Now, this band was refreshing to listen to. Smugly Ugly are from New Jersey area and this is their debut album. This one contains eight songs of interesting music. It all sometimes sounds like noise punk with Sonic Youth influences for example in ‘Smugly Ugly’. Also there are brass instruments like trumpet, trombone, saxophone and also keyboards delivering melodic favorites and hits like my favorite ‘One Last Chance’. But, that is not all, ‘Feeling Gr8’ delivers pop punk like it was played in early 2000s with all those bands like Blink 182 and similar came out with their best music. This is a short album but so varied and interesting to listen to that you just got to spin it one more time or two times in order two catch all what you missed.
Hospital is a Chinese horror movie directed and written by Chia-Lin Chu. It’s been a while since I have watched any Asian horror movies, so I decided to see this one, since I am a sucker for abandoned haunted hospitals and stories revolving around them. This one is about two women stricken with grief, one lost her husband in a routine operation in that hospital, another one lost her sister who was a nurse there and killed herself by jumping out of the window. They hire an Tao exorcist and his son to take them there to make them speak with the dead to get kind of closure. As things go in such movies, everything goes wrong and then interesting ghost haunted story turns into mixture of mindfuck psychological horror and haunted vengeful ghost story. Everything is done pretty naive, characters are plastic and you can not get into any of them and wish them to make it out. The twist at the end is already seen thousands of times and made it only worse. Ghosts are okay, there are one or two creepy situations that make your skin crawl, but in all, this is one of the not so good Asian horror movies I have watched and now I wish I chose something better, but next time.
Roots of Czech band Exitus go back to 1989 when Vladan Pražák and Víťa Ferenčák formed this band but disbanded in 1991. Now, thirty years later, with help of some new forces in the band, they released their opus containing twelve songs, one being a Pro-Pain cover. Exitus play that nineties old school thrash metal with one leg being in the eighties European school of thrash and one with some hardcore influences of early nineties, or maybe crossover even. Vocals are harsh and music is like running through a gauntlet of warriors who batter you with their metal gloves on your head and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Songs like ‘Final Solution(…of Existence)’, ‘World Error’ or ‘Apocalypse Never’ are sure to win you over for sure. Guitar work is chainsaw and brutal with some melodic hook here and there thrown in for good measure. I love Eastern European scene with so much good bands coming out and waiting to be discovered every day. This is fast, aggressive, groove, no holds barred thrash metal angry attack in your face.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 