Ice Nine Kills' Gruesome Livestream Brought Halloween Horror To Life

It’s Halloween and time for a ghoul’s night out. Okay, so it might have to be a virtual one, but even if you can’t leave your own home, there are no better hosts for an evening on the field of screams than Ice Nine Kills. Horror and metal have always gone hand-in-hand, and no-one does it better in the modern era than these bloody Bostonites.

It goes without saying that the ongoing pandemic and accompanying lockdowns have been awful in all sorts of ways, but they have spurred a lot of creativity. In other, more precedented times, INK’s I Heard They KILL Live!! (NOFX reference and all) would have been an excellent – albeit still pretty standard – live album and DVD. In the era of the enforced livestream, they’ve made it into much more of an event.

The bulk of the stream is the live performance, recorded last November in front of actual crowds when things were very different. It’s a killer 19-song set captured at the band’s sold-out hometown show at The Worcester Palladium. This is accompanied by an original, blade-in-cheek horror flick created by INK’s own Spencer Charnas and director Myles Erfurth. Our host for the evening is horror icon Bill Moseley, AKA Chop Top in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise and Otis Driftwood in Rob Zombie’s Firefly film series.

In the fourth wall-breaking segments, which are interspersed throughout the show, Bill interviews the band via separate video link-ups. We actually find out some interesting information, as Spencer claims the band are working on a new album and Bill reveals he’s working on his own screenplay, which is “no fucking romcom”. More sinister things are afoot however, as a masked figure stalks the band members in their homes. There are plenty of ‘Look behind you moments’ as - without giving too much away for anyone still to watch the on-demand version - the musos are dispatched in a variety of gruesome ways related to their own roles in the band. And having the stream experience realistic ‘technical issues’ as all this goes on? They’ve tapped into a real nightmare of the times.

The show itself is spectacular. There’s an onstage murder during the Scream-themed Your Number’s Up, and frontman Spencer goes through more costume changes than Cher as the band crank out their horror-obsessed metalcore assault. There are Jason masks, Krueger claws and there’s even a shit shark to shout at during the brilliant Jaws-flavoured set-piece of Rocking The Boat. The band are on fire throughout and IT Is The End brings the live performance to a suitably chaotic conclusion in a welter of grindcore energy and demonic clown honks.

Throughout all of this, the fans add a twisted community vibe in the comments and the ‘Psycho Cams’ bring viewers – most of whom are suitably dressed up as killer clowns and other horror staples – into the spotlight. All in all, the event has been a total scream. May Ice Nine Kills rest in pieces.

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