Dreams turn to nightmares

It's the most wonderful time of the year. There's a chill in the air, the days get a little bit shorter, and the darkness sets in a little earlier than we're ready for. What a perfect time to listen to some dark, moody, sometimes scary, definitely haunting, rock & roll music.

Every year I make a new playlist for the season. There's no rhyme or reason. I'll pull from modern hard rock, classic hard rock, metal, 60s and 70s rock, and sometime blues – whatever feels right for the playlist.

This year we set our sights on the dream world for a loosely tied-together collection of songs. Within that macabre world are ghosts, monsters, demons, killers, and other spooky, creepy entities just waiting to enter your mind and your soul through your music and your dreams.

Black Sabbath

This year, for obvious reasons, we're a little heavier on Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath than normal. Ozzy and Sabbath always have a spot in the playlist, but since attending Back to the Beginning, their music has served as the soundtrack for much of my year. We open our program with Black Sabbath's haunting introduction, their title track, "Black Sabbath", follow by "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", which inspired the name of the playlist.

Tributes to our rock heroes

In addition to paying tribute to Ozzy, I've also included a tribute to both KISS' Ace Frehley and Mastodon's Brent Hinds, both of whom passed away this year. "Strange Ways", from KISS' second album Hotter than Hell features Peter Criss on vocals, but it also features one of my favorite of Ace's guitar solos. "Halloween", from Mastodon's 2014 release Once More 'Round the Sun is on this playlist frequently, but I had to give it a prominent position in honor of Hinds. The opening guitar line of that song is so cool.

"I killed everything in my path"

One addition that I've made this year is to add Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" to the playlist. I'm from Nebraska, and the story of spree/serial killer Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate is always somewhere, lurking in the back of our minds here. The title track of Springsteen's 1982 album Nebraska loosely tells that story, including the scene of Starkweather's execution in the electric chair. The version I've included in the playlist is from the new boxed set Nebraska '82, from the section of the set called "Electric Nebraska".

First time haunts

There are several bands I've included for the first time, including:

The Dead Deads, a great band from Nashville that has an appropriate name for this playlist. Their track "Sea Beast" is a fun song that could be about a monster or could be a metaphor. Either way, monsters are fun!
Stammer, another band from Nashville that I wandered into on Bandcamp this year. Their latest track, "Weird Pearl", is dark, cold, and moody, with themes of domestic abuse, mental illness, and murder.
The Warning are a great band as well, not from Nashville, but from Mexico. They're a power trio that's taken the world by storm with their big sounds, heavy riffs, and fun, driving songs. I've included the first track from their latest album Keep Me Fed, called "Six Feet Deep".

A tale of dreams and nightmares

We close the playlist with several tracks that summon the dream world.

Suspened in Dusk, the dark, brooding Type O Negative track
In Twilight Hours from Kamelot.
Sleep Paralysis, a recent track from Lacuna Coil
Darkside, moody, heavy blues from Rival sons.
Infinite Baths, from Sleep Token's 2025 album Even in Arcadia

Closing out the playlist is "The Shadow Man Incident", the final track from Dream Theater's new album Parasomnia – a 20 minute epic that's very spooky but has all that incredible Dream Theater musicianship, but also summons a feeling of 70s Genesis epics like Supper's Ready. It's a fitting way to close this long, dark, spooky playlist.