Tag Archives: Reviews

The Devil Next Door:You never know if your neighbour is a war criminal.

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I recently watched the five part series The Devil Next Door. It is a documentary about the arrest and prosectution of US citizen of Ukrainian descent John Demjanjuk for alleged war crimes. During WWII, Demjanjuk was an operator in gas chambers of infamous death camp Treblinka, called Ivan The Terrible by the inmates. He used to stab with his sword people on their way to death in gas chambers and cut off their body parts to make their deaths even more horrible. He worked in Ford factory in America, but was extradized to Israel to be processed there for his crimes. He defended himself that he was not that man, that he was framed for his Ukrainian anti Soviet movement sentiments. The crucial and almost only proof besides testimonies of the survivors was a photograph from the old ss identity card. This documentary series is heavy, heartbreaking when seeing actual survivors of Treblinka and other death camps stating their testimonies at the court in Israel. It is also a story of morality, ethics, how far could you sacrifice your ideals for money and what would you do for survival. Me personally wasn´t sure that the guy was Ivan The Terrible indeed, but as the series progressed and finished, now I am sure that the guy was a war criminal, whether that guy or some other ss camp killer it is not so important. Does war crime ever ends being important issue? Never! I have many old people in my neighbourhood, I often caught myself thinking while watching this series, how much do I know them? Maybe that smiling, old nice man was indeed a beast in human form killing thousands couple of decades ago. This is not light to watch, but it is important issue, never being out of importance.

(record review) Stray From The Path-Internal Atomics(UNFD)

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Long Island˙s Stray From The Path released new album with UNFD. These guys worked hard for over ten years to become a respected well known name in the modern hardcore scene and this new album is a proof of their persistence, zeal and willingness to bring their message to the crowd. The ten new songs are angry, in your face testament to the rotteness of today˙s world and problems that we need to change fast. Stray From The Path created their own sound with some obvious RATM influences but took it to the higher level with rap influenced angry shouted and screamed vocals, heavy hardcore and deep metalic riffs and political and social sensitive lyrics. This album is a great modern hardcore album with songs Second Death and Beneath The Surface being highlights for me personally, but album as a whole is a very strong record indeed!

8/10

(review) Booze & Glory-Hurricane

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At, last here is the new Booze & Glory album. After the tumult with recent years line-up change and taking another road with the band and music direction of the newer material, here is the first full length of the new line-up marking ten year anniversary of the band. Many fans turned their backs because the band no longer sounds the same as before, no longer playing skinhead streetpunk, but they rather chose a more melodic and many say they jumped on skatepunk bandwagon creating some sort of bastard child of streetpunk oi, pop punk and skatepunk. I like this album, but it has one problem, the first half of the album has much stronger and greater songs than the second half. Never Again, Live It Up, Ten Years, Ticking Bombs, The Guv´nor are fantastic and I really enjoyed the record until the second half. There are couple of songs that are not so strong there like Three Points, sorry but I think that many punk bands choose to write songs about West Ham United because it is hit to do so. Also, Elton John´s I´m Still Standing is rather boring cover, plus Goodbye and Darkest Nights that pass you by without notice, decent songs, but nothing special. My Heart Is Burning has superb guitar main melody riff, but there is no memorable anthemic chorus, so I always feel that this song is missing something. I know that guys in the band have special relationship to the song Too Soon, but I gave it a chance, believe me, ten times, but it is just too cheesy pop ballad for me. Much respect to the dead and I don´t mean to slander anyone, but this song just doesn´t work for me. So, this fifth album could have been superb record, but it is only decent one.