Blood Capsule #124

DESPERATE LIVING (1977)

I'm on something of a John Waters kick.  Heh, I feel like I've just admitted to struggling with drug addiction.  Most of his movies have subverted my DVD player, but strangely enough, Desperate Living has escaped my meddling eyes.  I came across a review that described this scrappy, prototypical piece of cinematic sludge as transitional.  That's about right.  Living sits in between Waters' early works of experimental "art trash" and his (slightly) more conventional fare.  It's also missing a key component that would come to exemplify a John Waters joint - Divine!  So how did I rate the film?  Was I able to cozy up to scenes of incommodious sex, do-it-yourself abortion, rape, and more rape?

The dialogue is customarily hysterical ("I'd like to stick my whole head in your mouth and let you suck out my eyeballs!"), and thankfully, it tends to make up for Living's grim tone.  But that's the thing; the atmosphere is almost too oppressive for a Waters joyride.  I didn't have fun with it.  Pink Flamingoes is just as warped and intractable, but all of its filth is accented with an off-center smile.  Don't get me wrong (or right, God forbid); I don't despise Desperate Living.  I just don't see many replays in the foreseeable future.  Oopsy-daisy...I forgot the synopsis.  That was intentional.  C'mon, make my life a little easier and consult any other review for a plot summary.  I'm a busy man, clearly.

  

Dead Review Collection #16 - VIOLENCE!

Well, that took long enough.  When you last visited your intrepid hero (that's me, asshole), he...er, I had just polished off Red Before Black.  It was a record that left me ambivalent.  While it proved that George and the gang still had combustible substances left in the tank, the actual songs showed a frustrating lack of forward momentum.  I didn't sense any real progression.  Was it possible that Cannibal Corpse had finally run out of impulses for new ideas?  Nope!  Okay, I suppose it was possible that they had exhausted their supply of meaty, distasteful riffs, but if Violence Unimagined proves anything, it's that Cannibal Corpse are neither cannibals nor corpses.

Story goes, longtime multi-tasker Erik Rutan joined CC's ranks on guitar in place of Pat O'Brien.  I'm not going to dredge up the palaver on Pat's personal life, but it was clear that he wouldn't be able to fulfill his duties, at least as it relates to the studio.  Rutan answered the distress signal (I imagine that it's similar to the bat-signal) and leapt into action.  I admit, I wasn't expecting him to be such a natural fit.  He did more than fit; he injected calcium into the hoary bones of an inveterate beast.  Granted, that's a terrible metaphor, but it holds water.  CC sounds younger on Violence.  A Benjamin Button joke wouldn't be out of place.  Should I?  Nah, I still have my dignity.

This necrotic flamethrower kicks into gear with "Murderous Rampage."  Normally, it's a harbinger of doom when the first cut is my favorite, but that's not an issue here.  Fuck, these riffs impale the listener.  Paul's work on the toms are key, as are the rhythm shifts that add intermittent bouts of density.  "Inhumane Harvest" was released as a single, and when it breached my ear canal, a couple of things happened.  A) I shit myself, on account of the weighty breakdown.  B) And I was assured that these gentlemen meant business.  "Condemnation Contagion" extends the hitting steak.  It was penned by Erik the Blood Red, and you can tell.  His leads force melody into the proceedings in a non-invasive manner.  That note applies to every tune, by the way.

"Follow the Blood" is a lurching Spinosaurus that picks apart its prey with crossbow claws.  Crossbow claws?  Folks, I'm low on metaphors.  There are only so many words that describe the brutality on display.  And I haven't mentioned "Slowly Sawn" yet.  It's fucking heavy, man.  Understand?  The production is tight across all numbers.  Alex Webster's bottom end is never sacrificed for the sake of simple loudness.  Honestly, I can't point to many missteps.  I mean, I could argue that Violence Unimagined is frontloaded, but that's such a minor gaffe, it's hardly worth typing.

I leave you with a facile, unaffected plea: LISTEN TO CANNIBAL CORPSE.  Please?

