A Serbian Film (2010)

This has been on the back-burner for me for quite some time; the film's sordid reputation initially drew me to it, but its fans pushed me away. "Man, some guy totally rapes a baby, hurr hurr hurr, sick, bro". A Serbian Film has become a piece of work that has become known for its graphic content, and not for its "artistic" vision or even for its plot, which is fine if you want to wear your heart on your sleeve and create a gory, depraved movie, but if you are - like the creators of this film - hiding behind some paper thin meta / political message to justify your motivation to depict such heinous acts as "entertainment", then I'm sure that this legacy must be pretty infuriating, no?

Anyway, all that artsy shit aside, A Serbian Film also fails on the face value of it being a shocking exploitation film. It draws out all the stops - and then some - yet fails to be entertaining, or repulsive, or even hilarious in its own failure. The film is cold and completely devoid of atmosphere or dread; even the flat-out exploitative moments fail due to them being re-cast in a harsh, "artistic" light that pretends to have a message. Cap that off with the half baked ending, and I would classify this as the worst - and most over-rated - "horror" film that I have seen so far. 

So, to clarify: A Serbian Film is 100% shock value tripe for plebs who think the Saw movies are the pinnacle of horror cinema, and is completely undeserving of its rancid reputation. Avoid. 

Sukeban Boy (2006)

This has to be one of the worst films I've ever seen. I love watching awful movies (that is the whole point of this venture!) but this just fails to entertain. I mean, in all rights it should; it's a tale about a boy (?) called Sukeban who looks like a girl so he goes to a girls school, dressed - rather convincingly - as a girl. There he meets a whole array of bizarre characters that are have no hesitation getting naked and violent. It is verrry weird, up to the point where his friend Kanko gets her legs chopped off by a masked female, and then it gets even weirder. A topless villain starts shooting bullets out of her tits. Similarly, Kanko's stumps turn into guns and she starts gunning people down too. Sukeban grows tits. Everyone else has their tits out too. A bunch of naked chicks tie everyone up in chains and then a bunch of people die. Did I mention there were tits involved?

All of this happens in under an hour, and by all rights it should be massively entertaining, even with the lack of English subs. Unfortunately however, the entire thing is so drab and badly edited that it is almost excruciating to watch. The lighting is awful and the choice of locations (almost entirely within a school) is dark and musty, but in the worst, most amateur way possible. The acting is (unsurprisingly) beyond saving and the fight choreography looks like it was cobbled together by the type of people who wear fedoras, drink lots of Monster energy and enjoy playing with toy lightsabers. Even for exploitation filming, this is abysmal. All DVD copies of this should be fired into the fucking sun.

Avenged Sevenfold - The Stage

(Words by Griefmonger)

I’m  a prissy fuck. I thought this would be a straightforward shit-shoot. And I was wrong. We have got at least 15-17 mins of engaging music (and vocals may I add), although I dare you to try and make it to 20 mins without getting diabetes, which is when it becomes a shitestorm of Trivium, Metallica, Hatebreed and Alice in Chains. There is no amount of nonsense or high end guitar that stop your riffs sounding like Bon Jovi.  There are a couple of blast beats, though.

After this point I think that they are just trying to be clever (and failing, where many other bands have). You know where other bands do a keyboard or flute on a track? These guys make that a full track. I’m gonna try and be positive by saying that they have a couple of riffs that are supposed to be low key intros but I’m trying to justify a band that has big bucks behind them and are trying to sound like Alice in Chains when they where meaningful yet end up sounding like Trivium (who in turn are trying to sound like Metallica who are in turn also trying to sound like Metallica). 

I might be a bit biased as I like depressive suicidal black metal, but never have I listened to an album that made me want to kill myself more than this one.

Obie Trice - Ass

Man, this is fucking awful, even for Obie Trice. This is some Lil' Wayne level shit right here. Seriously, how is it possible for someone to fall off so hard? Granted, the relentless pursuit of the $$$ leads some artists by the nose through the trends of the month / year / decade, and that is the only explanation I have for this absolute farce of a single.

Ten years ago this guy was sharing records with Dre, Eminem, Nate Dogg et al. It is sad to see his output reduced to this boring, lowest common denominator trap bullshit. Next!

