Bear

Wow, that sounds brilliant.

wait wait wait. Is it that guys from Bataar? How I aleays hated Bataar, and the one guitarist wjo dreamed of being Die is the most pathetic guy ever. Lol.

So who, is this Patrik guy? 

 

 

 

The clean vocals is way too low in the mix, but musically this sounds great. It's not a new Til Fjälls, but it sure does sound like Vintersorg, and when I say that I mean the folky era of the band.  And it sounds really fucking nice, despite being a bit overproduced. But you know, this is how I want my Vintersorg and I really fucking like it. Give me the entire album, fuckers!

 

Sigh - Scorn Defeat (black, clear and orange vinyl)

 

That takes me to 7 different versions of Scorn Defeat. That means I got 9 left until I got a full Scorn Defeat collection. Lol.

Voted Shintaro and Wataru for obvious reasons. Disgusting behavor by both. I mean, come the fuck on, guys.

 

 

The drug "scandals" are nothing as far as I see it. Don't care if people (artists) snort huge mountains of cocaine ororshoot shoot rivers of heroin on a daily basis or don't do drugs at all as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. Could not care less. 

 

 

I'm not a fan of teasers like this, but this sounds promising. Emyn Muil plays epic black metal in the vein of Summoning, Caladan Brood, Kinstrife & Blood and Nazgûl, which tells you all about the sound of the band. Also heavily inspired by Tolkien of course.

 

Emyn Muil's debut Túrin Turambar Dagnir Glaurunga isn't all that to be honest. There's a shitload of good music on the album, but a lot of the songs are way too short. When you play black metal like this you need some lenght on your songs to be able to build the songs properly. The longer tracks (6+ minutes) are very good, but the shorter tracks leaves something to be desired for sure. 10 tracks, 52 minutes.

 

The upcoming album Elenion Ancalima have 5 songs clocking in at 41 minutes. 3, 14, 7, 8 and 8 minutes. So the track lenghts are there for sure, and from the teaser the songs are there too. Sounds more Summoning-esque than the debut too, which I will always consider a good thing. I am really looking forward to this album.

 

 

Vampire - With Primeval Force

With Primeval Force sees Vampire return to form, and they've managed to renew themself quite a bit. It's raw, it's epic and it's melodic, and it balances these elements really nicely throughout the album. I'd wish for a rawer production, but it works really well. It doesn't sound nearly as soulless or flat as their debut album.

 

Btw, there is a certain Castlevania feeling throughout this album. At least I think so.

 

 

 

 

Droid - Terrestrial Mutations

I recommended this band some pages back when I was speaking of Vektor, and Droid are finally releasing their debut album. Not as agressive as Vektor, but they still have a certain Vektor-esque feeling to them. But they're more speed metal-oriented, and they actually sound a bit like Voivod too, unlike Vektor.

 

Beautiful cover art! Looks awesome.

 

 

The Source is Ayreon's best album since Universal Migrator. This is his most metallic, guitar-oriented and epic album since Universal Migrator, sounding more grand than the previous more progressive rock-esque oriented albums. Which is a pleasant surprise.

 

I gotta admit that I gre bored with recent outputs as time moved on. I loved The Human Equation back when it was new, but it's an album I never listen to anymore and neither 01011001 nor The Theory of Everything managed to grab me at all. I always end up going back to Into the Electric Castle, The Universal Migrator and The Final Experiment whenever I want some Ayreon.

I was told yesterday that I have to find myself a new place to live.  The owners are gonna fix this place up and sell the entire house, so I haven't done anything bad/wrong. But it still sucks.

 

Not sure where I'll go from here on, and what I'll do.

Cool! The vocalist (i assume he is the vocalist) looks pretty messed up. Suits their lyrical themes. Heh.

Black Dragons

This is, like many of the other films of this "classic horror" box, not a classic, and it's not a horror film either. Elements of horror there is, but it is mainly a standard thriller.

 

The entire film is a mess. Poorly directed and awfully scripted, but Bela Lugosi and Clayton Moore gives us some grand performances as usual. But the film isn't very good, but it's short clocking in at 65 minutes and the pacing is fairly good throughout the entire film. And there's something about the plot that is quite thrilling, actually.

 

Bad but alright!

 

6/10

Nightmare Castle

Up until the release of this, Mario Caiano, the director of the film, had only made some sword-and-sandal and western films. Nightmare Castle sees him move into the big world of horror and plays alone like a tribute to other gothic horror films of the time. Black Sunday and Castle of Blood are two of the films which comes to mind, and like this, they also star the excellent Barbara Steele. But this time she plays a dual role, which is nice as it just gives us more of her beautiful face and incredible presence on screen.