    

Album Cover of the Whatever

Still in "soft reboot" mode.  I'm just posting whatever whenever.  Then again, that has always been my approach.  I must recuse myself, as I haven't actually listened to this particular album.  The band is Esogenesi; the (sub)genre is doom.  Chances are, I would dig it, but there are three zillion records I want to hear, and that's an underestimation.  All I know is that the cover art is phenomenal.

You can download MUSIC?

I feel old.  Every day, I feel older.  As I understand it, I'm actually aging as time progresses?  I don't buy it, but at the very least, I feel ancient.  My heart will always live in 1995.  For example, I just purchased an album on Bandcamp, bypassing the tangible.  It's an honest-to-Satan download!  Er, some of you may have beaten me to the punch by 20 years or more.  I don't know if I'm proud or not.

Look, I'll always prefer having the album in front of me, but due to a myriad of unforeseen circumcisio...stances, circumstances, it simply makes more sense to absorb my jams through digital osmosis.  So what was my inaugural acquisition?  Inexorum's Equinox Vigil, a serious contender for Album of the Year.

I've been on a rabid, spirited black metal kick as of late.  Specifically, melodic black metal.  Vigil is supreme meloblack.  It's also supremely polished, but the songwriting is there.  It's autumnal to the core, whereas 2020's Moonlit Navigation (my pick for 2020's top record) spoke to a more frigid climate.  It's rad.  The layered guitar harmonies are fucking medicinal in their ability to restore the soul to its default setting, that being one of calm and stillness.  Or something to that effect.

I'm a gentleman, so I'll LINK you directly to the source.

IL

In baseball, it used to be called a "disabled list."  To fend off woke millennials, it was renamed the "injured list."  By the way, coming from an actual disabled person, the addendum...eh, it wasn't necessary.  You can call it the "fucked list" for all I care.  I mention it because I'M INJURED!  To make a very long story mercifully short, I aspirated pneumonia in late April.  Almost died.  I was hospitalized for roughly seven weeks.  I wasn't discharged until this past Monday.

If I sound awfully pragmatic about it, it's only because I'm fuckin' over it.  I just want time to speed up, to put one foot in front of the other.  I will say (for the sake of human interest) that in the process of determining a diagnosis, I ended up with two brain operations, a tracheostomy, a random fractured leg (unrelated), and other cartoonish misadventures.

I was planning on shooting boring YouTube videos that would plot out the whole debacle and explain everything in excruciating detail, but again, I'm wanting to move on.  I don't need to relive something I describe as a "debacle."  Ideally, I'd pick up where I left off and post a movie review tomorrow.  That's not realistic, though.  I'm still finding a groove.  My life feels new and foreign right now.  I feel...weird?

There was a period of two days (roundabout estimation) where I was unconscious.  It's a void.  A gulf.  Anything I did, say, one year ago?  Feels like ten years ago.  The entire hospital stay is blurry, even the parts I vividly remember.  Told ya I feel weird.

So when will RR Inc. return to its normal programming?  I have no idea.  Maybe a week.  Maybe never.  I can tell you that I no longer feel like an authority on horror films.  Was I ever?  That's not the point.  My perception is skewed.  I am WAY out of the loop, at least as it relates to modern horror.  Meaning, if or when the site returns unadulterated, it will be weirder and more random than ever before.

PS-The most likely scenario is a "soft reboot."  I'll probably post easy, small things here and there.  And I'm done typing.

Album Cover(s) of the Whatever

Here's the deal.  I'm sitting on three supercalifragilisticexpialidocious album covers for the site, but I want to use them before I take a break.  Prepare yourself!  Gaudy, chromatic monsters were harmed during the making of this column.

Power metal!  Probably my favorite piece from today's selections.

Black metal!  Spooky trees rule.

Death metal!  I honestly didn't mean to play "subgenre hopscotch," but it worked out, didn't it?  DIDN'T IT?

Break Pending

Once in a blue moon, I'll become ensnared by the oncoming traffic of life and be forced to cancel this project or that project.  I don't like it, but it does happen.  For example, I was hoping to have a review of 1985's Girls School Screamers posted by, like, now.  Clearly, it didn't come to pass.  Do you want reasons or excuses?  I have both, but in all probability, you're not too concerned.  You might enjoy my little write-ups, but you don't see the occasional gaffe as the end of the world.  Neither do I, although I'm harder on myself than is necessary.  NOTE TO SELF: The world is absolutely ending.

