Yeah. Poop on stage and the constant threat to commit suicide in front of the crowd gets a “creepy” vote from me, too.

Enrique Olmos – That time at a small club in San Francisco when the frontman wore a black full-body spandex suit and poured hot candle wax on himself. Power move.

Stephen Aldrich – Gram Parsons’ “Grievous Angel” comes to mind, singing about his death which occurred before the album was released.

Thomas Leonard Saxe – I have never been frightened by a band — show biz and all that — but the crowd in Detroit at a James Gang show was seriously scary. And I’m an inner-city kid.

Tyler Beer – “Om” by John Coltrane. I was not alive in 1965, but holy shit, if this isn’t creepy.

Mike Dodge – Beatles “Revolution 9” was another. As a teenager/young adult blasted or trippin’ with headphones on, that tune freaked me out of me a couple of times. Oh man, “Tubular Bells”! I have a couple of friends who can testify that times that tune freaked me out. Damn, now in need to hang out alone in the dark with some fear tunes!

Dean Madonia – I was on a writing retreat in the Smokies and someone told me about a songwriter named Randall Clay back in Nashville. They played me two songs “If I were the Devil” and “Loomis’ Funeral Home.”

Robert Biggie G Gill – This is probably pretty tame by comparison, but I remember being creeped out to the point of having to hide the cassette tape cover to “Piece of Mind” by Iron Maiden. That was the heaviest shit I had ever heard at the time! Back in 2000 or so, I saw Slipknot at Deltaplex. They had a pigs head they put on a stick and literally pulverized it with flesh and bone flying off of it as they pounded it to oblivion: Disturbing!

Leroy Theseal – The residents are pretty darn good.

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