A Band: Pharaoh

Originally, this column was conceived as a way to direct a floodlight or two in the direction of a band (y'know, "a band") that rawked my world and yet, slipped beneath the metal mainstream sonar.  For no particular reason, I always saw it servicing bands of the moment.  That is, music that was happening right now underfoot.  Proggy power metallers Pharaoh have always been a band (y'know, "a band") that I've championed and tried to lug out of the ligature grip of obscurity.  Nonetheless, they are a band of battle-scarred veterans.

So?  Why should that keep me from directing a floodlight at their latest endeavor?  They're still too goddamn obscure.  If you don't know (ugh, I can't take you anywhere), they are led by tornado-throated singer Tim Aymar, he of Control Denied fame.  The first time that I listened to 1999's The Fragile Art of Existence, I couldn't believe that an unknown was damn near upstaging Chuck Schuldiner.  Ever since, I've been a loyal fan of the Pennsylvanian collective.  Aymar joined in time for 2003's After the Fire.  A solid debut, but the follow-up?  2006's The Longest Night?  Well, I'll just say that I consider it to be one of the finest albums of the decade, a decade that was pretty kind to our genre, all in all.

Needless to dribble, that has nothing to do with 2021.  I wouldn't be writing this if Pharaoh had not dropped a banger in the preceding twelve months.  I'm talking about The Powers That Be.  It bristles with an unruly, indignant energy, a choleric verve I wasn't expecting after nine years of radio silence.  But you're willing to wait after a record as gratifying as 2012's Bury the Light.  Pharaoh is cool.  That's what I'm saying.

As for where you should start (and let's assume that you want to start because you have a brain, stem included), that depends on your tastes.  Do you wave the flag for traditional heavy metal?  Try 2008's Be Gone on for size.  Maybe you're more like me and you're into technical stuff.  I started with The Longest Night.  What's good for the goose is good for the gibbon...no, the gazelle...no, the Galapagos tortoise!  I'll figure that one out later.  While I'm doing that, why don't you take a gander at Pharaoh's catalog?

Four out of five shovels?

If you'll notice, a new link has been added to the top of the website.  It was about time that I stored all of my Corpse reviews in one place.  Heh, that sounds like I review the condition of dead bodies.  Maybe I do.  Next week, we dig up Princess Diana!

Dead Review Collection #11 - KILL!

I've found that an armada of metal freaks cherish 2006's Kill.  In fact, they say it's their favorite.  Makes sense.  Personally, I don't think it quite measures up to The Wretched Spawn, but it's a raging cracker.  I say that its popularity makes sense because of the circumstances surrounding its release.  This is the record that introduced Cannibal Corpse to a new generation.  The video for "Make Them Suffer" was played on the modern, streamlined version of Headbanger's Ball.  And it didn't take long for social media (which was in its infancy at the time) to notice that George was an awesome nerd.  With an ogre's thumb for a neck.

Another music video and a viral clip of George panegyrizing World of Warcraft (fuck the horde!) later, the mighty Corpse was cool.  They had not been cool to the common teenager since The Bleeding.  This was a big deal, no?  Am I the only one who thinks it's noteworthy?  Granted, CC's quickening wasn't as grand or as far-reaching as the revivification that Aerosmith enjoyed, but The Eagles maybe?  They actually reunited for their comeback.  I guess...I guess not.  Whatever!  Kill was successful.  That's the crux of this provision.  Hey, is World of Warcraft still a thing?

Kill was produced by Hate Eternal's lead demon and Florida's death metal cynosure (what a badass word) Erik Rutan.  I don't love all of his production jobs.  His own band's Fury & Flames sounds terrible, what with the nuances being rubbed out by obnoxious mixing.  The drums are too loud, a verifiable truth that supports my theory - get ready - that the album was produced by Animal.  Y'know, the muppet?  That dude kicks ass, but keep him away from the studio when he isn't recording his tracks.  Right, so Miss Piggy has clearly fucked every slip of felt under the sun and I...

