Ice Nine Kills are reworking “Carol Of The Bells” and “O Christmas Tree” for Art The Clown‘s “Terror Tram” at Halloween Horror Nights.
Ice Nine Kills are turning Christmas carols into something considerably less festive. Slash, on the same event, is writing Spanish guitar music for a quinceañera that goes badly wrong.
Universal Studios Hollywood completed its Halloween Horror Nights 2026 lineup at Midsummer Scream on August 9, where creative director John Murdy revealed that the park’s “Terror Tram” will be hosted by Art The Clown from the “Terrifier” films. The concept is billed as “Every Day Is Artmas!”, and Ice Nine Kills are supplying the music.
The premise: Art turns up on the Universal backlot carrying a bag of blood-soaked presents, works out that Christmas is still months away, and hijacks the tram to hold his own celebration anyway. Guests who make it off the backlot may run into him elsewhere in the park.
The band’s contributions include reworked versions of “Carol Of The Bells” and “O Christmas Tree” among other seasonal standards, rewritten as horror music.
Frontman Spencer Charnas framed it as an extension of a working relationship rather than a one-off booking.
“We are forever honored that ‘Terrifier‘ writer/director Damien Leone and his team invited us to play in their sandbox of bloodshed. Art himself, David Howard Thornton, killed it in the ‘A Work Of Art‘ music video, and we’ve had Damien and several of his cast members at our Silver Scream Cons every year so far. Halloween Horror Nights is among our favorite destinations each season, and our fans love it, too. This is yet another natural step forward in our unnatural world of horror,” he said.
Ice Nine Kills are not the only metal act on the 2026 bill. Slash composed an original score for the haunted house “KILLceañera: Music by Slash“, which follows a fifteen-year-old named Lola turning her quinceañera into a revenge killing spree. His work includes Spanish guitar and an exclusive song written for the house.
The rest of the lineup features the returning “Killer Klowns From Outer Space” house, an original house called “Dead, Deader, Deadest“, the “The Purge: Dangerous Waters” stunt show at Waterworld, and nightly appearances by Freaky Nikki from this summer’s “Obsession“, played in the film by Inde Navarrette. Universal is also running a daytime behind-the-scenes add-on tour for the first time.
The event opens on Thursday, September 3 and runs select nights until Sunday, November 1.
Ice Nine Kills first worked with Art on “A Work Of Art“, written for “Terrifier 3“. The video premiered alongside the film in cinemas, and the song entered Billboard‘s Hot Hard Rock Songs chart at number three and stayed on it for 18 weeks, with close to 60 million streams since.
That was the start of a run through most of modern horror’s major franchises. “Twisting The Knife“, featuring Mckenna Grace, closed “Scream 7” and became the band’s first number one on Mainstream Rock Airplay, also topping Hot Hard Rock Songs and Hard Rock Digital Song Sales with 35 million streams across platforms. “Hell Or High Slaughter (Grave Diggler Pt. 2)” appeared in “Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come“, and “Play Dead” was written for the tenth anniversary of “Dead By Daylight“, released alongside an in-game Ice Nine Kills collection.
The band’s “A Grave Mistake“, written about “The Crow“, has been certified gold by the RIAA.
Charnas formed Ice Nine Kills on the North Shore of Massachusetts, and 2026 marks 20 years since their first album. Their breakthrough came with The Silver Scream and The Silver Scream 2: Welcome To Horrorwood, and they have toured with Slipknot and been picked by Metallica for the “M72” world tour. They run the annual Silver Scream Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, and closed 2025 with a headline show at OVO Arena Wembley and the first Silver Scream Con in London.
Art The Clown started small. Damien Leone introduced the character as a minor figure in the 2008 short “The 9th Circle“, then promoted him to lead villain in the 2011 short “Terrifier“. “Terrifier 3” went on to become the highest-grossing unrated film ever released.