 

Nightmare Castle is a real underrated film. It's poorly written, but Barbara Steele, Paul Muller, Helga Liné and Marino Masé are doing a real good job, and the atmosphere is really good, and it is these things that pretty much saves the film. Or, they don't save the film, they make the film what it is. Along with Ennio Morricone's brilliant soundtrack.

 

If you're new to the subgenre of gothic horror it's not the first film I'd tell you to watch, but if you are familiar with the genre I'd recommend this a lot.

 

8/10

Why no one from MH come to Norway and sex with me?

I just can't get enough of the Allahu TRAPbar tracks. They're just too fucking good. I want to dance my way through town tonight while listening to this on a boomblaster which I carry on my shoulder.

 

Not sure if this is a good sign or an extremely good sign.

 

 

 

 

 

Also, was puking blood on tuesday morning and night to wednesday, so I decided I cannot stop drinking just yet. Got 18 beers and half a bottle of G&T for tonight, so that I can cure my stomach. #Healthy

Had some terrible stomach pain during those days, too. Felt like someone was stabbing me on repeat. Was so painful I thought about calling the doctor. And I don't go to fucking doctors. Twice for the past 15-16 years. But it probably means I am dying or something.

Creature from the Haunted Sea

A film with a great title and a beautiful poster. This just gotta be good, we all thought., right? Well, it fucking isn't. Creature from the Haunted Sea is a cheap flick partially produced and directed by Roger Corman, a personal favourite of mine.  And when I say he's a personal favourite I mean it. He's got so much shit on his filmography, but he's also got some absolute stunning and classic films to his name, and the way he ran his business is impressive as fuck, and the way he gave new faces a fair chance, only to make money himself of course, is easy to adore.

 

But like I said, he's got a crapload of crap in his filmography, and Creature from the Haunted Sea is one of those. A real shitfest. Creature from the Haunted Sea was shot back-on-back in  Puerto Rico with two other Roger Corman-produced flicks, The Last Woman on Earth and Battle of Blood Island, from a script that had previously been filmed as Naked Paradise and Beast from Haunted Cave, just slightly rewritten. Roger Corman had some unused scenes left from The Last Woman on Earth and just decided to make a new film based on those. Simple as that.

 

Creature from the Haunted Sea is an attempt at making a horror comedy, spoofing the masterpieces that is Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Lady from Shanghai, as well as standard spy and gangster flicks. The film is all over the place. The horror is lacking, the comedy is pure fucking shit, and the entire film is, as already stated, a shitfest from begining to end. The quality of the pictures itself is poor and the sound is godfuckingawful.

 

But again, like with Atom Age Vampire, there is something about it that I just can't seem to dislike. Or, there is something that actually pleases me, but I can't tell what.

 

Complete shitfest only for the weird.

 

6/10

 

And the monster looks like the cookie monster, and at least that's a plus. As cheap and dumb as the monster looks, I gotta admit I really like the look of it.

 

Anyone got some tips and recipes for asian food that is cheap, good and easy to prepare?

 

Don't care about the origin of the food, be it japanese, korean, chinese, vietnamese or whatever. But cheap, easy and good are the 3 keywords here.

Been watching a lot of Vice documentaries since I got home from Oslo as they cover a lot of interesting subjects, but why is it that 99/100 times they're having some uncharismatic, nooby college kid in front of camera? Stupid/dumb/poor questions seems to be a must for these guys, the documentaries are usually way, way, way, way too short to be able to properly cover any subject whatsoever, but if they're actually long they're poorly paced. Frustrating.

 

Watched the one about E-sports last night, and the interviewer was so fucking dumb. More or less took all the fun out of the interviews. Awkward guy who just had no idea what he was doing or how to do it properly.

 

They got some interesting stuff on Bosozuku, modern gangsters and Yakuza in Japan, but they are all so fucking short. 22-33 doesn't let you cover shit to be honest. Why not go the full way when you set out on doing something? This shit isn't even half-done. It's just lazy to be honest.

 

Again, fucking frustrating!

Till fjälls, del II

 

Making a part II of such a legendary classic as Till Fjälls is seriously risky as fuck because people will automatically put it up against the original, but as Naturbål was a proper return to form and their folkiest/most viking-esque album since Ödemarkens son I am really excited for this. Naturbål is excellent, and I've got some high expectations for this. There will also be a bonus EP with tracks from around 96-97 or something, from the time when they went from Vargatron to Vintersorg. I think they're re-recorded, or slightly re-recorded at least, but that is very interesting anyway.

