Saturday 29 June 2013

Film Review - Taken 2

Taken 2

Ok - it's been a while sincem y last post, due to a combination of laziness and me being busy with other things. So I thought I'd make this post something special - my first ever film review!

On the one hand, I don;t envy the director and writer of this film - they had a really tough act to follow. Taken was a stunning film - up there with Die Hard and Terminatir 2 as one of the great action classics. But on the other, it shouldn't have been too difficult to do - this isn't Citizen Kane 2 after all. All they had to do was make a good action film, and let's face it, if Steven Seagal can do it, anyone can. Somehow, though, through a mixture of half-arsed writing, a reliance on tired cliches and a complete lack of plausibility, they managed to fuck up that most un-fuckupable genre. A bad action film is not like any other kind of bad film - when someone makes a shit horror film, or an unfunny comedy, that's fair enough; those are damn hard things to get right. But action? Come on. A director failing to make a good action film is like Frankie Boyle failing to be offensive. Even a film like Rambo: First Blood Part 3 (which we can take as being the universal standard for measuring awfulness) is at least enjoyable. It takes a special kind of incompetence to make an action film so soul-searingly terrible that it's not even exciting. But the team responsible for Taken 2 have managed it.

The dialogue sounds like it was written by a fifteen-year-old in half an hour. The action scenes are plodding, dull affairs, the set-peice chase scenes strecth plausibility to breaking point (even by action film standards) and the attempts to build suspense are laughable. At one point, I suggested to the people I was watching it with that we create a drinking game based on this film: every time Liam Neeson says "I need to to focus/listen," you drink. Had we gone through with that, we would have been plastered within half an hour.

Because I'm a merciful man, I will spare you the details of the hilarious climactic fight scene, Liam Neeson's character's complete inability to do the kind of thing he did without even breaking a sweat in the first film, or the sheer predictability of this appalling pile of crap. Suffice to say, don;t buy this. Don't even pirate it - if you see the cover of the DVD in a shop, avert your eyes lest the raw, toxic fuckwittery of this film infect you.

Rating: 2/10

Wednesday 19 June 2013

Aliens - no, seriously

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMxngl9p__0

Watch this video. It's the former Canadian Minister for Defence revealing that Earth has been visited by aliens, and that those aliens are in contact with the US government. This is not just some random bloke in a tinfoil hat - this is a politician, someone in the know, telling the world what he knows. Heavy shit.

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Review - Integrity

Integrity
Suicide Black Snake

This is a band I've just come across on Spotify, and whom I know absolutely nothing about. What I do know is that they play a heavy form of thrash with grind and hardcore elements, and they may just be the first thrash band I've heard that don't sound like shit (yes, that includes Metallica). Their punk influence stops them ending up sounding as ridiculous and self-parodic as Metallica (seriously, fuck those guys) or Megadeath, or any other thrash band you care to name, but they are very definitely a metal band, which is good, because it means they have the distorted vocals, low-end heavyness and guitar solos that make metal great. And those guitar solos are fucking good - occasionally, they may slip over into over-technical wank, but those moments are rare. For the most part, the lead guitarist plays peircing shrieks that add that extra something that turns a decent band into a really good one. Indeed, it's the lead guitarist that really makes this band - without him, they'd be your standard I-hate-everything-for-some-reason metal band (albeit with some damn fine riffs), but with him, they're a force to be reckoned with.

There are some parts of the album where the band really let themselves down - the slow/fast changeovers in second track I Know Where Everyone Lives are pretty messy (not in a good way) and the overlong teenage whine There Ain't No Living In Life is a definite low point - but mostly this album is a blistering peice of heavy-as-balls metal. If the changeover from noisy, industrial sound peice to pummelling thrash on Detonate Vvorlds Plague doesn't get your heart racing as effectlively as any defibrillator, you may well be dead.