It has gotten to the point where I schedule "offseasons" whenever I feel the stress of writing grip its constricting grip around my throat.  I feel a break coming on.  Just letting you know.  I won't actually take a break without letting you know beforehand, so cool your jets.  As for my targeted terminus, I want to finish my Cannibal Corpse discography review ahead of the sabbatical.  Hmm, what's the right word for it?  A respite of sorts, stationed betwixt a coffee break and a maternity leave...I mean, I'm not your mother, but I need my caffeine, you dig?

PS-Screamers is a sleepy slasher that doesn't make a lick of sense.  Apart from the stylish prologue, it's not worth ferreting out.

Album Cover of the Whatever

So what the fuck is Toxoplazmoziz?  I'm not sure how I came across it, but apparently, this is an experimental metal project of sorts.  No opinion on the music.  To be fair, I didn't give it much of a fighting chance.  The artwork is the star of the show.  Yowza!

C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud

C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud is critic-proof.  It's a sequel, yes, but you can't draw parallels to other sequels.  It doesn't act like any sequel I know, and I'm widening my net to accommodate in-name-only consecutions.  Something keeps getting in the way.  Tone!  1984's C.H.U.D. was a leaden, grim-faced horror film that seemed to look down on entertainment.  It was about as much fun as a lecture on the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary.  Seriously, all I remember is Daniel Stern stressing out over the sewer.  Nothing else.  Just 90 minutes of the cracker from Bushwhacked lobbying the Environmental Protection Agency and occasionally clobbering a cannibalistic humanoid underground fuckwad.

To Bud's credit, it dares to be different.  Well, different-ish.  It plants a comedic camber and assigns the creatures with fresh garb.  Well, fresh-ish.  These dwellers are a little more human.  They are inherently zombies, which makes sense when you realize that this project was originally Return of the Living Dead 2.  Bud is strikingly similar to the ROTLD2 that we did receive.  If I'm being honest, this is the lesser zom-com.  Before our relationship gets serious, you should know I'm not big on zom-coms.  The fact that I managed to finish Bud without execrating myself and bearing a grudge against God is a small victory ("it shouldn't bother me/but it does").

Gerrit Graham plays the titular goon, a chipper cadaver inadvertently stolen from campus grounds.  The, shall we say, precarious plot sees the three leads (Sensitive Nerd, Party Jock, and Babe Girl) try to maneuver around town and return Bud to his morgue slab.  Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  You don't need to see C.H.U.D. II to conclude that it doesn't contain enough storyline for a feature.  It's barely enough for an episode of Moesha, although I admit...I wouldn't mind seeing that episode of Moesha.  When you consider the advantages, ol' Bud works as a rainy day rental.  The pacing is pert.  I didn't get the chance to become bored.

Unfortunately, those are the most glowing accolades I can throw at C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud.  At the end of the day, this is a comedy, and I didn't laugh.  Maybe it would have panned out with exaggerated gore and childish levels of nudity, but I'm not even certain that this thing was slapped with an R rating.  Okay, I checked, and it was!  But it could have been PG-13.  Yawn.  Keep an eye peeled for Norman Fell (yep, Mr. Roper's in the fucking house) and a creepy Robert Englund cameo.  Robert Z'Dar says, "The pick-up truck on the poster?  That's me peering over the tailgate.  I'm banging your mom."

 

Geek Out #154

What was Sawbones?  It was a direct-to-video riff on my precious Dr. Giggles.  It wasn't particularly entertaining, nor was The Surgeon from that same year.  Medical horror needs to stage a comeback in the worst way.

Dead Review Collection #15 - RED!

    Dom looked at the front door with longing in his eyes.  A sadness.  A seismic sadness.

    "You know you can come with us, right?"  Scotty asked, mainly just to fill in the awkward silence.  He was Dom's roommate, and for days, he had tried to peel the disabled writer away from his laptop.  A night of debauchery would do the trick, wouldn't it?

    "I know, but you know that I won't.  I can't."

