SCREAMING DEAD

“Eyes at the windows watching. See the bodies, see the bodies all move on through. Shapes move from the corners, dancing shadows distort my view.”

Formed on the ashes of punk’s first explosion, Screaming Dead took the snarling energy of 1976 and twisted it into something stranger, darker, more cinematic. While their peers shouted politics, they whispered poetry — tales of vampires, graveyards, and love beyond the grave. Their look, born from raiding an old wardrobe full of dinner jackets and cloaks, was pure gothic theatre; their sound, raw and infectious. Indie success followed through singles and EPs like Western Front, Valley of the Dead, and of course Night Creatures — a track that would become their eternal calling card. The band was formed by guitarist Tony McCormack (later McKormack), who recruited former singer of The Waste, Sam Missile (Simon Bignall), bass guitarist Mal Page, and drummer Mark Ogilvie.

A blood-red moon hung low over Cheltenham — the town where, in December 1979, something dark and beautiful began to stir. Out of boredom, rebellion, and a fascination with Hammer horror, four young men conjured a sound that would haunt generations to come. They called themselves Screaming Dead — and from the moment their first chords sliced through the fog, there was nothing dead about the Dead. Among the first to lace punk’s raw defiance with horror’s macabre allure, they set the stage for what would later become horror punk and deathrock. By the time their first split came in 1985, the band had already cemented themselves as cult icons.

But the grave refused their silence.

Reforming briefly in 1997, then again in 2014 with a lineup of Sam Bignall, Mal Page, Mazzy, and Hugh Fairlie, and now with the addition of Baz Clark on bass as main songwriter alongside Mazzy, and Phil Jones as the most recent acquisition on drums, Screaming Dead rose once more from the shadows. Their extensive touring — including Vancouver, Montreal, Xanthi (Greece), Milan, Bologna, Vienna, New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno, Philadelphia, Boston, Poland, Berlin, and Mexico City — along with the 2020 Resurrection EP and 2023’s Ride With the Dead, proved that their sound, both classic and revitalized, could still draw blood.

This October — perfectly timed for Halloween — the band that once defined horror punk casts a new spell with Bedlam. Recorded over the summer, the release features three all-new tracks: the title song Bedlam, Ghosts, and Can’t Live in Fear. Screaming Dead describe these tracks as their strongest recordings to date, capturing the band at their most confident and cohesive.

Bedlam was produced by Pete Newdeck, whose credits include working with Judas Priest and Saxon. His experience with the band ensures a sound that is both precise and powerful, with clarity that highlights the depth of Screaming Dead’s signature style. Every layer — from the bass to the vocals — benefits from Newdeck’s intimate understanding of the group’s sound.

Whether these three all-new, “risen-from-the-grave” tracks are indeed the band's strongest recordings to date, I’ll gladly leave for you to decide — one thing I can tell you is that each of them most definitely deserves a place on any All Hallows’ Eve playlist.

A return to Screaming Dead’s gothic roots — moody, brooding, and beautifully sinister — Bedlam feels both cinematic and claustrophobic, as though the ghosts of their Hammer horror past have found a new voice through modern production. Here, music becomes an exorcism, a ritual that lets the darkness speak, while each riff and vocal line seems to squat among the tombs of punk and horror’s shared history, honoring the past while breathing life into it once more.

• Bedlam EP | Bandcamp
• Screaming Dead | Facebook
• Screaming Dead | Instagram

Hayley CLX
23/10/2025