Preview: Trick or Beats?

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What a shame that Halloween falls on a Thursday this year.  Because it's right in the middle of the week, hardly any venues are doing silly theme parties.  That means I can't go overboard making naff puns about them like I've done in years gone by. 

 Actually, most of this week's party picks fall on Day of the Dead so they mostly have a deadly-serious tone to them: Gegen's Death party, Slaughterhouse, Burn the Machine and Dia de los Muertos. 

Gegen Death. Kit Kat Club, Friday Nov. 2nd
The name says it all: this month's Gegen will take Berlin back to the roots of Halloween by hosting a party on All Saint's night.  It's the moment in the season when everything in nature is both living and dead: live trees are shedding their leaves, living crops are getting the chop for harvest, and live Berliners bar-hopping and clubbing although their brains have shut down for winter; trawling the streets like so many trick-or-treaters in a candy-induced daze.   But will that stop the Gegen crew from shocking them back to their senses with stormy techno, dark arts and magical acts?  Of corpse not!

Also on Day of the Dead (November 2nd) Berlin's gutsy open-air crusaders Sounds for Berlin and Zuruck zu den Wurzlen will be doing a really gutsy party called Slaughterhouse at the Kulturfabrik in Pankow.  They won't try and take an arm and a leg from you on the door, though, because it's only 5 Euros to get in.  Just try not to get too mangled on the cheap drinks! 

Halloween night through to All Souls' Day (Oct. 31-Nov. 2) have been reclaimed by the Burn the Machine Festival.  This festival started off in 2011 as a German tribute to Guy Fawkes night.  Guy Fawkes night often sees effigies of hated public figures being burned in Guy Fawkes' stead.  Because, let's face it: Fawkes just doesn't seem as horrifying as, say, the current British PM. During his time in Parliament, David Cameron's certainly made more lethal cuts than your average slasher-movie villain has.   

Burn the Machine takes place at Subland and is dedicated to such incendiary underground styles as "Hard drum’n'bass, breakcore, left-of-center techno, drones and experimental noise."  Personally, I'd like to be there when DAVE the Drummer (Hydraulix Records) is playing.  Although he is not scary in any way, his twisted rhythmic beats have a way of making people dance until they start to look quite macabre.
  
And on Saturday, everybody's favourite streetart haunt, Urbanspree, will be doing a Dia de los Muertos record release party in its hipster-friendly dungeon. But the main attraction as always, will be the scarily-good murals that surround it.

Have a wicked week!


Please help me improve this post by ranking the quality of its puns. Were they: a) Stu-pun-dous b) Pun-of-the-mill or c) Pun-derwhelming ?

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