Entartete Kunst

Hangin' with Mr. Cooper

2011-10-29T20:01:00.000-05:00

Chillin' is my business, and business is lousy! However, I cannot let the season pass without a little celebration, despite many other irons in the fire. And, since all this blog is good for anymore is lists of stuff I like, what will almost certainly be my last post as an unmarried man shall also serve as our annual Halloween hootenanny.

Last winter, I envisioned this to be an insightful, in-depth salute to America's greatest horror rock icon, something equaling my "Weird Al" homage in depth and scope. Instead, you get this.

Alice Cooper was one of my early obsessions when I first delved into the heavier end of rock, and of course my initial attraction was to his eye-blackened, blood-spattered, snake-brandishing, doll-chopping image. I soon came to understand that although the dude simulates getting killed on stage at every concert, only a fistful of Alice's songs are actually creepy and/or menacing. Alice Cooper the band, recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, started life as an acid-soaked garage prog act, and in their prime were only somewhat harsher than The Rolling Stones or The Doors, both obvious influences (and in the latter's case, compatriots). Alice Cooper the singer, born Vincent Furnier, went solo in the mid-'70s and took the theatricality with him, not only in his concerts but also as a TV personality and, most perversely, a sensitive AM radio balladeer. Alice was one hell of a musical chameleon until he settled on commercial metal in the late '80s, which was around the time I got into him.

I have heard every Alice Cooper album except his brand new one, and I'm sure I'll get around to that one soon. Without question, I prefer his first couple of decades of material to the stuff he's been hawking since "Poison." I ain't gonna trash the guy for trying to stay relevant (at least he cares enough to try), and he still puts on a great live show, at least as of a couple of years ago. Still, the latter-day records I've liked the best are the ones that consciously try to evoke the early years.

Therefore, I'm gonna take you on a tour of the most Halloween-y moments of the first half of Alice Cooper's career. We're gonna skip of few albums, and we're gonna linger on some more than others. I hope you enjoy.

1. "Refrigerator Heaven" (Easy Action, 1968) - Here's an accessible slice of the early Alice Cooper, in all their freaky psychedelic glory. This ditty from their second album is narrated by a man who is having himself cryogenically frozen until they find a cure for his cancer. Not pure Halloween horror, but it's kinda morbid, and it starts with some screams. The song was later referenced in Alice's solo classic "Cold Ethyl"... more on that in a bit.

2. "Black Juju" (Love It to Death, 1971) - Now, these sorts of spooky acidhead shenanigans probably scared the crap out of '70s parents. From what is considered by many to be the first "real" AC album, "Juju" was surely made for live performance. Half meandering hippie jam, half haunted house soundtrack, the voodoo drums and funeral organ drones are the perfect backdrop for Alice's howl.

3. "Ballad of Dwight Fry" (Love it to Death) - The title of this ode to mental breakdown is a tribute to the actor Dwight Frye, who played Renfield in Tod Browning's "Dracula" and Fritz in James Whale's "Frankenstein." In a true display of method acting, movie buff Alice recorded the "I gotta get out of here" section while trapped under a pile of folding chairs. In concert, he usually does it wearing a straitjacket.

4. "Dead Babies" (Killer, 1971) - I think this is the first really notorious Alice Cooper song. The lyrics describe a young child who, left to her own devices by neglectful parents, dies after devouring a bottle of pills. Of course, only stupid parents become agitated when a man who performs with a snake wrapped around his neck accuses them of being irresponsible. Cool facts: this album came out only ten months after its immediate predecessor, and both were recorded in Chicago.

5. "Luney Tune" (School's Out, 1972) - Best known for its overplayed title track and ingenious original packaging, School's Out contains a lot of teenage drama, but not a whole lot of darkness. This portrait of paranoid confusion is the closest it gets. I mean, the protagonist kills himself at the end of the song. Otherwise, fans of "West Side Story" might get a kick out of the album's copious references, which prove that these dudes were born entertainers, macabre or not.

6. "I Love the Dead" (Billion Dollar Babies, 1973) - The last great record by the AC group ends with this curious power ballad which, like "Blue Turk" before it and "Cold Ethyl" after it, details the joys of necrophilia. This is the most blatant (and funniest!) of the bunch, with no way to misinterpret its corpse-banging lyrics. I can report that it's a poor karaoke choice, as I sang it a number of years ago, forgetting that after the two marvelous verses, it's mostly repetition of the title.

7. "The Black Widow" (Welcome to My Nightmare, 1975) - The first Alice Cooper solo album came out the year I was born. It's one of his few albums with any sustained "horror" theme, although that doesn't extend throughout. I did a little editing on this track (which, in its lovely sing-song way, extols the praises of a dictator spider), as the CD is sequenced so the Vincent Price intro is at the end of the previous song.

8. "Years Ago" (Welcome to My Nightmare) - This and the following two tracks are the main attraction of the Nightmare album, a mini-opera introducing the troubled character of Steven, who still pops up in Alice's songs from time to time. In this original incarnation, he is either a damaged child or a developmentally halted adult, or maybe both. The joyless carnival accompaniment makes this one of the album's creepiest segments.

9. "Steven" (Welcome to My Nightmare) - Continuing from "Years Ago," the man-child Steven wrestles with accepting an apparent death. The piano part is reminiscent of Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" (popularized by "The Exorcist"), while the hard rock outburst of the chorus crushes in context, its crunch effectively contrasting the lullaby verses.

10. "The Awakening" (Welcome to My Nightmare) - The trilogy closes with this brief coda, wherein Steven wakes up to a missing wife and bloody hands. My take on the whole Nightmare/Steven saga is that he has a split personality and, while he believed he was dreaming, actually killed his real-life wife. To me, this morbid little saga is so memorable because of the ambiguity.

11. "Go to Hell" (Alice Cooper Goes to Hell, 1976) - Here's another one that's not explicitly Halloween-y, but does show off the man's wicked side. The lyrics are sung from the perspective of Alice Cooper haters, who list off the stuff he does that they don't like and thereby condemn him to eternal torment. My perfunctory research has revealed that the gift theoretically mailed to Aunt Jane is a "leper," not a "leopard," sadly ruining my longtime mental image.

12. "Inmates (We're All Crazy)" (From the Inside, 1978) - Inspired by a stint in an asylum to treat his then-raging alcoholism, From the Inside probably isn't most Alice Cooper fans' favorite album, but it's mine, kicking off a string of much-hated, poorly selling recordings that I personally treasure. It's the pinnacle of his late '70s diversity, a weird mix of funky disco-era rock, ultra-depressing AM radio ballads and treacly Broadway bombast. A now-famous adaptation was released by Marvel Comics, but it's a shame the music isn't better remembered.

13. "Nuclear Infected" (Flush the Fashion, 1980) - Although it swings with a '50s rock vibe, from the Reagan-era nuclear theme to the dated keyboards, this number from the dawn of Alice's controversial new wave period is totally '80s. Flush is one of the albums least loved by casual Alice fans, but for the rest of us, it's tons of fun to hear him in another setting.
14. "Skeletons in the Closet" (Special Forces, 1981) - More strangeness from the skinny tie era, Forces carried a heavy military theme, as Alice was supposedly quite fond of guns at the time. At any rate, this is a rare atmospheric track on what is otherwise the toughest, meanest solo set Alice released prior to his metal days. Its cheesy novelty feeling ("Hey, you're Alice Cooper, the horror guy, you should sing about skeletons!") only adds to its charm.

15. "Tag, You're It" (Zipper Catches Skin, 1982) - The much-derided Zipper is the first of two albums Alice says he doesn't remember recording, and that's a shame. It's perhaps his strangest and silliest record, with jaunty songs about Zorro, Scrooge, man-eating aliens and life-saving undead pets. The bizarre second-person lyrical approach is like someone pitching a ripoff of Carpenter's "Halloween" (complete with knitting needle) to an actress, and was the American b-side of the great single "I Am the Future," the theme song for the teen-punk trash classic "Class of 1984."

16. "Former Lee Warmer" (DaDa, 1983) - Here's one of my favorite AC songs, a gothic, piano-driven ode to a zombie(?) brother that's among the most evocative tunes in his catalog. Despite the helpful hand of producer Bob Ezrin and some sterling melodies, DaDa is almost choked by its murky and dreary atmosphere, perhaps a reflection of the singer's mind at the time (he was just about to kick the bottle for good). It's still a cool and unique record, Alice's last before rebounding as a pop metal boogeyman.

17. "See Me in the Mirror" ("Monster Dog," 1984) - In a recent issue of Fangoria, Alice spoke about his only starring feature film role, stating that he deliberately chose to do a Z-grade Euro monster movie because it was the kind of thing he liked to rent. Director Claudio Fragasso ("Troll 2," "Zombi 4: After Death") cast him as a rock star/werewolf and dubbed all his dialogue because the Italians never shot with synch sound. You only hear his real voice during two songs, including this haunting ditty, which are presented as music videos in the film and were never commercially released until the box set The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper in 1999.

18. "Teenage Frankenstein" (Constrictor, 1986) - And here, after years of idiot critics calling his music heavy metal, Alice actually made a metal record. Granted, it's candy-coated pop metal with ridiculous lyrics, but it put him back in the spotlight. I heard this song when I was 11 years old on a cool Chicago station that played heavy metal but was nearly impossible to tune in at my suburban house, and I said, "If that's what Alice Cooper sounds like, I like him." I got my mom to buy me Constrictor at Venture shortly afterward, and was surprised to find on it a song that seemed to be about the then-recent Rodney Dangerfield vehicle "Back to School."

19. "Gail" (Raise Your Fist and Yell, 1987) - Alice continued down the pop metal road with the considerably darker Fist, the second side of which is pure bloody horror lyrically, correcting the major mistake of Constrictor (commercial radio aspirations, which would unfortunately dominate his next few records). This is one of my favorites, bringing back the "Steven" vibe with some truly morbid lyrics.

20. "Roses on White Lace" (Raise Your Fist and Yell) - This neo-thrasher is by far the heaviest song Alice has ever put on a record, even considering his late-'90s aggro days. The lyrics are uncharacteristically graphic, a fitting capper to an album-side-length streak of catchy, crunchy Grand Guignol songs about evil, anger and messy murder. Believe it or not, the bassist on this sickie was Kip fucking Winger. And if you are some young snot-nosed deathcore tween who thinks this is not heavy enough, there's always the Arsis cover.

HALL OF FAME, BITCHES! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

My favorite albums of 2009 and 2010

2011-06-19T22:44:00.003-05:00

The time to unveil the Year In Music edition for 2009 and 2010 has obviously arrived. Obviously.

I don't want to belabor this. Of course, I must iterate that these are my favorite full-length albums released during the past two years. I'm not saying they're the best, because I couldn't possibly have heard every album that came out in order to say so. My rule is to never trust anyone who uses the adjective "best" when describing their year-summary music lists (nor anyone who finishes theirs in time for an early December deadline). There are huge gaps in everyone's musical diet, especially if you only listen to one radio station or one type of music. Even the most eclectic listeners must ignore stuff that they think won't interest them in order to spend time with stuff that they think will. I do it, you do it, there's nothing wrong with it. But we can't honestly use "best," which implies not only judgment, but sweeping finality. I really enjoyed, and still enjoy, each of these. You might, you might not. I hope you at least enjoy reading this little trip back in time.

2009

1. Katatonia, Night Is the New Day (Peaceville)
The fourth — and evidently last — album by Katatonia's longest-running lineup is the subtlest set of tracks my favorite current band has released to date. Sorta gothic, sorta progressive, sorta metal, sorta arena indie rock, the Swedes remain difficult to adequately describe (in no way, as some may claim, a "Tool clone"). Night crushes and heaves one moment, twinkles and soothes the next. The dynamics between loud and soft are pushed to their furthest extremes within the wide confines of the Katatonia sound, now abetted by tasteful synths and electronic embellishment by recent collaborator Frank Default. All the extremes of style and emotion are expertly centered by the quintet, shimmering leads and undulating rhythms anchored by Jonas Renkse's aching, supremely confident vocals. I have even come to terms with "Idle Blood," the beautiful ballad which I hope is a one-time-only sound-alike tribute to Katatonia's buddies in Opeth. This album sounds exactly the way 2009 felt to me... nervous, dejected, grasping, pensive, hopeful, and, at the last second, complete.
"The Longest Year" (official music video)

2. Týr, By the Light of the Northern Star (Napalm)
A pity about the lousy cover art (is he crying because he broke the cross?), as this is the sound of a great cult band reaching a higher echelon. Týr hails from the Faroe Islands, and their singular style blends the intricate rhythms of Faroese folk songs into bright, energized heavy metal. Here, they decided to streamline their fussy sound into something more immediate, starting with amazing opener "Hold the Heathen Hammer High," a barnstormer bursting with ridiculous fist-pumping lyrics and a boisterous high-speed chorus that rivals the greatest of old school German metal beerhall sing-alongs. Sure, the old Týr quirkiness shows up here and there during the first half, but the largely English-sung bulk rejects the sprawling epics toward which the quartet had been drifting, single-mindedly peppered with code words such as "pagan," "heathen" and "sword." Týr remains adept enough to thunder and soar through what could have been a corny LARP soundtrack, keening down from the eternal sky like strange Scandinavian gods.
"Hold the Heathen Hammer High" (official music video)

3. Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino)
Even though it was practically illegal to not have this on a "Best of 2009" list, I appreciate the mass appeal of this bunch's recent work. Merriweather is a bright, happy-sounding jumble of sounds and textures that feels smart in its esoteric construction, but also just plain feels good. It's head music you can feel in your guts. What hits first and foremost is the thick texture, heavy and dense as a swamp, frequently exploding into glittery alien pop psychedelia. There's so much shit going on at any given time that it's difficult to tell which instrument is which, what's sampled and what's organic. The singles glow with the sweaty, vibrant, mantra-like energy of dance music, while the cooldowns simmer and float wistfully. Everything is soaked in effects, but what you make out through the haze focuses on the astonishingly relatable subjects of love, family and home. And therein is the true key to Animal Collective's triumph: making the mundane sound fantastic, or at least encouraging a listener to appreciate the daily beauty they might otherwise take for granted. And if you don't like it, you can just stare at the cover art for a while.
"Summertime Clothes" (official music video)

4. Mastodon, Crack the Skye (Reprise)
Looking back at the '00s, Mastodon obviously stands among the most important and beloved metal bands of their formative time. When their fourth album rolled out at the end of the decade, the quartet was where Metallica had been two decades prior: a rare serious metal band that everyone from graying biker dudes to teen punker chicks to college rock geeks might agree upon. Thus, Crack the Skye is in essence Mastodon's ...And Justice for All, a mature, confident, hermetically sealed magnum opus polished with accessible ass-kicking. There are memorable choruses in the sing-along — rather than shout-along — vein, the harsher vocals and youthful glimpses of grindcore now completely absent. In their place are a proggy fluidity, a wind-hewn smoothness that nods to the album's "air" theme (surely making The Mars Volta jealous, the concept album's plot relates an astral-traveling paraplegic's Devil-battling adventures with Rasputin). Ambition and acceptance have ruined many a once-great metal band (see: Metallica), but Skye gives me enormous confidence in Mastodon.
"Divinations" (official music video)

5. Woods of Ypres, Woods 4: The Green Album (Practical Art)
David Gold makes metal for those of us who live in the real world. The incredibly personal nature of his lyrics and themes is unfortunately not prevalent in a genre of music that is founded in raw emotion, and this is only one reason Gold's Woods of Ypres remains a special band. On this latest (recently re-released by Earache Records), the music leans toward the doom/goth side of the eclectic Woods sound, the sad, loping melodies showing an obvious love for the sullen lushness of sardonic "green" gloomsters Type O Negative (I hope Peter Steele heard this before he passed away). "Green" also signifies the relatable story of renewal which forms the backbone of Gold's musical diary of leaving his Canadian homeland for a teaching stint in South Korea. As our narrator enters, his relationship and home are torn from him, and he descends into despair. He takes a chance when offered a fresh start in a new environment, but he has carried the weight of the past with him. After much struggle, catharsis and realization, he finds the resolve within to move on. With the first pressing of the self-released CD, Gold includes a copy of Slaughter of the Seoul, the decent album he recorded with death/thrash metal act Necramyth during his time overseas. Because Slaughter's creation was part of Gold's life, the result is part of Woods 4, a sincere personal touch that typifies how this outfit operates.
"I Was Buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery" (official music video)

6. Muse, The Resistance (Warner Bros.)
It feels good to genuinely enjoy a band that's as popular as Muse is. There's something warm in the communal bonding of a stadium rock sensation that I just don't get from all the little specialty acts with which I spend more time. But as we all know, modern megastars usually blow goat fetuses, so it's usually safer to keep one's ears underground. In defiance, Matt Bellamy and his gang write strong hooks and lyrics with imaginative arrangements. Muse bothers to record dynamic albums meant to be listened to in full sequence, offering enough convincing dramatics to justify their hockey barn-packing status. The Resistance is clearly the work of a self-aware stadium rock sensation, one that gorges and fortifies itself on those thousands of skyward-thrust lighters and cell phones and amplifies the energy back as The People's Music. Yeah, it's arted up with solo piano excursions here and there, but it still evokes the usual Muse hodge-podge of prime U2, Depeche Mode and Queen, bands that once knew how to artfully move many souls at once. Loudly and fervently exhorting us to fight vague dystopian oppressions with love and togetherness and all that junk, the Brits gleam and yearn exactly where they should, building a perfect machine with a human heart.
"Uprising" (official music video)

Tags: 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, More VMA Video

7. Madder Mortem, Eight Ways (Peaceville)
Too much "progressive metal" is as stodgy as any old radio pop, too set in its ways to explore anything but accepted modes of furrow-browed expression. Although they're not reinventing anything, Norway's Madder Mortem deserves to be mentioned alongside better-known soulmates like Katatonia and Nevermore, as they are another fussy, stormy unit which excels at doing things its own way. This is mostly due to the incomparable Agnete Kirkevaag, whose vocals are a commanding weapon which can turn quickly from seductive serenity to blood-freezing ferocity. This keeps with her bandmates' subterranean palette, a cerebral, anxious, gothic stew which submerges chunky, downtuned metal in a velvety tub of late-night jazz. Ways is the most impressive album Madder Mortem has unleashed yet, diverse and even quite accessible in places, while striving to try new settings and applications for the band's established strengths. As in the past, the push/pull of disparate elements can be jarring, but it's exciting to hear this band (especially that amazing voice) teetering between meltdown and shutdown. There's always a latent lullaby or a churning maelstrom of exotic doom in wait, and throughout Ways remains dark and raw, yet beguiling and impeccably crafted.
"Where Dream & Day Collide" (official music video)

8. Mr. Lif, I Heard It Today (Bloodbot Tactical Enterprises)
As the recession, bank and housing crises dominated, 2009 was a year fraught with pessimism and fear for a lot of non-rich Americans. The third album by the celebrated Boston MC gets my vote for the best musical encapsulation of this moment, the one which will be most worth revisiting years from now. Mr. Lif's delivery is as ever focused on substance over style, although his laser-sharp rhymes wouldn't sound half as convincing without his sly coffeehouse drone. Woven together into an industrial-strength update of the dense realm the Bomb Squad built on Public Enemy's classics, the mesmerizing beats by the likes of Edan, Headnotic, Batsauce and Willie Evans Jr. are vital components of Lif's political-meets-personal work. Guest spots are kept to a lean minimum, and the contributors (particularly a perfectly icy Bahamadia on "Breathe") add flavor without sucking the focus from the star. Lif remains committed to the soul of socially concerned rap, curiously nestling a police brutality skit that could have been on an early '90s Ice Cube disc among screeds of post-Obama ambivalence and breakdowns of the mortgage fallout. And even toward the end of the album, when heartfelt rays of kindness and kinship seep into the songs, that vibrant mix envelops the listener like a pulsing glove.
"The Sun" (official music video)

9. Amorphis, Skyforger (Nuclear Blast)
It's been a long journey back to the height of excellence for Amorphis, who remain Finland's most singular contribution to metal music. In the '90s, they were a decent melodic death metal band who stumbled into the hidden crossroads between romantic national folklore and expansive '70s psychedelia, but soon soured the recipe by gradually toning down their heavier tendencies. Although to my ears they never lost the plot completely, the entrance of versatile vocalist Tomi Joutsen in 2005 was surely the catalyst for Amorphis to once again realize their powerful potential. Two very good records later, the seemingly effortless songwriting and performances on Skyforger is that realization. Fluid guitar (particularly Esa Holopainen's molten leads) and spacy keyboards churn out winsome traditional melodies, adding grandiose textures to glistening goth-pop jams and imposing Eurometal monoliths alike. Yet dreadlocked Joutsen is the glue, a mythic marvel who can pull off tenderness and wounded melancholy as capably as he can bravado and earth-quaking roars. He is clearly the best frontman this band has ever had, and his performance catapults each already vital song into an untouchable skyward realm.
"Silver Bride" (official music video)

10. The Appleseed Cast, Sagarmatha (Vagrant/The Militia Group)
I lack the sweeping knowledge of the post-rock landscape which would allow me to ascertain this album's quality in relation to everything else out there. Regardless, I know that The Appleseed Cast's seventh album creates an incredible realm in which to get lost. Before Sagarmatha, I had previously only heard the Kansas quintet's two most recent discs, which were by all accounts finessed fusions of the band's formative old-school emo (like, emotional post-hardcore, not goth costumed pop-punk) and the atmospheric instrumental tendencies of their acclaimed two-disc Low Level Owl saga. Drifting in on a shimmering pillow of chiming chords and pulsing rhythm, it's only after a six minute journey through a sun-dappled landscape, just as the pace quickens like a jet taking off, that Chris Crisci's voice creeps in to close out the last few minutes of the opener. The Appleseed Cast balances that mysterious ebb and flow, at times abruptly shifting into earthen rock that magically carries over the bleary-eyed bliss. Craftily, the giant guitar rock segments never truly disrupt the flow, rather providing intrigue in a smooth, addictive ride, a road trip with perfect weather, gorgeous scenery and no traffic.
"South Col" (live Feb. 12, 2009 at The Glass House, Pomona, CA)

15 HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Antony and the Johnsons, The Crying Light (Secretly Canadian)
Between the Buried and Me, The Great Misdirect (Victory)
Candlemass, Death Magic Doom (Nuclear Blast)
The Chasm, Farseeing the Paranormal Abysm (Lux Inframundis)
The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love (Capitol)
Dethklok, Dethalbum II (Williams Street)
Eels, Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire (EWorks/Vagrant)
Finsterforst, ...Zum Tode Hin (Einheit)
HORSE the band, Desperate Living (Vagrant)
Hypocrisy, A Taste of Extreme Divinity (Nuclear Blast)
Mos Def, The Ecstatic (Downtown)
Samael, Above (Nuclear Blast)
Sun of the Blind, Skullreader (Avantgarde)
We Were Promised Jetpacks, These Four Walls (FatCat)
Zombi, Spirit Animal (Relapse)

2010

1. Blind Guardian, At the Edge of Time (Nuclear Blast)
I've lazily described Blind Guardian to the uninitiated as "Queen on steroids," and Time, my second-favorite current band's ninth album, does not make me a liar, being their biggest sounding, most diverse and dramatic set to date. The Germans' main innovations this time are found in the bookends, a pair of grandiose epics that seamlessly integrate an orchestra (shockingly, a first). In between, it effectively tours all the territories BG has traversed during their career, from the oddly catchy prog-pop of recent years to the hairpin turn speed metal sing-alongs that they once seemed content to leave behind in the last millennium. Then there are the ballads, two of the best they've ever done, sumptuous medieval jobs that finally allow drummer/bagpiper/flutist Frederik Ehmke to flex folky in a manner befitting the bonfires of the gods. All of this gleams with brilliant melody, teems with engaging hooks and reams with Wagnerian bombast. Inspired by the likes of George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan and the "Sacred" RPGs, the lyrics distill the raw emotion of nerdy fantasy, their world-weary wizards and wild-eyed warriors always asking the Big Questions amidst the magickal melees. There is a reason Blind Guardian's music is called "power metal": it obliterates prosaic notions of modesty or practicality, instead filling the listener with celestial energy, passion and, yes, power.
"A Voice in the Dark" (official music video)

2. Eels, End Times/Tomorrow Morning (EWorks/Vagrant)
I don't care if it's cheating to have these two albums in one slot. These companions are perfect analogs for the course of my year. Along with 2009's Hombre Lobo, a once-dismissed record I have come to love, the two albums Eels released during 2010 make up a conceptual trilogy about affairs of the heart. As the year dawned, End Times emerged as an early favorite with its understated, dejected bleakness and claustrophobic beauty, its garage folk melodies simple and spare. Reflecting the painful dissolution of Mark Everett Horton's marriage, it allows for little frivolity, and even less in the way of hope. By the end of summer, Morning appeared, offering a dreamier, more fertile and buoyant look at new beginnings. The rich arrangements are wide open, as if freshly awoken to life's surprises, complimenting the confident lyrics. I was already devoted to E's bare-it-all eclecticism, yet the way these discs coincided with my moods upon their respective release cemented a special place for them in my heart, slotting the whole trilogy just below the epochal Blinking Lights and Other Revelations. Sure, if you like this outfit, or any sort of honest, occasionally rootsy rock with easy hooks and a restless spirit, you will like these albums. If you had the kind of 2010 that I had, you will wonder if E was spying on you.
"Unhinged" (official music video)

3. Sigh, Scenes from Hell (The End)
Japan's — shit, the world's — nuttiest metal band arrives with the whacked-out, visionary album they should have given us years ago. The first Eastern band to make a splash in the black metal scene way back when, Sigh has since birth consistently taken risks and gleefully scorned underground metal convention. Their eighth full-length suite introduces frontman Mirai Kawashima's saxophone-playing, bondage-clad girlfriend Dr. Mikannibal to the recording lineup, which foreshadows the heavy presence of woodwinds (as well as brass and strings) on Scenes. The mad maestros also incorporate a hearty selection of vintage keyboard tones and psychedelic sound effects, restoring the essential Sigh freak factor that was missing on 1997's relatively normal Hangman's Hymns. The material otherwise is an extension of its predecessor's fusion of high-octane German thrash riffs and symphonic black metal pomp. However, it's livelier and much more fun. Sometimes it sounds like ska-thrash, sometimes like feral longhairs mocking vintage cartoon music, sometimes like gnarly doom metal performed by a zombie cabaret act. The songs themselves pull together tightly despite their frequent detours and delightfully distracting ornamentation. And, damn, that freaky cover art!
"The Soul Grave" (live June 18, 2010 at Hellfest Open Air, Clisson, France)

4. Agalloch, Marrow of the Spirit (Profound Lore)
A decade ago, Agalloch was just a promising little cult band from Oregon who typified the quality roster at The End, which was at the time America's most consistent, forward-thinking niche metal label. Today, they receive positive coverage from snobby yuppie media like Pitchfork and NPR, and debuted their fourth LP for Profound Lore, currently America's most consistent, forward-thinking niche metal label. Agalloch's sudden hipness is most shocking because on the surface, little has thankfully changed. Their organic blend of black/death/goth/doom remains steeped in the classic Opeth/Katatonia/Ulver template of sprawling, hypnotic, tragic melody, and they continue to enrich it with textures from neo-folk, post-rock and experimental noise. Actually, Marrow is the harshest Agalloch album yet due to its charred-earth analog recording and new member Aesop Dekker, who offers a more visceral, punishing drum performance than this outfit has ever employed. The heavier approach is perfectly integrated with the signature high-pitched leads, whispery rasps and elemental pagan atmosphere. With Nevermore gone (and their final disc a bit lacking), Agalloch has finally slid into their spot as my favorite American metal band, and personally, I'm glad that people finally know who these shadowy giants are.
"Into the Painted Grey" (live December 17, 2010 at Berbati's Pan, Portland, OR)

5. Fang Island, Fang Island (Sargent House)
Fang Island's self-titled debut might begin and end with manipulated static and feedback, but it sure sounds like firecrackers and crickets. The disc appropriately evokes an idyllic summer evening even before the fade-in of a mini-symphony in buzzing harmonic guitars, which pauses for a few moments of ecclesiastical crooning, then explodes into upbeat rawk gushing with bright guitar doodles and hyper, loose-limbed rhythm contortions. The through-line is enthusiasm, which sets the youngsters apart from their sorta-math-metal indie forebears, who were always too concerned with looking cool to delve this deeply into overblown joy. The funny thing is that I had listened to this glorious blue raspberry brainfreeze a number of times before I realized that it is not largely composed of instrumentals. Somehow, the sweaty, colorful interplay of the quintet's instruments had almost completely blocked out their commingled voices as it flooded my skull with sugar prog overload. The first breather doesn't come until twenty minutes in, when the crescendo of "Davey Crockett" signals the final stretch of the mercifully brief set. Technical playing, towering melodies, everybody singing at once... Fang Island is perhaps the only indie rock album that all power metal fans should hear before they die.
"Careful Crossers" (official music video)

6. Big Boi, Sir Lucius Leftfoot... The Son of Chico Dusty (Def Jam)
Ever since OutKast's epochal double solo album Speakerboxx/The Love Below, I've gone back and forth about whose disc is better. I will admit that Andre "3000" Benjamin's set, with its smoky jazz and falsetto funk tangents, seemed far more innovative to me back in 2003. These days, though, I'm leaning toward Antwon "Big Boi" Patton's half, which is more easily identifiable as a big-budget rap record, but also maintains a more consistent momentum without skimping on eclectic flavors. In this, Sir Lucius Leftfoot can be seen as a sequel to Speakerboxx. Never sitting still for too long, Patton's lyrics range from boastful and horny to abstract and vaguely political, always in command as he plays with rhyme schemes. Lyrics also reveal that a number of the tracks were gestating or finished years before release. In fact, three singles once intended for the album hit the public so long before the album that it didn't make sense to include them on it. (That, and OutKast's record company kept Benjamin's voice off the finished product.) Still, nearly every track is peppered with diverse guests, as pop rappers T.I. and Gucci Mane, unique newcomers Janelle Monáe and Yelawolf and wildcards George Clinton and Jamie Foxx drop by the party. The host's incisive mic skills, rhyming acumen and self-assured personality make Lucius a slicker, funkier, catchier alternative to
hip-hop of both the stupid radio and stagnant underground varieties.
"Shutterbugg" (feat. Cutty) (official music video)

7. Anathema, We're Here Because We're Here (Kscope)
After a six-year wait for Anathema's eighth album, it was certain that this forever-evolving outfit would sound a bit different this time. This is their fourth album in a row with some sort of eternal landscape depicted in the cover art, and the brightly-lit, wide-open image that adorns We're Here reflects the songs within. Now primarily comprised of siblings from two British families, Anathema stays true to their emotionally nude legacy, only instead of coping with loss, fear and inner turmoil, they have discovered strength in love and perseverance. Thankfully, the surges of joy remain overwhelming torrents in the best Anathema tradition, the Cavanagh boys wringing those primordial guitars for every last drop of feeling. The usual Britrock influences (Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Radiohead) still linger in the songs, but the gang has obviously ingested more post-rock in recent times, evolving textures and volumes with deliberate care. Even a stab at Coldplay mass appeal in the skyward soother "Dreaming Light" ends up an agreeably romantic detour. The band released early versions of three of these songs online years ago, and a few others have been aired at live shows for a while, the compositions now lovingly massaged and confidently perfected. The only nervousness to be found is rooted in the delirious rush of leaping into the unknown.
"Thin Air" (live May 7, 2010 at Maçka Küçükçiftlik Park, Istanbul, Turkey)

8. Enslaved, Axioma Ethica Odini (Nuclear Blast)
I should have known not to worry about 2008's Vertebrae. After a decade and a half of introspective, explorative, risk-taking pagan black metal, the previous Enslaved album was curiously inert, not dull so much as unchallenging in its harshed-up Pink Floyd variations. Of course, it was their biggest success to date, as mainstream metal critics and audiences finally had an easy-to-grasp Enslaved album to praise. Coupled with a move to a higher-profile record label, I prepared to watch one of my favorite bands spoiled by the lure of populism. But Enslaved are too wise, and have never recorded the same album twice. Axioma Ethica Odini retains the natural flow of Vertebrae, an admittedly more cohesive album than the few that came before it. However, there is greater individuation among songs, as well as more energy and excitement, a balance of craggy peaks and verdant valleys they haven't achieved in some time. In some aspects, the venerable Vikings' latest sounds like your regular progressive metal band, particularly the spacy textures, the earthy groove found in the mellower sections and keyboardist Herbrand Larsen's most confident and dramatic clean vocal performance to date. That's OK, because prog metal is at heart what Enslaved plays. Yet they have always been more than just prog, black, experimental, whatever, and, after three albums, this Enslaved lineup finally captured that intangible ingenuity here.
"Ethica Odini" (official music video)

9. Menomena, Mines (City Slang)
A great pop band with an sophisticated sense of experimentation, Menomena greatly impressed me and many others with their 2007 set entitled Friend and Foe. Theirs is definitely a signature sound, frequently featuring a simmering smear of twinkling guitars, powerhouse rhythms that were literally decided by a machine, occasional horn and/or keyboard support and a lead vocalist in each member of the trio. This concoction is surely some sort of indie rock, but there are also strong whiffs of prog, jazz, ambient and jam band approaches, so taking any given track out of album context gives a different impression of Menomena's music. Mines gives you breezy pop, big dumb blazing rock, sweetly rendered lullabies and burbling funkiness all for the price of one admission. The songs crackle with creativity, and maybe even get a little too weird at times, but that's forgiven due to the earnest, messy, artsy fun this band engenders. Now that co-founder Brent Knopf has left Menomena, I sincerely hope that the synergy they've cultivated thus far will not be compromised.
"Five Little Rooms" (live July 28, 2010 at KEXP studio, Seattle, WA)

10. Ihsahn, After (Candlelight)
At one early-career juncture, Norwegian black metal institution Emperor was on a forced hiatus, unable to complete the follow-up to their venerated debut because 75% of the lineup was in jail for crimes ranging from church burning to murder. Vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Ihsahn was the sole exception, and to this day remains the only ex-Emperor member who seems most occupied with evolving his musicianship. Looking back at the final Emperor material, various projects with his wife and his solo career thus far, he's clearly drifted away from that fabled black metal wall of sound, opting for a progressive, at times avant-garde, approach. After, Ihsahn's third solo disc, is completely in line with that adventurous, intelligent spirit, introducing a post-metal flavor that is new to his arsenal, along with the surprising integration of saxophone by Shining frontman Jørgen Munkeby. Barring the manic, fun twists of "A Grave Inversed," the songs mostly hover between contemplative prog majesty and massive, dejected doom. They are at once accessible and unbearably weighty, comfortable and unfamiliar, cerebral and mired in human turmoil. Emotions reverberate throughout these wide-open corridors, which Ihsahn obviously sculpted in fervent reflection. Despite the winding path he's walked, the man still cares deeply about his music and its effect on a listener, which is more than you can say about many of his peers.
"On the Shores" (live April 2, 2010 at Inferno Festival, Oslo, Norway)

15 HONORABLE MENTIONS:
65daysofstatic, We Were Exploding Anyway (Hassle)
Arcade Fire, The Suburbs (Merge)
Barren Earth, Curse of the Red River (Peaceville)
Das Racist, Shut Up, Dude (Mishka/Greedhead)
Elvenking, Red Silent Tides (AFM)
Gogol Bordello, Trans-Continental Hustle (Dmz/Columbia)
Gorillaz, Plastic Beach (Virgin)
Helloween, 7 Sinners (The End/Sony)
Interpol, Interpol (Matador)
Mike Patton, Mondo Cane (Ipecac)
Murder By Death, Good Morning, Magpie (Vagrant)
Nachtmystium, Addicts: Black Meddle Part II (Century Media)
Orphaned Land, The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR (Century Media)
Overkill, Ironbound (Nuclear Blast)
Slough Feg, The Animal Spirits (Profound Lore)

Bring out the chimp

2011-06-19T03:03:00.012-05:00

Awright, this time I'll apologize, but only to myself. I have been avoiding my once-obsessed-over blog to attend to many other things. It's not that I don't love writing anymore. Since I was a little boy, it's always come natural to me as a rewarding passtime. Hell, I used to gleefully get paid to do it, plus I went out almost every night of the week, and I still devoted plenty of free time to this poor, neglected space. I find other stuff to do with my time these days. But I still love ya, Entartete Kunst.