...I forgot which piece I was writing.  The production!  I dig it!  It retains the heft of The Wretched Spawn, while adding a dash of gloss.  I spun the piss out of Kill that summer, so I'm more than qualified to proclaim that it's a perfect set for the sunlight-achromatized season.  The energy is up.  Way up, as Kill begins with the agile, riff-pitching "The Time to Kill is Now."  I hope to Satan you've heard "Make Them Suffer."  If you're a metalhead of a certain age, you would have heard it at some point.  I'm almost sick of it myself, although I realize it's not a radio fixture.

The crushing midsection of "Murder Worship" is so heavy, it induces a sinkhole in the parking lot of the venue where CC is playing that night.  The vocal patterns in "Necrosadistic Warning" are goddamn demented.  "The Discipline of Revenge" might be my most preferred number.  The opening stagger brilliantly utilizes Alex's bilious bass accents and a fidgety guitar harmony that brings the lyrics to life in the form of brutal death metal.  And Kill is brutal.

Flies in the ointment?  It doesn't strike me as a gravity-bending epic the way that its predecessor does, but I can't offer a categorical rationale.  It's a feeling; it's not a reason I can explain.  However, I do hold one more opinion about Kill, and it would never be confused for ambiguous.  The cover.  Okay, they wanted all of our attention to go straight to the songs.  They worked hard on Kill and they didn't want the material to be obfuscated in the distance.  I respect that, but goddamn it, if you're Cannibal Corpse, you better commission Vincent Locke to whisk a nasty, disgusting slab of artwork to jazz up your finished product.  Like a flaming baby.  Or a severed mutant penis skullfucking a zombie.  Magnifique!

    

Halloween is almost here!

For obvious reasons, this has been a busy month for yours truly.  And not in a cool way.  I wish I could tell you that I've been super busy (like so many drone insects, perhaps drawn to pollen) writing a future bestseller and compiling material for this very website, but frankly, winter is a drag.  I hate it.  It's hard enough curbing seasonal depression.  Staving it off and remaining productive?  How the fuck is that even possible?  Fear not; I have...plans!

Plans don't see themselves to fruition, but I feel alright about fulfilling these particular plans.  I have a new feature (!) up my sleeve.  I don't know how often I'll be able to update it, but the prospects are exciting.  I'm still ploughing through my Cannibal Corpse discography review.  Expect a kill within the week.  Oh, and I'm gonna watch some movies!  Yeah!

Album Cover of the Whatever

Blackened death metal.  That's what you're getting.  Oh, you ordered the blackened salmon?  I don't give a fuck!  You're getting blackened death metal.  Thankfully, Vahrzaw is a cool, accomplished band.  From the looks of things, Husk is a concept album about a spooky skeleton who is terrorized by...hands and stuff.

Rassle Inn #25

Gimme an F!  Gimme a U!  Gimme an N!  What's that spell?  I can't hear you!  C'mon, your current  location, you can do better than that.  WHAT'S THAT SPELL???  That's right.  We're having fun, although it used to be easier to garner a cheap pop in this intermediate cornfield of nihility.  Heh, I called the world wide web a cornfield.  That's how you know I'm playing the heel.  I'm still having fun, which is the subject of tonight's concursion.  Are you having fun yet?

I don't keep a running tally of professional wrestling programs.  I don't rank every episode of Raw or Dynamite.  Nevertheless, I feel that this past Wednesday's telecast of AEW's Dynamite was one of the best yet.  I bring up fun because it's an elusive element of entertainment that seems to enjoy slapping me around.  I kid you not; I haven't had that much fun rubbernecking rasslin' since my high school days.  Everything from CM Punk's heel (!) promo to MJF working against type put a dense, doltish beam across my face.

The wrestling landscape should be exclusively chipper right now, but Ring of Honor is holding a PPV event on the brink of certain uncertainty.  The strait-laced promotion is closing its doors, kinda-sorta.  Starting next year, ROH won't have any contracted talents.  I'm not sure how that's going to go down as it relates to the champions (poor Rok-C just arrived), but chum, um, vector sum, net income, ummmmm...

...pond scum?

