Theatres Des Vampires - Moonlight Waltz

As previously with Pain's You Only Live Twice I also got published as agustes reviewer on Metal Storm - one of the biggest and IMHO the best metal communities on the web. This time reviewing Moonlight Waltz by Theatres Des Vampires. If you'd like, you can read the review here.

Presenting Ars Moriendi!

So as I have nothing better to write about, I decided to present  you an awesome on-line radio, created by DJ Ravendeath - Ars Moriendi. It's a fairly new radio, mainly dedicated to goth metal, goth rock and atmospheric music, but you will also find a lot of great black metal, darkwave, EBM, industrial, snythpop and more. But better than to read about it is to find out yourself, so you can check out the radio here. If you're in luck you just may have to honor to hear one of my playlists, but even if you're not, you will witness some great music.

Neurotech's Blue Screen Planet - a futuristic cyber symphony

Neuorotech is a band that got my attention due to their first full length album, Antagonist, an album with very intense sound, dense in electronics with flowing, edgy melodies. The fact that the band originates from Slovenia was another factor why I needed to check these guys out. But let’s leave Antagonist behind. Neurotech released their second EP, entitled Blue Screen Planet just a day ago and of course I had to check it out as soon as possible.

My thoughts? Brilliant! Excellent! Superb! Astonishing! I was blown away by the compositions of the songs, as Blue Screen Planet features ‘’just’’ two tracks, Axiom (10:05) and the instrumental Revelation (8:32). Blue Screen Planet is somehow a futuristic, ambient, industrial, cyber odyssey. Both songs achieve such greatness, because what Wulf (the man responsible for Blue Screen Planet to become what it is) did is upgrade the basic cyber metal sound Neurotech were going for, with some goth like adding of fragile choirs, piano melodies that flow into growls and intense drumming, so the music in its origin is still metal. Revelation then is Axiom’s instrumental brother, again, a composition of greatness.

If you like industrial music, cyber metal, futuristic music, electronics and atmospheric music, you really need to give Blue Screen Planet a chance. I’m actually so glad that Slovenia has to offer such greatness to the metal community and I can’t wait for Neurotech to give as another full length album. 

Pain - You Only Live Twice

You see, the world has a lot of Peter, but Peter Tägtgren is only one! The genius behind metal music (who is also quite pleasant to look at) left me cold a couple of years back, when releasing Cynic Paradise. This year he released Pain's 7th studio album, entitled You Only Live Twice (Bond fans, I am sorry, it's not about you or your precious 007 agent this time) and a couple of days back my review finally got its epilogue, so I published it on Metal Storm. Since I agreed with the terms of my publication, MS now has the rights over it, so I can't copy it here, but you can read it here. Enjoy :)

Gregorian - a show to remember!

 Last Saturday, it was October 22^nd, I went on a very special concert, or perhaps I should say a show. Gregorian, a group of 8 singers singing modern songs as Gregorian chants were kind enough to make a stop in Maribor and bring heaven to my eyes and especially ears. I know Gregorian for quite some time now and I got to know them because some years ago I came across their remake of Join Me (In Death), a famous song by my all time favourite rock band HIM, written by none other than my personal favourite singer, songwriter and composer, Ville Valo.

            
And of course, thanks to the Internet it was not hard to hear some of the other remakes they have done and they all sounded amazing. In other words: they didn’t ruin any song and they even made some, I personally don’t really like, much more likeable.

            
The show started a few minutes after 8 o’clock (to me it’s a very big plus that they weren’t running late) as 8 incredible singers, dressed as – not hard to guess – monks stepped on stage. What was the biggest surprise to me is that they were accompanied by a live band, consisting of a violinist, bass player, guitar player, drummer (mad drummer, with very awesome drumming skills, remember Animal from Muppet Show?) and a keyboard player. They started off with Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters, a great prelude to the concert. In the two hours we had a chance to hear some great songs, for example Losing My Religion (R.E.M), Join Me (HIM), More (Th Sisters Of Mercy, hell yea, Sisters!!!), Blue Monday (New Order), In The Air Tonight (Phil Collins), Bring Me To Life (Evanescence). Those are the songs I was most pleased to hear live, but they also did some U2, Coldplay, some of their original work, from which The Forest was superb, and of course, the famous Carl Orff’s O Fortuna. Several times they were accompanied by Sarah’s Brightman’s younger sister, Amelia Brightman, who also brought some of that extra energy to the stage.

