When drawing goes wrong pt1

You may have seen those worst album cover lists going round on all the other, slightly less cool websites? Well I have been collecting my own bad album artwork for some time now and would like to present my findings in the first of not so often series. Despite a lot of these being anatomically incorrect I believe there is a certain charm present.

Its pretty easy to poke fun at metal art like this. Lets move on.

Bitches Sin showing a complete lack of respect for art history.

What makes this one so bad is the look of puzzlement on the barbarian's face. Or maybe its the sudden realisation of the situation he's in. Or the terrible font choice.

I spent 5 years at art college. The first lesson they ever taught us was that smudging is no substitute for shading. Druid's artist buddy obviously never attended art college.

I always feel bad about ragging on Pantera ( which I often do) but then I think of this cover and the feeling passes.

More recently we have this monstrosity. You would think with the obvious money this band have available for artwork and design they would try and avoid the "Amiga 500 game artwork" vibe the artist seemed to be going for.

I love Vision Of Disorder. But this cover still blows to this day. I have tried to work out what the theme was or how it links with the music. Always drawn a blank.

I sort of like this one. I don't know if its the homeless, crackhead criminal with his tattered shirt or the young lady enjoying the sunset unawares that does it for me.

This album actually contains some pretty sweet, pump up, montage-esque, Miami Vice jams. Sadly I don't know anyone that would want Russ Ballard leaping at them in 3D or even in real life. You didn't even get 3D glasses with it.

I can just imagine the brief for this one "The devil emerging from his cave/lava pit and trying to grab a flying horse." Pretty specific and I am pretty sure that's what they got by the look of this. This is actually my desktop background now.

Obviously there is nothing slightly wimpy about this cover other than the ink started running out as they where finishing the nude dude's torso shading.

All that is missing are the obvious lines on the A4 paper it was drawn on.

I had this written of as some terrible 7th generation nu-metal band going of this cover. Sadly, during this research I found out its a German Avenged Sevenfold covers band. I would like to think they have some concept of why a Werewolf is dressed like one of The Blues Brothers and running along the highway in the rain. But I really doubt that.

What makes this bad is the fact its got the Waking The Cadaver font at the top. Otherwise this would be a pretty sweet image. But the sudden association with terrible gore/slam/death malarky means it is relegated to bad artwork corner

Every one's favourite industrial elf surely knew this was a stinker from the get go. I don't know if this has any relation the the film/TV series of the same name or why he has chosen to show himself floating with a glowing aura. Completely unrelated, I remember hearing a story about Mortiis trying to hail a cab outside his record companies office when this album was out. They wouldn't stop so he was forced to walk the streets in full costume.

TO BE CONTINUED......

A MESSAGE TO POST-DORITO AMERICA

ATTENTION:

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FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC!


Obligatory:


Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go rescue the President's daughter... FROM SPACE PRISON!

Naked Lunch

I'm not a statistician, but based on the crude, haphazard and half-assed surveying that I've done, I'd be willing to guess that the average IllCon reader has some interest in William S. Burroughs and/or David Cronenberg. As far as my lazy research tells me, there is only one place where the two overlapped, 1991's Cronenberg directed film version of Naked Lunch. The director's early work in the 70's and 80's essentially founded a whole new way of looking at monster horror, namely in which the monster is within ourselves and hence, Burroughs seems a nice fit. Cronenberg has since branched out into new genres but the theme of internal transformation still runs through his work.

While it included many aspects of its titular source, the film Naked Lunch also included biographical material from Burroughs' life. Still, I don't think one necessarily has to be a fan of Burroughs' writing to appreciate the movie. As an exercise in oddity it can stand alone just fine. In truth however, despite my ascribed area of "expertise" here at IllCon I have no intention of talking about the film. I haven't seen it in over a decade. No, what I want to tell you about is the Naked Lunch soundtrack by Howard Shore. Shore got his start working with Cronenberg, and has scored almost all of the director's films (including Videodrome.) Obviously it's a partnership that works, and this Naked Lunch soundtrack is ample proof. Still, I'm not even here to talk to you about the soundtrack to Naked Lunch, merely to point out that it is awesome and encourage you to listen.

