Tag: vacation bible school

Album Review: Satanic Panic 4: Possession – Vacation Bible School

Posted on by Flanger Fobia

Album Review

Satanic Panic 4: Possession
by: Vacation bible school 

Written By: Flanger Fobia 

Published: October 31st, 2021

There are some Halloween memories that most people have likely experienced in their lives, such as carving pumpkins or going to Halloween parties. Even on a night where ghosts and ghouls walk the Earth, there is nothing to be afraid of. After all, such monsters that we dress up as are only make believe, right? Well, Satanic Panic 4: Possession by Vacation Bible School makes those scary monsters come to life, and YOU are at the center of it all.

The narrative of the album follows the listener, as they make their way to a party at a church, looking forward to a night of fun. However, as this is not a typical vaporwave album based on relaxation and good vibes, things will not go as planned. Imagine going to a Halloween party, excited to see your crush there, except when you finally see her, it turns out she has a partner, and it’s not you. Can things get any worse? Of course! She could get possessed by a demon, and it could be your fault. Now then, how do you plan on surviving? Do you think you can save the day? Such questions can only be answered by giving the album a listen. If getting chased by Satanists in Satanic Panic 3: Hell House was not enough to spook you away from the series, then you are in for a scare. 

While the concept for the album is very intriguing in its own right, the music itself is quite captivating even when separated from the other elements of the album. The selection of sound choice comes from a variety of different sources, including various genres of music, promotional movie trailers, and atmospheric noise. The wide range of audio sources helps to put the listener in the state of feeling as if the events are unfolding right in front of you. 

 There is always a feeling of uneasiness throughout the sample choice, regardless of what the original source was, which demonstrates that Vacation Bible School has significant skill when it comes to manipulating samples. For example, on the track “Harvest Moon Over the Pumpkin Patch,” VBS manipulates the pitch and tempo of “Shine On, Harvest Moon”,  an old blues song dated to 1908 , which creates a feeling of tension, despite the listener consciously knowing that this part of the album is the most relaxing it will get. Sounds of leaves crunching underfoot and crickets chirping that cut out half way through the song, as well as the music cutting out all together before the track is completed, add to the feeling that this Halloween party is not going to go quite like the rest. While the majority of the storytelling is told through atmospheric noise and instrumentation, track 6 of the album, “The Demon Wrecks Havoc,” uses voice clips from a promotional trailer for the 1987 movie Demons 2 to describe the situation you are faced with: “There is nowhere to hide, no place to run.”

 

 

The music that is sampled varies greatly in terms of genres and the ways they are manipulated, with blues, pop, rock, and synth-dance all being reverbed and filter-cut in such a way that can make your hair stand on end and leave you anticipating to listen to the next track. There are times where it appears VBS clearly wants the lyrics of the samples to be heard in order to convey order, and times where the lyrics clash against instruments into a garbled mess, making it abundantly clear that chaos surrounds you. Even if one listened to this album without looking at the titles of the albums, a listener could fairly easily discern which types of emotions VBS is trying to convey to the listener with each track. In terms of how each sample is manipulated, the tracks appear to be produced using similar techniques. Such techniques include running the track through filters, lowering the pitch of samples, slowing the tracks down, and the occasional reversal of a sample helps to create terror that is felt when listening to this album. 

After listening to this album multiple times, I believe I am going to skip carving pumpkins, lest they end up possessing my crush after I cut into it, revealing a hidden demonic spirit. Actually, scratch that. I think I am going to skip out on Halloween parties for a while altogether — you can never be too safe.

 

 

Vacation Bible School

 

Get The Album!

Favorite Track: The Demon Wreaks Havoc

Score: 5/5

Our Grading System

Written By:

 Flanger Fobia 

Copy Editing By: Cerulea_D.lux

 

 

RECENT POSTS

BACK TO TEXT

Classics Review: Satanic Panic 3: Hell House – Vacation Bible School

Posted on by demodawg
Vacation Bible School

Classics Album Review

Satanic Panic 3: Hell House 
by: Vacation Bible School

Written By: DemoDawg  

Published On: October 30th, 2021

As the days get cool and the nights get longer, the spooky season is upon us. What better way to enjoy the season than with a Halloween vaporwave tape. The third offering in the Satanic Panic series by Vacation Bible School is just the tape to scratch that Autumnal itch. The story continues where Revenge of the Satanic Panic! left off. Things are not what they seem at the haunted house your church is putting on. Evil lurks among the decorations and haunted displays. I feel this album creates a wonderful atmosphere to convey its tale. The album plays out like an 80’s horror movie. The first track is a mix of calming tunes with sinister undertones that come in and out and intensify as the story unfolds. The use of stereo effects really puts the listener in the story. I listened to this album start to finish in a dark room with headphones, and felt like this amplified the listening experience.

