When I think of Halloween, I immediately conjure up images of dystopian futures in which sadistic android overlords called Machmen torture remaining humans by forcing them to compete in a survival games against rape and murder robots in an arena called “The Park”, while the Machmen sneer and enjoy the carnage from Zom-Zoms, a nearby nightclub. Every conceivable futuristic nightmare set to a creepy, almost dehumanizing musical soundtrack, underscoring the inevitable sublimation of humanity as cybernetic organisms continue their ascendance as the predominant life-form in our world.

You know… for kids!

Gary Numan/Tubeway Army’s classic 1979 LP Replicas was a New Wave revelation, a deep influence on industrial music, and pound for pound had one of the creepiest album covers of all time. No shitting you, every time I see that face in the window I get the skeevy-jeevies like nobody’s business. The album’s most popular track was Down In The Park, an almost minimalist keyboard-driven tune that has been covered by a host of artists, most notably Foo Fighters, who took on the song on the 1996 Songs In The Key Of X album (an X-Files ‘soundtrack’ LP). Their cover did the song justice, taking a straight-on hard-rock approach that still manages to maintain much of the original’s creepiness. Perfect for a Halloween moment to make a creepy silent evening more… disturbing.

Down in the park
Where the chant is “Death, death, death!”
Until the sun cries morning
Down in the park with friends of mine…