A Halloween Rebirth: GHENGAR Turns Metal, Monsters, & Dubstep Into His Darkest World Yet

If you have been looking for the perfect soundtrack to your Halloween season, GHENGAR has something considerably heavier than the usual spooky playlist. Today, October 2, David Lee Crow officially opens the next chapter of his project with REBIRTH, an eight-track debut album that throws dubstep, tearout, heavy metal, horror, gaming, screamed vocals, growls, and enough distortion to make your speakers question their life choices into one gloriously chaotic world. But REBIRTH is more than GHENGAR making a heavier bass album. It is the point where every part of Crow’s creative identity finally starts speaking at the same volume.

The metal musician, the electronic producer, the vocalist, the gamer, the horror fan, and the artist behind the masks all exist inside this record. That is what makes REBIRTH feel like an actual transformation rather than simply a new collection of songs. Before building his career in electronic music, Crow fronted Arizona deathcore band The Irish Front, and those roots are impossible to miss. The guitars are heavy, the drums hit with an almost physical aggression, and Crow’s own vocals move between scream singing, deep growls, and, for the first time within the project, his actual singing voice. Instead of treating metal as an aesthetic layered onto bass music, REBIRTH makes those influences part of the foundation.

The album opens with “LAVENDER CITY,” a collaboration with Usaybflow that immediately establishes how deep GHENGAR is willing to go with his inspirations. Built around the ghostly world of Pokémon and a darker interpretation of the familiar “Lavender Town” motif, the track begins with an eerie atmosphere before completely losing its mind. Vocal samples, Pokémon-inspired effects, tearout, and riddim crash into one another as the track transforms a piece of childhood gaming nostalgia into full-blown moshpit fuel. It is the kind of song that makes you remember something from your childhood and then immediately wonder how that childhood memory ended up sounding this violent.

“DEMONS” pushes the metal influence even further, combining pounding drums, electric guitar, crushing bass production, and Crow’s own scream-sung vocals. There is something particularly physical about the track because the aggression is not coming from the low end alone. The guitars and vocals give the record a human intensity, almost like you can hear the person behind the project fighting his way through the production. That same horror-driven energy continues into “DEAD LINE,” his collaboration with BERNZIKIAL, which opens with a phone ringing before Ghostface asks, “What’s your favorite scary movie?” From there, the tension snaps into heavy dubstep, with Crow’s vocals becoming another weapon inside the production.

If you are more likely to spend Halloween playing Call of Duty Zombies than watching a horror movie, GHENGAR has you covered there, too. “TACTICAL NUKE” dives directly into gaming nostalgia with eerie atmospheres, zombie horde sounds, gritty bass textures, metal screams, and the unmistakable “FETCH ME THEIR SOULS” sample before detonating into a barrage of bone-rattling dubstep. It is loud, ridiculous, nostalgic, and completely committed to the world GHENGAR has created. More importantly, it shows that the references are not random decorations. Gaming, horror, and metal are the source material that gives this project its personality.

Then comes “BODIES,” featuring K1N, which takes the album somewhere slightly different by reimagining Drowning Pool’s 2001 anthem for its 25th anniversary. Rather than simply recreating the original, GHENGAR performs the vocals himself and rebuilds the song around a bass house-driven instrumental. It is a reminder that REBIRTH is not about proving GHENGAR can make one specific kind of heavy music. It is about proving that his identity can stretch across different forms of electronic music without losing the aggression that holds everything together.

That freedom becomes even more obvious on “AUTOPSY BUFFET,” the collaboration with Chassi that first introduced this heavier chapter back in April, and “CARCASS FLAVORED FARTS,” which is exactly as unhinged as its title suggests. Between spoken word, metal, lasers, electric guitars, tearout, horror elements, scream-sung vocals, and some strategically placed fart effects, the latter might be the most unapologetically GHENGAR moment on the record. It is grotesque, funny, aggressive, and weird, but underneath all of that is something important. Crow clearly has no interest in sanding down the strange parts of his personality to make the music more digestible.

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That same philosophy extends beyond the music. Crow produced the album, recorded the vocals, created the artwork, animated the visualizer, designed the tour artwork, and even 3D printed his own GHENGAR masks. The result is a project where the sound and visual identity feel like they came from the same place. There is no separation between the monster on the artwork, the voice screaming through the speakers, the character onstage, and the person making all of it behind the scenes.

The album closes with its title track, “REBIRTH,” and after all the destruction that came before it, the contrast is almost surprising. Cinematic drums and an expansive atmosphere introduce beautifully sung lyrics alongside Crow’s visceral scream singing before the two vocal styles eventually collide inside the buildup and drop. Piano and airy effects pull the energy back down before the track spirals into a distorted, horror-soaked ending. It feels less like the conclusion of eight songs, and more like the final scene of the world the album has been building.

That is ultimately what REBIRTH accomplishes. It does not ask GHENGAR to choose between his past and his present. It lets the deathcore vocalist become an electronic producer without leaving the metal behind. It lets the gamer and horror fan become part of the songwriting. It lets the visual artist, vocalist, producer, and performer all contribute to the same character. Every influence becomes another piece of the same identity. Now that the album is here, there is only one reasonable way to experience it. Turn the lights down. Put on the headphones. Let the guitars creep in, let the bass rattle the room, and let the screams take over. Just keep the lights on if you are playing “LAVENDER CITY” alone.