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.

Continue reading ‘Blu-Ray Review: No Holds Barred‘

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.

Continue reading ‘DVD Review: Camp Dread‘

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.

Continue reading ‘Blu-Ray Review: The Telephone Book‘

Waxing Nostalgic: Failure, “Wonderful Life”

By Jeffery X Martin

The college rock scene was disintegrating in the mid-Nineties, and the Alternative Nation was annexing everything. Think of it as the Continental Drift of rock and roll. Bands had one leg on underground radio and the other on the set of a blue-tinted video with spinning chairs and dystopian decay, hoping to get some MTV rotation. But the college scene and the MTV kids started moving away from each other, both sides saying, “It’s not me, it’s you.”

Continue reading ‘Waxing Nostalgic: Failure, “Wonderful Life”’

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.

Continue reading ‘Music Review: Unwound, Rat Conspiracy (box set)’

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.

Continue reading ‘Music Review: Lowell, I Killed Sara V.‘

New Video: Dub Thompson, “Dograces”

By Less Lee Moore

Photo © Ward Robinson

Based on this interview from The Independent, Dub Thompson members Evan Laffer (drums) and Matt Pulos (vocals/guitar) sound like the kind of 19-year-old guys who play music and have not yet been indoctrinated into only responding to interview questions with pre-packaged sound bites. Which is refreshing.

Also refreshing is their new song and video, “Dograces,” from their upcoming debut 9 Songs (it has eight tracks). It looks like one of those ’70s videos that you used to see on MTV Classic back in the day but then it looks like it might be a new video that was intended to look that way. The song itself is an odd mix of disaffected vocals and heavy bass, with a burst of shiny keyboards serving as a chorus of sorts that will either annoy you or intrigue you. Or both, especially when the band sort of gives up about two-thirds of the way through and leaves the stage. Speaking of which, who are those people, anyway?

9 Songs was recorded by Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, who also plays keyboards for the band at their live shows. It will be out on June 10 from Dead Oceans. In the meantime, if you live in New York, you can catch them on April 3 at Pianos and on April 4 at Baby’s All Right.

New Video: The Cybertronic Spree, “Nothin’s Gonna Stand In Our Way”

By Less Lee Moore

The Cybertronic Spree
Photo © Paul Hillier Photography

If you haven’t heard of The Cybertronic Spree, listen up. It’s a band of Transformers—well, Hot Rod, Arcee, Rumble, Unicron, Spike, and a Quintesson, to be exact—who perform songs from the soundtrack to The Transformers: The Movie.

Interested yet? They also perform these songs live and in full costume. It’s pretty amazing. They recently released a video of an in-studio performance and recording of “Nothin’s Gonna Stand In Our Way” that must be seen to be believed.

Here’s a video of them performing “Instruments Of Destruction” last August at the Horseshoe in Toronto, as part of Nerd Noise Night.

And yes, they do perform “The Touch.”

For the full spectrum of the band’s online presence, check out TheCybertronicSpree.com

Waxing Nostalgic: The Five Eighties Bands You Should Still Be Listening To

By Jeffery X Martin

I’ve been writing this column for a year now, completely immersing myself in coming up with new words about old music. A lot of it, frankly, just doesn’t hold up. It’s the aural equivalent of parachute pants. Why did we like it? Why did we buy it? What were we thinking? Were we all mad? Nobody would be caught dead in parachute pants these days.

Some bands still make the grade, though, and are still insanely listenable after all these years. Following are the bands I implore you to listen to again, or maybe for the first time.

Continue reading ‘Waxing Nostalgic: The Five Eighties Bands You Should Still Be Listening To’

Blu-Ray Review: Dead Shadows

By Brad Henderson

I, along with many others, have been pleased with Scream Factory’s colossal catalogue for the past year and a half, as well as some of the astonishing releases they have planned for the near future. Along with their old-school horror/sci fi lineup, they are also acquiring new films and setting them up with the Scream Factory treatment.

Dead Shadows is one of the films that they have recently added to their roster of releases, after picking them up post-festival screenings. They first brought us Dead Souls, Cockneys Vs. Zombies, Chilling Visions (short film collection), and Beneath. Now they have released their first foreign language film, Dead Shadows.

Continue reading ‘Blu-Ray Review: Dead Shadows‘