Therefore, I am now enjoying one indulgent weekend of writing-muscle exercise. My beloved betrothed is currently away at a venerable writer's conference, hopefully digging deep into her own wordsmithing craft. While I'm on my own, I'm going to deliver some long-delayed content that's been clogging my brain. Next, and very soon, I'll detail my 20 favorite albums of 2009 and 2010. Right now, I'll revive a grand old summer ritual in which I determine the worst possible film I can think of, obtain it in a cost-friendly manner, then watch and write about it.

I traditionally go for a family movie because, at their worst, these are the most shoddily created and the most painful to complete. An irritating star usually helps a film's chances for consideration. For added face-grabbing mirth, wacky animals are invariably involved. You may fondly remember my run-ins with "Zeus and Roxanne" and "Monkey Trouble," or the fateful summer I endured "K-9" along with its excruciating sequels, "K-911" and "K-9: P.I." I've long quaked in fear of this year's awful film, combining all of the above elements with a sports theme. Ladies, gents, in-betweens, courtesy of NetFlix's handy "Watch Instantly" service, I give you... "Ed."

"Ed"
(1996)

It was March of 1996, and I was miserable. It had been a pitiless, gray winter in Chicago. I was slogging through my junior year of college in a daze, having just been rather cruelly dumped by some dame I had wrongly believed was the love of my life. Because my unheated bedroom's window had a hole in it, I was sleeping on a living room couch in the decrepit Lincoln Park apartment that I was renting with three other gentlemen. Our landlord was some sort of local folk music legend, as well as a giant, ZZ Top-bearded loose cannon who would rather bring us more and more free couches than see that the place was inhabitably heated. My grandfather passed away. And this fucking movie came out.

To me, it looked like the worst thing ever. First of all, its star was Matt LeBlanc, best known for his role on TV's "Friends," a show I detested so much that it's still tough for me to enjoy anything containing any of its six main actors. LeBlanc, however, is the worst of these cretins. When "Friends" premiered, his casting was my first problem with it. I had been thoroughly infuriated by him on the short-lived "Married... With Children" spinoff "Top of the Heap," a thankfully forgotten sitcom which also introduced me to the ear-splitting terror of Joey Lauren Adams.

Written by the creator of both of "The Sandlot" features (there are two), "Ed" is about baseball, which is not a draw for me. I feel about sports the way most people feel about opera: I range from indifferent to hostile, depending on how in my face it is. I can appreciate the dedication and skill it takes to perform well in that realm, but the result just turns me off. There are some good examples of entertainment using a sport as a backdrop ("BASEketball," "Shaolin Soccer," "Eastbound and Down"), but it is usually tired bullshit about the redemptive power of teamwork. This is especially true in the milieu of kids-and-animals-playing-sports-together films pioneered by Keystone Entertainment, creators of the "Air Bud" and "MVP: Most Valuable Primate" franchises. Those are the most obvious inspiration for "Ed," the only feature by TV director Bill Couturié, who one-upped Keystone by casting a human as the title chimp. No, I don't mean LeBlanc.

LeBlanc squints and mugs and winces his way through the film as Jack "Deuce" Cooper, a bland hayseed who wears too much denim and, before securing a spot on the minor league Santa Rosa Rockets, admits that his prodigious pitching had only been witnessed by his mother. His nickname is surprisingly not meant to indicate that he is a festering turd, rather that he prefers throwing curveballs, which the film informed me are signaled by catchers with two fingers spread into a V pointing downward. "Coop," as most of the characters call "Deuce," is established as an animal lover, one who sleeps with his dog, faithfully milks the family cows (he turns on the milking machine by throwing a baseball at it) and objects when his mom serves Wilbur, his favorite pig, for breakfast. Yet, this big softie is instantly rattled by the chimp that attacks him when he picks him up from the bus station. Granted, he went there assuming it was a new player, not... whatever Ed is.

From our first glimpse of his Hawaiian-shirted frame, made more menacing by a whimsical flute on the soundtrack, it is very clear that Ed is not a real chimp. The credits clarify that he was played by two different people in a monkey suit bearing animatronic embellishments, while his vocalizations and other noises were made by a third person. He is unsettlingly lifelike at times, mostly when he is not ambulatory, because try as they might, the actors only approach an uncanny simian countenance. Although manager Chubb (reliably crusty coot Jack Warden) sends Coop to pick him up, it's not really made clear where Ed came from, who summoned him to the team or even why he was summoned. It's offhandedly mentioned once that he's the new mascot, although what does a chimp have to do with rockets? Naturally, Chubb puts him in a game as a substitute third baseman after he shows off his amazing fielding skills during practice, throwing a ball so hard it burns a hole through a player's glove.

Along with the prodigious primate, the team is comprised of one-note cartoons. There's the Aryan asshole pitcher who becomes Coop's sneering detractor and rival. There's the obnoxiously dumb guy who thinks Ed is Curious George and beseeches Coop to respect a superstitious horseshoe. There's the cheesy nice guy who's obviously going to have something bad happen to him, in this case an eventually-sacked sucker played by Jim "Jesus Christ" Caviezel. There's the Mexican pitcher who prefaces his exotic Spanish phasing ("Mi casa, su casa") with, "As we say back home..." These stereotypes have no problem with a chimp being placed on the roster because not only is he good, he wackily pulls the toupee off Kirby, the scheming son of the team's owner. Furthermore, Ed becomes a league fixture because the first time Chubb brings him out, a black umpire detects racism in the objections of the other team's coach and gives an indignant speech extolling the chimp's right to play. This circumstantial decision is never contested by another team or authority. When Ed makes an unassisted triple play during his first inning and then is walked because his strike zone is so small, Kirby literally gets dollar signs in his eyes.

In a questionable exercise of coachly authority, Chubb forces Coop to let the chimp crash at his apartment. This is largely because Coop blows goats on the field, although when he's not playing in a game he can pitch baseballs like a really good baseball pitcher. He chokes hard during his very first game, which had to hurt more because the game was televised (as I'm sure most minor league games were during the '90s), complete with taunts by a broadcast commentator played by Jim O'Heir, currently seen as office punching bag Jerry on "Parks and Recreation." Coop gets all bent out of shape about his slump, practicing too hard and refusing to become distracted by dating his bland but interested neighbor Lydia, whose precocious daughter Liz becomes instant BFFs with Ed. He never lets his own shortcomings become the fuel for his dislike of Ed, though, even if the chimp is a way better player and becomes an instant sensation, appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Teen Beat. There are so many other reasons to be pissed at this hideous manmonkey.

Ed is not inside Coop's house for five minutes before he begins frantically grabbing and pointing at his crotch, howling and carrying on like a midget who really needs to piss but is stuck inside a monkey suit. He barges into Coop's toilet, lays down some thunder, then ducks out to grab some room deodorizing spray before heading back and really letting loose with the scatological sound effects. When he exits, the bathroom is smoking, leaving Coop to lamely quip, "Jesus, you went ape with the air freshener, too!" He proceeds to jump on the bed and swing from the ceiling lamp until it breaks, laughing manically in his unholy human-chimp voice all the while. Coop declares, "I'm gonna spank that monkey!"

Later, after being locked out, Ed breaks down the door to Coop's apartment, then steals his host's frozen dinner and devours it in a disgusting high-speed manner. Later still, he takes Coop's ancient truck on a white-knuckle joyride while the owner is unconscious in the passenger seat, breaking the gear shift and Bronx cheering out the window to the strains of Meat Loaf's "Everything Louder than Everything Else." Ed receives no comeuppance when he pulls down opposing players' pants on the field, so why would he behave around the guy whose apartment he's sharing? This little bastard, like most movie monkeys, is a menace who deserves to be dressed in a yellow clown suit, caged and electrocuted.

Liz plays matchmaker for her mom and Coop, as she craves alone time with Ed and knows where her mother's heart lies. Lydia is in fact a little too buddy-buddy with her young daughter. She tells the girl that Coop is "one troubled guy" after a failed flirt session, and Liz replies that he has "a great butt." When Jack finally mans up and takes Lydia to the carnival, she has no compunction about leaving the child alone with a chimpanzee babysitter. At first, they watch cartoons and gorge on ice cream, which Ed sprays out of his rubber nose after Liz cracks him up with a silly face. Liz ultimately rewards her mother's negligence by trashing the house during a montage set to Dire Straits' annoying "Walk of Life." This includes scenes of the microwave spewing more popcorn that it could possibly cook and the pair playing dress-up, with Ed modeling a Madonna ponytail and cone-bra ensemble, intercut with footage of the adults trying to look happy on carny rides. The Coasters' immortal "Yakety Yak" accompanies the high-speed cleanup, being the only song that should accompany the image of a ghastly ape-creature scrubbing a kitchen floor.

Kirby ushers in the third act by selling Ed to some thugs, and Lydia flexes her new-girlfriend muscle by guilting Coop into hunting the little fucker down. He finds Ed dressed in a clown suit, caged and being electrocuted. Rather than smiling and walking away, he barges in and scuffles with the toughs, leading a hasty getaway during which the simian teammates are separated. Recognizing a favorite treat, Ed stows away in a frozen banana truck, and contracts hypothermia by the time Coop nearly causes a deadly accident in the act of running the truck off the road. The chimp is placed in a human hospital, with breathing tubes and IVs and sheets on the beds and everything, and no one thinks that this is strange. He instantly gets better when Liz, seemingly abandoned at the hospital, prays and gives Ed his baseball glove, proving the old American adage that Jesus and baseball can cure anything.

Meanwhile, the Big Game at the End of the Movie is happening, and everyone on the Rockets, even the dumb guy, is playing extra hard in honor of their fallen teammate. Special guest star Tommy LaSorda, the onetime Los Angeles Dodgers manager who I remember better as "the guy who loves to eat" in those old Slim-Fast ads, drops by to see the chimp play and is dismayed to learn that Ed is missing due to Kirby's machinations. Ed arrives in a stolen ambulance just as Coop is almost replaced on the pitcher's mound by his nemesis, making it just in time to see the doltish pitcher halt play at a dramatic moment so he can walk over to the stands and make his girlfriend kiss him in front of the entire stadium. Then Coop has his big moment, winning the game with his patented curveball. LaSorda immediately signs him to the Dodgers. The whole shoddy affair ends with the new nuclear family cramped into Coop's jalopy, as he apparently convinced Lydia to pack her kid up and leave whatever the hell she was doing in Santa Rosa behind. Ramones' cover of Tom Waits' "I Don't Want to Grow Up" plays as Ed munches a frozen banana and enjoys Coop's backyard swing set, which for some reason stands assembled in the back of the rickety truck for the haul to L.A.

"Ed" is indeed a shitty movie. If you ignore the plot and the freaky monkey suit, it's competently put together, but utterly without interest to anyone over the age of 10. I didn't mention some of its stupider sequences, such as when the chimp is flipping channels and comes across footage from "Friends" in which Schwimmer's pet monkey has crapped in Aniston's shoe (my hero!). There's a running thing where the Rockets' coaches flip a coin to predict Coop's fate in baseball, but it lands on its side and stays that way, waiting to drop until the very end. That pretty much sums up the flick. That, and how much goddamned denim these people wear.

This post was composed to the inspiring strains of Moonsorrow's Varjoina Kuljemme Kuolleiden Maasaa, G-Side's The One... Cohesive, The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema and M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts. See ya soon.

Eight ain't enough

2011-02-15T23:53:00.002-06:00

Whew, January (and half of February) flew by, huh? I have not had much time for blogging among wedding planning, getting rid of many CDs, new stuff to do at work, crippling blizzards, "Toy Story" trilogy marathons, incessant car troubles and keeping up with my stories on TV. It's tough to remain abreast when new episodes of "American Dad" (getting way long in the tooth), "The Simpsons" (it's a good season, a little of the old attitude's back), "Bob's Burgers" (Loren Bouchard's new joint, much better than the ads make it look), "Family Guy" (dependably ridiculous), "The Cleveland Show" ("Family Guy" with a different family, but less predictable than "American Dad"), "Big Love" (better and bleaker than last season, but I'm still glad it's ending), "Robot Chicken" (dependably ridiculous), "Mongo Wrestling Alliance" (growing on me, but I'm not blown away), "Eagleheart" (the epic return of Chris Elliott, not great but amusing), "Parks and Recreation" (my favorite sitcom on right now), "The Office" (getting a bit long in the tooth, but still makes me laugh) and "30 Rock" (dependably clever and ridiculous) are airing. Don't worry, a major piece of housecleaning will be appearing in this space in the forseeable future, during which we will look at the most badass music of the past two years.

(3/7 EDIT: It finally dawned on me that "Archer" has been back on for six damn weeks. I am now caught up, and am pleased to report that it's as filthy and clever as ever.)

In the interim, please note the new mini-playlist's hilarious and nearly contemporary "part 6.5" title. These are the last eight songs from 2010 releases I'll feature for annual record-keeping purposes, none of which I heard until January 2011. It's all metal, mostly of the black variety. There's some wild shit in here, so don't put it on at bedtime. And do yourself a favor, at least sample the newest Volbeat and Nachtmystium albums, both unique acts on which I'm exceptionally sorry to have slept during '10.

1. Deathspell Omega - "Phosphene" (Paracletus, Season of Mist)
2. Blood Revolt - "Indoctrine" (Indoctrine, Profound Lore)
3. Volbeat - "Heaven Nor Hell" (Beyond Hell/Above Heaven, Vertigo/Universal)
4. The Northern Ontario Black Metal Preservation Society - "Northern October" (Future Northern Prosperity, Practical Art)
5. Nachtmystium - "No Funeral" (Addicts: Black Meddle Part II, Century Media)
6. Hail of Bullets - "The Mukden Incident" (On Divine Winds, Metal Blade)
7. Deströyer 666 - "Through the Broken Pentagram" (See You in Hell, Invictus/Poison Tongue)
8. Altar of Plagues - "The Weight of All" (Tides, Burning World)

To conclude, here's a complete list of every musical performer I saw performing live during 2010. The number is surprisingly low, but, hey.

1. Mr. Blotto (x5)
2. Swashbuckle
3. Týr
4. Korpiklaani
5. The Great Influence Machine
6. The Dirt Daubers
7. Trey Anastasio and Classic TAB
8. We Were Promised Jetpacks
9. Suidakra
10. Orphaned Land (x2)
11. Via Vengeance
12. A Storm of Light
13. Tommy Tuesday and Scott Anderson
14. Swallow the Sun (x2)
15. Moonsorrow
16. Finntroll
17. Fang Island
18. Caspian
19. Red Sparowes
20. Jim Bianco
21. Concrete Blonde
22. Phish
23. Ween
24. Still Kick'n
25. Ryan Olson
26. Gogol Bordello
27. Testament
28. Megadeth
29. Slayer
30. Denny Diamond
31. Maggie D
32. Diva Band
33. Caught in Your Pockets
34. You, Me, and Everyone We Know
35. mc chris
36. Russian Circles
37. An Aesthetic Anaesthetic
38. P.O.S.
39. Frank Turner
40. Murder By Death
41. Clad in Darkness
42. Novembers Doom
43. Katatonia
44. Jesca Hoop
45. Eels
46. Benoît Pioulard
47. Seven Kingdoms
48. Holy Grail
49. Blind Guardian
50. Chicago Gay Men's Chorus

There is no space between us

2010-12-27T15:17:00.006-06:00

Hope your holidays are going well. Mine have been extremely pleasant. Here are some movies I've seen recently.

"Tron: Legacy" (2010, dir. Joseph Kosinski) - Hooray! It's not a disappointment. First of all, it's a legitimate sequel, one surprisingly created with a lot of love and respect for the original "Tron." Flynn's genius hacker son gets sucked into the game grid, where his dad has been trapped since the late '80s, and runs through the same games the senior Flynn did, now commanded by the too-aggressive CLU program. The story picks up as organically as possible, considering it's been almost 30 years since its predecessor. Although the movie often doesn't use the 3D medium to its advantage, the showy, glowy effects, even the freaky digitally de-aged Jeff Bridges, look fine in context, and Daft Punk's electro/symphonic score (see below) is mighty cool. Yet, what impresses me most about "Tron: Legacy" is how dissimilar it is from most of the other recent updates of pop culture I loved during my childhood. Unlike "Transformers" or "G.I. Joe" or even the "Star Wars" prequels, this feels like "Tron" down to its methodical (some would say slow) plotting and Disney-fied violence. I challenge you to find a 7 year-old boy who wouldn't love this movie.

"Until the Light Takes Us" (2008, dirs. Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell) - A much-hyped metal documentary, one not produced by VH1 for a change. It abstractly tells the story of the old Norwegian black metal scene through interviews with several key figures, including two of its most famous murderers. Then-inmate Varg "Count Grishnackh" Vikernes sports a hilarious Hitler youth haircut and "Three Musketeers" facial hair while chatting demurely from a nice-looking prison, while Bård "Faust" Eithun hides his face and voice behind an identity cloak, even though everyone knows what he looks like. As a document, "Light" covers the basics of the story, but it mostly hints at a more fascinating film. Its biggest problem is that it treats a multifaceted artistic scene as a lurid conversation starter or a hallowed museum piece. After footage of affable Darkthrone granddaddy Fenriz wandering around looking bewildered at a touring gallery show "inspired" by Norwegian black metal, one begs for more contrast between the antisocial, reactionary, destructive ideals of second-wave black metal's origins with its evolution into a global niche rock music commodity and, more recently, a curiosity that the gatekeepers of modern art have decided to explore and accept. I would have preferred to hear more perpsective from artistic transgressives such as chameleonic Ulver frontman Garm, who only gets in a few brief quotes, or progressive pagan lords Enslaved (see below), whose Ivar Bjørnson and Grutle Kjellson are only seen in the disc's deleted footage. Light on context for the uninitiated and offering little in the way of fresh insight, it often ignores the music entirely, as well as the primal, hypnotic atmosphere that makes people all over the globe adhere to what Norwegian black metal was then or where it's gone since. The film is thus far more tabloid than it wants to be, and the praise heaped on it bodes ill for the proposed feature film based on the Euronymous/Grishnackh rivalry.

"Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009, dir. Wes Anderson) - Finally got around to Anderson's stop-motion Roald Dahl adaptation. I never read this book, so the story was all new to me, acceptable Dahlian kids' fare about a cunning fox who recruits some pals to raid the farms of three megafarmers. The farmers retaliate with increasingly outrageous weaponry, and, for some reason, are British, even though the animals living among them all have American accents. Anderson's low-key whimsy befits the story and animation, adding a homespun feel to the film which is very different from most modern animated fare. Case in point: "Fox" is the only post-"Shrek" kids' movie that ends with an impromptu dance party which is not completely crass and irritating. I wonder whether actual kids like it, or if they'd prefer something with more farting and TV actors shrieking the voices.

"Sugar Hill" (1974, dir. Paul Maslansky) - Until this year, I'd kind of gotten out of my formerly compulsive habit of renting movies, but Netflix has changed all that by helping me cross off titles from my long list of Films I've Always Wanted to See. Not to be confused with the largely forgotten Wesley Snipes vehicle, this "Sugar Hill" is the world's first blaxploitation zombie flick, which has until recently been very difficult to rent. It wisely features traditional Haitian-style zombies, in this case undead slaves awoken by Baron Samedi to help the young woman of the film's title avenge her fiancé's murder. All the reviews I'd read before seeing it pointed out its PG-rated levels of violence and sensuality, so I was prepared for the old-fashioned movie that it is. Other than Don Pedro Colley, who is a lot of fun as the guffawing, hammily enthusiastic Baron, the unique zombies are the reason to see the movie. Like the Spanish "Blind Dead," these are dry corpses, perpetually covered with cobwebs and dust. Their eyes bulge grotesquely, and they always seem to be smiling about their supernatural wetwork. They do not eat the racist mob villains, instead dispatching them with machetes or cornering them so that pigs, voodoo dolls, quicksand, reanimated chicken feet and/or coffins full of snakes do the job. Aside from its horror elements, this is a pretty tame and predictable racially-charged revenge story. The most outrageous thing about "Sugar Hill" is that Sugar receives no comeuppance, assuming everyone watching agrees that she was right to send in her zombie hit squad. Well, that and its eye-searing '70s fashions, but what vintage blaxploitation movie can't you say that about?

"The Human Centipede: First Sequence" (2009, dir. Tom Six) - Like most folks of my persuasion, I needed to see this sensation before I finished my first view of the trailer. Y'all know the "story," wherein a crazy German doctor who is skilled at separating conjoined twins aspires to achieve the opposite by attaching three people ass-to-mouth. I had high aspirations. I hoped to be challenged and thoroughly sickened. I did not anticipate such a low-achieving b-movie. The awesomely-named Dieter Laser is perfect as the sicko surgeon, surely leering his way into a decent screen career as a poor man's Udo Kier. He's especially great in the first third, which had me hoping the rest would be played as a disgusting black comedy. However, the American girls are terrible, both as slasher-fodder characters and as actresses trying to make us sympathize with them, beyond the obvious consideration of how much it would suck to have your face sewn to someone's fudge factory. Very little happens in the movie that you can't infer from the trailer (SPOILER: two cops show up!), but unlike the far better "Inside," it's not substantial or visceral enough to satisfy with how it plays out its concept. It's a bog-standard, low-body-count survival horror flick with an ingeniously gross hook. In that, it's definitely a modern exploitation classic, but I already want the proposed trilogy to just get to the damn climax. Show us 100 or however many fucking people linked up and be done with it.

To conclude, the player now features a selection from each of the final 17 new albums I heard during 2010. There's some definite top 10 material in here, folks, so pay attention. The grand total of new releases I listened to this year? A respectable 117.

1. Helloween - "World of Fantasy" (7 Sinners, The End/Sony)

2. Anamanaguchi - "Airbrushed" (Airbrushed, self-released)

3. Withered - "Residue in the Void" (Dualitas, Prosthetic)

4. The Dead Weather - "Gasoline" (Sea of Cowards, Third Man/Warner Bros.)

5. Solefald - "Norrøn Livskunst" (Norrøn Livskunst, Indie)

6. Daft Punk - "The Game Has Changed" (Tron: Legacy Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Walt Disney)

7. Ghost - "Ritual" (Opus Eponymous, Rise Above)

8. Anathema - "Summernight Horizon" (We're Here Because We're Here, Kscope)

9. Heljareyga - "Heljareyga" (Heljareyga, Tutl)

10. Mini Mansions "Thriller Escapade" (Mini Mansions, Rekords/Ipecac)

11. Enslaved - "Night-Sight" (Axioma Ethica Odini, Nuclear Blast)

12. Ishraqiyun - "Balthassar : Melchior : Kaspar" (Secret Chiefs 3: Satellite Supersonic, Vol. 1, Mimicry)

13. Bad Religion - "Pride and the Pallor" (The Dissent of Man, Epitaph)

14. Gorillaz - "The Joplin Spider" (The Fall, EMI)

15. Slough Feg - "Heavyworlder" (The Animal Spirits, Profound Lore)

16. El Guincho - "Novias" (Pop Negro, Young Turks)

17. Agalloch - "The Watcher's Monolith" (Marrow of the Spirit, Profound Lore)

I used to write letters

2010-12-12T12:32:00.008-06:00

Ladies and germs, the year groweth long. I present one song from each of the 81st through 100th new musical releases I heard during 2010. As usual, I don't have much time to work on this, so just once sentence about each. Spot two of each of these: self-titled albums, Middle Eastern-themed metal bands, covers (hint: self-covers count) and songs featuring the same Swedish guitarist.

1. Powerglove - "Inspector Gadget" (Saturday Morning Apocalypse, E1): The instrumental cover prodigies' first mass-released album nimbly brutalizes songs from cartoons of their youth, tossing in a little Grieg here to keep it metal.

2. Menomena - "BOTE" (Mines, City Slang): Funky, yearning, sweeping and addictive, the indie-prog trio's sublime follow-up to Friend & Foe only misses that album's kitchen-sink brilliance by a hair.

3. Amorphis - "Sign from the North Side" (Magic & Mayhem: Tales from the Early Years, Nuclear Blast): The Finns celebrate their 20th anniversary by re-recording early tracks in their current uncategorizable style, which in some cases means old Swedish-style melodic death metal gets a pleasing psychedelic overhaul.

4. John Zorn - "Seven Sigils" (Ipsissimus, Tzadik): Legendary avant-garde saxophonist Zorn joins the Moonchild trio (vocalist Mike Patton and bassist Trevor Dunn, both Mr. Bungle and Fantômas alums, and drummer Joey Baron) on this track, but is hardly heard elsewhere on this head-scratcher of a record.

5. Elvenking - "Runereader" (Red Silent Tides, AFM): Coming back strongly after the universally-unloved style change of The Scythe, the Italian folk metal mainstays return to power metal and display unabashed, fluffy pop sensibility, with shockingly good results.

6. Interpol - "Try It On" (Interpol, Matador): With fewer highs and lows than Our Love to Admire, bassist Carlos Dengler's final album with Interpol is another elegantly harrowing urban gothic concoction that requires frequent spins for its teeth to sink in.

7. Triptykon - "Descendant" (Eparistera Daimones, Century Media): Onetime Celtic Frost frontman Thomas Gabriel Fischer's unbelievably strong debut with his new outfit dips into furious black metal and avant-garde artsiness, but at heart it's a punishing, woozy, ash-caked doom record.

8. Arcade Fire - "We Used to Wait" (The Suburbs, Merge): With a strong flow, emotional intelligence and giant hooks everywhere you look, AF's latest reminds me of how much I loved their debut, as well as of how the suburbs felt when I was too young to notice the negatives.

9. Katatonia - "Sold Heart" (The Longest Year, Peaceville): A soft, haunting pillow of ethereal melancholy by my favorite band, the b-side to a single from my favorite album of 2009.

10. Melechesh - "Grand Gathas of Baal Sin" (The Epigenesis, Nuclear Blast): A feral, dextrously violent assault from the Mesopotamian metal masters, although much of their latest album finds Melechesh widening their focus to lofty, cinematic prog/folk heights.

11. Parenthetical Girls - "Young Throats" (Privilege, Pt. II: The Past, Imperfect, Slender Means Society): More infectious, infected pop from the fertile mind of Zac Pennington, who as always never misses the chance to soil a perfectly gorgeous melody with poetically creepy lyrics.

12. King of Asgard - "Vämods Tale" (Fi'mbulvintr, Metal Blade): Guitarist Kalle Beckmann and drummer Karsten Larsson revive the rousing spirit of their pioneering folk/black metal outfit Mithotyn, with all the tremolo picking and shout-along choruses we've missed since the '90s.

13. Marnie Stern - "Cinco de Mayo" (Marnie Stern, Kill Rock Stars): Less go-for-broke than her debut and less mantra-like than her second disc, guitar ace Stern's latest offers a few more (relatively) straightforward rockers while still kicking up a homemade whirlwind of sparkling grandeur.

14. October Tide - "The Dividing Line" (A Thin Shell, Candlelight): Apparently, Fred Norman left Katatonia in order to revive the mid-'90s hiatus project once famous for sounding pretty much like mid-'90s Katatonia, dependably delivering a strong slab of gloomy, mid-paced melodic death.

15. Bassnectar - "Underwater (feat. Tina Malia)" (Wildstyle, Amorphous): Known best for providing the insane levels of low end that gave him his name, dubstep superstar Lorin Ashton doesn't simply pump out repetitive dance jams, he sculpts vivid, evolving textures out of rhythm, here energizing potentially sleepy trip-hop with his signature whirring synths and wobbly beats.

16. Powerless - "Dead Man's Chest" (Battle Hymns, Set Productions): My Sassy Frassy Lassie's dad was born and raised in Croatia, so once in a while I like to check out Croatian folk metal, and while Powerless' lo-fi Ensiferumish power/death galloping isn't as original or affecting an example as the equally obscure doom outfit S.O.M., this tune's got some cool moments.

17. Murder By Death - "Yes" (Good Morning, Magpie, Vagrant): MBD shake off the by-the-book malaise of their last album and follow their hearts back to the rawness and mystery that drew me to them in the first place, where rootsy warmth exudes mirth in the face of misery.

18. Aeternam - "Hamunaptra" (Disciples of the Unseen, Metal Blade): The debut of this Egyptian-themed Canadian metal outfit comes off like a high-gloss cross between Melechesh and Amorphis at their most "Arabian," and that's not a bad thing.

19. Weezer - "Ruling Me" (Hurley, Epitaph): Weezer can still write a great power-pop tune, but Hurley's by no means the stongest album they've ever released, and at times is a little too fucking smarmy and cute for its own good.

20. In Vain - "Dark Prophets, Black Hearts" (Mantra, Indie): Sometimes, checking something out based on an enthusiastic review can pan out, as this release by a little Norwegian act turned out to be a rewarding alt/prog/doom pileup.

Come, I'll show you the end

2010-11-11T14:28:00.001-06:00

Hey gang, I ain't got much time, so let's do this all quick and dirty. In the player, you'll now find one cool track from each of the 61st through 80th musical releases I heard this year. I'm too lazy to write about them or even find links to decent reviews. If you want more info on something, you know how to use the damn Google. Curiously, I happened to listen to the majority of this batch at the behest of music-loving friends, so this post is dedicated to those of you whose expansive tastes help keep my horizons open. I suppose there is a bit of a "technological" flavor to this list, and, obviously, less metal.

Speaking of which, my favorite album of the year is also represented here. Now that I have finally purchased my ticket, I feel comfortable reminding you that its creators will be in town on November 29. For me, 2010 has been pretty awesome, on both a personal and a musical front. I mean, it's not every year that my two favorite bands come to play in Chicago. First, Katatonia, now...

1. Bassnectar - "Here We Go (original mix)" (Timestretch, Amorphous)

2. Early Man - "Nine Riders" (Death Potion, The End)

3. Ratatat - "Bob Gandhi" (LP4, XL)

4. Circus Devils - "Freezer Burn" (Mother Skinny, Happy Jack Rock)

5. Blind Guardian - "Ride Into Obsession" (At the Edge of Time, Nuclear Blast)

6. mc chris - "Drinkin' Blunts" (mc chris Goes to Hell, mc chris LLC)

7. Tokyo Police Club - "Bambi" (Champ, Mom+Pop)

8. Sorgeldom - "The Cold Empty Void" (Inner Receivings, Frostscald)

9. Plaid - "Fum" (Violet, Balkan Vinyl)

10. Soulfly - "Bloodbath & Beyond" (Omen, Roadrunner)

11. The Most Serene Republic - "Jelly Chamber" (Fantasick Impossibliss, Arts & Crafts)

12. Sleepy Eyes of Death - "Night Wires" (Toward a Damaged Horizon, Sleep Capsule)

13. Iron Maiden - "The Talisman" (The Final Frontier, UME)

14. Rudi Zygadlo - "Magic in the Afternoon" (Great Western Laymen, Planet Mu)

15. Fear Factory - "Industrial Discipline" (Mechanize, Candlelight)

16. Eels - "Mystery of Life" (Tomorrow Morning, E Works/Vagrant)

17. Himinbjørg - "Destin de Sang" (Chants d'hier, Chants de guerre, Chants de la Terre, European Tribes)

18. Solvent - "Formulate" (Subject to Shift, Ghostly International)

19. Aiumeen Basoa - "Akelarrearen Sua" (Iraganeko Bide Malkartsutik, Erzsebet)

20. God Is an Astronaut - "Shining Through" (Age of the Fifth Sun, Revive)

Shock after shock after shock

2010-10-27T10:27:00.003-05:00

This year's Halloween playlist is brought to you by "Shock Festival." You see, earlier in 2010, I was browsing the DVD selection at a local electronics superstore when I happened across a reasonably-priced set called "Shock Festival." It promised a collection of exploitation film trailers, a second disc with a horror trailer "reel" and a third disc entirely filled with mp3s of vintage exploitation movie radio ads, transferred from the original vinyl. The package said this was all a companion to a book by Stephen Romano which had apparently caused a stir among sicko cinephiles and fans of good reading. I am not as hip as I attempt to seem, and I had not heard of the book. However, the discs came home with me immediately.

This is indeed a fine collection of trailers. The selection of oddities on the first disc includes "Treasure of the Four Crowns" (the flop 3D follow-up to "Comin' At Ya!"), the trippy French animation "Fantastic Planet," the softcore staple "2069: A Sex Odyssey" and Cronenberg's car racing drama "Fast Company." The horror set is truly excellent, with essential ads for infamous flicks like "Snuff," "Great White" and "Mark of the Devil." In addition, you get a bunch of TV ads ("Cry of a Prostitute," "The House That Dripped Blood," "Rollerball") and a slate of films released by Independent International Pictures ("Brides of Blood," "Satan's Sadists," "Blazing Stewardesses"). Finally, there's a series of trailers for fake movies a la "Grindhouse," these having been based upon the "Shock Festival" book. While none of these homemade jobs have the genuinely retro flavor of a "Don't" or even a "Hobo With a Shotgun," some of them are done pretty well, and combined with Romano's informative, engaging and downright righteous commentary tracks, the concept convinced me to hunt down the 2008 book.

