Assignment 23 - INK Playlist - Cat Lucier

Swazey Sexton introduced me to the metalcore/horrorcore band Ice Nine Kills in freshman year. At first listen, they're super hardcore, very edgy and heavy and loud with some melodic sections sprinkled in. But then as you listen again and again, you realize that they're absolute genius. Their most recent music takes after classic horror stories. The 2015 album Every Trick in the Book is literary-inspired, and the 2018 album The Silver Scream is cinematically-inspired. There are earlier albums, but they aren't quite as mature - the band was still developing their sound.
Spencer, the lead vocalist and the only founding band member left, has an incredible voice. I can only really describe it as "orgasmic". I would also say that I am "Spencer-sexual", and Swazey agrees to a lesser extent ("Spencer-romantic).
1. "The Greatest Story Ever Told" is about a guy who kills his girlfriend after she cheats on him. He invents a murderer (probably from an underlying Dissociative Identity Disorder) to avoid the blame from others and guilt from himself. I love how the two different personalities are portrayed through the accompanying instrumentals and types of vocals.
2. "Stabbing in the Dark" is based on the movie Halloween, where Michael Myers dons a (white-painted Captain Kirk) mask and goes around stabbing his sister and other teenagers in his hometown. He is characterized as pure evil directly by the creators of the character and the movie. Now, what gets me with this song is the external sounds that are incorporated. Throughout the song, an alarm is used as a beat, and it really gets me when it slows down to half-time for the last few seconds. Also, during the bridge, the police chief radioing out orders to shoot to kill is audible.
3. "Rocking the Boat" is based on Jaws. The song opens with radio chatter of a boat making an official distress call to the Coast Guard. Again, this song incorporates external sounds, such as the radio chatter and the uber-recognizable Jaws theme song underlying the middle part of the song as you can hear the mounting panic of the crew as they realize that the Coast Guard is too far away to save them from the great white shark attacking their boat.
4. "IT is the End" is based on It (yes it was a book first but they used the movie). Again with the external sounds, there are classic carnival sounds used throughout. You can hear carousel music and a clown horn, and the speed of the words and the instrumentals create a fittingly diabolical sound.
5. "Your number's up" is based on the Scream franchise. A heavy bass accentuates each word of the first few lines of the chorus, and there are again external sounds. A telephone rings, and throughout the song, there is an intermittent dialogue between the girl who picks up the phone and the murderer. The song concludes with some pretty gory stabbing sounds, too.
While this is only 5 songs, The Silver Scream is my favorite album and sometimes I'll listen to it on repeat for days at a time. Here is the link to the final cut of the album: https://open.spotify.com/album/7JHuopZAKDulAbpg61Yjzm?si=_QfLU2d8Q2eobF6ASiKA8w