It’s spooky season so it’s a great time for a song about spooky stuff.

Metal Church released their second album The Dark in 1986 and today’s song is the title track. This album got a pretty mixed reception from critics, who were more in love with the band’s self-titled debut, but this album and song have its fans and I am absolutely one of them.

Metal Church are more accurately described as a US power metal act than a thrash band, though this song might convince some otherwise. This is a hard and aggressive track with pounding riffs and rapid fire vocal delivery from David Wayne, who is almost rapping through the chorus. There is an instrumental break but not really a proper solo, this song pretty much just slams in and out.

Lyrically the song is about being stuck in a house at night while sinister things are about. No telling if those evil things are real or imagined, but all those noises in the night are making the song’s subject paranoid. He feels like he has to stay up all night to avoid being prey to whatever lurks in the shadows, if that thing is even real. Playing upon that fear of things that may or may not be there, often a childhood thing, can be far scarier than an actual monster on a rampage.

The Dark wasn’t released as a single but is a relatively well-known song from the band’s output. IT doesn’t have the profile of songs like Watch The Children Pray from this same album or a few cuts from the widely celebrated debut, but this one still stands as a signature Metal Church track. It was covered by Stone Sour in 2015 when that group focused on playing several cover tracks.

Metal Church would go on through a lot of line-up changes, hiatuses and tragedies through the years, including the death of David Wayne in 2005. Founding guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof has been the band’s caretaker through the 2000’s. While Metal Church have been through a lot of ups and downs in the decades since their 1980’s breakthrough, they have also contributed a lot to the realm of metal, including this great song.