Folks, "Shock Festival" is hands-down the best book I've read in 2010. It is, upon first glance, a giant, heavy, lavishly-designed coffee table book dedicated to classic exploitation films and the colorful characters who made them. Each chapter concerns one or several interrelated movies, providing behind-the-scenes info, interviews and discussion of the movies' place in cinema history. Nudie potboilers, seedy action, no-budget sci-fi, transgressive horror, underground animation, psychedelic exploration and cynical blaxploitation are all represented. As it spans the 1970s and 1980s, the reader is gradually introduced to a fascinating mix of actors, producers, writers and directors whose careers and personal lives intertwined or ran parallel. Some are woefully overlooked, some dangerously wild, some hilariously misguided, some tragically hopeful. Full-color posters and promotional materials, photos from personal collections, newspaper ads and other memorabilia augment the superiorly rendered package.

The book's authenticity and continuity are impressive, especially considering that all of the films and people inside (except Romano, who manages to write himself into the narrative without it becoming a gimmick) are the product of the author's mind. The fictional characters and events may mingle with actual low-budget film history, but sadly, there is not really a lost Italian movie called "Sharkhunters" about damaged Vietnam vets brutally avenging their familes' deaths by shark attack. It's a unique way to present a novel, and the true shock is that in the end, the multifaceted story proves emotionally satisfying. It's much more than a clever list of really awesome ideas for movies that should exist. A blurb on the back cover from Dread Central (whose Uncle Creepy donates an absolutely painful pair of commentary tracks on the DVD trailer reels) praises "Shock Festival" as "'Grindhouse' meets 'Spinal Tap,'" but I'd replace "Spinal Tap" with "Boogie Nights."

The only thing negative I have to mention about the book is its large number of misspellings and other typos. It's such an intricately-designed work, if only that detail had been more thoroughly attended to, "Shock Festival" would be perfect. As it is, the human imperfections hint at the hands-on love that is evident throughout. However, I would like to tell Mr. Romano that I absolutely love, and am mildly obsessed with his book, and if he ever wants someone to do a more thorough read-through before his next one is published, I would very gladly donate my time in exchange for a free copy of the finished product.

So, the aforementioned companion set came out earlier this year, and it's similarly amazing, other than the enthusiastic but content-light Uncle Creepy commentary tracks (seriously, most of it's like, "Aw, yeah! Look at that guy doing that thing! I love movies like this!"). From the third disc, I chose 19 horror movie radio spots, plus one for a stage show based on a Mark Pirro direct-to-video classic, and made a Halloween playlist. I did this partially out of a desire to do something different with the list this year, partially out of laziness, and partially to show off these great vintage ads. Happy Halloween. Enjoy your fun-sized Snickers.

1. "The Gruesome Twosome"/"Something Weird"
2. "They're Coming to Get You"
3. "The Astro-Zombies"
4. "Grizzly"
5. "Twilight People"
6. "Nudist Colony of the Dead"
7. "Deranged"
8. "Squirm"
9. "Cannibal Girls"/"Raw Meat"
10. "House of Usher"
11. "Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde"
12. "Destroy All Monsters"
13. "The Corpse Grinders"/"The Undertaker and His Pals"/"The Embalmer"
14. "Horror of the Blood Monsters"
15. "Maniac"
16. "The Night Visitor"
17. "A Knife for the Ladies"
18. "Ruby"
19. "From Beyond the Grave"
20. "Phantasm"

Terror 2000

2010-10-10T09:48:00.007-05:00

It's October, even though it's 80 degrees outside. Just as I am happily settling into fall, the accursed heat decides to creep in and nearly ruin my weekend. This is, frankly, horseshit. I live in the Midwest. I shouldn't have to run my air conditioning this late in the calendar year.

Well, the trees know what time of year it is, as do the stores and TV channels. I am naturally looking forward to Halloween, even if my costume is still half-formed at the moment. I plan to celebrate extra hard this year, and this extends to my once-flourishing blog. For the first of two spooky playlists, here's a look back at 20 good horror movies from the '00s. I picked at least one from every year, and tried to mix it up while staying away from the most obvious franchises (for the record, I'll take "The Ring" or "Hostel" over "The Grudge" or "Saw" any day). Some you'll definitely recognize, some you may not know at all. I can vouch for all of 'em.

1. "Final Destination" (2000) - This mainstream funhouse ride from former "X-Files" folks came on the tail end of the post-"Scream" teen slasher craze, hence its dreary "bunch of people standing against a black background" poster. It transcended its marketing with brilliant kill scenes and the downbeat message that no one can escape the clutches of death, which all of its sequels except the inferior second installment have carried forth.

2. "Uzumaki" (2000) - Once you start digging, you realize that a lot of modern Japanese horror is either irritatingly similar or clinically distasteful. This manga adaptation is a one-of-a-kind exception, a tale of small town mass madness that is low on cheap jolts but long on visually stunning Lynchian weirdness.

3. "Ginger Snaps" (2000) - The smart, female-centered horror film has really blossomed over the past decade, with some good results ("May") and some not so much ("Jennifer's Body"). This Canadian classic about two close teen sisters growing apart is not only the prototype, but the best. Yeah, it's an adolescent allegory with werewolves, but it has more in common with "Heathers" than with "New Moon."

4. "The Others" (2001) - I love a nice extreme horror movie, but once in a while a more understated picture is made by the right people and manages to be more impressive than a thousand chainsaw manglings. From the foreboding atmosphere to the riveting performances by Nicole Kidman and the kids, everything clicks creepily in this supernatural story of unraveling faith.

5. "Bones" (2001) - Slick, violent fun with a vague social conscience, Snoop Dogg's first foray into horror films brought back the spirit of '70s blaxploitation horror more confidently than did its most visible predecessor, 1995's "Tales from the Hood." Director Ernest Dickerson was the DP on all of Spike Lee's great early movies, and he also directed the loveable "Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Night."

6. "Dagon" (2001) - The dudes behind "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond" dipped back into Lovecraft and left out the splatter humor for a more visceral, unrelenting sort of spookshow. The damp, enveloping atmosphere of the rainy island setting is only let down by a few lousy digital effects, while the international cast and crew lend the movie a uniquely "foreign" flavor.

7. "Jason X" (2002) - Many people seem to hate it, but I think the 10th "Friday the 13th" installment is one of the series' best in that it completely embraces, enhances and sends up the ludicrous conventions of its predecessors. Jason is cryogenically frozen, awoken in space and eventually becomes a cyborg, and unlike the time he took Manhattan, the carnage that ensues lives up to the premise's gimmicky promise.

8. "Cabin Fever" (2002) - A throwback gorefest about a group of complete douchebags attacked in the woods by a flesh-eating virus, Eli Roth's directorial debut is a gloppy, sloppy mess of audience manipulation. Grimly gross and amiably wacky in different places, it bears the slimy mark of true Troma fandom (after all, Roth provided the legendary commentary on Troma's "Bloodsucking Freaks" DVD).

9. "House of 1000 Corpses" (2003) - We waited three years to see Rob Zombie's first movie, which was held up and ultimately dumped by Universal because it supposedly got slapped with an NC-17 for content, then picked up and dropped by MGM before finally being scavenged by Lionsgate, the New Line Cinema of the '00s. The final release was a crazed jumble of goofy and grueling horror images largely informed by "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," not a classic but perfect background noise for a Halloween party.

10. "Willard" (2003) - Although remake fever blighted the decade, and has of course spilled into the next, not all remakes are bad, as evidenced by this update of the '70s favorite by the "Final Destination" guys. Everybody's favorite flake Crispin Glover is perfect as the put-upon misfit who finds friendship and acceptance in a horde of intelligent, homicidal rats.

11. "Toolbox Murders" (2004) - Tobe Hooper's first good movie in more than a decade was also a remake, but much like Crispin Glover's turn as "The Wizard of Gore," "Toolbox" was really a remake in name only. Hooper's compellingly bizarro re-imagining of the 1978 video nasty starring the ever-interesting Angela Bettis only retained the seedy apartment setting and gory hardware dispatchings.

12. "The Descent" (2005) - Ostensibly a story about a group of women who go spelunking and stumble across a batch of hungry subterranean beasts, Neil Marshall's follow-up to the enterprising "Dog Soldiers" drifts in a somber haze of encroaching dread from its opening tragedy. It's smart, suffocating and primal, the best pure horror movie the UK's given us since Clive Barker's flesh-ripping salad days.

13. "Slither" (2006) - Former Troma/"Scooby Doo" screenwriter James Gunn made his (credited) feature debut with this shockingly great horror comedy in which small town yokels are besieged by alien slugs with a hive mind. With just the right pace, attitude and amount of gross-out fun, plus a game cast, it rises above schlock as the '80s greats it emulates did.

14. "Feast" (2006) - One of the best things to come out of reality television in general, "Feast" was the subject of the final season of "Project Greenlight," which simultaneously moved from HBO to Bravo and from tedious indie dramas to a boisterous splatterfest. As the occupants of a shithole bar fight off bloodthirsty creatures, it's like the second half of "From Dusk Till Dawn," but cheaper, faster, louder and nuttier.

15. "Mulberry Street" (2006) - If you can forgive its obvious microbudget, this underheralded feature from the ever-popular After Dark Horrorfest is a unique take on the infestation movie, and not just because it creatively involves people turning into rat-beasts. Debuting director Jim Mickle's confidence and vision turned meager resources into a stylish, intimate post-9/11 NYC monster movie.

16. "28 Weeks Later" (2007) - I like Danny Boyle's zombie-ish original just fine, but I prefer the sequel to 2002's "28 Days Later" because it's a rare horror franchise entry that doesn't lighten the mood with commercial aspirations. Instead, from its nail-biter opening, where we get a protagonist we can't side with, it delves into bleaker territory, as much about entropy as "Days" was about evolution.

17. "The Mist" (2007) - Given Frank Darabont's track record with Stephen King adaptations, I'm glad he finally decided to do one of the horror stories. This look at small-town folks trapped in a supermarket by an enveloping, inscrutable, monster-filled mist isn't perfect (the interpersonal confrontations are contrived and it's too long), but the ambience is right and the ending is, appropriately, a real downer.

18. "Diary of the Dead" (2008) - At first, I wasn't very thrilled about George Romero's foray into hand-held zombie horror, as despite some neat sequences (the hospital) and quick-flash gore effects, it's not a great zombie movie. George has become more of an "idea" guy, and upon subsequent viewings, it's clear to me that he still has keen insight into human failings, and he's pretty hip about how modern technology impacts the way we address our fears.

19. "Let the Right One In" (2008) - Everybody loves this stark, quiet Swedish movie about a bullied kid befriending a little girl in his apartment complex who turns out to be an ancient vampire. Who the hell knows why it needed to be faithfully remade in America two years later, but it seems the new version by the guy who made "Cloverfield" that opened last weekend is already a flop.

20. "Drag Me to Hell" (2009) - It took a lot of convincing to get me to watch Sam Raimi's PG-13 "return to horror," as I expected the guy who made "For Love of the Game" to deliver the sort of heartless product that Wes Craven grudgingly shits out these days. Instead, the dubious prospect of a bank loan agent cursed by a gypsy becomes ten tons of fun thanks to Sam's seriously zany (and surprisingly graphic) sequences. Somehow, the film's legitimacy never gets in its way.

What I listened to on summer vacation

2010-09-17T09:42:00.004-05:00

First, TONIGHT in Chicago:

Second, for well over a month, I had a malware issue that prevented me from using my computer for anything useful. Now that the tricky bastard has been eliminated, I'd swear that's what kept me from posting, except for the fact that I've also been super busy doin' stuff. All I have to report is that I am now fairly well-versed in replacing sink drains and that "Piranha 3D" is a million times better than anyone could have expected. Yes, Alexandre Aja has finally made a movie I can get 100% behind, a self-aware but genuine drive-in flick packed with idiotic plotting, ridiculous characters, gratuitous nudity and a brilliantly gruesome climax that seriously gets away with a lot of brutal carnage for a wide-release post-conversion 3D horror flick. Curiously, the plot is more similar to the awesome monster movie stupidity of "Jaws 2" than to Joe Dante's original "Piranha."

So, if anyone's scouring the web for a quote to put in the Blu-ray promotional material, Soulreaper of entartetekunst.blogspot.com says: "'Piranha 3D' is the most fun I had at the movies all summer! You'll stand up and cheer!"

Third, you're right, I still haven't finished writing about my top ten albums for 2009. However, I've stocked the player with something from the 41st through 60th new musical releases I've heard during 2010. There is more metal than last time, but the metal tunes in this batch are more "accessible" than usual, since it seems like every power metal band that still interests me has put something out recently. Besides, some of them are acoustic versions. You'll also find a few non-LP tracks. I don't know if they'll be up for long, as I've already got 20 more to follow this batch, but I actually felt like writing a bit about these, so here we go. Hope you're enjoying the onset of autumn as much as I am.

1. Twilight - "The Cryptic Ascension" (Monument to Time End, Southern Lord): Once a supergroup comprised of the hippest American one-man black metal bands, Twilight finally returns to reclaim its name from that Burger King vampire fad. The group's second album sees founders from Nachtmystium, Leviathan and Krieg joined by members of Isis, Minsk and The Atlas Moth, with the results as expected, a dense studio-fuckery fusion of black metal's and psych-doom's most hypnotic aspects.

2. Grand Magus - "At Midnight They'll Get Wise" (Hammer of the North, Roadrunner): With album number five, hooky riffs, strong vocals and pagan lyrical themes continue to be their trade, but the Swedes have moved closer to classic heavy metal territory, all but burying their doom roots in an avalanche of swinging axes. It's nice to see this underrated act moving to a well-funded label, even if they will likely be lost among Roadrunner's more commercial priorities.

3. Kele - "Rise" (The Boxer, Wichita/Polydor): Bloc Party vocalist/guitarist Kele Okereke indulges his love of dance music on his first solo album, a floor-shaking set which at times is a little too club-oriented to really float my boat. There's still enough creativity within to win a rock guy like me over, and some of the tracks (like this one) sound like a logical extension of the recent bass-heavy material from Kele's main band.

4. Nevermore - "The Obsidian Conspiracy" (The Obsidian Conspiracy, Century Media): After five years, a couple of solo albums and a live disc, Seattle's finest downtuned prog-thrash vets offer their long-awaited seventh album, which most seem to feel is well-crafted but dispiritingly short on surprises. I won't argue with that sentiment... I could once easily say that Nevermore was my favorite American metal band, but while it's got it's dependably badass moments, I'm really not blasted out of my chair this time.

5. Broken Social Scene - "Forced to Love" (Forgiveness Rock Record, Arts & Crafts): The first proper BSS album in five years finds the current Canadian collective joyously bestowing another addictive indie pop classic, swells of voices and instruments bursting with warmth and swaddled in bright, expansive layers. Record gets better with every listen, and its frazzled but majestic songwriting is stronger overall than on the great self-titled album.

6. Entrails - "Breath of Blood" (Tales from the Morgue, F.D.A. Rekotz): For some, the prospect of a disc of old-school Swedish death metal tunes written in the early '90s but not properly recorded and released until now would not seem desirable. For the discerning, the vintage Stockholm guitar tone and rollicking, subtly melodic nastiness of Entrails' debut is pure nostalgic bliss.

7. Ween - "DC Won't Do You No Good" (The Right Track: Tunes to TargetCancer, righttracktunes.org): Released as a download for the benefit of an organization seeking treatment for rare cancers, this, like any random Ween song, is not representative of their astoundingly diverse career. It's pretty "normal" in Ween terms, a melancholy, somewhat countryish classic rock tune for which Neil Young seems a likely inspiration.

8. Blind Guardian - "War of the Thrones (acoustic version)" (A Voice in the Dark, Nuclear Blast): Hot damn, tamale! I couldn't wait for my second-favorite band on the planet's new album, so I mail-ordered the three-track single and spun it for days. The a-side is excellent and the cover tune is awright, but the acoustic rendering of this folky medieval ballad is worth the price of admission, more intimate and powerful than the gussied-up, piano-fied album version. At some point, I will very likely need to gush about the brilliance that is At the Edge of Time. Until then, just know that the last 1:15 of this song has had me prancing around the kitchen like a jackass for months.

9. Charred Walls of the Damned - "Creating Our Machine" (Charred Walls of the Damned, Metal Blade): Drum hero Richard Christy teamed up with several other veterans of the revolving door that is Iced Earth for a disc that is at heart very similar to that band's blend of power and thrash metal, jolted with modern-day energy. The performances are flawless and unflagging, yet the mix is lousy and the songwriting only occasionally matches the level of musical talent assembled. I'll bet they slay live.

10. Big Boi - "You Ain't No DJ (feat. Yelawolf)" (Sir Lucious Left Foot... The Son of Chico Dusty, Def Jam): As we patiently await a new OutKast album, half of the Atlanta duo has delivered a fun, funky set of summer jams elevated by his signature confident personality and rapid-fire wordplay. Jive Records wouldn't let André 3000 rap on the disc (the obviously-several-years-old tracks he recorded are circulating on the Webs), but he produced a few tracks such as this. The album Big ultimately delivered is great enough to forgive any backstage meddling.

11. Fleshgod Apocalypse - "Thru Our Scars" (Mafia, Willowtip): A young Italian entry in the over-the-top death metal sweepstakes those crazy kids are holding these days, the clumsily-named Fleshgod Apocalypse tout a pronounced symphonic influence on top of fast, wild, technical aggression. Far from a generic gore-and-Satan outfit, their recent EP is lyrically concerned with (and dedicated to the victims of) organized crime, and includes an outrageously caffeinated cover of At the Gates' era-defining "Blinded By Fear."

12. Rage - "Hunter and Prey" (Strings to a Web, Nuclear Blast/Sonic Unyon): This is the 19th studio album by German metal mainstays Rage, and I'll bet you've never heard one of them. Well, I've heard 'em all, and this one is somewhere in the middle, most reminding me of the kitchen-sink hodgepodge of pounding metal groove, melodic Eurorock, poet-shirt symphonic frills and occasionally brilliant overkill of 2001's Welcome to the Other Side, but not as fresh.

13. The Coral - "Roving Jewel" (Butterfly House, Deltasonic): Having long abandoned the catch-all psychedelic craziness of their brilliant debut, the Brits offer an impressively consistent sixth platter of incense-and-patchouli-scented pop. Despite having lost longtime guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones, the overall moodiness is in line with their last couple of releases, while the songs themselves are more focused and memorable.

14. Lantlôs - "Coma" (.neon, Prophecy): More artsy stuff this year from Alcest mastermind Neige, a Frenchman who along with German cohort Herbst offers a more cohesive slate of shoegaze black metal than was recently presented by his main meal ticket. Lantlôs' second disc is one of the strongest entries yet in this quickly growing realm of gossamer misery and is bound to become a genre benchmark.

15. The Apples in Stereo - "It's All Right" (Travellers in Space and Time, Yep Roc): The long-running pop specialists have obviously grown out of their '60s fixation, as their seventh album sounds more like the funky '70s, ELO-style. Imagine my surprise... I saw 'em a coupla years ago, but hadn't heard 'em for a few albums, and if it weren't for Robert Schneider's unmistakably twee little-kid vocals, I would never have guessed some of the dancier tracks here were the Apples.

16. Masterplan - "Far From the End of the World" (Time to Be King, AFM): Former Helloween guitarist Roland Grapow welcomes back vocalist Jørn Lande, the Norwegian Dio, after one surprisingly solid Masterplan album without him. Also returning is the increased AOR slant that characterized the band's material just before Lande left, assuring a mature, prog-lite approach to hard rock/power metal that doesn't pack the punch of their debut.

17. Helloween - "Eagle Fly Free" (Unarmed, Sony/The End): The German metal vets celebrated their 25th anniversary by re-recording some songs from their catalog in various easy listening styles, from jangle pop to big band to a symphonic medley. The predictable track listing is both obvious and arbitrary, but this diehards-only release successfully makes the argument that beautiful songs, like this once-speedy classic, remain beautiful regardless of genre, even if the infamously poor English of the lyrics is made easier to hear.

18. The Cool Kids - "Strawberry Girl" (Tacklebox, C.A.K.E.): Another summer has gone by without the supposed debut LP When Fish Ride Bicycles, but it did come with another free digital mixape from the Cool Kids. The Chicago indie rap icons don't have as much of that retro '80s rap vibe as they used to, but Chuck Inglish has evolved into a creative producer who still crafts excellent beats, even when woven into an electro setting like this.

19. Equilibrium - "Aus Ferner Zeit" (Rekreatur, Nuclear Blast): The German symphonic folk metal outfit, riding the crest of the genre's commercial peak and their frankly excellent previous album, have weathered lineup changes to turn in a similar but lesser album. Even if the depth of real-sounding folk instruments is now supplanted by fakey Ensiferum-y keyboards, I liked Sagas so much, I just can't dislike the cut-rate blockbuster cheese and unabashed fun of Rekreatur.

20. Danzig - "Left Hand Rise Above" (Deth Red Sabaoth, The End): I saved the biggest shocker for last, the product of someone evidently sitting Glenn Danzig down and explaining why everyone used to like his music. Aside from the muffled production, Sabaoth's mix of desolate, bluesy doom metal and slightly experimental gothisms reminds me most of the grossly underated 4th Danzig album.

There's something about Mary Woronov

2010-06-20T10:26:00.004-05:00

What's the rumpus? Things have been pretty action-packed around these parts. Sassy Frass and I had a blast on our rock n' roll road trip to Ohio. My favorite band is coming back to town, and the men behind one of 2010's finest albums are opening. Most significantly, the living room has been repainted and rearranged. It's still a work-in-progress, but it already looks a hell of a lot better. Next major upgrade, barring unforseen circumstances: a PS3.

You'll notice that I've also added a new playlist, with one song from each of the second twenty new albums I heard during 2010, with personal favorites including Mike Patton, 65daysofstatic, Negură Bunget, Skyforger, Gogol Bordello and Gorillaz. There is less metal this time. Rock that shit, homey. To conclude, here's a quick look at some of the "genre" pictures I've seen lately, which range from awesome to awful:

"Turkey Shoot" (aka "Escape 2000") - A badass 1982 trashfest from Australia that crosses a Men-and-Women in Prison movie with "The Most Dangerous Game" and sets it in the dystopian future of the year 2000. I have wanted to see this gory action flick for a long time, but somehow the fact that Anchor Bay released it on DVD in 2003 escaped me until very recently. It lives up to its reputation. The colorful, plentiful villains compete for scenery-chewing honors, and it's hard to pick a favorite among them. The giant, bald, mustachioed guard? The classy lady with the exploding crossbow bolts? The fey, bearded guy with the hairy mutant circus freak assistant? They all deliver and receive gloriously lurid, non-digital '80s deaths. I've featured the trailer before, but here it is again.

"REC" - I know, I'm late to the dance with this one. This was the Spanish shaky-cam infestation horror sensation of 2007 that was remade the following year as the American film "Quarantine," starring Dexter's sister/wife (who, incidentally, used to go to school with my cousin). "REC" is basically the document left by a two-person TV news team when they and the firefighters they're following for a human interest segment are locked inside an apartment building teeming with infected, bloodthirsty residents. Despite my negative stance on "Blair Witch," I don't necessarily hate the "found footage" horror trend, and this example was much more effective and visceral upon first viewing than Romero's "Diary of the Dead," which I have come to like over time, while being a purer shock experience than the benchmark "Cloverfield."

"Triangle" - The third feature by "Severance" director Christopher Smith from 2009 makes an elaborate attempt at twisting a viewer's mind. A single mother goes on an ill-fated sailing trip with a young hunk and his asshole friends, and she's sucked into a time paradox puzzle when they come across a cruise ship that is, aside from a hooded sniper, completely deserted. I have to admit I didn't always guess where it was heading next, and just when I started to get bored with one scenario, another would present itself. One of the twists even got an out-loud "Wow" out of me. Still, I would have been a lot more impressed with the machinations of "Triangle" had I not already seen "Timecrimes" - do yourself a favor and catch that economical Spanish gem before Tom Cruise shits all over it with his proposed remake.

"The House of the Devil" - This flick got lots of hype for its intentional sylistic resemblance to late '70s/early '80s horror flicks, and it's seriously one of the best modern-day evocations of that era this side of "Grindhouse." It's the archetypal story of a nice college girl who needs money to afford rent and agrees to a suspicious babysitting gig during a lunar eclipse for a weird middle-aged couple (Mary Woronov and the dude who played Cain in "RoboCop 2"!) who turn out to be robe-wearing, blood-spilling Satanists. Director/writer/editor Ti West, who also directed the long-shelved "Cabin Fever" sequel, went out of his way to keep things authentic, from the film grain and camera movements to clothing, hair, decor, telephones with cords and even vintage disposable Coke cups. It's no classic, but it's a lot of fun, and even made me jump twice. Oh, and for some reason, even though it's a 2009 release, I noticed that either MTV or MTV2 was already showing it a few weeks ago.

"À l'intérieur" (aka "Inside") - For years, I've been hoping to finally see a really great flick out of this new wave of feral French horror. "Frontière(s)" was agreeably nasty if overly derivative, and "Haute Tension" was pretty good until the bullshit ending, but this 2007 job is the movie I was waiting for. The simple setup (a very pregnant woman is beseiged in her home by a deranged lady who wants to cut out the baby) belies an extremely well-wrought cat-and-mouse battle coarsened with the grit and grime of no-holds-barred survival horror. Y'all know I can handle the goriest gore, but something happens during this movie that literally almost made me pass out. Like "Audition," I have no idea when I'll feel like watching "À l'intérieur" again, but I cannot deny that it's an amazing film.

"Seizure!" - Another movie I've wanted to see forever, Oliver Stone's 1974 directorial debut stars "Dark Shadows" icon Jonathan Frid as a mopey writer whose vivid nightmares come true when he and his obnoxious weekend guests are beset by an evil trio seemingly born of his imagination. The baddies are a giant muscleman executioner, a vampy "Queen of Evil" played by English sex symbol Martine Beswick and a sadistic dwarf played by Hervé "Tattoo" Villechaize, while the irritating murder fodder includes faded Hollywood squarejaw Troy Donahue and an in-her prime Mary Woronov. Sounds amazing, right? I always thought so, but now that I've dozed through it, I can tell you that only the rarity of the film kept me from popping out the disc 2/3 of the way in. As mentioned, the characters pretty much suck, and it's often hard to tell what's going on thanks to disjointed editing, lousy nighttime photography and pretentious "is it a dream or is it real?" plot contrivances. Overall, it has the feel of a dreary TV movie, and it's not genuinely curious enough to reward the curiosity I'd long harbored.

Where the underworld can meet the elite

2010-05-08T14:27:00.001-05:00

I finally got my hands on volume 5 of Synapse Films' "42nd Street Forever" series, and to celebrate, I put together a video playlist culled from trailers found on each of the volumes.

First, a word about the folks that put out these compilations. Let's face it, we're never in danger of losing, say, "The Wizard of Oz" or "Jaws," because someone rich will always be around to maintain and protect major cultural touchstones and big moneymakers. I'm mostly glad for that, but what about everything else? Synapse Films is one of several cool DVD companies that's taken an interest in preserving the lurid, lascivious, gross and nutty classics no one else is looking after. Thanks to Synapse, we have souped-up, uncut, definitive digital releases of Jim Muro's "Street Trash," Doris Wishman's "Let Me Die a Woman" and Jean Rollin's "The Grapes of Death," along with curious Asian titles such as "Karaoke Terror," "Horrors of Malformed Men" and "Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom."

Now, Synapse isn't the only company out there doing such important work, but I want to praise them for another reason entirely. A few years ago, I happened to buy my copies of "42nd Street Forever" volumes one and two at a famous big box retail store, which at the time offered them in an exclusive double-pack for the price of a single volume. I jumped on that deal, but when I opened the shrink-wrapped discs, I found blank DVD-Rs where the DVDs should have been. Seriously. Dismayed, I took the only course of action I imagined might help: I sent an e-mail to Synapse, explaining in mundane detail exactly what had happened. Not only did I get a prompt and personal reply, I was told to send in the cases and packaging for a full replacement. This came very quickly, and with a free t-shirt, which I proudly wear from time to time.

Synapse is a cool-ass company. They do good things and genuinely care about the people who purchase the fruits of their loving labor. If you have the funds in these lean times, I'm telling you that Synapse is worth supporting. (No, I am not getting a kickback for this wholly unsolicited endorsement.) You'll find many crafty artifacts in their catalog. For instance, for all the classic porn fans out there, they offer an additional volume in the 42nd Street Forever series, a "XXX-Treme Special Edition" with dozens of vintage adult film trailers. Sorry, I'm only featuring the regular volumes here.

42nd Street Forever Volume 1
The initial offering has an egalitarian mix of classic exploitation genres: action, horror, sex, sci-fi, biker, mondo, blaxploitation, hippie counterculture, martial arts, gialli, peplum and more.

1. "The Crippled Masters" (1979) - One dude gets his arms chopped off, another gets his legs burned up, and they seek their vengeance by becoming deadly kung fu warriors. This infamous chopsocky entry stars real-life cripples, who, like a low-budget Asian Master Blaster, occasionally pool their physical resources to become a single head-busting machine.

2. "The Pink Angels" (1971) - Aside from Kenneth Anger's experimental landmark "Scorpio Rising," this is the best-known gay biker film in existence, with a bit role by Dan "Grizzly Adams" Haggerty as a straight guy from another biker gang. Although these cross-dressing queens don't represent a very enlightened view of homosexual life, this rambling, surprisingly chaste z-flick wasn't aiming for an Oscar.

3. "Teenage Mother" (1967) - From the producer of "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song," here's a typical out-of-control youth flick featuring endless go-go dancing, tinny garage rock, hypocritical morals, clumsy line delivery and grotesquely aged footage of actual childbirth, complete with episiotomy. The best thing about the incredibly long ad is its meathead voiceover ("Teenage Mutha! Means 9 months o' trouble...").

4. "The Raiders of Atlantis" (1983) - I remember seeing ads in the newspaper for this action obscurity directed by Ruggero "Cannibal Holocaust" Deodato, but I have sadly never seen the film. Beloved by fans of such Italian-bred nonsense, it involves the awakening and resurfacing of sunken Atlantis, which turns out to be populated by motorcyclists of the insane post-apocalyptic variety.

42nd Street Forever Volume 2: The Deuce
This edition contains a greater number of older trailers than the other sets, with a good number of cheap flicks from the '60s and even '50s representing the legacy of the drive-in more than the grindhouse.

5. "The Dark" (1979) - The great '70s mugs of William Devane and Cathy Lee Crosby meet the grave growl of famed voiceover dude Percy Rodriguez in this exciting ad for a dull supernatural thriller produced by Dick Clark that in no way earned its R rating. Casey Kasem cameos as a pathologist, but that's no reason to sit through it.

6. "Spy In Your Eye" (1965) - Here's one of the many James Bond knock-offs ("An Out-BONDing Thriller!") that proliferated in the '60s, this variation made in Italy despite featuring aging American movie star Dana Andrews, who is not the spy of the title. It looks painfully boring.

7. "Dixie Dynamite" (1976) - Lee Frost, director of "Love Camp 7" and "The Black Gestapo," contributed to the era's redneck chic movement with this PG-rated hayseed shitkicker about moonshine runnin', cleavage displayin' and vehicle crashin'. The highlight of the trailer is when the cop sits on the exploding toilet.

8. "The Evictors" (1979) - King of the based-on-regional-lore '70s horror flick, Charles B. Pierce ("The Legend of Boggy Creek," "The Town that Dreaded Sundown") made this awesome-looking, impossible-to-find rural nailbiter, which my gal Jessica Harper appeared in between shooting "Suspiria" and "Shock Treatment." Sadly, Pierce passed away in March.

42nd Street Forever Vol. 3: Exploitation Explosion!
A good number of excellent cult horror, action and shitty comedy trailers, along with the addition of informative audio commentary by film geeks, make this one of my favorite volumes of the series.

9. "Jaguar Lives!" (1979) - There are few varieties of vintage film trailer more hilarious than those attempting to promote a new movie star as the next sensation, only to have failed miserably. While the ad does all it can to make this film look watchable, how many people today would mention its star, Joe Lewis, alongside tough-guy icons Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood and Bruce Lee?

10. "Beyond the Door" (1974) - Here's a fine Italian hack job, a splattery riff on "The Exorcist" and "Rosemary's Baby" starring Hayley Mills' less fortunate sister. Director Ovidio Assonitis was also behind the dreary octopus-themed "Jaws" ripoff "Tentacles" (through which I recently suffered) and James Cameron's flying-piranha-themed "Jaws" rip-off "Piranha II: The Spawning."

11. "Seven" (1979) - No, not "Se7en." This is an early movie by Andy Sidaris, a pioneer in professional sports broadcasting. He later went on to late night cable fame by masterminding a long series of action adventures with awesome names like "Savage Beach" and "Hard Ticket to Hawaii," all starring gun-toting, frequently naked Playboy and Penthouse models .

12. "Tattoo" (1981) - Another mostly forgotten movie for which I remember seeing print ads as a child, it's one of Bruce Dern's more notorious "obsessed madman" vehicles due to the actor having claimed in an interview that he was actually railing Maud Adams onscreen (Maud did not concur). Of all the oddities in my fabulous girlfriend's video collection, this is the oddest.

42nd Street Forever Volume 4: Cooled By Refrigeration
This volume has a really strange, if typically fascinating, mix of material ranging from crime, horror and blaxploitation to lame comedy, historical epic and adolescent sports drama.

13. "The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman" (1971) - Another cult horror favorite recently taken from us, Spanish icon Jacinto Molina (aka Paul Naschy) unfortunately passed away in November. This is a classic ad for his biggest hit, one of a dozen movies in which he played gloomy aristocrat/bloodthirsty werewolf Waldemar Daninsky.

14. "Combat Cops" (1974) - The late William Girdler is best known today for such well-advertised '70s b-horror films as "Three on a Meathook," "Abby" and the immortal "Grizzly." However, he also made this missing doozy, aka "The Zebra Killer," in which a white psycho puts on blackface and shoots up white people in Louisville, Kentucky.

15. "Breaking Point" (1976) - This lesser-known entry in the popular '70s "peaceful guy pushed too far by criminal scum" genre came from director Bob Clark, whose uniquely diverse filmography also includes "A Christmas Story," "Porky's" and "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things." Apparently, Bo Svenson uses a bulldozer to knock over a house in it.

16. "Tender Flesh" (1974) - Actor Laurence Harvey ("The Manchurian Candidate") directed his own final film before dying at age 45, a creepy-looking tale of kidnapping, incest and cannibalism that originally had the more ambiguously evocative title "Welcome to Arrow Beach." This ad is for a retitled re-release that was apparently cut, but having seen neither version, I can't verify that.

