Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
Rocksteady know how to do Batman. Not just how to make Batman video games, but how to really do Batman. They get that character and with Arkham Knight they have brought to an end their Arkham trilogy with a game that rivals the very best of Batman’s appearances on a screen.
Teens with cancer is in danger of becoming it’s own genre. Following the success of the emotionally draining Fault in Our Stars, we now get the quirky indie version. Sundance awards and all. It’s a description that is sure to raise the heckles of some, as they expect to hate Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and yet this story about a self loathing teenager called Greg and his friendship with a girl suffering from leukemia manages to never collapse into mawkish sentimentality.
Encapsulating an Iron Maiden album into a few hundred measly words is a hard job. You have to mention the fact that now on their sixteenth album, they are arguably better than they were 40 years ago when Steve Harris started this whole thing. You could then throw in the fact that live they are still a life affirming experience and doggedly refuse to follow their peers into becoming a heritage act. After that you’ll probably get round to mentioning the music, which usually defies words anyway. With The Books of Souls, Maiden seem to have set out to make that process even harder, releasing a double album which is just over an hour and a half in length and includes three songs over ten minutes long. Here we go anyway.
‘We write songs with massive guitar riffs, but with the catchy hooks of an indie pop song.’ That’s how lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Alex Cameron describes A Modern Masquerade. Having released their first single earlier this year, they are hoping those catchy hooks can lead them to a bright future.
Cinema is often unfair to the elderly. There are few films that give an accurate representation of what it actually means to be old, at least not a growing old doesn’t involve them either going senile or just being a bit racist. However, with the discovery in recent years that as a group they will attend the cinema on mass, this has begun to change. The success of films like The King’s Speech seemed to activate the Grey Pound and we are now getting films that are more understanding of elderly life.
Since leaving Gallows Frank Carter has struggled to make up his mind. First he was fed up of singing about hate and would never do hardcore again. Then, after a brief flirtation with the underwhelming Pure Love, he seemed to change his mind and is now back in the hardcore groove, with Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes. Their debut album, Blossom, sees him try to recapture the magic that made Gallows one of the most exciting bands on the planet.
Continue reading “Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes – Blossom”
In their own way, Bullet For My Valentine have played a big part in my musical education. They were the first metal band that felt like one of my own, a band whose debut album I went out and bought and it wasn’t thirty years after the fact. Of course, since then things have only seemed to go downhill and they’ve gone from the UK’s next big hope to being overshadowed by Bring Me The Horizon and their American peer’s Avenged Sevenfold. Which bring us to Venom, their latest attempt to prove they aren’t dead yet.
The Angulo families seven children have been raised without really seeing the real world. An active year was leaving the house nine times, while there were years where they would never leave at all. When Crystal Moselle met them walking down the street dressed like they had walked straight from the set of Reservoir Dogs, she found out about this story and determined to discover more. Henceforth, The Wolfpack was born.
On Monday night the Raw crowd at the Brooklyn Center turned on the WWE Diva’s segment. They begun to perform the usual antics of a bored crowd, Mexican waves and unrelated chants. Yet, only 48 hours beforehand a similar crowd had come unhinged when Bayley pinned Sasha Banks to win the NXT Women’s Title. So did the crowd change in that 48 hours? Or does it point to all the ways that the WWE is failing the Diva’s Revolution? It’s hardly a spoiler to claim it’s the latter.
In the build up to the biggest show in their history, Fear and Loathing VIII at the SECC on the 15th of November, ICW made their way to Edinburgh for a run of shows at City Nightclub. I was lucky enough to have a season ticket for the event. Having previously been a bit of a part-time ICW fan, it’s fair to say that this particular run has seen me fall in love with this Scottish wrestling company.
Ramblings About Wrestling 