So you think you’re the greatest Dungeon Master to gaze upon the Altars Of Madness and come away unscathed?
Or maybe you fancy yourself a legendary Dungeons & Dragons player, who walked into the fires of Gethsemane and strolled out the other side laughing?
If that’s the case then Trial By Dice: The Unholy Rite is the event for you……….
It’s been a bit quiet in terms of big events for Corehammer so far this year – but don’t worry, we’ve got your back. This one required a little more organisation than our usual chaotic gatherings but we’re pretty sure it’s going to be the best thing since Entombed’s guitar tone. Continue reading →
Well it’s been a while. Despite my best intentions of keeping the blog updated weekly, they stumbled and expired on the side of the highway like some knackered old tramp on a hot day when confronted with the greater evil of an academic deadline looming on the horizon. Consider this update a palate cleanser for me then rather than an omen of things to come. I don’t know if or when I’ll be resuming regular posting/editing here. I don’t plan on leaving it entirely in abandons care but there’s a fallow season upon us.
To business then, first up is the demo from World Of Difference. They are a new straight edge band that, if memory serves me correctly, contains former members of the Dublin group Bang Bros amongst others…. Continue reading →
Author: Stephen Hupfer
This was originally going to be an article dedicated specifically to The Prodigy’s – The Fat of the Land, but after having a chat with Sophie about how good Music for the Jilted Generation is as well, I thought I’d encompass both albums. Seeing as it’s Cyberpunk Week at Corehammer, we will tilt our hats to the ultimate Cyberpunk soundscape artist and take a trip down memory lane.
The year is 1995. Johnny Mnemonic, Waterworld, Tank Girl, and Judge Dredd have all hit the theatres. On top of these high-tier films sits the ultimate film of all time, Hackers. Now, I know this is not a Hackers spotlight, but it is my favourite film and it happens to include the tracks “One Love” and “Voodoo People” from the album Jilted Generation, which was released a year prior, so I had to give it a spot. Whenever “Voodoo People” comes on when I’m not watching the film, all I can picture is rollerblading on the run from cops in New York City. This album doesn’t sit as high for me as Fat Of The Land, but it definitely still has some major hits.
Note: that heavy-ass riff in “Their Law” makes you want to crack someone’s head with a beer bottle and get involved in a 200 mph car chase. Continue reading →
What’s that, mate? You love future bikes? I do too. And what was that? You like laser guns and people that swell to a thousand times their normal size like they’ve been filled with Sunny D? I like that too. It may have been that strange combination of interests that means I ended up loving Akira, or maybe it’s the fact that if you have even a passing interest in science fiction then it’s almost impossible not to like Akira (even if you don’t understand it.)
It’s Cyberpunk week on Corehammer and when Nate threw the question out to everyone to see if they’d like to talk about something Cyberpunk that was close to their hearts, I knew that top of that list for me was Akira. I first saw Akira at a friends house when I was about 13, at the time we were obsessed with Metal Gear Solid, his Desert Eagle BB gun & these large figurines you could buy of SWAT and SAS figurines from a weird shop in Hull. Looking back at it now we were probably going the direction that several school shooters took but luckily my friend showed me a frog he’d killed and we didn’t speak after that.
Once again it’s time for a week of themed posts over here at the mighty Corehammer. Our Seven Nights Of Samhain theme was pretty successful last Halloween and it was a great opportunity to throw the doors wide open and invite some friends and allies to get involved. We are doing it all again this week and the theme is something thats been on my mind a lot these past few weeks, CYBERPUNK!!! With shows like Altered Carbon and Phillip K Dick’s Electric Dreams popping up in recent months alongside the new Bladerunner movie and Akira turning 30, I figured it’d be an appropriate time to don our disheveled trench coats and step outinto the hard rain of Neo Tokyo to take a look at yesterdays vision of tomorrow.
Any nerds who grew up in the 80’s will be familiar with the Cyberpunk juxtaposition of High Tech/Low Life. With it’s strong aesthetics, punk sensibilities, class politics and speculations on technology Cyberpunk caught hold of a lot of imaginations and inspired an enormous amount of radical art, literature, gaming and cinema. If you’re reading this blog it’s a reasonable assumption that you’re already familiar with genre benchmarks like William Gibson, Phillip K Dick, Akira, Bladerunner and so on…but what else?
Over the course of this week we’ll be taking a break from our regular content to probe the matrix by looking at some of the movies, music, games and ideas that contributed to Cyberpunk as a subgenre and it’s legacy in 2018.There’s also a new episode of Dungeonpunx in which the guys try to get their heads around cyberpunk by watching Johnny Mnemonic …..
Massive shout out to everyone who reached out and got involved. Check out Andrew Scully’s awesome SCUM poster at the top of the page and be sure to follow his work on Instagram @scullcomixinternational I really appreciate all your efforts. We’ve got some great stuff for you this week..
1989 was a real kicker of a year. I was 13 years old. My brain was already a bubbling toxic soup from prolonged exposure to lethal amounts of 2000AD and undiluted Kia Ora. I was peaking hard and gobbling up everything I could get my greedy claws on to feed my developing appetites in twisted fiction, dystopian sci-fi and martial arts movies. At the cinema we finally got a ‘dark” Batman courtesy of Tim Burton and my cinematic comfort blanket The Burbs was released into the world.
