Vampires

Whether you're entranced by Twilight or you go batty for old-school bloodsuckers like Nosferatu, we've stocked up the ultimate virtual vampire jukebox for you. Even with creep-rocking creatures of the night the Birthday Party howling out terrortastic tracks like "Release the Bats," vamping on vampires isn't always scary stuff. O.G.'s (Original Goths) Bauhaus lay down a deliciously doom-y groove with their Drac-track to die for, "Bela Lugosi's Dead." And the guitar-grinding drama of Paramore's "Decode" provides the punctuation for Twilight's big question: can an average teenager find true love with the fanged kind? Discover the friendlier fiends from the vampire kingdom in Next Steps.

Don't be afraid of the dark: bring it on, as horror-punk godfathers the Misfits bang out a bloody valentine to their silver-screen scream queen of the night, "Vampira." Jonathan Richman's wide-eyed wonder makes his hunger for a "Vampire Girl" sound more like a schoolboy crush than a fatal attraction. Daniel Johnston's "Devil Town" is a neighbourly place occupied by D.J.'s bloodthirsty buddies, who seem about as spooky as Casper the Friendly Ghost. And even the ghastliest ghoul would grin when Harry Nilsson delivers all the fun of a fright-night carnival with "Daybreak" from the musical comedy Son of Dracula. The craziest collection of vampires you've ever encountered awaits you in Deep Cuts.

Vampires don't all come off the Count Dracula assembly line — some are frightful, some are friendly, and some are downright whacked-out. Instrumental outfit Los Straightjackets add a touch of spooky surf rock to the night-crawling party sound of hit-that-count "Rockula," while wild man Wesley Willis is as off-the-wall as ever on his hilariously cracked sonic snapshot of a streetwise "Vampire Bat." But they all run for coffin cover when hardcore punk heroes Bad Brains trade their chainsaw guitars and jackhammer drums for stakes and silver bullets and come careening out into the night as the "Fearless Vampire Killers."

From punk to pop to metal and more, the musical obsession with the undead goes deep. It's given birth to everything from the sympathetic Big Easy bloodsucker of Sting's suave, jazzy "Moon over Bourbon Street" to the heavy 'n' hungry attack of Judas Priest's full-fanged "Love Bites." We've scoured the cemeteries and combed the castles for the bloody-greatest batch of tunes ever to turn up the volume on the Vampire's domain. Some are spooky, some are strange, and some are just plain silly, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger, better soundtrack to a night on the prowl anywhere else . . . without a Transylvanian postal code.