 

Vacation Bible School

The masterful use of real samples from christian Anti-Halloween/satanist televangelists from the Satanic Panic period of US history sends the creep factor through the roof. The first track  “welcome_to_hell_house ” sets the tone, expressing that evil is afoot. This leads into the same campy 80’s horror movie intro that was featured on the first album in the song “p a g a n _ i n v a s i o n”. This song sets the stage of a happy-go-lucky town that has no clue of what evil is around the corner. Track two,  “satan_is_real ” reminds us that if good exists, so too does evil. As the season changes the vale becomes thinner, the witching hour upon us. The mounting tension of the album kicks off with the battle cry  “steal_halloween_for_the_church ”. Those pesky pagans can’t hoard all the holidays, we are taking back Halloween for the church. This hubris is the turning point for the album.

The album places you as the main character in this story. You are working with your local church, an unwitting soldier in the war on Halloween, with the task of creating a haunted house to educate the masses on how souls are tormented in hell. A Devilish spectacle for the season and great propaganda if some care about their immortal soul.

Time to prepare for the big night. “ Shopping_for_decorations ” is the shopping montage of the movie, zooming isle to isle in the store, picking up plastic skeletons, foam pitchforks, and all manner of spooky accoutrements. This song was the one that most benefited from headphones. The panning of the track makes one feel like they are along for the ride, weaving between isles as the lofi background music plays over the cheap speakers in the ceiling. Throughout the song a sinister tune plays over top of the track adding a creepy flavor to a normally innocent task. The sample from the  Doctor Dreadful food lab  killed me. It lends itself to the lighthearted feeling we have towards the Halloween season. Its goofy ghosts and goblins galore, taken none too seriously. This is the error the characters of the story make to invite evil into their town.

The very next track proposes the question: Is Halloween just a silly candy day or is it the holiday of  “the_prince_of_darkness ”? The spiral begins as the tale takes a dark plunge. It is time for  “redecorating_the_church ”. The costumed mannequins and Halloween props are arranged with great care. As the day progresses, the church takes on an evil facade, it truly is the  “hell_house ”. You did a good job — maybe too good of a job. This place really is starting to look like the hell warned about in sermons. Is it getting hot in here or are you just working too hard? The room spins and the candles burn brighter;  “the_portal_to_hell_opens ”. This track’s use of Satanic Panic news broadcasts explains why the war on Halloween was a growing fear: Satanists are real. They are here now. And they want your children!

With the portal open, the plastic  “skeletons_come_to_life ”. Dear god! Why did you buy so many?! This song is full on spook-tacular, the kind of music one would picture from Fantasia. It uses the same panning effect to create movement through the horrific scene that is unfolding. In trying to create a realistic looking hellscape you have opened the gates to hell. Demons possessing the Halloween displays carrying out  “the_tortures_of_hell ”. This was a hard track to listen to on first pass. Very troubling screams of agony and for help. Very appropriate to the title of the track but took me to a spooky place in the dark. You can distinctly make out a heartbeat, a sample played backwards, and an eerie music box tune playing, before erupting into a full demonic monologue. It is hard to make out exactly what is being said but I assure you it is not something you would want to be said to you. It sounds like a demon making a deal with the typical “all I need you to do” phrase. I really want to know the context of the end of the track — it sounds like running water and someone saying “it’s all good now”. You have had enough, your mind flips to survival mode as you need to escape. Braving the demons around each turn you try to make your way out,  “running_from_hell ”. Oh man,  SunKist fruit snacks! No time to think about that now. You’re running from this nightmare. The final track of the album builds to a crescendo. You make your escape through flames as the church is consumed in the negation of hallowed ground meeting its polar opposite: the portal to hell. You dive to freedom, sprawled in the church courtyard — back where the world is blissfully unaware of the evil reality of Halloween, and the night is just about candy and costumes.

