Recommended if You Like: 80’s New Wave, European Techno, Pet Shop Boys
There isn’t a ton to dislike about this record, but then again there isn’t a ton to love about it either. Most of the time it’s by the numbers synth-pop with hints of industrial sounds scattered through out. It relies heavily on the synths and the clean vocals. The vocals are strong and melodic but they are kind of a one trick pony. If you’ve heard one song on this record you’ve pretty much heard them all. It’s not a terrible record, and perhaps if there weren’t a lot of bands out there stealing a bit from Cesium_137 sound recently it would be more memorable than it is, it’s not terribly interesting either. It probably plays better in a club than it does sitting here in my office. It’s good background music, but not something you would throw on to pump yourself up for a night of clubbing. The album boasts solid production though. I prefer my synthpop a little darker and my vocals a little more dynamic. If you stick with the record long enough there is a nice little payoff with a certain king sample that is down right awesome though.
Century Media Artist, In This Moment is making a stop on their first headlining tour at Spicoli’s Bar & Grill and The Reverb Rock Garden next Friday (November 13th) night so I thought I would take the opportunity to chat with Maria Brink from the band about their music, their inspiration and what’s next for the band. I’m very impressed with their new record The Dream and think it’s something everyone should check out.
I’ve also included their video for their cover of Blondie’s Call Mefor you listening and viewing enjoyment. So get out to Spicoli’s next Friday night and catch In This Moment with special guests In Fear and Faith, Motion Lesson White, Surrender the Silence and Project Sock Monkey
Velvet Acid Christ has done their time in the scene and have earned their stripes. From the noise and aggression of the earlier releases to a more polished and mature sound of today. The Art of Breaking Apart is the 11th album for Bryan Erickson and there is definitely a real maturity on this record. The album swings between industrial beats with distorted vocals into acoustic guitar and melodic clean vocals. The acoustic guitar has to be for me the most shocking revelation in the new VAC material. In a genre that is often piled high with more of the same, it’s refreshing to hear a breath of fresh air in a sometimes stale formula. VAC does a great job at it but has one little misstep in trying something new and that would be the track Faithless. Bryan’s vocals are a bit off key and while the rest of the album is pretty solid, this is the only real blemish on the entire creative return.
But that is really the only complaint I have with the record, apart from that this is a solid performance from beginning to end and like I said before extremely refreshing to hear some experimentation in the genre. If you are looking for something new that might be a step from Depeche Mode into something a bit more dangerous I would give the new Velvet Acid Christ a spin in your media playing device of choice. A solid record from beginning to end that never bored me or made me want to skip to the next song. I look forward to hearing what VAC comes up with next. 3 1/2 Stars out of 5.
OK, so yesterday I skipped doing the blog cause I was working on something pretty special and today I present it to you! Last week I got an email from a student at Waterloo West High School about their production of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. So I thought, what a perfect way to end the Halloween blog, exactly the way it began only completely localized. So I gave Elliot a ring and set up an interview with Co-Director Ryan Penning and three of the cast members Sean Klippel, Nina Turovtseva and Matt Holmes. So with out further ado I present to you that interview for your enjoyment!
You’ve probably heard of and maybe even seen Guillermo del Toro’s movies like Hellboy 1 & 2, Mimic, Blade II and maybe even the Oscar nominated Pan’s Labyrinthbut you’ve probably never seen his film The Devil’s Backbone. Guillermo says that Pan’s Labyrinth is the spiritual sequel to The Devil’s Backbone (which I can kind of seen his point but) it’s a far superior film than Pan’s.
The Devil’s Backboneis a ghost story set during the Spanish Civil War. The civil war is a metaphor for what is happening in the film as well. This film is a beautiful tale of children who are lost.
The film is beautifully shot, beautifully acted and beautifuly directed. It’s a quite film that gets under your skin and unnerves you. When I first saw this I had read a lot of hype about it. I’m not a huge fan of ghost story movies, most fail to even garner a scare from me, but this one moved me on an emotional level. It’s sad and haunting, and deeply affecting. It gets into your heart and mind and it lives there. I’ve only seen the film once and I’m still talking about it, so that has to say something for it. Every other film on this list I’ve seen at least a dozen times.
If you thought The Sixth Sense was creepy and had visual cues to watch for, The Devil’s Backbone makes M. Night look like a kid out of college. I can’t talk a lot about the film because it will ruin it for you so I’ll skip out on any more of the chatter and just tell you to go out and rent this today, don’t even rent it, just buy it. As a side note a great double feature night would be The Devil’s Backbone paired with The Orphanage(which was produced by del Toro).
I guess you know by now that I am a Sam Raimi fanboy, so it’s probably no surprise that Raimi’s horror/comedy Army of Darkness is also on my list. From beginning to end this movie is instantly quotable, and if you see me on the street ask me and I’ll quote any line from it. I have it memorized. A couple of years ago, or maybe it was last year The Core along with Marcus Theatres had a midnight showing of this on the big screen and you can believe I was first in line to see this project high and mighty!
So Army of Darkness is really Evil Dead III, but that’s not what they ended up calling it. It’s not really a scary movie at all, it’s pretty much a straight forward slapstick comedy. Think Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein or The Three Stooges meet an army of the dead. There are a ton of references in the movie as well. You’ll notice stuff from Gulliver’s Travels, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Three Stooges, Ray Harryhausen and so much more. Sam really through everything and the kitchen sink into Army of Darkness. The really funny thing about it, it was basically a box office failure and has been re-cut at least four times by Universal to get what they thought was the right movie. I actually saw the theatrical cut first on home video back in the day and still kind of prefer that cut to the Director’s cut which I eventually picked up on DVD. Not so much for the ending, but some of the better lines are cut from the theatrical cut for the director’s cut, including the best line in the whole movie; “Good, bad, I’m the guy with the gun”. Classic.
