[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]

If the OCTOBERFEAST teaches us nothing else, it’s that every individual must act as both prey and predator of the heart’s darkened recesses. While evading their burdensome remembrances in daily living, one can use this annual masquerade-macabre to unearth the roots of personal anguish. Show them to the world. Chop them to pieces with a fuggin’ axe. Light them on fire.

For as horrifying as it might be to approach our own repressions, it is infinitely more exhilarating to air them out. So no one amongst us, from the most fragile bonfire-stoker to the strongest cask-hurling juggernaut, will escape the revelry without revealing a lost truth, a fact that may begin to be slipping into fiction. Go ahead – turn your head to the sky and just scream what it is that you don’t want to face but can’t bear to forget! There’s no need to be shy!

For even the most evil of our OCTOBERFEAST guests have some black-boned skeletons dancing in their closets.

Tonight, Lord Ozzy is going to get things going for us. Look there he is! And he’s about to Bark at the Moon!

You don’t have to have attended an official OCTOBERFEAST Bat-Biting to know of the black magic aura that surrounds Ozzy Osbourne. Between his work in Black Sabbath, his own band, and his record-smashing MTV cash-grab (I’m still convinced Ozzy only did it to fund virgin sacrifices), the Ozzman is perhaps the most ubiquitous figure in all of heavy metal.

Moreover, his music is still played all over the damn place. It might be impossible to go to a sporting event without hearing Crazy Train, watch a RDJ flick without thinking of Iron Man, or survive a breakup without Goodbye to Romance. There’s no doubt about it – Ozzy has transfused his music into our collective bloodstreams.

While the average modern-consumer can headbang in perfect sync to these tunes, the sad fact is that one of Ozzy’s greatest masterpieces goes largely unacknowledged. Perhaps it’s because the underappreciated Jake E. Lee shreds all over the track. Or maybe it’s the fact that the mainstream is much more enamored of vampires than wolfmen. Or hell, maybe it’s just too fuggin’ sinister for the airwaves, scaring off Apple Pie Americans by sending diabolical messages into the brainstems of children.

But for all of those reasons, and the fact that it kicks all sorts of 1980s hair-metal ass, Bark at the Moon is a goddamn work of art.

Lyrically, Bark at the Moon serves a fist-pumpin’ lycanthrope anthem. Ozzy isn’t trying to use the werewolf archetype to discuss the plight of the politically disenfranchised or genetically-unfortunate. No, what he’s doing to screeching out what it means to be a nasty-ass werewolf, traipsing about the forest and screaming at the satellite responsible for monthly transformations:

Howling in shadows

Living in a lunar spell

He finds his heaven

Spewing from the mouth of hell

Those that the beast is looking for

Listen in awe and you’ll hear him Bark at the moon

Hey yeah, bark at the moon

Hey yeah, bark at the moon

Oh Oh yeah, bark at the moon

Additionally, the music video not only provides suitable visuals, but actually slaps on extra layers of monster-rockery. The viewer is taken through a smattering of narratives, which sometimes point to a unified structure but often don’t. In the beginning of the video, we see Victorian-era Scientist Ozzy slurping an unstable elixir in his laboratory. His wife doesn’t approve of such reckless science, and much to her chagrin Scientist Ozzy turns into Wolfman Ozzy! We then get scenes of Ozzy being institutionalized, a funeral in which we get to see Ozzy decompose rapidly, and then a full-fledged chase between a Wolfman and Ozzy (it’s, like, total symbologism of Ozzy running from his demons).

Luckily, everything works out for the Prince of Darkness and he gets to go home to his babe.

Bark at the Moon is a classic Ozzy track and it’s about time that it gets the respect that it deserves. It’ll never get the stadium status of Crazy Train. I know. But through the wonder of OCTOBERFEAST, we can all do a small part to celebrate an oft-forgotten gem. With some luck, we might even convince Ozzy to start flaunting the song again, coming out of the woodwork to do his best geriatric-karaoke version during a Halloween episode of whatever.

So on the next full moon, blast this song as loud as you can, run around shirtless, and bark at the moon.

Oh snap! Hunter’s Moon is tonite. You know what to do.