I got in to Cursive about four of five years ago after the release of their album Happy Hollow which is one of my favorite albums of last decade.   They followed up with the extremely tight and focused album Mama, I’m Swollen in 2009, which made me a life-long fan.  I’m not a big fan of punk, or post-punk music, but Cursive is one of those bands that had a foot firmly rooted in punk rock and evolved into something else.  They become more of a prog-rock/punk outfit much like one of my favorite bands …and You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, who else dove into raging and intelligent concept albums within that genre.

Their new album I Am Gemini follows in the same vein as their three previous albums.  Dissonant chords with alternating screeching vocals and whispers, all within the scope of a concept album.  Cursive delves hard into the concept of this album which involves two twin brothers separated at birth, one good and one evil, and their journey as they try to re-unite.  The album then has a cast of characters that come and go along the course of that journey.   It plays like the soundtrack to Dante’s Inferno and Chuck Palahniuk’s new novel Damned. It’s an epic idea for an album, and those that know me know how much I lovvvveeee me a concept album.

The problem is that Cursive get’s too involved with telling this epic story, and not making epic music to go along with it.  Mama I’m Swollen, The Ugly Organ and of course their best album Happy Hollow also were epic in scope, but they had a lot more of what I Am Gemini doesn’t have…great songs.  Now don’t get me wrong, songs like Drunken Birds, The Cat and Mouse, and A Birthday Bash (the best track on the album) are close to some of their best previous efforts, but that’s as far as they get.

If you’ve never heard of Cursive and are a fan of prog/rock influenced post punk, then by all means check out their past albums I’ve mentioned here before you even think about delving in to this, or check out Trail of Dead’s Source Tags and Codes or Worlds Apart if you’re in to that post-punk prog genre.   I can appreciate what they’re trying to do here, but I can’t think of any reason to listen to this album unless you’re a hard-core Cursive fan, and even then it’s a little high-brow and pretentious.  I’m hoping this is an album that they needed to get out of their system in order to get back to what they do best.

Grade:  C

A lot of hype has been placed on the new Sleigh Bells album, Reign of Terror.  The duo’s debut Treats was one of my favorite albums of 2010, taking me by surprise with their overdriven 80′s guitar sounds, and anthemic cheerleader chants.  It took me a while to get in to, understand, and appreciate the genius of that album, and attempt to understand where the band was coming from.

There’s something very compelling about listening to singer Alexis Krauss’s sublime bubble gum pop vocals, over shredding metal riffs that we haven’t really heard before.  The closest band that comes near to them might be Crystal Castles, but they’re coming from a much more electronic, dub oriented sound.

Reign of Terror sounds a lot poppier than Treats, which was written solely by guitarist Derek Miller, and that gives it a lot more space to work with.  The core of their sound is unchanged though.  They’re not trying to re-write themselves two albums in, and thank god for that.  To many bands at this stage in their career think; “This is it! Now we have more money to play with, more access to equipment and producers. Let’s make it HUGE!”  9 times out of 10 this would be the wrong answer.  Sleigh Bells gets it right.

The album sounds more cohesive as a whole and is stock piled with more songs that reach the epic pulse-pounding chorus of Kids and Treats from their debut.  Just listen to songs like Demons and Comeback Kid and you’ll hear what I’m talking about.   Then there are songs like Crush and End of the Line which sound like tormented Debbie Gibson or Go-Go’s songs.  One of the high watermarks of the album is a song called Never Say Die which is trance-like, reaching Massive Attack trip-hop status.  They’re playing around in a lot of genres and that’s what really makes the album enjoyable all the way through.

Reign of Terror isn’t much different from Treats, but it’s just different enough in all of the right places, and works a lot better from start to finish.  It’s an intelligent next step for Sleigh Bells and it’s a step in the right direction for music right now, which I think is on the cusp of a downward slide.  This year has been one of the weakest years in memory for releases so far, and that’s why this album sounds so sweet to the ears.

Grade: A-

I could watch Liam Neeson do just about anything.  Running around killing people and things is at the top of my list of things that I like to watch him do.  He’s an expert at this in Taken, which was way more enjoyable to watch then I thought, and he’s ok at it in Unknown, and in The Grey?…well lett’s just say there’s not a lot of killing but a lot of soul-searching and boring exposition that goes along with him and a motley gang of Alaskan workers, that go down in a plane crash.

Neeson plays John Ottway, a sniper whos job it is to kill wolves from attacking an Alaskan oil drilling team.  The film opens with flashback sequences of Neeson remembering his time with a wife or former lover, while clutching the remnants of a letter.  Ottway is headed home with the rest of the crew, but you can tell he is a deeply troubled man, and is in someway haunted by these images of the mysterious woman.

He and the crew of about thirty or so board the plane, but while it is in flight something goes terribly wrong and the plane crashes, leaving the majority of the passengers dead.  Only about seven of them survived the crash, but they are left in the middle of nowhere to find a way to survive the elements, and whatever else is waiting out there for them.  The men quickly realize that no help will be coming to save them.   There is little hope for the surviving men, but they will do anything in their power to survive and find someone to help them.

