2021 REVIEW - RECORDS

I didn’t get enough ‘new’ records for a conventional Top Ten this year, so I’ve broken my favourite records of 2021 into three sections. With WitTR’s newest commune-with-mother-nature ambient black metal opus really scratching an itch in the top spot. UN and Bongzilla channelled some big, miserable 2021 doom energy, while Darkthrone’s Eternal Hails was comfortably horrible and a return to form after their kind-of-forgettable last effort. On the synth-y end of things Chvrches continue to be one of my favourite bands and John Carpenter’s third volume of Lost Themes was no disappointment.

On the reissue front, Plazma X’s post-Chicken Bowels metal was spinning constantly for a good while, My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything lodged in my cranium for months and would not budge and the United Mutation lp on Radio Raheem was a thing of extreme beauty. Singaporean black metallers Xasthur proved to be a pleasantly evil surprise and they get bonus points for featuring their dog in their spooky forest pictures in the insert.

Due to either the pandemic, or the fact I live in my own little world, I was two years late to the party on a bunch of killer records. Blood Incantation and Tomb Mold really knocked my socks off with their cosmic death metal and illegibly green band logos. Could not stop playing either for ages and they helped me through the dull times.

Some honourable mentions must go to a couple of records that I really like, but do not yet own, so can’t really qualify for my list at the moment. Spectral Wound’s A Diabolical Thirst is a nasty, feral slice of raw black metal and I need the lp quite badly (thanks for the tip Flo!) the new Gauze release is a CD only and I don’t have it but it sounds great, if a little more methodical than we’ve come to expect. I’ve yet to pick up the new Rata Negra lp and I really dig Colombian punks Unidad Idealogica, both on La Vida Es Un Mus.

Top new records released in 2021

1. Wolves In The Throne Room - Primordial Arcana

2. Bongzilla - Weedsconsin

3. UN / Coltsblood split 12”

4. Chvrches - Screen Violence

5. Darkthrone - Eternal Hails

6. John Carpenter - Lost Themes III

7. Rudimentary Peni - Great War

8. Night Marchers - Live At Bar Pink

Top reissues / old stuff

1. UN - The Tomb Of All Things

2. Plazma X - White Shadow 1986-1989

3. MNK Project

4. Xasthur - Hidden Lore demo

5. My Bloody Valentine - Isn’t Anything

6. My Bloody Valentine - m b v

7. Lost Years - Black Waves

8. United Mutation - Dark Self Image

Great records from 2019 that I somehow only heard this year

1. Tomb Mold - Planetary Clairvoyance

2. Blood Incantation - Hidden History Of The Human Race

3. Xoth - Interdimensional Invocations

4. Best Coast - Always Tomorrow

FIREBITE (full review at Screen Realm)

Firebite is an Australian vampire series created by Warwick Thornton and Brendan Fletcher  which is streaming in Australia on AMC (via Amazon) from 16 December. It’s a unique spin on the vampire myth which takes the creatures out of their traditionally cold, dark environs and places them in the hot, bright outback sunshine.

Vampires were transported to Australia in the hold of colonial ships, brought over by the British to deal with the Indigenous population. But in the two centuries since, they have been kept at bay by a solitary band of fierce Aboriginal vampire hunters known as Blood Hunters. Tyson (Rob Collins) fights the local vampire population in the small mining town of Opal City. He trained to be a Blood Hunter but was forced to stop before his training was complete. With the help of his adoptive daughter Shanika (Shantae Barnes-Cowan) they keep the numbers under control.

Read the full review at Screen Realm:

https://www.screenrealm.com/firebite-series-review-amazon-prime-australia/

IMDB: Firebite

DUNE (full review at Screen Realm)

Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune is a science fiction classic, whose influence is felt throughout the genre and beyond. Fresh off the back of his own sci-fi masterpiece, the sublime Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve has proved to be the perfect choice to adapt it.

House Atreides, a powerful ruling house in the Imperium, is ordered by Emperor Shaddam IV to leave their homeworld, Caladan, and relocate to the desert planet Arrakis, otherwise known as Dune. The Atreides are to oversee the production of spice, the most valuable substance in the universe. The spice enables Guild Navigators to find a path through the stars and is thus, the key to space travel.

Arrakis’ population centres cover only a small portion of the surface, with the majority of the planet a deep, inhospitable desert occupied only by the indigenous Fremen and the mighty, leviathan sandworms. 

House Atreides inherits the stewardship of Arrakis from their sworn enemies, the brutal and merciless House Harkonnen. Led by the megalomaniacal Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), they have overseen spice production with an iron fist, brutalizing the local population. The Atreides, led by Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and their son Paul (Timothée Chalamet) travel to the desert world seeking an alliance with the Fremen, and to avoid the multitude of Harkonnen traps they expect to encounter.  

Read the full review at Screen Realm:

https://www.screenrealm.com/dune-movie-review-2021-denis-villeneuve/

IMDB: Dune

THE PROPOSITION (full article at The Guardian Australia)

The second feature film written by the musician Nick Cave is a grisly, sweat-stained tale of outback violence and colonial oppression that has lost none of its power in the 16 years since its release. Directed by John Hillcoat, The Proposition is awash with striking scenery and ugly truths about Australia.

After a fierce gunfight, outlaw Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) and his brother Mike (Richard Wilson) are captured by Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone). Although both brothers are former members of the notorious Burns gang, Stanley’s real target is their sadistic older sibling Arthur (Danny Huston), who is wanted for the brutal murder of a local family.

With no lead on Arthur, Stanley turns to more “inventive” methods, offering Charlie a proposition. He will release Charlie, while Mike will hang in nine days for the crimes of the Burns gang. But both will be pardoned if Charlie can locate and kill Arthur. Mike is naive and not able to mentally comprehend their situation, so Charlie feels he has no choice but to protect his younger brother and accept Stanley’s deal.

Read the full article at The Guardian Australia:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/dec/08/the-proposition-nick-caves-savage-outback-western-reveals-ugly-truths-about-australia

IMDB: The Proposition

MAD GOD (full review at Screen Realm)

Phil Tippett has been an integral part all your favourite movies. Contributing his unique visual effects talents to everything from Return of the Jedi, to Robocop, to Jurassic Park. With Mad God, a passion project thirty years in the making, Tippett reached into your brain when you were sick with the flu that time, and animated all those terrifying nightmares you had.

Mad God is a gobsmacking display of talent and brain fever that left me almost speechless. Dialogue and plot be damned! Mad God has neither! Instead, it is a collection of grotesque images and ugly nihilism. Characters hack lumps off each other and descend ever deeper into a horrific and unexplained netherworld.

Blending animated sequences with deliberate, stuttering live action, it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. It’s not hard to see why the head spinning intricacy of the set design and the crazed imagination in the creature’s forms took Tippett’s deranged genius three decades to compile.

Read the full review at Screen Realm:

https://www.screenrealm.com/mad-god-movie-review-phil-tippett-stop-motion-animation/

IMDB: Mad God

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