WARBEAST - KRUSH THE ENEMY

Warbeast are signed to Phil Anselmo's Housecore Records. They are a Texas thrash band featuring ex-members of Rigor Mortis and Gammacide. These guys are veterans of the underground scene, and it shows on Krush the Enemy, an intense agglomeration of tightly wound tunes that recall the flesh-stripping speed of Slayer and the monstrous groove of Pantera. This will sound audacious, but in my eyes, this record will be heralded as a classic in ten years. It's that good. Is it original? Not terribly, but when music is this satisfying, it doesn't need to be unique of experimental.

Are you a fan of Sadus? Demolition Hammer? What about Exhorder? If so, you'll have a field day with Krush the Enemy. There is nothing modern about it thanks, in part, to Phil Anselmo's organic production. You won't find any triggered drums or cut-and-paste leads here. I doubt very strongly that they even used a computer to track anything. Editing? What's that? The songs themselves teeter between "old school" sensibilities and "new school" sensibilities. Thick riffs are draped over a variety of tempos. Warbeast avoids that feeling of sameness you hear on most thrash albums. Every time that I've popped this disc in, I've listened to it straight through without skipping over the filler (because there is no filler).

In all honesty, this band sounds more like Slayer than anyone else. Imagine if Kerry King had an imagination and played decent solos. That's essentially Warbeast in a nutshell. If you're a true metalhead, buy this sucker pronto!

Geek Out #1

Have you ever seen something that is so cool, so awesome, so badass, so fucking gnarly, that you geek out to the extreme and you realize why you're single? And alone? And blogging? And running out of reasons to wake up in the morning? Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. This column will highlight things that transcend primitive adjectives like "cool" and "awesome." There isn't a word to describe these things. I have to warn you, though. As the name of this column suggests, viewing the video below may cause violent geek-outs. Make sure you are alone. Lock the door. Handcuff yourself to your chair just to be on the safe side. It's time to GEEK OUT! That's a sort of tagline I came up with. I guess it's not too bad. I don't know.

Never Sleep Again

If you're like me, you know almost everything there is to know about the Elm Street franchise. Freddy is my favorite villain of all time. He gave me countless nightmares as a child, and ever since I became a rabid horror junkie, I made it my mission in life to read as much as I could about the crispy one. Interviews, Fangoria articles, wikipedia entries...I absorbed enough knowledge to make an Elm Street documentary. Y'know, like this one. That's why Never Sleep Again felt a little pointless to me. Every serious horror fan knows most of this stuff. No, not all of it, but at least 75% of it.

In this instance, 75% accounts for three hours of material. On the upside, people can point to Never Sleep Again as being the definitive Elm Street documentary. It certainly uses all four hours to cram as much stuff into your head as possible. I'm not saying that it's poorly made. Hell, it's awesome. I just had a hard time staying plugged in after the halfway point. I did appreciate how they handled some of the goofier sequels like Freddy's Revenge and Freddy's Dead (both of which are underrated, in my opinion). Addressing the former's homoerotic overtones was a wise move, as the topic lightened up the proceedings. Man, Mark Patton looks like a completely different person, as does the "hall monitor" girl.

The tidbits of minutiae that I was not privy to were quite interesting. I love how the teenage cast members of Dream Warriors went to Robert Englund for advice on how to woo Patricia Arquette. I would have done the same thing. What you get out of Never Sleep Again will depend on whether or not you're a willing participant. Personally, I wasn't willing to sit through four hours of anecdotes that I was already familiar with, and technically, I didn't. I fell asleep towards the end. No rating because I don't feel objective about this one.

Random Reviews: Phase II

From the moment I created this blog to the time of my surgery, Random Reviews popped and crackled like strips of bacon resting on the surface of the sun. Since then, everything has died down. The recovery process has been unbearable at times. It now seems that the surgery itself was ineffective. It was a complete waste of time. Over the past few months, I feel like I've let down my readers. I am now faced with the challenge of building this blog back up. It will be a little different than it was before. I may even change the name to accommodate some of the new ideas I have. I won't be able to update it every single day. In retrospect, I'm not sure how I was able to update it so much before.

Anyway, my first new review since the surgery will be posted tomorrow. I said this on the last update, but it bears repeating...I've slacked off long enough!

An Announcement Announcement

A big announcement will be made soon. I have slacked off long enough. Stay tuned!