Skeleton Sam’s Deadtime Stories is not shaped like any record LVCRFT has made before. It is shaped like a late-night horror broadcast that clawed its way out of somebody’s basement: twenty-seven songs, skits and interludes, trailers for films nobody can watch yet, and a host who will not let you go to bed.
That host is Roger L. Jackson, the voice of Ghostface since 1996, and handing the microphone to the man who has spent thirty years asking people about their favorite scary movie is the most on-the-nose thing LVCRFT has ever done. It works anyway.
He has company. Robert Englund and Heather Langenkamp, Freddy and Nancy, share a song for the first time in years, alongside directors Mick Garris and Robert Rodriguez. John Kassir, the Cryptkeeper, turns up on “Dead Heart Beat,” which is either a passing of the torch or a professional checking on his replacement. Bruce Campbell gets a track named after him. Ernie Hudson takes the Vincent Price role. Jasmin Savoy Brown sings the focus track “My Boo.” Jenna Davis, the voice of M3GAN, rides shotgun on “Devil In My Rearview.” David Dastmalchian, Alyssa Sutherland, Katharine Isabelle and composer Christopher Young are all in here somewhere.
The ghoul whose name is on the marquee has had a career. Skeleton Sam started in 2019 as one song on an album a room of pop songwriters made in a week because they were sick of hearing the same four Halloween records at every party. That song has since passed 22 million streams in the United States alone. In 2022 it led Hocus Pocus 2 and became the eighth most Shazamed song in the country. Somewhere in there Sam picked up a legal name, Samuel St. Skelevoie, and a lost love called Seraphina whose rescue was the entire plot of the 2023 album V.
Seven years on, he has stopped asking for favors, put his name above the door, and hired a voice. The stories are about other people now.
Skeleton Sam’s Deadtime Stories arrives October 1 on all digital platforms, with a music-driven anthology series to follow. Sam has stories for days. And nights. Mostly nights.