The Scream

Metal fans, and the young and heart, will be drawn to THE SCREAM for its portrayal of the rock and roll lifestyle both stadium and club variety. Obviously inspired by Stephen Davis' HAMMER OF THE GODS and like journalism, Skipp and Spector whipped up a righteous concoction that just bubbles over with greenish lava froth. If Satan really had a say in what metal sounds like, do you think He would have permitted those of little brain power to approach his altar? I don't think so my friends! The suspense gathers in the final chapters, as the members of the SCREAM (the band, not to be confused with England's PRIMAL SCREAM) approach the coming apocalypse with stiff upper lip and a variety of hallucinatory experience. They used to be the two authors you could really count on to really scare the living daylights out of you, but then something happened--something twisted snd sick--something that broke the bonds which it had been thought no man was born strong enough to put them asunder. And ever since then, there really hasn't been a good thrill book and we've taken to watching old re-runs of Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Come back you guys, reunite, everyone else has done it, you can too!

First S & S book I ever read. Captivating writing, a little iterminable about the capers of the Jacob Hamer band but overall one of the best pieces of horror writing I have read next to "It". Their best book is "The Light at The End" but this is a very close second.

The Scream contiinues to be my favorite Skipp and Spector book, right up there with The Light at the End and The Bridge. It shows an excellent balance between the different storylines as well as dishing out the splat in the ways that few can.My one complaint when reading the book was that I didn't have a soundtrack to listen to. A CD by The Scream would have been perfect companion material. Well, going by how they were described, there is a band who is strikingly similar to The Scream. The band's name is Crisis. Karyn Crisis is not Tara Payne exactly but close. Exotic-looking with a voice that can bounce between melting butter and shattering steel, backed up by a band with it's own dark, heavy feel with touches of the beautiful mixed in. Check out the Strangeland soundtrack for an excellent cover of Twisted Sister's Captain Howdy, exhibiting Tara's...I mean, Karyn's, vocal ability.

Skipp and Spector are rock and rollers at heart and this is their rock and roll horror novel (with a nod towards heavy metal). Like the music, it assualts your senses and in the end you know you've had one heck of a ride. This is the boys at their best.

Out of all of their books, The Scream remains my favorite work by these two authors. I bought this at a used book store, not expecting much more than an afternoon's entertainment. To my delight, I discovered a thought-provoking treatise on censorship, Christianity (and this book *isn't* anti-Christian), abortion, and demonically inspired heavy metal music.The plot is pretty straightforward, and follows three main vectors:1. The protagonists, all part of a heavy metal band, are fighting the extreme censorship attempts of fundamental Christian televangelists.2. The antagonists, a heavy metal band inspired by a demon from another dimension, are trying to bring their matron through to this reality.3. One of the protagonists, Jesse, finds herself accidentally pregnant and must wrestle with her beliefs, dreams and desires over whether to terminate her pregnancy.In the hands of less skilled authors, these plots could have become sophomoric and boring. Guided by Skipp and Spector, they are instead intense, exciting, horrifying and enthralling. It was especially nice to see a book on this topic that didn't just mindlessly bash Christianity (a topic I'm fully sick of, even though I'm not Christian), but instead approached the subject with a true understanding of the problems of narrowmindedness and greed.Don't worry, splatterpunk fans -- there's also a lot of blood and gore, violence and insanity. My only regret is that Skipp and Spector didn't do a soundtrack for The Scream -- I'd love to hear the music in their heads.