The Wolfgangs - Cannibal Family

"Shout With The Devil"

I can't get enough of The Wolfgangs. This female fronted Psychobilly band from France have a classic rock & roll sound with smooth but powerful vocals. They sound great. They look great. Their presence is great.

Cannibal Family is so far the only official video the band have produced and is taken off their album "Shout With The Devil" which is also worth a write-up on here sometime.

I rate the band as being ideal for fans of of Imelda May or even Demented-Are-Go but you may have you own ideas. Either way, watch the video and see what you think!

Follow The Band:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Wolfgangs/191487380890799

Buy the album at Amazon

Bad Pollyanna - Hollow

"An experiment reminiscent of The Bride of Frankenstein."

The much anticipated Monstrous Child is a concept album about a young woman kidnapped and being used by a mad scientist in an experiment reminiscent of “The Bride of Frankenstein.”

 If you have not heard the band yet you are missing out so here is their official music video for Hollow which captures the whole essence of Monstrous Child in one short film.

Check out their site and order the album:
http://www.badpollyanna.com

Follow the band:
https://twitter.com/Badpollyanna
https://www.facebook.com/badpollyanna

Dead Thing by Andrew Hawnt (2011)

“Painting The Town Red!”

 Cover art by Richard Woollatt

The story centers around the actions of an otherworldly entity, a demon which survives and grows by inhabiting human hosts. Our major protagonist is Kevin, a young man whose days are numbered by Cystic Fibrosis. After a short encounter with the fiend he finds himself assisting a team of paranormal investigators in a desperate race to save his estranged lover Julie from becoming the creature’s final host.

While the supernatural action is incredibly graphic and extreme the brief episodes of normality are amazingly true to life. Andrew Hawnt clearly has a good grasp of his characters in their everyday lives with their pet hates, daily routines and waking thoughts. These scenes of the mundane serve to make the scenes of the macabre surprisingly believable. The main characters are realistic, intelligent and sympathetic people whose world is torn apart by a foe that you genuinely want them to defeat. In true Tech-Noir fashion much of the action takes place in the seedy world of clubland, where violence and panic are easier to camouflage into a backdrop of leisurely excess.

All in all Dead Thing is a fairly short read but it’s impact is hard. At Kindle price it is certainly worth buying just to try something a little different. I look forward to reading (and hopefully reviewing) the sequel.

Buy it at Amazon

Follow the author:
http://andrewhawnt.blogspot.co.uk/

The Hero Gotham Deserves

"Just Put This On The Damn Screen Already!"

Okay so this is a couple of years old now and I don't know how I missed it at the time but I have just been watching part 1 of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns on Amazon and it strikes me how we have never got the Batman movie we actually deserve.  This animated action-thriller is probably the best version of Batman I have ever watched on the screen.  I read the original by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson a few years back and liked the story (it's heralded as one of the best stories ever).  I never knew how well it would transfer onto the screen until now.

Batman has had a varied history on screen ranging from darkly gritty to downright ridiculous over the years.  We've never really had a definitive Batman in the movies because there simply isn't one.  Each writer either at DC Comics or in Hollywood has their own take on the caped crusader.  This is probably one of the factors in his longevity.  

However I would argue that having your own take on something does not have to mean presenting us with yet another origin story.  We are constantly bombarded with cinema reboots at the moment.  Having to see how Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Hulk and even Superman started yet again just because someone else had their own take on the story is getting downright boring!

We already know who Spider-Man is.  We already know who Superman is.  Everyone with a TV knows who Batman is!  Even if you're not a comic geek I'm sure you know at least enough to get you through a two hour movie.  More to the point these characters have been starring in creative and original printed stories each week for generations now.  Could we please see a movie about one of them at some point?

There are plenty of writers, reviewers and Bloggers who feel the same way.  My eyes were opened to origin overload on Andrew Hawnt's blog back in 2011 and later in 2014 with his comments on The Amazing Spiderman and Fantastic Four, two franchise re-imaginings that had the chance to break the mold and didn't dare  There are plenty more out there but you get the idea.  With yet another Batman reboot on it's way I'm holding out hope that Ben Affleck will get to so something other than just becoming Batman for the entire first half of the movie.


This is where The Dark Knight Returns comes in.  Here is a story that assumes the viewer knows who the Batman is and gets on with telling us the story in hand.  We're taken to a Gotham city some years in the future.  Batman has not been sighted for ten years.  Once again crime is spiraling out of control as a new criminal movement known as The Mutants attack indiscriminately and people are scared to walk the streets at night.

Bruce Wayne, now well into his fifties, dons the cape once again and takes the fight to them.  His reappearance provokes the return of the Joker, the birth of a vigilante army and also inspires a determined teenage girl to join the fight as Robin.


This film is almost a frame-by-frame recreation of Miller's Masterpiece.  It pulls no punches.  The Joker guns down innocent people, torments an aged Selina Kyle and almost kills Batman in a vicious knife attack.  Batman himself is the very definition of dark.  He breaks bones and beats criminals into a bloody pulp.  These aged versions of the characters are more brutal than ever.  They know their time is coming to an end.  They know they have little left to lose.

