The Ghoul Brothers

"Welcome to the disgusting world of...The Ghoul Brothers!" The Ghoul Brothers (1984)

I first discovered The Ghoul Brothers in the advertisement section of Fangoria. Or maybe it was Gorezone. It was one of those Eighties newsstand horror and gore magazines.

The ad depicted an arm, clad in a plaid jacket or shirt, holding up a butcher knife with a gloved hand. I can't remember too much of the rest of it, except that it promised horrors undreamed to the potential listener. Me and my buddy Buff, both of us confirmed gore-o-philes, imagined it probably sounded something like the Misfits. Or, at the very least, we thought it might sound something akin to the kind of Fifties greaser rock on The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack. No dice (but a lot of slice-n-dice).

The Ghoul Brothers is a tongue-in-cheek Halloween 1980s synthoid dance-a-thon album, that sounds as if it might have been recorded with a top-of-the-line Casio Keyboard back around the time Dr. Demento was still a cultural watershed for legions of geeky novelty record collecting obsessive freakazoids (those that thrilled to Fred Blassie and cheerfully dug the "Fishheads" video when it debuted on MTV).

Alas, the Brothers Ghoul never made it to Dr. Demento's demented show, but they did manage to put out an album that is the literal "wave of mutilation" The Pixies celebrated in their song. From slicing off tongues to carving off lips, "covering young girls' heads in cement," and "tying up grandma and killing her in bed," the psychopathic and badass Ghoul Brothers recite the Book of Cruel--a litany of mutilation and horror that includes a literal necrophagous repast--"digging up a corpse" so white, "plucking out its eyes and taking a bite." Or somesuch

They hold forth in songs such as "I Want to Eat Your Flesh" (stop laughing, he started with onion rings before moving to "chocolate-covered maggots"), which, one supposes could have an entirely different meaning if applied to a different sort of straight-to-video entertainment affair; "Gorehound" (self-explanatory), and "Ode to the Horror Men," which is a fascinating ditty that references Dawn of the Dead, The Exorcist, Halloween, Rabid, Cronenberg, Lovecraft, King--all the staples of horror from the past. ("Well thank you Mr. H!" he sings at one point, after describing how he always "keeps his bird in a cage!")

"Ghoul Days," describes one Ghoul Bros cruelty to another ("You cut off my nose and used it as an eraser!"), but the real kicker comes with "I Feel Ghoulish," where the singer confesses to "feeling ghoulish tonight, looking for a helluva fight." He then sings that he's gonna find someone that he "can't stand, cut off his nose, rip off his hand."

He then confesses (and that's an appropriate word to use for the psychopath singing this, I feel) that he's going to burn his hand with a lit match to show what a badass he is.

"I'm the kind of guy that would decapitate a head!"

Sadism and butchery are par for the musical course here--the song "The Tooth Song," describes a dentist that wants to "yank on it, tug on it, twist it all around" (stop laughing damn you), leading the casual listener to break out in a monstrous grin imagining the singer might just be having a tongue-in-cheek (a rotting tongue) moment.

The singer dies at the end, having "survived the night," and yet fallen asleep at the wheel, and perished in a flaming car wreck. Before that he squashes "mucus membranes from a dead dog's guts, squashed eyeballs and slimy brains." As you can tell, this is all family-orineted entertainment.

Take with a grain of salt. (Perhaps after rubbng it into a gaping wound.)

As far as me and my buddy Buff, we never did order the vinyl 12 inch record from Gross Records (Distributed exclusively by Marshall Discount Video Service, according to a blog called Zombo's Closet), and so poor, disadvantaged tykes that we were, we were denied the cheapjack musical stylings of The Ghoul Brothers. I suppose childhood was that much brighter for it. But as for RIGHT NOW, well, baby, "I'm a gorehound, I like that bone-crunching sound!"

Here's blood in your ear!

Zombo's Closet on The Ghoul Brothers

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