The plot beats for this year’s upcoming Stranger Things season five have yet to be revealed, but one thing’s for sure: metal-loving actor Jamie Campbell Bower (a.k.a. series big bad Vecna and vocalist for UK post-hardcore band BloodMagic) once again kept his playlist pretty hardcore throughout the shoot.
A few years back, Bower had revealed he’d been pumping anything from Darkthrone, Mayhem and Sunn 0))) into his headphones between takes, to get into the villainous spirit of his Upside Down character. In a new interview with Rock Sound, however, Bower explained that for this season, he ended up slapping headphones over his prosthetics and makeup to throwdown to the juggernaut that was Knocked Loose’s You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To. Like many of us, he was “super fucking stoked for it.”
“We had some amazing PAs this year on the show and I would have Knocked Loose playing on my headphones, because the thing is with Vecna and the costume and make up, I can’t put earbuds in. The only thing that will work is my ginormous over-ear headphones,” he explained.
“So, I will walk onto the set wearing headphones, listening to this music, and I will hand over my headphones, obviously, because I can’t have them in the shot…I don’t pause the music because my fucking fingers are fucked and I’ve got all this fucking makeup on. But I remember one of the PAs looking at my fucking headphones and being like ‘I couldn’t stop the music. It was so fucking loud, I had to walk off set’.”
In addition to Knocked Loose, Bower noted that he’d been listening to a lot of Counterparts and Architects on set, and has likewise followed both sides of the Every Time I Die split by streaming both Better Lovers and Many Eyes. Other faves on his season five playlist included Sunn O))), Norma Jean, Chelsea Wolfe and “folk and black metal stuff” he uses to channel the “spirituality” of his character.
A streaming release date has yet to be confirmed for the next season of Stranger Things, but it’s expected to pop up on Netflix in late 2025.
As for Bower’s BloodMagic project, the band released debut single “Death/Rebirth” all the way back in April of last year, but have not yet followed up that track with another release. At the time, however, they noted that “Death/Rebirth” was “the beginning of the journey.”