 

They've also started playing live. Finally!

Atom Age Vampire

The second film is Atom Age Vampire, a film that is on the opposide side of the scale compared to Carnival of Souls. Atom Age Vampire has a beautiful poster and a really cool title, but the problem is that the film has nothing to do with vampires whatsoever. It's just a poor translation of it's italian title, which would translate to Seddok, the Heir of Satan if done right.

 

Anyway, Atom Age Vampire, directed by Anton Giulio Majano, is a complete shitfest from start to end. The script is poor, the direction awful and the acting worse. Oh, did I mention the godawful editing? Or dubbing? Well, let's see it from another way and point out the good parts in this film, because that is a lot easier: the special-effects looks cool and whenever the monster grabs a woman it looks kinda cool. And Susanne Loret who's beautiful. And that's it.

 

In other words, this is a bad film, but it's not bad enough to be considered so-bad-it's-good. It's just bad. Really bad. So why the fuck do I like it? I don't know, to be honest. I really shouldn't, but as with the majority of pre-1980's horror films, I just find it entertaining. There's something about these old films that please me no matter how bad they are. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, but this 60's euro-sleazy, trash, whatever, does in fact please me.

 

6/10

Decided to watch every 50 films in the Horror Classics box chronologically since I've already seen, if not all, the majority of the films anyway. So the sub-par quality of some of these don't really matter.

 

 

Carnival of Souls

The box set kicks off with an absolute beast of a film. Carnival of Souls is Herk Harvey's only feature film as a director, and he produced, co-wrote, directed and acted this masterpiece which looks, sounds and feels like a billion bucks. It was not a success on its release and did not gain much attention at all, but its since then gained status as a cult classic and the film is more often than not feature on lists of scariest films, and it's inspired people like George A. Romero, David Lynch, Roman Polanski and James Wan among others.

 

But hey, I mentioned that it looks, sounds and feels like a million bucks, so let's just start with the budget: 33 000. 33fuckingK. Compare that to Night of the Living Dead's 114 000, The Innocents' 43 0000, The Haunting's 1 400 000, Cat People's 134 000 or Peeping Tom's 135 000. In other words, this is as low-budget as it gets. Made from close to nothing compared to other films of the era. But it surely does feel like a big-budget film. But the problem was never it feeling like a low-budget, but it being slightly more artistic and slow-burning than other horror films of the era. It's closer to an Ingmar Bergman film than classic horror films. It's just different.

 

The film is beautifully shot in B&W. The cinematography is simple but effective, and the entire film is almost free of any special-effects whatsoever, and instead relying 100% on creating atmosphere via cinematography, acting and more than anything, an organ score that sounds like the soundtrack to a 1920's horror film. The film is eerie as fuck, very surreal and dreamlike, and that's basically what makes this so god damned great.

 

If you're into atmospheric horror films, then this is for you. But you do need a bit of patience, because it is kinda slow. But it's never boring. Masterpiece!

 

9/10

I'm not big on the Fright Night remake. Decent for sure, but it just feels so unnecessary. It doesn't offer enough freshness for me, despite some great performances.

 

 

I brought this back from my mom:

 

 

 

The quality of the release looks a bit cheap and the quality of the prints ain't the best, but this is a fun pack. Features everything from shit like Atom Age Vampire, Creature from the Haunted Sea, The Screaming Skull, Swamp Women, Bloodlust and The Beast of Yucca Flats to super classic films like Metropoilis, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, Night of the Living Dead, The Phantom of the Opera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Carnival of Souls and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So you've got a bit of everything in here, but the majority of these films are, if not good, at least really fucking entertaining.

 

 

http://www.imdb.com/list/ls000810176/?start=1&view=detail&sort=user_rating:desc&defaults=1

I wonder if this is that list. It looks that way.

 

 

Mill Creek got a lot of interesting releases, from horror to sci-fi to martial arts to crime to fantasy to westerns and whatnot. I really want a lot of these because they're full of cult, classics, cheese and crap. But the quality of the prints is poor, the non-english films are dubbed and so on.

 

Take their martial arts releases Iron Fist Frenzy, Way of the 5 Finger Death Strike, The Great Impersonators, Kickin' It Shaolin Style and Flying Fists of Kung Fu. These boxes are filled with obscure and hard to find gems of both good and awful films, but they are, to my knowledge, dubbed. That's a big problem. Same as with the Wu-Tang Collections. It's dubbed and they look like they're transferred from old, shitty VHS tapes that's watched to death.

