Monday 5 April 2010

NOSFERATU D2 - you have been warned!


Artist: Nosferatu D2
Album: We're Gonna Walk Around This City With Our Headphones On To Block Out The Noise
Label: Audio Antihero
The danger machine that is Nosferatu D2 actually have an album out. It's stone cold genius, and I can't recommend it enough.

The wit of The Smiths and Half Man Half Biscuit, the observation of The Wedding Present, melancholy of Joy Division, the urgency of The Fall or Mission Of Burma, the sensibilities and musical awareness of Pavement, all combining to make something completely its own.

All I can say is, give it a bloody go. It's £5.99 and it's genius.

10/10.

Sunday 4 April 2010

Live Review - BENJAMIN SHAW

oops. I found a live review I wrote *MONTHS* ago of Benjamin Shaw, and never published. I'm doing it now. The absolute gent has a 5/5 classic of a record out NOW on Audio Antihero, entitled "I Got the Pox, the Pox is what I Got" - you can buy it for £3.99 HERE. Do.

Review:

I had the good fortune of seeing Benjamin Shaw play in a particularly charmless dive that I to have had the misfortune of playing in twice myself, but it didn’t take long for me to forget all about the ‘sports crowd’ and the indulgent support artists, because my man Ben is a rocking machine.

Without the benefit of the synth, percussion and distortion that swamps his recorded works, Benjamin is given the opportunity to shine as both a songwriter and a vocalist. He can tell a story, and he can lose you in metaphor; he can keep things beautifully intimate, or produce something magnificently abstract; and whether it’s the “let’s pop down to the market – to happen on some cake” or the “there’s a fine line between talented and me” that does it – he’s bound to get a smile out of you. Vocally he’s flawless, he keeps his croaks and mumbles, but soars when the time is right and when he screams…you’re liable to lose your wig. He really means it, man.

Two parts tortured artist and one part teddy bear, Benjamin Shaw will both charm and alarm you. Plucking material mostly from his magnificent ‘I got the pox, the pox is what I got’ record, the set is littered with highlights. The fragile falsetto of the ‘thanks for all the biscuits’ climax, the humorous sadism of the EP’s title track (which got more than a few well timed laughs from his audience) and a shrieking and chill inducing rendition of ‘when I fell over in the city’ all stood out in one very special set. Although fans of his record will doubtlessly enjoy seeing him perform (and vice versa), Benjamin Shaw on record and Benjamin Shaw on stage are two very separate and very special beasts (like a Minotaur and an Ewok). Magnificent.

11/10.

Track Ben down here:

Benjamin Shaw.net

Myspace

Facebook

Buy his EP (+ get a free MP3 and stream some videos)


Monday 16 March 2009

HELL'S KITTENS - The Horror Sensation!



Being one of the lucky few to have seen their debut, BAD FRIEND, I'm really pleased to 'announce' (as if Fangoria, Blood Disgusting.com and Arrow in the Head didn't beat me to it!) that the hookers and germs over at Rottwieler Productions have a new horror feature in the shakin' making!
 

Urinating copiously on the charred ashes of DEATH PROOF (and I take no pleasure in that) comes HELL'S KITTENS!!!!



Judging from the *gruesome* TRAILER this beast of a flick takes the classic rape-revenge narrative and sticks it with guts, grit and grain not seen since Wes Craven went ballistic in 1972 (and judging on that stink-pot remake of a remake, this is a timely reminder of what revenge really is).  

Sadly I've not had the pleasure of seeing this particular film just yet, but I'm positive it's going to be something special. These guys are true horror buffs and they make a mockery of every show/movie to complain of 'budget-cuts' by beating any such difficulties (the last film cost them about £1000...) with pure innovation, passion and awesomeness.
These kids could save this Godforsaken genre! 




DON'T MISS IT!


Sunday 15 March 2009

Kieronononon's Three Man Party

Hooray! They're back!

The weirdo trio have returned with their most sodomizingly creative songs yet. 'Three Man Party' running at a short but satisfying fifteen minutes carries just enough of the most butal techno-punk you could ever hope to expose your pets to, leaving you warm fuzzy and trembling, but never threatens to outstay its welcome.

Packed with hilarious stories of useless spies, dodgy dares and vampire vodka parties - Kierononononon keep the content to their thrashed out metal, funky raps and screeching industrial just the right side of 'boomshakalaka'. Yes. It's a winning formula.

Quite frankly, the UK doesn't have a better band that Kieronononon. If this review was as good as their CD, I'd be hired by someone awesome. and really flamin' rich. They would quote me at the start of horror films. I would guest in documentaries. I WOULD BE PROLIFIC AND INFLUENTIAL. But I'm not. Still, Kieronononononon are amazing.

Support insane and independent music. Buy their music. So they can make more.

It's in your hands.

"GO ON DO IT! GO ON DO IT! DO THIS ONE THING! DO THIS ONE THING!"

Here's a link
Here's a video
Here's a song

They live at www.roxxor2.co.uk

They rock.

Sunday 23 November 2008

Evilution Review

I recently raved about a film called “Basement Jack”, and I’ve since been lucky enough to see its prequel “Evilution”. This gruesome epic follows award-winning actor Eric Peter-Kaiser (performing with the charm and skill of a young Ted Raimi) as military doctor Darren Hall (Dan Cain and Herbest West all in one). Darren was last seen working with some mysterious samples to create a cure for death but following a botched experiment was forced to abandon his zombified Iraqi outpost and flee back to America. Now at home in The Necropolitan, Darren attempts to perfect this cure while dodging military assassins.



