Bring Gavin Castleton’s Zombie Opera Home for the Holidays
Debi Moore
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Do you by chance have a highbrow friend or two on your holiday shopping list who equally love both horror and the finer arts? If so, you’re in luck because the first zombie “popera”, Home by Gavin Castleton, was recently brought to our attention, and now of course we’re bringing it to yours.
Home, distributed by Five One, Inc., carries you on a focused journey of love (and the footprint it leaves when it steps on your face) through the eyes of a man, a woman, two ladybugs, and an army of corpses. Not only is the concept left-of-center, the album itself is unique in its function. It is sequenced in two halves: The first depicts Castleton and his young lover falling deeply in love, and the second, in which said lovers are stalked incessantly by a growing population of flesh-eating zombies, is the story of falling out of love.
Freshly arisen from the devastation of a six-year relationship, Castleton set out to design an album that would both document his healing process and deliver comfort to equally heartbroken listeners. In what close friends described as “a monumental error in judgment,” Castleton enlisted the help of his departing lover to help write the story. The process became so heart-wrenching that Castleton abandoned the house they had shared, and for five months (until his final mastering date) he and his faithful dog slept on couches, floors, and car seats, recording musicians all over New England. The result is Home, a 14-song narrative that follows his relationship from the coffee-shop flirtation beginning to the mauled-by-zombies-while-his-girlfriend-leaves-in-a-helicopter-with-some-army-dude end.
Despite the unconventionally wide scope of Home, Castleton insists it is a very accurate depiction of a rough breakup: “When you fall in love, is it not a little bit like a musical? When your heart breaks, is it not a little bit like a horror movie?
We concur, Gavin, thanks to DC reader SaraTerror, who gave us the heads-up about Home.
Below are the CD’s track listing and a few samples. Give ’em a whirl; if you like what you hear, pick up a copy from the EvilShop. And be sure to visit Gavin Castleton’s official site as well, where you can listen to Home in its entirety along with an exclusive director’s commentary.
1. Bugguts
2. Coffeelocks
3. Warpaint
4. Sugar on the Sheets
5. Stampete
6. The Onslaught
7. The Wall Starts to Give
8. Layers
9. Unparallel Rabbits
10. Red + Blue = Yella
11. Oregon
12. …Beetlemeet
13. The Human Torch
14. Credits
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