Category Archives: books

(book) Adam Nevill – ‘The Vessel’

Those who read this webzine from its inception, know that Adam Nevill is one of my favorite newer generation horror writers. This is his latest work, a bit shorter than previous ones, but king of folk horror works his magic here too. The story evolves around Jess, young mother with daughter Izzy, who starts to work at old people vicarage tending to the older lady called Flo. Her ex husband Tony is around, but acts strangely and you dig that something really terrible happened between those two. As things go, Flo is in wheelchair, suffers from dementia and is at first look and ordinary old lady. But, at night, when Jess’ shift starts, strange things start to happen and Flo walks, wanders and is driven to the nearby pond and all other inhabitants around the vicarage are strange too. Jess starts to suspect that something is at play, and scary and eerie things start to happen. Not to discover just all, so not to spoil your reading of this beauty, you will see that folk horror is in fact so beautiful and scary read because it can happen everywhere and to everyone of us, old gods and beliefs are still out there before plague called christianity soiled this earth and forced upon us their new deity stolen and based upon old beliefs. Now I digress. Well, there is not too much gore in this one, but tension builds as in all Nevill’s works from page to page making it hard to put down page turner. I read all of his books except ‘Cunning Folk’ until now, but I plan to read this one too and of course you will read my review here!

(book) Greg Prato – ‘Survival Of The Fittest: Heavy Metal In The 1990’s’

This almost six hundred pages behemoth was a pleasure to read at most times, although there are couple of to me boring themes in there through couple of chapters. As the title says, the book revolves around alleged death of metal due to grunge explosion early in the nineties, which was not true at all and it is explained in this book why that’s not true and I totally agree with that. There is an interesting divide of parts in this book, like a live show of some sorts, parts being: Load In, Soundcheck, Opener, Headliner, Encore, After Party and Load Out. Something that every musician knows about if he toured and played live gigs. Foreword is written by none other than Rex Brown, bass player of legendary Pantera. The concept of chapters is that metal, let’s call them celebrities namely for example Phil Anselmo, Joe Elliot, Devin Townsend, Dez Fafara, Dani Filth, Kirk Windstein, John Christ and many others talk about nu metal, industrial metal, vocalists leaving legendary bands and returning back, their own albums and how they were conceived in idea and recording and there are lots of anecdotes in this book, like in great documentary movie which is what makes me love this book. But, there are also couple of too long chapters like on prog metal or nu metal that are not my personal tastes so it was quite boring for me to read them, but I did it. So, this is good book full of information and anecdotes especially for us who grew up with these bands and albums in the nineties.

3,5/5

(strip) Dylan Dog br 195 – ‘Korak anđela’

Eto, stigao nam je i novi broj omiljenog mi stripa Dylan Doga kojeg skupljam već desetljećima. Broj 195 regularnog izdanja i pošto mi ove nove epizode u zadnje vrijeme nikako nisu ležale, ova je bila pravo osvježenje uz neke nedostatke. Početka epizode podsjećana jednu kultnu ranu epizodu ‘Noći punog mjeseca’ ako se sjećate bila je to druga ili treća epizoda ikada sa školom baleta u Schwarzwaldu i sestrama Blucher kao negativkama, svojevrsni hommage Argentovoj Suspirii. Takav sličan je početak i ove epizode kada dvije očajne učenice škole počine samoubojstvo, navodno zbog baletnog koraka ‘Let anđela buntovnika’ kojeg nisu u stanju savršeno napraviti kod stroge i čudne profesorice Wilson. Tu se ubacuje Dylan kada ga jedna od učenica zamoli da preuzme slučaj i otkrije vezu između baleta, SS-a, nacista, ratnih zločina i zla koje nikada ne prestaje. Nacisti i Dylan? Može! Iako je u nekoliko ranijih epizoda se već susretao s njima u raznim situacijama. I tako, sve u ovoj epizodi mi ide super, zanimljiva je, čak mi i inspektorica Rania u koju je Dylan potajno zaljubljen, a koja je zamijenila umirovljenog Blocha, ne ide toliko na živce koliko mi je išla. Kraj, odnosno zadnjih 20 ak stranica je toliko zbrzan, ne do kraja objašnjen, da je na neki način upropastio epizodu i smanjio svo ono uzbuđenje i sreću koju sam osjećao čitajući ovo. Zato samo 7/10