Wormface

How was your summer vaca--er, Thanksgiving?  Honestly, this is my least favorite holiday.  I realize that it's an unpopular opinion, but I don't care for most Thanksgiving food.  Turkey is cool.  It's an upstanding meat, but you can keep your mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce (seriously, what the fuck?), stuffing, candied yams, and your butternut squash (see my comment on cranberry sauce).  It wasn't made to infiltrate my paunch.  Worms on the other hand...

No, I only gobble gummy worms.  That brings me to today's subject, an extended player (or EP, if you're fussy) cast loose by Cannibal Corpse.  I've mentioned it before, but I won't be scrawling full-length reviews for the band's shorter releases.  I will piddle and put down words concerning 2003's Worm Infested.  When I bought my CC hoodie, this disc was included.  I was awfully hankful, as I doubt that I would have purchased it otherwise.  It's hard for me to justify parting with cash in exchange for twenty minutes (on average) of music.  I would have heard the songs eventually, but then I wouldn't own the artwork.

Typically, I try not to post explicit nudity on the site, even in cartoon form.  Vincent Locke's interpretation of the title is stomach-churning in a groovy way.  Nice color scheme, too.  As for the material, we get two outtakes from the Gore Obsessed studio sessions, three covers, and a re-recorded version of "The Undead Will Feast."  The outtakes make me super curious about other leftovers in the vault.  If there are one or two unheard threnodies for each CC album, holy shit.  Release them now!

At any rate, I'm curious because "Worm Infested" and "Systematic Elimination" kick tremendous ass.  The act of headbanging?  It was invented for these rippers.  The covers are fine.  I could take them or leave them, but they do display George's range.  So I've written more than I thought I would, but I'll be back in a few days to slobber on a long player.  That didn't sound incredibly right.

Blood Capsule #117

THE VISITOR (1979)

Did you catch the Lakers game last night?  It was a nail-biter.  With three seconds to spare, LeBron James jumped to dunk the deciding basket when suddenly, the goddamn hoop exploded.  Okay, that didn't actually happen in reality, but it did happen in The Visitor.  Replace LeBron with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and kablooey!  It's never mentioned again and no one seems to think it's a big deal.  Explosions are fixtures of your average basketball game, I suppose.  That scene is an unmarred reduction of the totality of The Visitor.  It's a kinky, whimsical bite of the 70's, although it's not as cinematic as The Omen, The Exorcist, or The Birds.

The Visitor wants to be as weighty as those genre paradigms, but it's deliriously tipsy.  In fact, if it were a person, it would be a falldown drunk.  There are redeeming qualities here, namely the actors forced at gunpoint to recite amphigory dialogue (I had to laugh at a prepubescent Paige Connor telling her mother to "make love" with Lance Henriksen so that she could have a baby brother).  Lance is detached, but he's still Lance.  John Huston gives the best performance as Jerzy, an interdimensional...warrior?  Wizard?  Shelley Winters, Mel Ferrer, and Glenn Ford round out the cast of confused onlookers.  Of all the "evil tyke" movies I've seen, this is probably the worst.  And yet, it's entertaining enough for a rainy Tuesday night.

Album Cover of the Whatever

Fuckin' Nazareth!  That's all I have to say.

Lamberto Bava's DEMONS is My Spirit Animal

That right there.  That image represents my interests in pop culture.  It's a three-ring hippodrome.  Venom symbolizes (symbiolizes?) heavy metal, Carnage betokens the horror genre, and hey, what are they doing?  They seem to be engaged in a struggle.  Could they be...wrestling?  It's my block of text, so I say that they are, in fact, wrestling.  To me, this ternion of hobbies makes logical sense.  If I loved ghouls (I do), wouldn't it follow that I jammed out to Ghoul (I do), a death/thrash band?

In recent years, it has become fashionable for raw black metal projects to write songs about vampires with wacky, pretentious titles (personally, I favor Forbidden Citadel of Spirits' "Moonlight Cast Upon Thy Waters of Sorrow").  Wrestlemaniac is a 2006 slasher that blends arm drags and arms being dragged from their stumps.  Point being!  Well, I guess my point is obvious, so why is it so hard to find like-minded folks?  I've met metalheads who can't stand horror films.  And vice-versa.  What gives?

Wrestling is an acquired taste.  I can understand not jumping into that cesspool, although I could make the argument that watching old episodes of Nitro is no different than watching a b-movie.  Still, I get it.  This business about metal and horror...guys, they are made for each other.  Peanut butter and jelly!  Burgers and fries!  Yikes pencils and blowjobs!

I had to get that off my chest.  I've got a Blood Capsule and another Cannibal Corpse review in the convection oven.  Stay fucked!

PS-I haven't actually seen Wrestlemaniac.  I apologize.

