Macabre and Monstrous: The Playlist
Today on We Aren’t Dead Yet, we talked vibes and how they can benefit our work. I don’t know about you, but not a word gets typed in any of my documents without a playlist or some form of ambient music for background noise.
Music can motivate and inspire, it can horrify and repulse. For many of us it’s an integral part of our human experience, and when developing the stories in Macabre and Monstrous, all three of us came to our work with a different cycle of sound.
And for the triune of trying new things, that meant a spotify playlist for Macabre and Monstrous: A Horror Anthology of Eldritch Space, Myth Monsters & Forest Frights, our first short story collection launching this October 31st via Vraeyda Literary.
We start off with songs which inspired the mood for Fell Plumes by Emily Armstrong. Atmospheric and cosmic, these songs feature Kammarheit and Beyond Sensory Experience. Expect a sense of openness and unease, the frothing of an unsettling aura I know I couldn’t click away from. I was captivated by Hypnagoga, sent into a space, where the atmosphere of Fell Plumes was as real as the tower jutting from the planet surface far below. I can’t wait until you read Fell Plumes, and see what I mean.
Fell Plumes takes us to Whiskey and Sinners Blood, which hits upside the head with the Dropkick Murphys, and Great Big Sea. We’re into one of my two stories, where Carolee and Colm deal with the High Queen of the Fae in 1990’s Ireland. The Rumjacks with The Pot & Kettle slides from Irish Punk/Folk to a darker turn in Firewake by Zeal & Ardor. Here, we have the first true metal song in the playlist, right when Carolee does something indelibly rash. It takes us past the climactic horror of a moment when all things went wrong for one afternoon. Unconformities by The Ocean, featuring Karin Park take us into Doctor Blind from the intensely talented Emily Haines & The Soft Skeletons.
Nothing says ‘you done effed up’ like the melodic and sometimes unsettling vocals of the lead singer of Metric. Doctor Blind plays Whiskey and Sinners Blood out, to a different sort of vibe completely with KS Bishoff’s short story Harvest of Horrors.
So, moody and deep Doctor Blind to Concerning Hobbits by Howard Shore. Not too much of a whiplash neck jerk is it? It starts us off at a fantastic place for this work of pure fantasy. A creature feature, Harvest of Horrors is unlike the rest of the collection and a different sort of horror.
Same with the next song, which Dazz chose as the main theme of Jaws. Yep. Pure creature feature fuel here. Enjoy your next walk in a forest, not-so-gentle readers.
Emily brings back the mood music with Apocryphos and Cryo Chamber for her story Salvager’s Loop, and we discussed at length on stream about the hollow but resonant quality of Apocryphos and Cryo Chamber’s music, which inspired the mood in Salvager’s Loop. Epic, thrilling and unsettling music with a tone that makes my skin crawl in the best of ways. Something wicked this way… oh there it is again… wait… is this… am I looped or something?
The final section of the playlist is inspired by The Lamia, another Judge of Mystics Saga story we put in this collection. Intensity from Cryo Chamber lilts off to Norse folk and historical Scandinavian-inspired music by Warduna, Heilung and Myrkur. This dives into Let it Die by the Foo Fighters, Dana-Dan by Bloodywood, and Wh*re by In The Moment, a powerful song from a mighty female vocalist.
In the end, much like the collection itself, we settle things down with Moby and The Lonely Night. We’re not actually going to leave you on the back end of terrified… have a little faith and hope you listen in to the Macabre and Monstrous playlist now and when Macabre and Monstrous is released to the world on paperback and digital, wherever books are sold.
