Czech or Czechoslovakian cinematography is one of the mightiest in mid Europe, with so many great movies, directors and stories coming out through the history and decades of movie making. I ran into this one the other day, so it was time for me to see it. This movie, directed by Otakar Vavra, based on the novel by Vaclav Kaplicky is a daring and at moments disturbing ode to witch hunting histeria in black and white.
The story revolves around an inquisitor Boblig who is summoned to a town to investigate alleged witches and with time he becomes more and more obssessed with extermination and torturing of innocent women. Some of the noble town folks try to confront him and resist, but will it be enough to stop the overall madness? What I must say, that this movie left a remarkable impact on me. There is a lot of nudity and naked female bodies in this one for a time it was made, back behind the iron curtain and communism was still ruling this land. Acting is superb, madness and histeria is depicted with precision and there are couple of really disturbing and sad scenes in the movie, knowing how many women were persecuted, tortured and executed with no reason in the 1600s when this movie takes place. The ending is quite poetic but dark as is overall atmosphere and vibe of this movie jewel of Euro cinematography. Go see this one!
Knight & Gallow are hailing from California and after releasing one single and demo this is their first full length opus. This one contains intro and eight songs. Knight & Gallow play a mixture of heavy metal done in old school style if I must compare it to some bands it would be a more nwobhm version of Cirith Ungol or little Manilla Road, but the trouble I have with these songs on the album is they sound all too similar and they just didn´t reach that my inner vibe and touched my metal heart in the way they were supposed to. Lyrically band is varied between Tolkien, vikings, crusades, gods of war and all other merry themes. There are three songs that stand out for me above rest of the material, those are Stormbringer´s Call, Blood Of Wolves and Black Swordsman with blast beat part and almost thrash power metal solo and melody. This is a decent debut, we will see what the future brings.
Wow! This is all I can say after I finished this 500+ pages monstrosity by Daniel Lake with a foreword by legendary Tom G.Warrior of Celtic Frost and Hellhammer fame. I always somehow held European black metal in higher worth and regard than American black metal scene, but now I understand how wrong I was. Leaning more into punk rock and hardcore back ground than its European counterparts, American bands and projects have managed to create their own identity and large quantity of originality not trying to sound like third grade clones of Darkthrone and Burzum, rather evolving and thus becoming hated by some black metal purists circles, but also becoming original in their diy and free spirit. This book covers it all in shape of articles and rich interviews, from old school masters Judas Iscariot, Absu, Von, across Inquisition, Deafheaven, Panopticon, Krieg, Leviathan, Xasthur and many, many others. This book is a worthy document of a scene and its worth cannot be grasped in one reading, so I am definitely going to have to read it once or twice more soon. Great book!
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 