Dead Space

Roger Corman produced 1991's Dead Space.  It's a remake of 1982's Forbidden World, which was produced by...Roger Corman.  It's common knowledge that the man revels in the act of cannibalizing his own exploits.  Perhaps he gets sick joy out of it.  How sick am I to rent and enjoy these c-movies?  If you use IMDb reviews as your barometer, it would appear that Dead Space is unilaterally seen as residual sheathing left behind by Forbidden World, the high-class pick of the two Alien riffs.  I wish I could stand alone and volunteer an adversarial viewpoint, but in this case, the plurality of nerds is comme il faut.*

However!  I reserve the right to dig trash.  Dead Space is flimsy, but it's not THAT flimsy.  It can be digested as rattlebrained entertainment.  There was a helix of sci-fi/horror cheapies crapped out in the late 80's/early 90's, and you could say that this whirlpool trend continued into the tailpiece of the decade (that sounded too sexual).  I mean, we had Event Horizon and fucking Virus.  The former was divisive as shit, and I still haven't seen the latter.  I should break down and allow Jamie Lee Curtis to transmit bacteria onto my removable, magnetic tape videocassette.  Speaking of infectious agents (that was the kind of segue your parents would love), a virus has blighted a research facility on the planet Phaebon.  Why did they invent a bullshit planet???

Anyway, a distress signal reaches Marc Singer and his trusty robot pal.  Singer's character has a name, but I'm choosing to believe that he played himself.  It makes sense.  The robot is Tinpan, and guys, this fucking bionic borg is the heart of Dead Space.  The nucleus.  The anchor!  He is as fleshed out as much as he needs to be, his morals are verifiable (I'm talking "lawful good" here), and I felt something when he perished.  Don't give me grief over spoiler warnings.  You don't care.  You never cared for Tinpan, not like I did!  Welpers, I'm using slathers of exclamation points.  I know better.

The acting is fine.  Aside from Singer, Bryan Cranston plays a slightly mad scientist, though he doesn't become a true antagonist.  Of course, he's flippin' awesome.  The special effects are typically gooey, and as a millennial might say, I'm here for it.  The creature is essentially a Xenomorph Queen.  I can't defend cribbing, but again, I'm here for it.  I'm not proud of my taste; believe me.  Logically, I look down on plagiarism, but at the end of the day, it's a rubber monster.  It's tacky.  It's great.  I should be admitted into a rehabilitation clinic of some description.

Dead Space runs for 72 minutes.  Pacing is not a problem.  Plot holes are a problem, but they aren't dealbreakers.  It's minor league stuff.  This is a minor league flick, so I didn't mind meeting it halfway.  Oh, the asterisk?  I don't know.  It's Spanish.  I don't speak Russian.

  

Rassle Inn #24

I'll get back to splintering horror movies soon, but I don't make the schedule.  Okay, I'm in charge of this website's schedule, dubious though it may be, but I didn't decide to run a wrestling PPV over the weekend.  Okay, I did.  I'm Tony Khan.  Holy shitting fuck, I'm exhausted.  No, but I am tired.  This is Dom talking again.  See that adorable labradoodle puppy being cradled by AEW World Champion (more on that in a sexual second) "Hangman" Adam Page?  I've had a stuffed animal for most of my life that looks exactly like...erm, Unnamed Hangpup.  Isn't it cuuuuute?

Right, so if you follow wrestling media or lurk on message boards (if those are a thing in 2021; I'm desperately out of touch), you have heard plenty of racket about storylines and how long-term prevarication - that's not the right word.  It implies deceit.  Certainly, you can't say that the brain trust behind AEW's main event programs was ever trying to deceive the public.  They basically laid it out three years ago.  Page was going to be their guy.  Omega would have a part to play, and by a punctilious fluke that wasn't really a fluke at all, the two box office attractions have great chemistry.

Page's first title reign should last for at least six months.  He hasn't been injury prone, so you don't have to worry that he'll trot out his impersonation of Kyrie Irving.  Is he photogenic?  It should be obvious, but I can answer that question.  Several female friends have commented on the "hot cowboy" on TV, and some of them don't even watch wrestling (pretty sure they do now).  Merch?  Catchphrases?  Real.  Cowboy.  Shit.  It's fucking brilliant!  Slap it on mugs, shirts, bumper stickers, and marshmallow dispensers.  And caskets.  I mean, why let Gene Simmons have all the fun?

I wanted to focus on "Hangman" Adam Page, but Full Gear offered a full card of exquisite pro-rasslin' action.  There were three Match of the Year candidates by my count.  M.J.F. versus Darby Allin was technically flawless, and I approved of the finish.  That's important.  I have to approve of this (cowboy) shit.  Eddie and Punk?  Wow.  That was a goddamn fight.  I loved every brutal, unfeeling moment.  What was the third epic encounter, you inquire?  The main event!  Do I need to spell everything out for you?

After close examination, I could see myself in a committed relationship with Mr. Page.  He has what I'm missing in my life right now.  Stability.  Also, cock.  Stability and cock.

Top 5: Best Death Metal From the Late 90's

There is a narrative in modern day metal journalism that the 1990's were unkind to our favorite genre of music.  To be specific, the late 90's sucked the muscle and virility out of metal altogether.  But let's get even more specific!  Starting in '96 (I have my reasons, which I'll enumerate later), death metal seemed to shrivel, to exsiccate into a teensy-weensy clump of crud.  Did it, really?  While thinking to myself (do not try that shit at home), I noticed that a couple of my favorite death metal records were birthed in the late 90's.  This warranted further scrutiny.

