The days are getting shorter and colder, the leaves are falling from the trees, and today is All Hallow’s Eve – also known as Halloween. Today is usually when kids get dressed up in silly outfits and go around knocking on doors and taking candy. This is also about the time of year when women, in particular, get dressed up in “sexy” (read: really slutty) skimpy outfits and go out to party as vampires and witches and zombies and so on and so forth.

Oh, and it’s also about the time of year when Starbucks sells its chemicals- and sweeteners-laded Pumpkin Spice lattes, specifically designed to make your teeth rot and your brain addicted to sugar.

But here at Didactic Mind, I do things a bit differently.

I use it as an excuse to re-post songs by one of the greatest heavy metal bands of all time, HELLOWEEN. These guys were the absolute pioneers of the entire power metal genre. Along with fellow German innovators like RUNNING WILD and a few British and Scandinavian bands, these outfits fused the heavy riffs of NWOBHM and the technicality and violence of American thrash and speed metal into the formula that we now know of as power metal.

Unfortunately, ever since then, they’ve been copied by countless bands to the point where people think that HELLOWEEN is itself derivative – when, in reality, they’re the GRANDDADDIES.

Their “Keepers” trilogy ranks as a collection of some of the very best heavy metal ever recorded. And it’s the perfect soundtrack to use for today given everything that’s going on. If you listen to the lyrics, the metaphors about a hero fighting fear and evil to triumph and lock away the Great Adversary, only for that same opponent to come back and destroy the Earthly realm in the end, apply very well indeed to the current situation.

Most of you who are parents over in the USA could probably use an opportunity to get the kids outside and blow off some steam and have some fun. That is all well and good. This year is going to be remembered as possibly the worst in living memory – and considering that most if not all of you lived through the Crash of 2008, that’s saying something. It’s not going to get much better anytime soon, either. The election is just a few days away, and while I fully expect the God-Emperor to win, the aftermath is going to be uglier than anything we’ve seen since Lincoln’s election in 1860.

Take heart nonetheless. All things pass away, and this too shall pass away in time. We’ll get through all of this and out the other side. Sterner tests even than these are yet to come. So prepare yourselves.

But for now, Happy HELLOWEEN, and enjoy the time with your families while you can.