Jonah Carden- The Great Depression

It has been my intention to review this album for quite a while now.  One might assume that I would review it only to give my good buddy Jonah an ego boast regardless of what I actually thought about it but that's not true.  If the album sucked I would simply just leave it alone.  Fact is, the album does not suck, and in fact is the most solid album Jonah has been involved with to date.  The actual reason I want to review it is because it is so good and I hate that it is going without any attention being paid to it.  Indeed, the nine songs found on this album are so on par with anything available within this genre from signed artists that it annoys me that it's not being heard by the people that will appreciate them.  Of course, I highly doubt that me writing this will at all change this situation but if I can get any body else at all to check this music out it'd be worth it.

Metalliance Tour Review 03/22/11

Being a fan of Crowbar I was aware of the Metalliance Tour for some time now.  It started off as a tour featuring a band I love and one I'm not too familiar with at all, Helmet.  Later, Saint Vitus and Kylesa sweetened the pot even more, not to mention some other bands that I was less familiar with but had heard good things about.  I had just assumed that this tour was some time away and would probably only be on the west coast anyway.  Needless to say I was pretty pumped when I saw a post on Crowbar's Facebook page that said they were going to be in Greensboro, North Carolina that night.  Not only was that in my area but it was actually closer than the last Crowbar show I went to.

Plan 9 From Outer Space at The Lewis Theater

For as long as I can remember I have wished that The Lewis Theater, a small theater in downtown Lewisburg, WV (voted the "coolest small town" in America by somebody, somewhere recently), would show cult/horror films.  It's a small theater, one screen, that usually gets the artier, less mainstream films that the other theater in town (with it's whopping TWO screens) won't touch.  Being a fan of films that don't always get much of a release in this area, The Lewis Theater is a godsend from time to time.  It's obvious that they are catering to a niche film crowd, so I always wondered why they didn't show classic midnight movies as well.  Imagine my surprise when I went to see True Grit there (finally!) and saw a cut-out of Elvira holding a coming attraction notice of Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Southern Flame: Whiskey Metal

Southern Flame are a metal band from southern West Virginia that combine elements of doom, sludge, and thrash into their sound.  This is a review of their 2007 album Whiskey Metal.  The disc itself actually comprises two separate recording sessions with two different line-ups not unlike Napalm Death's Scum.  Tracks one through eight are the newest songs with an at that time new drummer, nine through sixteen a previously recorded album titled Alcoholocaust with the original drummer, and the final two songs bonus tracks.  The shift in quality brought about by this could be seen as a problem, but when you view all tracks after number 8 as bonus as was intended it clears that up.

Q: The Winged Serpent

I've been aware of this movie for years, but for some reason I had it in my head that it was some artsy film along the lines of something that Criterion would release. Don't get me wrong, Criterion releases are awesome, but they do release a lot of boring, pretentious stuff too. It seems I was way off on that point as this is actually a Larry Cohen film, the fella behind such genre films as the Maniac Cop films and Uncle Sam. The tone is definitely set when in the first ten minutes of the film there is a decapitation, a flayed human body, and a topless gal picked from the roof she is sunbathing on.
The story concerns a giant half-reptile, half-bird that is terrorizing New York City by going around biting off peoples heads and snatching people from rooftops. Amidst this is someone committing sacrifices to the creature which may or may not be a reincarnated Aztec god, a pathetic criminal using his knowledge of the location of the creature's nest to his advantage, and David Carradine (aka Bill, aka Caine from Kung Fu, aka the actor that died quite embarrassingly not too long ago) who plays a cop that is attempting to figure the whole thing out. Shaft is in there somewhere too.
I found the film itself to be very entertaining. I had no qualms with any of the actors, and actually thought they did a really good job for the type of film it was. It definitely has a late '70s/early '80s New York feel to it and there a lot of helicopter shots of the city meant to be the creature's POV that are fun to look at. When the creature is shown on-screen it's pure cheese, but if you are of the age or mind of someone that appreciate the old school of monster effects you will probably find it charming. If you were ever on the fence about whether to check this one out or not like I was, I recommend you do.