There was no better time for heavy metal and horror movies than the ’80s. So many great slasher films lined themselves up with the metal music of the day: Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives, Trick or Treat, Pledge Night, Black Roses, Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and of course Maximum Overdrive, which was basically an excuse to put together a best-of AC/DC compilation. 

If you grew up in the middle of it like I did, there will always be a cold, black hole in your heart that can be filled only with chugging, metal riffage and straight-to-video horror.

Local horror/metal enthusiasts Night Killer get it.

As Nick Braun reported in these very pages, “The band began with Jeff Iseton (Filth & Majesty) on vocals/guitar, Josh Peebles (Lackluster) on drums, and Steven Funk on bass, all wanting to play some obscure horror movie songs together. They soon added fellow spooky rockers Matt Reish (Hailshot) on guitar and ShaNell Brazo-Iseton on synthesizer.” 

The results of these horror hounds getting together is the three-song EP Nightmare: Prelude, a soundtrack to some ’80s slasher flick that was lost to time and lack of budget.

The result: A bloody good time.

If bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Scorpions, Alice Cooper, Accept, and early Dokken revved your engines back in the days of Reaganomics and parachute pants, then Nightmare: Prelude is going to hit just right. Just listen to those opening riffs on “Savage Streets,” a heavy rocker with some solid synth stabs thrown in for good measure. I can hear touches of Dokken, ala “In My Dreams” or even “Breaking the Chains.” 

“Night Killer” is 80-mile-an-hour music, full throttle metal ready made for some exploitation horror. “Mutilated Love” closes this imagined horror score with a bang. Power chords and synthesizer come together in a grand Alice Cooper sound via Constrictor.

Hankering for a hunk of bloody horror metal? Look no further than Night Killer’s Nightmare: Prelude. And like all great ’80s horror, let’s hope there’s a sequel.