// Category Archive for: Reviews

DVD Review: Don’t Ask Me Questions: The Unsung Life of Graham Parker and The Rumour

By Jeffery X Martin

Read Cait Brennan’s interview with Graham Parker.

At the end of the Seventies, a British gas station attendant, who was also a musician, got his record played on the radio. The next day, he had a contract offer from a major record label. Overnight success? A Cinderella story? Not quite.

The Kickstarter-backed documentary Don’t Ask Me Questions chronicles the rise, fall, and rise of Graham Parker and the Rumour, a band whose contemporaries included Elvis Costello and Squeeze. Their big US hit was “Local Girls,” one of the earliest videos to be played on MTV.

When their first album, Howling Wind, came out in 1976, the critical acclaim was instant and practically universal. They were widely regarded as the best live act in Britain. That doesn’t necessarily lead to stellar album sales, though, and as Parker says, “Everything was just a bit off.”

(more…)

Music Review: From Hell, Ascent from Hell

By Jeffery X Martin

There was a time, not too long ago, when rock and roll was the Devil’s music. Heavy metal was Lucifer’s tool of destruction and damnation, and if you even touched a Hamer Scarab electric guitar, that was enough to send your soul screaming out of your body into the abyss, where demons would torture your eternal soul with free-form jazz and Zydeco gospel music.

Those were the halcyon days. Black magic and pentacles, hailing Satan on a regular basis (not just on holidays, like we do now), and rock loud enough to cause internal bleeding were normal things. Good times, man, good times.

Thank god for From Hell, a metal supergroup, bound and determined to bring horror-metal back to the forefront. Name-checking the immortal King Diamond, From Hell’s debut album, Ascent From Hell, is part metal album, part radio play. It’s a concept album about . . . well, here. Let me just quote the press release. (more…)

Music Review: The Faint, Doom Abuse

By Melissa Bratcher

Sometimes when a band suffers burnout, they continue to make music anyway and that music usually blows. Omaha’s electro-punk stalwarts The Faint found themselves facing a lack of inspiration and, more importantly, fun after a year of touring for their 2008 album Fasciinatiion and instead of forging ahead and into mediocrity, effectively broke up. And they were sorely missed.

In 2013, they reformed, releasing a four-song 12” they called Preversions. Preversions led to a full-length album, Doom Abuse, and it is amazing. Imagine Kraftwerk fronted by Lemmy Kilmister. Imagine being in a room full of chainsaws hanging on wires and bears are chasing you. Doom Abuse is that exhilarating.

(more…)

Music Review: The Mary Onettes, Portico:

By Less Lee Moore

The Mary Onettes’ new release, Portico: is dense with almost claustrophobic layers of synths and jangling guitars. But singer Philip Ekström’s voice has a lighter touch and floats above the music, which gives depth to these songs. Portico: reminds me a lot of The Cure’s Disintegration at times, but far more restrained and condensed. Ekström has an emotive warble like Robert Smith even while sounding almost nothing like him. He talks about death and ghosts and dreaming, all of which fit the music like a hand in a glove. There are choruses and bridges everywhere, both instrumental and vocal, which propel the songs forward, and out of the heaviness that might otherwise weigh them down.
(more…)

VHS Visions: Hide And Go Shriek

By Brad Henderson

There is a feeling of satisfaction that many have received when dabbling in horror and falling in love with it. Hide and Go Shriek has a plot that will always give me goosebumps. As soon as you tell me there is a horror film with a group of high school or college students that goes camping, hitchhiking, to a summer camp, a sleepover, the mall, or in this case, a furniture store, I’m completely down. I honestly don’t need to know more than that and I couldn’t care less what the plot is about. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to impress us and we love these types of films.

(more…)

Blu-Ray Review: No Holds Barred

By Brad Henderson

When I was little I saw the cover for No Holds Barred countless times but never watched it because I really wasn’t into wrestling. When I was in my early teens I got a little into wrestling for a year or so, but then just got bored with it all. So as you can see, I’ve never been into wrestling and just don’t understand its following.

(more…)

DVD Review: Camp Dread

By Brad Henderson

Oh look! Danielle Harris is in a new movie! . . . not. I’m getting pissed that filmmakers cast people like Danielle Harris, Kane Hodder, Tony Todd, Tiffany Shepis, and many others to act for five minutes and then kill them off or turn them into needless characters just so they can put their name on the front cover.

Camp Dread is a new movie that does not star Danielle Harris. It does star Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp) but they, of course, don’t put that on the cover. Felissa Rose is iconic and deserves a shout out on the cover of the film she is in. This isn’t the first time (and it won’t be the last) that a production company and distributor have done this. It’s a cheap selling point and it’s disgusting and insulting to everyone. I understand that the director can’t afford these actors and actresses during the whole production but it is still a cheap move and tiresome to see over and over.

(more…)

Blu-Ray Review: The Telephone Book

By Brad Henderson

Back in the 1970s, films with gratuitous nudity were usually rated X during their initial release. Now, these types of films will, at most, be rated NC-17, but we don’t see that rating much these days. Vinegar Syndrome releases many films of this nature with an X rating but that doesn’t mean they’re hardcore pornography. Sure, Vinegar Syndrome does release some vintage hardcore features but they also dabble in the non-hardcore stuff as well. That is where The Telephone Book comes in.

(more…)

Music Review: Unwound, Rat Conspiracy (box set)

By Pres. Bystander

Unwound’s output from 1993 and 1994 is built on contradiction. Hyperactivity and hyperfocus in equal measure. It is the sound of deeply ADHD kids who alternately forgot to take their pills, took too big a dose, or self-medicated themselves into a stupor. This is the sound of blast-off, free fall, weightlessness, and submersion. Tension colors every corner, as does suffocation and kicking against the heavy blanket that covers.

(more…)

Music Review: Lowell, I Killed Sara V.

By Less Lee Moore

Toronto and London-based Lowell has the kind of voice that veers dangerously close to being exploited in an iTunes commercial. Which is why it’s significant that her new EP I Killed Sara V. opens with the blisteringly original “Cloud 69.” That music and those lyrics could never be used to sell hybrid cars. The crush of percussion and synths and the descending “oooooh” in the chorus make the heart pound faster. It’s an extraordinary song and unlike anything else I’ve heard.

(more…)