            
All in all, the guys & and girls did a great work, their sound was flawless, their stage presence energetic and mystical at the same times and their set list pleased all crowds, from youngsters liking Evanescence to those who were teenagers in the 80s and enjoyed the music of whether Collins or The Sisters. What made their show a true show and not just a concert was a mixture of light show and their choreography, spicing it up with some fireworks, lasers and one really big and pompous explosion.

  
So if you are a fan of Gregorian chants, this is something you absolutely must see, if you get the chance too. When I was leaving the hall I felt excited, happy and a bit sad at the same time, because I had a great time, but when you’re having a great time 2 hours just aren’t enough. Next time I will have the chance to see them again, I’ll be there for sure!  

           

Hellraiser: Revelations – to watch or not to watch, that is the questions?

Movie poster saying: I am about to suck!

You know when you are a tr00 fan or something, you always take something new coming out of it with a cup of cautiousness, but either with excitement or with a first-aid kid ready at your side, in case of emergency. There’s no news in fact that I love Hellraiser , of course I am talking about the first film from 1987 and the novel The Hellbount Heart, written by an awesome guy named Clive Barker. To be fair, the sequel Hellbound:Hellraiser II  was an extremely good sequel to it, but later on since Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth they kind of lost it. Hellraiser VIII: Hellword was an abomination of this lovely franchise, coming a regular teenage/college kids countdown, but at least it still had Doug Bradley in the role of the leading Cenobite, Pinhead, who is – you like it or not – the alpha and the omega of everything Hellraiser films are all about.

           

Unfortunately a little bird came by and told me that I am yet to see another horrible Hellraiser film and let me tell you, the bird did not lie. Just a few days back Hellraiser 9: Revelations came out on DVD and I hesitated a lot whether to lay my eyes on it or not. Well, curiosity killed the cat and luckily didn’t kill me, but I was well prepared in case I needed to call an emergency.

Mr. Potato Head

First of, no legendary Doug Bradley. Mr. Bradley kindly declined the role of Pinhead in this film, because he’s obviously a very smart man and saw how bad this is going to be, when he read the script. So we get this ‘’new guy’’ whose name I don’t even remember and is not even worth goggling for, looking more like a very anaemic Mr. Potato Head who had a terrible accident while building a fence around a house and hit his head on some pins. Several times. His acting skills…. Not so much skills as kills, as in ‘’kills the joy out of watching this film’’. None whatsoever. The story? Do you really want to know? Ok, two guys decide to go partying in Mexico and take a video camera with them and don’t come back. So we’re jumping from present, where we see the families of these two guys having dinner together, to past, learning that the guys, stupid as two guys together on a journey of seeking fun can be, took the Lemarchand’s Box from, because they’re stupid and let a homeless guy (remember the homeless guy from the end of Hellraiser? I thought so. Many more resemblances are to follow) convince them to take it, because it leads to ultimate pleasure. Oh boy, if only they knew Cenobite’s kind of pleasure and the pleasure (sex, drugs & rock’n’roll) they were seeking don’t really resemble. So of course, they open the box and the crazy Mr. Potato Head appears, trying to be all ‘’Doug Bradley awesome kind of Pinhead’’, but fails miserably, which isn’t 100% his fault, but also the fault of whoever was stupid enough to write such a bad script. Pinhead & co. are known for their obscure way of talking, trying to explain whoever summoned the Cenobites what he did and what is about to happen, but man, give it a break! It has to be done with elegance and the right proportion of mysticism in it, but this guy sounded like a bad record repeating over and over again. Ok, where was I? Oh yea, so one of these guys comes back,  he’s a bit shaken and then we realize that it’s not actually him, but the other stupid guy, who killed this one to take his skin, after he lost his (of course, in resemblance to the original film, this time we also see a skinless guy needing victims to shamelessly steal their skin, and they have to be provided to him – remember Julia picking up men in the bar and taking them to Frank? What a coincidence!). So this guy is back, terrorizing his family, shooting around, then Cenobites come to action, do their stuff, none of which is explicit and therefore loses it’s credibility of being a bloody horror movie, and then the film ends. Say what? Yea, it just ends right there, in the middle of something and nothing. 75 minutes of pure nothing I say.