Sukekiyo not wanting the audience to talk/sing/make noise is something that I would actually appreciate quite a lot, the whole dresscode however comes off as retarded.

Home, tired and destroyed. Feels like I am gonna die any minute now. Anyway, good festival as usual, and even tho my brother was missed we managed to have lots of fun.

 

Wednesday:

Tangorodrim - Simple, stripped down and straight-forward black metal heavily inspired by Hellhammer, Celtic Frost and Darkthrone. This gig was top notch. No mumbo jumbo, just pure black metal.

Hail Spirit Noir - I was drunk out of my mind when these guys played, and that might have done wonders to the gig. But this was fantastic. Great gig!

This was moments before I puked on the security guard and walked around in Oslo puking all over the place, looking for my friend. That's the state I was in. I have no idea how they could serve me the last 5-6 beers/G&T's.

 

Also catched a couple of tracks by Borknagar, but it was pretty poor.

 

Thursday:

Got there late, so Destruction was our first band out. Sounds a bit too modern, but the gig was pretty good. Was better in 09 or whenever it was, tho.

Pillorian was amazing. While they were black metal as fuck, they did sound a lot more Agalloch-esque live than on album. I even thought they played an Agalloch track, but from the looks of it I was mistaken. But this was great and the ending with Dark Is the River of Man was brilliant. Just... completely put us under some kind of a spell.

Carcass was headlining day two, and they went on with a full 90 minute set. Which is really long for a band that play this type of music. But it worked and it was fantastic from begining to end, and Jeff Walker looked like he was having the time of his life. Looked like he could've gone on for a couple of more hours. My biggest problem was Bill Steer who looked like he came straight from a stoner rock gig, and with some nu-metalish moves here and there. But that's not a big deal. Amazing gig!

 

Missed out on Helheim and Venom. Inc, but they played too early for me. Simple as that. Having to go a gig before 8pm one of the days is more than enough for me.

 

Friday:

Infernal War kicked off our day with some brutal black metal. Just pure brutality from start to end. Far from amazing, but very fun.

I didn't expect much from Samael as I haven't enjoyed a single album since 1994's Ceremony of Opposites, but this was a very good gig. Lots of fun, even though I wish Xy played a real drum kit for the old track. But it was good.

Gorgoroth was surprisingly good. Drums was a bit off, but it wasn't awful or anything. Considering they headlined friday I expected them to do a bit more on stage, but they kept it really simple. Lots of spikes was all really. They were mainly carried by Hoest (I believe it was Hoest handling the vocals live this time) who did a fantastic job. Superb stage pressence for this gig. Looked like he came straight from hell.

 

Tried Crowbar but left after a couple of songs. Boring.

 

Saturday:

Primordial kicked it off and they were as good as only Primordial can be. Winner of Inferno Festival 2017. The sound was a bit muddy and "tight", but you could hear everything and A.A. Nemtheanga is just out of this world as both a vocalist and frontman. Stunning!

I had never heard Kontinuum before their Inferno Festival gig and the gig didn't make me want to check it out any further. Progressive black metal/post metal clearly inspired by crap like newer Sólstafir. Just... they were all over the place. Didn't seem like they knew what type of music they wanted to make. Meh.

Belphegor surprised me quite a lot. I did not expect to like this live, but it was pretty good. Tho, I got a bit tired towards the end. It's just more of them same until it's over, and the drum sound was a bit annoying. But the first 3/4th of the concert was cool. LOL at Serpenth looking like the fucked up, uglier son/brother/whatever of Dani Filth, though.

I've seen Svartidaudi a few times now, and I've never really been too impressed. But this gig was a a force of its own. Blew me away! I did miss them covering their faces tho (only the two guitarists did it this time).

Abbath got the honor of ending Inferno Festival 2017 and they just fucked it up. Or, Abbath fucked it up. He's a fucking diva, a pussy and a fucking idiot. They played four songs before he threw his guitar in on the floor, left stage and never came back. How anyone wants to be in a band with this dick is beyond me. Rumors has it that he was angry, had fought with the rest of his band earlier this day and that he had some technical problems. But still. A disgusting way too end Inferno Festival 2017. Got not statement from them yet, tho. But whatever.

 

 

Great shit. Got way too drunk for most part. But it's all good. It suits me.

Great night last night. Had way too much to drink, and as I was standing alone somewhere and puking a security guard came over to see and ask how I was doing. My response? Puke on the guy and walk away.

 

 

Classy. And that was just the first out of four days with alcohol and concerts. Not my proudest moment.