 | GRAVE DIGGLER | L-R: Cubano Cortada, Shmuel Sugarman, Sonny Charnas,
“Shreddie” Murphy Occhiuti, Miles Long |
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“If you were a kid in the ‘80s, and you were into fast cars, fast girls, and sniffing glue,
then you were into GRAVE DIGGLER.” – Matt Pinfield (Radio & MTV icon) “What people don’t know is that the way that ICE NINE KILLS actually met is that all of
our fathers were in GRAVE DIGGLER.” – Spencer Charnas (ICE NINE KILLS) Their sons may have eclipsed them in the 21st Century, but for a sleazy moment, GRAVE DIGGLER left its stain on hard partying rock n’ roll with decadence, desecrations, and panty raids. The group once stood shoulder to shoulder with their eyeliner-and-excess peers in Poison, Mötley Crüe, and W.A.S.P., before bad business and even worse drugs dampened the fire in their loins. By the early ’90s, like many glam bands, GRAVE DIGGLER faded from the spotlight. But history has a strange way of digglering up the past. When the directing duo behind Scream (2022) and Scream VI began work on the sequel to their 2019 black comedy horror hit Ready or Not, they desperately wanted to include one of GRAVE DIGGLER’s forgotten classic anthems. But even after Radio Silence Productions deduced the connection with Spencer Charnas, securing the rights was no mean feat. The ensuing legal battle between fathers and sons resulted in ICE NINE KILLS re-recording ‘Hell or High Slaughter (Grave Diggler: Pt. 2)’ for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come and the long-banned 1987 music video for the song seeing the light of day. “I’ve been estranged from my father for a long time,” Spencer explains. “But this movie, and this song, while bringing a lot of complicated feelings to the surface, also brought us back together.” ‘ICE NINE KILLS presents Hell or High Slaughter (Grave Diggler: Pt 2)’ and its NSFW music video are only available on YouTube. Watch and listen here. |
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 | ICE NINE KILLS PRESENTS HELL OR HIGH SLAUGHTER (GRAVE DIGGLER PT. 2) |
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Broken Lizard’s Paul Soter (Super Troopers), a lifelong Diggler obsessive, teamed up with director Myles Erfurth (Pandemic Sex Party) and Spencer to detail the band’s tale in a forthcoming documentary. Laid to Rest: The Grave Diggler Story features all-new interviews with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’s Samara Weaving (The Babysitter), Kathryn Newton (Freaky), Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings), and directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett; Stephen Pearcy (Ratt); Matt Pinfield (MTV); Michael Starr (Steel Panther); Jose Mangin (SiriusXM); James A. Janisse and Chelsea Rebecca (Dead Meat); Andy Gould (former Rob Zombie and Guns N’ Roses manager); and both Sonny and Spencer Charnas. In recent years, ICE NINE KILLS toured the world with Metallica; ‘A Grave Mistake’ went gold; ‘A Work of Art’ was in Terrifier 3, the highest-grossing unrated film ever; and ‘Twisting the Knife’ ft. Mckenna Grace, from Scream 7 (which topped the box office upon release and set a franchise best record for Scream) shot to No. 1 on multiple Billboard charts. But even as ICE NINE KILLS presents ‘Hell or High Slaughter (Grave Diggler: Pt. 2)’ blazes into Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (playing both in an early scene and again over the closing credits), Sonny Charnas remains characteristically unimpressed. “You call my son shrieking into a microphone like a meshuggah mental patient ‘singing’? That’s not heavy metal. I’m heavy metal.” |
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ABOUT GRAVE DIGGLER:
GRAVE DIGGLER once stood shoulder to shoulder with their eyeliner-and-excess peers in Poison and Mötley Crüe, before bad business and even worse drugs dampened the fire in their loins. After getting dropped by nearly every major label, the band believed they were signing with another major, but quickly learned that Dental Records was, in fact, a dental practice, and all the talk about “plaque” had nothing to do with platinum. The Dental Records era included Fluoride with the Devil and Cavity Search. But neither album nor their raucous title tracks ever surpassed Snatch and Release (and its arena-sized power ballad title tune) or Just Busted, which produced ‘Hell or High Slaughter’. GRAVE DIGGLER also antagonised the era’s PMRC-led censorship debates. In response to the Parental Advisory, they stamped their albums with their own sticker that read “Placental Advisory.” By the early ’90s, like many glam bands, GRAVE DIGGLER faded from the spotlight as rock culture shifted, their fall was exacerbated in no small part by notoriously volatile frontman Sonny Charnas. But history has a strange way of digglering up the past.ABOUT ICE NINE KILLS:
ICE NINE KILLS spreads cavalier carnage with a knowing smile, as evidenced by the densely catchy songs on their two breakthrough albums, The Silver Scream and The Silver Scream 2: Welcome to Horrorwood, including the gold-certified single ‘A Grave Mistake’; ‘A Work of Art’, the official song from the highest-grossing unrated film ever, Terrifier 3; ‘The Great Unknown’; ‘The Laugh Track,’ a hilariously homicidal tribute to Jack Nicholson’s Joker; and ‘Twisting the Knife’, featuring Mckenna Grace, from the franchise record breaking movie Scream 7. Led by Spencer Charnas, the internationally acclaimed band blends extreme metal with melody. They toured with Slipknot and were handpicked by Metallica for the M72 World Tour (2022 – 2025). The horror community Spencer grew up loving has embraced his band in return, as evidenced by collaborations with major franchises like Scream, Terrifier, and Ready or Not; their own Silver Scream Con; and a presence at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights. 2025 closed with a headlining performance at OVO Arena Wembley and the first Silver Scream Con London. |
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