In a particularly lore-heavy drop, Ice Nine Kills has shared “Hell or High Slaughter (Grave Diggler: Pt. 2)” for the new horror movie “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.” The song and music video are available exclusively via YouTube; watch the video below.
The story behind the song is a lot even by Ice Nine Kills’ standards: Featuring the fathers of the members of INK, Grave Diggler made it big it the 1980s glam metal scene before fading from the spotlight in the ’90s. But 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.”
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 unimpressed. “You call my son shrieking into a microphone like a meshuggah mental patient ‘singing’?” he said. “That’s not heavy metal. I’m heavy metal.”
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.
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 it was 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 antagonized 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.”
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