Blood Capsule #118

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932)

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I had not seen this particular Universal classic until last night.  Perhaps the absence of an iconic monster persuaded my subconscious to sidestep Murders in the Rue Morgue (I'm an insipid polliwog, after all).  It's unimportant.  I am righting my wrongs, as I'll be investigating a separate infraction at the very same Morgue.  The murders are decades apart, but I suspect foul play.  Then again, the cast is different.  These transgressions may be...movies.  Gasp!  So that was nice and stupid; why don't I encapsulate this Lugosi-starring spine-tickler for you?

I was expecting the story to tarry over grave robbers, but to my pleasant surprise, a considerable portion of Rue Morgue is occupied by a brainsick, off-his-rocker "mad scientist."  Yippee!  That's where Lugosi earns his pay (which wasn't enough).  Most horror fans agree that Dracula and The Black Cat contain his best performances, and I will co-sign on that dotted line.  However, his raving turn as Dr. Mirakle is no straggler.  The scene in which he tortures a prostitute is grisly stuff.  Yeah, the studio extricated twenty minutes from the initial cut, and technically, that was before the Hays Code was officially adopted by Hollywood.

A black-and-white medalwinner.  I don't believe that it won any actual medals.  I just mean, watch it.

Geek Out #153

It's a movie!

Hard Rock Nightmare

Just when you think you've discovered every "heavy metal" horror film from the 80's, an unsung ruby of corundum(b)* falls into your lap.  I feel like I've used that introductory sentence before.  Switch out the sub-subgenre (say, seaside creature features), and yeah, these are well-worn galoshes.  As for this sub-subgenre, I've settled on an exemplar model.  The peak of the mountain, a crag of riffs and spooks.  Good Lord, that's cornier than Jim Cornette shucking an ear of corn while fucking a member of Korn...with a corn cob!  Don't ask what Colonel Sanders did with the kernels.

My pick for the top "heavy metal" fright flick?  It's clearly Black Roses.  You may disagree.  That's fine.  However, if your pick is 1988's Hard Rock Nightmare, we have a problem.  I strongly doubt that we could ever be friends.  This isn't the worst oddment I've pulled from the dustbin (a.k.a. the metagalactic void), but it's not honest with the viewer.  Hell, forget the viewer; it's not honest with prospective consumers at large.  Abrupt left turn!  I struggle with spoilers.  Meaning, apart from twist endings, I never know how much of a film's storyline to unveil.

I have gathered you here today to spoil the ending of Hard Rock Nightmare.  If you don't want to know how it sews itself up, point your browser elsewhere.  Back to sewing!  If this churlish cheapie were a surgeon, it would suture wounds with shoelace and blue raspberry bubble tape.  Eek, that's one wretched vasectomy.  In any event, we are told that the main lad's grandfather was a total prick.  He delighted in scaring the shit out of his grandson (whose name is either Jim or Charlie) by saying that he was a vampire.  He was going to drink Jim's/Charlie's blood and kill his whole family.  Yeah.  Told you he was a prick.

I guess that he also claimed he was a werewolf?  We are led to believe that Jim/Charlie fucking stabbed him and spent the rest of his pre-18 days in therapy.  We cut to the present, and Jim/Charlie is rehearsing with his band in the peace of a remote cabin.  Before you can say "this band sucks," ancillary characters begin to drop off.  They are gashed to death by a...monster.  We are shown a silhouette and a ghostly shot of feral, saffron eyes.  The poster image, indeed.  We get a good look at it.  Repeatedly.  Boy, it's impressive the first time you see it.

Hard Rock Nightmare climaxes with the surviving nobodies removing the monster's mask.  It's an episode of Scooby-Doo!  And it's not even a cool episode.  The cast is interchangeable, the kills are trite, and the cheesiness of the rock 'n' roll cheese is mitigated by the fact that - again - the music sucks.  I realize that I said it's not the worst of its ilk, but that's only because it's relatively short.  Robert Z'Dar says, "Is this what Billy Corgan dreams about?  No wonder."

* A ruby is a type of corundum, a common mineral.  I almost went with "rhinestone(r)."  Laughs were heard for miles...

 

Cherry Pop's Ice Cream Shop

Fucking Blogger is being difficult at the moment.  It won't let me upload ANY images, which will be a quandary tomorrow when I write my next movie review (it's a doozy).  I'd like for you to see the cover art, at the very least.  As for tonight?  Ice cream, comic books, and soda pop!