So back to the titular point of the article.  This is the hero Gotham deserves.  This is the hero we as viewers deserve to see.  This is the story we deserve to see.  The Nolan trilogy (cool as it was) drew many influences from The Dark Knight Returns.  Dawn Of Justice has obviously stolen the idea of an epic Batman/Superman fight from The Dark Knight Returns.

How about someone just swallows it down and makes The Dark Knight Returns?


Mask Of The Phantasm.  SubZero.  The Dark Knight Returns.  Son Of Batman. Assault On Arkham.  I could go on.  Animation studios are bringing some of the true classics to our screens.  But every time there is a live action movie it becomes another by-the-numbers origin story where each director/producer arrogantly wants to plaster "their take" on Batman all over our screens

Maybe I'm right or maybe I'm wrong.  At the end of the day it's still about a grown man that runs around dressed as a giant bat.

Wrestling - it just got awesome again!

"The big John Cena push just wasn't doing it for me"

 

Okay, to go back to the early 2000's I was literally obsessed with wrestling, with The Undertaker being top of my list.  Around 2006/2007 it just stopped captivating me. 

I'm not sure if I had gotten tired of seeing the same people paraded out each week or perhaps the big John Cena push just wasn't doing it for me.

Every time anyone at work or in the pub mentioned anything to do with WWE it just seemed they were either running low on ideas or just losing the plot.  Bizarre and often distasteful storylines were being pushed, none of the new superstars seemed interesting.  I'm not sure if it was just me being jaded or whether Vince McMahon and his board had flipped.

I wondered if a lack of competition was the problem.  The famous Attitude Era came about because WCW was killing the ratings with Nitro.  Now that WWE had bought out ECW and WCW perhaps they were lacking the motivation. 

TNA seemed very interesting at first.  They had a big reputation for pushing new wrestling and new ideas.  Sadly as they started to adopt more and more ex-WWE wrestlers they started the terrible formula of pushing all of the known faces to the top and relegating their TNA athletes to mid-carders or even jobbers.

"Pushing all of the known faces to the top"

It wasn't until 2015 when I even started talking about wrestling again.  I heard that The Undertaker had finally lost his winning Wrestlemania streak to Brock Lesnar.  It left me a little conflicted.  The Undertaker was always my favourite but he is older now and I don't like seeing the guy reduced to being wheeled out once or twice a year at pay-per-views.  Either way it raised my interest in the sport again and it was bold to change what had become a very old Wrestlemania tradition.

 "Getting the job done rather well"

So I borrowed Summerslam 2014 from a friend, who told me this was what got him back into WWE again and I can see why.  Vince seems to have retreated to the boardrooms and in his place we have the team of Stephanie McMahon and Triple H, known as The Authority (authoritah!) and getting the job done rather well.  The WWE feels fresher with the Hemsley-McMahon couple running the show.  Triple H is a ring veteran.  He knows what works and what doesn't.  Stephanie has inherited the McMahon intelligence but she is not her father and her ideals are less tainted.  They are pushing younger and sometimes even smaller athletes because of the charisma and favour with the crowd.  Vince's comic-book physique obsession has lead to some very bland wrestlers being pushed in the past.  The show is only as good as the performers and finally I feel they have got that back.

"The new face of fear"

From my own personal experience we have awesome talent in the form of the cocky Seth Rollins,  the powerhouse Cesaro and the inspiring Daniel Bryan.  We also have the new face of fear with the merciless Bray Wyatt, a man who (like the Undertaker) was brought in as a heel but is so captivating that he is already a fan favourite.

It's not just for the guys of course.  The women's division has been boasting the charismatic Bella Twins, the amazingly talented AJ Lee (sadly retired however since I watched Summerslam) and the absolutely awesome Paige, the screaming raven-haired talent from England.

"Screaming raven-haired talent from England"

Well there you have it.  I've watched a further three PPV events since then and I'm happy to say I genuinely like WWE right now.  Yes, Cena is still their baby-face but he obviously works hard and he has become more impressive.  Undertaker has recently appeared again but that's not really what I tune in for anymore.  Bray Wyatt fills the evil slot now.  As much as I love and respect Mark Calaway, Steve Austin and Dwayne Johnson I feel they need to move aside now and let the next generation make their own era.  So far they've proven to me that they have what it takes.

Anyway, get in touch with any opinions you might have on the subject and check in again soon because when it comes down to it my life is basically good-ish!

All images and names are respectfully used with the sole purpose of promoting their respective brands.  This is a non-profit site.

Welcome To My World!

Welcome to Sean's World and thanks for stopping by.  The aim of this blog is really just to share awesome stuff with whoever wants to read it. 

I've ran New-Soundwave for a couple of years and more recently Dungeon-Gamer but those are very specialist sites.  This really is just a blog as the term origially intended.

Anyway, pop in and have a read about some of the movies, TV shows and games I've been trying out because basically my life is good-ish.

Sean Crossey