Dave Grohl got in touch with his demonic side for “March of the Insane,” a thrashy new death-metal song attributed to the fictional band Dream Widow. The track, which surfaced on Foo Fighters’ YouTube page, claims to come “from their never released self-titled album.” Although the exact musicians who play in “Dream Widow” are unknown, it’s safe to assume Grohl had a hand in the track given his collaborations with members of Celtic Frost, Mercyful Fate, Motörhead, and Venom years ago on his Probot project.
The track features a breakneck riff that conjures memories of bands like Slayer and Sodom along with vocals that sound like they’re worshiping at Lemmy Kilmister’s altar. “Worship the unholy spirit,” an unusually gravel-throated Grohl (likely) growls, “pray to the god of the dead.” The three-and-a-half minute track even finds time to throw in an old-school breakdown and melodic, Kirk Hammett–esque guitar solo, before locking back into a militaristic rhythm.
Dream Widow figure heavily (pun intended) into the Foos’ upcoming horror movie, Studio 666. “The premise of the movie is that we move into this house, I have writer’s block, I’m totally uninspired, I can’t come up with anything,” Grohl recently told Howard Stern, according to Ultimate Classic Rock. “And I wind up finding this creepy basement. And I go into the basement, I find this tape by a band from 25 years ago that recorded there. And there’s this song that, if recorded and completed, the fucking demon in the house is unleashed, and then, whatever, all hell breaks loose.”
Filmmaker BJ McDonnell (Hatchet III, Slayer’s The Repentless Killology) directed the film, which is based on a story by Grohl. In addition to the Foo Fighters, Studio 666 also stars Will Forte, Whitney Cummings, and Jeff Garlin. The film is “Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, pervasive language, and sexual content.”
The three movies Grohl cited as inspiration for the flick in a Rolling Stone interview were The Shining, The Amityville Horror, and Evil Dead. “The ‘rock band film’ as a tradition seems to have disappeared,” he said. “Whether it wasA Hard’s Day’s Nightor [the Ramones’]Rock ‘n’ Roll High SchoolorKiss Meets the Phantom of the Parkor the fucking Spice Girls movie. We’re not going forThere Will Be Blood. We just want to have fun in that old tradition of rock & roll.”