Highly recommended release from the cockroach king Manuel Garcia, in what is becoming an October tradition, Blattaria return to Dismantle the New Cult. When the lights come on these cockroaches don’t scatter, this hive mind swarms en masse in discordant threnody, perhaps even fluttering airborne, to overwhelm and trample under sewer dabbed chitinous claws and ravenous mandibles.
Not yet privy to soundbites, there is a new QRIXKUOR on the horizon entitled Zoetrope. The unholy triumvirate of QRIXKUOR, Dark Descent and Invictus Productions to release this on multiple formats in November.
Next we have a trio of funereal releases.
First being the Dallas, Texas Funeral doom jazz trio Blightcaster. Slowly unfurling Golgothian trod under squelching brass, droning guitars and a Bunkur - Nullify pulse.
Secondly, and curiously another with ties to Texas (in this case Houston), is Apparitions. Two members are remotely attacking from Brooklyn and Chicago. This is more artful and dutifully tasked with a mission than Blightcaster, but, it is none the less challenging on a sonic front. Typically I am fast to pull the synths and keys out of metal card, but, again, why does it appear only doom and drone metal acts come correct with applying this technology?
Third is Burial Womb - 0. A guttural death industrial drone gurgling up from a thawing Antarctic portal to hell. This is what I wished the ambient and noise element that Altarage apply would be rather than what it is on Sol Corrupto.
A few people have already been in on the rant that is to follow. Sure, it is approaching Halloween and I’m doing my due diligence by watching horror flicks. I managed to catch a screening of The Outwaters at the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival. How this is garnering rave reviews is beyond all comprehension. Don’t be suckered by the well put together first trailer as I was.
Seriously, other than some mockumentaries using found footage this genre is slop. For every Hellstrom Chronicle, Noroi, Lake Mungo, Cannibal Holocaust, Poughkeepsie Tapes, The Medium you have 50 garbage titles. Such is The Outwaters. This is worse than blair witch project because it is interminably long whereas blair witch wraps up under 90 minutes.
The Outwaters is constructed as if police have discovered the video cards from a camera found 5 years after the disappearance of the four main characters we are introduced to on the first card. Two are musicians the other two are siblings of one musician and they are going to make a music video in the Mojave.
For the first 30 or 40 mins Camerabrother is following these idiots around visiting mom, rehearsal, lazing about the house, and through a couple Los Angeles earthquakes. Call it "character building" dull, uninteresting people.
The next 30 mins are spent scouting the desert where a couple noteworthy things do occur. After feeling a vibration on a hill Camerabrother inserts a microphone in a hole in a hill and it records scouring feedback worthy of a Merzbow or Sutcliffe Jugend recording. He also comments that his battery hasn’t lost charge. This, just so you know something odd is afoot and to justify the camera’s battery lasting over the course of days. At night-time there are thunderous atmospheric disturbances rattling the quartet. Again, great use of sound.
With the final 30 or 40 minutes all hell breaks loose. Or is it interdimensional bleed? What you get is kitchen sink nonsense scare attempts involving sonic assaults in the darkness. I guess it's supposed to be stress inducing when you hear them sobbing hysterically for "mommy" and screaming; but, you know what? I just don't care. I want these characters dead for boring me. Camerabrother is stumbling through the dark barefoot, practically naked while filming the mayhem befalling him and the others.
Shaky cam following a flashlight through the night ensues and viewers catch glimpses of characters covered in blood. There's zero logic to the proceedings. If things are meant to be reality shifts or a hell gate opening, so what? I'm laughing at this exercise as it keeps going in circles, repeating itself, looping between night and day and encounters with the other 3 characters in various states of distress. While things are looping about, I'm thinking, this amounts to a super low budget lo-fi event horizon captain's log. The reality, dimensional bending is something we've seen Benson & Moorhead do with resolution and the endless to far greater effect and impact. And I wonder if director, writer, Camerabrother Robbie Banfitch would have been better served pulling the Outwaters off in a more conventional manner than found footage?
Further muddying this incoherent visual mess there is a body horror component to the Outwaters involving slimy eel-like creatures scurrying about in what can best be summed up as a piss take on tremors and the 2001 psychedelic hallucination by way of from beyond pineal gland resonator opening a gate to another dimension. Sure, that sentence is a mess, but, given what I’m working with…. After more delirium on his desert trek, including finding the 3 other characters heads impaled on poles, Camerabrother mutilates himself with a tooth he found, cutting off his penis and disemboweling himself. Why? Who knows, who cares, probably slime creatures climbed up his anus and/or penis. Oh, the horror.
May Blackie Lawless set you free. He won’t be paying the bills.