Ideas for a death metal theme party?

April 15, 2008 9:14 AM

I'm hosting a death metal/black metal themed party on Friday. I would love some recommendations for ways to make it memorable.

If anybody has suggestions for my costume, decorations, a welcome drink, a party game and/or anything else it's much appreciated!

Things I've already done: Ordered a pig's head from the butcher and bought a couple of Mayhem albums. I'm not really sure what I'll do with the pig's head yet but it seemed appropriate.

posted by sveskemus to grab bag (21 comments total)

guillotine
posted by greta simone at 9:23 AM on April 15

Have some bats around ... y'know just in case anyone get hungry.
posted by netbros at 9:27 AM on April 15

How about a corpsepaint makeup buffet with all the fixins for a TRULY SATANIC visage?

Also, you definitely need Venom's iconic Black Metal album (or the even better live version!)
posted by Mmothra at 9:29 AM on April 15

Using cardboard boxes, maybe an old grey/black sheet (salvation army) and tempra paints can you make a table look like an alter to have the pigs head on?
posted by silkygreenbelly at 9:30 AM on April 15

Ring toss onto spiked arm bands?

A punch bowl of something red and alcoholic (I assume this isn't a kids death/black metal party).

A cake in the shape of a cross. A layer of raspberry preserves would be a nice touch.

And why listen to Mayhem when Immortal is their own hilarity.

A pinate in the shape of a nun or something equally appropriate. Extra points if your whacking stick has spikes on it. Double extra points if you fill the pinate with sausage.
posted by munchingzombie at 9:31 AM on April 15

Corpsepaint is a must. If you have a friend that has experience in applying facepaint or is a makeup artist, maybe they can apply corpsepaint on your guests if they so choose.

Use more candlelight than electric light if you aren't scared of drunk/high people bumping into the candles.

Here's a pretty good list of other great black metal albums to get.

Here's a pretty good list of great death metal albums to get.

Other suggestions for music would be: Venom, Celtic Frost, Possessed.
posted by NoMich at 9:33 AM on April 15

Burn down a marzipan church? Blood-red heavily spiked punch ist krieg!
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 9:33 AM on April 15 [1 favorite]

Thorax cake? And plenty of absinthe. Or am I confusing death-metalheads with goths?
posted by uncleozzy at 9:34 AM on April 15

Or what Mmothra said.
posted by NoMich at 9:35 AM on April 15

Make sure you have a huge metal fan at the party.
posted by donovan at 9:41 AM on April 15

Slide show of top 10 worst death metal pics, interspersed with unreadable band logos.
posted by mkb at 9:46 AM on April 15

From A rebours, by Joris-Karl Huysmans, 1884:

Des Esseintes acquired the reputation of an eccentric, which he enhanced by giving famous dinners to men of letters, one of which was a funeral repast.

In the dining room, hung in black and opening on the transformed garden with its ash-powdered walks, its little pool now bordered with basalt and filled with ink, its clumps of cypresses and pines, the dinner had been served on a table draped in black, adorned with baskets of violets and scabiouses, lit by candelabra from which green flames blazed, and by chandeliers from which wax tapers flared.

To the sound of funeral marches played by a concealed orchestra, nude negresses, wearing slippers and stockings of silver cloth with patterns of tears, served the guests.

Out of black-edged plates they had drunk turtle soup and eaten Russian rye bread, ripe Turkish olives, caviar, smoked Frankfort black pudding, game with sauces that were the color of licorice and blacking, truffle gravy, chocolate cream, puddings, nectarines, grape preserves, mulberries and black-heart cherries; they had sipped, out of dark glasses, wines from Limagne, Roussillon, Tenedos, Val de Penas and Porto, and after the coffee and walnut brandy had partaken of kvas and porter and stout.

The invitation cards were designed like bereavement notices.
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:00 AM on April 15 [1 favorite]

Corpse paint? Are you going to have black balloons and spooky cake too?

Listen up, and listen well:

The pig's head goes on the crucified naked girl at the head of the altar. At the foot of the crucifix is a recreation of the original album cover (NSFW) of Mayhem's De Mysteriis.... You could stand in for the body. Then someone could play some death metal song with an incantation, and you could "arise."

If you are going to do a pinata, pick something good. It better look like a fetus, or it isn't metal. You might as well be playing Winger and drinking Bud Light.

You should have a long dinner table, with black damask table cloth. The chairs at the end are thrones, for you at one end and your succubus/girlfriend/virgin whore sacrifice at the other. All the other chairs are highbacked, and attached to them are chains with dog collars. These are for your guests. After you chain your guests (or "shit pigs") to the chairs, you give them a menu. Yes, a menu. Because there's no reason metal can't be classy.

