Hellraiser Samples Used in Music

1. Dunkelwerk (1 track)

Track: 2hell (ladykiller mixx)
On compilation: Cyberlab 4 (2003), CD2 track 7

Sample: "There is a secret song at the center of the world, and its sound is like razors-through-flesh. [...] I'm here, to turn up the volume" from: Hellraiser 3: Pinhead in The Boilerhouse nightclub.

The album is a beautiful, modern techno-style industrial dance compilation, very club-based. The tracks are often dark and brooding in nature, but that's the only truly industrial aspect of the album. It's techno. Also sampled on this track is "Welcome to hell", and "ladies first", the samples are largely used before chorus-style dancy bits and the longer quote above is used during refrains in a very effective, exciting way. The track is stompy and genuinely suits the Hellraiser genre in its powerful, body-moving rhythms. I don't have any other tracks by Dunkelwerk, so don't know how representative this remix is of their music in general.

2. Front Line Assembly (3 tracks)

Track: Surface Patterns
On album: "Reclamation", track 12

Sample: "Down the dark decades of your pain, this will seem like a memory of heaven" from Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth, at 3:35 into the track.

Front Line Assembly are a staple part of the Industrial EBM scene, heavy electronic stompy dance maybe with guitar loops. Surface Patterns is a very good track, plodding and very well paced with an energetic, exciting feel to it. The lyrics are infamously undecipherable, but he sings about "something in hell" and other such allusions suit the music well to a Hellraiser sample! The sample fits in seamlessly, adding to a building sense of foreboding half way through the track.

Track: Comatose
On album: "Flavour of the Weak" (1997), track 6

Sample: "He who summons the magic, commands the magic" from Hellraiser:Bloodline, at 4:30 in track.

An electronic dance track, bleepy, which breaks into beautiful moments of techno ambience with catchy, slow, dreamy vocals. The hellraiser quote is minimal and on the sidelines, the vocals of the track are audible and mystically inspiring without the sample having much of an appreciable effect on the track. Nonetheless, it's a suitably cryptic sample that it fits.

Track: Predator
On album: "Flavour of the Weak" (1997), track 8

Sample: "Let me save at least one soul" from Hellraiser: Bloodline (the Space station interview scene), at 7.30 in track.

A long track, electronic industrial dance, only medium-heavy but with dominant moog bass and a good sense of fantasy. The track grew on me over time. It's not so much exciting or powerful, as longer-term brooding and a little bouncy. It's a well balanced track and can play in the background nicely, playing with your subconscious with its hints of meaning and depth. The sample appears right at the end, quite forcefully. The album has a hidden track afterwards.

Flavour of the Weak is in general a wonderful album, it's not club-dancy, but it is industrial. It's not dramatic, but it feels deep and inspires deep-down thoughts and feelings. There are moments of pure brilliance, when you want the vocals and soundscape to engulf you, and moments where it plods along, neither building-up nor breaking-down. In addition to the Hellraiser samples there are also more from Predator, Robocop and many other films.

3. Rosetta Stone (1 track)₁

Track: Shadow
On album "An Eye For The Main Chance" track 1
And album: "Adrenaline" track 1

Sample: "What's your pleasure, sir?" at 50 seconds. This is spoken by the Chinese occultist who sells the Box to Frank Cotton at the start of Hellraiser 1 and who again attains the box (via a skeletal dragon...) at the end of the film and who is then shown selling it again to someone else.

The track is typical trad goth (traditional goth rock), with male echoey vocals, prominent guitars and drums, which is in keeping with the style of the band throughout their career.

4. Solitary Experiments (3 tracks)

Track: Pandora's Box
On album "Cause & Effect" (2004), CD1, track 5

Sample: "The box. I don't know what it's for, or who made it, or why. I only know what it does".

This sample opens the track, and then repeats another sample a few times, where I think the female lead is quoted as saying "it hurts".

This is a dancy EBM album; but not particularly tuneful. Its pleasant moments are in the electronic synths which are sometimes beautiful; and the slower tracks ooze meaning and mysticism, with a hint of sadness. There are inspiring samples throughout all of this album, most of them are not from films that I know. Despite the beauty, the percussion and rhythm is generally harsh.

Track: Miracle (Headscan remix)
On album: "Cause & Effect" (2004), CD2, track 5

This track samples Pinhead explaining that the box 'holds the key to unknown pleasures'. The sample is faded into the background as the track opens, and is hard to make out. This remix is a harsh electronic take on the original, more like alien industrial trance than either nightclub music or EBM.