This is the real deal!

What a shame. No wondering Clive Barker has stated loud and clear he didn’t have anything to do with him or his original story, I would do the exact same thing. This is just such a great epic fail in the Hellraiser franchise, has nothing to do with the original story, has no story of its own, no suspension, no mystery, no horror and no real demons. And what’s the moral of this story? Where, before weird stuff begins to happen, the phone line in the house where the families are having dinner is off, there is no signal and the cars are gone. So, logically, one comes over an idea Pinhead is actually a car theft, waiting beyond this world to get his chance of stealing a car and driving away to… Hell, I’ve got nothing.

Seigmen – Radiowaves (1997)

Now this is an album I have been playing all day long, even though outside was a sunny and fairly warm day,  while Radiowaves is more of an ‘’dark rainy day’’ kind of album. First off I need to state that I have been looking for Siegmen’s music for years, before I actually downloaded got firstly Radiowaves and slowly then their other works. This band is hard to reach, even though they were a quite popular act on the alternative rock scene back in the 90s in Norway. Moving on, I also feel the need to say that I wouldn’t have come across this band if it wasn’t for Tristania’s cover of The Modern End on their 2001 album World Of Glass (which is a masterpiece in its own genre, but now is not the time to discuss it). As Tristania’s version of The Modern End sounded so very passionate and fragile at the same time, I just had to find out how the song sounds originally. And I did, even more; I got my ears on an exceptional rock album, blending gothic music with some electronic features, creating a very specific, dark and mystic atmosphere.

Radiowaves opens with an exceptional song, Performance Alpha that really gives you the feel of 80s darkwave, gothic rock and some Depeche Mode thrown in there and it’s actually quite representative for the whole album. The song Trampoline is pure gothic rock, goes the same for Bloodprints and Guilt, while already mentioned The Modern End has a more modern (coincidence?) sound, being a mixture of electronic music with some darkwave influences. When you hear Universal and The World Revolves Around You, you may even find a bit of Nine Inch Nails in there.

One more thing I need to expose as well are the haunting vocals that really bring that final touch of desperation, which is a cherry on the top of every dark, atmospheric rock album. 

This is a live version of The Modern End, the quality may not be the best, but it will give you a good presentation of the sound of. Radiowaves  

And if you wish to broaden your horizon some more, the famous Tristania's cover:

American Horror Story – next best thing (really)?

So as of this week I added another one to my way to long humble list of TV series I’m currently watching and it goes by the title American Horror Story. I don’t think I need to emphasize it’s the word horror that convinced me into seeing the pilot series.

The story is actually a huge horror cliché: a family moves into a new house, believed to be haunted. At the very beginning of the pilot we get a retrospective shown, that something paranormal is going on in the basement of the house that brutally ends up by someone getting killed. Well back to the future, a family of thee moves into this house with the idea of starting a new life after a miscarriage and an affair shook up the marriage of Viviene (played by Connie Britton – you won’t believe how much I wondered where have I seen that face before, she seemed so very familiar to me and I finally figured out I remember her from Spin City, where she played Nikki) and Ben (played by Dylan McDermott, now I recognized that face in a minute, it’s Bobby Donell from The Practice). Together with their teenage, kind of weird and corky daughter Violet (Taissa Formiga, don’t know her at all) they move into a huge house, almost a mansion that has a lot of history going on, but I’ll save the spoilers.