Yo!  I just wanted to recount my visit to Cherry Pop's Ice Cream Shop(pe), a snazzy joint that opened in the past year.  It's located in downtown Catawba, thirty minutes from my abode.  That's a "special occasion" distance.  This time, the occasion was...well, I had never been there before.  Dude, this isn't just any ice cream vendor.  The 50's throwback theme may be old hat, but who cares?  This place offers delicious sundaes, bubbly water in glass bottles (both Pepsi and Coke), a superfluity of candy, and comic books!  You read that right.  I bought a couple of Marvel titles from 1990.  The selection is limited, but I'm not going to complain when I'm enjoying a lollipop and reading a random superhero comic from the 90's.

That's filed under "fuck yeah" between the ridges of my brain (no, this isn't a paid advertisement).  Blogger is filed under "fuck you" until they can get this image problem fixed.

Dead Review Collection #10 - SPAWN!

I have too many things to say about this album.  2004's The Wretched Spawn is my favorite Cannibal Corpse outing.  To my ears, it's the perfect distillation of every element that makes this band...this band.  Since I'm not stopping at three sentences (don't tempt me, Satan/Jesus), I'll have to whip out the bulleted list.  I'm sorry!  I tried to avoid this route, but if any record is suited for an itemized index, it's this badass daughterfucker.  A scanty digression, if I may; that's my daughter on the cover.  Mary Mary Sue Coccaro (I named her Mary twice because she was conceived on a merry-go-round on Christmas Eve) died during childbirth.  The winged gentleman behind her gurney?  That's me.  As you can see, I was racked with grief.

~ Production!  This one was doctored by a returning Neil Kernon.  I thought that Gore Obsessed sounded adequate, but Spawn fucking blows it out of the cemetery slush.  The guitars are full and massive.  Alex's rumblings are represented well in the bottom end, especially for the grinding riffs in "Cyanide Assassin" and "Nothing Left to Mutilate."  And "Slain."  And the others.

~ The songs!  Songwriting has never been a weakness for these chaps, but variety and the thorny matter of dynamics have been elevated.  The first seven tracks are astonishingly multifarious for death metal carols.  Heh, wouldn't it be funny if all Christmas carols were replaced with CC tunes?  Anyway, "astonishingly multifarious" may seem excessive, but dude, they aren't just seven tracks.  They are seven different approaches to composition.  No theme or concept is repeated.

~ The songs!  Specifically!  "Severed Head Stoning" is an ideal opener.  It's a barrelling blackjack to the cranium.  "Psychotic Precision" cranks up the speed and technicality, which are graded back down for the caveman grooves of "Decency Defied."  A studio video of "Frantic Disembowelment" went viral because fucking holy piss, it's fast.  "Festering in the Crypt" is an all-timer (remember, it's my review, not yours).  The melodies are sickly, and the languid tortoise pacing allows George to enunciate, to really dig into each syllable.  Speaking of which...

~ George!  Individually, the members of CC are operating at full tilt.  There isn't a weak link in the bunch.  But man, Spawn is the album that made me fall in heterosexual love with Corpsegrinder (and his neck).  His vocals are unreal.  The low growls are so brutal, I would believe you if you told me that George was part-chicken.  For the uninitiated, chickens swallow small rocks and gravel for digestive purposes.  That's a stupid way of expressing it, but the guy's voice sounds inhuman, okay?  And the high screams!  This is the last CC set where George uncorks loooong shrieks (he comes close to hitting 13 seconds on "They Deserve to Die").  They were giving him intense headaches, so he had to retire most of his upper range.

~ Smash the scrotum!  The lyrics to "Blunt Force Castration" are hilarious.  That's all.  I'm immature.

I guess that's it.  Spawn sits atop my personal pile of corpses.  By the way, "Skull Fragment Armor" is a bonus track on the digipak edition of Evisceration Plague.  If you're a trained fan (read: maniac), you'll be able to tell that it was recorded during the sessions for The Wretched Spawn.  Of course, it slams.