Monthly Archives: September 2017

Anaconda: I don’t want none unless…actually I just don’t want none.

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1997 was the year of sequels. Speed 2, Jurassic Park The Lost World, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (don’t worry, I will eventually get to that one for you), Alien Resurrection, Batman and Robin. As we know, all these films were shite. Sure, we got Con Air, we got Face/Off, The Fifth Element, Spawn (shuuuut up), and Starship Troopers. But there were no creepy crawlies worth mentioning whatsoever. Somehow, at the end of my 13th year, I had gotten a touch bored of watching people shoot each other, and I needed something else. I needed monsters. I needed blood and guts and inhuman terror. I also needed Ice Cube (I always need Ice Cube), and when we made our regular Friday night trip to the video shop, both of those things were staring back at me from the top row of the horror section.

Now, we told you this is an action movie blog, about action movies. We’re only two weeks in, and I’m going off on a tangent. But you know what? I’m not ignoring monsters, because when you ignore the monsters, you also ignore the opportunity to revisit 90s CGI and tear it to fucking shreds, and I don’t think you want me to do that, do you? I think you need to know precisely every awful thing about this film that a revisit in 2017 makes painfully obvious, don’t you? Of course you do – it’s JLo and Ice Cube and Jon Voight and a massive rubber snake. And you do now anyway because I watched it and I refuse to suffer alone. Continue reading →

For those about to mosh…September Hardcore Roundup

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It has been a while since we last had a peek under the  lid to see what’s boiling away in the realms of underground metal and hardcore. Lets rectify that immediately shall we?

 First out of the skillet is Razorbite I had assumed this shower to be from Leeds given Nat Wood took their photos, Jimmy Wizard drew the cover and Atko recorded the demo but no Donny, these guys and girls are from Glasgow. I’ve visited Glasgow on a number of occasions and it’s always struck me as a tough fucking town. The first time was back in 1997. We asked for a pizza in some glum cafe and the pie faced curmudgeon behind the counter shoved a frozen pizza into a deep fat fryer before presenting it to us on a Glasgow salad, a formidable bed of chips. Like thats normal. Other highlights of that evening included a three legged dog, Knuckledust playing in a weird mosher pub/strip club hybrid hell hole, trying to get some kind of sleep in a sketchy mill and waking to discover we were being silently watched from a doorway by a man in a pair of bunched tighty whities and a Massacre T-shirt. Choice. The sounds Razorbite produce are a testament to all that misery…groove heavy hardcore not unlike Trapped Under Ice I guess, but the production on this is all squashy and sounds like the first One King Down record. I like that One King Down record loads though so it’s chill. So yeah, Trapped Under Ice meets Albany hardcore circa 1994 with bratty female vocals. It’s a combination that took some getting used to but its not immediately like anyone else and I dig it. Maybe you will too, have a listen HERE 

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Samurai Cop + Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance

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Any film that starts with Bob Z’dar with a beard and ponytail stabbing someone was always going to be a belter.

Samurai Cop is one of those films, alongside Miami Connection and Deadly Prey, that basically personifies the term “Cult Classic”.  Rarely seen outside of VHS rental shops until the late 00s as avid fans digitised them and put them on torrent sites before receiving legitimate BluRay releases  by whoever was lucky enough to own the rights. Finally the world can see Matt Hannon’s luxurious hair in High Def as the good Lord intended.
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Broken Toad brush conditioner, any cop?

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Toad mate, its broken you complete clip.

Broken toad, what’s that then?

I’d not heard of Broken Toad gear till last summer, so i did a bit of research and it turns out they do brushes, pigments, cleaners etc, so I thought id pick up a few bits to test out, put through their paces and report back. First up, brush cleaner.

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The History Of Nemesis Records by Patrick Kitzel & Frank Harrison  (Tribal Books/ Reaper Records) 2016

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I’ll preface this article by stating that when it comes to putting together these reviews, unlike many of my peers, I do not fuck with press release material. I read so many reviews of books/music/movies/comics whatever that are just lazy rewrites of the blurb that accompanies the product. I consider reviews like that to be devoid of any genuine opinion or individual insight and therefore without critical merit. They depersonalise the experience of absorbing the material. As far as I’m concerned that is a massive disservice to the effort put into project by it’s creators and the expectations of you, the reader. Rest assured that when your stuff ends up on the desk of Nathan Bean, you better know I will review the SHIT out of that thing.

My first purchase on Nemesis Records way back in 1993 was the Bonesaw record. As was often the case in the 90’s, this was a random pick up based upon the fact that I thought Bonesaw was a cool name for a band and the songs on the record had hard titles. I had previously heard one Bonesaw song on a sampler CD someone gave me outside my first hardcore the year before and I rinsed that record for a whole summer. Have I listened to Bonesaw since that Summer? Have I fuck. Continue reading →

Lords Of Waterdeep Review

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Squad goals – Box art for Lords Of Waterdeep

 

So when I was first into this kind of stuff I never really fucked with board games, I stuck to Games Workshop stuff for the most part and Dungeons and Dragons. I didn’t really see the merit in a game where you hadn’t funnelled hours of work into building an army and painting it up or having your own narrative/fluff involved. It’s only really since I came back into it I’ve seen the merit of dropping 50 bar or less on a game, spending 20 minutes flipping through a short rulebook and then get cracking, and being done with a game in an hour or so. How else are people supposed to catch up on what’s popping off in the group chat about Bake Off or what kind of curry Mark had for his tea without that kind of convinience? In absolute honesty me and my brother picked this game up like 3 years ago or so now so this review could have been on here sooner. Nate’s latest push to action made me think it was probably a good idea to actually type up bunch of article ides instead of doing fuck all about them. He can be very motivating both in and out of the geography classroom.
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Demolition Man: Simon Phoenix, A Love Story

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I was never legally old enough to watch pretty much any of the films that I’ll end up talking about at the time I first watched them, but I’m certain I’m not alone in that. Watching from behind newspapers and through banisters after we were supposed to be in bed was the business in the Francois household. “No I’m not looking, Mum. No I haven’t ripped holes in this magazine, Mum.” Exposure to horror, action, and any combination of the two was drunk hungrily down into our emotional lexicon pretty early on, which is probably why my brother and I spent the first 18 years of our lives trying to murder each other with household appliances and wondering why it hurt our own hand and didn’t make a cool noise when we punched each other in the mouth.
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Doing The Resurrection Shuffle……

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Hello darling, it’s been a while hasn’t it? You look nice though. New hair and…have you been working out? Thought so. Look, I know what you’re thinking, here he is cap in hand, crawling back to us from his latest failure. A man who thought himself bigger, better, brighter than the humble blog that spawned him. I know how you people think. You can smell the guilt oscillating off me in great stinking waves. So here’s my confession. Continue reading →