Negura Bunget - From Transilvanian Forest

I saw these guys live and thought they were shit. I mean, fucking plank solo much? This album, unfortunately, does not do much to change my mind on them. Even by black metal standards, the production on this is terrible. It sounds like a seriously crappy mp3 compression, if crappy mp3 compression could somehow have been attained in the early 90s on some shitty recording equipment. The guitars failover into nothing but pure fuzz, offering no nuance, riffage, tune or even overall atmosphere. Its like a 96kps rip of a fucking beehive, but run through a flanger. 

Everything else follows suite similarly. The vocals are weak and almost non-existent in the mix, and the drum kit sounds like a £50 shitheap from Argos or something. The only redeeming feature of this record is the synth work, which is surprisingly advanced, although possibly only in comparison to the rest of this shitshow.  I know a lot of black metal (and noise, and punk, and goregrind) that sounds like complete shit but still rocks really hard. This...this is just terrible.

Blues Pills - Blues Pills

When Blues Pills first came about it was a refreshing, very accessible take on the done-to-death blues rock template. With the resurgence of both stoner and occult rock, Blues Pills offered a simpler route without any of the ridiculous satanic pomp and edgy marijuana references. When Bliss was released in 2012, I fell in love with the band's dusty, authentic rock and roll music. Blues Pills inevitably got signed to a big label, and it all went downhill from there.

This album has been out for two years and I haven't been able to bring myself to write about it because of how disappointing it is. I've tried and tried and tried, and now I finally give up and present this negative review. It is as if the band have had all the life and soul sucked out of them. Sure, better production value is to be expected with a big budget debut, but any magic that the band had previously has well and truly been washed away in the studio polish. Most tragically, even the vocals, once crackling with bluesy lust, energy and fever, are now flat, compressed and devoid of any real emotion or interest. Having several tracks from Bliss re-recorded here does nothing but cement this fact. This debut is nothing more than a 10-tracked, convenient 40-minuter designed to shift units. Bitterly, bitterly disappointing.

How to go from alternative music's new hope to boring dad-rock 101, courtesy of Nuclear Blast.

Genitorturers - 120 Days Of Genitorture

I avoided Genitorturers for a very long time simply because I was aware of the fact that Vincent from Morbid Angel played in some sort of badly-named industrial side project. I was also acutely aware of his penchant for bad leather / pvc shit so on those reasons alone I gave this band a very wide berth. I know that this band doesn't begin and end with Ol' Vince, but when all those crapulent dance/gabba/industrial parts started leaking horrifically into Morbid Angel's music, some sort of morbid curiosity (see what I did there?) was awakened, and I came over for a listen. 

At first it sounds a bit like Prong meets L7, only not as sexy as one would imagine that mash up to be (ironic considering the immense overtones of this band's image). The music sounds to me like stale, 3rd-rate Marilyn Manson grade shite that goths like to dance to, only infuriatingly paraded under the industrial banner. Why does that happen? Industrial to me is Throbbing Gristle, Godflesh, early Einsturzende Neubauten etc. etc., not boring grungy metal with BDSM over-tones. 

I have nothing positive to really say here so I'm just gonna wind this up before I go off on a massive tangent about how frustratingly shit this is.

Agathocles / Jan AG & The Gajna - Split 7"

My final Agathocles 7" for the time being! Phew! This here is the cheap Agathocles split with Jan AG & The Gajna, which was not released on any label. Again, there is no pressing info online anywhere, and I am assuming that all copies are black. Considering both bands feature Jan as the frontman, the evidence points to self-release, but something about this tells me it might be a bootleg. Any clarification is welcome!

Agathocles offer one song to this 7", which is plonked right on the end of side b. It's a bit of a bummer if you bought this for collecting all the Agathocles stuff, because 90% of this 7" is the fucking abysmal Jan AG & The Gajna "music". I do not understand why there needs to be another Agathocles-style noise band? They are truely awful and I hope to never come across them again. This is my least favourite Agathocles release in my collection and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I'm torn between selling this (edit: it's actually fucking worthless, should have seen that coming!) or keeping it in the hope of amassing a gigantic Agathocles collection one day.