White Zombie and Crowbar and Hanson are real contenders, but the scariest band in the world consists of four middle-aged guys from San Diego who call themselves Deadbolt. It’s printed right there on the cover of all four of their albums: “Scariest Band In The World.” Doubt it? Then consider this: They always wear sunglasses when they play! Don’t think it wouldn’t be horrifying to trip over a speaker and crash onto a hard club floor.
Harley Davidson, Les Vegas, R.A. MacLean, and 3rd Degree Burns do lots of other scary stuff on stage, too. Like, they cut stuff in half with an actual power saw! It’s like having a whole two-stroke motorcycle engine jammed in your ear! Pretty scary! And what about that stinking, toxic exhaust cloud that pours out of the saw? Incredibly unnerving! The band also does a lot of on-stage stuff with fire that you just know would be full-on catastrophic if any of them ever, like, moved closer. Les Vegas also does this death-defying “Snake Dance” with a five foot long python snake. It’s rubber, but still. If that snake ever, like, caught fire and melted on him or something, that’d be pretty scary.
“We’re the kind of band you play when you’re driving to Las Vegas,” growls front man Harley Davidson (guitar / vocals/ “creepy organ”). “You’ve been dumped. You’re drinking a six-pack. You’re wearing a gun. That’s when you pop us into your stereo. Then you know you’re on a serious trip to danger.”
Taking people on dangerous trips is a Deadbolt specialty. On 1994’s Shrunken Head, the band ventured into Voodoo territory, from which they barely escaped with their normal-sized heads. On 1995’s Tiki Man they went to a luau gone terribly, terribly wrong. On 1996’s Tijuana Hit Squad they headed south of the border in order to do something involving guns and blood looks pretty real. This year Deadbolt brought their cringing fans Zulu Death Mask, about the band’s journey into a foreign land so dark and foreboding that on the album’s inside jacket photo you have to look really hard before you can even see the “Wild Animal Park” sign behind the rhino.
And through it all, like the Devil’s Muzak, plays Deadbolt’s signature sound: brooding, ominous guitar; throbbing, malevolent drums; harrowing, disgusting bass.
“We call the kind of music we play ‘Voodoobilly,’ says Harley. “You got your rockabilly, your punkabilly, your psychobilly. Screw all that. We’re voodoobilly. We’re definitely on the churning, dark, creepy side of the Billy family.”
Fair enough. After all, scariness doesn’t always have to be of the “Oh my God, I can’t believe that nice man eats babies!” variety. It can also be an, “Oh my God, I can’t believe those four dorks drank all our beer!” sort of thing. So beware, boys and girls: Deadbolt’s coming soon to a town near you.
Hide your daughters.
Hide your guns.
Hide your beer.