The Gun Club Fire of Love (Porterhouse Reissue) If you’re serious about your music you know that listening to it can be one of two things: pleasure or homework. There are those times when you listen to music purely for pleasure: a new band you’ve heard of, or an old record you want to revisit. Other times, listening to music takes the form of homework: there are these gaps in your knowledge that need filling, or a reference you need...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Good Night Tomorrow LP by NEEDLES//PINS. Such occurrences are rare, but sometimes all the tumblers align and a band doesn’t just produce the best damned music of its career, that music happens to get released in just the right place at the right time that the music catches a large amount of attention. There are too many variables at work to try and plan something like that; it pretty much has...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Unclean 7” by Tough Age. After they’ve gone through all three songs which comprise Tough Age’s new Unclean 7”, listeners may find that they need to take a moment and collect themselves – I certainly did. I needed to step back and collect myself because I had no particular desire to just spill ink and compliments all over a page; true, all three songs are great and effortlessly called out the...
The Lawnmower Man How do you think a nerdy high school teen in the 90s would have processed a movie like the Lawnmower man when he first saw it? Let alone one that was literally living on a rock in the middle of the ocean. Even American TV was a novelty for us as we had just gotten cable. The internet wasn’t even a thing and most of us didn’t own a computer. But then a movie like...
The Paul Naschy Collection Shout! Factory Every now and then, a movie falls on your lap that charms the pants off you. This time it was five movies. Not having known a single thing about Paul Naschy, I really didn’t know what I was getting into when checking out this collection. But boy, am I glad I did. What you’re getting with Paul Naschy movies are visceral, low budget, and very interesting horror flicks. It’s not for nothing that he’s...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the vinyl reissue of the Labyrinth soundtrack by David Bowie and Trevor Jones. While his career was characterized by no small number of unusual events, arguably the greatest concentration of weirdness about David Bowie’s career can be found in the 1980s. Within those ten fateful years, Bowie released albums which have come to be regarded as some of his finest (Let’s Dance was the album which broke the singer into the Top...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the “Freeze Me” flexi-disc by Death From Above. It might not really need saying, but listening to the new flexi-disc from Death From Above really reiterates what a creatively fertile period the last few years have been for the group. The appearance of The Physical World in 2013 marked the beginning of a new era for the band; on that album, the group better developed their sound so it functioned well beyond...
The Fifth Element Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Mondo) Eric Serra It’s going to take a lot for me not to start yammering on like Ruby Rhod when I talk about the Fifth Element. I’ve been in awe of it ever since I saw it as a kid. From the story, to the characters, to the sets, to the outfits, everything in the Fifth Element is executed at an absolutely stellar level. Surprisingly, all this has not prevented the movie...
Jerusalem by Alan Moore I should start this review by admitting that I am an Alan Moore fan and a very big one at that. So much so that I consider Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell required reading for anyone who cares about words on paper. The man has reached a certain status in my mind where, even though I don’t consider him infallible (Promethea didn’t exactly float my boat), I will go the extra mile and really...
ALL Pummel (Porterhouse Records) I think it goes without saying that in the ALL/Descendents camp, ALL will always be the more underappreciated group. It’s strange to think that, out of the two, the band that’s considered the part-time project (Descendents) will always get all the glory. Not that ALL has had a stronger musical output, mind you (though after the Descendents’ Hypercaffium Spazzinate that gap might be closing in), but the fact remains that when the cards are...