Johann Johannsson : Mandy S/T

When Panos Cosmatos’ film Mandy was announced there was an instant buzz around the second film by the Canadian filmmaker. His 2010 low budget sci fi fever dream Beyond The Black Rainbow had built itself quite a cult following due to the film’s retro-futuristic look, new age nightmare storyline, and of course the incredible score […]

Sungod : Wave Refraction

The Austin, TX music collective Sungod aren’t one to take lightly. Since their inception in 2009 the band, formed by multi-instrumentalists Michael C. Sharp and Braden Balentine, have kept things pretty heady and vast. Taking cues from Tangerine Dream, Sun Ra, John Fahey, and a vast pool of mind-expanding forward thinkers to help mold their […]

Xander Harris : Villains of Romance

There’s a really dark, palpable mood that emanates from Xander Harris’ new album Villains of Romance. His previous records all carried with them a heavy air and brooding stare, as if you walked into an underground club that seemed to lead directly into some Gothic alternate universe. A place where leather was a coat of […]

Protomartyr : Consolation E.P.

Joe Casey sounds like a man on a mission. He’s like your college professor that finally said the hell with the system and one day during class had his Network moment of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!” He’s a prophet in a rumpled suit and sunglasses who spits barbs […]

Wye Oak : The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs

I came across Wye Oak around the same time I came across Phantogram. I’d heard their album The Knot right around the same time as I’d heard Phantogram’s Eyelid Movies. I was impressed with the whole guy/gal dynamic in both bands. They weren’t doing the whole garage rock thing which I really wasn’t into. Wye […]

My Lifestyle Determines My Deathstyle

When Metallica’s St. Anger came out the hoopla around it was pretty overwhelming, which once everyone had heard it reversed to underwhelming. “Trendy”, “no solos”, “that snare sound” were a just a few of the many things that were mentioned as part of the overall indictment of the long gestating, long drawn out, post-rehab, post-therapy, […]

Forty-Four

Today I turn 44 years old. I don’t feel much different from 43. Some days I feel like I’m 26. Other days I feel like I should be retired and taking chondroitin with my prune juice and egg whites in the morning. Tomorrow I’ll probably feel feeble and in my 80s because I worked in […]

Hell Raisin

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser is one of those films that stands as a horror pillar in my early teen years. I remember reading all about it in Fangoria and seeing the pictures of those Cenobites. Those visuals were unlike anything my teen brain had ever come across. It felt foreign, alien, new, and disturbing in a […]

Tobe Hooper : 1943-2017

I was sad to wake up to the news that we lost yet another “Master of Horror”, Mr. Tobe Hooper. While he never quite had the career or accolades of guys like Wes Craven, John Carpenter, and George Romero, he still contributed to the genre in a big way. His biggest and most prominent work […]

That Dracula’s A Bad Mutha….

Of all the video games I was a fan of, none of them were as fun for me as Super Castlevania. I was never much of a hardcore video game guy. I liked simple stuff, mostly. Mario, racing, fighting, and shooting games were where it was at for me. Even The Legend of Zelda was […]