Spencer Charnas was born on November 14, 1985. The Ice Nine Kills vocalist and songwriter brought his love of horror into the band’s music, building songs around film and literary characters. He co-wrote and sang “The American Nightmare,” the Freddy Krueger-inspired opening track on The Silver Scream.
Long before those films became songwriting material, their packaging caught his imagination. In a 2023 interview with Kerrang!, Charnas remembered exploring the horror section of the video shop inside the supermarket where his mother shopped. The VHS artwork drew him toward films he hadn’t seen. Once he persuaded his parents to rent Halloween, he wanted a Michael Myers mask, sending him and his mother searching comic and costume shops. Watching the films and dressing as their characters became parts of the same fascination.
Music offered another way to join in. His older sister introduced him to Nirvana, and he began asking his parents for a guitar. Seeing a school band perform made him want to play the school’s talent show himself. When he started Ice Nine Kills in high school, however, the band leaned toward punk and ska. Charnas told Rue Morgue in 2023 that horror references appeared even in those early recordings; as his listening moved toward heavier music, the band followed. He also wanted to bring in musical theater, another interest he’d developed through seeing stage productions as a child.
That storytelling impulse became an album concept with Every Trick in the Book, released in 2015. Its songs drew on literature, including Dracula, Animal Farm and Romeo and Juliet. Charnas and the band then moved from books to films for The Silver Scream in 2018, assigning each song a different movie. “Thank God It’s Friday,” for example, centered on Jason Voorhees. The format let the band move between different characters and settings while keeping the record connected by its horror theme.
Charnas took that connection into the recording process, too. Some of his vocals for The Silver Scream were recorded at houses used in the original Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street. The locations that had helped make those films frightening became places where he could work on his own interpretations.
Writing from fiction also changed what he wanted from the process. In a 2021 interview with The Spill Magazine, Charnas explained that themed albums let him revisit material he loved without drawing on painful personal experiences. Rewatching served a practical purpose: getting details right for the lyrics and visuals. The appeal was being able to “put my own stamp on these films,” he said. Film scores offered musical starting points as well; he cited the nod to Halloween in “Stabbing in the Dark.” He also credited the themed records with helping make the band a sustainable career.
The Silver Scream 2: Welcome to Horrorwood followed in 2021, with Charnas finding different approaches for its individual films. On “A Rash Decision,” inspired by Cabin Fever, he wanted to capture the film’s frantic shifts in mood. For “Wurst Vacation,” he wanted a European flavor. That idea extended to the voices on the recording: the band brought in a German voice actor.
