I Was The Scarecrow’s Death to Self and Other Creepy Albums

Album cover design by Malcolm Ertha.

This Halloween season at Nerdy but Flirty, we’ve given you a lot of articles about costumes, nail art, makeup, and comics, with quite a few more coming your way. I thought I would look at something that is new to NBF: music. There’s not a lot of Halloween music, let alone music that can scare you, but the upcoming album from I Was The Scarecrow gets under your skin to trigger a primal fear: the complete loss of Self.

I Was The Scarecrow, an alternative band from Buffalo, recently made a major transition in sound from acoustic folk to electric rock/grunge/punk. The band consists of Peter Vullo (guitar/vocals), Casey Mullaney (bass), and Jannell Viera (drums). Death to Self will be available in late November, and it deals with the loss of Self that happens when someone is indoctrinated by a cult. Vullo, the lyricist, combined his own experiences with in-depth research into how cults operate. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to listen to the entire album, and it’s an exhilarating, unsettling experience that I highly recommend.

Here’s one of the tracks off Death to Self – “Be My Charlie Manson.” It’s a great taste of both the album as a whole and its themes.

The band also did an interview with Artvoice, titled The Cult of I Was The Scarecrow, which you can watch here.

If you happen to be in the Buffalo, New York area, you can see the band perform live on Saturday, November 2nd at The Tudor Lounge and on Saturday, November 23rd at Spiral Scratch Records (the latter is the official Death to Self release show!). I’ll be sure to do a follow-up article to let you know when you can get the album for yourself – and maybe even an interview with the band. Stay tuned.

Find I Was The Scarecrow on Facebook, Bandcamp, and YouTube. Follow the lead singer and guitarist on Twitter.

Photo by Joed Viera. Left to right: Casey Mullaney, Peter Vullo, Jannell Viera.

While you wait for Death to Self to come out, here are a few more scary/creepy artists and albums that I would recommend that you check out (a couple of which share commonalities with the I Was the Scarecrow sound!)

7/11 by The Fat Man and Team Fat (Soundtrack to both The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, classic horror games)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (“Red Right Hand” is a good place to start.)
Tom Waits (you ever hear him do the marching song from Snow White? It’s terrifying.)
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (“I Put a Spell on You” – classic)
Kip Tyler (“She’s My Witch“)
The Lunatiques (“Backseat Betty“)
Rasputina (“Transylvanian Concubine“)