The Funeral Portrait, courtesy.

It’s a rock-heavy list featuring Thornhill and FELICITY shredding the guitars, Skinny Lister offering up some shanty punk, Dragonforce’s Marc Hudson with a video game homage, and a couple appropriately timed spooky season releases from The Funeral Portrait and B-52s legend Kate Pierson.

Thornhill, “Viper Room” — “Viper Room” starts a bit slow, and I generally don’t have a ton of patience for songs that take forever to get going, but this time it’s worth it. Once you get through the intro, this rock song reminds me of my beloved late ’90s, complete with grinding guitars and driving beat. Gotta love this slot somewhere between alt-rock and prog metal.

FELICITY, “She’s Nuclear” — We’re going back to hard rock, because these are my picks and I like my rock on the hard side. “She’s Nuclear” has the sort of melodic hooks and anthemic vibe that gives songs decades of radio airplay but, for some reason, songs from which some bands shy away. Just lean into it! Everyone loves a song with a riff that gets stuck in your head! Look at Felicity here, they did it and it’s been playing through my head for days!

Skinny Lister, “Company of the Bar” — I love Celtic punk and, while Skinny Lister isn’t comprised of Irish musicians (they’re from Greenwich, outside London), it certainly has the sound down. That’s good enough for me. The first single from the band’s upcoming autobiographical album, Shanty Punk, lives up to the album name and that’s all I could really ask for. Now I just need to figure out why I like raucous drinking songs so much when I don’t actually drink…

Marc Hudson, “Dracula X!” — There’s a whole subgenre of metal that sounds kinda like old video game music, and this is certainly part of that. In this case it’s appropriate, however, since Dragonforce singer Marc Hudson wrote “Dracula X!” about the “Castlevania” series of games. And I’m sure the song will appeal to you more if you’ve got a familiarity with “Castlevania”—not because you need to know the mythology to understand it, but because if you dig the games, you probably also dig what they sound like, and this is definitely like that.

The Funeral Portrait, “Mad World” — Yes, it’s the Tears for Fears classic. It’s apparently one of those songs that sounds good no matter who’s performing it. The original was obviously fantastic, it had a resurgence in the late ’90s and early ’00s when a rendition was featured in the overrated movie (fight me) “Donnie Darko,” and it recently came back again when Demi Lovato recorded her take on it. All great! But in the hands of a proper emo band, it really shines, to the point I’d rank this best among the song’s various covers.

Kate Pierson, “Every Day is Halloween” — You know Kate Pierson, right? No? Well, first off, you’re dead to me, and second, I’m gonna need you to go listen to The B-52s until you fix that situation. I’ll wait. You’re back? Good. That’s her, but without the hair when she’s solo.

Reuniting with Sia, who collaborated on Pierson’s solo debut, Guitars and Microphones, she dropped this one on Friday the 13th to formally welcome in the Halloween season. It absolutely does that. Maybe listen twice to really get you into the spirit.

Danny’s pick: I hate to pick covers as my favorite because it feels like it’s cheating but, man, do I ever love the version of “Mad World” from The Funeral Portrait. Who knew making it even more emo was the secret to perfecting it?

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis at @bayareadata.press on BlueSky.