Vampire Music Part III

This is the third part in my series featuring the chapter on vampire music in my book Vampires' Most Wanted. There is a surprising amount of music out there inspired in some way by vampires that it was really hard to choose. My choices in the whole book don't necessarily reflect my opinion on what's best. Just what I found interesting. Best, biggest, brightest is just too subjective a thing to try to state. But I only had ten entries to work with. Here are numbers 6 and 5:

6.  Opera of the Dead

The Italian gothic metal band Theatres des Vampires has a fixation for vampires, among its other dark song subjects.  This is not upbeat music.  It’s dramatic and unrelenting yet curiously beautiful in its black mood.  It seems to understand the romance and the danger of the modern concept of vampirism and how a soul can be lost to its deceptive beauty.

“Vampiryca” begins with a gentle piano and the soft sounds of a woman crooning.  As the tempo picks up, a guitar wraps around the song like a rope being pulled taught.  The song is both an entreaty and a warning.  “When you walk my dark path/ love like a blood bath.”  The singer is answering a prayer yet cautioning that the gift will change life in dark ways unexpected. 

“Suicide Vampire” is a slower song, yet meaty and operatic, guided largely by violins and a heavy beat.  The desperate confusion of a person torn between two extremes is palpable in a chorus performed with the staccato of a chopping ax.  The singer speaks of his immortality purchased with other lives, but it’s “A dismal journey in the valley of death.”  Perhaps this is the gift in “Vampiryca” making itself fully realized.  Eventually, the song drifts to an end as if disappearing into the night like the vampire itself.

“La Danse Macabre du Vampire” is another song of operatic passion.  An 80s sounding synth line threads throughout the song punctuating the cat-growled lyrics with a curiously poppy feeling.  Make no mistake, though.  This is a hungry song.  Attempting to seduce, “I’m your pleasure…” yet promising, “…your pain/this night we rise for our thirst/this night we rise to live.”

The group’s name is taken from Anne Rice’s Paris vampire coven in Interview with a Vampire.  Members have romanced the notion of vampirism adopting nicknames like Lord Vampyr, Incubus and Strigoi and using album titles like “Nosferatu” “The Vampire Chronicles” and “Vampyrisme.”  Hardly understated, but definitely worth a listen.

5.  Oh Yes They Will

There’s a gothic, lonely-drifter feeling to My Chemical Romance’s “Vampires Will Never Hurt You.”  The song can be found on the New Jersey group’s 2002 CD “I brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love” a musical scream from start to finish.  The CD was recorded three months after the group’s formation in 2001 and is surprisingly tight for so young a band.  Citing among their influences the arena rock of Queen, the media-punk of The Misfits, and the drama of the Smiths, its no wonder their songs contain an element of theatricality in their storytelling.

In "Vampires" two people seem stranded in a horrifying situation.  It's a dramatic song, the music harsh and unrelenting, almost frightened, the singer desperate in his desire to save them both.  One can practically envision the singer and his love holed up in some ghost town, terrified of what will happen when the sun goes down.  The singer vows that he'll do what he can to protect his beloved from whatever undead seems about to come upon them.  All the while, he tells her, "And if they get me take this spike to my heart."  But as much as he insists, "I'll never let them hurt you now tonight" it seems it's a promise he's unable to keep.  The force they're running from is just too powerful and at some point the sun will go down.



Next time, two names that started in the late 70s yet managed to stand the test of time.