Head Crushing

I tried to find a cartoonish image of a head being crushed, but since I'm dealing with the Internet, all I could find was actual gore.  Ordinarily, I'd post it anyway, but no one needs to see that shit.  I was googling "head crushing" because I've felt like drainage pipe putrescence since I woke up.  Ugh.  I'm gonna lay low for a couple of days.  Robert Z'Dar says, "Motherfucker, don't quote me if you aren't reviewing anything."

Torn like an old dollar bill...

I'll be promoting my YouTube content soon.  I'll be doing a few different things soon, but first, I wanted to say a couple of words about the passing of Mark Lanegan.  Staley and Cornell are usually seen as the best voices to come out of the Seattle rock barrage, but when it came to baritones, no one touched Lanegan.  He was a tortured soul who sounded like a tortured soul.

Whether it's through one of his pensive solo records or a Screaming Trees classic, let Mark serenade you today.  Requiescat in pace.

Blood Capsule #121

THE X FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE (2008)

I'm all caught up.  Save for a rotten episode here and there, I've seen all of The X-Files that I can see, with or without a hyphen.  I Want to Believe arrived six years after the TV series was perorated into nullity, which makes the storyline seem awfully random.  Was anyone picketing for a second x-film?  If so, wouldn't it have made sense to resolve overarching narratives uprooted from eleven seasons of fertile soil?  Because writer/director Chris Carter decided to take the fuzzy, less obvious route.  The script reconvenes Spooky and Red to find missing persons...with missing body parts.

Billy Connolly plays a priest with sibylline precognition.  He uses his crystal-gazing senses to pinpoint victims of a Dr. Frankenstein-esque lunatic, but can his benevolence be trusted?  Oh, did I forget to mention that he sexually assaulted thirty-seven altar boys?  Overall, Believe has the makings of a sprawling chapter of The X-Files, perhaps an ambitious two-parter.  And it's pretty damn good, although I prefer its 1998 forebear by a nubbin.  The second half trails off.  I did appreciate the warm, yielding moments between Mulder and Scully.  There is just enough action to cob this sharecropper (???).  Robert Z'Dar says, "I don't know if I believe in flying saucers, but damn it, I believe in love.  I want to believe in Mulder and Scully!"

Panels From Beyond the Grave #35

I don't know which device you are using to peruse my site, but I can promise that regardless of its modernity, it doesn't capture the sacerdotal beauty of...this, this graceful thing.  It does have a name.  This is the fourteenth issue of The Witching Hour, a DC title.  I have become something of a sweaty, blanched addict as it relates to horror anthology comic books, specifically books from way back when.  They speak directly to the socially inept monster kid in me.  When I saw the cover of this dazzler, I pounced on the "Buy It Now" option.  Can you blame me???  The menacing witches, the broomsticks, the decrepit house, the very concept of witches flying around in outer fucking space...fiffleby shit-dang, it seemed too gonzo to be real.

My expectations were aerial.  I should have adjusted my prognosis, but again, witches in space.  How could it go south?  Well, I still don't know, but this cackling cartoon strip is nowhere near as marvelous as it should be.  It's undone by anemic storytelling.  Three stories are relayed to us by three witches.  Why are these oracles of the occult hanging out in the cosmos?  Boredom, I have inferred.  The first story - if you can categorize it as such without chuckling - is pitiably short.  An official synopsis tells us that "a space battle has left Elliot Scott's ship badly crippled."  Yeah.  That's what happens.  I recall laser guns sounding their authoritative whizzes and blangs (oh, those are definitely words; trust me).  Next!

Dave Kaler is credited as writer on the second yarn.  I'll give him this much; as a story, it displays knowledge of progress.  There is a discernible sequence to these events, but they are scarcely horror by design.  Sci-fi is a stretch.  An astronaut meets a Martian vixen at a space speakeasy.  He is absolutely smitten, so enamored that he doesn't realize he is being bewitched.  Okey-dokey, but the meridian is tragically anticlimactic.  Our witch bitch doesn't kill him.  No, the dumbass gets into a fistfight with his astro-partner, and after tumbling into important doodads, finds himself being sucked into the vast nothingness of space.

The vixen was an alien, so I guess it was science fiction by cosmetic proxy.  Scared yet?  I was holding out hope for the main event, the cover story.  A haunted house!  In space!  The third time is a charm, but even here, a successful at-bat is a ground rule double where it needed to be a home run.  Our astronauts are criminals scouting for a hideout (in space...yes, it's that silly).  They are murdered one by one, their souls conjoining with the room of their fears.  That might sound like something, but it doesn't really make sense.  The artwork is a little off, as scale and proportion garble the reader's view.  We are never presented with a clean look at the witch.  That's right; this story's villain is a witch.  I don't know.

