Bauhaus' 1979 debut single, "Bela Lugosi's Dead," is already a creepy song in and of itself, but Frayle managed to make it even spookier. The Cleveland doom duo transformed the nine-minute goth-rock epic into four minutes of eerie suspense and crushing heaviness, and today, we're proud to be premiering its accompanying video (October 20th).
Whereas Bauhaus' version sounds like Suicide crossed with Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Frayle took the bones of the minimalist original and built it into a towering doom behemoth that sounds like King Woman via Electric Wizard. After a couple minutes of creeping buildup, the song eventually explodes into suffocating, down-tuned riffage, a ghastly refrain and haunting wails lurking in the background.
It's a spine-tingling metal-ification of this Halloween playlist classic, and it comes paired with a video that sees frontwoman Gwyn Strang donning wild blue hair and a leather face harness. Watch and listen above via YouTube.
"I was nervous to cover 'Bela Lugosi's Dead,'" Strang comments. "It's what I consider a perfect song; ambient and creepy and it crawls along, keeping your attention the entire time. I wanted to make sure we did it justice so we took some extra time with it to make it something we're happy to share. The first half of our version pays homage to the original while the second half is definitively Frayle."
