The Crown
Doomsday King

The Crown have returned. After a six year absence, the Swedish death metal band has a new singer (Jonas Stålhammar of God Macabre) and a new album, the colossally brutal statement, Doomsday King. That statement, as best as I can make it, is a steadfast one, a waving, tattered black banner under which a united front of undead, steel-helmeted militia stand tall and hungry, whose demise was nothing more than a self-imposed exile from which they could choose to rise at any time. Well, the time is now; the front-line swells, sharpened scythes are held high, the victor’s spoils waiting to be plucked from the night sky amidst flying blood and angel’s screams. Perhaps driven by the desire to erase their absence from our collective conscious all together, the resurrected Crown strike with obvious purpose, unleashing a relentless slaughter of death thrash that sounds ultimately more sinister than anything they’ve done before. It isn’t, of course. It just sounds that way because it’s been so long, but there does seem to be a slight shift away from the motor-driven death n’ roll of previous albums, probably because they’ve turned off the long highway through Hades and now it’s time to kill…and eat like kings.

Listen to “Age of Iron” from Doomsday King!

It was George Romero’s 70th birthday on Wednesday, so the wife and I celebrated by watching Night of the Living Dead. The original 1968 version, of course. It’s strange how on his birthday we’re the ones who get such a nice present. Anyway, I really love watching old horror movies because, more than anything, they’re good for a laugh. We’re so used to trillion dollar budgets and CGI this and green-screen that nowadays that when we come across something archaic and raw like a movie from the 60s, it seems comical in comparison. And most times it is, but that’s really not the case with Night of the Living Dead.

It’s amazing what superb lighting, clever camera angles, and chocolate syrup can do. I’ll compare Night of the Living Dead to The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (since it’s freshest in my mind), where the latter was shot as though it was a theater performance on film. Everything was stationary and static. The actors moved as if on a stage. Romero’s classic, however, just six years later, shows remarkable visionary achievements. There’s real chills created in the shots alone. Throw some zombies into the mix and it’s one hell of a movie, even if it is 42 years old. It also stands as the benchmark in zombie movie mania (even though the word zombie is never mentioned once in the movie). It is the one. Everything we know and understand about the undead is established in Night of the Living Dead; their penchant for human flesh, how to kill them, the downside of being bitten by one, the confusion and fighting amongst the people trying to avoid being eaten, etc. But I think I’m telling you stuff you already know.

For those that don’t know, here’s how it all started. Siblings Barbara and Johnny are visiting their father’s grave when a zombie attacks them. Barbara escapes, but Johnny isn’t so lucky. Barbara takes shelter at a nearby house whose owner has perished, likely eaten by a zombie. Then this dude, Ben, shows up (he’s also trying to avoid being eaten) and together they board up the house and hope for the best. Actually, Ben does most of the boarding up; Barbara spends the rest of the movie in a catatonic state. Then two dudes pop out of the basement. They had also taken shelter in the house and had been hiding in the basement with their women (and a sick child) until the madness was over. Well, the madness is only escalating. They turn on the TV and the radio to learn about the mass murders sweeping the land at the hands of the undead, or ghouls, likely due to some radioactive contaminants from an exploded space probe.

So the people in the house argue over how to proceed and finally they decide that some of them will try for a bone dry car, fill it up at the house’s gas pump, and then grab everyone else and make a break for it. It was a good plan in theory, but it didn’t quite work out, and now the zombies have made their way into the house and the sick girl in the basement wants in on the flesh-eating action. The only one left by sun-up is Ben, but when the local authorities make their zombie-killing rounds, they shoot Ben because they think he’s a zombie. Oops.

There you have it, the grandfather of all zombie movies, and while it has a few are-you-kidding-moments, it’s nowhere near the kind of chuckle-fest most of these old horror movies are prone to be. No, Night of the Living Dead is a masterful, original, apocalyptic triumph concerning the reanimation of the recently dead. Fuck yeah.

So you know what you’re going to do now, right? Yeah, you’re going to watch Night of the Living Dead right here!

There still is a plot though, but it’s nothing spectacular, and it goes something like this: a group of medical students head to a remote cabin somewhere in the backwoods/mountains of Norway for some winter fun on Easter weekend. They meet a local curmudgeon who warns them that the hills are rumored to be haunted by a force of Nazi soldiers who were once stationed in the area during World War II. The Nazis had abused and tortured the locals all those years ago until the locals staged an uprising and killed many of the Nazis. The rest fled into the woods and were never heard of again. Until now, of course.

The only other non-violent point of interest is that when the kids are partying in their cabin, they find a box of old German gold coins and jewelery in the floorboards. It’s never explained how this fits into the mayhem that ensues, but I guess we can assume the undead Nazis want it back. I’d like to say the discovery of the box sparks the zombies into action, but they were already killing people before the box showed up, and no explanation is ever given as to whether the treasure belongs to the zombie Nazis or not or what its worth and importance might be. But let’s just go ahead and assume they want it back because so long as they are willing to climb out of the snow and terrorize the vacationers, I’m with it.

The kids begin to fall one-by-one at the decaying hands of their undead enemies; they are beheaded, get their faces ripped off, and are torn limb from limb. They do put up a good fight though, using many different weapons to inflict the same kind of fates on their ugly attackers, and the snow runs red with the skin, brains, and entrails of both sides. It’s a beautiful, disgusting mess. Plus, one dude cuts off his own arm with a chainsaw after he is bitten and another dude sews the gaping wound on his own neck with a hook. They are med students, after all.

Dead Snow isn’t without its comedic moments, either. One person remarks how going to a remote location where phones don’t work is the lame premise of many horror movies, another attacks the zombies brandishing a hammer and a sickle, and the sex scene in the outhouse between the hot girl and the fat guy is anything but sexy when she mounts him after he shits and sucks on the fingers of the hand he used to wipe his ass. Oh, and whomever was responsible for putting up the subtitles must’ve had too much coffee that day because they sometimes flash by so quickly I barely had time to read them. But you don’t read Dead Snow, man. You watch the blood fly.

Check out the trailer for Dead Snow!