Catch Goblin at the UC Theatre

Catch Goblin at the UC Theatre

MIKE ROSEN-MOLINA

The eerie Italian prog rockers are back.

Get ready to have your spine tingled. Goblin, the Italian progressive band that gave 1970s Italian giallo horror films their distinctive brain-overloading soundtracks, is rising from the grave to perform at the UC Theatre.

The band originally recorded as Oliver (and later Cherry Five), but its strange, sinister sound attracted the attention of horror maestro Dario Argento and the band was rechristened “Goblin” when it created the jarring, cacophonous score for Argento’s classic supernatural suspense films Suspiria and Profondo Rosso.

In Suspiria, Goblin’s sinister synths and eerie vocals—consisting of just a single word whispered over and over—made the tale of an American ballet student uncovering the secret behind a mysterious German dance academy into a pulse-pounding odyssey of terror. In Profundo Rosso, Goblin’s score turned the story of a jazz musician drawn into a police murder investigation from a by-the-book police procedural into a spiraling maelstrom of madness.

Goblin continued its creeptastic legacy by performing the soundtrack for the European release of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Goblin disbanded in 2009, but original band members Maurizio Guarini, Massimo Morante, and Claudio Simonetti regrouped the following year, together with Bruno Previtali and Titta Tani from Simonetti’s band Daemonia, to form New Goblin. The resurrected Goblin performs at the UC Theatre. Beware! Nov. 3, 9 p.m., $32, UC Theatre, 2036 University Ave., Berkeley, TheUCTheatre.org.