If the last 24 hours has made anything clear, it’s that a generation of rock and metal fans still hold Linkin Park in their hearts. The music may have veered wildly off course in the last few years, but their brand of arena rock, rap and nu metal inspired a million kids into a passion for everything heavy. A huge part of which is because of the voice of Chester Bennington.
It Comes At Night (2017)
If you were judging solely by the marketing, then you’d be forgiving for believing that It Comes At Night was a pretty straight forward horror film. The type with plenty of jump scares for groups of teenagers to scream at in delight. Sadly, for them, we can only imagine a few of those groups have gone home unhappy.
The Little Hours (2017)
How funny you find The Little Hours comes down to how funny you find the concept of a nun saying fuck. If that makes you giggle just thinking about it, then you are on to a winner. If you are going to need a bit more then you might struggle.
Emo The Musical (2016)
Romeo and Juliet but instead of Montagues and Capulets we’ve got emos and Christians. Instead of fair Verona, we have a clique filled school in Australia. Oh, and it’s a musical. That’s the elevator pitch for Emo The Musical, adapted by writer and director Neil Triffett from his short of the same name, and the end results are even more ridiculous than it sounds.
Freak Show (2017)
Freak Show takes a well-worn plot and decides to give it a bit of a twisting. Billy Bloom (Alex Lawther) is forced to leave the big city and his beloved Muv (his flamboyant mother played by Bette Midler) behind when he moves in with his dad who he hasn’t seen for seven years. Now living in the Red States, he suddenly finds that being gay with a penchant for drag isn’t the best way to fit in and in fact attracts violence. Billy ain’t no wilting flower, however, and he strikes back by letting his freak flag fly and running for homecoming queen.
Story Of A Girl (2017)
The Edinburgh Film Festival has kicked off and with it the chance to catch a whole bunch of films you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. First up was Story Of A Girl, the debut feature from Kyra Sedgewick which will air on Lifetime after its festival run. With a cast which includes Sedgewick’s husband, Kevin Bacon, it follows Deanna (Ryann Shane) who three years after a sex tape of her and her big brother’s best friend was leaked on the internet, is still dealing with the consequences.
Kamikaze Girls and Nervus w/Goodbye Blue Monday
Edinburgh on a Wednesday night can be a tough place to play a gig. Always a harder city to pull a crowd in than Glasgow getting anyone through the doors of Bannerman’s should be considered a success. When you’re selling a bill of emotionally switched on indie punk bands, it should be seen as a God damn triumph. This particular Wednesday night was nowhere near a sellout, but there was a healthy crowd for the double bill of Nervus and Kamikaze Girls.
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Fuck You Gene Simmons
Rather than using pictures of Gene ugly mug I’m going to fill this post with music from young bands that represent the rock scene that is apparently dying.
In what may be the least of his crimes but perhaps the one that sums him up the best, Gene Simmons has attempted to trademark the Devil’s Horns. Yes, you read that right, he wants control over the hand gesture thrown by a million heavy metal fans and adopted as a central part of our culture. Why? Because in his twisted little mind he believes he invented it. Even if you ignore the falsehood of that in light of the claims of Ronnie James Dio and pictures of Coven doing it in 1967 six years before KISS formed, this is still the act of a puckered old arsehole and should be the final nail in the idea that we should care about Gene Simmons.
Rancid – Trouble Maker
The way to approach a Rancid album in 2017 is very different to the way you would have approached one in 1997. You can no longer expect genius, and you need to figure out exactly what you need to make you happy. It’s not going to be And Out Come The Wolves… and after the disappointment of …Honor Is All We Know and Let The Dominoes Fall, merely good might be enough. A couple of great punk tracks could be all we need.
Mutoid Man – War Moans
If you were to guess what a side-project from members of Converge and Cave In was to sound like you might hit on something close to Wear Your Wounds the album released by Jacob Bannon earlier this year. It’s a dark and unsettling piece of music and while you’d struggle to call it heavy in the way you do Converge, it most definitely is. What you wouldn’t expect, is Mutoid Man.
Ramblings About Wrestling 