DVD Review: Killer Mermaid

By Brad Henderson

Between artwork mishaps and title changes, distributors are getting worse at promotion. I understand their target audience perspective and get the logistics behind it, but that doesn’t change how dumb it is.

In the beginning of the year a film was circulating festivals with the title Nymph. That recently changed once the film was picked up and distributed in the US as Killer Mermaid. Of course the title Killer Mermaid is bland and straight to the point, but the title is the spoiler. I was pissed. While watching the film we are anticipating a mermaid and that’s fine, but it actually isn’t revealed until nearly the end of the film. The fact that it is a mermaid is meant to be the twist, but we are flat out told what it is in the goddamn title and the cover of the DVD.

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Kickstarter Campaign: The Gates Of Misery Horror Comic Anthology

By Less Lee Moore

Who doesn’t love horror anthologies? Who doesn’t love comics? Even if you think you don’t like either, you’ll probably change your mind once you find out about The Gates of Misery.

Here’s the synopsis:

The Gates of Misery is a horror anthology comic set in Mount Misery Cemetery. The comic features three unique tales of terror, each illustrating a different character’s journey to the grave and how their souls came to be trapped within the Gates of Misery. Issue #1 features tales by genre filmmakers Steven Kostanski (writer/director Manborg), Brandon Cronenberg (writer/director Antiviral), and Jon Knautz (writer/director Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer). Each story is illustrated by Matthew Therrien (Manborg: The Official Comic) and coloured by Shira Haberman (Manborg: The Official Comic).

Those are some serious horror pedigrees right there, people. If you’re attending this weekend’s FanExpo Canada in Toronto, please check out booth #5229 in the Rue Morgue/Festival of Fear area. They’ll have posters for sale for $20 and all proceeds will go towards the comic.

The project needs $3,500 by September 30 so do what you can to make sure this happens.

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1329688494/the-gates-of-misery
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegatesofmisery
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mt_Misery
Official Website: http://www.thegatesofmisery.com

Music Review: Mortals, Cursed To See The Future

By Tim Murr

The debut album by Mortals from Brooklyn, NY is a black/thrash/sludge metal-enthusiast’s dream. Cursed To See The Future hits hard and never relents across six tracks, clocking in at around 50 minutes. With brutal, pummeling rhythms, throat-shredding vocals, and unimpeachable guitar and bass work, Cursed sets a high bar for a debut.

I don’t think it should be necessary in 2014 to make a big deal about Mortals being an all female power trio that rightly earns comparisons to High On Fire and Darkthrone, but there you go. These three women—Caryn Havlik (drums), Lesley Wolf (bass/vocals), and Elizabeth Cline (guitar)—create rhythmically exciting metal that stands shoulder to shoulder with any of their contemporaries. Track 5, “Series Of Decay,” backs up that assessment nicely.

After buying this album, it’s been pretty much all I’ve listened to, and before that I’d been listening to their Death Ritual EP and Night Terror Demo. I like Mortals quite a bit and highly recommend Cursed To See The Future. It’ll be exciting to watch this band continue to evolve; they’ll certainly be one of Relapse Records MVPs. If you can catch them on tour make sure you buy them each a quadruple espresso!

Cursed To See The Future was released by Relapse Records on July 8 and can be purchased on the label’s website. You can listen to the album on Bandcamp and purchase it from there, too.

Blu-Ray Review: Rats: Night Of Terror/Hell Of The Living Dead

By Brad Henderson

Rat movies seem to sprout up every once in a while over the years. I’m pretty sure none of them have been big successes but they are always fun in a cheesy way. Seriously, rats are the things that are killing people? Just fucking run away! Unless you are dealing with humungous rats, I’m sure this wouldn’t really pose a problem.

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New Country For Old Men: Tyler Farr, “Redneck Crazy”

By Jeffery X Martin

TRIGGER WARNING: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

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Waxing Nostalgic: The Pretenders, The Pretenders

By James McNally

Does anyone remember what an album was? Do they still call a music “release” an album anymore? Well, back in 1980, when a band released an album, you bought an album, a piece of vinyl inside a paper sleeve slipped into a cardboard sleeve. I think I might have paid about $8 for this record when it came out in 1980. I was 15 years old. A bit of background may be in order.

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Music Review: Orenda Fink, Blue Dream

By Melissa Bratcher

To call Orenda Fink’s Blue Dream meditative isn’t at all a stretch. It’s an exploration of the meaning of love, death, and spirituality, all filtered through a dreamy, gauzy haze and sung in an incredibly intimate way. Listening to Blue Dream is like walking into someone else’s slumber: a place where you’re welcome, but it’s all a bit disorienting and dark and a little eerie. It’s a captivating record.

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Movie Review: An Honest Liar

By Noreen Sobczyk

An Honest Liar is a documentary about James “The Amazing” Randi (self-described liar, cheat, and charlatan) directed by Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein. I was surprised by how many people to whom I mentioned this film had not heard of “The Amazing Randi.” Perhaps he’s one of those people locked away somewhere in the brain along with Tang™ and some random fact that you can’t quite access but know you know while playing Trivial Pursuit™. After all, helping Alice Cooper with a little stage decapitation and appearing on Happy Days in cahoots with The Fonz are among his lesser-known activities.

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Movie Review: Only Lovers Left Alive

By Lisa Anderson

The vampire movie renaissance, of which Let Me In was the high point and Priest may have been the low point, appeared to be drawing to a close. Then in late 2013, Director Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes) came out with Only Lovers Left Alive. This moody, atmospheric, bohemian tale pleased both critics and fans alike, especially the built-in fanbases of its leads, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. However, underneath the dark rock-guitar score, the musings about art, and the familiar vampire lore, there’s something more going on. Only Lovers Left Alive is, at its heart, a movie about marriage.

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Waxing Nostalgic: The Boomtown Rats, The Fine Art Of Surfacing

By James McNally

There was once a time when “Sir” Bob Geldof was known for something other than organizing huge benefit concerts to feed the hungry. In fact, there was once a time when he was the hungry one. Hungry to find meaning in the world, and to find his place in it. In 1979, Geldof and his band The Boomtown Rats released one of my favorite albums, but the fact that it contained what amounted to a novelty hit (“I Don’t Like Mondays”) consigned The Boomtown Rats to “one-hit wonder” status and left the rest of this masterpiece of angry pop criminally undiscovered. In fact, the album was extremely difficult to find on CD in North America until a 2005 release added some bonus tracks.

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