Buy yourself some Naked Lunch

Lunch

Lest you think that Howard Shore is some kind of one director pony however I offer this other awesome selection. In addition to the above, in the same year he scored the phenomenal  psychological crime/horror Silence of the Lambs for director Johnathan Demme. (He also did some Twilight ST's, but whatever, gotta pay the bills right?)

Buy Yourself some Silence of the Lambs

Silence

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VARIOUS ARTISTS - THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD SOUNDTRACK (1985)

To be honest, I'm not really a huge fan of any one band on the Return of The Living Dead OST (not even Roky Erickson--please direct your indignant hate mail to illogicalcontraption@yahoo.com), butt ass a hole, the whole thing just WORKS, probably just because of all the fond memories I have personally attached to this beyond-stellar 1985 masterpiece of a film. I mean, zombie movies just don't get much better than this. Real talk.



Track list:

1. Surfin' Dead - The Cramps
2. Partytime (Zombie Version) - 45 Grave
3. Nothing For You - TSOL
4. Eyes Without A Face - The Flesheaters
5. Burn The Flames - Roky Erickson
6. Dead Beat Dance - The Damned
7. Take A Walk - Tall Boys
8. Love Under Will - The Jet Black Berries
9. Tonight (We'll Make Love Until We Die) - SSQ
10. Trash's Theme - SSQ


Download HERE
Purchase HERE

*Extended version with dialogue snippets and whatnot over at Digital Meltdown

RIGOR MORTIS - SELF-TITLED (1988)

Aren't you guys glad it's finally uncool to like thrash metal again? Jeez, that took FOREVER.
Anyhow, good thrash transcends trendiness or fashion, and great thrash bands (such as Texas' own Rigor Mortis) never die, "retro" revivals be damned. Bear in mind: this is not the short-lived "Immolation" Rigor Mortis, rather it is the excellent, long-running, riff-driven purveyor of sick and twisted horror-thrash we've all grown to know and love lo these past two-and-a-half decades. A legacy of face-melting shreddification indeed. Everything about this band is fucking great, but the axemanship, man, THE AXEMANSHIP.

Mind-blowing.

Fun Fact: Rigor Mortis' wacky jam "Foaming At The Mouth" appears on the soundtrack to the 1993 Hulk Hogan star vehicle Mr. Nanny, a movie which stands, to this day, as the zenith of all American filmmaking. Observe:



Download HERE
Purchase HERE

Metallum/Last.FM

PS Cobras is on vacation til the middle of next week to celebrate the 235th birthday of this great nation in the only manner that it truly should be celebrated--by discharging firearms and igniting explosives in a remote rural location. Peace out, Turds.

America: FUCK YEAH.

XTRO-ORDINARY

"Garbage is the operative word."

Siskel & Ebert... Man, what a couple of fun-hating buttholes. Case in point: they're gonna bag on XTRO? Fucking XTRO?!!? "Mean-spirited"? "Abysmal"? "Garbage"? You're lucky you're fucking dead, Gene Siskel, or else Cobras would have one Hell of a score to settle with you.
For my sci-fi/horror dollar, it just doesn't get any better than this 1983 masterpiece, written and directed by British helmsman Harry Bromley Davenport. Davenport has rarely ventured outside the XTRO franchise for the remainder of his film career, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you ask. I figured we're loooong overdue for an XTRO post on IllCon, after all, can any of you think of a film more pertinent to I.C interests? XTRO has it all: a super-low budget, awesome special effects, good ideas, humor (both intentional and unintentional), aliens, shitloads of gore and arterial spray, an ultra-spacey electronic soundtrack, a dude eating raw snake eggs, and, best of all, a woman giving very graphic birth to a full-grown man.


"XTRO! BEARING POWERS OF BLACK MAGIC FROM OUTER SPACE!"

