We needed a playlist at our heavy metal wedding that matched exactly who we are. We never sacrificed our style to please our guest. Playing music that is not us would have resulted in questions like “Are you sick?” and “Did you get hit over the head and become someone else?”
When I shared my wedding story, I got a question from one reader who asked “Is there a heavy metal love song? What type of metal did you play that the guests could tolerate all night?” The answer is, well, EVERY TYPE! You have to play all types of metal for those non-metal heads and the pros.
We also used our laptop and rented the PA equipment because we could not get a DJ that would cooperate with what we wanted to be played.
Here is a list of the main heavy metal love songs we used at our wedding:
- Wedding Party Entrance: Opeth's “Heir Apparent” (hear it)
- Bride's Entrance: Mono's “Follow the Map” played by the groom on guitar! (hear it)
- Recessional: Theme from “Hellraiser” (hear it)
- Bride and Groom First Dance: In Flames' “Come Clarity” (hear it)
- Father/Daughter dance with my stepfather: Deftones' “Risk” (hear it)
- Bouquet Toss: Drowning Pool's “Bodies” (hear it) Get it? Because the ladies will hit the floor for the bouquet!
- Cake cutting: Alice Cooper's “Feed My Frankenstein” (hear it)
Head Banging Competition
We had our guests compete in a head banging contest to win the centerpiece. We played “pass the skulls around the table” until the music stops and whoever had the skulls in their hands had to come to the dance floor. We let that person choose someone to compete against. At this time we did not tell them until they got onto the dance floor that they would be head banging. Andrew and I chose which side of the dance floor won the competition. The song we used for this was Strapping Young Lad's “Love.” (hear it)
Now, you might be wondering: is there a heavy metal love song?
Well, there are several on our metal wedding playlist…
Here is a sample of the playlist that we played for the rest of the night. We did play grunge, alt-rock, and just some danceable rock before 9pm and after that, it was a face-melting metal fest for the rest of the night.
- Alice In Chains' “Would?” (hear it)
- American Head Charge's “All Wrapped Up” (hear it)
- Apocalyptica's “SOS (anything but Love)” (hear it)
- Billy Idol's “Rebel Yell” (hear it)
- Bjork, “Army of Me” (hear it)
- Bloodhound Gang's “Foxtrot Unicorn Charlie Kilo” (hear it)
- Bring Me the Horizon's “Pray For Plagues” (hear it)
- Gojira's “Yama's Messengers” (hear it)
- Dimmu Borgir's “The Serpentine Offering” (hear it)
- CKY's “Close Yet Far” (hear it)
- Coal Chamber's “Tragedy” (hear it)
- Cradle of Filth's “Nymphetamine” (hear it)
- David Bowie's “Rebel Rebel” (hear it)
- Deftones' “My Summer (Shove It)” (hear it)
- Devildriver's “Pray for Villains” (hear it)
- Dommin's “My Heart Your Hands” (hear it)
- Dream Theatre's “The Root of all Evil” (hear it)
- Enslaved's “The Watcher” (hear it)
- Faith No More's “Midlife Crisis” (hear it)
- Fear Factory's “Act of God” (hear it)
- Five Finger Death Punch's “Hard To See” (hear it)
- Foo Fighters' “The Pretender” (hear it)
- Ghost Brigade's “Away and Here” (hear it)
- GWAR's “Gathering of Ghouls/Storm Is Coming” (my personal favorite) (hear it)
- H.I.M's “Heartkiller” (hear it)
- H.I.M's “Wicked Game” (hear it)
- In Flames' “Touch of Red” (hear it)
- Incubus' “Anna Molly” (hear it)
- Interpols “The Heinrich Manuver” (hear it)
- Iron Maiden's “Run to the Hills” (hear it)
- Judas Priest's “Painkiller” (hear it)
- Katatonia's “Ashen” (hear it)
- Killswitch Engage's “The Element of One” (hear it)
- Kittie's “Brackish” (hear it)
- Korn's “Twisted Transistor” (hear it)
- Lacuna Coil's “Enjoy the Silence” (hear it)
- Led Zeppelin's “Immigrant Song” (hear it)
- Machine Head's “Now I Lay Thee Down” (hear it)
- Marilyn Manson's “MObscene” (hear it)
- Massive Attack's “Paradise Circus” (hear it)
- Megadeth's “Hangar 18” (hear it)
- Meshuggah's “Rational Gaze” (hear it)
- Metallica's “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (hear it)
- Metallica's “Nothing Else Matters” (hear it)
- Ministry's “Everyday Is Halloween” (hear it)
- Mnemic's “Door 2.12” (hear it)
- Motley Crue's “Kick Start My Heart” (hear it)
- Mindless Self Indulgence's “Straight to Video” (hear it)
- Mudvayne's “Happy?” (hear it)
- Nightwish's “Bye Bye Beautiful” (hear it)
- Nine Inch Nail's “Head Like A Hole” (hear it)
- Pantera's “Walk” (hear it)
- Pantera's “Revolution is My Name” (hear it)
- A Perfect Circle's “Judith” (hear it)
- Queens of the Stone Age's “Sick Sick Sick” (hear it)
- Rage Against The Machine's “Down Rodeo” (hear it)
- Rammstein's “Du Hast” (hear it)
- Raunchy's “Somebody's Watching Me” (hear it)
- Raunchy's “The Yeah Thing” (hear it)
- Ratt's “Round and Round” (hear it)
- Rob Zombie's “Demonoid Phenomenon” (hear it)
- Rob Zombie's “Dragula” (hear it)
- Sisters Of Mercy's “This Corrosion” (hear it)
- Slipknot's “Vendetta” (hear it)
- Soundgarden's “Jesus Christ Pose” (hear it)
- Static-X's “Cold” (hear it)
- Stone Temple Pilot's “Tripping on a Hole in a Paper Heart” (hear it)
- Team Sleep's “Your Skull is Red” (hear it)
- Times of Grace's “The End of Eternity” (hear it)
- Type O Negative's “Love You to Death” (hear it)
- White Zombie's “More Human than Human” (hear it)
Awesome playlist! My fiance would approve! Our playlist is going to be different…Heavy Metal, country, and lord knows what else.