    Scotty interjected to no avail.  "You do realize that the review will be there when you--"

    "I'm so close now!  Once I finish Red Before Black, I'm practically home-free.  It's just giving me issues."

    "What issues?"

    "It's A Skeletal Domain all over again.  Well, almost."

    Scotty furrowed his brow.  "But the Skeletal review was well-received, was it not?  You were plastered on every journalism magazine cover.  Think of how many kids want to be music critics because of you."

    "If that's the case, it's because I am my own worst critic."

    Scotty reared back and punched a hole in the wall.  "Goddamn it!  Let yourself breathe!  Enjoy one night out!"

    "You don't think I want to?  Skeletal took forever to come together, and I'm seeing the same signs with Red.  I have nothing to say.  The music doesn't speak to me."

    "Didn't you say it was a step in the right direction?  That the band sounded more comfortable with Erik Rutan as producer?"

    "Yes, on both accounts.  That doesn't make the review easier to write.  The first two tracks are stunningly bland."

    Scotty punched another hole in the wall.  "Goddamn it!  That may be so, but you owe it to yourself to hang out with us tonight.  Sluts will be there!"
    Dom sighed a reflective sigh.  "I got into the writing game because of the sluts.  But I'm an elder statesman now.  And like you said, I'm a role model."

    Scotty peered out the window.  "Z-Dawg and Poonthomas are here.  Last chance."

    Dom didn't need to give it much thought.  "Go ahead.  This will be good for me in the long run.  You'll see."

    "I hope so, man.  Dom, just out of curiosity, will you rate Red any higher than Skeletal?"

    "I will.  It's a quivering mass of sameness with 20% more life in its muscles.  And I don't have it in me to deplore a ditty called 'Heads Shoveled Off.'"

    "The main riff on 'In the Midst of Ruin' is badass, too."
    "Hey, I thought I was writing this review."

    The pals laughed together as Scotty waved a goodnight wave.

    Dom was alone now.  If he had to, he would stare down the witching hour and win a blinking contest against time itself.  Red Before Black wasn't a great record.  His readership would just have to deal with it.  Thankfully, the band seized the chance to square it straight with their next long player.

    So about those sluts...

  

Groovy?

I might give Evil Dead 2 a crack soon.  I've seen it a few times, but it's been a sweet while.  I've long held the position that the original is a superior horror film.  I expect to maintain that position.  Look, Dead by Dawn is a fun jaunt through a bargain-counter carnival, but the groan-inducing comedy doesn't work.  Don't get me started on Army of Darkness.

Vanity Scare #15

CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN (#25, June 1975)

These days, we take certain things for granted.  For instance, you have incredible writers like Dom Coccaro churning out steadfast, high-principled content in the field of horror journalism (he also excels in other fields and is said to be "about that life").  But horror journalism didn't always exist.  You couldn't always rely on Fangoria or Rue Morgue for knowledgeable reviews of current flicks.  Of course, those are fusty, outdated references, but you couldn't always fall back on the Internet either.

Records indicate that serious commentary on the genre didn't transpire in magazine form until Castle of Frankenstein.  Print editor Calvin Beck started the rag in 1962.  I imagine that it carried an underground vibe, seeing as how there was no corporate advertising and it was honor-bound to its own unorthodox publishing schedule.  New issues were simply made available when they were completed.  All told, CoF reached twenty-five installments before Beck decided to pull the plug in favor of writing fiction.

I'm surprised that it took so long for monster movies to be seen as art.  Why shouldn't they have their own omnibus of editorials, their own glossy gazettes?  Reading anything from decades past, you're going to matriculate the way perspectives have changed over time.  Just glancing at the fan letters, I learned that film critics were once valued with brighter esteem.  What happened?  You can barely call "film critic" a job nowadays.  No one will pay you for your opinion, unless you have held that post for a perdurable spell (Leonard Maltin comes to mind).  Film itself has depreciated in worth, so it tracks that coverage of the medium has been devalorized.

Fuck, that's depressing.  Why don't we talk chainsaws?  You and me!  If you don't know (and you should, excepting the condition that you're new here), my favorite motion picture is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  The original, you human dunce cap!  Don't ever ask again!  Anyway, Richard Buonnano pens an excellent piece on Tobe Hooper's magnum opus.  The whole article is about the badassery of the thing and how it's infinitely scary.  Remember, this was written less than a year after its release.  Do I really need to explain why it's such a fun read?

