Suede Brothers

In the hierarchy of rock n’ roll fabrics, suede probably ranks just above corduroy and just under whatever that neon shit was that David Lee Roth used to stuff his junk into. I mean, suede’s not completely awful, but it’s certainly no denim or flesh, and it definitely pales in comparison to its much cooler cousin, leather. However, what this Cleveland trio (who, despite their name, are not triplets with a wardrobe shtick, although that could be quite awesome) lacks in texture knowledge, they make up for in name-dropping sound. On their third album, The Night, the brothers suede open themselves up for all sorts of comparisons, each one of ‘em a salute to to the way they mix n’ mash the electricity and fuzz of notable hard power heroes. Basically, there’s not one song on The Night that doesn’t play on the sexy black of Year Long Disaster, the cosmic wail of Wolfmother, the barefoot groove of The Parlor Mob, and the dusty punch of Hermano, and the band delivers each one of them in bold, cross-eyed fashion. And for good measure, dig the sleazy spit of Danko Jones on my fave of the bunch, “Too Late.” Familiar, sure, but an awfully solid album nonetheless.

Listen to “Too Late” from The Night!

Howl
Full of Hell

Yeah, yeah…I know I’m late with this one by a bunch of months, but I figure I better catch up on all the stuff I missed throughout the year before it’s too late. In fact, most of the reviews from this point forward until the end of the year will probably concern albums that have been out for awhile that, for one reason or another, I never got around to attacking when it mattered. Cue Providence, Rhode Island’s Howl, another big, fat pack of flesh-eating rats in Relapse’s verminous army, which means they’ve got the disease n’ doom down pat. Their debut, Full of Hell, is just that, teeming with ambitiously black riffs and emitting a world-eating belch with the heaviest, most foul stench. True, there’s not much musically that separates the nine songs here, but that hardly matters when they take on this kind of sludge metal groove, chugging and rolling like a mean-ass motherfucker with blood on his boots. An impressively boss full-length debut, and bonus points for the epic Ryan Begley cover art.

Listen to “Gods in Broken Men” from Full of Hell!

Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction
We Are Volsung

Dripping with pure gonzo rock action, Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction have endured decades of decadence, befouling the sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll idiom with a more dangerous brand of sex, far deadlier drugs, and a nastier, sleazier style of rock n’ roll. Led by the tattooed beat messiah himself, Mark Manning, artist, wordsmith, and debauched raconteur, and guitarist Cobalt Stargazer, the Duffy to Manning’s Astbury, Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction have earned a cult following by pushing a larger than life libido up the tailpipe of any teenage runaway (girl or boy…they don’t discriminate) hungry for a backseat education. We Are Volsung then, the band’s sixth full-length, is every bit the riff riot you’ve come to expect from these vaudeville villains, liquor-drenched, leather-chapped viking rock, hard charging and chest thumping, with more of a nod to Norse mythology than back alley hi-jinx. Man, with classic, unbeatable songs like the title track, “Stark Von Oben,” “We Ride,” and “White Trash,” as well as the mean-boned rattlesnake slide of “Kill A Mockingbird,” who cares if Turbonegro ever gets their shit sorted out. And if you’re worried that Manning and Stargazer might be getting long in the tooth, don’t, because they continue to surround themselves with young destroyers with names like Jack Shitt and The Cat, and they can still sink each one of their pearly switchblades deep into your flesh and make you love every minute of it.

Listen to “We Are Volsung” from We Are Volsung!

Kaw (2007) stars Sean Patrick Flanery (Boondock Saints) as Wayne, a small town sheriff (in jeans) on the verge of quitting so he and his lady friend, Cynthia (Canada’s Kristin Booth), can move to a big city where she can put her cultural anthropology degree to good use. But as we know, if you’re a cop in a movie and it’s your last day of work, chances are it’s not going to go so smoothly (just ask Robert Duvall or Morgan Freeman).

So, Wayne’s day starts off with an investigation into the mysterious death of a local farmer. Then he gets a call that local drunk/curmudgeon/school bus driver, Clyde (the great Stephen McHattie…also Canadian), has been shooting off his gun, which is a no-no when you’re within city limits. Clyde tells Wayne he was attacked by a bunch of birds and had to defend himself, but Wayne doesn’t buy it. Of course, when more people start winding up dead with fatal bird-inflicted injuries and Wayne can’t help but notice the incredible amount of ravens flocking into town, he realizes that maybe Clyde isn’t so crazy after all.

The ravens in question here are quite diabolical. They seem to have a leader (of course, that could be my imagination seeing as how all the birds look alike, but I swear that one bird dude was always calling kawing them into action), they recognized guns and got quite agitated whenever someone pointed one at them, they were able to cut the power at the restaurant where everyone was taking shelter, and they attacked Clyde’s broken-down school bus by picking up rocks in their claws and throwing them at the windows.

The description my PVR guide gave this movie was a bit misleading because it referred to the ravens as mutant, but they’re not really mutant at all. You see, there’s a Mennonite family living in town and their cows started getting sick. They believed it was God’s punishment for mingling with the English folk and letting Cynthia take pictures of them (something to do with being vain, I guess). Instead of informing the town that their cows were dying, they just decided to burn the cattle corpses and hope God’s wrath would end if they smartened up. However, before they could get rid of the dead meat, the ravens came and had a little treat. And  there you have it. Not mutant, just suffering from mad cow disease.