42nd Street Forever Volume 5: Alamo Drafthouse Edition
Curated by the programmers of Austin, Texas' cult cinema mecca, this set has a number of obscure, outrageous gems as well as a fun, informative commentary track and a documentary about the theater. Talk about a place worthy of a well-timed road trip!

17. "Lucky Seven" (1986) - Kidsploitation movies don't attract the same number of obsessive fans as cult horror and action, but when so many outrageous time-wasters have been churned out for the supposed entertainment of childen, it's hard to see why. Dig this insane kiddie kung fu trailer, in which egregious bodily offense is committed against what are obviously real children.

18. "The Secret of Magic Island" (1956) - Another amazing kid picture ad, this one's a French-made fantasy romp with an all-animal cast that played cheapo American matinees in the '60s. This ad is so freaking awesome, its inclusion on this disc is liable to spark a nationwide hunt for the movie, since all English language prints of "Magic Island" are unfortunately considered lost.

19. "Caged Virgins" (1973) - This famously lurid trailer, packed with brazen nudity and kinky violence, obscures the fact that it's advertising a very artsy film, Jean Rollin's "Vierges et Vampires," aka "Requiem for a Vampire." It was the first Rollin movie I ever saw, and it bored the crap out of me upon initial viewing, but I found it mesmerizing once I came to appreciate his singularly salacious style.

20. "Norman, Is That You?" (1976) - This was Redd Foxx's big bid for movie stardom, a politically incorrect comedy based on a flop stage play about a crusty old crank who finds out his son is gay right after his wife leaves him for his brother. It's hard to believe something so '70s fabulous (Wayland Flowers and Madame are in it!) could be as forgotten as this movie is.

The Bitter Tears of Dorothy Zbornak

2010-04-21T11:55:00.004-05:00

Oh, that's right! I have a blog!

Seriously, since I last provided signs of life, I haven't forgotten about Entartete Kunst. A healthy hoard of half-written posts will attest to that. No, I just haven't had much free time in front of the computer, as anyone who's attempted to contact me by e-mail might gather. Today, however, is the first paid vacation day I have enjoyed in more than a year, so it's time to attend to business. My new job is excellent, my lady and family and kitties are all doing well, I'm sleeping again thanks to my CPAP machine, and I've been taking the opportunity to get out of the condo more often. I may even have seen you for a brief moment. Hello again!

Of course, when I'm home, I'm often attending to whatever disc we have from Netflix. Recent selections have included "Gimme Shelter" (one of the most fascinating rock documentaries ever made, and Sassy Frass had never seen it), "The Passion of the Christ" (okay if viewed as an artsy, "300"-ish interpretation of mythologized history, but somehow not as gruesome as I'd always hoped), "The Good Girl" (we gave the hated Jennifer Aniston's mopey "dark comedy" a chance, which was a huge waste of time) and "Absurd" (the new Mya Communication version entitled "Horrible," Joe D'Amato's once-rare Video Nasty that's merely a shitty Italian "Halloween" knockoff). Then there's the current television season, which continues unabated... I have never written much here about my current TV habits, but that may change. There just happens to be a lot of stuff worth following that's on right now. I mean, fucking "Lost," right?

Otherwise, I have gotten out to a good number of concerts, and I am still keeping up with new stuff as best as I can. Check out the new playlist over on the right, featuring one song from each of the first 20 musical releases of 2010 that I heard. I don't feel like writing about 'em. Give the tunes a chance. If you like anything, Google it. If you don't like how something unfamiliar sounds, give the song a minute in case the horrible, roaring metal suddenly morphs into something else. I'm personally loving the new efforts by Sigh, Orphaned Land, Eels, Ihsahn and, believe it or not, Overkill, along with the impressive debut albums of Fang Island and Barren Earth. Don't worry, I'll eventually get to the 2009 top 10.

But, enough with the name-dropping bullshit. I know what you animals want! After three months without a post, there's only one logical way to stage my comeback: with another excerpt from my forthcoming tome of "Golden Girls" fan fiction, to be entitled "The Cookie Connection":

Dorothy never knew it was possible for pain to be so sharp and so dull in such equal measures. Yet, the throb in her left hip, which had awoken her at 2:30 a.m. and persisted through two adult doses of Bayer, had achieved a unique, maddening balance. It was as if an idiot child was trying to insert a dull screw into a wet, knotty hunk of enchanted pine while some eldritch forest spirit forced it back out with its heathen blood-magic. This was the third night in a row that the mercurial hip agony had kept Dorothy from sleeping. It was starting to terrify her, but she dared not say anything to her housemates.

Speaking of whom, one of the others was definitely up as well. A hearty warble drifted under Dorothy’s bedroom door, as cheerful as a springtime finch. She at first suspected her mother, but having never heard Sophia sing happily, let alone before 6 a.m., she dismissed her suspicion. Gripping her hip and cursing her years of motherhood, Dorothy worked herself to her feet and limp-shuffled toward the kitchen, a stormy, sleep-deprived glare plastered on her face.

Indeed, it was Sophia providing the cut-rate Dean Martin impression. She was dusted with a fine white powder and appeared to have been baking.

“I ate antipasto twice/Just because she was so nice/Angelina! Oh, good morning, pussycat,” blurted Sophia, startled by the sudden appearance of Dorothy’s floral print-draped frame in the doorway. “It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” replied Dorothy, “if you’re Marlee Matlin. What’s gotten into you, ma? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Time to celebrate! I just got wonderful news. Do you remember Marie Scavolini?”

“Wasn’t she the girl who boiled your pet rabbit back in Sicily?” Dorothy didn’t like where this was heading.

“That’s the one,” Sophia crowed. “Poor Bugs never had a chance. I always said, ‘I hope I live long enough to show Looney Tunes cartoons on Marie Scavolini’s gravestone.’ Now I can! The miserable crone was eaten by an alligator!”

“Ma, that’s ridiculous,” moaned Dorothy, her sore hip quivering like a cornered spaniel.

“Ridiculous? Marie’s good-for-nothing son took her on one of those Louisiana bayou tours. Her hat blew off, she leaned over to get it, and – CHOMP!”

“Really? I can’t believe it!” Dorothy paused to consider the woman, and could find very little worth considering. “I remember she had those awful, jagged, yellow teeth. Maybe the alligator thought she was its cousin.”

Just then Rose came into the kitchen, already dressed for the day in a billowing pink sweater and breezy teal slacks.

“Good morning, girls,” chirped Rose. “Who’s an alligator’s cousin?”

“Some woman Ma hated from Sicily,” summed up Dorothy.

“That’s funny. Did I ever tell you about Helga Flernderfer?” Rose asked hopefully.

“Don’t tell me,” snapped Dorothy, not in the mood for another St. Olaf story at such an early hour. “She fell asleep in a haystack and woke up married to an alligator?”

“No, of course not,” laughed Rose. “That was her sister Olga. Helga married the alligator’s cousin!”

“But the alligator’s cousin was also an alligator!”

“Oh, Dorothy,” replied Rose, shaking her head in bemused pity. “St. Olaf may be old-fashioned in a lot of ways, but we were anything but traditional when it came to animal families. Maybe where you come from, all the alligators are related. We had birds that were related to fish, frogs that were related to mice and alligators that were related to city councilmen.”

“Come on, Rose, what was an alligator doing in Minnesota?” wondered Sophia.

“The company he worked for transferred him there. You see, a long time ago, the herring plant held a sweepstakes...”

“Enough, Rose!” Dorothy roared, another wave of sickening pain flowing out from her hip. She softened her tone. “Don’t you have to get going to set up for the bake sale?”

“Oh, you’re right,” said Rose, glancing at her wristwatch with a jolt. “I don’t want to be late. Those poor kids at the orphanage... so many of them are terminally ill. They need all the help they can get.”

“Just think of the help they’ll need after she’s done with them,” zinged Sophia, cocking her head at Dorothy and her thumb at Rose.

“Bye, Rose,” Dorothy responded, relieved to finally see the morning moving along. “We’ll come by a little later. I want to stop at Zayre on the way to the bake sale. I need a new shawl.”

“Rose, can you bring those red tins on the counter?” Sophia asked. “I made a few batches of my special Italian almond cookies for the bake sale. I figured the orphans could actually use some money, and between Mildred Wallace’s prune cake and Father Miller’s fig tarts, they weren’t going to make any.”

“Oh, thank you Sophia,” said Rose, slipping on her sunglasses and jingling her keys. “But you know I made my snickerdoodles, and they always bring in the most money.”

“You mean they used to,” replied Sophia with a superior smirk. “Now that you have my almond cookies, you won’t have to rely on your old snickerwhatsis.”

Rose gasped quietly, aghast at Sophia’s culinary hubris. She struggled for a retort before Dorothy broke the silence.

“Come on, Ma, get yourself cleaned up. We can stop at Phar-Mor between Zayre and the bake sale. They have that diet chocolate fudge soda you like.” Dorothy shuddered in revulsion at the thought. The stuff smelled like soggy Tootsie Rolls and rotten-toothed despair.

“Oh, boy! I love the eighties,” exclaimed Sophia, hurrying out of the kitchen. “Our president’s an actor, phones don’t have cords and you can drink carbonated chocolate out of a can!”

“I hope Blanche is okay,” exclaimed Rose, who had opened the back door in preparation for her journey. “Her car isn’t in the driveway.”

“Didn’t she have a date last night?” asked Dorothy through her teeth. If there was much more of this procrastination, she would push Rose out the door.

“That’s right. I think she was going to see that police officer again. He sounds so nice. What was his name? I can’t think of it.”

“It’s either Hardcastle or McCormick. Goodbye Rose.”

“I don’t think that was it.”

“GOODBYE, ROSE!” Dorothy hollered, turning away to hide her grimace and hobbling after Sophia. As Rose gathered up her snickerdoodles, she glanced at the tins containing Sophia’s cookies, then in Sophia’s direction, then at the tins again. She bustled out the door, intentionally leaving the Italian almond cookies behind.

Blanche primped her bouffant in the restroom mirror, puckering her lips and swaying her leathery bosom back and forth. She knew that she was stunningly beautiful, but there was something about her companion that had made her pause to verify it. After all, from his devil-may-care stubble to his casual pairings of white Italian suits with pastel t-shirts and no socks, Detective James Crockett was the sort of guy a woman, even one as stunningly beautiful as Blanche Deveraux knew herself to be, did not meet every day.

Indeed, as she prowled into the hallway where the Miami vice officer stood waiting, she could sense the other women in the vicinity cravenly sizing him up. Sonny, as he asked her to call him, exuded a raw sexuality that Miami women found irresistible. She touched his arm lightly.

“Ready to go in, Sonny?” asked Blanche, just loudly enough so that Mildred Wallace could hear.

“Sure, baby,” said Sonny. When he turned to look into her eyes, Blanche heard a saxophone playing somewhere, softly. For some reason, she was compelled to stare at him admiringly for a moment, as if waiting for the roar of an unseen audience to die down, before stepping forward and snaking her arm alongside his. “Anything for the kids,” he finally concluded. They stepped out into the bake sale benefiting St. Egbert’s Home for Boys and Girls.

As Blanche and Sonny approached Rose’s table, they could see a disturbance brewing. Sophia had apparently brought her own cookies and set up selling them directly next to Rose’s sales area. A man in a denim jacket had been browsing Rose’s snickerdoodles when Sophia leaned over and said, “Excuse me, sir? Do you really want to pay that much for a cookie that was mixed by a dog?”

“That’s ridiculous, Sophia,” snorted Rose, quickly flashing a smile at the customer. “A dog didn’t mix these cookies, sir! Isn’t that the silliest thing you’ve ever heard?”

“I didn’t say a dog mixed them. I said they were mixed by a dog, meaning near the dog. That mutt’s hair must be all over those cookies.”

“Sparky didn’t go anywhere near the cookies!”

“Not when you were around. While you were taking a bathroom break, I caught him standing in the mixing bowl!”

The man dropped the snickerdoodle he was inspecting and stepped over to Sophia’s display. He bought a half dozen Italian almond cookies and hurried away.

“Hello, girls,” announced Blanche, swooping in on Sonny’s arm. “I don’t believe you’ve met Detective Sonny Crockett of the Metro-Dade Police Department?”

“Gee, it’s nice to meet you, Detective,” said Rose demurely.

“I’ll say,” said Sophia. “The cops are a lot better looking these days.”

“It’s just Sonny. And it’s a pleasure to meet you both,” said Crockett charmingly. His attention seemed to be diverted by Sophia’s customer, who was nibbling at one of the cookies. After a bit, the man licked his lips, stared at the cookie, licked his lips again and smiled, swallowing the rest in one bite.

“Won’t you try a snickerdoodle, Detective?” asked Rose, shooting Sophia a hateful glance. “They’re for a good cause.”

“Sure,” said Crockett, peeling a few bills from his classy gold money clip. “They look delicious.” He told her that they tasted that way, as well.

“My Italian almond cookies are nothing to sneeze at,” offered Sophia, sitting up proudly. Crockett propped his half-eaten snickerdoodle in his mouth and grabbed for his cash again, but the denim-jacketed man who bought the cookies earlier darted in front of him.

“They’re the best cookies I ever had,” said the returning customer, now extremely animated and rubbing forcefully at his gums. “I don’t know what you put in those, lady, but give me six dozen!”

“You see?” Sophia preened, first at Crockett and Blanche, then, more deliberately, at Rose. “Who needs snackerhoodoos when you can have fine, Old World tradition?”

“Snickerdoodles are from the Old World, too!” burst Rose.

“I meant this Old World, not an Old World in a galaxy far, far away,” concluded Sophia, satisfied in her triumph at last as Crockett bought a dozen Italian almond cookies. He handed them to Blanche, whose eyes went wide as soon as she bit in.

“Ooomphff, Ffophia” she exclaimed around the crumbly dough. “These are amazing! You’ve got to give me your recipe. Sonny, you have to try these.”

“I will in a minute, Blanche,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the cookie fan in the denim jacket, who was now jittering in the corner, wolfing down handfuls of the powdery crescents. “Will you please excuse me for a minute, ladies?”

“Of course! Don’t be gone long,” purred Blanche. “I might wander off and you’d have to put me in handcuffs again.”

Crockett strolled up to the man and cautiously said, “Melvin? Melvin Diaz?”

“What?” barked the man, looking up quickly. His lips were caked with saliva and crumbs and white powder, and his eyes had turned a dangerous shade of red.

“I thought that was you, Melvin,” said Crockett, flashing his badge. “Remember me? The last time you got hauled in for running cocaine to the Guatemalans?”

“Hey, man, I-I’m through with th-that stuff,” said Melvin. He scanned the orphanage’s greeting hall for a handy exit, but could not find one. “You can ask my parole officer, I ain’t failed a drug test in six months!”

“I’ll bet you'd fail one right now,” chided Crockett, reaching for his handcuffs. “You’re higher than a kite.”

“No way,” exclaimed Melvin, pushing his back into the corner. “I tell you, all I had today was some coffee and these cookies.” Nervously, he dug his hand into the box to pull out more, but Crockett snatched them away.

“Let me see these cookies,” said Crockett testily. He ran a pinky over one and touched the tip to his tongue, then spat violently. “Just as I suspected. Cocaine! Melvin Diaz, you’re under arrest for public consumption of narcotics. That’s a violation of your parole.” Melvin squealed in fear.

“Wait a minute”, hollered Sophia. “Cocaine? You’ve got to be kidding. That’s just powdered sugar.”

“Oh, my stars,” said Blanche, dropping the remains of her cookie and stabbing at her lips with sharp-tipped burgundy nails. “Sonny, does cocaine make your mouth go all numb? Because my mouth is all numb. Sonny, I can’t feel my mouth, it’s all numb. Sonny?”

Just then, Dorothy sauntered out of the ladies’ room. Her mother had insisted on opening one of the unrefrigerated diet chocolate fudge sodas in the car, and when Dorothy had to brake quickly to avoid a careless driver, it had spilled all over the upholstery. After five minutes of hunching over, dabbing the sewage-colored mess from the seat while its unholy stench wafted up in the sticky Miami morning heat, she not only wanted to have her hip removed with a chainsaw, but needed to vomit on top of it. Having to lumber through a large room festooned with fragrant fudge on the way to the toilet did not help.

Now racked with bottomless misery, Dorothy only wished to lurch back to the car, drive home and soak in the tub until she died. Naturally, she was greeted by her mother in handcuffs, being led by a very sharply dressed plainclothes officer, and trailing both a terrified Blanche and a confused Rose.

“Pussycat! Pussycat, help me,” cried Sophia as the cop led her past. “I was framed!”

“Ma, what have you done now?” Dorothy winced.

“Your mother is under arrest for distribution and sale of cocaine, ma’am,” mumbled Crockett, lighting a cigarette in the doorway. “Those cookies probably have a street value of over five thousand bucks.”

“What are you talking about?” Dorothy sobbed, at no one in particular. “What is he talking about?”

“I told him, Dorothy,” Sophia pleaded. “When I was walking out of the grocery store with the powdered sugar, I bumped into a guy who was carrying a bag just like mine. We both dropped our bags. He must have been smuggling the cocaine, and the bags must have gotten mixed up!”

“Of course they did,” agreed Dorothy, her tormented body shocked back to attention by this fresh hell. “Officer, please. My mother is 84 years old, how could she be a drug trafficker?”

“Until we get this straightened out, she’s coming downtown,” growled Crockett, yanking Sophia outside.

“You’re making a big mistake, buddy,” she snarled at him. “What do I look like, a jazz musician?”

2009: The Year in Metal, Part II

2010-01-23T21:26:00.001-06:00

I bid you a considerably tardy welcome to 2010. Naturally, here is my second and final all-metal look back at 2009, which, all things considered, was a pretty decent year for the genre. As it ages, metal continues to expand its borders to new levels of restraint and garishness, aesthetic refinement and primal indulgement. Although none of the following selections made my personal top ten, there is a lot of amazing stuff to be found in here, including a number of my favorite local bands.

And what exactly did make the top ten, you ask? Well, you might be able to guess some of its contents by what's been missing from these retrospectives, but I think overall you'll be as surprised as I was. That list may not be up next, but you'll see it at some point. I am proud to say I'm starting a new job on Feb. 1, so between that and the Netflix subscription (many thanks to Uncle Dennis and Aunt Chantal, this month I've already enjoyed such great subcultural documentaries as "Not Quite Hollywood," "Jesus Camp," "The Gits" "Small Town Gay Bar" and "Heavy Metal in Baghdad," plus "Teeth," Guy Maddin's "Cowards Bend the Knee," Takashi Miike's banned-from-Showtime "Masters of Horror" episode and most of the first season of "True Blood") we'll see how much time I have for bloggin'. Plenty, I hope!

1. Between the Buried and Me - "Disease, Injury, Madness" (The Great Misdirect, Victory): The best progressive metalcore act on the planet (from North Carolina, of all places) followed the masterpiece that was 2007's Colors with another towering acheivement, one slightly chillier in its more "professional" sheen but still teeming with menacing tech-grind, bright arpeggios, spacy prog-grunge and left turns aplenty.

2. Slough Feg - "Shakedown at the Six" (Ape Uprising!, Cruz del Sur): Traditional heavy metal never sounded so effortless, yet so thoroughly sweat-soaked, as it does in the hands of Slough Feg guitarist/vocalist/Bay Area philosopher king Mike Scalzi, who this time indulged a "Planet of the Apes" fetish among his classic high-flying fretboard fireworks.

3. Absu - "Amy" (Absu, Candlelight): Revived by percussion shaman Prosciptor McGovern after an eight-year hiatus, the Texan cult act offered an outstanding blackened thrash feast that harnessed their trademark ferocious precision to surprising segments of anthemic melody and occult weirdness.

4. Hypocrisy - "The Quest" (A Taste of Extreme Divinity, Nuclear Blast): Veterans of Sweden's melodic death metal empire, Peter Tägtgren and crew's 11th album is one of their strongest to date. While every bracing speedfest and groovy rocker is a winner, it's long been the trippy death metal ballads like this one that set Hypocrisy apart.

5. Korpiklaani - "Kultanainen" (Karkelo, Nuclear Blast): Although they're often unfairly singled out as all that's silly and superficial about the folk metal explosion, Finland's working class sextet isn't all about beer, vodka and beer, as this somewhat brooding number ("Golden Woman") inspired by the Kalevala attests.

6. Slayer - "Psychopathy Red" (World Painted Blood, American): Improving on the gains of 2006's so-so Christ Illusion, the California thrash institution got closer to earning back its deadly reputation, trading the rote petulance of the late '90s/early '00s period for genuine anger and violence, finally delivering an album that's at least as good as 1994's Divine Intervention.

7. Gorgoroth - "Satan-Prometheus" (Quantos Possunt ad Satanitatem Trahunt, Regain): At last, guitarist, founding member and ex-con Infernus was legally granted the right to his own band's name again, bringing back vocalist Pest (along with a rhythm section hailing from Dark Funeral and Obituary) for another star-studded slab of gloomy, melodic, traditional Norwegian black metal.

8. Suidakra - "Conlaoch" (Crógacht, Wacken): I lost track of folky melodic death metallers Suidakra some years ago, but checked out the Germans' latest after a particularly good live show, finding a strong mix of Celtic tones and rousing riffery that should appeal to anyone who likes their folk metal more muscular than mirthful.

9. Candlemass - "Hammer of Doom" (Death Magic Doom, Nuclear Blast): Sweden's eminent slowpokes upped the ante on their second disc with Solitude Aeturnus' Robert Lowe's dramatic wail commanding the mic, their best album since their '80s heyday. Every track is genius, but the best is this massive tribute to the first song on the first Black Sabbath album... the genesis of doom metal itself.

10. HORSE the band - "Big Business" (Desperate Living, Vagrant): Growing up in fits from their early Nintendocore spazziness, California five-piece HORSE further evolved into the Faith No More of the '00s with this surprisingly expansive alt-prog-core opus, one still steeped enough in amusing ugliness to both reference John Waters and sample "Xavier: Renegade Angel."

11. Wolves in the Throne Room - "A Looming Resonance" (Malevolent Grain, Southern Lord): While the Washingtonians' full-length Black Cascade was excellent, the sharper recording is a little too harsh and contained, whereas the year's preceding Grain EP dipped more into the fuzzy, hypnotic black-ish metal we know and love. As on their debut, former Hammers of Misfortune siren Jamie Myers aids them on this track.

12. Obscurity - "Im Herzen des Eises" (Várar, Trollzorn): One of very few metal bands I discovered for the first time in '09, this scrappy little German horde stomped across black and death metal borders with a hawk-eyed heathen intensity rarely heard in these days of generically melodic "extreme" metal, the no-frills sound of epic battle personified.

13. Novembers Doom - "I Hurt Those I Adore" (Into Night's Requiem Infernal, The End): Our first Chicago act, the venerable doom/death institution dredged forth another set of textured melancholy, not as forceful as their last outing nor as heart-rending as the one before, yet still slotting comfortably among the quintet's solid recent work, worth a listen for any fan of the slow, sad and self-reflective.

14. Anaal Nathrakh - "The Lucifer Effect" (In the Constellation of the Black Widow, Candlelight): One of the planet's most genuinely extreme acts, the British duo tore into full-length number five like demonic jackals, hurling bloody chunks of grindcore, black metal and stunningly triumphant metal might into the machinery for one of their most consistently eye-popping sets to date, with songs like this one perfect for scaring other midsummer drivers.

15. Glittertind - "Glittertind" (Landkjenning, Napalm): It's been a long wait for another full-length by this formerly-one-man Norwegian outfit, and while the disc's a little too short and mellow for my taste, a few tracks, like this jolly folk/punk/metal theme song for the band, justify my allegiance to the unabashedly patriotic duo.

16. Nachtmystium - "Life of Fire" (Doomsday Derelicts, Battle Kommand): Chicago's enigmatic post-black psyche freaks dropped a typically diverse under-the-radar EP running the gamut from traditional black metal to campy blackened thrash to the artsy post-punk pace of this atmospheric rocker, easily the most unique track on this stopgap release.

17. Paradise Lost - "Last Regret" (Faith Divides Us — Death Unites Us, Century Media): The first new Paradise Lost album I've bothered to listen to in fourteen years turned out to be worth the spins, the aged British quintet having settled into a respectable gothic groove ruled by the classic razor-sharp guitar melodies of the venerable duo of Mackintosh and Aedy.

18. Samael - "Earth Country" (Above, Nuclear Blast): The fastest, most extreme-sounding disc in the Swiss act's 23-year existence revives the martial thrashings of their mid-'90s industrial days, smears on the imperial atmosphere of their more recent records and jacks up the tempo to Norsecore blitzkreig. Imposing and enveloping and completely unexpected, Above very nearly made my top 10.

19. Arkona - "Pamiat" (Goi, Rode, Goi!, Napalm): If the Scandinavian and Teutonic pagan metal scenes have become too predictable for you, look to Russia's vaunted Arkona, whose ambitious (if overlong) fifth album combines somewhat jolly traditional ethnic singalongs with a rougher, black-ish sort of metal and lots of glorious Slavic choirs, all fronted by a diverse-voiced woman nicknamed "Scream."

20. The Chasm - "Entering a Superior Dimension" (Farseeing the Paranormal Abysm, Lux Inframundis): My favorite Chicago band (via Mexico) self-released their seventh ritual to minimum hype, making the curious choice to exclude Daniel Corchado's bizarre vocals from half of the eight tracks, laying bare the infectious, otherworldly urgency that suffuses their one-of-a-kind epic death metal with the strength of cult suffering and unheralded genius.

2009: The Year in Non-Metal

2009-12-31T13:02:00.000-06:00

In case you're keeping count, this is the 200th post on Entartete Kunst!

Before the year is gone, I wanted to leave you with 20 cool tunes that will not hurt your poor widdle ears. Here's a look at some non-metal stuff I enjoyed during 2009: pop, indie and art rock, hip-hop and what have you.

With the sudden lack of promos coming my way, I must admit that in 2009, I was not as adventurous nor as adamant about hearing musicians I didn't already follow. If it were not for friends with varying tastes, I might not have heard more than half of the songs on this list. So, let me take this holiday moment to thank all of my dear friends, not just the cool music-sharing ones. Even if I did not see you or even speak to you as often as I would have liked this year, I am incredibly grateful for your place in my life. Your encouragement and companionship during the jobless months and the quitting of the cigarettes (2 months and counting) have really helped me get through. Things aren't that terrible, but I long for time and funds to shed this hermit-like existence and venture back into the real world, where people are learning and growing and doing... I would love to hang out with so many of you awesome motherfuckers, I cannot keep count. I will surely see you in 2010. After all, it is the year we make contact.

1. "Weird Al" Yankovic - "Skipper Dan" (Internet Leaks, Volcano): Regardless of my strange burst of superfandom this year, this was the best guitar pop single I heard all year, a perfect example of Al's ear for hooks and a uniquely poignant look at unfulfilled potential that will resonate with anyone who works a shittier job than they deserve to be working.

2. Beirut - "The Shrew" (March of the Zapotec, Ba Da Bing!): On a split EP with himself (the other half of bedroom electro-pop, Holland, is credited to Realpeople), globe-trotting New Mexican Zach Condon took his wistful indie-folk project south, teaming with Mexico's 19-piece Jimenez Band for an unfortunately brief set of sad and dusty border songs.

3. DOOM - "Cellz" (Born Like This, Lex): Long Island's masked supervillain returned to lambaste the lazy status quo, his signature mush-mouthed wordplay matched with beats ranging from comically kooky to criminally complex, his laid-back indie rap venom given a suitably apocalyptic intro here by Charles Bukowski.

4. The Octopus Project - "Wood Trumpet" (Golden Beds, Peek-A-Boo): The Austin outfit stretched out a bit on this EP, curiously sounding more like a regular old indie rock band than ever, whereas this joyful, danceable instrumental (presumably an older composition) is the sort of thing that drew me to the band in the first place.

5. Phish - "Light" (Joy, JEMP): The planet's premiere jam band came out of hiatus and personal turmoil with an accessible pop slant to their proggy ambition, this tune an expert balance of rootsy groove and slinky spaceout, pensive and hopeful in equal measures... although I think overall I prefer the more eclectic bonus disc that came with the box set.

6. Eels - "Lilac Breeze" (Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire, Vagrant): Anything was bound to be a letdown after the career-defining majesty of Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, but E's reversion to the primal rawk-meets-tuneful folk of the Shootenanny! era felt unnecessarily slight, despite possessing a number of endearing individual moments such as this horny charmer.

7. Method Man and Redman - "Four Minutes to Lock Down (feat. Raekwon and Ghostface Killah)" (Blackout! 2, Def Jam): With only a few concessions to modern mainstream hip-hop cheese, Meth and Red's long-awaited sequel proved they still have the skills and interplay to leave most permanent duos in the dust. When they're joined on this track by two of Method Man's Wu-mates, it's pure East Coast kung fu brilliance.

8. The Most Serene Republic - "Don't Hold Back, Feel a Little Longer" (...And the Ever Expanding Universe, Arts & Crafts): The seven-member Ontario band long regarded as a mini-Broken Social Scene took its lush pop into loftier environs, boy/girl vocal harmonies melting into the grand dynamics of the collective, heard here at their most sprightly and stimulating.

9. The Mars Volta - "Desperate Graves" (Octahedron, Warner Bros.): A rare hot spot on the Texan outfit's lovely but uncharacteristically mellow fifth LP, this track redefined "power ballad" into a shuffling, nervous beast of prey. If Ced and Omar had mixed in some of the whirlwind punk-prog from their side project with Hella, Octohedron would have been a more well-rounded MV disc.

10. Kool Keith - "Black Lagoon" (Kool Keith Presents Tashan Dorrsett, Junkadelic): DJ Junkaz Lou provided some astonishingly strange beats for a decent set by the wildly fluctuating New York MC, who plays a "regular guy" character, one who's quick to diss or defecate on all that is wack, loves the ladies, mutters his own weirdo chorus hooks... no, Tashan's not too removed from most of Kool Keith's other guises.

11. Antony and the Johnsons - "One Dove" (The Crying Light, Secretly Canadian): I can pile adjectives between "Antony Hegarty's" and "voice," but I cannot adequately describe its eerie allure, nor why it's such an engaging presence among the British band's mannered chamber pop, capable of fluttering to majestic heights or plummeting to the depths of elegiac despair.

12. Bon Iver - "Blood Bank" (Blood Bank, Jagjaguwar): Justin Vernon's one-man band became a full unit on this EP, yet the native Wisconsinite still sounds blissfully desolate on all but the title track, a characteristically pretty folk number left over from the debut days that crystallizes the breathless intimacy of fresh winter love.

13. Asobi Seksu - "Familiar Light" (Hush, Polyvinyl): By stripping some of the swirling shoegaze production and occasional Japanese vocals from their winsome dreamscapes, the New York quartet revealed themselves to be fairly ordinary pop rockers, although not without an occasional celestial highlight like this one left in their bags.

14. We Were Promised Jetpacks - "Quiet Little Voices" (These Four Walls, FatCat): Young Scottish aspirants to the throne of countrymen Frightened Rabbit, these dudes quietly dropped an excellent debut of soaring, post-punk-flavored indie pop, announcing themselves with this driving single that portends a healthy career packed with giant-sized anthems.

15. Black Lips - "The Drop I Hold (feat. GZA)" (The Drop I Hold, Vice): After thoroughly enjoying a portion of their set at Pitchfork, I was disappointed by the Atlanta garage rock hipsters' ugly new album, with this odd blues-rap track the sole standout for me... although, when I heard about this digital single version featuring one of my favorite MCs, I was mighty pleased.

16. múm - "Prophecies and Reversed Memories" (Sing Along to Songs You Don't Know, Morr): Ever twee and cuddly, the Icelandic collective moved even further from its intricate electronic origins and edged closer to regular indie pop territory, eclectic instrumentation and genial vocal glee helping to assuage the repetitive nature of this still-enchanting single.

17. Azeda Booth - "Squall" (Tubtrek, Absolutely Kosher): The Calgary outfit followed their impressive debut of rich electronic shoegazing with a half-new/half-remix EP (available as a free download), the original material such as this expanding their alien pop template with shiny, clattering, cooing density.

18. Zombi - "Spirit Warrior" (Spirit Animal, Relapse): The addition of guitar to the Pittsburgh duo's synth/bass/drum setup didn't affect their spacy sound as much as one would guess, as their vocal-free compositions still evoke night driving in a sleek European sports car while evading a horde of grey Italian flesh-eaters.

19. mc chris - "Neville" (Part Six Part Two, mc chris LLC): If the Libertyville-bred rapper/comedian wants to distance himself from the nerdcore movement, tracks like this brilliantly irreverent, reggae-tinged homage to Harry Potter's botanist pal Neville Longbottom aren't going to help his cause.

20. Porcupine Tree - "I Drive the Hearse" (The Incident, Roadrunner): Never afraid of an ambitious concept, Steven Wilson helms his long-running prog ship into dark and modern territory, adding the electro-cool angst of recent Nine Inch Nails to his signature Floyd/Beatles/Crimson melange, ending somewhat peacefully on this tuneful happy/sad note.

And... oh, what the hell. Here is a complete list of every musical performer I saw during the lean times of 2009, in order of first contact. I'd like to say with certainty that I will increase the final tally in 2010, but we shall see. Happy New Year, gang!

1. Something Beautiful
2. Suidakra
2. Alestorm
4. Týr
5. Ion Vein
6. Circle of Fate
7. Azeda Booth
8. The Show Is the Rainbow
9. J+J+J
10. Intronaut
11. Kylesa
12. Mastodon
13. Blackguard
14. Moonsorrow
15. Primordial
16. Korpiklaani
17. Kiuas
18. Earthen Grave
19. Dope
20. Luna Mortis
21. Gwynbleidd
22. Sheephead
23. Novembers Doom (x2)
24. Perzonal War
25. The Norwegian Beatles
26. Mr. Blotto (x2)
27. The Killdares
28. Seven Nations
29. Massed Bands (23rd annual Scottish Festival & Highland Games closing ceremonies)
30. Eddie Money
31. Fucked Up
32. The Antlers
33. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
34. Bowerbirds
35. Ponytail
36. Yeasayer
37. DOOM
38. Beirut
39. Matt & Kim
40. The Black Lips
41. The National
42. Phish
43. District 54 Orchestra
44. Scott Wesley Band
45. FOX
46. K. Michaels Band
47. Joe Walega's Happy Hearts
48. Blownload
49. Revolting Cocks
50. Hildur Guðnadóttir
51. Sin Fang Bous
52. múm
53. Sacred Dawn
54. Woods of Ypres

2009: The Year in Metal, Part I

2009-12-16T22:49:00.006-06:00

It's that time of year, when I suddenly spring to life and unleash a flurry of year-end musical retrospectives. Without the added influence of work-related listening, 2009 found me exploring a lot fewer unfamiliar acts, and this meant I heard a lot more metal in proportion to other types of music. Thankfully, I like lots of different types of metal.

