THE GOLDSTARS – The Halloween Album (2026, Digital, Mordorlorff Music) 

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Mordorlorff Music

Format: LP, Album, Digital, Bandcamp 

Release Date: 2 Oct 2026

Somewhere between garage punk’s back-alley instincts, rock ’n’ roll’s crooked grin and the kind of spooky nonsense that makes Halloween worth celebrating, The Goldstars have decided to open the coffin again! Chicago’s long-running garage rock raiders return with their first full-length album in twenty years, and they haven’t exactly come back to play nice. “The Halloween Album” promises thirteen tales from the darker side of their primitive, hook-laden universe, where horror-movie shadows meet scruffy guitars, mischievous spirits and the unrepentant attitude of a band that never needed permission to make a racket. These are seasoned underground troublemakers with a history of sailing alongside some rather colourful characters, but this time the voyage takes a decidedly haunted turn. Forget polished pumpkins and supermarket horror — The Goldstars are here to raise a little hell, rattle a few skeletons and remind us that rock ’n’ roll can still smell wonderfully of dust, sweat and graveyard mischief. So, turn down the lights, open another bottle of whatever keeps the ghosts talking, and let this Halloween party begin!

Emerging from Chicago during the early 2000s, The Goldstars built their reputation on a primitive, sharply melodic blend of garage punk and scrappy pop instincts. Releases such as “Gotta Get Out”, “Purple Girlfriend” and “The Race EP” attracted the attention of Little Steven Van Zandt and his influential Underground Garage radio show on SiriusXM, helping the band spread their noisy gospel beyond their hometown. Their journey took a significant turn when legendary musician Andre “Mr. Rhythm” Williams brought them aboard as his backing band for a decade, resulting in the “Nightclub EP”, a live album and several rough-edged 45s. Following Williams’ death in 2018, frontman Matt ‘Sal’ Favazza found the inspiration to carry the Goldstars’ spirit forward. After more than ten years without new recordings, the band returned with a series of standalone singles that received airplay on SiriusXM’s Faction Punk and Underground Garage, as well as Sound Opinions and Dr. Demento. Now, twenty years after their previous full-length, Favazza and his fellow Goldstars unleash “The Halloween Album” — thirteen new songs that steer their garage-rock vessel into delightfully eerie territory.

The album kicks off with “Let Your Freak Flag Fly (It’s Halloween Night)”, a punky, garage-y Halloween anthem where spoken words, monster attitudes and primitive rock ’n’ roll set the scene for the night’s spooky celebrations. “Stroll In Hell” is an absolute treat, dripping with a wonderfully 60s horror atmosphere, as if Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” had stumbled into the sinister theatrical world of Screaming Lord Sutch. “Cats, Rats or Wind”, featuring Gabrielle Sutton, plays with our everyday fears, adding a cool electric guitar solo to the creepy proceedings, while “It’s Scary” feels like stepping into the pages of a vintage horror comic book, full of ghosts, goblins and those little terrors that make ordinary life seem downright frightening. “I Frankensteined U” turns up the volume with a heavier rock ’n’ roll attack, imagining Mick Jagger sharing a graveyard stage with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, all swagger, theatrical menace and voodoo-flavoured mischief. “The Introduction” strips everything back to spoken words, letting Sir Ken Mottet deliver the unsettling message without a musical safety net, before “No Halloween”, featuring Mottet, drifts into an eerie, creep-a-delic ballad, haunted by hell’s bells and the dreadful possibility of a world without Halloween. With “Monsters Go Away”, the creatures of the night refuse to leave the party, and the band responds with a dance-a-delic monster stomp that could easily have escaped from a forgotten 60s novelty-horror 45. “Cabin Rd.” takes us down a road that Google Maps wisely ignores, its clipped, staccato speech crawling over a creepy Farfisa-like garage-organ sound, while “Leave Me Alone (A Halloween Song)” mixes haunted organ, children’s voices and other unsettling ingredients into another slice of deliciously twisted Halloween fun. “New Orleans Ghost Tour Night” shifts towards late-50s rhythm ’n’ blues, reviving the spirit of those old horror-rock ’n’ roll recordings where the supernatural and the dancefloor happily shared the same space. “Hallowteen” keeps that vintage atmosphere alive, turning the awkward business of growing up into a Halloween nightmare, before “Want My Damn Candy” closes the thirteen-track adventure with the spirit of Grease crashing headfirst into a trick-or-treat riot — a wonderfully mischievous finale to an album dedicated to Count Scary. Throughout these thirteen spooky little trips, The Goldstars reconnect us with the glorious tradition of 50s and 60s horror-themed rock ’n’ roll, from Screaming Lord Sutch and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to Bobby “Boris” Pickett, with a little nod towards the theatrical monster madness of The Cramps. No polished modern horror soundtrack here, just garage-rock fun, vintage scares and enough Halloween spirit to make those old ghosts dance again! Dig! TimeLord Michalis

Tracklist

Links

Listen / Buy through THE GOLDSTARS Bandcamp

Check THE GOLDSTARS Facebook