I enjoyed the interview with Darren McGavin, conducted in between seasons of The Night Stalker.  Man, what a nifty show.  It wasn't given much of a chance to succeed, but it prospered in spite of a baleful slot at the anus-end of primetime.  The George Pal sit-down is merry stuff.  It made me revisit The War of the Worlds, and it made me want to revisit The Time Machine. Speaking of inspiration, I really want to check out Andy Warhol's debauched double feature after leafing through words of praise on his Dracula and Frankenstein (well, words of praise and words of...nevermind).

Clearly, there is a wealth of material for nerds to bite into here.  I don't need to sell it.  Kudos to Marcus Boas for the eye-catching cover, which wraps around to the back.

Album Cover of the Whatever

Well, I finally did it.  I found a death metal band simply called Die.  They sound as fruitful and resourceful as their name, but I'll be honest.  It's not bad!  If you know how to riff, you can get around a lack of creativity.  The cover is what matters and that's an impressive ghoul.  Goblin?  Imp?  Maybe it's the guitarist.

Rassle Inn #28

I don't know, man.  I may end up deleting all of this shit and going to bed.  I had a dentist appointment this morning and it took a lot out of me.  I'm not mining for pity, but fuck.  Dentists are evil.  It wasn't that painful or anything.  It was just the fuck of it all.  They (well, she) "operated" on me for close to an hour.  It was scheduled as a deep clean, which means I didn't have any cavities...in my youth.  Actually, it was the pandemic that caused me to miss my dental appointments for too long.

Teeth are stupid.  Should I say something about WrestleMania?  I will be watching.  I swear to fuck (sorry, my decommissioned mental state doesn't allow for witty, inventive writing), Vinnie Mac has no clue how to book Raw in 2022.  Let's look at the two biggest matches, shall we?  Kevin Owens vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin...holy shit, right?  I know, I know; it's pitched as an episode of The K.O. Show, but I have a feeling that we'll get a match out of this segment.  And the build-up!  It's an angle that writes itself.  Man, imagine the promo battles.  Wait--there were none.

Austin delivers a single promo via tape, and that's supposed to be...what the fuck is that supposed to be?  He didn't appear live on Raw once.  Fuck!  The other big deal?  Seth Rollins vs...yeah.  It's probably Cody Rhodes, but here again, where are the promo battles?  Where is the build?  WHERE???  When I said "imagine the promo battles," I was telling you to imagine the promo battles because that is where they reside - in the imagination.

Hey, how you doin'?  Dom here.  My dentist appointment was yesterday.  That's when I put pen to paper, and that's when I eventually stopped writing to retire to my bedchamber.  I can now stew with a clear head (the rest helped).  I'm equally unzipped and blunderstruck in relation to Vince's non-booking.  This used to be an elevated time of year for WWE Creative, a span of however many weeks that called for easy, simple booking to lift and dignify the biggest names in professional wrestling.  It would start with Royal Rumble (my favorite PPV, coincidentally) and it would end the night after WrestleMania.

Well, WrestleMania is now held on two nights.  The main events are not built properly (Brock/Roman notwithstanding).  The NXT special used to be the sleeper hit of the weekend, but the rainbow brand is no longer a foregone conclusion.  The celebrity contingent buzzes in to put itself over.  And they wonder why it's so hard to build stars.  Celebs used to put wrestlers over at 'Mania.  The McMahon empire has admitted defeat in conceding that the current roster is stacked with nobodies.  But yes, I will be watching.

I can't believe that I didn't drop one reference to Dr. Isaac Yankem.  I'm slipping!

Blood Capsule #123

LAST GASP (1995)

One day, I'm going to write an article about the year 1995.  I may have mentioned it before, but 1995 was "my" year.  It was magical.  Why?  Well, that would require something more stout than a blood capsule.  I thought I was familiar with every cruor-curdling calash that shaded The Year That Did Shred (that's what I'm thinking of calling 1995; pretty metal, no?), but films like Last Gasp continue to prove me wrong.  Was this thing created in a vacuum?  Robert Patrick stars as Chase, a tight-fisted real estate developer who wants to clear an indigenous tribe from his acreage.  They won't budge.  This forces Chase's hand, as he does what any levelheaded businessman would do - he has them butchered.

