With the announcement of the first House of Krazees album for many, many years, it seems like 2024 will be the first year Majik Ninja Entertainment are not releasing a Songs of Samhain compilation album featuring all the artists on the label. This appearing to be the case, and because of my obsession with ranking things, I’m going to take this opportunity to rank the four albums from the series so far; to decide which is the pinnacle of Halloween music and if any are just plain shocking.
4) The Liminal Space
I didn’t like this record at all the first time I heard it, but wanted to give it the chance to grow on me, which is why I didn’t write this article last year. Plenty of albums don’t make a good first impression but go on to become firm favourites within a couple sessions. The Liminal Space is not one of these examples.
I do really like Deluded Death, Collide and Wounded & Suffering, but aside from those I seldom listen to any of the other tracks. The audacity at attempting a Dark Lotus revival and leading with one of the weakest songs in MNE history is as terrible as it is unwelcome.
I Am The Night is a decent enough Twiztid song, but I think this would have worked better if included on the upcoming HOK record with a verse from The ROC at the end. It isn’t hard to see why The Liminal Space is the album that broke their annual release trend with the Songs of Samhain series.
3) Haunted Record Player
I didn’t like this album either when it released in 2021, but over time it did start to grow on me. Needle on the Record, Halloween Treat and Quarantine are all exceptional spooky tracks, and although Sing It was my least favourite song on the project when it dropped, now it only just misses out on the top three. This is why I let albums settle before trying to review them, my opinion can change so strongly on particular songs that I hate looking back fondly on a song I trashed originally.
Overall this is not a bad album, but there’s a clear gulf in quality between it and the top albums ahead of it.
2) Songs of Samhain
“An entire MNE roster Halloween themed album”, I thought to myself in 2020 when this project was announced, “sign me the fuck up!” While it took a couple listens for me to really get into half the music on this record, there were four distinct standout tracks that I loved from my first listen.
9lb Hammer, Die on Samhain, Haddonfield 2 Crystal Lake and In My Head are among the best Halloween songs of all time as far as I’m concerned. Yes, that’s half the album that I can confidently call among the best Halloween songs ever!
The other tracks are not skippers, make no mistake, but the aforementioned four are heads and shoulders above the rest, and must listen tracks all year round.
1) Cult of Night
I want to lead by stating one of my favourite and most listened to MNE tracks of all time is P3.1. Every verse on it is ridiculously good and I very rarely let the song finish before starting it over again. I do wish the lyrics on the hook were changed slightly from ‘Dead of night’ to ‘Cult of night’ to reflect the album name, but even including that it’s a perfect Halloween song.
The rest of the album sits pretty close to perfection as well, with too many tracks to name that I adore and really put me in the spooky season mood. Any song which features the Venomous 5 deserves a special mention, so Terrified No Fear and Parasite Paradise are the ones I want to highlight in particular alongside P3.1.
All in all, Cult of Night is an outstanding album fit to be played all around, and played way more during Halloween. This is the only album of the series I listen to at least once a month.
Thanks for reading this article. There will be more rankings coming up in the future so be sure to follow Respawning UK for those and everything else we post. In the meantime, my Get Low Gaming channel has full Let’s Plays of Days Gone and Maneater, with a new series starting soon for Halloween!
Written and edited by Alexx.
Days Gone Let’s Play – Get Low Gaming
Maneater Let’s Play – Get Low Gaming
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