Together with them we also get some notable neighbours, who definitely know what is really going on, most notably the sophisticated and mysterious neighbour Constance (played by Jessica Lange, whom we all know very well) and her mentally challenged daughter Addy, who despite her incapability knows much more than you can imagine. As Ben being a psychiatrist, we are also introduced to one of his more prominent patients, Tate (Evan Peters) a heavily disturbed teenaged boy, who not is showing a great amount of deviance per se, but is also well aware of the legacy of this house and is capable of much more than average teenage boys are.

Ok, so what’s the mystery here? Well, we don’t know exactly, because it’s a mixture of supernatural powers overcoming one’s minds facing them with their inner demons and fear, a real existing unknown deity embodied living in the house and a retrospective of murders, which we don’t exactly know are the work of supernatural forces or disturbed serial killers possessed by those forces. Not only that the story is obscure, the picture of the series is veiled in dark colours and shades of grey, with good music effects that really create a massive suspension and very well built characters, which you might find a bit one dimensional form time to time, but when the story accelerates to maximum speed, they go along with it.

This is only the beginning, as the series just began to air recently, so in a couple of more episodes it may fall to the average or even below that, but let’s hope people creating this show know what they’re doing and will continue so. Just to get a feel of it, check out the intro and you’ll pretty much see, where this show is going. And if you get shivers, feel a bit of discomfort, thrill, a tiny bit of fear of if you're stomach isn't taking it so well, maybe a wee bit of sicks, that means American Horror Story reached it purpose (for now).

Shark Night 3D - not a horror film, but a horrible one

I have this weird hobby of mine, or how should I phrase it, maybe a tendency, to watch movies, which I am sure shall be utterly bad, but still go watch them with great enthusiasm. And there is no better theme for such film, as sharks!

 

For anyone who has ever laid eyes on lameass shark masterpieces such as The Asylum's Mega Shark vs. Octopuss or its sequel, Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus or one of the Shark Attack films, you know what I'm talking about. Out of proportion huge sharks, with pointy teeth, approximately 412 teeth in their jaws with atrocious desire to dismember every single human being that comes in their way. Or a huge octopus. Or a crocodile.

Ok, let’s leave that and go to the newest invention in the shark film branch of the movie industry. This little thingie is called ‘’Shark Night 3D’’ and it is all over bad. I mean really really bad. Not bad in a good way, as in, so bad it’s really funny or so bad it’s actually amusing, it’s just bad. Barely watchable. Not fun. The ‘’I want my money back’’ movie.

Shark Night 3D is a classical count-down cheap horror with no surprises, no suspension, bad story, no-name actors and very few and very badly done CGI effects. Want to go over the clichés? Ok, here it goes: a bunch of college kids decide to go partying for a weekend at one’s house, which so happens to be secluded. What you definitely don’t see coming is that it’s so cut from the world, that it doesn’t have phone signal and is surrounded by an enormous lake. You may not believe this, but the first one to be evil shark’s snack is the black guy. The second one is a Latina. The third one is a douchebag, who thinks he’s cool because he drinks beer, but he’s no Johnny Depp in the looks department. The next one is the fun, a bit promiscuous girl with the tattoo. After her, the self-absorbed, not so bright guy who spray-tans his genitals. Want to know who survives? Two blond, beer hating, kind of awkward dorks, who are of course the embodiment of everything we hate, but is socially and morally above the average human and therefore represent the Adam and Eve who shall bring us the new line of humans. The progenies that will live by moral standards of today’s utopic socitey, hate alcohol and weed, not have sex for pleasure, study hard, work hard and will always be ready to help. Oh yes, the all American dream.

Poor sharks. They don’t stand a chance. What makes this movie so boring is almost no great shark action. There is a few of shark attack scenes and only one that is amusing. The shark scenes are short, blurry and each and every one of them is so goddamn expected, that even the 3D effect of shark coming right to you doesn’t surprise you. So all in all, this movie is a conglomerate of poor 3D effects, terrible computer animation, boring story and, well to be honest, pretty bad acting. Well, mega shark at least attacked a plane!