Problem solved!  Unfortunately, the chieftain of the slain caste in question lived long enough to put a curse on Chase.  He now subsists with a compulsion to kill.  It's hard to feel bad for the guy, but there are other characters.  Joanna Pacula and Mimi Craven drop their respective tops, and while I should be scolded for reducing their roles to spouts of lechery, that's what Last Gasp wants me to do.  It never decides if it desires to be a softcore thriller or an infantile slasher.  The deaths are certainly bloody enough to appeal to any Beavis or Butthead looking for simple delights.  Ultimately, it fails to fulfill grander goals.  The final girl is frustratingly dumb.  Her stupidity almost single-handedly ruins the climax.  So.  Goddamn.  Dumb.

I wouldn't be embarrassed to own Last Gasp.  Then again, I could be saying that because I own Last Gasp.  You've seen better days, 1995.  You've seen better days.

Valentine

Say what you want about the late-90's slasher boom; I know I have.  At the time, I excoriated its very existence and questioned the sanity of its adherents.  Like any unsavory trend, it sweetened over the years.  I can now see the positive effects it had on the horror genre in much the same way that I can see the beneficial predications of nu-metal.  Think of how many ears Limp Bizkit beckoned and roped into the hegemony of real metal.  You probably weren't expecting to find a Limp Bizkit reference in the first paragraph, were you?  I'm sorry.  But my point stands!  Vapid "dead teenager" flicks served to reinforce the horror section of your local video store, even if the films themselves were nothing more than woebegone widgets.

Woebegone widgets...that's a business idea.  I just need to figure out the business.  And the idea.  NOTE TO SELF: Do something with that.  Aside from My Bloody Valentine, the most amorous of holidays had yet to be milked by bloodthirsty screenwriters.  Our stock premise could have supported beaming entertainment.  A prologue introduces us to Jeremy, a nerdy buck who asks several girls to dance with him at the school function.  One of them is bound to say yes, right?  Well, the big-boned girl complies, but the rest of them pitilessly tease him.  He begins to menstruate, which invites chants of "plug it up."  Travolta's performance is stunning, and although the tampon knives are a bit much, I...I have lost the plot.

Ah, found it!  Later in life, Jeremy decides that he wants revenge on the girls who rejected his advances.  Does he mail them glitter bombs?  Intercalate red fabrics into their wash cycles alongside whites?  Empty their salt shakers and replenish them with sugar?  None of the above, for those options would have led to abject, soul-rattling terror.  Ultimately, he goes with a classic, the ol' "scrupulous eradication of human life from behind a cupid mask" technique.  The first act is spent establishing red herrings.  Hey, red is popular today.  I wonder if that's why words of Christ are printed in red within the pages of The Holy Bible.  Perhaps J.C. was prophesizing, foretelling the rise of David Boreanaz.

This is, like, the worst movie review I've ever written.  Focus, Dom...focus!  Jessica Capshaw gives a respectable turn as the main target (or so we're led to believe).  Marley Shelton is decent, but no one else bothered to show up.  I sensed that each cast member was seconds away from leveling with the audience and issuing a formal apology for agreeing to star in Valentine.  Denise Richards plays a pedantic bitch, but she doesn't believe her own dialogue.  By the way, these beautiful women stay clothed for all 96 minutes.  Did director Jamie Blanks know that he was synthesizing a slasher?

I dug the art direction.  The visuals deserve to be in a better motion picture.  The stalk sequences are flavorless, an adjective that cannot be applied to Capshaw's ass.  Clothed!  Forgive me for going blue.  That's what happens when a subject doesn't hand me anything that I can use.  I hate to admit it, but the twist ending is clever.  There is a chance I'm wrong.  There is also a chance that I've wasted too much time on Valentine.  I'm being generous with my rating, but there was axiomatic talent behind the camera.  As for the late 90's slasher boom, this was the final nail in a coffin fit to incinerate.

