REVOLVER Magazine

🔪 On October 5th, 2018, Ice Nine Kills released the instant classic 'The Silver Scream.'⁠
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Few musicians have celebrated horror villains and their on-screen bloodlettings as fervently as Spencer Charnas did on INK's breakthrough album.⁠
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You see, the group's founding vocalist is a lifelong fright obsessive, a kid who couldn't help but recite his favorite lines through every rewatch of 'Friday the 13th' and 'A Nightmare on Elm Street.' He fittingly slips into the roles of many famous monsters on 'The Silver Scream,' a celluloid-and-gore-trimmed album where screamed-and-sung plot beats are intercut with a unique hybridization of brutal breakdowns and theatrical songcraft befitting a Broadway review.⁠
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Name-dropping Freddy Krueger's razor glove or the quippy killer doll Chucky is mere child's play, though. Ice Nine Kills further splice a mix of instantly recognizable and deep-cut music cues from slasher scores into their music: Charnas' performances channel the eerie inflections and vocal tics of on-screen baddies like 'IT's tittering nightmare clown, Pennywise.⁠
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Beyond that, 'The Silver Scream's intertextuality even includes the rise of a new villain for the ages — namely Charnas, or at least a fictional version of himself. Starting with 'The Silver Scream,' INK's music videos presented a series of interconnected vignettes from the singer's therapy sessions. Throughout, an opportunistic psychiatrist wonders whether the violent fever dreams his patient is describing — each a viscera-flinging homage to a different horror franchise — are actually a killer's confessions.⁠
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✍️:

"I won't let this build up inside of me."⁠
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On October 5th, 2004, Slipknot released the single "Vermillion."⁠
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Which do you prefer: "Pt. 1" or "Pt. 2"?⁠
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Slipknot's Corey Taylor pointed to "Vermillion" as the song that really sums up the late, great Paul Gray's songwriting contribution to the band. "The first time I heard 'Vermillion,' I had fu***ng chills," Taylor told Revolver. "That was really the song that got me excited about 'Vol. 3' — and this is, like, hearing it in just demo form, with him and Joey jamming. It made me go, This could go very well. This could be something very, very special."⁠
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M. Shawn "clown" Crahan agreed. "When Paul wrote 'Vermillion,' you know, you felt his pain," he said. "You felt struggle, you felt hard times. And you couldn't help but just be floored — like, this is so much pain and so much love in just one little area. That really did it for me."

"I'm so sick."⁠
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On October 4th, 2005, Flyleaf released their self-titled debut.⁠
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The album hit like a lightning strike. From Lacey Sturm's unmistakable vocals to the band's explosive blend of melody, vulnerability and heavy riffs, 'Flyleaf' became a defining record of the 2000s nu-metal landscape, spending 133 weeks on the Billboard 200 and eventually going platnium. Songs like "I'm So Sick," "Fully Alive" and "All Around Me" still carry the raw urgency that made the LP resonate with listeners around the world. ⁠
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21 years later, its impact is impossible to ignore. 'Flyleaf' didn't just make noise — it gave a generation something to scream, sing and hold onto.

"Aim my smilin' skull at you."⁠
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34 years ago this month, Alice in Chains released the single "Sea of Sorrow."⁠
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A dark, riff-driven standout from their groundbreaking debut, 'Facelift,' the song helped establish the band's signature sound — Jerry Cantrell's sludgy guitar work, Layne Staley's iconic vocals, and that unmistakable Seattle heaviness. "Sea of Sorrow" captures Alice in Chains at their rawest: brooding and brutal yet also melodic and catchy, with a sense of tension that never lets up. ⁠
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More than three decades later, the grunge anthem still hit with the same force. A crucial early chapter in the band's legacy — and a reminder of why 'Facelift' changed the game.