What was I listening to? Guns & Roses ‘Appetite For Destruction’ exclusively. I hadn’t traded in the Grifter for a mountain bike yet either. Life was pretty good.
A little googling revealed that cinematic trend for B-Movies in ’89 was underwater alien horror. Sophie already dismantled The Abyss a couple of weeks ago much to Boardy’s chagrin, but there were at least four other ‘Aliens living at the bottom of the sea’ films doing the rounds. Leviathan, Lords Of The Deep and Deep Star Six. That’s all well and good but I’m from Margate mate, I saw horror on the regular down that sea front in the 80’s and didn’t care to revisit it in the cinema. That and I’m terrified of deep water. No friends, my attention was drawn to the other end of the environmental misery spectrum. The dusty plains of the post apocalyptic future…..
We live in an age where a geeks life is a many splendored thing. Gone are the days of scrounging around at stale old comic marts, tracking down grainy third generation dubs of the Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie or the Star Wars Holiday Special. At the touch of a button the modern dork can access out of print games, underground music, cult movies and become an expert on their chosen field of interest in minutes. But it wasn’t always like that. No mate. I’ve said it before and I will definitely say it again but being about that nerd life before the internet was some fucking toil man. If you wanted something niche…..you had to put in the leg work.
These days fandom is accessible to all. Comic book movies dominate the multiplexes. TV shows that draw upon the established lore of once reviled cult authors are now smash hits. We are quite literally spoilt for choice. I am not ashamed to admit that there’s a big part of me that is incensed by all this acceptance. What changed? Where was all this enthusiasm and tolerance when I was getting the pipe knocked out of me because I’d rather read an X-Men comic than play football? You people are all posers. I bled for this shit. Actual blood, not fake blood from the joke shop or corn syrup or whatever you cosplay people use. Fuckers.
Anyway look, right back at the dawn of the internet, before Marvel got their shit together and turned the superhero movie into a certified money spinner, that genre was absolutely in the bin. Yeah yeah we may well be past saturation point with superhero movies these days but until you’ve suffered through the Albert Pyun Captain America or endured The Hoff as Nick Fury, and don’t even get me started on the guy from Streethawk playing Daredevil in the Trial Of The Incredible Hulk… spare me your issues with superhero cinema you mewling babies. You don’t know pain.
Hi, hello, happy new year! We made it. Nothing exploded or melted at midnight on the 31st (unfortunately?), and we’re seemingly all here for another year of Tr*mp, vaping, beard oil, and all manner of other horror that makes it difficult for me to look at the internet in the morning. On the bright side, the Emoji Movie came out last year, so that’s at least one thing we don’t need to fear. Hopefully you used your time wisely over the festive season. By wisely I mean that you used it to consume meats, cheeses, any fake version of the aforementioned, and enjoyed repeated viewings of Die Hard, as well as ITV showings of teen movies such as the Maze Runner series, facsimile Shrek Kung Fu Panda, twee garbage The Princess Diaries, and Battleship. Despite what you’ve come to know of me, I don’t enjoy any of those things, but I definitely sat and watched them, and a load more cinematic compost, with a baked Camembert, some part baked rolls, and a posh pear M&S chutney. In fact I enjoyed Battleship so little I’m almost sad it’s out of our time frame for a review. The film was 2 and a half hours long and seemed to involve mostly the plot from Independence Day, but written by teenage drama students and located on a boat. Also Rihanna wearing a Hoods tshirt – the hardcore scandal everyone forgot because no one listens to Hoods really anymore, not even in the gym. All this is just proof of what you can get me to shut up and sit through if you offer me a nice cheese. Anyway.
I discovered Guilt Ritual by accident earlier this year when I got talking to frontman Stephen Hupfer about some other nerd shit. Guilt Ritual are cool and sound like all the good bits of 90’s metallic hardcore with none of the bullshit. This interview is taken from my zine Harder They Fall issue 4 which will be up for pre-order in January. That issue also features interviews with Tom Pimlott, Ill Natured, Payday, Firm Standing Law, Insist plus loads of the mad shit that I write at 3 am when I’m deprived of rational thought and sifting through the rubble of my existence to determine exactly where where my life went wrong. Cool. Anyway, here’s Stephen….
Tell our readers about Stephen Hupfer’s secret origin…how did you find hardcore?
When I was younger I listened to a lot of Ramones, Korn and Eminem and had no idea what hardcore was. When I got to high school (2005) I became friends with this kid Jordan who was a year older than me. We were linked up due to our mutual hobby Magic: The Gathering and him wearing goth chain pants that I thought were so sick. One day he gave me a couple CD’s (Set Your Goals – Reset, The Warriors – War is Hell, & Bane – The Note) and told me about these concerts that’d happen every Friday in our town. I thought Bane sucked and The Warriors were the sickest thing I’d ever heard. I went with my new found pal down to this bar and saw 100 Demons & Since the Flood. I was really surprised to see a bunch of kids that were older than me that I went to school with moshing and just beating the shit out of people. For whatever reason hardcore was like the cool thing at my high school. Continue reading →
It’s been a bit quiet in terms of big events for Corehammer so far this year – but don’t worry, we’ve got your back. This one required a little more organisation than our usual chaotic gatherings but we’re pretty sure it’s going to be the best thing since Entombed’s guitar tone. Continue reading 