 

 

Currently listening....

I've always been kind of jumping around in different music genres, and well, my favourite one - metal - is no exception. I like different subgenres of this totally amazing branch of music and there are times when I wish for something romantic and yet obscure, and I turn to gothic, sometimes I wish for something to kick me alive, and I go to thrash or melodic death/gothenburg and so on. Well, since it got a bit cold outside in the past few days, it was no surprise for me to crave something cold, dark and mystical - of course I'm talking about good old black metal.

What to choose.... As I was checking out my [legally bought] and alphabetized collection of bands, I got all the way to the letter S... and even skipped Satyricon, when I finally found the jewel - Summoning.

 Summoning, currently consisting of Michael Gregor - Silenius and Richard Lederer - Protector and  has been one of my favourite bands for almost a decade now, and I actually discovered them quite accidentally - I was looking around for some good gothic/darkwave when I came upon Die Verbannten Kiner Evas, a side project of Summoning with a lead singer Tania Borsky, whom I later found out collaborated with Summoning on their album Stronghold. So, the song Where Hope And Daylight Die was the first Summoning song I ever heard and I fell in love with it in a glimpse of a moment. There is no surprise I wanted more so first I checked the whole Stronghold album and later on the rest of their discography.

And of course I can't go over the fact Summoning are basing their music on no other than the great J.R..R Tolkien, probably best known for his majestic work entitled Lord Of The Rings. Tolkien's themes have influenced a lot of metal bands, [there's even a metal band called Isengard and many more, but if I start listing them, I'm going to lose my track of thoughts over Summoning] but I myself have not found any more perfect combination [Gandalf fangirl here though, if you hadn't figured that out by now] than Summoning's.

What I love about this band's music is their dark, obscure, mystical, fantastic approach to black metal, distancing it from the stereotypes of aggression, satanism, violence (again, note the word stereotypes, I however do not agree with any of those adjectives being representative for BM) with it's epic approach.

Listen to the song Morthond and you'll feel the coldness of the river. Listen to Over Old Hills and you'll feel the depression and tiredness passing over to hope and victory, just as the fellowship did over their journey. Listen to Rhün and you'll feel as if you've reached a promised land, when you just thought you may never have. Listen to Wyrmvater Glaurung and you'll feel the cold dragon's breath on your neck. Listen to Mikrwood and you'll feel as if you got lost in a deep and darkly forest. It is the atmosphere, the ambient that this music creates what makes it so special.

Deadcell - who are they and what do they do?

So a couple of weeks ago I was so thrilled to go see Gothminister, and gothic electronic act from Sweden. Unfortunately, they cancelled the show in Maribor due to illness so all we, goth fans, got stuck with, was an industrial metal act from Holland, named Deadcell. I've never heard of those guys &gals before, I checked a couple of their songs online and read some info and they didn't really appeal to me. But nonetheless, my curious natures (and free entrance) lead me to go see them.
And what did I get? They were a bit fun.... at the beginning. But hearing song #2 I just thought I heard a replica of the song #1. And so it continued.... Their sound was great, the band looked neat, the video projection in the background was fun, the girls were probably eye candy for guys (well, the bass player was nice to look at even for me, I admit) and the poor front man tried to amuse the public and only got response from us, the public, probably because we kind of felt bad for them trying so hard. There were a couple of (drunk) girls who came later on and head banged in the first row, which made the bald one (front man) kind of happy.
All in all, I'm not going to get their albums, because their music is just too much repetitive and bare. Their melodies are basic and sometimes way too stuffed with synths and programming. Any of their songs is neither catchy nor memorable. 

It tends to happen to me that I don't even know the band or don't really know them, then go see them live and fall for them like Pepe Le Pew falls in love with any cat who wears a white stripe over her back. But this is not the case. It was a fun night, but Deadcell are not the cause of that.