In a lot of ways, I think metal as a whole is silly. I say this as someone who’s been listening to metal for over half of his lifetime, someone who used to take it too seriously. I’m not saying its inherent silliness takes away from what it means to me. Horror and comedy are so incredibly linked, and I think metal kind of embodies that in many ways. Deathgasm embodies this perfectly. It takes both horror and metal, and leans into the comedy/silliness. Long story short, two high school metalhead dorks start a band, find a legendary piece of sheet music, and…well, you know where this is going. Hell breaks loose in the most violent and amplified ways. Bloody. Gross. Metal as shit. Deathgasm rules, and it’s a movie that definitely has the metal-horror vibe.

If Deathgasm represents the inherent silliness of metal, Metalhead is the inverse. It’s the brutality. The raw emotion. The existential dread. The darkness. It’s anything but a caricature, and is perhaps one of the most honest and authentic representations of metal, and the black metal subculture out there. It takes place in Iceland, centering around a girl named Hera who turns to increasingly antisocial and rebellious tendencies to cope with the loss of her brother, while her parents do the opposite—turn to God, yet remain swallowed in their grief. Perhaps this is cheating, because it’s not a horror movie, but goddamn is it miserable. It also represents the healing and cathartic aspects of metal and playing music. Something that outsiders often don’t understand behind all the noise. Lead actress Thora Bjorg Helga also played her own guitar parts. What’s more fucking metal than that?

I remember Green Room making waves when it came out in 2016. It’s a horror-thriller where a punk band’s show gets cancelled last minute. Despite this, they’re able to get one scheduled at a nearby bar out in the boonies…and then the gig goes south. Way south. The band is held captive after finding the body of a girl who was stabbed to death, and then must fight their way out. It’s incredibly tense, full of grimy set pieces, and stellar performances. Specifically, Patrick Stewart, who places a relatively unassuming and quiet roll as the leader of the skinheads, despite how violent and unnerving the film is.

Uncle Peckerhead is quite simply a delight. Another horror-comedy that shouts from the front row, fist raised high. The band Duh have all quit their jobs and are headed on a short tour to prove themselves, but fuck!—their van was repossessed. So they find a new one, but it comes with a little surprise, a roadie named Peckerhead who happens to turn into a flesh eating beast every night at midnight. But hey, every band loves their roadies, so Duh makes due. It’s silly. It’s gruesome and gory and filled with guts. It’s unashamed about what it is, which is incredibly punk rock.

I know Nicolas Cage is one of those guys you either love or love to hate, but Mandy isn’t just metal, it’s peak metal. A doom album in movie form. Esoteric, psychedelic, weird, culty—it checks some extremely specific boxes for some folks and wards away others, but for me, it was one of those movies that required time to digest. Honestly, like a lot of good doom albums. You just have to be patient. Nic Cage plays a recovering alcoholic veteran lumberjack and lives with his girlfriend Mandy, an author and fantasy artist. Unfortunately, Mandy catches the eyes of cult leader, Jeremiah Sands. He sends his biker gang after her…and well, I don’t want to spoil the rest. It’s bonkers. It’s Hellraiser and a YOB album and '70s esoteric-vibes blended together. It’s chainsaws. It’s bigger chainsaws. LSD. Lots of purple. And to top it off, it boasts an incredible score by the late Johann Johannsson.

Time to wrap up the movies with something a bit old school, and perhaps a little out of the blue. Demons, an Italian film from the '80s that fills a specific cult classic type of void. It follows a group of people who’ve been given tickets to a movie. One of the characters cuts herself on a mask that is in the theater lobby before the film starts. The film they’ve been given tickets to ends up being pretty messed up: a violent movie about kids looking for Nostradamus’s tomb. They find the tomb but not the body, instead an odd book and a mask—yes, a similar mask to the one in the theater lobby. Folks start turning into demons and the movie gets messy. It’s weird. It’s a bit gross. One of those movies that for some reason just gives off a metal vibe, ya know?