A wild ride from start to finish, this album was an absolute treat to immerse myself in for the Halloween season. If you are new to the series I suggest starting from the first tape, Fall Festivals and the Satanic Panic, and then Revenge of the Satanic Panic!. And, on Oct 6 2021 Satanic Panic 4: Possession  was released as the 4th chapter of the series. No word about a physical release as of printing, unfortunately. Also, check out the quick look we did on this album here . If you are in the mood for something seasonally appropriate, or a tape that you can listen to like a horror movie, look no further than this series.

 

 

Vacation Bible School

 


Get The Album!

Favorite Track: s h o p p i n g _ f o r _ d e c o r a t i o n s

Score: 4/5

Our Grading System

Written By:

  DemoDawg  

DemoDawg

Copy Editing By:  Cerulea_d.lux  

RECENT POSTS

BACK TO TEXT

Classics Review: Revenge of the Satanic Panic! – Vacation Bible School

Posted on by C A S I N O

Classics Album Review

Revenge of the Satanic Panic! 
by: Vacation Bible School

Written By:  C A S I N O 

Published On: October 29th, 2021

I don’t mind going on record here and saying that I am a big fan of Satan. You can quote me on this. I’m a huge fan of his work, but the creation of Halloween is by far his magnum opus. A day dedicated to goblins, ghosts, and ritualistic sacrifices? What is not to love? But those pesky televangelists keep on foiling the plans of my cult to convert today’s youth into the service of my dark lord. In an effort to find out how they always remain one step ahead of my plans, I have decided to do a review of Revenge of the Satanic Panic! by Vacation Bible School, the sequel to his 2019 album Fall Festivals and the Satanic Panic, the review for which can be found here. 

 

The collective paranoia of America’s televangelists regarding this special time of year is put on full display in this album. A majority of the tracks in this work either begin or end with a sound clip from an interview, commercial, or some other sort of after Sunday School program that exists for the sole purpose of inspiring as much panic as possible into the hearts of parents across the nation. All these samples are somewhat staticy and low in quality (this is Vaporwave after all) and each one seems to be more ridiculous than the last, with one going as far as to suggest that there are werewolf satanists among us. They become fun to play along with and as the album progresses you begin to look forward to these interludes as the black curtain of Satan is once again drawn back before thine very eyes.

As for the music itself, there are some interesting sample choices and the distortion and echoing effects applied to them make for an entertaining, though somewhat unsettling listen with a big tip of the hat to the Halloween movie franchise thrown in. Some tracks sample straight-up bangers, like Alice Cooper’s “He’s Back (The Man Behind The Mask)” used on the first track of the album, but there are some odd picks later down the line that exist more to disturb than to amuse. An example of this is track 9 on the album, “satanists break into your home,” a toned-down and slowed down edit of The Chordettes’ “Mr Sandman”. It acts as another homage to the Halloween movies as they used the song in a similar way in the films. I should say that the full title of the track is “satanists break into your home (“mr. sandman” mallsoft)” but other than that iconic “mall echo” that can be heard in the song, it does not really feel like mallsoft in the way that the “St. James Infirmary ” track did off the first Satanic Panic. I know it seems silly complaining about a scary and unsettling song on what is a Halloween album, but compared to the rest of the tracks on the work, it seems out of place. With that said, other than a few similar hiccups, most of the tracks are a fun listen with the televangelist samples and music samples being blended together quite well.

After listening to this album, I think I am going to hang up my ceremonial black robe. They are aware of every trick in the satanic playbook. I thought the Satanic messages I hid in Dungeons and Dragons books were really subtle, but they managed to sniff them out all the same! Truly the forces of Satan are no match for holy soldiers like Vacation Bible School. My only solace is that I have a decent vaporwave album to listen to now. And the fact that it does not seem like they have caught on to Pokemon yet.

 


 Damn it…

 

 

 

Vacation Bible School

 


Get The Album!

Favorite Track: revenge of the satanic panic

Score: 3/5

Our Grading System

Written By:

 C A S I N O 

c a s i n o

Copy Editing By:  Cerulea_d.lux  

RECENT POSTS

BACK TO TEXT

Classics Review: Fall Festivals and the Satanic Panic – Vacation Bible School

Posted on by Gbanas92

Classics Album Review

Fall Festivals and the Satanic Panic 
by: Vacation Bible School

Written By: GBanas92

Published On: October 28th, 2021

Ahh, fall. The best time of the year. Autumn foliage, spooky movies, and the…looming threat of Satan taking over the world? That’s right, back in the ‘80s (hell, even today in some parts) there was a growing fear that Satan would engender himself into every house throughout the world thanks to horrifying rituals and depraved sexual acts. Which begs a much more important question: what would the music of a real satanic panic sound like? Well, thanks to Vacation Bible School, we have an answer.