Let's start with my first look back at the loud n' proud offerings of 2009. You'll find world-famous legends and underground upstarts, classy artistes and crass workmen, beguiling melodies and punishing beatdowns, ancient warchants and future madrigals. I like all of these songs, and if you give them a chance, I'm sure you'll find something to like about at least one of them. Labels listed are the U.S. distributor, unless there isn't one.

1. Dethklok - "Laser Cannon Deth Sentence" (Dethalbum II, Williams Street): The stars of Adult Swim's animated gorefest "Metalocalypse" — the Archies of the '00s — bested sales of their first disc and retained claim to the highest-charting extreme metal album of all time with a somewhat less jokey slab of melodic death/thrash, including some seriously impressive guitar fury from series creator Brendan Small. Who knew the guy behind "Home Movies" could shred like this?

2. Amorphis - "Sampo" (Skyforger, Nuclear Blast): Now thoroughly settled into a comfortable late-career cruise, Finland's long-running atmospheric shapeshifters dipped back into native folklore for inspiration and came up with their strongest recent album, resplendent in sky-spanning guitar riffs, proggy detours and heartfelt goth/death vocals.

3. Megadeth - "1,320" (Endgame, Roadrunner): Since 2001's The World Needs a Hero, Dave Mustaine has slowly rebuilt Megadeth into a respectable band, and for the first time since he lost the plot in the mid-'90s, he's delivered an entire album worth hearing, split between the catchy melodic sensibilities of onetime Jag Panzer guitarist Chris Broderick and the twisted, nearly-off-the-rails thrash that once defined Megadeth.

4. Amesoeurs - "La Reine Trayeuse" (Amesoeurs, Profound Lore): Alcest mastermind Neige finally delivered a full-length, full band effort from his cult side project, then promptly disbanded the artsy outfit, leaving behind a grimy, apocalyptic, occasionally gorgeous battle of buzzing disciplines, haunted '80s proto-shoegaze trading shots with hypnotic French bedroom black metal.

5. Ensiferum - "Stone Cold Metal" (From Afar, Napalm): For what is easily their best effort since their outta-nowhere 2001 debut, the Finns put a little more thought into their compositions and take their rousing Viking-ish pomp into big-budget territory, knocking one out of the park on this number by deciding to take a wicked spaghetti western track about three minutes in.

6. Believer - "The Need for Conflict" (Gabriel, Metal Blade): The nonexistent award for Most Impressive Reunion should go to the way-underhyped return of these obscure Christian prog-thrashers from Pennsylvania, who remarkably resurrected their scorched Earth shrieks, dry mullets-down riffing and quirky rhythmic spasms without sounding like something out of 1994.

7. Immortal - "Arctic Swarm" (All Shall Fall, Nuclear Blast): While in no way a towering achievement, Immortal's reunion album is actually a slight step up from their prior platter of mainstreamed black metal, containing all the bitter rasps and cavernous grooves one could want from the ludicrously painted Norse trio.

8. Crimfall - "Wildfire Season" (As the Path Unfolds..., Napalm): "Bombast without bounds" seems to be the motto of these Finnish upstarts, impressive enemies of minimalism with some folk tendencies who generally live to inherit the symphonic excesses of Therion, classic Nightwish and Howard Shore's "Lord of the Rings" scores.

9. Heaven & Hell - "Eating the Cannibals" (The Devil You Know, Rhino): The Mob Rules/Dehumanizer lineup of Black Sabbath may have been forced to change their name by a certain former reality show couple, but the surprising weight of the old timers' first album in 17 years is no publicity stunt, a hearty helping of vintage Dio/Iommi doom n' gloom.

10. Ghost Brigade - "My Heart Is a Tomb" (Isolation Songs, Season of Mist): Injecting post-metal textures and effective, emotive clean singing into artsy melodic greyness, this Finnish outfit's sophomore effort is the perfect holiday gift for any Katatonia fan who still misses their older doom/death stuff but reveres their recent preference for dynamics.

11. Månegarm - "Nattsjäl, Dromsjäl" (Nattväsen, Regain): Perhaps taking after countrymen Thyrfing, folk metal stalwarts Månegarm thickened up their sound this time around, the Swedish Vikings content to cruise at a steady gallop, Janne Liljeqvist's fiddle at the ready whenever a little nighttime jiggery is due.

12. Lamb of God - "Reclamation" (Wrath, Epic): It's a shockingly forgettable collection of retreaded material, and Randy Blythe is best advised to quit experimenting with "singing," but the once-formidable Virginia neo-thrashers haven't completely lost it yet, as this closing number hides the band's strong points (aggro drama + deadly rhythms) in a swampy, bluesy cushion... they wear this sort of Pantera affectation well.

13. God Dethroned - "No Survivors" (Passiondale, Metal Blade): As reliable as heartburn after a Heineken, the Dutch death metal institution returns with a disc centered around one of WWI's biggest battles, their characteristically caffeinated barbed-wire guitar melodies graced by Henri Sattler's most diverse vocal performance to date.

14. Sun of the Blind - "Ornaments" (Skullreader, Avantgarde): This solo disc by Zhaaral, 1/3 of Swiss ambient black metallers Darkspace, is a journey through chasms of layered despondency, a psychedelic slow-burner that seduces the ears and oxidizes the soul in a diseased collusion of wafer-thin tones.

15. Alestorm - "Keelhauled" (Black Sails at Midnight, SPV): The Scottish pirates quickly follow their surprisingly well-received debut with another predictable yet stoopidly fun round of power/folk/thrash tunes about guzzling rum and scurvy sea dogs, with this one possibly standing as their definitive hooligan anthem. You'd have to be a really boring piece of shit to not have a good time listening to this song.

16. Vreid - "Blücher" (Milorg, Indie): Back in World War concept album land, this criminally overlooked black n' roll crew's fourth disc shrieks the praises of the Norwegian homefront resistance during WWII, their assured hooks and expert experimental moments providing depth to what could have just been a solid slate of skullcrackers.

17. My Dying Bride - "Santuario di Sangue" (For Lies I Sire, Peaceville): Ye Olde British Doom personified, MDB introduces the lineup's first full-time violinist since Martin Powell left eleven years ago on what is unfortunately a middle-of-the-road album, only occasionally reaching the depths of wispy melancholy heard here.

18. Unanimated - "The Endless Beyond" (In the Light of Darkness, Regain): Any fan of Sweden's '90s melodic death metal scene will be heartily satisfied by the reunion of this cult horde, who eschew the keyboard accents of old but retain the dank eerieness that kept them among the less mainstream shadows of the underground.

19. Manowar - "Let the Gods Decide" (Thunder In the Sky, Magic Circle): After their last album, a self-indulgent symphonic crapheap that managed to be more clueless than this famously insular New York quartet ever had, a simple dumbshit rocker like this sounds pretty good, although it's pure filler by their classic standards.

20. Finsterforst - "Sturmes Ernte" (...Zum Tode Hin, Einheit): Exceeding all expectations for a second album, the blackened folk metal sextet stretched out into mini-Moonsorrow territory with five epic-length compositions fleshed out by surging riffs, pumping (real) accordion and rich old-world German atmosphere.

Nanaba, nanaba, nanaba...

2009-12-06T13:27:00.002-06:00

I like to think of myself as fairly well-versed in the world of cinematic oddities. Since high school, when midnight show staples like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "A Clockwork Orange," "Pink Floyd The Wall" and "Eraserhead" initiated me into the realm of not-for-everyone movies, I've spent a significant portion of my life reading about, searching for and, at times, actually viewing as many "cult classics" as I could.

It's been a nebulous pursuit. At first, everything was a revelation. I dug into the filmographies of icons like David Lynch, John Waters, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Dario Argento, Russ Meyer, Edward D. Wood, Jr. and Terry Gilliam. Then I discovered the bizarre side of arthouse fare from Pedro Almodóvar, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, Peter Greenaway and Guy Maddin. I naturally gravitated toward the creative iconoclasts of horror cinema, visionaries like George A. Romero, David Cronenberg, Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, Michele Soavi and José Mojica Marins. I braved the disturbing waters of Jörg Buttgereit, Ruggero Deodato, Takashi Miike and Harmony Korine and came out relatively human on the other side. I was, and still am, a big Troma buff.

Long story shortened, I prefer atypical, creative, boundary-pushing shit. I think I've seen all the classics, and modern cult films just don't have the same obscure allure. I mean, I like "Donnie Darko" just fine, but it did not blow my mind like "Blue Velvet" did back in the day. I personally enjoyed video hits like "The Big Lebowski" and "Office Space" during their brief, unsuccessful theatrical runs, before all you regular people cared. I would gladly re-watch not-so-famous cult curiosities like "Wizards," "Forbidden Zone," "Freaked," "Liquid Sky," "The Dark Backward," "The Reflecting Skin," "Tapeheads," "Cabin Boy," "The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!" or even "The Rules of Attraction" before sitting through "Showgirls" again.

I've seen a few great contemporary movies this year, but I prefer the nostalgic comfort found in film grain textures, pre-digital special effects, organic soundtrack instruments and amusingly outdated fashion. To me, there's just something spine-tingling about discovering an incredibly unique film that's been long overlooked. It gives me hope. It justifies all the hours of slogging through mediocre bullshit to find a one-of-a-kind obscurity like "Psychos in Love" or "Diamond Ninja Force."

Mere taboo-busting doesn't do it for me like it used to. I crave the uncanny. I want a shock to the system that shows some creativity, imagination or surprise. By 2009, however, I was beginning to fear that unless I tossed aside my moral restrictions and sat down with titles I've been consciously avoiding, I would never find another of these hidden masterpieces. Then I read about "House."

Not to be confused with the American horror-comedy from 1986, nor the current doctor TV show with the guy from "Black Adder," this "House" is a 1977 Japanese film released by Toho Company Ltd., the folks who brought us the oeuvre of Akira Kurosawa, Godzilla and Studio Ghibli. It was the feature debut of director Nobuhiko Obayashi, who reportedly came up through experimental shorts and TV commercials, but with whose other work I am otherwise unfamiliar. Prior to this year, when it was acquired by Janus Films and began to make the rounds at festivals and revival houses, "House" (or, if you prefer, "Hausu") was virtually unknown in the United States. I happened across a review, which made it sound like the best movie ever, and then I saw the trailer, which made me immediately hunt down an English fan-subbed copy of the German DVD through, um, untraditional sources.

I really don't know why I didn't see "House" sooner. I now realize that it's featured in a few books I keep on my living room shelf, including perfunctorily in Jack Hunter's "Eros In Hell: Sex, Blood and Madness in Japanese Cinema" and slightly more substantially in Pete Tombs' inedispensable "Mondo Macabro: Weird & Wonderful Cinema Around the World," but neither author adequately conveyed its unrivaled lunacy to me when I first dug through their tomes. This is really the sort of film that I live for.

It's soaked through with fantastic elements. It collides tones until it's impossible to predict its creators' intent. It keeps you guessing. It combines sensitive themes about loss and family with ludicrous slapstick non sequiturs and gonzo horror set pieces. Its colorful, professional and psychedelic look is unrivaled; on one hand, it's serious and stylish, and on the other, it's lovingly handcrafted mischief.

Notice how I've danced around describing what actually happens in the film. Part of me doesn't know where to start, and the rest doesn't want to ruin anything. "House" is really the kind of journey that you're better off knowing nothing about, but I'm not so vain that I would expect anyone to rush off and find a currently limited release film just because I said it's worth the effort.

In the same way "The Shining" is about a down-on-his-luck dad who gets a job as a hotel caretaker, "House" is about seven teenaged girls who vacation with the aunt of one of the girls. Oshare misses her late mother, so when her father decides to introduce his new fiancée, she gets upset and decides to ditch their traditional family trip. Seeking to reconnect with her mother's sister instead, Oshare writes to Auntie and quickly gets a positive reply. A fluffy white cat shows up at her window around the same time. Oshare, the cat and six giggling Japanese girls hop a train to Auntie's house, hoping to meet their handsome teacher there and listening to the tragic story of Auntie losing her true love during WWII. A goofy dude selling melons directs them to the house.

So far, pretty normal, with only Obayashi's visual flourishes clueing you in to how insane the movie will get. After Oshare and her buddy Fanta hug each other goodbye, we see Oshare turn around and the frame freezes, suggesting Fanta's mental photograph of her close friend. Oshare's scenes with her dad and his new ladyfriend are set "outside," shot against an intentionally fake painted sunset and through a convoluted '70s wall made of beveled glass squares which distort all the human figures. The fiancée's hair and scarves perpetually billow due to a wind that only seems to affect her. When Oshare storms into her bedroom and spins around, keeping only her head in the frame, we see as the shot widens that her clothes have suddenly changed. Ohare's flickering impressions of her mother have the wistful indie childhood vibe of Michel Gondry's finest work. Throughout the girls' journey to Auntie's, the outdoor landscapes often appear artificial and cartoonish — sometimes they're revealed as diegetic, other times you're not really sure.

Then there's the cutaway scene to the hapless teacher who's supposed to be meeting the girls in the countryside but gets sidetracked in a podunk town where he gets a hubcap stuck on his butt and goes zipping down stairs and into traffic. Sped-up footage and zany sound effects combine with the soundtrack's sunshine funk to resemble a live-action interstitial on "The Banana Splits Adventure Hour." This, in what is ostensibly a horror film in which characters are subsequently attacked by oversized bedding, chewed up by a piano, sucked into a ceiling lamp, drowned in a river of blood that is vomited out of a cat painting or turned into a pile of bananas.

You may need to wait until Janus releases the film on DVD (most likely as part of the esteemed Criterion Collection), but if you have the ability to see it sooner, do it. Trust me, even if "House" reminds you of a lot of other visual experiences you hold dear, you have never seen anything else quite like it. Upon my first full viewing, I was unable to take my eyes off of it. I shook with laughter, surprised myself with a few tears and, occasionally, fumbled for the remote to rewind and verify I had just seen what I thought I saw... not that I missed something, I just couldn't believe what had just happened. If you're like me, it will make you glad to be alive.

Next up: a multi-part look at the new music I listened to during 2009. Hooray!

Night for day

2009-11-06T23:14:00.002-06:00

Since my special lady is out for the evening, I was planning to come home and blithely blog about a crazy movie with which I've lately been obsessed. I trudged up the blandly carpeted stairs lugging my jacket (it was warm enough for just the hoodie), the book I finished today, the book I started after finishing the other and a few scraps of crap mail, including twin missives from our local congresswoman about the raging health care debate. Lamenting yet another day without the CD I pre-ordered last month, which was supposedly shipped last Friday, I fumbled the key into its slot and shoved open the testy door of our humble unit. The cats scampered to greet me, loudly demanding their dinner. I set down the books and jacket, dished out some stinky fish-smelling mush for the girls and tossed the propaganda into the nearly overflowing recyling bin... and then I saw the package on the table.

It was here. The Swedish Limited Digibook Edition of my favorite band's new album, "Featuring 20 Page Booklet and Bonus Track" and mailed with a postcard personally autographed by all five members (thanks, gents!). It doesn't come out in the States until next Tuesday. I have not illegally downloaded a leaked promo rip, nor accepted the free download of the lead track I'm entitled to for being on the band's e-mail list, nor previewed the samples they've posted online. I have been waiting until the disc was in my hands. I wanted to hear it in its entirety. I've read nothing about it except their own studio diaries and press statements. And now, since I have the time to nerd it up tonight, I'm going to document my track-by-track impressions as I listen to it for the first time. (You remember, I have done this in the past with power metal favorites Blind Guardian and Helloween.) Oh, I can't wait to hear it any longer. I present:

KATATONIA

Night Is the New Day

1. "Forsaker" [4:04] - A slow build to a pummeling intro. The rhythmic, monotone chugging at the onset here is the sort of thing that could confuse an unfamiliar listener a few bars later, when the band eases into cleaner, velvety guitars soaked in crystalline reverb. The guest synths by Frank Default are surprisingly prominent in the mix, but do not detract in the slightest. This album is rich and filling already...

2. "The Longest Year" [4:37] - As the current incarnation of Katatonia, their albums' second tracks always come equipped with super catchy choruses to follow the openers' insistently aggressive grooves. This one is a bit more abstract and artsy at first, but eventually grabs hold in the appropriate bleak and sweeping manner. The subdued electronic tinge of the verses adds texture, a big step up from the awkward drum loops inserted into "We Must Bury You" eight years ago. Jonas Renkse's lyrics are always choice: "How cold is the flame/Of our uncompromising future..." Awesome.

3. "Idle Blood" [4:21] - This is acoustic and pastoral at the onset, the keys fixing a slightly symphonic bed. For a minute there, I was thinking it was awfully Opeth-y. I know the bands are old pals and all, and Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt (who is currently in Bloodbath with two of the Katatonia guys and did the growly vocals on 2 of their mid-'90s releases) thinks NItND is "possibly the greatest 'heavy' record [he's] heard in the last ten years," according to the package's promo sticker. I never thought of them sounding very much alike until right now. This is, of course, far more compact and "poppy," but Renkse's vocal melody does give me the vibe of a b-side from Watershed, Opeth's excellent prog surrender from last year. It's not a bad thing, I suppose, just somewhat out of character. There's some beautiful guitar soloing by (I'm guessing) Anders Nyström, who wrote the track. I detected a Fender Rhodes during the fadeout.

4. "Onward Into Battle" [3:49] - Not a throwback to their doom/death days, then, but a tense anthem in the more familiar modern Katatonia vein. Come the first chorus, Daniel Liljekvist's deftly accented drumming leaves me in a heap, and I find it hard to pay attention to much else for a while. Then I notice Mattias Norrman's bass patiently driving the jittery machine, an inviting but sinister pulse. This song feels too short, which always helps replay value.

5. "Liberation" [4:16] - Not to be confused with their 2006 single "Deliberation." This one is a dark (of course), low-slung stomper with further evocative use of electronic beats during the verses. There's another corker of a catchy chorus. By track five, I am used to the occasionally prominent synths and completely impressed with the way this album feels. The mix really captures the band's strengths.

6. "The Promise of Deceit" [4:15] - I am swaying back and forth like a lunatic during this smoothly building, overall low-key groove monster. By the time it gets loud, it's swelled to the point that it can only rain down sheets of obsidian bliss. I have a strong feeling that songs like this are not going to have quite the same whisper/roar dynamics in a live setting, but I cannot wait to hear how they play them. Either Nyström or Fredrik Norrman is behind the harsh squeaking that bleeds into and out of the track - it's a guitar, not a synth.

7. "Nephilim" [4:25] - Oh, shit, that is a straight-up doom metal riff, and you cannot tell me it is not! I wish I had long hair right now, just so I could shake it slowly and deliberately in my own face. Driven by that cranky, eldritch Sabbathy guitar groan, the whole tune remains impressively foreboding, even the spookily mellow sections. Again, Renkse's lyrics are wonderfully evocative: "Listen/How he strides the earth/When only animals are awake..."

8. "New Night" [4:25] - Okay. Eight tracks in, and the band hasn't truly cut loose. Yet, here am I, still enjoying every track. The relative subtlety here was predicted on their last album, anyway. This is a very seductive midpaced number, led by songwriter Renkse's smooth vocal meanderings, which make me think of a romantic, moonlit winter night on a post-apocalyptic beach.

9. "Inheritance" [4:28] - If there was a darker than dark side of the moon, this song would be playing on it. The nocturnal atmosphere is incredibly thick within its opulently bitter strains. The quintet's confident synergy is totally on point here. I am shocked to embrace new elements like this song's "symphonic" interlude so quickly, but their expert integration makes me understand why Katatonia took so long to craft this disc (I think they originally wanted to get it out last year).

10. "Day and Then the Shade" [4:27] - This is the first single, for which a video is forthcoming. The riffing seems pretty complex for a single, but, then note-heavy bands are actually given some due by "Guitar Hero"-playing kids these days, so what the hell do I know? I think this is a great choice for a single, actually, in that it's uptempo and definitely sounds like Katatonia, yet retains an ethereal, alien aura that lets folks know they have grown up a bit more in the three years since The Great Cold Distance. Despite its own fussy, highbrow machinations, the chorus totally swings. (UPDATE: The "Day and Then the Shade" video is now out... it's pretty dumb, just some goth chicks writhing around in a bug-infested forest, but the song's good.)

11. "Ashen" [4:08] - This is the aforementioned "bonus track," only available on this particular version of this album (at the moment). Renkse sounds low and freaky at the beginning with some sort of vocal treatment. Some heavy-hitting riffing appears again, reminding me that there was some of that at the beginning of the album, alongside jangly guitars mixed with soaring, celestial keyboards. This is a gorgeous and varied track, injecting a welcome surge of energy near the end of a disc that I didn't notice lacking in it, proving that even their "extra" material is as carefully sculpted as the rest. I can already tell it was totally worth whatever extra I had to pay for this damn disc to have it sequenced where it is.

12. "Departer" [5:22] - The proverbial sun sets with a final chilled, electronically enhanced ballad, a final note from what is clearly a naturally evolved band. Here, Renkse is joined by someone named Krister Linder from a Swedish alternametal band called Enter the Hunt, with whom I am completely unfamilar. He actually shares co-writing credit with Jonas on the lyrics. Linder's not bad at all and doesn't trash the song, but he doesn't really add much, to be honest. For a moment there, it reminded me of a tug-of-war between Muse and Interpol, which is not to be taken as a negative connotation. It's a nice, floaty ending to a mature set of tunes.

Night Is the New Day boldly and assuredly takes the Katatonia sound into further territory. Some myopic, ignorant turd-gobblers will unfavorably compare it to all sorts of turncoat "False Metal" bullshit, but the fact is Katatonia hasn't been a strict metal band in well over a decade, which is part of their allure for those of us who appreciate variety and progression. I would have been disappointed had this album sounded exactly like their last one - as disappointed as I would have been if it sounded nothing like it. I am not disappointed at all, and if you are someone who has long appreciated where this band is coming from, I can't imagine you will be, either.

And, for your patient indulgence, I will give you a teaser of what I originally planned to write about tonight... THE CRAZIEST FUCKING MOVIE I HAVE SEEN IN AGES. I read about it somewhere and saw a trailer on YouTube before finding a fan-subbed copy, but knowing what I did going in did not prepare me for the sheer lunacy on display. I'm talking paradigm-shifting. Imagine if Guy Maddin made "The Evil Dead" as a comedic live-action cartoon after watching "Suspiria" 100 times in late 1970s Japan. It's sort of like that, but I haven't scratched the surface of how bonkers and entertaining it is. For your post-Halloween pleasure: the trailer for the inexplicably long-hidden 1977 Toho production, "House." More in the next post, gang, I pinky-swear.

A graveyard smash

2009-10-31T12:15:00.007-05:00

Hey, ho, it's Halloween, and you know what that means: scary songs straight from SoulReaper's vaults to pump up your holiday cheer! I obviously meant to get this up earlier, but technical difficulties cocked up the works. All is fixed now. You'll note that the usual suspects (trashy punks, funky Italians, etc.) have naturally returned, but this year I've tried to include a few fairly modern selections.

This has always been my favorite time of year, and no matter the state of the world, it always will be. I hope your Halloween is as happy as can be. If these 20 terrifying tunes aren't enough for you, take a trip back to the playlists from 2008 and 2007. Oh, and here are our 2009 jack o'lanterns... the cooler one (on the left) is Sassy Frass' handiwork.

1. Buddy Baker and Xavier Atencio, "Grim Grinning Ghosts" (A Musical History of Disneyland, 2005) - We begin with the jaunty theme song from Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, which is one of the most Halloweeny-sounding songs I know. For anyone who's ever ridden it, the theatrical howling should bring back rickety memories of family-friendly animatronic specters. I chopped the musical segment out of the track myself; the CD contains the classic dark ride's entire soundtrack.

2. They Might Be Giants, "The Edison Museum" (No!, 2002) - "Grim Grinning Ghosts" always reminds of TMBG, who have a number of ghoulish tracks in their catalog. This one from their first children's album (and previously on the download-only album Long Tall Weekend) sings the praises of "the tallest, widest and most famous haunted mansion in New Jersey." The vocals are by WFMU DJ Nicholas Hill.

3. "Weird Al" Yankovic, "Nature Trail to Hell" (In 3-D, 1984) - The subject of my last playlist returns to kick off our tribute to horror movie songs with this gem about a fictitious slasher film. Lyrically packed with the sort of advertising ballyhoo once used to hard-sell tedious stalk-and-chop snoozers, this is Al's "Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati." Now that the '80s slasher nostalgia wave is cresting, someone should actually make "Nature Trail to Hell."

4. Meco, "Werewolf (Loose in London)" (Impressions of An American Werewolf in London, 1981) - Yes, the man behind the disco version of the "Star Wars" theme did garish tributes to other movies, too. This ridiculous slab of sub-Meat Loaf bombast is terrible, but worth a laugh, especially if you think of it as an exploitative spinoff from the classic Landis joint. I must be honest, I actually got this track from The Best of Meco, which is all the Meco a sane person really needs.

5. Captain Zorro, "Phantasm" (Phantasm, 1979) - Speaking of disco, here's a rarity from the polyester era's dog days. I have no idea who Captain Zorro is, but their funky cover of the "Phantasm" music is actually pretty awesome if you don't think about The Tall Man shaking his bony old ass to it. The original theme by Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave is one of the greatest '70s horror movie refrains, on par with the more celebrated likes of "Halloween" and "The Exorcist."

6. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, "Nightmare on My Street" (He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper, 1988) - A mere 9 years into the Willennium, here's one everybody knows. As little as I've enjoyed Will Smith in recent years, I can't pretend that I didn't listen to this tribute to Freddy Krueger all the time in junior high, or that it isn't a brilliant piece of pop rap. It was released the same year as "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master," but unfortunately wasn't on the soundtrack.

7. S.O.D., "Freddy Krueger" (Speak English or Die, 1985) - A more underground response to Wes Craven's epochal slasher opus brings us into louder territory. Stormtroopers of Death was a side project of thrash metal titans Anthrax with a sarcastic spirit and fierce mosh riffs that made their debut album a staple of '80s hardcore/crossover. It came out before Freddy became a self-parody, so Scott Ian's fanboy lyrics here reflect the bastard son of a thousand maniacs' scarier early appearances.

8. The Vision Bleak, "Elizabeth Dane" (The Deathship Has a New Captain, 2004) - Former Empyrium mainman Ulf Schwadorf traded austere German folk metal for tacky goth metal in his ongoing Vision Bleak project. I've only heard the debut, which isn't great but contains a few groovy numbers in a Sisters of Mercy-meets-Moonspell vein. This instrumental contains dialogue by the late John Houseman lifted from John Carpenter's underrated "The Fog," while Ulf and pals bash out a rocked-up version of the director's eerie theme music.

9. The Rotted, "28 Days Later" (Get Dead or Die Trying, 2008) - Last year, to reflect a more rock n' roll attitude, British death/thrash favorites Gorerotted changed their name to The Rotted, acquiring former Cradle of Filth guitarist Gian Pyres for the debut with the new moniker. The disc's pretty good, but the final stroke of British pride leaves the strongest impression, a doom metal adaptation of John Murphy's menacing theme from Danny Boyle's post-apocalyptic pseudo-zombie drama.

10. Goblin, "L'Alba Dei Morti Viventi" (Zombi, 1978) - George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead," considered by many to be the best zombie movie ever made, was released as "Zombi" in producer Dario Argento's native Italy. Romero's one of my favorite filmmakers, but one of the dumbest things he ever did was replace most of Goblin's brilliant score with canned music for the American cut. This ghostly Pink Floydian cue is one of the few pieces that remained in all international versions.

11. Fabio Frizzi and Giorgio Tucci, "Main Title" (Zombi 2, 1979) - Italy's most famous "Dawn of the Dead" ripoff was the sequel-in-name-only "Zombi 2," known on these shores as "Zombie," or "that movie where the zombie fights a shark." The movie came out in 1979, but a soundtrack wasn't released until the '90s, when director Lucio Fulci's short run of astoundingly gruesome horror flicks was enjoying a resurgence after his death. The mellotron-fueled Frizzi/Tucci theme is one of the most beloved in Italian horror, as cheap, garish and grim as the flick it scores.

12. Keith Emerson, "Mater Tenebrarum" (Inferno, 1980) - For Dario Argento's divisive follow-up to "Suspiria," the director employed the scoring services of one of his favorite musicians, prog keyboardist Emerson. The man who put the "E" in ELP provided a mostly subdued, piano-based soundtrack that adds to the film's dreamlike languidity, but this cathedral rocker screaming the praises of the Three Mothers better exemplifies Argento's striking sensibility.

13. Danny Elfman, "The Church Battle" (Sleepy Hollow, 1999) - Considering the macabre slant of his working relationship with Tim Burton, it's surprising that composer Danny Elfman doesn't have more horror movies under his belt. We recently revisited their Hammer studios tribute "Sleepy Hollow," shocked that it's now a decade old. The story is more ludicrous to me now, but it's still a lot of bloody fun, and the music is appropriately sinister and calamitous.

14. GraveRobber and Chorus, "Genetic Repo Man" (Repo! The Genetic Opera, 2008) - While certainly flawed, the widely-panned goth musical "Repo!" is a unique piece of work. Its confounded marketers tried to push it as a modern "Rocky Horror," but it's less of a satire (despite its digs at plastic surgery) and more an outlandish and convoluted family drama with gore. This bombastic tune from early in the film, sung by co-writer Terrance Zdunich, sets up the main character's job.

15. Rob Zombie, "House of 1000 Corpses" (House of 1000 Corpses, 2001) - Speaking of fascinating messes, here's the groovy theme song to Rob Zombie's directorial debut, which is essentially "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" retold as a "Natural Born Killers"-style visual assault. I prefer the grittier sequel, "The Devil's Rejects," but "House" is an enjoyably random mishmash of ghoulish imagery. If Rob had continued the industrialized rockabilly stomp he explored here, I'd still buy his albums.

16. Los Straitjackets, "'The Munsters' Theme" (Halloween Hootenanny, 1998) - Through his short-lived Zombie-A-Go-Go label, Rob Zombie also gave the world one of the season's coolest rock albums, the trash rock compilation Halloween Hootenanny. Among its many fine exclusive tracks is this swinging "Munsters" adaptation by Los Straitjackets, the famed Mexican wrestling mask-clad surf rockers from Nashville. FYI, Hootenanny is still in print and goes for pretty cheap on Amazon.

17. The Ghastly Ones, "Hangman Hangten" (A-Haunting We Will Go-Go, 1997) - Also Hootenanny participants, California's Ghastly Ones (named after the great Andy Milligan movie) were one of few groups who actually put out an album through Zombie-A-Go-Go. This track is as good a sample as any, a jacked-up surfin' safari with an evocative title and creature feature sound effects. The Ghastly Ones maintain a low profile, but are still active and perform regionally.

18. The Cramps, "The Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon" (Stay Sick!, 1990) - Pour out a little of your pumpkin ale today for Lux Interior, the legendary cross-dressing trashoholic who passed away in February. As the frontman for The Cramps, he and his guitarist wife Poison Ivy Rorschach kept alive the flame of drive-in culture: rowdy rock, fast cars, sexual heat and low-budget monsters. This song has it all. We already miss you, Lux... happy Halloween, wherever you are.

19. The Aquabats!, "Monsters Wedding" (Vs. the Floating Eye of Death! and Other Amazing Adventures, Vol. 1, 1999) - As sugar-fueled costumed superheroes and spiritual descendants of Devo, the long-dormant Aquabats! have the right attitude of campy fun for Halloween, as well as a fair number of songs about the uncanny. This one from their third platter sees an apprehensive Bat Commander (aka Christian Jacobs, co-creator of Nick Jr.'s "Yo Gabba Gabba!") joined to a creepy chick in macabre matrimony.

20. Misfits, "Halloween" (Halloween, 1981) - We conclude with the patron saints of horror punk. As I've made clear in the past, I fully support the Misfits' 1990s comeback material, but this year I decided to feature something from the era when Glenn Danzig was the wiry, howling Evil Elvis, not the musclebound self-parody we occasionally tolerate today. This is their ode to the holiday, and it features the anthemic yet slightly eerie edge that characterized their classics.

Finally, for those of you who stuck around, here are 20 trailers for flicks that would be welcome at any Halloween party I'd attend. They span the glorious two decades following 1968, the year George A. Romero changed horror cinema.

1. "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave" (1968)
2. "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" (1971)
3. "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" (1971)
4. "Don't Look in the Basement" (1973)
5. "Return of the Evil Dead" (1973)
6. "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein" (1973)
7. "Shivers" (1975)
8. "Eaten Alive" (1977)
9. "Prophecy" (1979)
10. "Hell of the Living Dead" (1980)
11. "Deadly Blessing" (1981)
12. "Creepshow" (1982)
13. "Parasite" (1982)
14. "Sole Survivor" (1982)
15. "Pieces" (1982)
16. "The Deadly Spawn" (1983)
17. "The Stuff" (1985)
18. "TerrorVision" (1986)
19. "The Gate" (1987)
20. "Prince of Darkness" (1987)

They Call Me MISTER Trash!

2009-09-28T19:58:00.007-05:00

I just figured out that you can make a video playlist on YouTube and embed it elsewhere. I'm sure this is old news to everyone else, but, hey.

So, being an exploitation movie trailer fanatic, as well as a big proponent of exploitation movie trailer compilations, I put together a nice batch of 20 fun trailers from the golden years with an ever-flowing theme. The inaugural collection includes bouncing boobs, degenerate despots, fierce futurescapes, kung fu kicks and pervasive paranoia of the ass-whipping sort. Please note that I didn't upload any of these myself, and that at present, I've only seen eight of them. I don't think I need to tell you this is NOT SAFE FOR WORK, but I might as well. Expect this sort of thing to become part of the rotation here at EK, at least until I get sick of it.

1. An intro.

2. "Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens" (1979): Russ Meyer's final eye-popping melodrama. This ad may seem high-octane, but the hyperbole and heterosexism are as thickly applied throughout the entire movie, ensuring that the breast fetishist and underheralded craftsman went out with a suitably raunchy bang. It is a truly crazy film, extremely personal in that it reflects all of Meyer's red-blooded obsessions, and a lot of fun if you can put up with the legend's unashamedly Neanderthal attitudes - his buxom ladies are always his strongest characters.

3. "Screwballs" (1983): When I was a pre-teen boy, this Canadian-made cable classic (with a cameo by Russ Meyer vet Raven De La Croix) was my favorite of the low-rent teen sex comedies. As with all things '80s, these sorts of flicks are currently cultivating a nostalgic cult following. Now that it's unbelievably out on Blu-Ray, its perverted zeal should finally get its due.