XTRO is far more than just your run-of-the-mill 'alien intruder' genre flick, it does of course begin with your standard spaceship crash but spins out of control into something far more surreal rather quickly. By the end of the film, it has morphed into some sort of Satanic mashup between Alien, House By The Cemetary, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, and Toy Story (no, really), causing one to invariably wonder: what the fuck was Harry Bromley Davenport smoking, and why didn't he share?
In reality, it's probably been 5 years or more since I've seen this movie, but the highlights are burned into my brain with an eerie permanence--which I guess is the primary goal of a shocksploitation film like as this one. Badmovies.org has quoted Davenport in confirmation as such: "(I) set out to do the most disgusting things that we could get away with. And if I'd had it my way, they would have been more disgusting." He also called the film an "extraordinary mess" and "rubbish".


XTRO is currently scored as "20% fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes (2% lower than Sucker Punch), which I find totally understandable considering the average person's shitty taste in movies. This movie just ISN'T FOR 99% of the population. But c'mon... How could you possibly take issue with a scene like this?:



As always, I guess we need to take a moment to discuss the (mostly inconsequential) plot. There's a dad, and a kid, and a wife, then some gratuitous boobie shots and stuff, then a bunch of alien-murder, and cocoons, and a midget clown, and a death-by-random-panther scene... Wait, what?

Let's start over. We start with the aforementioned spacecraft crashing in a swamp somewhere in Britain, and it is eventually revealed that said spacecraft formerly housed a really creepy, gooey alien that looks suspiciously like a dude on all fours with a backwards mask on. Said alien proceeds to spirit away the aforementioned Father, possessing his body and then disappearing for three full years.

Upon Daddy's re-appearance on the Family Scene, things start to get pretty goofy. Mom's pissed that he bailed for all that time, and it is then exposed that she has since taken up with a dorky new fella who in turn harbors a deep mistrust of the magically-reappeared Dad. Of course, we all know he's possessed by an alien, so it's no surprise when he starts doing zany shit like sucking on his son's neck, or chowing down on raw snake eggs, or, y'know, impregnating random cottage-dwelling women of the British countryside with Martian embryos. Oh yeah, and killing people.


As a result of his old man's neck-sucking (apparently aliens reproduce a la vampire), the Youngster (Sam) starts doing some pretty wacky shit too, like killing his neighbor and bringing a bunch of his toys to life (hence the Toy Story reference and also, for some reason, the midget clown), and by the time Mom and Dorky Boyfriend catch on to what's happening, the proverbial "fit" has alreready hit the equally-proverbial "shan".
This movie just gets weirder and weirder and weirder as it progresses. Trust me.

I'm sure that at this point you guys are all super-pumped on XTRO, and hankering for its respective sequels. Well, I regret to inform you that its 1991 sequel XTRO 2: The Second Encounter, starring Airwolf star Jan Michael Vincent (right), is a big old boring pile of shit (in fact I ranked it among the worst sequels of all time way back here), and its second sequel, 1995's XTRO 3: Watch The Skies, ain't much better. So that sucks.
You can't win 'em all, I guess. But you can still try: Last year, Harry Bromley Davenport announced plans to begin production on XTRO 4, and although no release date has been set as of yet, I think it's safe to assume that it will at least be.... Interesting?
Who knows? Garbage is the operative word.


No.


No.

Yes.

Watch it on YouTube/Get it on Netflix/Buy VHS/Buy DVD/Ride a rollercoaster with The Rock.

PS I would literally give birth to a full-grown man out of my butthole for a copy of the XTRO OST. Any help?

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!

Holy shit, during the course of my research for this post, I fucking accidentally found it. Original soundtrack by XTRO auteur Harry Bromley Davenport himself! I've seriously been looking for this sucker for years--it is amazing stuff, especially if you're into that whole psychedelic/sci-fi Moog shit that Tomita and Carlos do so well. Which I am.

Joy!

BLACK MAGIC FROM SPACE