We are thinking of doing our first dance (if we do a dance) to “For Whom the Bell Tolls” off of Metallica’s S&M album.
Bwahaha! “Bodies” makes total sense! Also “Dragula” was a great choice because no one can ever tell me that they can’t dance to that.
I think you are my new idol. Love the playlist!
I promptly sent this to my best friend… and he is now in love with you and your husband =) Love Grandma on the dance floor! Congrats on your face-meltingly awesome wedding
You go, Grandma!
She was totally getting down to White Zombie here!!! My Grandma is a rockin’ lady and she is clearly where I get that from 🙂
haha my wedding playlist is similar! I’m going to walk down the isle to either cradle of filth or dimmu. 😀
NIGHTWISH, yeah! 😀 I have hope that people will still dance to my Metal. Though I’m gonna go full-out Power metal. C’mon, Dragonforce is toootally danceable. Du Hast is also a must.
And that SOS song by Apocalyptica is beautiful, thank you for reminding me that it exists.
See, this makes me feel better about having “Possum Kingdom” on the wedding video… for some reason everyone keeps telling me it’s “inappropriate” for a wedding. Pppppshaw.
I love Possum kingdom too. That could so be a first dance song 😉
first dance to in flames? awesome. my song will be “metaphor” 😀
Thank you for all your kind words. One of the best parts was my 65 year old father in law headbanging to Meshuggah with us. Also when my husbands Tia’s and Tio’s who basically only dance to anything Spanish music related got up to slow dance to Ghost Brigade’s Away and Here… We have video footage of it because it was so sweet!!
That sounds like hands down THE coolest wedding ever. Considering uploading the video? I would love to see the dance to ghost brigade(BIG BIG fan of them)
This post gives me hope 🙂
AND you know what’s more awesome than grandma rockin’ out?
Grandma rockin’ out barefoot!
Fuck yes.
😀
Hey i was just wondering what the whole playlist consisted of since you said the list was only a sample.
ps. My friend who is a HUGE katatonia and ghost brigade fan seen them listed and his jaw dropped haha.
I wish our playlist looked a little more like this. Our music has been a source of great argument. My Mother (who hates EVERY band either of us like) insists that our family will not enjoy our wedding if we “play that sh1t!”
She’s already warning guests that they will hate our music. :\
Oh no! I’m lucky in the regard that my dad would be angry at us if we DIDN’T play the music we love! I’m sure there will be some people who may not know half of it, but I’m sure they’ll have fun in the end 🙂
Love the post! Thank you!!
I love the play list! As a big fan of both Metallica and Type O Negative, my fiancé and I are seriously considering having our first dance to TON’s ‘Love You To Death’.
This playlist rules! And your grandma is awesome.
Ours is similar with some random old country mixed in.
Love you to death is one of our choices we have it narrowed it down to for the first dance. It’s also what I’m having inscribed in his ring.
Thank you so much for posting this! It gives me a jumping pad for my playlist. Not quite so overwhelming anymore 🙂
That playlist is so brutally awesome! I would love to play some Pantera, Shadows Fall and Children of Bodom at my reception, but I am pretty sure my family would leave lol. I’m glad everyone enjoyed it.
Thank you so much for this…you gave me the courage to play more metal songs for my wedding! If it were up to my fiance….we’d play death metal the whole way through haha. I was struggling to find music everyone would like, but my ears were bleeding while trying to make playlists for the dance music.
I was able to expand my options to radio edited metal songs and such. My side of the family is Mormon (read as: heavy metal is not approved) although my dad raised me on classic metal. My fiance’s family is catholic on his mom’s side…and Evangelist on his dad’s. (neither of us are religious though)
You also gave me the idea to play instrumentals by heavy metal bands for the cocktail hour portion.
You rock!
Pun intended.