Inevitably things go from bad to pleasant (there’s a bodacious love interest), to bad to worse, and then finally: Boom! Welcome to zombie town. We climax with a swarm of infected tenants ripping through everything that stands in their way including comical body builders, street gangs, junkies, improperly dressed young ladies and dotty old women gone bad. Only Darren has the know-how to try and reverse the effects of his experiments on the community and save the day. There’s a twist too!



“Evilution” is every bit as entertaining as its slasher counterpart “Basement Jack”, but it remains its own monster. There’s been a recent surge in this style of doomsday film with re-makes, spins-offs, sequels, adaptations (28 Days/Weeks Later, Day of the Dead, Doomsday, Diary of the Dead, I Am Legend, Resident Evil, Dead Set…) racking up DVD sales, but I’m pleased to say that “Evilution” owes nothing to this trend. Writer Brian O’Toole has named “Dawn of the Dead” as his favourite film, and that influence can (arguably) be seen within “Evilution” in that there’s something decidedly “old-school” and classic about its structure and content. “Evilution” is not a flavour of the week - rather it is a witty and intelligent horror movie with well-placed gore around the edges. This is one for true fans of horror.



I don’t like to press the “Hype Button” with a couple more features like this and Black Gate Entertainment could really prove themselves to be the future of horror. You have been warned.



P.S Nathan Bexton is a horror-icon in the making. You heard it here first!

Tuesday 4 November 2008

Awesome Film Review: BASEMENT JACK



Though easily marked as a '70s/'80s throwback, "Basement Jack" is about as good a slasher film as you could hope to find in any decade. Tipping its hat to John Carpenter's classic while still relishing in its modernity; "Basement Jack" is a hugely entertaining horror film that acknowledges its influences without being a thing like "Scream".

The story follows Jack Riley (the spectacularly creepy Eric Peter-Kaiser) AKA Basement Jack: a silent slasher who takes up residence in the basements of "apple-pie" American families, silently observing their happy lives before putting his favourite blade to use on mother, father, sister, brother, and Spot the dog.
His motivation? In true delusional mass-murderer fashion, he has mummy issues. Driven mad by seventeen years of home-cooked electro therapy courtesy of his endlessly charming mother (Lynn Lowry of "The Crazies" and "Shivers" fame) Jack seeks revenge on any family that represents the love and kindness he was denied.

Jack tours the country, slaughtering families in every town he visits - but no matter how well you slice-and-dice, there's always one that gets away. Enter Karen (Michele Morrow): the sole-survivor of Jack's murder spree. Each hunting the other, Karen wants retribution for the death of her family, while Jack hopes to improve his bowling average by finishing the job.
With the help of a likeable rookie cop (Sam Skoryna) Karen tracks Jack for one final showdown. She must stop him once and for all - or die trying.

True, you may have already seen a number of films with a similar story, but the slasher has always been very formulaic, and "Basement Jack"'s plot certainly has enough demented quirks to help it stand out from the regular Myers/Krueger/Voorhees clone. There is tribute, but there's originality too. 

The film plays well at a perfect 90 minute running-time with gross-out gore scenes, scares, laughs and plot revelations all liberally distributed at the right moments.

There's no shortage of highlights, but certainly a newly masked Jack Riley's assault on police headquarters will go down as one of the all time great stalk-and-slash moments, recalling "Halloween 4", "Maniac Cop" and "The Terminator" all at once. It's beautifully choreographed, frantically shot, outrageously gory and sickeningly amusing – not to mention it features the simultaneous deaths of three prominent characters. This is horror back to its old unpredictable self.

While producer/screenwriter Brian Patrick O'Toole has a good a track record for horror ("Dog Soldiers", "Cemetery Gates" and personal favourite; "Sleepstalker") – you have to believe that the cast and crew believed in this picture 110%. For what is truly a shoe-string budget, "Basement Jack" looks great, possessing almost a Hollywood standard of gloss. This is something a first-time director (prolific FX artist Michael Shelton) simply cannot achieve without the benefit of a crew's love and dedication to a project.
Shelton himself is a bit of a revelation, having obviously paid attention during his fifteen year career, his first time behind a camera and he's already showing the spark of a young Sam Raimi ("Evil Dead" trilogy). Keep an eye on this man.

Although there's been a few noble attempts to revive the slasher sub-genre (or indeed the horror genre) recently ("Hatchet", "Wrestlemaniac" and "The Tripper" come to mind), none have brushed the cobwebs off the 1980s formula quite as well as "Basement Jack" and certainly none have been so accessible that they might actually pose a threat to the slew of sequels and avalanche of remakes (which I'm not actually all that fussed about) that are dominating the genre – but "Basement Jack" does. Basement Jack Riley is an icon in the making.

Monday 3 November 2008

This Month's Awesome Film: Brotherhood of Blood

This month's awesome film isn't awesome at all...it's more like FLAWESOME.

Despite some hard work and good performances (genre veteran Ken Foree is especially entertaining) the film really struggled to keep me interested. Much of the actual horror happened off-screen or in cutaways and the majority of dialogue sequences were under dramatised, over-long and a little daft.

Certainly it picks up a little towards the end with a nice twist or two, but ultimately its complete lack of style and urgency keep a good premise bogged down by mediocrity.

It may act as a decent demo-reel for its rookie directors but I can only really recommend this to Ken Foree fans or vampire completists.