The St.Louis based goth rock band Cult Sounds recently released a music video for their single “What Gets Done In The Night” from their upcoming album `Death Of A Star ` and seemingly never stopped working as they just released a compilation album of Halloween and generally horror themed covers by a variety of artists, styles and genres inclduing their own cover of “I Was A Teenage Werewolf” by The Cramps.
Sounds & Shadows got in touch with guitarist Jordan Hagemann and snooped around regarding the video, single and of course; The compilation, read on and be informed while listening to these dreadful dirges 😉
Not too long ago you released your video for the single “What Gets Done In The Night” what can you tell us about the song the video and what`s to come?
- What Gets Done In the Night was one of those songs for us that was written in essentially a few hours. There was something instantaneous with it, like a song we had always known but hadn’t written yet. The music was inspired by some, at the time, recent play-throughs of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Super Castlevania IV a long with a lot of Punk and Deathrock we were listening to. The song sounded vampiric, so we thought it would be a great song to explore the immortality aspect and connect it to our situations of being stuck in isolation. The video was one of the most things we’ve ever done. I went to film school for writing and directing, so I had my cinematography partner, Ryan Kneezle hop on the project along with another friend of ours, Sam Rozier, to help co-direct the performance shots. Everything was entirely DIY from the props, to the pre-production, to editing, everything. We’re very proud of that video. Coming next month, in November, we’ll have some surprises for the fans. I don’t want to say too much, but one has to do with something old and one has to do with something new.
Onto the compilation, what gave you the idea for this project and how did you pick the artists?
- . We‘ve been doing a Halloween cover for the 2 years we’d been a band prior to this, starting with Bela Lugosi’s Dead – so we wanted to maybe do something a little more special for our 3 year anniversary. The original lineup of bands that were interested in the comp was very large but it can be pretty tough to find people to record you right now. So we had some bands we wanted to reach out to and some that reached out to us.
The artwork certainly stands out, it`s not what one might expect from a Halloween release colour wise, who`s responseable for it?
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The artwork was all Bennett[Vocalist of The Cult Sounds]. He stays up till all hours of the night sometimes and will send us cool photos and we end up using them for things. This was no exception, it was basically “hey look at this spooky skeleton, let’s use that.” He manipulated the colors to stand out and catch your eye.
Do you see this becoming an annual tradition of sorts?
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I’m not sure if a covers comp would be a tradition, but we’ll always keep to our tradition of doing a Halloween cover every year.
Tracklist:
1. I Was a Teenage Werewolf – The Cult Sounds
2. Spiritual Cramp – Redbait
3. Toxic – Secret Shame
4. Dead In Hollywood (Feat. Dominic Nation) – Vanity Kills
5. 10 Simple Murders – Darling Skye
6. Halloween – Dylan Mitchell
7. Psycho Killer – Deaddigital, Inc.
Hear the compilation here:
https://thecultsounds.bandcamp.com/album/the-cult-sounds-presents-dont-fall-asleep-tonight