Anyway, the hundreds of crazy ravens wreak all the havoc they can while the trapped townspeople fight to survive. You know how it goes. Kaw really is a weak movie with sub par acting, a lame script, and many laughable moments, and unless you have a serious case of ornithophobia, it’s hardly scary at all. I say stick with Hitchcock for all of your avian thrills and chills, but, as always, if it’s really bad fun you’re in looking for, then this movie is a kawtastic time.

Check out the trailer for Kaw!

“You’re a terrible best friend. You stole my toys when we were little. You poured lemonade on my bed.”
“And now I’m eating your boyfriend. At least I’m consistent.”

Diablo Cody scored a lot of accolades for penning Juno. That movie turned Ellen Page into a mainstream star, capitalized on everyone’s love for the awkwardly funny Michael Cera, and showcased Cody’s hip, razor-sharp writing skills. “That ain’t no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can’t be un-did, Homeskillet.” Gold, right? Well, Cody was clearly aiming for the fences again with Jennifer’s Body, which stars everyone’s ultra-babe, Megan Fox, as a sexy, boy-eating demon. I’d accuse Cody of completely selling out, but this idea is so good I’m just pissed I didn’t think of it first. It takes the high school drama chicks go for, throws in the flesh-eating action dudes go for, and puts Megan Fox right in the middle of it all. Shameless, I tell ya, but who doesn’t love a little shame now and then?

Ok, so Fox plays Jennifer Check, the hottest girl at what I can safely assume is the only high school in Devil’s Kettle, Anywhere, U.S.A. Her BFF (did I really just type that?) is the bookish “Needy” Lesnicky (Amanda Seyfried), who splits her time equally between hanging out with her adoring boyfriend and living in Jennifer’s shadow. Well, one night Jennifer and Needy head to a bar to scope out the pretty boys from the big city in the indie band Low Shoulder. Not one song into the show and the whole bar goes up in flames, a la that Great White show in Rhode Island a few years back, and the boys in the band grab the disoriented Jennifer, toss her in their van, and take off, despite Needy’s best efforts to convince Jennifer to come home with her.

Jennifer returns from her “date” with the band a little different — ahem — and soon some of the boys at school start turning up dead. Actually, not just dead, but disemboweled. Needy is the only one who figures out what Jennifer is up to and starts to come loose at the seams, which is understandable considering her boyfriend won’t believe her and her best friend is puking up black goo, can heal from wounds rather quickly, and has an insatiable appetite for guy guts. Like all teenage best friends, Jennifer and Needy fight and then make out and then fight again (that’s how it goes, right?), but the relationship reaches its breaking point when Jennifer takes a hungry interest in Needy’s boyfriend.

I’d like to tell you what happens with the band to turn Jennifer into an evil, rabid, blood thirsty hellion in a skirt, but I think I’d be spoiling things for you just a bit. What I can tell you is that Cody is in fine form once again, her dialogue rife with the bizarre, colourful things no one ever says in real life but wishes they did. It can get irritating, though, hearing it come from the mouths of snarky teenagers (as was also the case with Juno). The movie has a lot of lame indie music in it (with one awesome exception: The Sword!), which is a total bummer for beards like you and me, but you get to stare at lots of Fox skin, so you can suck it up like I did. The gore is ok and…actually, you know what? You’re gonna watch this movie for the same reason everyone else watched it, so I don’t really need to say anything else.

Well, one more thing: Check out the trailer for Jennifer’s Body!

“Let’s get this one.”
“But Val Kilmer is in it.”
“Come on, Val Kilmer does great work. I mean, not recently, but he has…twice.”

That’s how the wife and I ended up grabbing The Thaw. But it wasn’t just Val Kilmer’s billing that sold us, it was also because The Thaw is about researchers who discover – and become infected by – deadly parasites feeding on a woolly mammoth carcass in the Canadian arctic. We LIVE in the Canadian arctic (or damn close, anyway) so we felt watching The Thaw could one day prepare us for when the ice actually melts and unleashes tiny prehistoric killers that will do their best to feast on our flesh. For instance, we discovered that cutting off your arm at the elbow because you’ve been bitten near the wrist will not, in fact, save the rest of your arm…or you. That’s important information.

Bugs, it seems, are a bitch to quarantine. That’s another one. Oh, and if we do ever find ourselves in such a dilemma, we’re gonna hope we’re not isolated with a bunch of ecology students. You know that once the kids show up, it’s all bickering and crying from that point on. Then one of them will act all tough and grab a gun and try to control the situation. One of them will likely lie to you about being infected, too. Those bastards.

Anyway, The Thaw has this whole global warming message attached to it, so be responsible or else. It also stars Martha MacIssac (Superbad) and aside from the usual prats and pitfalls of your standard infectious horror flick, it will make you squirm and itch.

And in case you’re wondering, those two times were The Salton Sea and Heat. Nope, not even The Doors. Top Gun, maybe…but not The Doors.

Check out the trailer for The Thaw!