It's kinda-sorta cool.  Now that I think about it, the whole of the fourteenth issue of The Witching Hour is kinda-sorta cool.  Bah.  Man, this should have been a drop-dead stunner.  With that zany cover?  Fuck.  It hurts to award a mediocre rating, but I must publish the truth.  This column is protected by the U.S. Constitution!  Freedom of the press!  Sir, your constituents deserve to know--sir?  Sir?  Why am I still typing?

   

The X Files

A couple of years ago, I binged all 218 episodes of The X-Files.  Well, that's only partially true.  I binged all of the "monster of the week" episodes and skipped out on the tracts of sci-fi melodrama culled from the show's mythological story arc.  No offense, Mulder.  I do want you to find your sister, but in the meantime, I'd much rather watch The Flukeman dragoon New Jersey's sewer system.  Today, I consider The X-Files to be one of my favorite television programs (programs...lol).  You'd think that I would have an opinion on the two times that everyone's favorite paranormal investigators went from the small screen to the silver screen.  You'd think.  Somehow, both films eluded yours truly.

I am halfway to rectifying this egregious offense.  Last night, I took in 1998's The X Files.  Note the absence of a hyphen in the title.  It bugs me.  Apparently, writer (and showrunner) Chris Carter was bugged and crunched by the studio to reticulate his movie around the storylines of the upcoming slate of X-tracurricular serials.  His initial idea was to end the TV show at five seasons.  Any further Mulder/Scully action (hey now) would play out in a feature-length format.  But nope!  The X-Files was too damn profitable to prematurely rescind.  This flick would have to act as a bridge between seasons.  Of course, it would also have to stand on its own merits.  A tall order; did it succeed?

X-tracurricular serials...the fuck?  Man, it's a good thing that I'm unbelievably sexy.  I can't write worth a shit.  The "X Files" division has been closed.  Mulder and Scully are assigned to a bourgeois, button-down bomb threat (yawn), but the ticker is a bit of a MacGuffin.  The kaboom points us in the direction of a potentially lethal virus.  Who is behind the virus?  Say it with me now ~ aliens!  The X Files is one of the most suspenseful films I've seen in recent years.  Plaudits are in order, as this shouldn't be such a tense watch.  I know how the characters wind up.  Hell, I know that they fuck in approximately twenty years, but that didn't stop me from bolting my hands to the edge of my seat.  Metaphorically.

The script is ingenious in the way it toys with viewer empathy.  It's a rollercoaster, if you'll pardon the putrid platitude.  There is a concourse of plot threads, but at its core, The X Files is fairly simple if you have a base understanding of the series.  It helps if you're familiar with Mulder and Scully.  David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are note-perfect.  By this point, they were more than comfortable in their roles, wearing them like plum, cushy pairs of shoes.  If this picture were to be found lacking or went on the blink, it wouldn't be their fault.

It would be too easy to give The X Files a bag of Z'Dars and call it a day.  I may be a fanboy, but I try to see everything behind eyes of purposeful elucidation.  A couple of scenes reek of Hollywood.  Mulder trucking through Antarctica to save a pickled, infected Scully (in a jar, no less)?  Was Carter on speed when he wrote that crockery?  The X-Files was always at its best when it was localized to modest destinations.  A traveling carnival with a Siamese twin up its sleeve, a small town harboring a cryptid, a school providing refuge for a ritualistic cult...that's the stuff.  Still, Fight the Future, as its mistakenly subtitled, is a banner blowout.  Will I ever stream the 2008 follow-up?  Sure.  In fact, I'm positive.

   

Album Cover of the Whatever

Brazilian extreme thrashers Vulcano are set to release Stone Orange in April.  That's a wicked cover, and you are set to...um, look at it.  Are my eyes deceiving me or does the two-faced winged demon have a shock of black hair?  Cool!  And entirely metal!

NOUN: Harsh or bitter derision or irony.

I'll probably write a new edition of Rassle Inn in the next week or so, but for now, here's an excerpt from Raw.  It's a stirring example of top-notch sports entertainment.  As you may know, Alexa Bliss has been seeing a shrink to alleviate her Fiend/Lilly issues.  Watch and learn, marks.  THIS is how it's done.

Dead Review Collection #13 - TORTURE!

As much as album rankings vary from one fan to the next, most Corpslings (taking that descriptor out for a stroll...we'll see if it sticks) agree that Torture is a tidemark in the discography.  It's not terribly divisive.  Chances are, if you don't care for Torture, you don't care for Cannibal Corpse.  Well, let me rephrase that; if Torture isn't your body bag, you probably don't have a taste for the second half of CC's indissoluble career.  This record bears all of the finery of the Corpsegrinder era.  If you've read any of these reviews, you know that I am an expounder of said era.  George Fisher rules!  Chris Barnes drools!