The movie also stars genre workhorse and all around awesome chin, Bruce Campbell. I had the pleasure of meeting Bruce a few years back on a book tour and well, let’s just say I was less than articulate when I met him!
Army of Darkness is just a ton of fun. It’s pure mindless entertainment for no purpose than to make you laugh for 90 minutes. Get yourself a copy today.
This is the movie that nearly scared me out of horror films for life. I was pretty young when I happened to catch this one with my parents back in the day. People often credit Carpenter for changing their lives with Halloween, but for me it was The Thing. A loose remake of the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, Carpenter’s version pushes the paranoia and gore to new levels with terrifying and sickening effects.
The image of the doctor doing chest compressions and what happens next will forever be stuck in my mind and always available for instant recall. This is another one of those films that is fun to watch in the dead of winter too. All the action takes place at a research outpost in the antarctic. The white vastness along with the isolation is just too much at times.
This is easily my favorite Carpenter film and in my humble opinion his best work to date. While Carpenter has done some great movies, nothing is quite as good or visceral as The Thing. I also don’t think that Kurt Russell has ever given a better performance.
This is truly a terrifying movie that should be watched with the lights on!
By now you’ve figured out that I really like Werewolf movies. So up next is a great werewolf film from across the pond: Dog Soldiers. Written and directed by Neil Marshall, Dog Soldiers basically took the werewolf genre and turned it on it’s ear in 2002 when it was released. I don’t think I actually got around to seeing it until probably 2006 or 2007 after my Netflix addiction was in full swing, but I had caught bits and pieces (pun not intended) of it on SyFyor Sci-Fi or what ever that channel was called back then. What I had seen was brilliant so I finally rented the movie.
What was laid out before me was one of the smartest, most intense horror movie I had seen in years. It simply floored me. When I post the trailer you’ll see how they kind of say it’s like Alien, and it is. Military personnel being forced to deal with an unstoppable and largely unseen force.
Great action. Great acting. Great humor and an extremely smart script kept this sucker flying for me and always guessing what was around the corner. Mr. Marshall really made a huge debut in the horror community with this film and then the two of the one two punch, The Descent which has to be one of the most terrifying films of the last few years. We won’t talk about his latest one, it’s a travesty of epic proportions.
If you are looking for an amazing werewolf movie that will leave you scared and hurting, then rent Dog Soldiers tonight and be prepared to be scared.
This is the box art I have for the VHS of the film Severed Ties. Apparently I’ve stumbled upon something extremely rare in my home video collection. Up next is a look at the German film poster.
I’ve never seen that German poster before and thought I would share it with you all, it’s a completely misguided take on the film itself for no other reason that the whole look of the background. Not once do I remember seeing anything resembling that shot in the whole movie. So any way about the film.
During my heyday in my first few years at college and my discovery of Premier Video’s 5 nights, 5 movies $5 dollar promotion I stumbled across this title. It has a couple of things going for it. The VHS box art was pretty cool, it was presented by Fangoria and it stared genre workhorse and Hammer films actor Oliver Reed. Released straight to home video in 1992 there doesn’t appear to be a wealth of information about this movie out there, at all. Which in all honesty is surprising. It’s a nifty little film that was shot up there in Wisconsin.
In it we have a money obsessed mother and her son who’s scientist father was killed work in his lab trying to discover away to help people who’ve last limbs in accidents (for all my comic book buddies think Dr. Connor). Harrison decides to pick up where his dad’s research left off and then all hell breaks loose. I don’t want to give away too much of the movie just in case you can actually track down a copy of this winner. It’s got tons of great moments and line after line of quotes for any B-Movie film buff.
Harrison escapes to save the girl that he loves and in the meantime meets up with Stripes the street wise hustler that helps Harrison find his way in the underbelly of homeless freaks and geeks inhabiting this world. If you like Peter Jackson’sDead Alive or Stuart Gordon’sRe-Animator than you are going to love Severed Ties. With healthy doses of black humor, gore and straight up blasphemy this film is a ton of fun.
For about 8 years now I’ve been bugging Tony Timponeat Fangoria to release this to DVD, and every year he tells me to expect an announcement shortly. I’ll keep my fingers crossed to finally see this on DVD!
Also I know I have a habit of throwing trailers up here but this one doesn’t have one on YouTube so we are just out of luck this time around!
The Unnamable is the second H.P. Lovecraft adaptation to grace this list here, and folks I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, it’s probably not the best movie ever made or one of the greatest horror film for all time, but I saw this at the right time in my life and I still love watching it today!
You know the story, college jocks take sorority girls to spend the night at a haunted house. Turns out the house isn’t haunted but a monster does live there and it takes the nerd to save the day. This movie is steeped in 80’s nostalgia and has a WONDERFUL performance by Mark Kinsey Stephenson as Randolph Carter(a reoccurring character in the Lovecraft Universe).
I saw this movie on VHS probably around 1988 or 1989 at my buddy Charlie Shirk’s house (we used to go on Nintendo and Horror movie benders back in the day) and well this movie floored me. The monster is truly terrifying and the effects work and gore were really well done. I’m not sure how well it stands up to the standards of today’s effects but believe me, when I saw it it scared the crap out of me.
It’s got a great back story and some real genuine performances. I dig this movie a lot and I’m hoping a few of you might just share my enthusiasm for it as well!