Track: The Dark Inside Me
On album "Cause & Effect" (2004)

Sample: "Is it so difficult to face your demons?" 30 seconds into the track. The sample is taken from Hellseeker (Hellraiser 6) at 55 minutes into the film.

Track: Bleak Prospects
On album: "Final Approach" (2006), track 4

This is another track that opens with a sample in the background. It quotes Pinhead from Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth, in the scene where the nightclub owner is talking to the statue. "Appetite: sated, desire: indulged". The sample is repeated at 2min20.The track is a slow electronic stomp, once again quite harsh (but nicer than the two tracks mentioned above), and featuring a female vocalist in parts. This is living-room music, rather than nightclub.

5. Suicide Commando (4 tracks)

Track: Jesus Wept
On album "Mindstrip" (2000), track 1

Sample: "Jesus wept" spoken by Frank Cotton in Hellraiser 1

One of Suicide Commandos best tracks. It is energetic, bouncy and above all stompy, heavy electronic industrial, but still in the minimalist style of the band. It is an all-round pleaser, with distorted, exciting vocals with content that Wumpscut would be proud of, and crisp techno and pounding bass. The Hellraiser quotes are prominent, highly relevant and dramatic. The entire album is full of hellraiser symbols and samples.

Track: See You In Hell (2002)
On best-of album "Anthology" (2002), CD2 track 1

Sample: "Welcome to Hell" opens the track, taken from Hellraiser: Inferno during the concluding scenes. Spoken by Pinhead when he reveals to the Detective that he's been stuck in hell since the moment he opened the box.

Another best track by Suicide Commando and once again originally on the Mindstrip album. But the sample only appears on the 2002 version that appeared on the Anthologies best-of album though. It is a simple stompy dance track with simple looped minimalistic synths over the top of the beats.

Track: Raise Your God
On album "Mindstrip" (2000), track 4

Sample: "This is my body, this is my blood" from Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth, the infamous Church Scene.

Another one of Suicide Commando's best tracks. I think they must reserve their Hellraiser samples for their best! The sample opens and sustains the track excitingly from the word go. The vocals are aggressive, the beat is industrial and hard, it's an all-round excellent industrial track. The lyrics are awesome and hellish, the chorus is aggressive and pounding.

Aside from these three tracks that sample Hellraiser directly is the outstanding track entitled Hellraiser. It is Suicide Commando's best track, on the Mindstrip album. Hunt out the VNV Nation remix of it, and you'll find a great EBM-industrial-techno track.

Track: Cry for Mother
On the "Love Breeds Suicide" single

The track opens and closes with a quote from quote from https://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002ISGCE?tag=65536-21, "This is the hell you have created for yourself", which appears in the closing scenes of the film when the detective learns that he is in hell.

6. Velvet Acid Christ (1 track)

Track: We Have To See We Have To Know,
On album: "Church Of Acid" (European Edition) (1996), track 5

Samples: The senior surgeon of the psychiatric hospital and lecturer says: "To tread the unexplored corridors in the hope of finding, ultimately, a final solution" and "We have to see, we have to know". From the speech 9 mins into Hellraiser 2: Hellbound.

Velvet Acid Christ are a very sombre alternative electronic "dance" band, whose peaceful slow techno music is suited for private, reflective listening, as background music, and only sometimes actually on the dancefloor. There is an underlying theme of drugs, insanity, darkness and sobriety combined with an anti-drugs message. Samples are used frequently, repeated in the background, melded in seamlessly to the general consistent flow of the music. Slowly changing loops and slow-paced tunes cover the soft percussion, leaving an overall Human, laid-back and mystical feel to the music.

The sample "we have to see, we have to know" is repeated slowly and frequently, occasionally with the full sample too, perfectly placed, unobtrusively yet forming part of the emotional whole of the music. Despite the nihilistic content, Velvet Acid Christ is inoffensive, quiet and acquiescent.

Track: Exquisite Stench,
On album: "Calling ov the Dead" (1998), track 8

Samples: Track opens with "I can smell the exquisite stench of what you really are" (repeated a few times from 3:31). There are frequent repeated Hellraiser samples throughout the track, some of which I can't quite identify.

The track is a continuous, rolling, quite un-melodic landscape of digital layers of sound, with some distorted lyrics, sometimes in the background, sometimes in the mid-ground. There isn't much of a foreground to the track, so you can listen to it quite a lot of times and pick out different aspects depending on what you let yourself listen to.