Just kidding, dear reader.  I respect Barnes's work on the first four CC releases.  It's just so hard not to rip on the guy, what with recent social media effluvium.  But that's neither here nor way over there.  Let's talk Torture.  To be honest, I don't have much to say beyond rudimentary praise.  For production duties, the band stuck with Erik Rutan.  Going back to his well was still paying remittance, so it made sense to strike the ferrous clinker while...wait, what?  My words are eating my brain.  Again.  Songs sound full.  There is nothing missing from the rumpus, yet the instruments are clearly separated.

Torture is my second favorite CC supercharger.  After the disillusionment brought on by Evisceration Plague, I was gobsmacked by convective loops of death metal that knocked me on my ass.  I didn't see this one coming.  In the run-up to an album's unveiling, band members typically spout the same flushed guff (read: bullshit) about their work.  I'm not casting blame.  Of course they feel a flatulent sense of satisfaction; I would, too!  But I've learned to take these comments with an entire shaker of salt, whether it's Cannibal Corpse or Cannabis Corpse.  How was I to know that Alex Webster was telling the truth when he said that Torture "facefucked your sister?"  Okay, that's not an actual quote, but my sister swears to this day that...okay, I don't have a sister.

"Demented Aggression" and "Sarcophagic Frenzy" are bitchin' tunes that start Torture out on the right severed foot.  They deserve their place in the sun, but for me, the album proper doesn't slam until "Scourge of Iron."  It begins as an admittedly generic double-bass incursion.  Then the percussion ceases, leaving only a plodding rhythm guitar.  The riff is joined by Paul.  His drums come back in to march in brutal solidarity with his fellow troops (the strings, not the pickers).  Y'know, I've used the term "heavy" to communicate the avoirdupois of a trillion compositions.  Motherfucker, "Scourge of Iron" is heavier than most of the music you have heard.  In your life.  It's really, really, really heavy.

I've hopped into another paragraph, so I guess I should progress to the next topic.  "As Deep as the Knife Will Go" is more than a great title; it's a sick mid-paced head-bobber.  The chorus is too cool.  It's almost as if George was born to deliver those vocal patterns.  They feel natural.  By the same token, Pat and Rob were seemingly conceived to shred, pitching solos over the middle of the plate.  Strrrrrrrike!  It's uncanny.  These dudes perspire death metal.  When they squat on a toilet, what happens?  Death metal.  For all I know, the knotty "Intestinal Crank" was recorded in a bathroom.

Now that I've referenced baseball and bowel movements, I'd say it's a good time to wrap it up.  Torture is excellent.  Period.  That's all I really needed to type.  This review is moot, much like my sister.

    

Why the long box?

Want a sudden shot of nostalgia?  I didn't hear your answer, so I'll just proceed as planned.  Remember CD longboxes?  They disappeared in the early-to-mid 90's, but if you're old enough, you remember them well.  They were defined as "exterior paperboard packaging."  Essentially, the casing extended vertically to a length of twelve inches, the same dimensions as a standard 33⅓ vinyl record.

Longboxes never attracted the mooning, romantic wistfulness that VHS evoked in millions.  Vinyl has seen a resurgence.  Most underground bands still release their music on cassette tape.  The lonely longbox?  Eh, no one gives a shit.  Or so I thought.  The new Immolation album -- Acts of God -- will see release in various formats, including the longbox!  I don't know of any other "modern" band who has released albums on longbox CD, but I haven't exactly kept watch for such an occurrence.  Why Nuclear Blast is making this call (assuming it was a label decision) is anyone's best guess.  Am I alone in thinking that it's kind of cool?

I pre-ordered my copy.  It was $25, but I didn't mind paying a few extra duckets for a sweet novelty item.  Hey, you never know.  An Acts of God longbox might fetch a pretty penny in a decade.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write about...metal.

Blood Capsule #120

UNINVITED (1987)

I have been longing to see this z-movie for gangling eons.  Now that I've seen it, I am faced with a brusque question - why did I want to see it?  I would say that Uninvited has a ringing, flagrant reputation, but it's not celebrated enough for all that.  It's obscure for a reason, I'm afraid.  The "plot" follows a patch of young tourists as they board a resplendent yacht.  One of the ditzy dames (apparently, I've just quantum-leaped back into the 30's) grabs a stray cat and carries it with her luggage.  Unbeknownst to her, the pussy has defected from a laboratory.  Unbeknownst to the viewer (and possibly writer/director Greydon Clark), there is a mutant kitty inside of the stray.

How did it get there?  Why has it mutated?  Good questions, both.  I wish that I had answers, but I only watched the film.  I cannot claim to have oracular, supersensory abilities.  The lack of a story gives Uninvited plenty of room for gore and nudity.  Tragically, neither element is proffered.  Vague blood stains are supposed to substitute for actual carnage, though George Kennedy's ankle laceration did look pretty painful.  I tried to hate this daffy sloop, but the acting is serviceable and the pace is mercifully nimble.  So Uninvited isn't disastrous.  Worse!  It's mediocre.