Barn Burner
Bangers II: Scum of the Earth
Metal Blade

Montreal’s booze-filled, flannel warriors return with their highly anticipated sequel (highly anticipated by me, anyway), Bangers II: Scum of the Earth, and it’s every bit the stoner metal riff-fest its predecessor was. What’s more is, Barn Burner seem to have upped the aggressive ante this time around without sacrificing their sense of party-hard humor, meaning you still get songs with titles like “Dark Side of the Barn,” “Keg Stand and Deliver,” and “Skid Marks the Spot,” but they’re thrown at you heavier and faster than ever before (no doubt due to better production this time around). I ate Bangers up like a plate of of rock n’ roll stew, traces of its slick licks dribbling down my bearded chin, thanks to its deliciously fraternizing nature; an album for bros by bros. Bangers II does not fail in drawing the denim-head scum together again, but the frothy, cursed, thunder-chuck that is now their glorious glue is more raging battle than raging kegger, is more broad sword than clenched fist, and will surely separate allies from enemies. And that’s the beauty of the Barn Burner way — whether killer or thriller, you’re always left bloody and smiling with your friends at the end.

Listen to “Keg Stand and Deliver” from Bangers II: Scum of the Earth!

We’ve run into a real string of bad movies lately, haven’t we? Not that I thought Parasomnia was going to be any different, and not that you haven’t come to expect bad movie write-ups from me, but when you hoe the low budget road, there’s usually some awesome surprises waiting for you. Besides, this one was written and directed by William Malone, the same dude who did House on Haunted Hill and Feardotcom (yeah, okay, also not great but at least these were legitimate theatrical releases and starred people like Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, and Stephen Dorff), so I suppose one could gleam a glimmer of horror hope from this one. But all hope was quickly dashed and there weren’t any surprises waiting for me. Only a mundane, low budget fantasy lost in a shitty dream world of love, blood, and madness.

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The House of the Devil (2009) is, as advertised, based on true and unexplainable events, and set in the early 80s, a time when 70% of American adults believed in the existence of abusive Satanic cults. I had high hopes. First of all, not only is it set in the early 80s, but it also looks like it was shot in the early 80s. This movie has an excellent retro feel to it, from the music to the film quality to the kind of suspense building found in such earlier horror classics as Black Christmas, most of which is supplied in the first hour and fifteen minutes of the movie wherein Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) explores and acclimatizes herself to the countryside mansion she’s “babysitting” at for the evening. However, that kind of intense mood can come across as slow, but I didn’t mind the pace too much. What I did mind was the pace at the end of the movie, when the action and blood rolls in, because it came and went in a flash compared to the rest of the movie, and left me scratching my head. But hey, at least there was some blood and action, so let’s get to that now.

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