For Your Halloween Playlist: Christian Nightmares Backmasks an End Times Classic (Listen Here)

About a year ago, The Christian Nightmares Tribulation Band was born. Here’s what Dangerous Minds had to say about it:

“One of the more reliable resources for massively bizarre content that works well on DM is the unbeatable (and perfectly named) blog Christian Nightmares… The personage who runs that blog, a shadowy figure known to me only as ‘CN,’ has spearheaded a remarkable cover of a remarkable song. The impressive collection of musical talent CN has assembled (more on that below) is going by the monicker The Christian Nightmares Tribulation Band for the purposes of covering a single track by the de facto inventor of Christian rock, the preposterously prolific Larry Norman. That’s right, the CNTB has released a cover of Larry Norman’s 1969 classic song about the Rapture, ‘I Wish We’d All Been Ready.’



Christian Nightmares collected an impressive roster of talent to cover the song. For starters, Jason Loewenstein (Sebadoh, Fiery Furnaces) provided lead vocals and guitar, and he recorded and mixed it, too. Other musicians in the band include Ego Sensation (White Hills), Jeff Conaway (The Psychic Paramount), Dana Schechter (Insect Ark, Bee and Flower), David Bozzler (Kosmodemonic, Silver Summit), Laura Ortman (Solo, The Dust Dive), Bryan Zimmerman (Corpse of Discovery, Dichroics)…



The video for the song uses footage from a bunch of “end times” thrillers like A Thief in the Night, A Distant Thunder, and the ecastically paranoid If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, which I’ve written about before. The CNTB video was directed by Chris Carlone, a.k.a. Borts Minorts, and a fine job he did. Anyone who has seen A Thief in the Night will instantly recognize the debt that CNTB’s version owes to the version of the song that appears in that movie, a debt that ‘CN’ readily acknowledges…” (more here)



With Halloween upon us, it seemed only fitting to release a backmasked version of the song, which you can listen to here. I’m pretty sure I hear “Beelzebub” in this version. What about you?

Illustration: Ross MacDonald.