First, I want to apologize for the lack of posts lately. The laptop has been suffering some major issues and so I’ve been without a full-time computer for about a week now, but a new one has been procured, so we should be getting back on track here real soon. I’ve got plenty of new stuff to throw your way. Anyway, I manged to watch some movies during all that non-computer time, so here you go…
Frozen
The idea behind Frozen, the 2010 horror movie about three skiers stuck on a chair lift high above a mountain side, kind of reminds me of the old Mitch Hedberg joke about the above-ground swimming pool commercial, and how it can only be 30 seconds long because that’s the most amount of time you can depict having fun in an above-ground swimming pool. I didn’t think it would be possible to squeeze a whole movie’s worth of scares out of such an above-ground premise (and it wasn’t, really), but Frozen does manage to push your anxiety meter well into the red simply because it thrives on a totally reasonable, palpable fear. That being said, it’s not hard to predict what lies ahead for our stranded skiers (i.e. finding a way down, frostbite, etc.), who don’t seem to be taking their survival very seriously (do up your coat, idiot!), and you have to be able to handle the kind of dialogue that evolves from a stranded situation, such as blaming, arguing, crying, and reminiscing. However, the circling, hungry wolves were an excellent touch.
You should see it around here, man. It’s all exploding hearts and raging boners and hot sparks, which kind of sounds like a sweaty Saturday night at the steel mill, but really it’s just me on cloud nine in the rock n’ roll sky that opened up above me the second I dropped the needle on this glorious slab of coke bottle clear wax. A new C’mon record can, without much effort at all, make your entire life worth living, so the fact that it’s been three years since their last full-length, Bottled Lightning of an All Time High, means we’ve been comatose for quite awhile now. But here comes our heroic power trio, Sir Ian Blurton, Katie Lynn Campbell, and Dean Dallas Bentley, riding in on this pale horse to save the fucking day, to shock us back into coherence with their brilliantly boss fuzz n’ roll. Beyond the Pale Horse, then, is like a shot of adrenaline right into your balls, like most C’mon albums are, naturally, and like previous albums, its beauty lies in its beastly nature, its ability to shift and deviate while still remaining furiously savage. The play this time is that the electric noise is saturated in dreamy effects, and C’mon mixes some foggy, psychedelic magic in amongst their usual motor-driven madness. Dig the catchy title track and the majestically groovy – and unusually long – “Fortress of the Night” for the freakiest examples. But for sheer riffola, “Midnite is the Answer,” with its stoner crunch, is the one that pumps my blood. C’mon prove, once again, that they are almighty and untouchable.
*That’s not the record I own, but it looks just like it. Courtesy of whomever took the pic. It might’ve been Tony.
Ok, I don’t have an mp3 from the album to share (I just got it in the mail), so go buy the album from Yeah Right! to hear it for yourself. In the meantime, enjoy an older C’mon video of them washing their van and kicking it live!
Throned in Blood, Jucifer’s seventh album, sees married, nomadic duo Amber Valentine and Edgar Livengood at what is perhaps their most savage, which is really something when you consider the sheer amount of LOUD these two volume dealer’s put into everything they do. I mean, this one is utterly UNHOLY, dude, as close as they’ve come to making a black metal album, really, and makes ’08′s L’Autrichienne sound like an afternoon tea party. Christ, any one of their six albums prior to this one had a handful of graceful, and I dare say pretty, moments, but this one is just ruthless and barbaric (don’t let the album’s last track, “Armageddon,” fool you, it may be soft but it’s still barbaric). If you ever thought Jucifer had a tendency to sound like the Melvins, just listen to a song like “Hiroshima” (or any of ‘em, hell) because now they sound like the Melvins on a more nuclear scale. If I didn’t already know that Amber is capable of softening things up every now and then I would assume she received a throat transplant courtesy of the Devil himself and is now abusing that vocal prowess like it owes her six months rent…and its first born. Jucifer is a multiple ear plug band on the best of days, but with Throned in Blood you’re going to want to encase your head in cement and pray that the boiling, rotten, and AWESOME energy pouring out of this one doesn’t penetrate your cold, grey fortress of solitude and disintegrate your fucking skull.
Frozen
C’mon
Jucifer