Blood on Black Wax: Horror Soundtracks on Vinyl (Expanded Edition)

by Aaron Lupton, Jeff Szpirglas, Mick Garris (Foreword by), Christopher Young (Afterword)

Overview

BRAND NEW & EXPANDED EDITION! Packed with dozens of additional horror titles and containing limited edition enhanced packaging (gilded foil page edges + ribbon marker).

Are you obsessed with John Carpenter's iconic music for the Halloween series? Do you thrill to the unforgettable stabs of the Psycho score, or the pounding synths of Goblin's soundtrack to Suspiria? Do you find yourself being pulled into the hair-raising modern scores for the likes of Get Out, Hereditary, and It Follows?

You're not alone.

Blood on Black Wax is a defining horror soundtrack volume that spotlights iconic franchises such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Jaws, The Exorcist, Child’s Play, and George A. Romero's “living dead” films, highlighting both the music and the amazing, often rare artwork that graces the record sleeves. It also tells the stories behind the soundtrack, from the mouths of the musicians who made them, including John Carpenter, Fabio Frizzi, Christopher Young, Harry Manfredini, Charles Bernstein, Pino Donaggio, John Harrison, and more.

Aaron Lupton and Jeff Szpirglas, both of Rue Morgue magazine, have curated Blood on Black Wax to reflect their own passion for the darkest slabs of soundtrack music. Their journey into the fascinating history of horror movie scores contains reviews, release details, and the wild stories about the making of both iconic classics and the strange outliers of the genre – everything from the orchestral sounds of Hammer and Universal horror, to the truly experimental albums for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Eraserhead, to the outlandish punk and metal songs of '80s soundtrack albums like The Return of the Living Dead and Shocker.

Go back to your favorite horror films one more time, through the jaw-dropping, spine-tingling music that helped solidify their place in cinematic history!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781948221177
Publisher:	1984 Publishing
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 10.80(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

AARON LUPTON has been writing for Rue Morgue since 2001 and is currently in the role of Music Editor, discussing horror-themed music and artists. An avid fan and collector of horror movie soundtracks, his attic functions as an ever growing library of music on vinyl, as well as the recording home of From My Parents Basement podcast, which he hosts with Eric Gaudet and Gary Pullin.

JEFF SZPIRGLAS has been rabidly listening to film soundtracks since picking up an audio cassette of Return of the Jedi back in 1983. Over the years, he has contributed to Film Score Monthly and now regularly writes for Rue Morgue magazine. He is also the author of over 20 books for young readers, ranging from horror novels to nonfiction tomes.

MICK GARRIS (foreword) is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer whose projects include Hocus Pocus, Tales from the Crypt, The Stand, Freddy's Nightmares, and Amazing Stories.

CHRISTOPHER YOUNG (afterword) is a composer whose projects include Hellraiser, Drag Me to Hell, Pet Sematary, The Exorcism of Emily Rose,Ghost Rider, and Spider-Man 3.

Read an Excerpt

FOREWORD

When breaking down what makes a horror movie work (or not), it is easy to bypass one of its most important elements. The script, the atmospheric lighting and lens choice, the cast, the visual and makeup effects, and the editorial approach all are important ingredients when leading the audience down the dark path to their deepest fears. But a singularly crucial piece of the puzzle is usually the last one to be locked in: the musical score.

Music can make or break a film; it can make a good movie – of any genre – great. Or it can make a mediocre or crummy film better. Or, it can just sit there in a puddle of its own lifeless blood. Film music is its pulse, and when the right film and composer meet, magic happens. Movies are visceral, experiential. Music may be mathematical on charts, but, from its beginnings with the heartbeats of the tribes around the campfire to the fantastic digital samples and electronic aural creations that never existed in nature, it amplifies our emotions, and digs in deep to primal places that words and pictures cannot easily access.

Even when they were silent, movies always had a soundtrack. In the pre-Vitaphone days, score sheets were distributed with the films to the cinemas, and the music was performed live – on giant Wurlitzer pipe organs in the most elegant theaters, or an out-of-tune Steinway upright in the more modest locations. They were, for the most part, consistent in that regard.

Tension is built as much through sound as through image, and in some ways even more. Just as the storytelling tools of cinema have evolved over the years to become a language of their own, so too has the metamorphosis of film music led us to expect – or not – the traps being laid by the score.

Some aspects of those are obvious: the loud discordant chord crashing onto the jump scare, the long held note warning us of something awful to come. Those are simple staples of the shocker, to the point of being self-parodying. But the soundscapes woven by the composer may also create an unsettling dread, a rich, deep, emotional experience that follows us home from the theater to haunt us a bit longer. Music has always been crucial for me, and it has allowed me to cover numerous cinematic sins I might have committed without anyone noticing.

