Another post that lets the Café moves away from exclusively commenting on old cult and horror films in its regular posts. While The Ghastly Ones is a surf/hot rod band from Van Nuys CA, the themes they perform about are basically old horror films and they do it pretty darn good. I am a big fan of old surf and hot rod music and I welcome the revival in the sound that happened in the mid to late nineties and has lingered on until now. Quite a few bands on independent labels have flourished by revamping the classic sounds of greats like The Ventures, Dick Dale, The Surfaris, Link Wray and many others. Not only are the sounds reproduced and basically done better - given modern production methods and playing ability - but the look and image has been resurrected as well.

The Ghastly Ones take their name from the Z-film by director Andy Milligan (Dragula, The Rats are Coming! The Werewolves are Here!, Gutter Trash, the Depraved) that is nothing more than a “spend the night in a haunted house” romp. The band members all have super spooky names like Baron Shivers, Dr Lehos, Sir Gogo Ghostly, Captain Klegg and gogo girl Necrobella. The playing style is frantic and tight with classicly cheesy farfisa organ and heavy reverb driven guitar .

A guy who has been at the front of this retro-rock revival but whose style leans towards the Heavy Metal side of things is Rob Zombie. He took a fancy to The Ghastly Ones and they recorded their first album on his Zombie-A-Go-Go records before establishing their own Ghastly Plastics Corps label. Like Zombie they mix in samples of dialog from old horror films with their music to good effect.

I provide you some examples of their creepy and cool album cover art and promotional art. I also give you a few thumbnails of sexy gogo ghoul Necrobella who is a swinging Mortica, Vampira type babe. Great sound, Great look. Great theme and bouncy dancing grave doll. What more can I say? Go get an album and give ‘em a try.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Music-MP3s . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.