4. "H.O.T.S." (1979): Never seen this one, but it's another jokey jigglefest from the days when T&A was a booming movie genre, set at a college (H.O.T.S. is a sorority) rather than a high school. One of its alternate titles is actually "T&A Academy." Look for a guest appearance by a desperate post-"Partridge Family" actor.

5. "Caligula: The Untold Story" (1982): Director Joe D'Amato and actress Laura Gemser made a crapload of sleazy Eurotrash softcore movies together, most famously the lurid "Black Emanuelle" series. This collab was obviously a knock-off of the Tinto Brass/Bob Guccione "Caligula" and features the director of my favorite movie of the '90s getting his tongue cut out. As with many flicks of its time and genre, XXX versions exist, with hardcore sex scenes clumsily inserted.

6. "SS Experiment Love Camp" (1976): I've seen even fewer Nazisploitation movies than I have "Black Emanuelle" entries... the first "Ilsa" was enough for me. Folks, these are the real "torture porns," unsavory (mostly) Italian jobs that center on fascist regalia, dull wartime drama and a lot of abused white girls. General consensus is that this flick, which includes a romantic subplot(!), is one of the less stomach-turning entries.

7. "The Black Gestapo" (1975): In the '70s drive-in milieu, even black militants could march in line behind the crooked cross to strike terror into the hearts of their enemies. This doozy (from the director of "Love Camp 7," the world's first Nazisploitation flick) stars Mac from "Night Court" as a jackbooted radical who beats the bad whiteys, only to become as bad as they were once absolute power corrupts him.

8. "The Inglorious Bastards" (1978): No, not the new one - Tarantino got the name for his recent triumph from a mislabeled copy of this obscure Italian movie at that famed video store where he once worked. Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, Bo Svenson and pals get embroiled in a plot to steal from the Nazis while avoiding their American countrymen, from whom they escaped on the way to military prison.

9. "1990: The Bronx Warriors" (1982): "Inglorious Bastards" director Enzo G. Castellari is better known for this post-apocalyptic knock-off of "The Warriors," where he once again gave Fred Williamson the chance to grit his teeth and mug like a B-movie champ. I reviewed it in an old post, but for those who don't remember that, suffice it to say that it was the last movie Vic Morrow finished before he was killed on the set of "Twilight Zone: The Movie," and the fey, headbanded hero is literally named Trash.

10. "Hands of Steel" (1986): On my most-wanted list of Italian '80s action flicks, this ranks up there with "Endgame" and "Blastfighter." Taking a few pages from "The Terminator," it's the sensitive tale of a cyborg assassin (played by Woody Harrelson's dad from the beginning of "Kingpin") who arm wrestles his way into the heart of a bar owner while wasting corporate villains in the future. "Bronx Warriors" bad guy George Eastman, the Italotrash hero born Luigi Montefiori, plays a menacing truck driver.

11. "Turkey Shoot" (1982): The future didn't only look bleak in Italy; after all, Australia gave us "Mad Max," as well as this gory dystopian hybrid of prison trashfest and "The Most Dangerous Game." It was released in America as "Escape 2000," which was coincidentally the same title given to Castellari's "Bronx Warriors" sequel. The director was also responsible for the ridiculous-looking cult item "Stunt Rock" and went on to such ignoble efforts as "Leprechaun 4: In Space" and "Megiddo: The Omega Code 2."

12. "Trancers" (1985): A relic from the days when Charles Band still made enjoyable schlock and Helen Hunt wasn't yet known as Paul Reiser's TV bedmate. Stonefaced Tim Thomerson is great here as a hard-boiled future cop searching for a zombiemaster terrorist who is sent back through time to possess his lookalike ancestor in then-present-day Los Angeles. There are five direct-to-video sequels to date; Thomerson was in four of them, while Hunt was in two.

13. "Gymkata" (1986): So, you like flicks about covert martial arts tournaments a la the epochal "Enter the Dragon," but you're also stuck in post-1984 Summer Olympics gymnastics thrall? This celebrated flop, from the director of "Dragon" and starring real-life gymnast Kurt Thomas, was made for you, although the formula sadly did not catch on. Before today, I never realized it was an MGM production. I totally would have guessed Cannon.

14. "The Octagon" (1980): Home gym spokesman Chuck Norris was far more successful as a whitebread martial arts star than Kurt Thomas was. Here's an ad from his youthful heyday, one of his most ludicrous chop-socky epics in which he takes on a consortium of ninjas led by Lee Van Cleef while talking to himself in incessant voice-overs. It's believed to be the first of the American-made ninja flicks, although "Enter the Ninja" made a bigger splash on that front.

15. "Revenge of the Ninja" (1983): Cannon's follow-up to "Enter the Ninja," and the predecessor to the absolutely insane "Ninja III: The Domination." Genre icon Shô Kosugi plays a ninja trying to escape his tragically blood-soaked past by moving to California and selling dolls, but has to contend with a ruthless, heroin-smuggling ninja business partner. I can't wait for Kosugi's long-awaited return to the screen in a couple of months, battling Colbert nemesis Rain as the villain in the mainstream action bonanza "Ninja Assassin."

16. "Vigilante" (1983): It seems that I just can't get away from the great Fred Williamson. Here, he joins Robert Forster and some other dudes to take back the streets from the criminal scum in a gruesome, grimy slice of reactionary '80s action cinema. I wrote about it briefly in a real old post.

17. "Rolling Thunder" (1977): Cinema informs us that ex-POW Vietnam vets are ticking time bombs. Why would you steal from one, grind off his hand in a garbage disposal and kill his family, but not make sure he's dead? He's just gonna put on a sharp hook, grab Tommy Lee Jones and hunt your ass down, as does overlooked character actor William Devane in this neglected thriller from the writer of such downbeat classics as "Taxi Driver" and "Hardcore." Great voiceover work on this ad by the unmistakable Percy Rodriguez.

18. "The Crazies" (1973): George A. Romero's most underrated movie is this awesome portrait of human downfall, similar to his almighty "Dead" series in that it involves the spread of a plague and the authorities' attempts to deal with it. Instead of becoming zombies, though, people turn crazy and turn on each other. Michael Eisner's kid has remade it as an action flick... even with Timothy Olyphant as the lead, I have my doubts.

19. "Blue Sunshine" (1976): Another anxious antique from those paranoid '70s, this one involving former hippies whose previous ingestion of the titular LSD batch causes them to lose their hair and embark on murderous rampages. Cult director Jeff Lieberman brings back the transgressions of the '60s to haunt politician Mark Goddard (Major Don West from "Lost in Space"). The guy who directed "9½ Weeks" is the main star.

20. "God Told Me To" (1976): One last bit of disco-era mass hysteria before we go. Larry Cohen's people-going-bonkers picture revolves around a cop investigating random murders committed by average folks who utter the film's title whenever asked for a motive. The answer to the mystery is pretty nutty, to say the least. It stars Tony Lo Bianco from "The Honeymoon Killers," and Andy Kaufman shows up as a cop who turns the NYC St. Patrick's Day parade into target practice. The trailer's voiceover talent is Ernie Anderson, the voice of ABC in my youth.

My craw, and what's stuck in it

2009-09-04T18:42:00.000-05:00

Remember when I used this blog for something other than extra-long dissertations and infrequently updated musical playlists? Like, when I started it MORE THAN FOUR YEARS AGO? Yeah, me neither, but I'm trying to. Here are some things I'm thinking about.

•First of all, to all Chicago-area summer lovers: I honestly feel bad that you have experienced an unusually temperate season. I understand that "70s and overcast" doesn't make for great pool parties. Still, not having been a big fan of bright, muggy summer weather since I was about 13 or so, I have no complaints myself, and I think it's weird to hear people complain about pleasant temperatures and moderate electricity bills. The economy still blows and everybody's stressed out, but at least we can open the windows without boiling or freezing.

•My current workplace pipes in music, which is quite a change after more than a decade of toiling under headphones which would only blast whatever clattering black metal, cuss-laden hip-hop or amateurish local punk I felt like hearing. The good news is that we get the oldies channel, which is really the only radio music format I can handle. This was underscored by two hellish days when some joker switched to some adult contemporary station and I had to squirm through a procession of songs I truly hate. I didn't catch their call letters, but those goat-fucking sadists threw everything from Bette Midler and Spin Doctors to Coldplay and Sara Bareilles at me, and I will never forgive them. (And while I'm ranting, let me tell you how much I loathe that new goddamned Jordin Sparks song. My fabulous girlfriend will occasionally leave VH1 or MTV or MTV2 or something on when we fall asleep, and Ms. Sparks' garish holler has now awoken me twice. This happens, of course, in the dead of night, when those channels stoop to playing music videos because no one's awake to watch "Who Wants to Date Someone Who Lost Another Dating Reality Show?" and "Semi-Celebrities Relate Uninformative Memories of Pop Culture Circa 1989.")

Throughout the day, I get to hear songs I actually like... you can never go wrong with The Monkees, The Turtles, The Crystals or The Four Tops. However, I naturally have my grievances with the local oldies FM station's playlist. Never mind that part of their programming is the syndicated "True Oldies Channel," hosted by crusty old Scott Shannon, who sounds like a constipated pirate who has been rudely awoken by the banshee shriek of Jordin Sparks. I can handle that in 2009, "oldies" means less time for Little Richard and more time for Seals & Crofts, and can even accept the inclusion of '80s tracks like Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl," which sounded a few decades old when it came out. However, I am not too pleased by the bleeding over of classic rock staples like Boston or Journey, who truly clash with the rest of the programming, and when they shoehorn Wham! among The Eagles, Elvis Presley and Louis Armstrong, they barely differentiate themselves from the "we'll play whatever" format that took over the former Chicago oldies frequency a few years ago.

Then there's "Margaritaville," which I suppose fits the bill of a "true" oldie. I really don't have a problem with Jimmy Buffett, but I have a hard time believing that even the most dedicated Parrotheads are not as totally burnt out on this song as I am. After all, I'm a huge Iron Maiden fan, but I could go a long time without hearing the overrated, overplayed "The Number of the Beast" again. And even if there are some fun-loving middle-aged types out there who always whistle along with its jolly tropical intro, I cannot fathom who would want to do so at 9 a.m. Yet, it's a rare morning that I don't hear this breezy ode to heartbreak-induced alcoholic benders while I'm hunched in my cubicle, and it never fails to feel wrong.

•I've actually gotten out to the movies a bunch recently. The first selection was "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," which chopped out a lot of the book's flashback-heavy filling but was still the least exciting film in the series since the first. I knew it would be that way going in, though, and at least appreciated its effectively brooding tone, of which "Order of the Phoenix" could have used more. Then Sassy Frass treated me to a fine birthday film, the Nazi-smashing "Inglourious Basterds," truly the most fun I've had at the movies this year. While packed with knowing film geek references, it's the least pretentious flick Tarantino's made since "Reservoir Dogs." Christoph Waltz is a fantastic villain and like George Clooney in a Coen brothers joint, Pitt is pure gold whenever he's onscreen.

Last weekend was a two-fer. M'lady and I took in Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock," a straightforward coming-of-age story about a closeted Catskills homebody who naïvely helped facilitate one of the most famous events in rock music history. It's not mind-blowing, in fact it's pretty corny and stereotype-ridden, although supposedly a true story. Still, the cast (especially Demetri Martin, Imelda Staunton, Emile Hirsch and Liev Schreiber) and cinematography make it much more engaging than it would normally be, and the requisite trip sequence is pretty wicked. Finally, I saw "The Final Destination," an enjoyably ridiculous junk food mainstream horror sequel if there ever was one. Despite the wacky 3-D effects, it has the been-there feel you expect from a "part four," but it at least eschews the bullshit happy ending of the second "FD" picture (directed by the guy who made this one), and you're certainly not expected to care about the doomed characters, which is a good thing in this series. I just can't say anything bad about a film in which a televised NASCAR event is treated as an omen of impending calamity.

•I am otherwise awash in playful British humor (The Mighty Boosh: The Complete Radio Series and "Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch," both highly recommended). We're trying to finish the third season of "Heroes" before the fourth one starts. It's bound to be a somewhat happy fall around our crib, since my favorite band's new album drops in November, two months after Sassy Frass' favorite band releases theirs. I'm currently attempting one of those herbal digestive cleaning regimens, so I'm finally getting optimum levels of skullcap, marshmallow, dandelion and slippery elm powders. What are you up to?

The deep end of "Weird Al"

2009-08-09T16:21:00.009-05:00

Earlier this summer, I went through a spell of extreme "Weird Al" Yankovic fandom, during which I listened to every one of his 12 full-lengths and assorted non-album tracks I've collected. Granted, I've loved the man since I first heard "Eat It" as a snot-nosed kid, and aside from the Beastie Boys, he's the only artist I was really into then that I still follow today. Since Off the Deep End, I've bought every one of his albums the day it was released. I saw "UHF" opening weekend with my friend and my cousin, blissfully unconcerned that we were just about the only people in the theater. When I got a copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller for Christmas one year, I traded it in for a cassette of Al's Dare to Be Stupid, which was subsequently eaten by my cassette player and provided me with my first taste of disappointment via media crapout. Already on the lowest rung of the junior high social ladder (an overweight, unathletic, style-oblivious transfer student), I got up in front of my entire school and lip-synched his non-hit "One of Those Days" without a shred of embarassment. I watched "The Weird Al Show" every week when CBS deigned to air it, and I have "The Compleat Al" virtually memorized.

From the commercial low of Polka Party! to the unexpected popularity of Straight Outta Lynwood, I have stuck with Alfred Matthew Yankovic and have rarely been disappointed. Sure, he's given us a few bum tracks here and there, but the man has an unfailing knack for capturing a moment, each album a time capsule that becomes more impressively prescient as the years march on. Even when the popular music he pokes fun at is excruciating, his versatile band and proficiency with pop melodies contribute to countless lovable non-parody tracks that offset the dated dreck. His originals, many of which are so-called "style parodies" conceived in homage to certain performers or musical genres, are frequently better than the higher-profile direct parodies for which he is best known.

Now, some dismiss him as a lightweight hack who merely repurposes hit songs with food- and television-themed lyrics, like any potty-brained kid on a playground can do, and some just don't like him because they can't abide humor in their music. The first group is severely misinformed, while the second is comprised of humorless fucks who fail as human beings. Yes, eating and watching TV come up a lot in his songs, but I submit that these are effective ways for Al to address his primary theme: modern American life. Americans are usually preoccupied with what they are or aren't putting into their bodies, and they spend a lot of time propped in front of the tube, even as they complain about what's being fed to them. While he's taken at least 27 shots at egregious consumption and material hubris, Al's also addressed such contemporary hallmarks as tabloid/celebrity obsession and technophilia, while demolishing the trite boy-girl romantic notions of most popular music with even more mundane themes such as legal entanglements, medical concerns, riding the bus, getting a new pet, fixing the plumbing or buying home improvement supplies.

Finally, there is in Al the paradox of an eternally family-friendly performer who, while not averse to the occasional double entendre, has never sworn or focused on "adult" subject matter, yet whose work is laced with a morbid streak of glib references to murder, torture, suicide, S&M, incest and nuclear annihilation. I have long contended that Al's relationship-themed songs are among the most vicious in existence, and if they were not delivered in such a faux-serious and self-deprecating manner, would point to a songwriter more wounded, bitter and jaded than Morrissey himself. It helps to know that Al is a happily married dad and that he enjoyed a close, healthy realtionship with his family... few deaths of people I never met saddened me as much as those of Nick and Mary Yankovic did in 2004. It's also interesting that he lives a substance-free vegetarian lifestyle and has never done anything unintentionally stupid in public. "Weird Al" Yankovic is a rare squeaky-clean agent of subversion who remains popular and relevant yet free of ugly personal drama, arch and iconoclastic yet as silly and friendly as your favorite uncle.

As Al rolls out this summer's ongoing "Internet Leaks" series of mp3 downloads (the style parodies of The Doors ("Craigslist") and The White Stripes ("CNR") are okay, but the original "Skipper Dan" is catchy, smart and tragically hilarious) and a traveling exhibit about the human brain, I decided to pay tribute with Entartete Kunst's first playlist dedicated to a single artist. There's something from every album here, the majority are originals and none of them were hit singles, although many of them deserved to be (and a couple were actually blocked from commercial success by some sourpuss or another). It's a chronological trip through the deep cuts of his illustrious career to date, designed by a lifelong fan for the delight of both those who know his catalog intimately as well as those who only have vague memories of "Like a Surgeon" or "Smells Like Nirvana." We can't all be Close Personal Friends of Al, but it takes a real douchebag to hate the man.

"Weird" Al Yankovic (1983)

1. "Stop Draggin' My Car Around": On his first album, like that of many other greats, Al's accordion-powered musical vision was relatively unfettered by outside influences. Every song, save the obviously blues-based "Buckingham Blues," features the title character pumping away on his squeezebox, inserting it into all of the parodies in an ingeniously homemade manner. This is a great example, turning the Stevie Knicks/Tom Petty joint "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" into a slightly less dreary portrait of a man plagued by perpetual towings. Al's monotone whine mocks Stevie's patented "mystical" phrasings, while the lyrics are full of hilarious details. Hand farts and a great accordion solo top it off.
Favorite line: When the nightclub owner tells him, "Your pants are groovy and your hair's OK," just before announcing that he towed Al's car because it's "so uncool."

2. "I'll be Mellow When I'm Dead": Another unique aspect of Al's self-titled debut is its abrasiveness, from the bloodcurdling screams he occasionally unleashes to the demo-quality indie recording of "Another One Rides the Bus," literally recycled from a live performance on Dr. Demento's radio show. The ragged-edged defiance makes sense, since Al came up through the college coffeehouse scene, trampling on the folkies' sincere pluckings with his maniac accordion attack. The socially conscious doomsday lyrics of "Happy Birthday" and the disparaging tone of "Buckingham Blues" and "Such a Groovy Guy" are on par with some of Dead Kennedys' most caustic gallows humor. But "Mellow" is the most punk thing he's ever done, a gleeful and snotty middle finger to the vacuous hippie-turned-yuppie trendsters that littered California in the early '80s. Nowadays, when he wants to make fun of a certain attitude, he tends to sing from the perspective of someone who holds it. Here, I think it's the real "Weird Al," musically paying tribute to no one, allowing himself to be candid thanks to his naïve youth.
Favorite line: "Don't want no part of that vegetarian scene..." He only stuck to that conceit for about a decade.

In 3-D (1984)

3. "Buy Me a Condo": Al's only stab at reggae to date was probably my first exposure to the Jamaican tradition, since I got this tape when I was 8 and my parents were mainly into Mantovani and Donna Summer. The song is packed with brand names (Cuisinart, Tupperware, "the T-shirt with the alligator on") and other '80s status symbols, but the idea is timeless, an American immigrant seeking to divulge himself of his cultural trappings and adopt a new face in a place defined by what one owns. I always loved this song, even before I knew what "Rastaman" or "ganja" meant, because the music is so bright and lighthearted, and Al's chirpy accent sells its optimism. It was only when I got older that I understood its underlying sadness, that the jolly protagonist is burying his identity under a heap of expensive plastic junk.
Favorite line: "Ain't gonna work in the field no more/Gonna be Amway distributor..." It's so catchy and wrong.

4. "Polkas on 45": In 3-D was the album that broke Al to the masses, myself included, on the wings of his well-timed Michael Jackson spoof, "Eat It." From that track on, he proved he had stepped up the professionalism of his arrangements, now mimicking various musical styles instead of squishing them into his own accordion-rock template. Yet, perhaps to say he had not entirely abandoned his fleet-fingered roots, In 3-D also initiated Al's tradition of the polka medley, a glorious lightspeed mishmash of popular refrains juxtaposed to unfailingly funny results. On this first of many, the frantic polka setting takes the stuffing out of such classic rock staples as "Smoke on the Water," "Hey Jude" and "My Generation," while the casual interpolation of Berlin's "Sex (I'm A...)" and The Police's "Every Breath You Take" (complete with Spike Jones-style gasp-and-wheeze sound effects) finishes the job.
Favorite line: "I'm hot blooded/Check it and see..." The lounge-style setting of the shitty Foreigner track is elevated by following it with a Lawrence Welk riff.

Dare to Be Stupid (1985)

5. "Girls Just Want to Have Lunch": As a young boy, I had a huge crush on Cyndi Lauper. She was just so cute and weird and colorful, and her songs were catchy as all hell. I must have spent hours staring at the cover of my She's So Unusual cassette, and I was glued to the set every time she came on MTV. Here's a rare case of my childhood musical obsessions colliding, "Weird Al" taking on an artist I actually liked at the time. OK, I admit I was also quite into Huey Lewis and the News, who were also parodied on Dare to Be Stupid via the brilliantly stoopid "I Want a New Duck," but Cyndi's eternal "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" holds up a lot better than Huey's bar band bluster. "Lunch" succeeds mostly on its silliness, its lyrics not picking on any real behavior or attitude (basically, the singer is convinced that females are singularly obsessed with the midday meal), and Al's singing is unparalleled. He does it in this obnoxious groan that was probably meant to mock Ms. Lauper's charming nasal hiccups, but instead makes him sound like a crazed Muppet.
Favorite line: "I know how to keep a woman satisfied/When I whip out my Diner's Card their eyes get so wide..." I wish there was a video to catch Al's facial expression while delivering this line.

Polka Party! (1986)

6. "Here's Johnny": During this summer's aforementioned "Weird Al" binge, I happened to be listening to Polka Party! in the car with my girlfriend and a friend of hers. Neither of them recognized the song being parodied in "Here's Johnny," which is of course El DeBarge's horrible synth-pop hit from the corny robo-classic "Short Circuit," "Who's Johnny?" It struck me that given the original song's age and deserved obscurity, coupled with the fact that "The Tonight Show" has now had two hosts since Johnny Carson, the Ed McMahon-worshipping "Here's Johnny" would make no sense to the average 15 year-old today. Such is the trapped-in-amber nature of some of Al's work, which is usually dated by design, and some of which thus must become obsolete (like, sadly, Polka Party!, which is unjustifiably Al's worst-selling album). Not too long after I came to this realization, McMahon died... and right after that, so did Michael Jackson, whose ill-fated career arc I had been similarly contemplating thanks to the Al binge.
Favorite line: "Watch him selling beer and dog food..." I love how he reduces McMahon's fame to "Carson sidekick" and "commercial pitchman," as if that's all he ever did.

7. "Good Enough for Now": Boy, what a pretty melody, and what a cynical set of lyrics. Al hasn't done much in the way of country music, a blessing considering how much I hate big-hat country pop, but this and 1999's "Truck Drivin' Song" suggest he could get away with a whole disc of traditional country originals if he gave it a shot. This one especially deserves to be better known, a simple but hilariously mean song of insincere love to a hopefully oblivious Mrs. Right Now which might pass for a bona fide toe-tappin' country song if Al sounded just a little more Nashville. It's certainly funny, but doing without Al's usual over-the-top lyrical hyperbole, it also cuts a little closer to the bone, especially if you've ever found yourself in a situation like the one being described. For more of the man's skewering of the banality that is the modern love song, see the equally great likes of "Such a Groovy Guy," "One More Minute," "Melanie," "You Don't Love Me Anymore," "Since You've Been Gone" and "Do I Creep You Out."
Favorite line: "You're pretty close to what I've always hoped for/That's why my love for you is fairly strong..." Ouch.

Even Worse (1988)

8. "Good Old Days": This track comes at the end of an album that, aside from "Fat," was stuffed with parodies of cover songs. I didn't realize it at the time, but Even Worse accurately reflects that '80s "Big Chill"/"Back to the Future"/"Dirty Dancing" nostalgia trip that resulted in old recordings by The Beatles, Ben E. King and The Contours sharing commercial radio station playlists with Phil Collins' cover of The Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love," Bananarama's cover of The Shocking Blue's "Venus" and The Fat Boys and The Beach Boys' double-team novelty cover of The Surfaris' instrumental "Wipe Out." "Good Old Days" harkens to simpler times itself, its warm and plaintive James Taylor-derived folk rock shuffle matching the lyrical theme of fond reminiscence. Yet, it is perhaps the darkest and most demented track in the entire "Weird Al" catalog, being the gentle musings of a homicidal sociopath.
Favorite line: "I'll never forget the day I bashed in his head/Well, you should have seen the look on his face..." I'm also very fond of the part where he shaves his homecoming date's head and leaves her tied up in the desert.

UHF: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and Other Stuff (1989)

9. "Generic Blues": It's not much of a soundtrack, there isn't even a excerpt from the score on it, but UHF contains a strange group of parodies that evince just how stratified pop music was becoming, including his first stab at hip-hop (Tone Loc, unfortunately). It also houses some of Al's best-loved original material, from movie-based skits "Gandhi II" and "Spatula City" to the summer road trip epic "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota." Not heard in the movie, "Generic" is Al's second electric blues song, and is another relatively bleak number. Narrated by a loser wallowing in the depths of self-loathing, it's only the ludicrous extremes he describes that make it funny, the idea that mundane annoyances like forgetting his ATM pin crush his soul as much as "plagues and famine and pestilence" do. And despite the humorous intentions, Al got something right, since B.B. King allegedly considers this among his top ten blues songs of all time.
Favorite line: "Make it talk, son, make it talk..." Hollered just as Jim West launches into an annoyingly repetitive guitar solo, followed shortly by, "OK, now make it shut up!"

Off the Deep End (1992)

10. "Trigger Happy": Although he obviously leans to the left, Al's never been too pushy with his political views, so as not to alienate his paying audience. After all, parents don't usually like to pay for their kids to be exposed to views different from their own. Instead, he sneaks his opinions into tracks such as this, which might be misinterpreted by a particularly dumb audience as a red-blooded endorsement of unchecked firearm use. The difference between "Trigger Happy" and the somewhat similar politically incorrect stance of "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead" nine years earlier is that here Al is obviously making fun of gun nuts, but he's sarcastically playing the part of one. Couching it in a rollicking, carefree Beach Boys style parody seems oddly appropriate.
Favorite line: "I accidentally shot daddy last night in the den/I mistook him in the dark for a drug-crazed Nazi again..." Apparently, it's happened before.

11. "Taco Grande": Ah, the wacky "food" song, the sort of thing for which "Weird Al" is best known. On Off the Deep End's lead single, "Smells Like Nirvana," he took an atypical angle by directly poking fun at a particular musical performer to the tune of their own blockbuster, attempted to far lesser results on the following year's "Achy Breaky Song." "Taco," which guest stars Cheech Marin and uses Gerardo's Spanglish hit "Rico Suave" to sing the praises of Mexican cooking, would have been a more expected single, and in fact, a promo single was released, but there was no accompanying video or resultant radio hype. "Nirvana" was obviously the smarter career choice, as it lent Al some popularity in the wake of the underloved "UHF," but this track does showcase the man getting better as a rapper, a vocal talent he'd increasingly draw upon. If you want to hear something surreal, watch Pixar's "Ratatouille" and listen for the cover of "Taco Grande" by some Nashville studio guy. (For something really surreal, check out the commercially released Filipino dance remix of the other Off the Deep End single, the original ballad "You Don't Love Me Anymore.")
Favorite line: "Oh boy, pico de gallo!/They sure don't make it like this in Ohio..." It's purely the delivery.

Alapalooza (1993)

12. "Frank's 2000" TV": Released at a time when alternative rock was suddenly accessible and regular old pop and rock went straight into the shitter, Alapalooza is the low point in "Weird Al" history for me. I think it says something about the state of music that, for the first time, his lead single, "Jurassic Park," lampoons a decades-old song ("MacArthur Park," specifically Donna Summer's 1978 version) via contemporary film-themed lyrics, which happened again with "The Saga Begins" in the doldrums of 1999. This disc is pretty light on parodies, with only the Red Hot Chili Peppers spoof "Bedrock Anthem" worth revisiting often, and even the polka forgoes the more challenging medley format, being more or less a crossover cover of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" (then in vogue thanks to "Wayne's World," but, again, 18 years old). The dealbreaker is the originals, which often save Al's discs, but here are awash in irritating synth-funk ("Traffic Jam," "Talk Soup") and obnoxious rock ("Young, Dumb & Ugly" and his worst song ever, "She Never Told Me She Was a Mime") that were already moldy well before their release. The pleasant jangle-pop melody of "Frank" has thus always been the highlight of the album for me, a bitter irony considering it's a style parody of R.E.M., one of my least favorite pretentious dinosaur rock acts.
Favorite line: "Robert DeNiro's mole has got to be 10 feet wide..." Hey, I said it was pleasing to the ear, not a laugh riot.

Bad Hair Day (1996)

13. "Everything You Know Is Wrong": As if to declare that Bad Hair Day was a far more creatively invested album than his last (boy, is it!), Al goes for total insanity on the disc's first original. I only had to hear about a minute of this song before I realized it was a style parody of They Might Be Giants, which sent me through the roof. Of course, TMBG was (and still is) one of my favorite non-metal bands, so I was glad to know Mr. Yankovic enjoys them, too. They Might Be Giants and "Weird Al" share plenty of traits beyond a constantly regenerating young fanbase, such as a fine ear for melody, a talent for good-natured sarcasm, a rarely-acknowledged morbid side and a distinct ability to outrage self-important booger eaters who want all music to sound like, I don't know, Throbbing Gristle or something. "Everything" is a series of outlandish vignettes involving freeway carnage, alien abduction, death by paper cut and "the floating disembodied head of Colonel Sanders" set to a caffeine rush of prime Giants sugar pop, the kind that gets stuck in your head and stays there, fueling your every movement, for days.
Favorite line: "And as I'm laying bleeding there on the asphalt/Finally I recognize the face of my hibachi dealer..." And he has prosthetic lips!

Spy Hard (1996)

14. "Spy Hard (Theme from the Motion Picture "Spy Hard")": The now-forgotten film "Spy Hard" starred Leslie Nielsen in one of his many post-"Naked Gun" spoof attempts, in this case a James Bond takeoff wherein Nielsen squares off against a robotically limbed Andy Griffith. I actually saw it at a theater. Directed by Nielsen's fellow "Naked Gun" series alumnus Al Yankovic and featuring his "Thunderball"-meets-"Goldfinger" theme song, the opening credits remain pretty great, but the rest of the movie is a steaming pile of crap. I am not surprised to learn that "Spy Hard" director Rick Friedburg has not made another film since, but it is kinda eerie that he was also responsible for the low-budget cult comedy "Pray TV," which is frequently cited as a predecessor to "UHF" and for which I distinctly remember seeing television ads as a young boy. The Bond parody was done better a year later in "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" (the sequel to which, incidentally, featured a similar classic Bond-type song by... They Might Be Giants!). Yet, as far as Al's non-album soundtrack contributions go, this one's a little classier than "Polkamon."
Favorite line: "By the way, if you walked in late/Allow me to reiterate/The name of this movie is 'Spy Hard'..." That Al, always so helpful.

Running With Scissors (1999)

15. "Polka Power!": As the last decade drew to a close, I had less impetus than ever to keep up with mainstream music. As far as I knew, it was a bland parade of overearnest pop rock, cheesy commercial hip-hop, toothless punk-lite and knuckledragging nü-metal. Therefore, I have come to consider "Polka Power!" as one of my major frames of reference for late '90s pop. Al's seventh polka medley, which was actually released as a single in Germany only, introduced me to a number of bands whose names I had read, but whose sounds had yet to profane my ears. I'm talking really foul-tasting garbage like Third Eye Blind, Smashmouth, Matchbox Twenty, Harvey Danger, Marcy Playground and Semisonic. Mingling these shit-slingers with such requisite contemporaries as the Spice Girls and Marilyn Manson, geezers like Madonna and the Beastie Boys and ubiquities like "MMMBop" by Hanson and "Tubthumping" by Chumbawumba, "Polka Power!" is one "Macarena" snippet short of being a flawless time capsule. From this point on, I'd hear a song at a store or a restaurant and recognize it solely because it was in a "Weird Al" polka.
Favorite line: "Ghetto Superstar, that is what you are..." Clarinets and Al's honky phrasing demolish any dignity left in Pras' only notable solo hit.

16. "Grapefruit Diet": Oh, damn, remember the swing revival? When white people in their '20s, inspired by the film "Swingers" and several other clever marketing conspiracies, started putting on zoot suits and driving their Oldsmobiles down to the new martini lounges, where they could not only dress and drink like their grandparents, but dance like them, too? Yeah, I also wish I didn't. But leave it to Al to salvage Cherry Poppin' Daddies' kitschy jump blues crossover hit "Zoot Suit Riot" with a continuation of the themes of "Fat," the once-proud tub o' lard now subjecting himself to a crash diet. The sad bastard spends the song making fat jokes at his own expense while running over a list of all the delectable treats he can no longer eat. In light of the swing kids' creepy materialist, cigar-smoking, tippling young Republican vibe, I think it's fitting that this parody is concerned with the purging of excess.
Favorite line: "No french fri-yi-yies now..." Al's call-and-response with the horn section never fails to crack me up.

Poodle Hat (2003)

17. "Couch Potato": If I had any respect for Eminem left in 2003, it was surely obliterated by his refusal to let "Weird Al" release his parody of "8 Mile" anthem "Lose Yourself" as a single because he was afraid of the effect it would have on his career. It's apparent no one told him that having Al parody one of your songs generally means you're a success, and that when he wants the parody to be the lead single from his new album, it generally means you're huge. I'm not saying that if the TV-themed "Couch Potato" would have had a hit video it would have affected Em's career at all (he seems to be handling its derailment just fine on his own). However, it might have gotten the darn good Poodle Hat into more hands. The lyrics are like a mix of previous parodies "I Can't Watch This" and "Syndicated Inc.," detailing all the programs and channels he's driven to watch, some of which he doesn't even seem to like. It's hard to believe some of the reality shows he mentions ("Celebrity Mole," "The Anna Nicole Show," "Are You Hot?") were on the air six years ago. Once again, Al proves that he's actually a very good rapper.
Favorite line: "Look, there's James Lipton discussing the oeuvre of Mr. Rob Schneider..." For all I know, this has actually aired.

