To Midian and Back- Songs About The Works of Clive Barker

“Hellbound Heart” Stellar Corpses

“Drawn to danger in the Devil’s game

Deadly attraction that we can’t explain

Some call us angels

Some call us demons

But we’re not satisfied ‘til everybody’s screaming!”

“Hellbound Heart” is far from the only song in Stellar Corpses’ arsenal about staples in the horror genre. The 1987 film Hellraiser was based off of Clive Barker’s novella, The Hellbound Heart. 

“Hellbound Heart” is the title track from Stellar Corpses’ 2018 EP release. The song features a guest verse by bassist/vocalist Jimmy Calabrese of the horror punk band Calabrese. 

the Midian album by Cradle of Filth

The fourth album by blackened extreme metal band Cradle of Filth is set around the theme of Midian from the 1990 horror movie Nightbreed, which is based off of Clive Barker’s novella, Cabal. In a 2012 interview with Empire, lead vocalist Dani Filth spoke about the album saying that, “Midian kind of is and isn’t a concept album: as a title, it just made perfect sense. The central song, ‘Tortured Soul Asylum’, is about Midian, and the characters in the rest made up a sort of collective from this mythical place where the monsters live.” Doug Bradley, Pinhead himself, provided the narration on the track “Tortured Soul Asylum”

“Lament Configuration” Vatican Falling

“We have such sights to show you.” 

Do not sleep on the deathcore band from Las Vegas known as Vatican Falling. “Lament Configuration” appears on their third album, 2020’s War. With the title referencing the name for the puzzle box in Hellraiser, the song samples Kirsty (played by Ashley Laurence) shouting, “Go to Hell!” 

“Midian” Shadow Windhawk and The Morticians

“And there’s a place where monsters go 

When the world has crumbled 

When I have lost my soul 

I hear it whispered in my dreams

in the crypts of Midian, forever I’ll be free”

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Shadow Windhawk is backed by musicians known as The Morticians. The epic 8 minute song “Midian” appears on their 2014 release, Casket Spray. 

“Hellraiser” Blitzkid

“Resurrected from centuries gone by

Cenobites traveling through the portals of time…

Some Hell is gonna raise and we shall come with it,

Forbidden pleasures materialized

We’ll torture your body by proportions so mythic

The puzzle box opens and brings us new life.”

Led by bassist/vocalist Argyle Goolsby and guitarist/vocalist TB Monstrosity, Blitzkid formed in 1997 in West Virginia. Their song “Hellraiser” was originally recorded on 2001’s Let Flowers Die, the bands’ first full-length release, then re-recorded as a part of 2008’s Anatomy of Reanimation Volume #1.