No one ever asked for a Napoleon movie. Even if someone did, that person most likely didn’t ask for a three hours long, American made movie about French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte with a bunch of english-speaking actors cosplaying as French revolutionaries. That fact itself is somehow Ridley Scott's Napoleon’s biggest calling card. How can such  a lush, expensive film no one ever wanted can be any good? It HAS to be a train wreck, right? While it’s ferociously dispassionate about its own topic, Napoleon is alright. I feel like it’s appropriately twisted and nihilistic for the historical e ..read more

My Dying Bride are what I call a reliable band. The British Gothic Doom titans have always known who they are and have always played within their strengths over their thirty-four years career. It’s great to have bands like that. Purveyors of precise pleasures. They have been such an overwhelming force in the Goth metal community over three decades that they could tour for the rest of their lives without ever writing new music. But the well hasn’t dried up yet for My Dying Bride and they are back with A Mortal Binding. This is very much a My Dying Bride record. It draws within the lines of thei ..read more

Photo Credit : Zachary Jones The first time I heard Full of Hell was not so long ago, but I had somewhat of an epiphany. For the first time in my life, I was hearing a music that I carried in my head and in my heart since I was young. A mix of unbridled ferocity, industrial heaviness and wonder, overwhelming electronic interference and noise, I was immediately a fan. I also became obsessed with the creative process of such a unique and counterintuitive band that went against everything, every musician who ever thought they were extreme believed in. Since I’ve been reviewing records for Vox &am ..read more

People who have never done manual labor or construction are delusional about what is achievable. They mix up thoughts and actions. They think thinking a thing through—and having a thing make sense in your mind—means that you can translate that sense into reality. You absolutely cannot. There is theory. There is practice. (p.69) I was born in a small town where people work with their hands. There was little place for a pop culture nerd out there, but it doesn't mean there wasn't any poetry. Of course, locals always fawned over the harsh beauty of the territory and whatnot, but there's more to w ..read more

Any wrestling fan will tell you : the Von Erich family story was begging to be made into a movie. In the early-WWF era, they were as important as they were cursed, like kayfabe Kennedys. I didn't see The Iron Claw in theatres because it was the Holidays and I had other things to do, but I was bummed out the only thing non-wrestling fans got out of it was a meme of Zac Efron crying in the grass with a weird haircut. So, I watched The Iron Claw over the weekend and kind of got it. Well, somewhat. The Iron Claw tells the story of the Von Erich family, four badass Texas brothers with a batshit cra ..read more

American singer-songwriter and musician Chelsea Wolfe is a very precise kind of pleasure. She writes intense gothic dreamscapes for moody, melancholic millennials who haven't quite given up on themselves yet. At this point in her career, she understands who she is and what people feel when they listen to her music, but she’s also figured out how to blossom within the confines of her creative paradigm. Wolfe's new album She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She might be her most ambitious and versatile effort yet. She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She contains ten songs and forty-minutes of ..read more

"What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever." I stopped playing video games in 2015. It was a conscious decision on my part and it felt like renouncing my religion. My choice was motivated by not wanting to pony up money for a Playstation 4 and wanting time in my life to do other things. But I do still platonically love video games. They’re the purest expression of two things I love: art & comp ..read more

Chuck Klosterman said about the original Road House: "Every single scene includes at least one detail that could never happen in real life. So does that make Road House bad? No. It makes Road House perfect." It's crazy movie, but it doesn't mean to be realistic and it could've never existed in the internet age where everything and nothing is under an insane amount of scrutiny. Except it does. A Road House for the millennial shouldn't work, but you should think of it as a Road House BY the millennials. That somehow changes everything. Road House is what you call a soft reboot. It tells more or ..read more

Hardcore punk is not metal It never was and it will never be, but their paths crossed somewhere along the way and both genres never really left one another since. Metalheads and hardcore punks are often at the same shows now, since both genres created so many hybrid offsprings. These guys are like annoying, younger ultraviolent cousins who could kick our asses any day of the week even if we don't really want to admit it to ourselves. I was never really into hardcore punk, but you can't write a history of metal without discussing it. There are two major types of hardcore punk: classic and beatd ..read more

Slayer’s 1986 record Reign in Blood was one of the most important moments in metal. It gave everyone permission to go faster, get heavier and address darker, more blasphemous topic. Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse and many other iconic extreme bands were inspired by such a paradigm shift. Reign in Blood was an almost impossible act to follow, but it was somehow only the beginning of Slayer's illustrious career. South of Heaven was the perfect follow-up, although it is often considered its creepy little brother. But it's the creepy little brother who grew up to become a fucking icon in his own we ..read more