“Yeah, I am the astro-creep,
A demolition style hell American freak - yeah
I am the crawling dead,
A phantom in a box, shadow in your head”
-“More Human than Human,” by White Zombie

Some folks say rock 'n’ roll is dead. That may forever be up for debate, but regardless, a large part of rock ‘n’ roll is death. From fanatical obsessions over the tragic death of rock icons, to the live-fast-die-young-leave-a-pretty-corpse attitude of rock culture, it's as hard to imagine rock without death as it is to think of Jimi Hendrix without his Fender Stratocaster. Gnarly rockin' death jams make shuffling off this mortal coil seem like the coolest thing since fire. And it's these songs that bond rock and death together like carnies and toothless-ness.

Rock grew out of blues and jazz. The music of New Orleans funeral processions has crept out of the crypt and slipped into the sound of rock ‘n’ roll as well. Louis Armstrong’s version of "St, James Infirmary" was there for the... birth... of... death: "I went down to the St. James infirmary / Saw my baby there / Stretched out on a long white table / So sweet...so cold...so fair."

Early rock songs dealt with death in a similar style. The Shangri-Las “Leader of the Pack,” Jan and Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve,” and “Last Kiss,” by J Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers all lament the loss of sweet honey-babies in gruesome traffic accidents. They’re kinda cheesy, but still touching at times. They also helped mold the bad-boy image of car and biker cultures.

This era came to an end, as Don McLean said, “The Day the Music Died.” McLean’s song is not merely about the death of Richie Valens, The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly. “It signifies the end of the first explosion in rock ’n’ roll,” says rock historian and guitarist Saul Gropman. “Elvis went into the army about the same time. Chuck Berry was caught by the Mann Act and Little Richard found God for a while.”

It was funeral time for rock. Today, when a full choir screams out “Dies Iræ,” from Mozart's “Requiem” -"Day of wrath, that day / Will dissolve the earth in ashes" - it's easy to hear the connection to a lot of the heavy shredding found in metal and *cough* butt rock *cough* (you know: Poison, et al).

Metal-heads are notoriously focused on morbidity. Dave Mustaine, bandleader of Megadeth, pulled his attention away from gory thoughts of blood and insect infestation just long enough to write tunes like "99 Ways to Die," "Crown of Worms," and "Countdown to Extinction." Metallica’s Kirk Hammet plays an ESP guitar with skull inlays on the fingerboard. He also collects occult books about death, torture and black magic. Jimmy Page also touted himself as a black magician.

When metal first broke, Ozzy Osbourne helped popularize Black Sabbath through gruesome stage antics, but it was really the power of their songs that was unstoppable. One song tells of a man who travels to the future and witnesses the apocalypse. He returns to warn humanity, but no one listens. He becomes enraged, seeks vengeance and ultimately brings about the apocalypse he sought to prevent. Sound familiar? It's the story of "Iron Man."

"Now the time is here / For Iron Man to spread fear
Vengeance from the grave / Kills the people he once saved"

Some of the rockin-est tunes ever are not only about death, but murder. Witness “My Name is Mud,” by Primus: "Six foot two and blue as hell / gotta gitem in the ground before he starts to smell... We had our words - a common spat / So I kissed him up side the cranium with that aluminum baseball bat."

If you're looking to add some homicidal rigor mortis to your recordus-collectus, Nick Cave's album “Murder Ballads” is 100 percent death. This little bit of murder trumps Iron Maiden's “Killers” because someone gets offed in every song - usually quite a few people actually. This disc-o-death includes "Song of Joy," (...bound in electric tape / In her mouth a gag; She'd been stabbed repeatedly / And stuffed in a sleeping bag), "The Curse of Millhaven," - written from the perspective of a female serial killer - and "O'Malley's Bar," which has 12 grisly deaths and features two double-murder stanzas! Wow, that’s a murder per line!

The last song on the bloody record is a cover of Bob Dylan's "Death is Not the End." Dylan's always had a way with words, but who knew he could be so Lovecraftian? "When the cities are on fire / With the burning flesh of men / Just remember that death is not the end."

Yeah. Once you've got "A Bullet in Your Head,” or you wind up at the wrong "Knife Party," get some “Metal Up Your Ass,” and join the Grateful Dead - like Iron Maiden says - there's always "Purgatory." If you don’t turn into a White Zombie that is…