JOSHIKYÔEI HANRANGUN a.k.a. Attack Girls’ Swimteam Vs. The Undead

This flick is the perfect example of how you get my attention. Chose a witty title, put in some lesbian asian girls fighting “zombies” and tag it as japanese softporn gore. But Attack Girls’ Swimteam Vs. The Undead really disappointed me. It’s really weak, neither fish nor fowl, with no attention to detail and a fucking lame story.

Also there are only a few (cheap) splatter effects but even they really got on my nerves. I don’t care if you can’t afford paying professional special effect artists but at least try your best by creating real, handmade and non-computer ones. If you are doing a B-Movie flick, handmade special effects, no matter how bad they are, always look better and more authentic than using pseudo professional hollywoodish digital bullshit. Do them with love, energy and enthusiasm, fuck technology and uninspired, pretended Independence. Lack of money can be compensated by visionary dedication for the art/movie. This movie clearly failed in doing so!

Boring as fuck, this campy j-sploitation flick was clearly made for the japanese school-girl rape, fetish scene. But what is the intension of hiring 2 porn stars as main characters but not doing a porn movie? It isn’t because of their brilliant acting talent, that’s for sure.

There is nothing much to say apart from: “don’t watch it”. Save your time in either checking out a good porn flick with Sasha Grey or the ingenious sick japanese stuff like Tokyo Gore Police, The Machine Girl or Meatball Machine.



The 13th Annual Tromadance Film Festival

Most of you people following the El Gore Blog regularly know that I am a huge fan of Lloyd Kaufman and Troma movies. Why this passion? I am not quite sure but I always had a weakness for feces briming over with passion and creativity. Sigmund Freud would probably explain that there went something wrong in the anal stage which I now try to sublimate by watching shit weeping Troma flicks.

As I am reading Kaufman’s book Make Your Own Damn Movie!, I realized again how brilliant this guy is. His passion for independent filmmaking is unique. I don’t want to write about it too much now, as the book review is coming soon.

I just want to draw your attention to a related thing which is important to me: The Tromadance Festival. 2012 is the 13th annual Troma Festival. It takes place from 4th to 5th of May in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Tromadance is completely free, which means that there are no entry fees and no charges for producers and directors submitting their movies (yeah! Fuck off Cannes and its botox crippled pseudo directors and actors). There also will be no VIP shit or whatever. All the people are treated in the same fucked-up way. For more informatation just check out the Official Tromadance Site!

El Gore has decided to support Tromadance in 2 ways. First of all we want to make publicity for the Festival’s Kickstarter. Support independent art and !DONATE HERE! Furthermore the blog, of course, is also donating some of their hard earned money.

Reunion-News

2012 starts like a bat out of hell!

First of all, post-hardcore-trendsetters At The Drive-In announced their reunion via Twitter yesterday. They will also be playing at this year’s Coachella festival in April!

The same applies for hardcore and post-core legends from The Refused, who also announced a reformation for Coachella. For both bands it is not clear yet if this only affects live performances or also new albums.

Shame on you if you haven’t heard of those bands! Relationship of Command and The Shape of Punk to Come are two legendary albums that shouldn’t be absent in your (post-)hardcore collection. Looking forward for European dates!

Not so good news reached us from Black Sabbath‘s Tony Iommi. He’s been diagnosed with the early stages of lymphoma. The band announced that the producion of their reunion-album will continue in the UK. If all this will affect the planned world tour is not known, but that of course is secondary for the moment. All the best to you from El Gore, Tony!

RIP Barry Clayton

Barry Clayton, the thrilling voice of Iron Maiden‘s Number of the Beast intro, passed away two weeks ago.

To cite metalhammer.co.uk:

”RIP Barry. We will never forget those hallowed lines:

Woe to You Oh Earth and Sea
For the Devil sends the beast with wrath
Because he knows the time is short
Let him who have understanding
Reckon the number of the beast
For it is a human number
Its number is six hundred and sixty six.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mHe6FMs46o]

Boris – Pink

Boris have released a whole bunch of albums since 1996, and I have to admit that I don’t know that much about their other works. They are known to switch their musical style pretty often. Their repertoire reaches from psych to hard rock, from drone to sludge, from electro to pop.

There is one particular full length of the Japanese combo that is still charming me for a few years now: Pink, from 2005.

Farewell lulls you into a sense of security, being a very doomy and post rockish song. After relaxing 7 minutes and 33 seconds Pink carries you away like a thunderstorm. The sound of this album is just awful. It sounds like a garage concert with the amps turned to maximum volume. And that’s just what makes those 11 tracks so awesome.