The menu has three choices presented in wither the most elegant script or that illegible dripping scrawl that is the basis of most band logos. The menu should read as follows:

1. Fruiting Genitals - sausage adorned with shitake mushrooms served in a crusted ahi tuna steak.
2. Abortion Viscera - bucatini pasta served in a tomato pepper sauce, with slices of veal and beef, wrapped in filo dough.
3. You

Everything is served with red wine. At a random point in the night, you should kill the lights, scream, and spray the crowd with red silly string. Have some friends in on it with you, but don't tell the guests it is going to happen. Have one of them scream, "Oh my God is this blood?!" Have these same friends quietly spread a rumor earlier in the evening that there's going to be a rape, and that the only question is whether it is simulated or not, or whether the victim is a guy.

End the party by getting another friend to act totally drunk. Have him wail in sadness, stumble into a bathroom, and slam the door. We should then hear a sudden yell, followed by a gunshot and a slump.

I expect an invitation.

Some of these suggestions are actually serious, but I'm not sure where the joke ends and the serious suggestions begin. I guess that means it's prescription time!
posted by Pastabagel at 10:03 AM on April 15 [8 favorites]

May I also recommend some Deicide, Carcass and Cannibal Corpse records? My freshman year roommate was a big, big fan.
posted by mmascolino at 10:36 AM on April 15

I feel I have to plug my (Swedish) cousin's band here. I think they toured with Cannibal Corpse in Europe, and they are called Defleshed. He used to send lyrics to me to make sure his translation wasn't too awkward in English. You should definitely play something by them during the party at some point.
posted by Grither at 10:44 AM on April 15

Get a Norwegian flag, and hang it sideways so that it looks like an upside down cross.
posted by spinifex23 at 10:46 AM on April 15

Defleshed is pretty bonkers stuff, I'm a big fan.

Some dry ice to simulate grimmm moon frost would be kinda necro.
posted by The Straightener at 11:20 AM on April 15

I agree with most of Pastabagel's suggestions, although the silly string is a bit much.

All wine should be served in heavy goblets. If it's still a little chilly where you are, gluvine would be perfect for the occasion. Mead would work, too. Take your pig's head and roast it. Add other heavy medieval-seeming foods (coarse bread, boiled potatoes, sweetbreads, other organ meats, stews). Rather than a menu, simply reveal at some point during the meal that a non-attendee (preferably one known to most of the guests) was the source of several of the ingredients (maybe have someone spit out a ring or other jewelry mid-bite).

Hors d'oeuvres should be served in a way that mocks the Eucharist. "Baptize" your guests with an upside-down cross painted in fake blood on their foreheads.

If you can hold it outdoors, have a bonfire.

Is there anywhere that you can rent wolves from?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:43 AM on April 15

SOMEONE's gotta show up as Mortiis.
or google "mortiis" for more fun pictures than you'll know what to do with.
posted by the luke parker fiasco at 11:53 AM on April 15

If you decide to recreate Huysmans' black feast I excerpted above, note that it didn't go well for Tarquin Winot, the narrator of John Lanchester's 1997 novel The Debt To Pleasure:

I told her, with that mixture of endearment and melancholy that attends the recitation of the follies of one's youth, about something I did once in what I used to call my aesthetic period. The idea, cribbed from Huysmans, was to serve a menu consisting entirely of black things. This occurred during my brief interval at university, whence I departed after two terms (the NOISE, dear, and the PEOPLE). My room, a banal heptagon in a banal heptagon-shaped building in one of the smarter Cambridge colleges, I had painted (slightly in violation of one or two of the more invasive college regulations) black. Bed, sheets, fittings, lamps, light bulbs--all black.

In my black room, dressed in black velvet, black silk cravat--no need to change the inherent color of the single orchid in my buttonhole--I would arrange for meals consisting entirely of black food: truffles grated over squid-ink pasta, followed by boudin noir on a bed of fried black radicchio. For desert, I wanted to emphasize the essential artificiality of the event, the fact that it was a celebration of art, whim, caprice, set over against the brutal facts of nature and death, so I served crème brûlée, dyed black. Naturally we drank Black Velvet.

Into this exquisite setting arrived my brother Bartholomew, an hour and a half late, in his overalls (in violation of the dress code I had specified) and saying:

"Bloody hell! Anybody dead?"
posted by Ian A.T. at 3:58 PM on April 15

Seconding everthing mentioned above.

Watch as much Metalocalypse as you can.
Refer to everything as brutal.
Name plaques for all guests with sufficiently brutal metal names (again, refer to Metalocalypse if necessary. For example: William Murderface Murderface Murderface.)
posted by slimepuppy at 4:51 AM on April 16