Rating: 7/10

Saturday 15 June 2013

Review - Laura Marling

Laura Marling
Once I Was An Eagle

Laura Marling is an artist I've been listening to since her first album came out in 2008, so it feels good to see that she's not only still going, but is more popular than ever, getting good reviews in Mojo and the Guardian for this, her fourth album. She's also one of those musicians who audibly mature over the years. Her first record, Alas I Cannot Swim, was a cracking anti-folk album that managed to pull off the difficult trick of sounding naive, young, unjaded, without ever becoming irrtating or mannered. Since then, her music has moved in a more individual direction, leaving behind the Jeffrey Lewis-esque arrangements in favour of more complex, adult sounds (and I use that term purely in a descriptive way - there's nothing wrong with Jeffrey Lewis). That tendency seems to have reached its apotheosis on Once I Was An Eagle, and the album has a few clues as to where marling might go next. The tunes are circular, decidedly un-pop yet radio-freindly in the best possible way. Her voice no longer has the artlessness of her early work, nor the Joan Baez-like purity of her last two albums; the cigarrettes are taking their toll, but so far the effect is largely beneficial. Marling's vocals are smoky, sexy, like a whispered invitation from a stranger in a smoky room - think Marlene Dietrich meets one of the Unthanks (can't remember which one), with a country edge - Marling has finally slipped into the American accent that hearing-challenged fucktards have been claiming she had since I Speak Because I Can. The almost jazzy arrangements give way to rollicking breakdowns on songs like Master Hunter. The lyrics are alternately oblique and bluntly confessional, and the outro to each song blends seamlessly into the intro of the next - this feels like a fully-formed album, rather than a collection of songs. Marling sounds much more well-travelled on this record - she's been around, lived a little and her songs are decidedly mature.

Altogether, this is a truly beautiful album by an artist at the height of her powers. If I had to make a criticism, it would be that there are too many love songs - she could do with broadening her subject matter a little. Still, Once I Was An Eagle is one of the best albums I've heard this year.

Rating: 9/10

Saturday 8 June 2013

Review - BLACK FUCKING SABBATH!

Black Sabbath
13


Yes, it's here - a new Black Sabbath album, with Ozzy! I haven't listened to any Sabbath outside of the first two albums, so when I heard that they'd brought back the old lineup (albeit with the Audioslave drummer standing in for Bill Ward) I was pretty excited. Sabbath are pretty much the only metal band I listen to that have clean vocals, and given the poor quality of the lyrics, that's a testament to how great the band are musically. I did worry, though, that they might be past it - after all, given recent releases by Billy Bragg and Bob Dylan, it seems like this is the year that the old greats die off. On those first two records, Sabbath were the closest I've heard to a jazz-metal band. they had that looseness, that space between the instruments - listen to War Pigs, Black Sabbath or Hand of Doom, then to something by Sonny Rollins or Coltrane; do you hear the space between the lead instruments and the drums? the question for me was, would they still have that indefineable Sabbathness, 43 years after they released their genre-defining debut?

The answer: sort of.

13 gets off to a flying start, with the deliciously heavy groove of End of the Beginning. There's a good guitar solo, a nice fat riff, and Ozzy's unique vocals floating over the top. If the opening track is anything to go by, then this will be one hell of an album.
The intro to second track God is Dead? is reminiscent of the band's classic song Black Sabbath - possibly the best song of their entire career - but that's where the similiarities end. To me, this song just sounds like Sabbath-by-numbers.
Fortunately, it's followed by the altogether better song Loner. This entire album sounds like classic early Sabbath - if this album had been released in 1973, it would have fit right alongside Black Sabbath and Paranoid - but this song more than any other sounds like it came from that era. It has everything that made those first two albums great - chunky, solid riff; excellent drumming; shite lyrics about a social misfit - but it never sounds like the band trying to rehash an old formula. Rather, Loner sounds new, it sounds vital - as if Paranoid had just come out.

After Loner comes acuostic interlude Zeitgeist - the less said about that, the better.

Age of Reason is perhaps the best track so far - heavy-as-fuck riff, socially conscious lyrics,simple yet effective rhythm playing and of course, the all-important Iommi solo (and a really great one - the man who invented metal is still one of the most talented lead guitarists in the genre).
Live Forever is a meditation on mortality, given added impact by  Tony Iommi's recent cancer diagnosis. Fortunately, there's no danger of the track becoming depressing or wallowing in self-pity; if there's one thing Sabbath don't do, it's mope. This song is a proper Sabbath song, and Iommi's blistering solo sounds like the work of a man with a lot of fight in him. Here's hoping he kicks cancer's arse.

 Musically, the rest of the album follows the same formula that made the first two Sabbath albums great. The deal with a wide range of topics (not surprisingly, given Sabbath's history of intelligent, if rather poor, lyrics): Dear Father is an attack on the Catholic Church's child-abuse coverup (apparently you still go to Hell if you're gay, but not if you fuck kids - not sure how that works); Methademic is about drug addiction; and Dirty Women is about...well...that one's kind of self-explanatory. To be fair, though, that last one isn't the kind of Def Leppard-style testosterone overdose that the title makes it sound like.

Basically, Sabbath are back, and as good as ever. Buy this album.

Rating: 8/10