 

Vacation Bible School is an artist with a definite religious focus –just about single-handedly carving out their own niche of “churchwave” – so who better to use music as an avenue to talk of the temptations of Satan? The opening track, “t h e _ s a t a n i c _ p a n i c” fittingly begins sampling John Carpenter’s classic melody from Halloween mixed underneath a “definition” of Satanism. The provided definition is a rather skewed outlook on the whole movement, which is masterfully demonstrated by the Carpenter sample being horribly scrambled. As the speech carries on, the piano melody begins to reverberate with such ferocity that it loops in upon itself, eventually degrading to such an extent that it destroys the core of the melody. A fitting metaphor for Satanism then? Or perhaps a warning about what permitting Satan into your home could do to your mind?

If the opening track was the thesis, the subsequent tracks provide the supporting evidence. One thing that will get progressively more noticeable as you listen is the reverb. Sure, reverb is present in a lot of vaporwave, but it serves an interesting purpose here. While in most instances, the goal is to distort or mask something hidden below the surface, the echoing actually brings forth added clarity to the whole affair. There’s something inherently ominous about reverberation, especially through a large, abandoned space. But what if that’s it? What if your goal is to disturb? This album affords the opportunity to be ill at ease for fifty glorious minutes. 

 

The Cassette, Previously Available Through DMP

But perhaps the most interesting thing with Fall Festivals and the Satanic Panic is that there’s not really much to talk about musically. Now that’s not to say there isn’t music. There are tons of samples and vapor influences present. For example, “p a g a n _ i n v a s i o n” has some slushwave underpinnings, and “z o m b i e _ m a l l” unsurprisingly incorporates mallsoft elements (and a sample from Halloween III: Season of the Witch, as it shall henceforth be known, the best Halloween.) There are a number of other vapor subgenres that make cameo appearances along the way too. On a traditional album, this scattered approach might ordinarily make everything feel a little unfocused. But it works for two reasons.

The first is that the album evokes the feeling of channel surfing one late Halloween night in the ‘90s. Everything should feel different as you jump around. Movies give way to commercials, which give way to more movies, including a fun little moment where the 1990 and 2017 It’s get sampled one after the other. There’s even room for the channels at the end of the cycle that solely play music, as shown off on “St. James Infirmary (mallsoft version).” The signal doesn’t seem to be coming in too great though, so make sure you mess around with the antennas if you’re dissatisfied with the sound quality. Many of the track titles are written in such a way where it should be pretty easy to jump around too. A track with a name like “g o o s e b u m p s” makes it fairly obvious what you’re in store for should you flip over to that tune.

The other driving force behind the album’s success is the degree with which it captures a mood. While the musical melodies remain present, they never really drive the ship. The biggest factors are, rather oddly, the sound effects. The ethereal whisperings, the wind rustling through the trees, the screams, these are the elements that really drive home the frightful visage of what this album wants to be. Dropping a plethora of musical tracks over top of that, and the end result is a thematically focused release as well as a personal seasonal favorite, even if it’d be a reach to call ourselves big fans of Satan.

 

 

 

 

Vacation Bible School

 


Get The Album!

Favorite Track: p a g a n _ i n v a s i o n

Score: 4/5

Our Grading System

Written By:

GBanas92

gbanas92

Copy Editing By: Termascur  

RECENT POSTS

BACK TO TEXT

Quick Look: Satanic Panic 3: Hell House – Vacation Bible School

Posted on by Gbanas92
Vacation Bible School

Quick Look

Satanic Panic 3: Hell House
by: Vacation Bible School

Written By: Gbanas92 

The 3rd entry in the Satanic Panic series, Vacation Bible School delivers another autumnal feast for the ears. Littered with fear-mongering news snippets playing over ominous, Carpenter-esque soundscapes, Satanic Panic 3 brings the goods.

The album provides a fascinating mixture of more traditionally calming vaporwave, but with the inarticulate, ever-present dread that “Satanism” represents. Much like the previous two entries of Satanic Panic, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more perfect album for this time of year. Pop this on and go watch the leaves change!

 

 

 

Get The Album!

 

Written by:

Gbanas92

Copy Editing By: Cerulea_d.lux

 

Recent Posts

 

BACK TO TEXT