Halloween Countdown: October 8 – the rest is silence

Today’s installment of our seasonal countdown features a much-loved favorite at Armagideon Time HQ: “Tenterhooks”, an instrumental track from Damned frontman and gothic fashion icon Dave Vanian. The piece originally appeared on The Whip, a 1982 gothic rock compilation. Subsequent reissues of the album have seen other tracks from the original dropped or swapped out of in favor of songs from contemporary goth acts, but “Tenterhooks” has remained a constant, and rightly so.

The track has a nice traditional spooky vibe (complete with a ghostly chorus), livened up by some retro-sixties organ flourishes. I can easily envision it as the theme to some lost horror film with a title like The Go-Go-Ghost of Castle Von Groovy (which may or may not have been the title of a Bob Haney Teen Titans story). Hardly the stuff of nightmares, but great, ghoulish fun nonetheless.

Dave Vanian – Tenterhooks (from The Whip, 1982)