18. "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?": Al has formed a few notable allegiances with other musicians (Rick Derringer, Wendy Carlos, Mark Knopfler, Ray Manzarek, Rob Zombie) and comedy greats (Cheech, Stan Freberg, Judy Tenuta, Mike Nelson) over the years, but he's thankfully not the kind of guy who stuffs his albums with gimmicky guests. He's had the same band since he started, beginning with drummer Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, then longtime friends Jim West and Steve Jay (guitar and bass, respectively), with keyboardist Rubén Valtierra joining in the early '90s. This ghoulishly tuneful original is one of the exceptions, featuring piano-pop icon Ben Folds tickling the ivories for the tale of a self-absorbed twit who only responds to others' misfortunes when they inconvenience him. Al had previously directed Ben's "Rockin' the Suburbs" video, and later appeared on one of his albums. Folds is no mere dabbler in "novelty" music, having helped orchestrated Dr. Demento favorite William Shatner's 2004 return to the recording studio.
Favorite line: "Poor Rob, I just had lunch with him/Hey, wait a minute, he still owes me money, what a jerk..." It's meant to be an exaggeration, but I've actually known people whose sentiments could turn like that.

Straight Outta Lynwood (2006)

19. "Virus Alert": On the strength of the infectious Chamillionaire parody "White & Nerdy," Straight Outta Lynwood debuted at #10 on the Billboard 200, Al's highest chart position ever. The single itself, recorded almost as an afterthought as a last-minute replacement parody, performed better than anything else he's ever released, besting even "Eat It," and helped resuscitate his work in the eyes of mainstream culture hawks eager to write him off as a has-been. Hopefully, everyone who bought Lynwood stuck around past the first track, as it happened to be Al's best album in a while. While not the funniest track on it, this style parody of whimsical cult act Sparks, based on those jokey e-mails that make fun of alarmist computer virus warnings, is an unforgettable piece of bright, quick-shifting pop bombast. The album is a DualDisc that can be flipped for a DVD with animated videos for all the non-parodies, so it contains a video for "Virus Alert," made by the guy behind the dirty web cartoon Retarded Animal Babies.
Favorite line: "...It will/Translate your documents into Swahili/Make your TV record 'Gigli'..." A spectacular rhyme, and funny not just because it references the infamous J.Lo-Affleck bomb, but because it equates the increased ability to see it with calamity.

You're Pitiful (2006)

20. "You're Pitiful": Yeah, I think Eminem was a dick about not wanting Al to release "Couch Potato" as a single, but at least he gave consent for the recording.The world's foremost parodist doesn't legally need an artist's permission, but he always asks anyway, so as not to be a dick. I also think Coolio acted like a self-important bitch when "Amish Paradise" came out, but in that case, it seems it was a matter of miscommunication among handlers. This commercially unreleased track was left off Straight Outta Lynwood thanks to Atlantic Records, the label backing fey singer-songwriter James Blunt. In his defense, Blunt had no problem with Al's parody of his sap-crap anthem "You're Beautiful," but Atlantic refused permission. Al conceded and went with "White & Nerdy" as his lead parody single instead. As usual, who won? Best of all, since Blunt was cool with it, the free download of "Pitiful" (I think that's a fan-made "single cover" up there) became the first "Weird Al" Yankovic song exclusively distributed via the Internet, and its instant delivery beat the actual disc to most fans' ears. This notion has snowballed into Al's current series of online singles, which wraps up at the end of the month.
Favorite line: "You’re half undressed/Eating chips off your chest/While you’re playin Halo 2/No one's classier than you..." Al so completely inverts the intention of the original song, I wish some lite rock DJ would slip "Pitiful" into his playlist and devastate every hair salon and dentist's office in the listening radius.

The ripoff report

2009-07-05T16:51:00.000-05:00

Hey, gang. The longest lapse in Entartete Kunst history might best be explained by the rigors of my current temporary job. After a long stint of jobless malaise, it's been a kinda fascinating, if essentially grim, experience. I can apparently hold my own in this setting, which means a modest income for the time being. I've just been trying to keep my mind on all the birthdays and weddings and other happy shit punctuating the gray day-to-day right now.

However, I intend to make the best out of this summer. I'm at least making it to Pitchfork on Saturday, and I really intend to hit a drive-in theater at some point, if for no other reason than because my girlfriend has never been to one. It's been about three years myself, and I am completely ashamed.

To get myself in the mood, I'm taking a look at a few great trailers for some international low-budget movies I'd love to see someday, none of which should be accused of innovation but which look like they might make up for it in sheer shamelessness. Y'know, like a good drive-in movie should.

"Ninja Terminator"
I've told you before about the astounding collaborations of Hong Kong producer Godfrey Ho and actor Richard Harrison, a mustachioed American who made a few ninja-themed films for Ho in the early '80s and later came to regret it. Like many greats of the American exploitation era, Ho often shot and spliced scenes into old footage he bought in order to create an entirely "new" film. Using this method, Ho made dozens of colorfully-titled ninja movies, in many of which Harrison's footage appeared, presumably to add some sort of name value, or at least international salability, to the ludicrous pastiches. If you're ever lucky enough to catch one, expect hysterical dubbing, a cheesy crime story, unappealing sex scenes featuring Asian people with afros and incongruous, seemingly random insertion of Ho's new footage. These undeniably magical action sequences observe the struggles of men in brightly colored "ninja" suits (sometimes with "ninja" helpfully written on their headbands), who always seem to come upon each other near a deserted park, viaduct, gazebo or hillside. Harrison is usually one of them... he'll be farting around in a robe in some sparsely furnished apartment, meditating or practicing his sword moves, when the urge will overtake him to wiggle his fingers and teleport himself to the battleground, changing into his costume and applying thick eyeliner along the way. I have not seen this installment, which centers around a mystical statue that bestows invincibility, but from the trailer, it looks awesome.

"Rampage"
The Turks are especially notorious when it comes to regional appropriation of American pop culture. In addition to the beloved "Turkish 'Star Wars,'" Turkey has its own versions of "The Wizard of Oz," "Star Trek," "Death Wish," "The Exorcist," "Jaws," "E.T." and "Superman." There's the infamous "3 Mighty Men," wherein Captain America and famed enmáscarado El Santo team up to fight an maniacal Spider-Man. Then there's this doozy, aka "Korkusuz," aka the "Turkish 'Rambo.'" They call their headband-sporting killing machine "Serdar." From what I've seen online, Serdar can knock down walls and has an unlimited supply of ammo for his dollar store rocket launcher. I don't imagine "Rampage" is as rip-roaringly gory as last year's ridiculous "Rambo" was, but it looks like a lot of fun in a "Son of Rambow" sort of way. Amazingly, some enterprising souls recently put out an official DVD of it, complete with nostalgic package art made to look like a beat-up '80s videotape. Unfortunately, since a lot of the film's original music was, um, "borrowed," the DVD distributors had to create an entirely new soundtrack, meaning there's new music and it's dubbed. A lot of Turkish exploitation films have been lost due to neglect, so if altering their soundtracks is the only way some can be preserved (meaning: sold again, thus funding the restoration of such disreputable cult items), so be it. This is the trailer they made for it.

"Alyas Batman en Robin"
Continuing the theme, here's the Philippines' version of the 1960s' "Batman" TV show, presented as a feel-good spoof. Director Tony Reyes has also served up Pinoy takes on such Western heroes as Tarzan, RoboCop, He-Man, The Lone Ranger, the "Miami Vice" and "Lethal Weapon" duos and Tango & Cash(?!?), but the first one I ever heard about was this zany-looking lawsuit bait from 1993 featuring popular comedian Joey de Leon. Apparently, in this film, Batman and Robin are actually brothers (played by Joey and his son, Keempee) who strap on the superhero costumes in order to stop a crime spree by a mustachioed Joker, a relatively svelte Penguin and a Catwoman who's adopted a red-and-blue color scheme. Of course, they employ the help of some musical numbers and a few onomatopoeic fight scene intertitles that appear to be lifted straight from the iconic Adam West series. The finale reportedly features appearances by Wonder Woman and a midget Spider-Man. I must say, Heath Ledger was real good, but this dude looks like the scariest Joker ever.

"Little Red Riding Hood and the Monsters"
Here's more ostensibly family-friendly business, the sort of terrifying children's movie the world will probably never see again. Bloomington, IL native and exploitation producer K. Gordon Murray imported a lot of weird Mexican shit, mostly horror flicks and kiddie pics, the most celebrated being MST3K favorites "The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy" and "Santa Claus." (He also brought Americans "The Brainiac," about which you remember me writing a few months ago.) This is one of many fairy tale-inspired pictures that Murray stuffed onto weekend-only double features, bizarre but energetically dubbed productions that resemble a rural park district's unauthorized stage production of "H.R. Pufnstuf." Its washed-out color, cheap but bright set design and ratty-looking costumes make it look like prime acid era kidsploitation (as well as John Waters' "Desperate Living"). The plot, which imaginatively confounds the storybook lore of Little Red Riding Hood and Tom Thumb with witches, Frankensteins, dragons, cavemen and robots, makes it sound like a nightmare-giving classic. I can't wait to see the forthcoming documentary on Murray, which might make a good double feature with "Not Quite Hollywood."

"Terror"
Although he only made a handful of flicks, Norman J. Warren was one of very few exploitation-era British sleazemasters of any repute. He's probably best known for "Inseminoid," one of several gory "Alien" knock-offs in which a woman is graphically impregnated by a slimy creature from beyond the stars. I saw that one under its old American video title, "Horror Planet," but don't really remember anything about it... as far as that sort of stuff goes, I prefer "Galaxy of Terror," simply because it embarasses production designer/second unit director James Cameron, has a great cast and you get to see Joanie Cunningham's head explode. Now, despite its generic title and relative obscurity, Warren's "Terror" has been reassessed in recent years as a long-buried gem of low-budget "Suspiria" worship. As you probably know, that's my favorite horror movie, and although many people have claimed it has inspired their work, I've never seen anything that approximates its balance of style, grace, savagery and mythical nonsense. Argento himself came close with "Inferno," but the unintentionally ridiculous "La Terza Madre" proved ol' Dario has completely lost his impulse to let images and sound lead the viewer like the primal pull of a nightmare. From what I've read, it appears that Mr. Warren understood why "Suspiria" is a great film, so I am itching to watch his own amalgamation of arcane witchcraft, startling murders and psychedelic light gels.

By the blood of our ancestors

2009-05-07T12:10:00.001-05:00

Tonight, the second Pagan Fest America tour stops in the Chicago area, once again serving as a pre-event teaser for Chicago Powerfest. Of course, Heathen Crusade remains the best single opportunity any average American fan of Viking/Celtic/etc. metal could enjoy, since even though there is something resembling a scene for the stuff coming into shape on these shores, we still don't have an opportunity to see the majority of these bands in the flesh. However, for the same fans, the Pagan Fest tour offers a fine mid-year recharge.

As a tour rather than a one-off event, Pagan Fest necessarily skews more commercially because it needs to sustain audiences across a larger territory than a similar tour would typically cross in all of Europe. The experience is simply not as intimate or "underground." However, this year's Pagan Fest lineup includes two Heathen Crusade alumni, Primordial and Moonsorrow, both of whom are among my very favorite bands at this moment. Commercialism be damned, I'm celebrating.

In honor of the evening's spirit, this new playlist is a sequel to one I made prior to Heathen Crusade II. Go see that one for a more thorough discourse on the ethnic metal phenomenon. Here, you'll find twenty completely different bands from last time, although the model is similar: the first three bands have played the North American version of the Pagan Fest tour, bands four through eight performed at past Heathen Crusades and bands nine through twenty are a sample of interesting stuff I've found on my journeys through the dusty halls of pancultural metal. (Sorry, no Irish metal, there was plenty of that on the last playlist.) I imagine I'll get around to a third installment of this someday, so I hope you enjoy.

1. Korpiklaani, "Kirki" (Tales Along This Road, Napalm, 2006, Finland) - Finland has bred many of folk metal's popular acts, including this year's Pagan Fest headliners, Korpiklaani (meaning "forest clan"). With a generally uptempo take on Finnish folk tropes and song titles such as "Wooden Pints," "Beer Beer," "Happy Little Boozer" and "Let's Drink," they're one of the genre's most jovial and accessible attractions, and rightly so. Despite their alcohol-loving levity, Korpiklaani has a greater claim to cultural relevance than many of their peers, since frontman Jonne Järvelä started off playing folk music and gradually moved toward metal. Järvelä's previous incarnation of Korpiklaani, Shaman, was known for incorporating traditional Sami chant-singing called yoik. He still pulls it out once in a while, although not on this tune, a boisterous ode to summertime horniness.

2. Eluveitie, "The Somber Lay" (Slania, Nuclear Blast, 2008, Switzerland) - Helvetians were a Celtic tribe that settled near the Alps in what is now known as Switzerland. Therefore, it's not a surprise to hear a Celtic lilt in the music of Eluveitie, whose name is Etruscan for "Helvetian" and have been known to sing in obsolete Gaulish. Fiddle, pipes and whistles appear, and Eluveitie is the only metal band I'm aware of that has a full-time hurdy gurdy player. The group's second album blew up last year, the material strangely bearing a strong influence from melodic death metal legends Dark Tranquillity, as if the aged Swedes swapped their futuristic keyboard textures for folk instruments. They were originally set to return to this year's Pagan Fest after winning a lot of fans at the last one, but have dropped off since the initial announcement. They also just put out the first of two acoustic albums planned for release this year.

3. Turisas, "In the Court of Jarisleif" (The Varangian Way, Century Media, 2007, Finland) - Another participant of the previous Pagan Fest, Turisas (not to be confused with underrated Belgians Thurisaz) offer a crowd-pleasing variety of Viking metal, complete with English lyrics and rousing sing-along choruses. The lyrics of their second album focus on the Varangians, Vikings who sailed an eastern trade route from Scandinavia through Baltic and Byzantine lands, with each song reflecting a different point on the journey. "In the Court of Jarisleif" is the mid-album party that occurs when they get to the seat of Slavic power, held by genial host Yaroslav the Wise... I have to admit, I like this band, but I was unexpectedly and truly blown away by Turisas' airing of this lively, complex tune at the first Pagan Fest. They're quite the performers.

4. Metsatöll, "Veelind" (Iivakivi, Nailboard, 2008, Estonia) - This quartet was the highlight of HCIII for me. I'd never seen any type of band from Estonia, let alone a metal band. Metsatöll's style reminds me somewhat of the Faroe Islands' Týr, as their blend of traditional folk and metal also chugs away on untraditional rhythms, but these dudes are rougher and utilize folk instruments such as a flute and an Estonian bagpipe called a torupill. The bass is typically quite thick, a nice Viking-ish touch that connects the Estonians to their Scandinavian neighbors across the gulf. On this tune from their latest album, the group demonstrates their fondness for regilaul (a cappella Estonian folk singing) and lyrics reflecting cultural tales. The title means "Birds from Water."

5. Ancient Rites, "Victory or Valhalla (Last Man Standing)" (Dim Carcosa, Hammerheart, 2001, Belgium) - This long-running Belgian group is often forgotten among the hordes of culturally-influenced metal groups out there today. They actually started as a black metal band 19 years ago, shifting focus to tales of history and bygone warfare with their 1998 album Fatherland. Though they occasionally pay tribute to their Flemish roots, Ancient Rites doesn't really play anything that's endemically "Belgian." Instead, they focus on pan-European pre-Christian themes, as heard in this grandiose Norse-themed corker. In conjunction with their increasingly melodic, epic material, they're emblematic of the Heathen Crusade's ideals, so it was nice to see them welcomed as headliners of the third one last November.

6. Oakhelm, "These Boundaries Crossed" (Betwixt and Between, Forest Moon, 2007, United States) - Although HCIII didn't have the insane international presence of the previous installment, the completion of the bill with so many American bands did not leave the audience wanting for appropriate or enjoyable acts. Take Portland, Oregon's Oakhelm, the Northwest's woodsiest band this side of Agalloch and Wolves in the Throne Room (both of whom would also be excellent musical and ideological fits at the fest, but are probably too cool for it). It's interesting that this band was formed by guys with backgrounds in the grind, sludge, experimental and "indie black metal" scenes. With just one album to their name, Oakhelm probably didn't bring too many people through the door themselves, but their combination of intense black metal attack and rousing Viking guitar melodies went over perfectly. This track shows off their occasional Celtic and acoustic passages, a suitably earthy introduction to their fierce yet epic approach.

7. Ulveheim, "Ulvekrigerne" (For Ære Heder og Fedreland, Asenath, 2007, Mexico) - Looking at the cover art, band name, album/song titles, you would never guess Ulveheim is from Mexico. So complete is the quartet's absorption of the classic Viking metal vibe, that would not change once you heard them, either. While they bring absolutely nothing new to the oaken table (I hear early Vintersorg and especially Mithotyn in there), they are very good stylists. Their demo, which was picked up for release by a little Mexican metal label, is Ulveheim's sole recorded work to date, and it unfortunately does not come close to capturing the rousing energy of their performance at the most recent Heathen Crusade. This is the opening track, which includes a nice atmospheric section in the vein of Ulver's folkloric days. The title means "Wolf War" or something like that.

8. Obtest, "Àþuolas" (Gyvybës Medis, Osmose, 2008, Lithuania) - Here is one of many bands that made 2007's Heathen Crusade II such a benchmark of multicultural discovery. Hailing from the country which they proudly claimed was the last in Europe to be Christianized, Obtest is one of those underground European acts that sounds familiar and intangibly foreign at once. Their style is somewhere between black metal and the traditional type, resulting in catchy refrains, frantic tempos and more ragged edges than you typically get with metal this unabashedly melodic. Furthermore, these melodies aren't the same ones you've heard on a million ethno-metal CDs inspired by Scandinavia or the British Isles. Obtest's guitar tone is often harsh but triumphant and the native tongue vocals are delivered with an enthusiastic coarseness that is completely comprehendible, provided you speak Lithuanian. The title of this high-velocity ditty from their fourth full-length means "Oak."

9. Forefather, "Hallowed Halls" (Steadfast, Seven Kingdoms, 2008, United Kingdom) - Underheralded due to sporadic releases, but beloved by anyone in the know, Forefather is easily the most galvanizing English pagan metal band since the legendary Sabbat. Formed by two brothers disinterested in live performance, these stalwarts of self-described Anglo-Saxon metal remain a studio-bound duo, utilizing a drum machine that sounds more convincing than some bands' real drums (see: Ancient Rites). Their music has recognizable black and power metal traits, but is ultimately its own bold statement of heathen pride. Forefather is one of many bands who got screwed by the ugly dissolution of Karmageddon Media, and they remain unsigned, self-releasing an impressive album last year. A taster from that disc, the lyrics of this typically exultant Forefather number reflect the cultural significance of meoduselds, Anglo-Saxon mead halls.

10. Аркона, "Выйду я на волюшку" (Лепта, Sound Age, 2004, Russia) - The Russian folk metal scene is fairly rich with talent, although many outfits push the nasty type of political angle one must unfortunately suspect from culturally-conscious metal of the former Eastern Bloc. Add Cyrillic script to the non-English mix, and you've got a listener barrier that can only be overcome by outstanding music. One of the most justly prominent Russian acts is Arkona, named after the last city-castle stronghold of Slavic paganism, which distinguishes its black/power/folk metal vision with winsome keyboard-driven harmonies and versatile vocalist Masha "Scream" Arhipova. She has a decent harsh rasp, but you'll only hear her affecting folk-style singing on this jubilant tune, which is precisely the sort of day-brightener that makes you wish you could speak a dozen languages. It's from their second album, Lepta, and its title transliterates as "Vyidu ya na Volushky," or "I'll Come to the Free Lands."

11. Heidevolk, "Wodan Heerst" (Wodan Heerst, self-released, 2007, Netherlands) - As an English speaker, I find something charming about the Dutch language, in which Heidevolk's two lead vocalists exclusively sing. Their warm vocal harmonies, along with a combination of wistful violin and shifting Viking gallop-riffs, provide the sextet's rollicking songs with a pastoral intimacy. Lyrically, Heidevolk (meaning "folk of the heathland") is primarily concerned with the cultural and spiritual history of Gelderland, the largest province in the Netherlands and ancient home of Germanic tribes such as the Frisians, Batavians, Saxons and Franks. This is the original version of "Wodan Heerst" ("Wodan Prevails"), which was re-recorded for last year's Walhalla Wacht. This band deserves to be better known, as their sound is entirely accessible, yet unique.

12. Svartsot, "Jotunheimsfærden" (Ravnenes Saga, Napalm, 2007, Denmark) - Sure, there was Mercyful Fate, but in the Scandinavian black metal races, Denmark was pretty much left behind by Norway, Sweden and Finland. Danish folk metal isn't exactly thriving, either, but relative newcomers Svartsot stand out with a strong debut bolstered by flute, mandolin, bodhrán and, most distinctively, deep death metal growls, which you don't often hear in the genre. They're another fine discovery of Napalm Records, formerly famous for a string of goth metal snoozers with "blood n' boobs" cover art (you know the type), but now an ever-growing haven for such folk/pagan metal favorites as Týr, Korpiklaani, Arkona and Heidevolk, along with Viking vets like Falkenbach, Vintersorg and Kampfar. This jaunty song, inspired by mythology, describes a journey to the land of the giants to borrow a vat in which to brew beer for all the gods.

13. Hantaoma, "Malombra" (Malombra, Holy, 2005, France) - Hantaoma is a side project of medieval neofolk duo Stille Volk, whose first album was named Hantaoma, after a malevolent spirit of Pyrenean folklore. Yes, this outfit's specific inspiration is the ancient culture of the Pyrenees mountain region (parts of France, Spain and Italy), with lyrics in Occitan. If that sounds exotic, wait until you hear the music, a wondrous clash of bagpipes, flute, fiddle, mandolin, bouzouki, shawm and bombarde with melodic, galloping black metal. Such a range of instruments might overwhelm as a gimmick if the songs were not as forthright and engaging as Hantaoma's are. Although thoroughly excellent and addictive, their debut isn't very well known, even if it's already inspired the formation of at least one other Occitan metal group.

14. Melechesh, "Rebirth of the Nemesis" (Emissaries, Osmose, 2006, Israel) - Metal riffs with Arabian flavors go back to Jimmy Page, and have been a mainstay ever since. It's only within the past decade or so that we have seen a rise of bands using Arabian music to reflect their genuine heritage. One of the best-known is Melechesh, originally founded in Jerusalem to play raw black metal with Middle Eastern influence in their guitar scales and drum patterns, drawing lyrics from Mesopotamian and Sumerian mythology. Their first album, which, coincidentally, was released in 1996 by an American black metal legend my girlfriend used to hang out with, was called As Jerusalem Burns... Al'Intisar (Arabic for "The Victory"). You can imagine how well that went over in their homeland. The Armenian/Assyrian and Palestinian guitarists attracted so much attention from Israeli authorities that they eventually relocated Melechesh to the Netherlands in the late 1990s. With American and Dutch drummers, they've since sharpened their sound into a bracing black/death/thrash assault with impeccable musicianship and ever-increasing traditional sounds. This intense opening salvo from their last disc hails the return of Babylonian sea goddess Tiamat and the annihilation she symbolizes.

15. Guahaihoque, "Thy Eternal Golden Dawn" (The Return of the Ancient Gods, Xue, 2007, Colombia) - I've long been searching for an exemplary South American, Central American or Spanish folk metal band. Sadly, so many Latin American pagan metal acts draw influence from other cultures, mainly Germanic or Celtic, that I was afraid I might have to dig out a copy of Sepultura's nü-metal compromise Roots for this list. Instead, the Internet led me to Guahaihoque, a Colombian quintet which includes a full-time "ancestral woodwind" player whose arsenal includes a variety of panpipes (siku, zampoña, malta), flutes (quena, quenacho) and ocarina. Their music is mainly your basic melodic black/death, the ghostly winds adding an otherworldly atmosphere to admittedly standard but quite enjoyable melodies. In the future, I hope to see Guahaihoque delve deeper into their pre-Hispanic cultural concept, as they've already got the integration of the instruments down pretty well on their debut. Lyrics in a non-Spanish indigenous language would be sweet.

16. Silent Stream of Godless Elegy, "You Loved the Only Blood" (Relic Dances, Redblack, 2004, Czech Republic) - We briefly move away from the blackend sort of ethnic metal for a stop in the land of doom/death. Silent Stream of Godless Elegy is a long-running group with a foundation in the man growling/woman singing dynamic familiar from the gothic doom scene, with violin and cello to augment the tasteful Eurodrama. They inject life into this classy but often dull type of drawing-room metal by steeping it in Moravian folklore. Relic Dances, SSoGE's most recent album, found only founding guitarist Radek Hajda returning. In collaboration with producer Tomáš Kočko, a famous Morovian folk musician, it reached further into ethnic explorations and won the group its second Czech Grammy. This selection is one of its most engaging, and aside from the death growls might seem too upbeat for the death ballad that it is. Considering how accepted they are by their countrymen and how long it's been since they released new material, I imagine SSoGE's next album will eventually go the route of Norway's Lumsk, dropping all but a hint of the metal in lieu of moody ethnic rock.

17. Finsterforst, "Traumwald" (Weltenkraft, Worldchaos, 2007, Germany) - Germany is a fertile fountain of folk metal, and that goes back to the likes of Empyrium, Adorned Brood and the big-in-Europe "medieval metal" subgenre (Subway to Sally, In Extremo, etc.). From the southwest comes the septet Finsterforst, who emerged with such a clear and professional vision that they can't possibly remain a secret for long. Their tunes lean toward the most accessible end of black metal, with both keyboards and a real accordion pumping up their beerhall guitar melodies and raspy native-tongue vocals, and often weave pastoral interludes among the otherwise high-energy material. This track ("Dream Forest") from their amazing debut provides jaunty fun as well as an idealized, brooding old-world flavor, appropriately conjuring the Black Forest that both shadowed Finsterforst's upbringing and provided the band’s name. Their recent follow-up, …Zum Tode Hin, is on a very short list of discs I must buy once I gather some spare cash.

18. Devil in the Kitchen, "Little Greene Men" (Wizard's Walk, independent, 2006, United States) - I still hold out hope to hear a domestic band who can integrate our traditional music with metal. Iced Earth had slight success with the folkier parts of their "Gettysburg (1863)" trilogy from The Glorious Burden. I'd hoped Across Tundras had invented something fresh, but I can't find the brilliance in their Americana-tinged Isis-core. It is actually the defunct little Boston act Devil in the Kitchen which actually comes closest to what I've envisioned. Entirely devoid of lyrics, their music was a sort of thrash metal/bluegrass/Celtic folk fusion fueled by a frantic fiddle. I'll admit, the beginning of this 2005 demo track (appended to the reissue of their sole CD) sounds like something the turd-gobbling Dave Matthews Band might have come up with. By the end, it's the kind of shit-kickin' masterpiece that I wish I had witnessed live. Devil in the Kitchen is unfortunately no longer with us, but perhaps some members will revive the mission one day. For the time being, bassist Bassil Silver-Hajo drums with awesome Nintendo metallers Powerglove.

19. Empylver, "Old Boy" (Wood Woud Would, Dying Empylver, 2006, China) - Wish I could tell you more about A.J. Alex and his one-man band Empylver, which has to date self-released one CD and an EP that includes covers of score cues from "Spirited Away," "The Piano" and "Forrest Gump." The album offers a transfixingly odd melange of lush folk, soft rock, light classical, nature sounds and harshly distorted black/doom metal. Due to its reclusive creator's English name and lyrics, as well as his general preference for European melodies, I can't really posit Empylver as a representative of native Chinese folk metal. However, the combination of wispily-applied, organic non-metal instruments (flute, violin, accordion and more) with the charming bedroom black metal ambience of sizzling guitar fuzz and drum machine offers a unique and ethereal feel that makes the project worth investigating. From what I can make out of the lyrics of this tune, it's not about the Park Chan-wook film.

20. Darkestrah, "Cult Tengri" (The Great Silk Road, Paragon, 2008, Kyrgyzstan) - Like the core members of Israel's Melechesh, vocalist Kriegtalith and drummer Asbath of Kyrgyz folk/black metal act Darkestrah relocated to a more metal-friendly country, in their case Germany. There, they picked up band members and shifted from blatantly anti-religious material to the nature- and culture-focused stuff they perform today, although hampered by their former record label's low profile and neo-Nazi stigma (Darkestrah is completely apolitical). Last year's epic debut for American label Paragon explores the grandeur and danger of the ancient Asian trade route known as the Silk Road, the same pancultural conduit examined in a more genteel manner by Yo-Yo Ma. Synths and cello flavor the churning, hypnotic melodies, along with temir komuz (Kyrgyz mouth harp) and throat singing, the latter performed by Kriegtalith alongside her raspy shriek. The title of this relative short yet gigantic number, which features a guest mandola player, refers to the great sky deity of Central Asia.

Shocking Cinema II: The Exsanguination

2009-04-23T15:19:00.000-05:00

Good mourning, boils and ghouls! I didn't get to that "Poultrygeist" screening, but I hope you did. It's finally time for part two of my intercontinental scary cinema tour.

"Frontière(s)" (aka "Frontier(s)," dir. Xavier Gens, 2007)
Okay, "torture porn." This widely-abused term does not refer to the infamously sick XXX material once produced by the Avon theater chain, but instead used to perjoratively describe a perceived fetishization of human suffering in such modern mainstream horror films as "Hostel," "Saw," "The Devil's Rejects" and the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes." The Moral Majority/PMRC witchhunts of the 1980s may now be properly derided as the efforts of ignorant alarmists, but the puritanical scolding of "torture porn" audiences remains fashionable among film critics who wish to appear responsible and tasteful. These are the same classy cinéastes who consider taut crime procedurals like "Psycho," "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Se7en" satisfying horror films, while turning up their noses at anything involving subterranean mutant monsters, psychedelic undead necromancers or twin deformed psychic killers.

Now, you might be able to take an Entertainment Weekly writer's word when a new Usher album is particularly awful, but you cannot assume that they can tell the difference between Metallica and Darkthrone. Likewise, you can certainly trust mass market critics to weed out good costume dramas or biopics from the dreck, but in no way should you listen to their opinion regarding horror movies. Any self-righteous douchebag on the right or the left who would lead some sort of campaign against a movie on moral grounds, especially when so many other injustices call for urgent action, deserves a brutally cold dose of reality.

The kinds of movies derided as "torture porn," regardless of individual quality, actually serve several purposes. First, after decades of MPAA tampering ("Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood," "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III"), slick TV star fodder aimed at teenagers on dates ("Urban Legend," "Stay Alive") and low-thrills effects bonanzas ("The Haunting," "Resident Evil"), the return of graphic, intense, uninhibited material is mostly welcomed by genre fans... you know, the paying audience for new horror movies. Sure, a lot of old-timey horror buffs don't like gore, and thus were pleased with the bloodless J-horror trend, but the rest of us crave something a little more transgressive. Second, while they are invariably explicit, typical "torture porn" films don't feature unheard-of levels of onscreen depravity. The '70s and early '80s were rife with violence and sleazy content that was often far more objectionable than what's roundly demonized today. The realistic atmospheres, stripped-down aggression and extended sequences focusing on unextraordinary people in physical peril are truthfully on loan from a previous cycle of horror films. One might argue that technological advancement makes screen violence appear too realistic, removing some of the psychological distance an unconvincing effect offers... to which I would answer that in fifteen years, the best effects of the '00s will undoubtedly look fake compared to what's achieved by then.

Ultimately, no one should set out to watch a horror film in order to have his or her insular worldview coddled or affirmed. You watch a horror film to be shaken up, challenged, even disturbed, to come out the other side and sigh with relief that you can survive such a shock to the senses. In an economically-doomed global environment where we can hop online and watch the real-life killings of journalists and heads of state alike, the safe, winking retreads that once passed for horror movies cannot begin to help us address our fears, and thus the intensity factor has inevitably increased. Extreme catharsis for extreme times. Personally, I believe simulated physical violence can serve this purpose in talented hands, as strongly as I believe simulated sexual violence never can. But just because you're not gonna catch me sitting down with the new remake of "The Last House on the Left" doesn't mean you'll see me protesting outside the local multiplex. It's surely a hateful piece of crap, but in the grand scheme of things, it's no worse an insult to good horror movies than "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" is to good children's movies. All I need to do is simply avoid both, which should be fairly easy.

So, "Frontière(s)." This French flick, which would arguably fit in the "torture porn" genre if such a thing actually existed, was directed by the guy who went on to helm the silly-but-fun action extravaganza "Hitman." It was imported by the folks behind the After Dark Horrorfest. It was supposed to be part of the actual fest at theaters, but the MPAA rated it NC-17, so it pretty much came out straight to DVD here. I have no idea what the ratings board's problem was, as it's no more grueling than the original "Hostel," and in fact "borrows" a couple of key effects shots seen in the theatrical version of that film (plus a lot of other stuff from any given "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" feature, including the requisite uncomfortable dinner table scene, as well as a claustrophobia-tunnel moment you may remember from "The Descent"). Perhaps it's the film's political angle? It's set among rioting youths (one's a Muslim) in the aftermath of a right-wing government takeover, which may be too reminiscent of the 2005 underclass riots and the jackbooted reaction by now-President Nicolas Sarkozy... nah, Americans don't know about all that French stuff. Perhaps it was the fact that the endangered heroine is pregnant? She and her friends are subjected to all sorts of duress, physical and otherwise, once they seek refuge at a country inn run by a family of neo-Nazi cannibals... nope, the French fascists decide to go easy on her when they learn that she's with child in order to cultivate a new race of purebred whatzis. Its downbeat tone being quite similar to what you'd expect for this sort of survival horror flick, I'm guessing the NC-17 came down for pure gore, of which there's plenty. That's actually a relief. Since the movie really has nothing original or insightful to offer, only fans of grimy bloodletting need bother with it. I'd say if you thought "The Devil's Rejects" was pretty good, you may enjoy "Frontière(s)." It's less of a gyp than "Haute Tension" was, but I'm personally still hoping for a real revelation amid this new onslaught of French extremity. On to "Ils" and "À L'intérieur," then.

