This webzine is full of Graham Masterton book reviews. The reason is that I love this horror author so much and I read really a lot of his novels, almost everything he wrote. Well, the time has come for ‘The Pariah’ to be read and grace the pages of this webzine. John Trenton lives in Granitehead, a little New England place near famous Salem, where all those witch trials took place and people were executed. John lost his wife Jane and unborn son in a tragic accident short while ago. But, Jane is not lost and somehow connects with John and talks to him through her scary apparitions. John has an antique store and buys a painting of long lost ship called ‘David Dark’ which apparently sunk in the waters near Granitehead. John realizes that he is not the only one who sees dead relatives in Granitehead and grisly deaths start to happen to those who see the dead. John realizes with help of local historians that there is something in the sunken ship which causes dead to rise and must try to stop it.
I can safely say that this one is one of Masterton’s best works I have read yet and I have read many believe me. This is constant chilling atmosphere, grey New England is a perfect place for horror to happen and finale is just epic and fighting the demon is something best I have read ever. John and other characters are fluidly written, there is no filler pages or boring parts that you read in order to get to the interesting ones again. No, this one is tour de force in horror novel. There are some really gory parts and there are some explicit sexual parts like we are used to with Masterton works. This is a mixture of gothic ghost story, demons, gore and walking dead. Just perfect!
Remark are hailing from Quebec, Canada and this is their debut full length album. This band started as an online project of two friends, namely Marco Gurtner – guitar and vocals plus Richard Cloutier – bass and drums. There are 15 songs in all on this one, I must say that I am pleased with how this album turned out. This is fast melodic, anthemic hardcore punk with great harmonies, vocal lines and good songwriting throughout the album, there are no fillers on this one. There are couple of really great melancholic melodies that reminded me of band from Serbia called Six Pack, like awesome song ‘The Process Of Learning’, the title song of the album. In other songs, music of Remark reminds me a bit of Bad Religion in their best era, nineties style Bad Religion, also Swedish No Fun At All and Ten Foot Pole. Lyrics are in three languages, English, French and German, so this is really great international little of a melodic punk jewel of a record. My other personal favorites are ‘Compass’, ‘Unser Land’ and ‘New Horizons’. This is one of the better albums I have listened to in last couple of weeks.
The Pond is also, as I can understand a one girl band from San Francisco. When describing the music, they use the term gay girl synth pop. In fact it is a mixture of synth pop and pop punk leaning more into synth pop side of things with fast tracks like ‘Rock In My Shoe’, being dancable and having such haunting melodies like ‘I Like U’. In all, this is a short one, five songs in no more than six minutes record with short and sweet pop punk/synth punk songs and eerie, at times haunting vocal melodies. This would sound average with guitars, but this way it sounds more interesting. This one is definitely not for your every day listening. Different, yet interesting and lasting just long enough not to get boring.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 