Woman on the Screen is like a vicious dog which won’t release its prey. This one is sure to stick in one’s head. Boris is uncompromising and stereotyped to the maximum knowing that there is no other way to milk this cow.

Blackout offers us a drone-break before the rumble continues. The hard rock parts mixed with an omnipresent wall of scruffy sound runs like a pink thread through this massacre. Afterburner lets the Indians sing about the desert and freedom. My Machine takes us on a melodic journey on a river which leads to Just Abondoned My-Self, which closes the album with the last bit of energy that’s still left. The amps suffer one last time. You can listen to their final screams for over 10 minutes, if you like to.

Recommendations: Farewell, Pink, Woman on the Screen, Just Adondoned My-Self.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WkaeBZ1kGU]

Christmas Special – The Little Nazi

The older I get, the more I dislike Christmas. Seems like I lost my “emotional bond” to this over-commercialized orgy of hypocrisy during the last 7 years or so. We are enchanted by this magic contemplation, whilst ignoring all the misery happening around us, but let’s be nice to each other, even just for the next 2 days. I might kill you next week, but hey; today is THE day and I have to get along with you!

But hey; even though I sound like a dick; it does not mean that one cannot have a good laugh for Christmas.

So what about a shortie of a random german family celebrating Christmas, where things couldn’t go any worse from minute to minute? Let’s take swastikas and a demented grandmother and shit will hit the fan, for sure.

Enjoy!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My_fj5B2VC8]

Eric

PRE-CHRISTMAS with the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet

So, as I don’t want to rank behind as far as the boasting with early Christmas presents is concerned, I proudly present to you my new flatmate.

She’s already an older lady but still as fit as a fiddle. Her name is Sansui FR-5800 and my dad bought her in the mid-1970s. Now junior has his fun with her. It just feels great listening to LPs with her, especially because her brothers, the receiver and the speakers, also still work nearly perfectly.

As lady Sansui always thirsts for new food I bought her a new LP a few days ago: Free Jazz by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet (in a red coloured vinyl edition). I picked it out of sheer curiosity. In fact I do not know very much about Free Jazz, so let me try to write just a few lines about how it feels to me.

So as a total newbie, what can I say about this? At first listening it is pure chaos, and I loved it. When listening to it a few more times you will realise that it is not as chaotic as it seems. Free Jazz is 37 minutes long and a totally improvised song, except for just a few pre-settings. It was recorded in only one take and put on vinyl as soon as they finished playing it. There are lots of things to discover in it, and it is highly remarkable that such a work was already being done in 1961. The two quartets never play against each other, on the contrary. Every member gets his stage and the others perfectly understand how to step back without disappearing and without giving up their own styles.

I guess this could be my entrance door to Free Jazz, let’s see what the future holds.

Kraton – Ker


There is one typical excuse Luxembourgish people use to explain our bad football results. This sentence always refers to the amplitude of the country. When our national team loses 5:0 against Timbuktu again, the media just as the inhabitants note that the result is not that bad if you consider that Luxembourg is such a small country. When it comes to music, it is exactly the same. A shitty record, a fucked-up live sound or the inability of playing an instrument is often referred and excused by the fact that the country is small and that it isn’t so bad for Luxembourg. Bullshit!

I doubt that Bördie and co. will save our badly crippled red lion and the Luxembourgish football nation (HAHA) but when it comes to metal music, it looks very different. Unfortunately I have to tell you that in our national metal scene quantity predominates quality. There are only a few extreme bands which are worth listening and I am not even talking about records. But since the 8th of december there is one EP which certainly raises the level again! It was that day Kraton (Guitar:Jacques Zahlen, Guitar: Jason Brink, Drums: Véronique Conrardy, Bass: Joël Reiter, Vocals: Mike “Bördi” Bertemes) released their first demo record called Ker. I won’t pussyfoot around now, Ker is (beside Midnight’s Satanic Royalty) my personal record of the year 2011!

I haven’t been to a lot of concerts recently and I only have heard some of their live stuff on the Band’s youtube channel before, but that’s why Kraton simply doumbfounded me. Ker kicked me right in the face without warning. The music is a perfect composition of groovy mid-tempi, modern black metal riffs covered in a cold and doomy atmosphere served on an traditional death metal plate. At the beginning I didn’t want to describe the music with the help of metal subgenres because Ker feels so fresh, so new and diversified that it deserves more. But you know what? I simply didn’t find the words. And if the excellent music wasn’t enough there is that voice. I personally think that Bördie has one of the most varied and interesting voices in the whole extreme metal genre. The recognition value of the death metal growls is outstanding and the black metal screams are pure evilness and kick every little grim trve black metal wannabe in his pale ass. I think I don’t have to explain that the music and the voice perfectly fit together, do I?

