Dave Grohl Recorded an Entire Metal Album for His New Horror Movie ‘Studio 666’
Nearly 20 years ago, Dave Grohl enlisted members of Motörhead, Celtic Frost, Venom, and other heavy-metal pioneers for Probot, his side project that he once referred to as a “death-metal Supernatural.” With the upcoming release of the Foo Fighters’ horror-comedy film Studio 666, Grohl returns to his most aggro side, telling Rolling Stone that he’s recorded an entire metal album as the film’s fictional band Dream Widow.
Studio 666 follows the Foos as they set up to record their 10th album in a dilapidated mansion. “I wind up finding this creepy basement. And I go into the basement, I find this tape by a band [Dream Widow] from 25 years ago that recorded there,” Grohl told Howard Stern. “And there’s this song that, if recorded and completed, the fucking demon in the house is unleashed, and then, whatever, all hell breaks loose.”
Grohl has already released one thrashy headbanger called “March of the Insane,” but tells Rolling Stone that a full Dream Widow album will hopefully arrive in time for the film’s Feb. 25 premiere. In the film, Dream Widow’s singer, as Grohl puts it, “went insane, murdered his entire band over creative differences and then kills himself in the house.
“It will be the lost album,” Grohl continues of the new project. “It’ll be the album they were making before he fucking killed the entire band.” Asked if it will be released in conjunction with the film, Grohl adds, “I mean, I work fast, but fuck, this deadline is going to kill me. Yes, I’ll get it out for the movie. By February 25th, there will be a Dream Widow record.”
It’s unclear exactly when the album will be released, who else is on it, or if Grohl has even finished recording it. But he notes his days growing up as “a fucking Eighties thrash-metal kid” will play a heavy inspiration. “I have my favorites. You’ll hear a lot of those influences in ‘Lacrimus dei Ebrius’ [a 13-minute metal epic performed in the film] because for that song, I put maybe four or five of these sections together in this big, long thing. Some of it sounds like [doom-metal pioneers] Trouble; some of it sounds like Corrosion of Conformity; some of it has a Kyuss vibe.”
The Foos kept the gore-filled horror-comedy, directed by BJ McDonnell, a secret for more than two and a half years, staying on to film in an Encino, California, mansion after finishing the recording of their latest album Medicine at Midnight. “There’s so many classic cliché horror elements that we filtered into this one movie,” he told Rolling Stone. “It’s part The Shining, part Amityville Horror, part Evil Dead. The ‘rock band film’ as a tradition seems to have disappeared. … We’re not going for There Will Be Blood. We just want to have fun in that old tradition of rock & roll.”
Despite the fun of “doing a movie with my friends,” the monotony and slow pace of moviemaking couldn’t be more at odds with Grohl’s breakneck work schedule. “I’ll tell you what I don’t like: I don’t like sitting around a fucking movie set for seven hours and then standing in front of a camera for 25 seconds,” he said. “That is not my vibe. So to be an actor, I don’t know — I don’t think I have the patience. I have a raging case of ADD. My friends call it ‘Advance Dave Disorder.’”
