If Monsters Were in Metal Bands
Dracula fronts a thrashy Transylvanian black-and-roll band, where he sings and plays guitar. The band is extremely popular, and the Count has tons of dedicated fans, but he can never keep a steady line-up. Most of the people who work with him consider him too domineering—always trying to control the music, ultra-competitive with other bands, always ready to steal your girlfriend. That said, he’s a rare example of an extreme metal rock star, and many are happy just to hang around him. He’s often accused of being a junkie as well, though this hasn’t done anything to harm his popularity.
Frankenstein’s monster is a one-man industrial death metal band in which he incorporates the sound of scientific machinery. All of his songs are about being abandoned by his creator, the plot of Paradise Lost, and how alone he is in the world. He constantly longs for a mate, but has a hard time talking to women when confronted by them. His music doesn’t quite work in the live setting—it’s a lot of noise with goth tendencies, obviously—but people always pack the club to see his finale where he hooks his neck up to a car battery.
Jekyll and Hyde are the two minds behind a really disturbing hipster black metal band that’s equal parts beautiful and revolting, a la Cobalt. Jekyll is the technical musician, and works his butt off, while Hyde provides the nihilistic attitude when he can be pulled away from the bar or gym. The band is always embroiled in drama and inner turmoil, breaking up and getting back together at the drop of a hat, which is a shame because they’re pretty damn good. It’s just hard to get those two in the studio together.
The Mummy leads a drone band that’s obsessed with Egyptian mythology (through a dark experimental lens, of course). He’s known for standing up there onstage, rigid and filthy, and letting loose these terrifying hoarse groans that plenty of people can’t stomach for an entire set. Still, the band always gets shows because it’s known for its road-dog determination and punctuality—even if he has to walk through a river or across a desert, the curse of the Pharoahs keeps the mummy coming until he makes his set time.
The Headless Horseman loves Iced Earth, and plays power metal in their style—filled with shredding and thrash, obsessed with historical battles. Plenty of folks who come to see a man without a head singing are sort of turned off to discover he’s singing galloping falsetto vocals about Hessian warriors running down Americans on the Revolutionary battleground (and deep in the woods on Halloween night), but the history nerds and old-school heshers who are into that kind of thing worship him. He’s very into America, and sometimes makes questionable political comments in interviews.
The Wolf Man is the lead singer of a hardcore punk band with political tendencies. Off-stage, he’s an eloquent, sober, troubled dude who’s quick to talk to new friends and super-generous to his fans. Onstage, though, he’s an absolute beast, tearing his clothes to shreds and transforming into a slobbering, howling monster who is a significant hazard to his friends and bandmates. If he doesn’t play live enough, he will erupt into violent rage during inopportune moments, like at the gas station or bar. The only way to stop him is by feeding him Coors Lights until he passes out.
The Creature From The Black Lagoon is into traditional thrash with a Sepulturian tribal aspect to it, connecting to those primal rhythms that it heard in the jungle for all those years. Given that there aren’t many people living in or around the Black Lagoon, it’s used to pulling together groups of locals who aren’t nearly as musically talented as it and thus making itself the only reliable member of the band. It’s self-taught and can play most instruments, often subbing in to record other parts in the studio. Its tour rider is the bane of promoters and venues, as it includes all sorts of extinct fish and water with the perfect PH.
The Three Witches are a spooky stoner band with biker tendencies. Their riffs are heavy and satisfying, their concerts are booze-packed bacchanals, and their sexual candor is the stuff of guffawed legend. Their aesthetic is heavily couched in hippie-ish ideas like astral projection, psychic manipulation, and time travel, but they also manage to load on a bunch of Satanic and pagan imagery as well. They’re past answering questions about being women within the scene, and as such are often publicly burned in the press. A lot of their shit is about Macbeth, of course.
The Boogeyman plays in an experimental metal act with significant circus and folk music influences. One minute, they sound like a cotton candy, and then the next they plunge into really upsetting psychological horrorscapes that make you feel like a child again. His well-dressed demeanor hides a truly terrifying mind, and his publicists are always trying to hide the stuttering confessions of his ex-girlfriends in the press. Considering himself above the metal and monster scene at large, he looks down on traditional extreme music, though has been occasionally sighted out partying with Dracula or Hyde.
The psychopath isn’t in a band, he/she runs a metal blog. In between masturbating into autopsied dogs (cause of death: getting fingered to death in this very basement) and dressing up in their dead mother’s lingerie, these human beasts scribble countless articles about why Ghost are bullshit and how the scene needs to be altered in order to survive. Unlike many of the monsters above, these fiends look like everyone else, so be careful—there might be one in the room with you right now.
