On Warmer Music's Official Halloween 2012 Mixtape

I have mixed feelings about Halloween. Although I do love autumn and have a strong appreciation for cheap Gothic horror, the glee with which my fellow Millenials have embraced the holiday does give me pause. There's something about the mixture of premature childhood nostalgia, wittier-than-thou ironic costuming and hardcore drinking that makes the whole thing smack of the Peter Pan Syndrome that is one of my generation's least-appealing qualities. (Insert Peter Pan costume joke here.)

Of course, at a certain point you either have to shit or get off the pot and I know that the combined forces of candy lovers, costume mavens and a consumer society in desperate need of a post-back-to-school, pre-Christmas cash cow means that Halloween as we know it is here to stay, so I might as well enjoy it. With that in mind, I'm hereby presenting you with your official Halloween party mix. Take an hour and sample a celebration of serial killers, infanticide, kosher lycanism and cerebral consumption.

Download the Mix As A .RAR

1. Werewolf Bar Mitzvah [Download] - Tracy Jordan  Buy An Evening With Tracy Jordan
The hit single off the raunchy, blasphemous and ultimately confusing An Evening With Tracy Jordan, "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" was Jordan's least culturally insulting moment on the album, a fact widely credited to a last-second re-write of the lyrics by Harvey Lemmings.
2. Halloween - Dead Kennedys  Buy Plastic Surgery Disasters
In the Dead Kennedys' last single Jello Biafra recognizes the carnivalesque social inversion element of Halloween and blasts a society of conformists for only daring to live out their dreams one day a year.
3. Monster - Kanye West  Buy My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
You know a posse cut is deep when Jay-Z has the least inspired verse. Also featuring Rick Ross, Justin Vernon and a frighteningly sharp Nicki Minaj, the video alone makes this song a horror classic.

Monster by Kanye West | Grooming by Ibn Jasper from FRANK REPS on Vimeo.

4. Human Fly - The Cramps  Buy Off The Bone
Perhaps Lux Interior's finest moment in a career dedicated to creating a soundtrack for Halloween. I don't know if there's a finer lyric in punk rock than "I'm a maggot reborn using germ warfare."
5. Subway Song - The Cure  Buy Boys Don't Cry
The first time I heard this song I was walking my dog late at night and the ending made me jump so suddenly it got the dog barking. It's still that good.
6. Rock And Roll Halloween [Download] - Bobby Bare Jr.  Buy A Storm - A Tree - My Mother's Head
No song captures the sad, demented, kitschy spectacle of a drunken Halloween party that this tale of loneliness and cross-dressing in Atlanta.
7. I Bleed - Pixies  Buy Doolittle
Kim's menacing bass and creepily enticing coo are a perfect foil for Frank lacks yelping about hell, vampires and barren caves.
8. Gacy's Place [Download] - The Mentally Ill  Buy Gacy's Place: The Undiscovered Corpses
Arguably Chicago's first punk band, The Mentally Ill was actutually from Skokie and they took the creepiest part of their north suburban experience and turned it into their most infamous song. One of the less SFW I can think of (until the end of the mix).
9. Dracula's Wedding - OutKast  Buy Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
Andre 3000 does his best Prince impersonation over a phatty synth while Kelis drips sexuality in her hunt for his blood and sexuality. One of The Love Below's most enjoyable experiments.
10. Zombie Graveyard Party - Be Your Own Pet  Buy Get Awkward
"Life is lame so let me eat your brain." R.I.P. BYOP
11. Ghost Town - The Specials  Buy The Singles Collection
The early '80s were dark times throughout the western world. The Specials infuse everyday life in Thather's Britain with all the menace it warrants.
12. Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident - Mountain Goats  Buy Heretic Pride
Only John Darnielle could show this much almost-relatable empathy to a murderer. His meditative description of murder in a bathroom is backed by soft strings and a heavenly chorus which makes the whole thing that much more chilling.
13. Dance With The Devil - Immortal Technique  Buy Revolutionary Vol. 1
More chilling than "scary", Immortal Technique's depiction of urban violence and alienation need do little more than look at America's city to find truly horrific subject matter.
14. Laughing With A Mouth Of Blood - St. Vincent  Buy Actor
Annie Clark's ability to sing with an oddly threatening sweetness was practically designed for Halloween. Also, I find the title image so utterly creepy.
15. Mommy, Can I Go Out And Kill Tonight? [Live] - The Misfits  Buy Earth A.D.
You could pick almost any Misfits song for this mix but I love the mixture of childhood innocence and murder.
16. Necromancer - Gnarls Barkley  Buy St. Elsewhere
Cee-Lo sounds both sensual and calmly psychotic in this song which knows, like most of the Mountain Goat's discography, that love, hate and violence are, at some level all parts of the same package.
17. Turkish Song Of The Damned - The Pogues  Buy If I Should Fall From 
Grace With God
It's just not Halloween without a banshee, right? RIGHT?
18. Country Death Song - Violent Femmes  Buy Hallowed Ground
Gordon Gano was the son of a preacher and he's clearly read enough Old Testament to know the ingredients for a great story - family, murder, betrayal, sacrifice, shame. The high point of the Femmes' underrated second album.