Ker is one fucking hell of a record! Download it at the Band’s Bandcamp or Homepage and tell El Gore what you think!

Pre-Christmas

I really don’t like the whole Christmas stuff but I am always very happy about some really cool presents and that’s what I got. First of all Eric gave me these 2 posters:

I simply love the Ilsa, She wolf of the SS Artwork. No I am not a Nazi and I don’t care about politics. I like what I like and I don’t want to explain myself. By the way, El Gore wrote a review about this classic (Nazi) exploitation/sexploitation movie, which you can check out HERE. The second one is a Giant Claw (1957) poster. This movie is, besides King Kong (1933) and Them! (1954), one of my all-time favorite classic b/w monster movies. The story is incredibly fucked up, just as I like it. El Gore also reviewed this masterpiece. Check it out HERE.


Furthermore I got this one.

This book tells a story of these heroes (Editor: “Ringo”, “Django” and “Sartana”) and their companions, “Gringo” and “Rocco”.(…) In any case, however, this book is a unique, ostensive, and essential work of reference on the Spaghetti Western, and western film lovers and those who want to become fans of the western genre are going to enjoy it.

The book is written in German and English, is limited to 500 copies and comes with the movies: Pistol For A Hundred Coffins and Vengeance. I’m not through it but it seems to be very interesting.

Yesterday while I was searching for the Portuguese short movie I’ll see you in my dreams (Review is coming soon) at my local DVD seller’s, I found The UH-OH Show Ultimate Uncut Version by Herschell Gordon Lewis. I don’t have to introduce this luminary and godfather of gore. If by any chance you should not know him, check out his wikipedia. I only have seen this movie once but I wish I would do some sick stuff like The UH-OH Show at the age of 82 too.  

P.s. Lloyd Kaufman is great, as always.

Thx for the posters and for the book! Happy Holidays and Fuck Off.

The end of CDs – a personal commentary

Rumours are being spread for months now, you may have heard of it: the major labels are planning to give up selling mediums like CDs or Vinyl LPs in the near future. So-called insiders guess that the music album as we have known it until today will have disappeared within the next 2-5 years, except for special editions and stuff like that.

Personally I can’t be really surprised about this idea, looking at the time we live in. Things have changed. The economical situation legitimates such a step because producing CDs is expensive. It seems logic to concentrate on the digital spread of music that has to be sold to the internet-generation.

I am not a naïve person, I honour scientific progress and of course I am a supporter of the internet, but I also do not have to favour everything at any price. Let us may call it a pessimistic and “postmodern” view on certain things. In my eyes the loss of a physical medium in the music business is typical for the loss our perception of reality.

We pay things with cards made of plastic. Our money is protected by the bank. I know it is there. Really. I look up the amount, just wait a minute, I‘ll show you as soon as I’m logged into my online banking account. There you see.

How are my friends, what are they up to, when is the next party and where is it? Let’s see what Facebook tells me about it. When did we meet each other for the last time? Must be months ago, but hey, I know everything that happened in your mind and your life. You are my best friend. Sorry that I missed your birthday, my internet was down.

Terrible things happened in the Near-East. Seriously, so many dead people, I felt so shocked and I’m so sorry for them. Really, I felt like I was there, I saw everything on TV.

Get in touch. Social networks. CNN-reality. The number of dumb boneheads is overwhelming these days, and the last thing they remember is what it means to get really in touch with somebody or something.

I know, when it comes to music, the most important thing is that you hear it. But touching an LP is not as unimportant as it may seem in the 21st century. People who still appreciate reading a real book know what I mean. For me, listening to an album is like reading a book. Going to a shop and buy a vinyl (or a CD), also order it through the internet, waiting for the day it arrives, opening it, studying the cover, the artwork, the art behind,  taking out the disk and putting it on, that’s what I call listening to an album even before a single note is being heard.

You may now say that I am being too romantic. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. Perhaps you’ll change your mind when we’re all going to the next good concert. There will probably be a cinema around who will broadcast it. And the best thing will be that you don’t have to desperately record your emotions with a god damn digicam like you used to when visiting real concerts. I know, it has become hard to retain your feelings during a concert of your favourite band without having your bloody mobile phone directed at the stage from the first second of the performance. The DVD will be out within a few weeks. Or rather the digital download of the concert. Ah, memories!

Don’t just stay in touch. Know how to touch.