Now this may sound a lot like another film, and true story, Alive, from director Frank Marshall in 1993.  That film told the true story of a crew who survived a crash in the Andes mountains, and had to survive by consuming the flesh of the dead that surrounded them.  The Grey sounds a lot like the film, because it is a lot like the film.  At one point one of the characters even remarks, “I hope we don’t have to start eating each other like they did in that movie with the guy from Training Day.

The one major plot line that is different in The Grey, and really the only thing holding it together, is that the men must fight off the wolves that are preying on them, waiting for them to get weak so they can attack.  They continue to journey south in the hopes of finding someone, or anything to help them, but the wolves soon begin picking them off, not to mention the blistering cold.

Neeson is the leader of this pack, because his job is to kill these creatures, and in killing them he obviously knows all about them.  I love a good film about man vs. nature and its surroundings.  2010′s 127 Hours is a perfect example of how well a film can tell that story.  The Grey, unfortunately, gets bogged down by a lot of slow story-telling and periods of time that had me yawning and looking at my watch.  I felt the film would have been a lot more entertaining, and enlightening, if Ottway was the only one to survive the crash.  Only a man and his thoughts vs. the wild.  It seems that he has to carry the rest of the crew with him in order to survive.  Neeson plays such a complex character that I wanted to know everything that was going on in his mind, especially with this mysterious backdrop of a story surrounding the woman he sees in his dreams.

There are some really riveting parts to The Grey but overall the film just feels stuffy and sloppy, and wayyyyyy to long.  Neeson is great as always but even he has a hard time holding this together.

Grade: C

“Someone’s in my fruittttt celllarrrrrr.”  Evil Dead II is one of the greatest horror films ever made.  I also think it’s one of the greatest films ever made, as I included it as #101 on my 101 greatest films of all time list.  2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the classic film, and with it an updated Blu-Ray release with loads of extras on it.  Many of the extras are found on previous deluxe DVD releases, but none the less this is a must have for all blu-ray owners.  I found this at Best Buy for a staggering $5.99.  Yes $5.99!  I almost felt bad at purchasing it for such a price.  I greedily grabbed a copy and held it tight to my chest, looking around waiting for someone in a blue shirt to tackle me immediately and scream, ‘Price Check!!’.

The first time I saw Evil Dead II was probably around 1993 or 1994.  By then the film had official gained cult status and I felt like an outsider in the horror film genre for not seeing it.  ”What do you mean you haven’t seen Evil Dead II yet?”  I went down to the local Roadrunner video store, and after numerous attempts of the film being rented out, finally found a beautiful VHS copy in a white clam shell case.  Finally!  I didn’t know what to expect.  Was I going to be scared witless?  Would my brain actual explode from what I was about to see?  I didn’t know what I was in for, just that I had to see this.

Evil Dead II is more than just a horror film.  It’s the first film I can remember that straddled the line of both horror and comedy.  I had never seen anything like it, and to this day futile attempts have been made to duplicate it.  I’m supposed to be terrified, but for some reason I feel like I’m watching a Three Stooges episode as well.  Huh, weird.  What am I supposed to do with this?

Here was the first ‘real’ anti-hero I could connect with, Ash Williams, the hero of that terrifying abandoned cabin in the woods.  Here was someone I could connect with.  This was my character.  To this day I have an Ash bobble-head doll on my desk reminding me to shop smart, shop S-Mart and be wary of his boomstick (yes I know these are quotes from Army of Darkness, fear not continuity junkies).   Long ago I swore that if I ever had a son his name would be Ash, and he would save us all from the horror of the deadites. B-movie star Bruce Campbell pours so much into Ash that he become a real life hero of mine.  He has the ability to transfer that dynamic past the screen, and make me interested in him as a human being and actor.  I mean who doesn’t like Brisco County Jr., Bubba Ho-tep, and his genius work in Waxwork II: Lost in Time?

Director Sam Raimi never intended to make the sequel to his debut The Evil Dead, instead he went on to make Crimewave and expected it to be a huge hit, but fortunately for us it wasn’t. Horror godfather Dino De Laurentis was talked in to producing the sequel from none other then Stephen King, who was a gigantic fan of the film.  De Laurentis agreed after seeing that The Evil Dead put up some pretty good box office numbers, after being made for virtually peanuts.  The film grew steam off of critics such as Roger Ebert praising it.  It eventually reached Gold status in the hearts and minds of all cult film junkies.  To this day my friend Mark and I pass back Evil Dead quotes like we are saying hello to each other.

Raimi went on to direct the hugely successful Spider-Man trilogy of course, and Bruce Campbell has stayed the course of his B-movie stardom, but Evil Dead II was that turning point for both of them.  And yes that’s correct, if you ‘haven’t seen Evil Dead II yet, you should be shot and fed to the deadites, with your remaining body parts buried in the back-yard, only to re-animate and become an evil version of yourself.  Classic in every way.

Grade: A+