 

5 Cool Records Dropping Tomorrow

Every so often, I'll read an interview with an older metalhead, usually because they're in a metal band.  I'll try not to name too many names.  First of all, I'm old.  If you want to argue that 37 is not old, that's fair.  I would riposte by saying that 37 feels old.  At the very least, it's older than every age under 37.  The current generation is constantly reminding me that I'm the goof in the passenger's seat, periodically chiming in during the backseat conversation between kids/teenagers and saying something that widens the gap between us.  So where am I going with this?

No, I'm asking.  Why did I enter this room again?  I'm modest by nature, but I have to give myself credit where it's due.  I do a damned fine job of staying abreast of new metal releases.  That's why my forehead crinkles when Bald Guitarist (his name might rhyme with Berry Bing) says there are no new bands worth appraising.  He only listens to the shit he discovered as a youth.*  And that's his prerogative, but it tells me that he doesn't love metal as much as he claims.  There is at least one interesting metal record hitting "shelves" (be they tangible or digital) every week.

This week?  Your wallet is going to bleed, provided that you still buy music.  I was moved to write this syllabus when I noticed how many bitchin' albums were dropping tomorrow.  It's a spread that accommodates varied tastes.  Count the ways...

Abbath - Dread Reaver) The third solo album from Norway's clown prince of the left hand path.  I loved Outstrider, and if the advance singles are any indication, this is shaping up to be a banger.

Falls of Rauros - Key to a Vanishing Future) I found out about this LP a couple of hours ago.  Somewhere, the head of a marketing department deserves to be decollated.  If you aren't familiar with these Mainers (actual term; I checked), they play organic black metal with raging leads and melody-conscious songwriting.  Arresting.

Father Befouled - Crowned in Veneficum) Incantation worship.  Simple as.  Please note that I'm not deriding their perceived orthodoxy.  I mean, if it works, it works.  I fancy the riffs, so you better believe that I'm going to crank it up.

Deathspell Omega - The Long Defeat) The French polemicists are back to enrage the metal faithful and captivate just as many of us leering over the railing.  I call myself a casual fan (I'm partial to their Drought EP).  If you want to discuss matters beyond the music, I'll need another website's worth of chatter to hackle through it all.

Kvaen - The Great Below) The debut from this Swedish one-man project made my top 5 of 2020.  He deals in blackened speed, which sounds incredibly illegal.  Here's an image to bookend the text.  Man, graphic design is for the birds.

*The interview in question is from a decade back, roughly speaking.  It wasn't a recent sound bite that spurred me.  Honestly, I don't know why it was rolling around in my cranium, but the knowledge of these new releases made me think of mossbacks who complain about "today's scene" as if it has nothing to offer.  Mr. Bing can listen to whomever he wants.  I still don't care for his solos, though.

I'm big on green, apparently...

This is a truly random post.  I'm feeling scattershot this evening, though not in a bad way.  So who are the fellows soaked and inumbrated in green?  And it's obviously a film still, but how old is it?  Any guesses?  It's taken from Dr. Cyclops, a wildly imaginative sci-fi trek from 1940 (!).  It was the first genre film to be shot in three-strip Technicolor.  Presuppose it as gospel; the movie is a visual feast.  Director Ernest Schoedsack absolutely understands mise en scene.  I love the way everything is framed, the way that the foreground is used to deepen the background.  Needless to say, the florid colors drip off of the screen, so prepare towels at the base of your television to absorb all of that polychromasia.

Dr. Cyclops is not a case of style over substance.  There is an interesting story, an innocuously ordinary "mad scientist" yarn that sees our protagonists being shrunk down and terrorized by the titular doc.  Check it out if you can.  Hell, check it out if you can't!

Interview: Writer/Director Bobby Canipe

I'd love to continue interviewing folks from both the horror community and the metal underground.  Today, I bring you a chat with burgeoning writer/director Bobby Canipe.  He happens to be a friend of mine, so this one was relatively easy to arrange.  Mucho thanks to Bobby.  PRO TIP: Listen to the interview, as opposed to watching my fat face twitch indiscriminately for half an hour.