Gozu
Locust Season
Small Stone

I don’t know if Gozu got their name from the bizarro Japanese film or not but I’m just gonna go ahead and assume they did because it makes ‘em that much better, brother. Grand theater of perversion and fear? You better believe it. Some of the song titles on Locust Season, their Small Stone debut, read like a ransom note cut from a 1980s TV Guide (“Regal Beagle,” “Kam Fong As Chin Ho,” and “Jan-Michael Vincent”) while some could be contents found in any serial killer’s tickle trunk (“Meth Cowboy,” “Jamaican Luau,” and “Meat Charger”). They might as well be singing about Yakuza attack dogs or bottles of breast milk or a soup ladle up the ass is what I’m getting at here, man, and with the lo-desert chicanery blasting away behind it all, I feel like all four walls are closing in on me fast and hard. The whole damn deal is raw, reeks of rancid rubber, and is as rough n’ tumble as a Boston bar brawl. Imagine a heavier Queens of the Stone Age with the sun-kissed flavour of Fu Manchu, the motorcycle madness of Valis, and the time traveling blues of Orange Goblin, and you’ve got yourself the gonzo glory of Gozu. A dope album in every sense of the word.

Listen to “Jan-Michael Vincent” from Locust Season!

Buy Locust Season from Small Stone!

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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Swallow the Sun
New Moon
Spinefarm

New Moon is kind of an unfortunate album title, what with all the fake teenage vampire nonsense dominating everything in North America these days, but my guess is that our mainstream schlock doesn’t penetrate the black, wintry wilds of Finland. You see, they’ve got real life covens of corpse paint wearin’, blood drinkin’, nocturnal crawlin’ spooks over there terrorizing the weak, breeding havoc, and cursing the daylight. So they don’t need the movies; they’ve got their FEAR and their DOOM and their DARKNESS and Swallow the Sun.

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