I posit that death metal was neither burgeoning nor tapering off in the late 90's.  It was holding steady.  Bear in mind, melodic death metal was stirring in Sweden, but I'll leave melodeath out of it.  Not to genuflect to derisive gatekeepers; it's merely for the sake of simplicity.  We can debate the credibility of In Flames all day, but there is no fucking doubt that Dying Fetus is a death metal band.  Because it's my site, however, I'll point out that The Jester Race is my numero uno melodeath album, and nothing comes close to topping it.

So why is '96 my starting point?  Why not '95?  Earlier, I interjected journalism under a critical light.  Those journalists...okay, I admit that I'm fabricating a character for the purpose of this list.  Oblige me.  The writer in my head (and he does exist) holds certain long players from 1995 in high esteem.  Suffocation's Pierced From Within, Death's Symbolic, Morbid Angel's Domination, Deicide's Once Upon the Cross, Vader's De Profundis, a few others that escape my marbles...do you see what I'm driving at?  According to the defeatists who enkindled me to write these words, death metal's dry spell lasted from 1996 to (roughly) 2001.

Thus!  I am playing footsie with those five years.  Obviously, these aren't the only records released during that time frame worth spinning.  I simply love them, and I went to the trouble of ranking them.  As always, my opinion is gospel.  If you don't agree with my picks, what the fuck is wrong with you?

5) Broken Hope ~ Loathing (1997)

Verily, my knowledge of these Chicago autochthons is limited.  I didn't start listening to them until - hold on, I must consult my calendar - the year of our lard, 2021.  Their discography is patchy.  Not every punch connects, but Loathing is a goddamn knockout.  The set immediately kicks your nethersphere with the fuming grooves of "Siamese Screams."  If you're new to Broken Hope, "The Cloning," "Auction of the Dead," and "I Am God" are worth sampling.  Expect gut-shuffling riffs, creative leads, and a nice variety of beats (thankfully, they don't rely on blasts).

4) Martyr ~ Warp Zone (2000)

Do you love latter-era Death as much as I do?  How about early Pestilence?  Early Atheist?  Principally, I'm sick of calling attention to a band and then specifying which version of the band I'm aiming to showcase.  It's not critically relevant.  I just felt the need to vent.  Anyway, yeah.  Martyr specializes in technical death metal and their material is sweetened by Canadian pluck.  It's impossible to describe, but it's there, mainly because Martyr hails from Quebec.  Songs such as "Virtual Emotions" and "The Fortune Teller" admix superlative musicianship with woeful melodies that cradle all four chambers of your heart.  Conclusion reached?  I'm pretty sure that Warp Zone gave me a stroke.

3) Dying Fetus ~ Destroy the Opposition (2000)

Never has a band's name been so damn appropriate.  Their music crushes the listener.  No, pounds!  No, it murders you!  And it's clear that Dying Fetus is behind the murder.  They make no effort to hide the evidence.  The riffs are bullets, and serendipitously, your head was whittled with exit and entrance wounds already in place.  It's no coincidence that those wounds contain drums.  How else can I stretch this analogy?  Okay, I can't.  John Gallagher's seismic growls are insane.  Each element is seismic, and I suppose you could consider the groups that DF influenced to be aftershocks.  I can't say with certainty that these embryo liquidators invented a microgenre, but for my money, they are the reigning kings of slam.

2) Morbid Angel ~ Gateways to Annihilation (2000)

This isn't my favorite Morbid Angel dish (that would be Domination, a classic that missed zero hour by a matter of months), but hey, my second favorite does gel with my purposes.  Pete the Feet's contributions are a trifle clicky, although that's bound to happen when chunks of your performance are replaced by a drum machine.  That's the sole cleft to be found.  These ditties are fucking perfect.  Everything from the monster solo in "Summoning Redemption" to the stuttering rhythm section of "I" rules, and you know it.  No one talks about "God of the Forsaken."  Guess what?  It rules, too!  I'm quite fond of Formulas Fatal to the Flesh, but in my book, this is Steve Tucker's finest offering as MA's bassist and lead throat.

1) Death ~ The Sound of Perseverance (1998)

I literally remember my first twirl of Death's swan song like it was yesterday.  It was my first Death record period.  I was slogging away at mindless homework when halfway through "Scavenger of Human Sorrow," I had to stop and pay attention.  Were these...humans?  I had heard technical metal before, but Jesus Christ.  Did I finish my homework?  No, I'm asking.  I don't recall, but I do recall being torpedoed through my bedroom window by "Spirit Crusher" and "Flesh and the Power it Holds."  Procrastination is the only factor keeping me from adding "Voice of the Soul" to my living will.  That's right; I plan on having it played at my funeral.  I would also ask that you play "Story to Tell" if you ever violate my corpse.

Eh...

It's taking longer than expected to write the piece I'm writing.  So, um, patience?  By the way, am I the only one who thinks that Season 4 of Stranger Things looks a tad boring?  It's just a trailer.  I get it.  But as far as trailers go, it's not very exciting.  And that's coming from a huge fan of the first three seasons.  Eh.