John Carpenter once told me that it’s easy to make somebody jump, to shock the audience. All he has to do is run black leader through a projector silently, then hit a white frame and a loud noise, and the work is done. But that’s merely a simple jump. And it’s ironic that Carpenter was the first filmmaker I ever saw recording a musical score for a movie, and neither of us realized that he was changing the course of horror film music at the time. I was interviewing him in a tiny recording studio in Hollywood in 1978, and he was alone, hunkered over a synthesizer, scoring Halloween.

The most important part of a film score is to do its work in concert with the movie it accompanies; it doesn’t need to stand alone on a soundtrack album, though it’s nice when it does. But sometimes, something magic comes from a soundtrack that won’t sound great on your car stereo. Consider, for example, the “score” that Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell did for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre back in 1974. It is a soundscape, conducted noises and disturbing audio accompaniment to one of the most powerful and frightening films of all times. And Tobe made it very clear that he never played an instrument, though he did an amazing job on those skins and blades and bones.

Groundbreaking scores that help a movie to terrify are plentiful, from Bernard Herrmann’s black-and-white string chillers in Psycho to Jerry Goldsmith’s melodic-and-atonal sound bed for Alien. Carpenter’s Halloween showed you could make great music without great cost (or an orchestra) – a point driven home by Claudio Simonetti and his band Goblin, in his scores for Dario Argento and many others.

I was a singer in a progressive rock band before I began writing and making films and television, but I always loved the full, organic sound of an orchestra for my films. I had the experience of a full orchestra on my first directing job, a Disney TV movie called Fuzzbucket, as well as on my one directorial effort for the TV show Amazing Stories, called “Life on Death Row.” There is nothing more exciting than being on a studio recording stage with a studio orchestra! The power of it can be overwhelming.

When I finally was able to direct my first feature, the timeless classic Critters 2: The Main Course (Me? Sarcastic?), it was important to have an orchestra, despite our very slender budget. We were creating Norman Rockwell’s America, after all, in a Spielbergian world, and a 1988 synthesizer would not cut it. In our first collaboration, Nicholas Pike pulled together a non-union 40-piece orchestra and made magic. I’m told that Spielberg’s editor Michael Kahn used that score as temporary music on Steven’s films for many years to come.

Another side of the film music coin is scoring by songs. In the miniseries I directed of Stephen King’s The Stand, for example, the opening pre-credit sequence is memorably set to Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” and I can’t hear that song without thinking of that scene...[continues]

Mick Garris
Director / Writer / Producer

Table of Contents

1) Foreword (Mick Garris)
2) Introductions (Aaron Lupton + Jeff Szpirglas)
3) Classic Monsters
4) Intergalactic Encounters
5) Creature Features
6) Supernatural Horror
7) Murder Maestros
8) Italian Terror
9) Rock 'N' Roll Nightmares
10) Different Beasts
11) Index

Editorial Reviews

Holiday Gift Guide Mentions: Fangoria, Under the Radar, Ultimate Classic Rock.

"Horror nut? Vinyl fiend? You’ve come to the right place. We’re obsessed with Blood On Black Wax: Horror Soundtracks On Vinyl, a lovingly crafted book that catalogues some of the greatest horror soundtracks of all time." – NME

"Blood On Black Wax takes a deep dive into the history of horror movie soundtracks and the cool AF artwork that cloaks them." – Alternative Press

"What a fantastic book! This thick tome, in full glorious color, is beautiful." – Blumhouse’s Shock Waves podcast

"Blood on Black Wax is a passionate tribute to movie soundtracks and vinyl, giving a voice to the composers who deserve to be celebrated and amplified just as loudly as their memorable music." – Slash Film

"For those who possess any love whatsoever for soundtracks from the dark side of cinema, it is difficult to fully relay how comprehensive and essential Blood on Black Wax truly is." – Decibel

"A refreshing read and a fun addition to your coffee table." – Screen Anarchy

"Horror buffs, meet music nerds. Blood on Black Wax is both accessible and fascinating – not just for the record nerd or the horror fan, but for anyone who watched Hereditary and found themselves thinking about the music afterwards." – The Outline

"Screams aren't the only horror movie sounds which frighten us — nothing can amp up the fear as much as the right soundtrack. And nobody knows that better than Aaron Lupton and Jeff Szpirglas, co-authors of Black Wax: Horror Soundtracks on Vinyl, which gives the backstories behind those terrifying tunes." – Shudder

"A beautiful looking object that is also super insightful, engrossing, and a must for any self-respecting soundtrack fan.” – Spencer Hickman / Mondo

"For the first time, an entire book dedicated solely to the rarest and wildest soundtracks and scores from every corner of the horror pantheon." – Invisible Oranges

"Blood on Black Wax is a horror music fan's dream book." – Vehlinggo

From the Publisher