Motörhead
The Wörld is Yours
Future PLC/Motörhead Music

If you’re an avid reader of Classic Rock magazine, you might consider Motörhead’s twentieth studio album, The Wörld is Yours, a December 2010 release, but for anyone waiting on the standard CD, it’s a January 2011 release, which really just means that no matter how you shake it, the transition from last year to this one was book-ended by a couple of nic-stained, heavy-ringed fists striking you hard and purposeful on either side of your mouth. A review at this stage of the game is ultimately pointless because, well, it’s Motörhead, which means it’s reliably metal and enviably Lemmy, through and through. But if you must know, it ceremoniously boasts predictable words in its song titles, like die, devils, rock n’ roll, snake, outlaw, and bitch, and rocks like a formulaic motherfucker. That’s what you get because that’s what you need. It’s as simple as that. I mean, you could not bother with it because you’ve heard it all before, but that would probably be pretty stupid because Motörhead is, as Lemmy says of rock n’ roll music (in the song of the same name), a true religion and will never let you down.

Check out the video for “Get Back in Line” from The Wörld is Yours!

Early Man
Death Potion
The End Records

I just got my wife to sew an Early Man patch on one of my jackets, which is some pinpoint timing, man, because here’s the long awaited new album from Conte & Co. And I do mean long. It’s been five years since their debut full-length, Closing In, and the only thing they’ve bothered to grace us with since that time is 2008′s four song EP, Beware the Circling Fin. But chances are you’re not going to find grace high on the Early Man priority list, especially when there’s a fistful o’ slacking, riffing, and thrashing to reign down on the masses. Death Potion, then, is a full-blooded metal album, the kind of nasty, skate or die, no life ’til leather, parking lot party you grew up puking to, and if I wasn’t losing my hair I’d immediately start growing it out just so I could shave it all off underneath (I believe it’s called “The Newsted”) and run around with balls full of toxic semen, smashing booze bottles and shaving cats. Every one of the twelve songs on the album spray havoc at you like a machine gun in the hands of a disgruntled classmate in a Megadeth shirt and Conte’s genuinely wretched, oft-shrill vox sounds like it’s pouring straight out of a Trans Am tape deck. Despite its obvious nostalgic power, Death Potion is still an anthem for today’s militia of misanthropic youth. That means YOU, Jack, ’cause I’m losing my hair, so go get wasted and blow something up.

Listen to “The Undertaker is Calling You” from Death Potion!

Why does it always seem that the only way a horror movie premise can work is if one or some of the lead characters display a complete lack of common sense? Take Dread, for instance. In this 2009 movie based on Clive Barker’s short story from his Books of Blood: Volume II, college film student Stephen Grace meets some dude on a smoke break outside one of his classes, Quaid, who apparently is also a student, but that’s not made very clear. To me he’s a creepy dude hanging out at a school in a shitty Luke Perry kind of way. Anyway, right away Quaid starts jabbering on about human psychology and behaviour, and asking really weird questions, and where most people would butt out their smoke and move away from the stranger, Stephen thinks, “Oh, hey, a friend!” So, when Quaid shows up at Stephen’s work the following day (how did he know where he worked?) telling him that he really wants to talk and that Stephen should come to his house, it’s all just par for the getting-to-know-your-new-creepy-friend course. Quaid’s house, of course, is some run down number in the woods, where as a six-year-old he once witnessed his parents’ murders by a crazy, axe-wielding maniac. He’s been living there ever since, I guess, in abject squalor, reliving the gruesome act over and over again. Stephen shows up (because how can this horror movie get any steam if Stephen doesn’t take up this stranger’s invitation) and is not at all put off by the house or its location or the fact that there’s a note on the door telling him to come down to the basement. Will Stephen run away and forget he ever met this creepy guy or will he go search out the basement? That’s right…basement it is.

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