"Trailer Park of Terror" (dir. Steven Goldmann, 2008)
In light of how many metal and hip-hop horror flicks exist, the potential for country music/horror movie crossovers is relatively unmined. Aside from the dubious promise of such a rare junction, I wasn't expecting much from this comic book adaptation, so I was definitely surprised by its opening sequence. We see a trashy young blonde named Norma (Nichole Hiltz, Anna Faris' lover from "May," marginally channeling Jaime Pressly's brilliant work on "My Name Is Earl") getting ready to meet up with her new boyfriend, an upstanding type who offers a promise of escape from the ignorant squalor in which she is mired. Her redneck trailer park neighbors leer and tease, and when one scuffles with her beau, he accidentally kills the dashing hunk. Norma loses it and takes off, only to run into a mysterious stranger (played by Big Hat country star Trace Adkins!) who hands her a shotgun and encourages vengeance. She returns and lays waste to the place, pumping the dirtbags full of lead before blowing everyone up, including herself. It's a pretty effective set-up, this wronged woman cleansing the painful source of her dire existence. Too bad country music video director Goldmann completely squanders it, going on to deliver a predictable saga in which a group of unrepentant bad kids on a Christian retreat become stranded outside the ruined trailer park and are picked off by its undead denizens. These doofuses are your bog standard slasher victims, from the klepto and the junkie to the goth chick and the straight-arrow youth pastor. The zombie-ish villains are also nothing special, such as the chuckling fatty who makes deep-fried jerky from one of the teens and the rotting rockabilly guitar slinger (done better in "Dead & Breakfast"). In a groan-worthy display of gimmicky nonsense, the latter growls a tune during which he comments upon carnage that's unfolding inside the house on which he's perched, even though he can't possibly see what's happening. Don't believe reports that "Trailer Park of Terror" has much in common with H.G. Lewis' white trash gore epic "Two Thousand Maniacs!" It's ultimately a lesser cousin of that classic's semi-remake, although more clearly modeled after Rob Zombie's hillbilly horror flicks, especially his lovably colorful trainwreck of a debut, "House of 1,000 Corpses" (Rainn Wilson's "death on video" scene is explicitly copied to diminishing returns here). The flick's biggest problem is that it can't decide if it's a cheeky Southern horror-comedy or grisly latter-day survival horror. The cornpone goofiness is often too forced or obvious to work, while the occasional grueling murder sequences always seem out of place, undercut by the otherwise campy proceedings. Worst of all, that explosive opening sequence clearly underlines how Norma feels about her fellow trailer park residents, yet her undead self seems to have no trouble collaborating with them, rendering the best part of the film nearly pointless. Shockingly, the makeup and gore effects in "Trailer Park of Terror" are very good, but are unfortunately wasted on a middle-of-the-road movie that's simply not willing to be outrageous enough to succeed.

"Splinter" (dir. Toby Wilkins, 2008)
Here's something I caught at the aforementioned Fango Weekend (see me in action here). As the scheduled activities drew to a close, I was bushed after many hours of Q&A panels, genre celebrity sightings and DVD purchases, but didn't feel like heading home yet. I decided to catch the last movie being screened for the day, but remembering my experience with "Turistas" at the 2007 fest, I figured I would bolt if it started to stink. Directed by the guy who more recently made the direct-to-video "The Grudge 3," "Splinter" ended up being good enough to keep me in my seat for its duration. It's the tale of a relatively bland young couple whose anniversary camping trip is hijacked by another couple, a convict on the lam and a junkie trying to kick her habit. These nogoodniks sucker, then force themselves upon the campers, who must tote their belligerent asses through the forest until a flat tire stops everyone's progress. We see that the cause is an animal infected by a spiny mass of gunk, possibly the same critter that we saw maul a gas station attendant at the beginning of the flick. When the travelers make it to said gas station, the junkie is killed by the attendant's animated remains, now laden with spiky protuberances and twitching about in a fearsome manner. The other three hole up inside the station's well-stocked convenience store, attempting to escape the virus-like menace, which attacks and repurposes the anatomy of any living animal in its path. "Splinter" is a pretty effective little invasion flick, aside from some clunky exposition. The bellowing, foul-mouthed con is actually a decent guy, don't ya know, and probably a better match for the plucky heroine than her nebbishy beardo husband, who much too conveniently figures out that the creature tracks by heat. Thankfully, the movie doesn't feel the need to explain too much else about its spine-laden threat (aside from hinting that it might have come from a nearby oil drilling site), as this is the sort of monster movie that works better with less science than fiction. The top-notch effects include a jolly reanimated hand that runs around the store, as well as the horribly bent, besplintered bodies overtaken by the nefarious parasite, flesh contorted like something out of John Carpenter's "The Thing" and moving with alarming abruptness. More shots of these fascinatingly icky things might have bumped "Splinter" up to minor classic status, since its suspense sequences are done very well, but with a low-budget production such as this, I can see how additional exposure might also have cheapened the effect of their minor screen time. As it is, the flick won best picture, director and four other awards at the 2008 LA Screamfest. For any horror buff, it's worth a watch.

"El Barón del Terror" (aka "The Brainiac," dir. Chano Urueta, 1962)
Something a older here, a b-movie "classic" featuring one of Mexican horror's most infamous creatures. I prefer the title's literal English translation, "The Baron of Terror," to "The Brainiac," which, although somewhat apropos, inevitably reminds me of the Superman villain. This is the tawdry tale of Baron Vitelius, a smarmy slickster who is dragged before a 1661 Inquisition court on charges which include heresy, dogmatism, precognating "through the use of corpses" and seducing women. He's obviously got some rapport with the occult sciences, since he jovially makes iron shackles move from his wrists to those of his judicial captors. For his ignoble efforts, the Baron is forced to wear a pope hat and burned at the stake, during which he naturally swears cackling revenge on the inquisitors' descendants with the help of a passing comet (what an effect!). Flash-forward to 1961, when the comet finally comes around again and slowly lands on Earth, causing a unique monster to pop out. With a thick, black mane, matching woolly beard, arched eyebrows, oversized fangs and elf ears, pointy nose and long forked tongue, the returning Vitelius' clumsily pulsing noggin gives him the appearance of a dilapidated deviled ham mascot. Putting him over the top are his hands, rubbery sacs of abomination which end in pinchers that look like suction devices, but which never do any sucking. Instead, he sucks out human brains by somehow using his floppy tongue to bore into the back of each unsuspecting victim's skull, as he does to a random motorist and a clueless lady who flirts with him at a deserted lounge. Sadly, to aid his murderous subterfuge, he transforms back into his human form most of the time, although he acts so suspiciously out of place, he makes Marty McFly seem like a master of undercover deception. Most of the movie follows Vitelius as he first hosts a party (he owns real estate and has a butler, both unexplained) with all of his intended victims as guests. Then he visits them, makes small talk, causes lights to flash on either his own face or theirs, briefly makes out with the women, transforms into the beast and dispatches them. Sometimes, in human form, he sneaks off and digs out a hidden tureen from which he gobbles spoonfuls of a substance that looks like scrambled eggs... a close-up confirms that this is a handy hoard of brains, although the stash's origin is not explored (does he save the gray matter in his cheeks until he gets home, spitting them in the urn for a rainy day?). Otherwise, it's standard old-timey monster movie stupidity, either with a pair of corny cops investigating the murders or a pair of boring astrology students who are extraordinarily into the whole comet thing. An abrupt climax involving flamethrowers brings the entire absurd mess to a surreal, if somewhat disappointing, end. The "Brainiac" monster, however, does not disappoint, standing up to its cult creature reputation. The costume's cheap, fleabitten oddity, along with the movie's litany of laugh-out-loud dialogue (hilariously dubbed thanks to original American importer K. Gordon Murray), are of great benefit to "El Barón del Terror." Most of its amusingly inept elements are expertly addressed here, but they're better experienced than read about. If you're the type that finds old b-flicks too tame and tedious to amuse, too bad, because this one is a lot of cheesy fun.

"Il Bosco Fuori" (aka "The Last House in the Woods," dir. Gabriele Albanesi, 2006)
Over the past decade, the vintage Italian horror movie industry saw a lot of nostalgic attention, but that unfortunately did not translate into a revival of its most charming aspects. Everyone loves Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento, but although the former is dead and the latter obstinately eschews the enveloping atmosphere endemic to his classic work, we haven't seen any filmmakers stepping up to fill their splattered shoes. It's pretty much accepted that the golden age of Italian genre cinema ended with 1994's glorious "Dellamorte Dellamore," as the national film industry had succumbed to the influx of Hollywood product and most technicians sought refuge in television work. While not a mind-blowing film, "Il Bosco Fuori" (meaning "The Forest Outside" or "Out of the Woods") manages to be a convincing update of "video nasty"-era Italian horror. This nutty mishmash of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (of course), "House on the Edge of the Park" and "Phenomena" starts with an on again, off again couple: he loves her, she LJBFs him, they have sex in his car. Before long, they're attacked by three archetypal spaghetti sleaze thugs, your classic trio of jabronis driving around with cologne on their cheeks, narcotics in their veins and rape in their hearts. Thankfully, these idiots don't violate the heroine, but they do manage to bang the dude up pretty well. The imperiled couple gets away from the hoodlums, thanks to the intercession of another couple, a slightly older pair who are out for a drive and insist that the young semi-lovers come home with them. Of course, like most Good Samaritans, these two kill people and feed them to their mutant cannibal monster son. Suddenly, it's modern-style gore time, real up close and personal, with some sweet chainsaw action! Then the toughs show up again, at the crazy people's house! Actually, the unshaven, '80s-looking trio proves to be a pretty hilarious presence, an overblown parody of the sort of amoral psychopaths David Hess used to play. Along with a cheesy synth score, artsy-fartsy framing and awesomely pointless zooms, the coked-up ruffians are one of several stylistic tributes that make the flick play like half of a cut-rate "Grindhouse" sequel. I mean that in the best possible way, since this Albanesi character apparently admits to a lot of influence from other filmmakers' signature moves. Although he claims classy guys such as Kubrick, Lynch and Leone, I would situate the director's true cinematic forebears among names like Aristide Massaccesi, Lamberto Bava and Enzo Castellari... the colorful capitalist cobblers of Italian schlock. Even the now-esteemed Lucio Fulci belongs among that journeyman bunch, so who knows what we can expect from Albanesi in the future? Hopefully not some remake-for-hire ignominy, but more pernicious and pretentious perversion.

Shocking Cinema

2009-03-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

You'd think that with all this time off, I'd have lots of time to watch movies. I have, but not as much as I'd like. 2009 has seen a fair amount of catching up on major 2007-8 releases that I missed in the theater ("Juno," "Iron Man," "Pineapple Express," "The Mist," "Tropic Thunder," "Hitman," "Saw V," "Shoot 'Em Up," "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," etc.), while I've ventured out to see the 3-D "My Bloody Valentine" remake, "Coraline" (twice) and even "Twilight" in second run. Since there are plenty of places to read about all of those, I'd like to tell you about a few of the low-budget international oddities I've enjoyed between them, in this post and a sequel to follow shortly. All would ostensibly be filed under "horror," although in many cases, that heading's a stretch.

"Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead" (dir. Lloyd Kaufman, 2006)
One can never rely too strictly upon release dates stamped on Troma movies. I think this one was was announced sometime in 2004 or 2005, and I'm pretty sure that although Troma president Lloyd Kaufman toted clips to conventions and other personal appearances for years, the finished film wasn't distributed until 2008. Anyway, for the uninitiated, Uncle Lloyd's signature style is juvenile gross-out, but with enough subversive thematic elements and highbrow references to evince that he makes dumb movies for smart people. Furthermore, Troma's own productions are good-natured chunk-blowers, and are generally much better than the stuff they distribute which was made by other people, a distinction which lazy critics often fail to make. I have personally been waiting quite a while for "Poultrygeist," a typically hard-to-describe Kaufman joint concerning a fast food restaurant built on a Native American burial ground which, naturally, becomes the site of a zombie/chicken creature bloodbath. It includes a number of lovably amateurish singin' and dancin' numbers in the tradition of "Cannibal! The Musical," which is one of few exceptions to the aforementioned Troma-flicks-made-by-other-people rule. Many of the characters are named after chain eateries (the heroes are named Arbie and Wendy), and the plot brings up every famous claim made against such ventures, including unhealthy food, exploitation of work force and corporate annihilation of independent competitors (the latter being one of Lloyd's pet causes). It at first seems to offer surprisingly right-wing takes on homosexuality and U.S./Arab relations, although by the final reel, these conservative attitudes are also upended in a fairly twisted manner. All of these themes are treated with levity appropriate to a film which features so many stoopid gags involving masturbation and things shoved into/spraying out of male asses. The musical numbers are all pretty fun, and everything from the nudity (both pleasant and unpleasant) to the gore (face in meat slicer, breast implants torn out, etc.) is gratuitous in the best possible manner. Most of all, it's a highly creative and original mishmash of styles, and while it's not as consistently enjoyable as Troma's last few in-house features (not counting the disappointing Frankenfilm "Tales from the Crapper"), you can see the DIY love in every handmade frame.

During Mr. Kaufman's presentation at the recent Chicago-area Fangoria Weekend of Horrors, I asked him how well "Poultrygeist" has done financially, and he understandably hedged his answer... the initial three-disc set, which my lovely lady bought me for Xmas, has already sold out, but he and his wife (who happens to be executive director of the New York State Governor's Office for Motion Picture and Television Development) sank a bunch of their own money into shooting it on 35mm, and it's been shorted on proper screenings due to all the space-hogging major "independents." So, although I already own it, I may have to attend one of the upcoming "Poultrygeist" screenings at Chicago's Music Box Theatre on April 17 and 18, if not for the live thrill of a new Troma print, then to support Lloyd and Pat Kaufman's personal investment. If you have any love for truly independent cinema, the stuff that's not studio-distributed horseshit starring slumming Hollywood people, you should consider attending as well. My only caveat is that this is the sort of movie in which a young man, in the midst of an insane zombie chicken assault, screams "I've got bitch titties!" before having his shirt ripped off to reveal eggs poking through the skin of his chest, which hatch into squawking chicks, upon which he proceeds to vomit green slime before being fed bloody meat by one of the beasts, with whom he then proceeds to make out. Yes, it's that good.

"Tôkyô zankoku keisatsu" (aka "Tokyo Gore Police," dir. Yoshihiro Nishimura, 2008)
Beyond the commercial drudgery of ghost-revenge snoozers, Japan can churn out some astounding genre enetertainment, and with a title like "Tokyo Gore Police," you might imagine you're in for a good n' bloody trashfest. Upon seeing it, you'll realize that the seemingly blunt title is fairly innocuous compared with its insane content. The directorial debut of effects wizard Nishimura stars model Eihi Shiina, the deceptively depraved lady from Takashi Miike's "Audition," as a damaged, self-mutilating officer in a dystopian near-future Tokyo. Here, the police have become a privatized paramilitary group given to extreme measures in order to deal with a dangerous new breed of crazed psycho killers. These are the so-called Engineers, whose bodies, when injured, generate outrageous weapons at the site of the wound. For instance, the first guy we see her tangle with gets his hand cut off and a chainsaw pops out, there's a woman who loses the lower half of her body, only to sprout a chomping set of crocodile jaws in its place, and one dude, upon having the top of his head removed, grows cannons from his eye sockets which fire bone fragment bullets. Our katana-weilding heroine works for a fascistic chief who wears a horned kabuto helmet outfitted with a loudspeaker mouthpiece, and she's haunted by the assassination of her straight-arrow cop father, which we see repeatedly in great head-exploding detail. On top of all this gruesome weirdness, there's a stream of morbidly funny commercial parodies advertising cutesy blade kits for fashionable young cutters and services which allow bereaved families to dispatch the killers of their loved ones with Wiimotes, as well as an ebullient police dispatcher whose inappropriately chirpy squealing seems like an homage to the orientation video girl in "Battle Royale." In a sea of underwhelming imports, "Tokyo Gore Police" is a rare satisfying Japanese gorefest. It manages to be both unsettling and fun, matter-of-fact and surreal, over-the-top and ponderous, satirical and serious. If you're looking for something different that combines the sensibilities of the Peter Jackson behind "Bad Taste" and "Braindead," the David Cronenberg responsible for "Rabid" and "Videodrome" and the Paul Verhoeven who made "Robocop" and "Starship Troopers," this is it.

"Severance" (dir. Christopher Smith, 2006)
Aside from notable exceptions like "Hellraiser" or "28 Days Later," the British horror tradition is more gothic/perverse than gory. Sure, Hammer Film Productions took the world's first steps toward graphic cinematic violence in the late 1950s, but their Frankenstein and Dracula flicks are pretty tame today, especially compared to the still-shocking stuff red-blooded Americans H.G. Lewis and Dave Friedman cooked up less than a decade later. Then the "video nasty" era kept classic extreme movies out of wide British circulation, and combined with the industry's slump in general, from being made there. Thankfully, recent years have seen this uptight trend reversing. A bloody and trenchant survival tale laced with humor, "Severance" has a bit in common with contemporaries like "Dog Soldiers" and "Shaun of the Dead," with a touch of gritty former-Eastern-Bloc terror a la "Hostel." The intriguing setup revolves around employees of a British-American defense contractor who embark on a corporate team-building retreat in remote Hungary. They're supposed to go to a luxury lodge owned by the company, but end up at a dilapidated building. Rumors that the area once housed a group of savage Russian soldiers who enjoyed their Bosnian war assignment too much are born out when they are beseiged by a group of military killers, who stalk and dispatch the desk jockeys with weapons once supplied by their own employer. The "hero" characters are generally well-drawn, especially the druggie slacker played by British celeb Danny Dyer, and their jocular interplay is nicely offset by the film's heaping helping of uncompromising violence. As such, it's engaging throughout, and provides a decent compromise for those who don't want a lightweight horror-comedy, but also don't want the overwhelmingly grim tone of what moralistic jagoffs call "torture porn" (more on that dumb term in the next post). I was impressed enough to hunt down director Smith's first movie, "Creep," a subway-bound gore flick which earned comparisons to the '70s cult classic "Death Line" (aka "Raw Meat"). It's pretty standard, and nowhere near as fun as "Severance."

"Nang Nak" (dir. Nonzee Nimibutr, 1999)
Here's a Thai ghost picture, a huge hit in its homeland that eschews the overdone J-horror style while remaining more suggestive and emotionally affecting than anything else in this round of reviews. It's got plenty of creepy moments, but having been based on a folk legend that has been filmed many other times, "Nang Nak" has a mythical quality that takes it out of the realm of pure horror cinema. At its center is the rural romance between Mak, who departs from his village to fight in a war, and Nak, the pregnant bride he leaves behind. The film's first truly powerful scene comes as Mak lies suffering from injuries, intercut lyrically with Nak struggling in a difficult childbirth. Mak eventually comes through, and he returns to find Nak at their modest hut, tending to their baby, Dang. The family's happy reunion leads to days of bliss, with Mak singing lullabies to Dang and making love to Nak, but the other villagers are spooked. As various people, including his best friend and the local monks, try to tell Mak, Nak actually died during the birth, so the wife and baby he clings to are actually ghosts. Of course, he doesn't believe them, and Nak is determined to support his illusion by terrorizing and even killing anyone who might prove otherwise, leaving one old woman's corpse to be eaten by Komodo dragons. By the time Mak comes around, the frightened villagers approach with torches to burn down his home, and Nak is is full-blown villainess mode, hurling hunks of burning wood at the mob. It takes a variety of holy men and rituals to convince the anguished spirit to move on, and the finale is absolutely heartrending. Beyond the lush, green scenery, effective score and surprisingly tasteful outbursts of violence, "Nang Nak" succeeds most because of its sensitivity to its sympathetic characters, who even as historical archetypes seem like real people rather than the detached cyphers seen in most modern Asian ghost movies. It rightly cemented the reputation of director Nonzee Nimibutr, a pillar of the Thai new wave who went on to produce the Pang brothers' "Bangkok Dangerous" (the original, not their Hollywood remake with Nicolas Cage) and "Nang Nak" screenwriter Wisit Sasanatieng's "Tears of the Black Tiger," a colorfully bizarre Thai western/melodrama.

"Nightmare Beach" (aka "Welcome to Spring Break," dir. Umberto Lenzi, 1988)
Sometimes I give up on hoping for a good horror movie, and I opt to rent something that looks completely terrible. Most of the time, this yields an umemorable or even painfully dull viewing experience. This time, I lucked out! While searching the computerized catalog at the local library for CDs by composer Claudio Simonetti, the onetime Goblin keyboardist who did a ton of session work in trashy Italian '80s cinema, I discovered a VHS called "Welcome to Spring Break." I'd seen the movie on rental shelves before, but passed it over due to the terrible box art, the unpromising "slasher terrorizes spring breakers" plot description and the unfamiliar filmmaker listed as "Harry Kirkpatrick." You see, back in the day, a lot of continentals used anglicized pseudonyms in the hopes of convincing Americans they were seeing a domestic production. For me, it has the opposite effect. I'll usually sit through any crappy-looking unknown quantity if it looks European, but have no desire to snooze through another random low-budget American slasher picture. It turns out that "Welcome to Spring Break" was originally called "Nightmare Beach" (a much better title), and it comes from renowned hack Umberto Lenzi, whose shaky resume includes some real losers ("Nightmare City," "Black Demons") but also such entertaining crapfests as "Cannibal Ferox" and "Ironmaster." For this one, imagine a cross between "Fraternity Vacation" and "Prom Night," wherein a host of large-haired '80s cheeseballs visit Florida to gyrate and jiggle while being picked off by a mysterious masked murderer, whose identity is hidden by a number of red herrings. Since the movie begins with the electrocution of a biker named Diablo and the helmeted killer electrocutes his victims (his motorcycle is even rigged with some sort of kick-ass shock device), we're supposed to think it's Diablo, but I guessed the proper culprit about 10 minutes in. Despite the lack of gore effects, the murders are pretty decent, and just about every character is hilarious, including the quarterback protagonist (who's literally tormented because he lost the Orange Bowl), the peeping Tom hotel clerk, the scowling bike gang with the logo from Lamberto Bava's "Demons" painted on their jackets and the creepy S&M cop played by genre favorite John Saxon. The girls tend to be kinda sexy in that poofy '80s sort of way, and we get to hear the soundtrack's five or so songs (including Simonetti's theme music) several times each, thus confirming how uniformly terrible they are. With its excess of extremely dated cheese, this relic is truly a hidden gem of bad cinema and has made me rethink my feelings about Umberto Lenzi... maybe I should investigate some of his gialli or poliziottesci.

I'll catch you in a few days with more stabbings, bludgeonings, asphyxiations, reanimations and other morbid happenings... and here's hoping that Crack the Skye, the new Mastodon album in stores today, ends the recent spate of eagerly-awaited but disappointing major metal releases.

Éireann go blog

2009-03-16T15:53:00.003-05:00

As you may well know, I am adopted. Although my parents are both 100% Polish-American, I have no idea of my "true" heredity. I really don't have a problem with that, but I've of course always speculated upon it. My complexion makes me think I'm of Greek or some other Mediterranean origin, although that's also me wishing for a grandiose name like "Demitrios Papadapoulous" or "Archemedes Vougiouklakis."

Then there was that one time when, after hearing me mention this lack of ethnic identity, my grandmother suddenly said that I am Polish and Irish. When I asked how she could be sure, she cryptically answered that she "just knew." Is there some piece of my history which has been hidden from me? Was Grandma just being weird? Again, it really doesn't matter to me, but that comment has stuck in my craw ever since. Along with Italians, I've always gotten along with Irish folk, most likely because we all ended up in Catholic school together. Some of my best friends are at least part Irish. Plus, the Irish are responsible for some great music.

So, whether or not I can actually claim Irish blood, I suppose I can celebrate St. Patrick's Day with the best of 'em. Therefore, here are twenty songs paying tribute to the Irish people, their culture, their humor and their tenacity. I've naturally included all the major players in Celtic metal, as this is an underheralded field in both metal and world music. Celtic punk is also a personal favorite, so you'll see a fair representation from those ranks, along with some other stalwarts of the Irish/Celtic canon. I don't have any piquant comments for these, but instead included appropriate links which may provide some context. Take us away, Uncle O'Grimacey...

1. Dropkick Murphys (with Spider Stacy and Ronnie Drew): "(F)lannigan's Ball" (The Meanest of Times, 2007)
2. The Irish Rovers: "Dunluce Castle" (40 Years A-Rovin', 2005)
3. Primordial: "The Calling" (The Burning Season, 1999)
4. Sinéad O'Connor: "Paddy's Lament" (Sean-Nós Nua, 2002)
5. Thin Lizzy: "Róisín Dubh (Black Rose): A Rock Legend" (Black Rose: A Rock Legend, 1979)
6. Flogging Molly: "What's Left of the Flag" (Drunken Lullabies, 2002)
7. Cruachan: "The Middle Kingdom" (The Middle Kingdom, 2000)
8. The Pogues: "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (Rum, Sodomy & the Lash, 1985)
9. Waylander: "Keen of Knowledge" (Reawakening Pride Once Lost, 1998)
10. House of Pain: "Top o' the Morning to Ya" (House of Pain, 1992)
11. The Tossers: "Finnegan's Wake" (Communication & Conviction: The Last Seven Years, 2001)
12. The Lord Weird Slough Feg: "The Red Branch" (The Lord Weird Slough Feg, 1996)
13. The Chieftains: "Boil the Breakfast Early" (9: Boil the Breakfast Early, 1989)
14. Tuatha de Danann: "The Wheel" (Trova di Danú, 2004)
15. Black 47: "Funky Céilí (Bridie's Song)" (Fire of Freedom, 1993)
16. Mael Mórdha: "Gealtacht Mael Mórdha" (Gealtacht Mael Mórdha, 2007)
17. Stiff Little Fingers: "Alternative Ulster" (Inflammable Material, 1979)
18. Geasa: "Spancill Hill" (Angel's Cry, 1999)
19. Young Dubliners: "Foggy Dew" (With All Due Respect: The Irish Sessions, 2007)
20. Loreena McKennitt: "The Old Ways" (The Visit, 1991)

Tiny toob adventures

2009-03-04T08:02:00.000-06:00

Y'all know that at times I post a bunch of video finds in lieu of actual content. This is one of those times. I guess the overall theme is "fun with television."

"Hatten-Baby"
I giggled my guts out at this crude Flash animation at the dawn of the decade. Like the best Tim and Eric sketches, it's nearly impossible to explain why it's funny... you're either hardwired to laugh at it, or you aren't. The clip is much weirder (thus, better) without explanation, so I won't bore you with any. Sadly, its original host site disappeared, and I feared it was lost forever. Thankfully, some enterprising soul resurrected it on good ol' YouTube. No, this is not TV-related, but I had to share.

"Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Show"
Speaking of Tim and Eric, here's a glimpse of two of their "stars," puppeteer David Liebe Hart and impressionist James Quall, in their formative years. The clip is from Hart's infamous Los Angeles-area public access TV program, where he hoped to impart lessons to children via readings and original songs, frequently about the Bible, staying off drugs and UFOs. I really wish this show had been my first introduction to these fellows; at any rate, it proves that they aren't just playing up their oddness for the benefit of stoned [adult swim] viewers. They really are like that.

"Diabeetus"
An example of one of my favorite Internet phenomena. For the benefit of those without televisions, beloved character actor and curmudgeon Wilford Brimley is the promotional face of Liberty Medical Supply, which ships testing supplies and other items of use to those coping with diabetes mellitus. Brimley's gruff demeanor and folksy pronunciation of the disorder (popularly referred to as "the beetis") has spawned hundreds of videos like this, which do not so much make fun of diabetes as they do the inherently hilarious Mr. Brimley. Others interpolate him with Hot Butter's "Popcorn" or Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus." I really hope he sees some of these before he dies, and that none of the younger employees of Liberty Medical tip their bosses off to how funny kids find their TV commercials.

"The Church of Snuggie"
Another popular Internet/TV ad crossover, this time featuring the amazing blanket with sleeves. This is my favorite of the Snuggie "remixes," highlighing the curious couplet: "Blankets are okay, but they can slip and slide/And when you need to reach for something, your hands are trapped inside." (Funny, no one seems to mention that the old dude looks like Malcolm McDowell, which is what first made me think of the product's sinister connotations.) I got my lady a Snuggie for Valentine's Day, and she says she loves it... but I had to wash it soon after it came out of the box, because whatever they treated it with made me sneeze like a sumbitch.

"Thundercats Outtakes"
Once a popular soundfile, many have tried to edit video to this widely-circulated collection of "Thundercats" voice actors flubbing lines and saying dirty things. This is one of the best attempts.

"Cookie Monster sings 'Hammer Smashed Face'"
Similarly, there are a ton of clips out there wherein people edited "Sesame Street" footage to metal songs. Most of them are completely awful, but this one pairing everyone's favorite glutton with an opening snippet from Cannibal Corpse's Tomb of the Mutilated hit (which you surely remember from the band's appearance in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective") gets it right.

"Monster Wars: Grave Digger vs. Carolina Crusher"
Finally, here's proof that this insane show existed. In the early-to-mid-1990s, the syndicated monster truck racing program "Monster Wars" aired locally on Channel 50 late Saturday nights. Although it was hard to get anyone else to sit through much of it, I watched it whenever I could. Not because I was into monster trucks, but because before and after each mercifully brief race, costumed characters representing the trucks would holler scripted taunts at each other in front of cheap bluescreens. It was like pro wrestling, but without 20 minutes of sweaty fat guys groping each other's spandex, and helped the incredibly dull "sport" of monster truck racing appear entertaining. Here's a classic clip of Grave Digger (forever my favorite monster truck because of the z-grade Skeletor character depicted here) and Carolina Crusher (a cheesy construction worker, who would be the program's gayest mascot if it weren't for Predator, a cross between a reject from a community theater production of "Cats" and a member of the worst hair metal band you never saw).

See change

2009-02-20T15:14:00.001-06:00

What up, gang? The job hunt is going about as well as can be expected in this economy, which is to say it's mighty frustrating. I know I have marketable skills. Employers in the area just don't seem interested in someone who can communicate effectively right now. Oh, if only I had 7 to 10 years of experience in coding SQXMLGBT, predicting growth sector revenue potential option shares, telling other people how to run their business or some other vague-sounding shit! I'd be lighting Cohibas with $100 bills right now. Instead, I'm hopping in the same leaky boat as nearly 5 million other Americans. I guess I should feel better because I'm not alone? Well, as long as COBRA keeps covering this recurring lung infection (the doc suspects it may be COPD!), I can't complain.

Meanwhile, changes are afoot here. Most obviously, I have a snappy new logo that incorporates my love of woodland fauna, old-timey fonts and insular hipster sarcasm. The other major difference is that I've overhauled the links, breaking them down into Entartete Kunst's main areas of interest: news/culture, music and film/TV. You might notice that I've canned the list of friends' pages. IN NO WAY does this mean that I don't love each of you who were previously there. It's just that it's tough to keep up with who's actually maintaining their blog or other site, and that while attempting to revamp my professional life, I've made the decision to keep this blog as outwardly focused as possible, and my first step is to minimize the "personal" links found on it.

Don't worry, the content should remain identical. I'll still include tedious navel-gazing paragraphs like the one that started this post, and, when inspired, I'll even return to documenting my kitchen adventures. This is a hobby site, after all, and it will still only reflect its creator's interests. It's simply about appearances. Next, I intend to delete my dusty MySpace profile, since I'm sick of avoiding it. No, I do not expect to move to Facebook, which, as far as I can tell, is just a boring combination of MySpace and Twitter "for adults" that won't let you block undesirables. Y'all have fun, though.

To herald the fresh-ish outlook, let me introduce a few of the new ways to leave Entartete Kunst.

SCRAMBLED FACE: A fledgling music blog initiated by yours truly. The simple goal is to highlight "music worth hearing," be it brand new or decades old, focusing on the unique, interesting, odd or just plain good. I'll try to include a variety of genres for all you silly metal haters. I'm not sure how often I'll post, but as long as time and interest allow, expect something every day, since it's not very labor-intensive. Along with my brilliant comments, like any music blog, each post will include a link to download the recording at hand so that visitors might sample its sounds and decide whether they should buy the damn thing, provided it's available for purchase. Like any responsible music blogger, I don't intend to illegally upload any copyrighted material myself, but merely to point folks at files that are already out there. (This may change... I'm considering posting compilations to coincide with Entartete Kunst's mp3 playlists, for those who don't want to be shackled to the trusty streaming player. A comp download would function like a podcast without my annoying voice mucking up the goods, and you could take it with you while you're power walking or riding the bus or begging for change or doing whatever people who use iPods do with them. Any interest in this?)

Something Awful: I'm not introducing you to anything new here, as I extolled this immensely popular site's pleasures years ago. In case you've missed that, or haven't visited in a while, SA is still good for a laugh when you're feeling miserable. Sure, a lot of it appeals only to Internet losers who have nothing better to do than harass other Internet losers in masturbatory lolspeak forums, and most of its content would confuse the hell out of your parents. However, despite my lack of interest in today's video games, I can't help but love perpetual cynics. Infrequently maintained features such as Your Band Sucks and The Horrors of Pornography, as well as regular columns like Garbage Day and Reviews [Movies] (note the lack of a snarky title), provide all the evidence one needs that pop culture is a festering cesspool in need of immediate torching. In the tradition of loveable American cranks like Ambrose Bierce, Flannery O'Connor and Anton LaVey, the folks responsible for SA's content generally don't have anything positive to say about modern life, which can really help you feel better about yours.

Fuzzy Memories: Did you grow up on Chicago-area TV? While the Museum of Broadcast Communications has sadly been without a physical facility for nearly six years, FM's searchable archives contains the stuff you'll want to see. At least, it's got what I want. I'm talking Son of Svengoolie's 3-D broadcast of "Revenge of the Creature," Waffelos commercials and the animated Captain America "conserve energy" PSA. Thanks to FM, I finally learned the name of guys who did voiceovers for Channel 32 (Jim Barton!) and ABC (Ernie Anderson!) when I was a kid, and the name of the trippy early morning live action/puppet show I had for years thought was "Gigglesnort Hotel" (it was "Hot Fudge Show"!). I revisited the opening of 32's "Monstrous Movie" (it used to make me piss my pants!), their "Snipets" segments and those low-budget nightly "Newscene" programs that aired shortly before they signed off and scrolled those cheesy Nite-Owl graphics until morning. I especially enjoyed the infamous 1987 incident starring the "Max Headroom" pirate who broke into Channel 11's "Dr. Who" broadcast. If you miss the days when Venture and Zayre fulfilled all your shopping needs, when any ride was a quarter at Dispensa's Kiddie Kingdom, when Harry Schmerler sang for your Ford dollars and Arthur Treacher's served up fish n' chips, when Starbeat presented what's happening, when ON TV and Spectrum were your pay TV options, when WFLD and the Chicago Sun-Times were owned by Field Communications, when Channel 44 showed "Speed Racer" and Channel 60 showed the "King Kong" cartoon, when Channel 66 wasn't in Spanish, etc., you will spend hours trolling these archives. Too bad all the vintage WGN clips are down... I blame Sam Zell for my inability to see the "Family Classics" intro.

More content to come, including reviews of recent film viewings. On a related note, TV ads claim this coming weekend offers your final chance to see "Coraline" at theaters in 3-D. If you haven't, I highly suggest doing so... it was written and directed by Henry Selick of "The Nightmare Before Christmas"/"James and the Giant Peach" fame, based on a book by Neil Gaiman, and is the creepiest children's movie released in recent memory. If that's not enough of a recommendation, I quote a post-viewing conversation that happened right behind me:

LITTLE BOY: "Grandma, that was a weird movie."
ANNOYED GRANDMA (who had guffawed straight through the lengthy "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" ad): "Yeah, it was!"