PETER HAINING—TERROR! A HISTORY OF HORROR ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE PULP MAGAZINES

  The pulp magazines were the launching pad of some of the cornerstone names in the horror, fantasy, and science fiction among other genres today. Their popularity relied heavily on illustrations, and like many publications,—including novels—they are indispensable and as decisive on the importance of publication to readers as they are an influence on their biases/preferences. Much less the same thing that has had certain dictations upon my reading habits/purchases over the years and looking forward to to depictions as a young-in to accompany long gone favourites. 

  This is a compilation of illustrations the author—Peter Haining—deems important to the horror and to an extent, fantasy pulp magazines—where some tended to cater but not limited to both—across the span of the 19th to 20th Century. Showcased are various artists and most are engravings as the printing press gained traction. Other styles of illustrations were later incorporated at length, replacing engravings. Some artists were impressive enough to be featured twice or more. It absolutely is an art lover's cherish. I had a copy from a library that had some pages plucked, and some missing sections that had been cut-out by some dumb fucking moron. Fucking retard wouldn't understand this might not be available in a hundred mile raduis. PoS!

  Here are some of The Mad Mane Machine's choice illustrations from the compilation. It's fantastic to have a new—old—great artist to uphold. That is when it resumes drawing.

 Experiments in the lost art of poisoning

 Steam-powered robot (cover)

Invaders from the infinite

 

 The bride of death

 

   Nor moon by night

Excellent cover by Hanes Boke

  Having book perusers serves as the prelude pictures with details about each illustration. Much more like Space Bestiary from GURPS, with its various artist perception of exo-monsters and a much longer description. TMMM envisions Groot as World Tree! The wonderful chronology is a mesmerizing work to anybody interested in that aspect of literature's history.

KnK—DEAD BODY MUSIC

  As an—Industrial—album dedicated to fear, it isn't serendipitous to have Dead Body Music II have such an ominously terrific and imposing cover. It is fucking Charlie Chaplin and his fears about the film industry—his famous self depiction arrayed to the grinding gears. The same is now humourously birthing the earliest stage of an EBM band ravaging humans to create DBM. Fucking hell. Fuckin' right. Let's not get caught up in the music industry's premonitions lest it will be generationally traced to pussyfooting 21st Century lost causes.

  Vocally, K2 sings and speaks—confronting topics revolving around existence. The band's aesthetics are a fervent extension and the Empty Future video epitomizes the rigid aura. Industrial by principle and ajar to non scripting. That is the shit. Fuck what you heard. It is only on reel where high and low values permeate. But unlike that or Chaplin's, The Mad Mane Machine needs a lot of noise. Some kinds.

  Sans romance playing advocacy to gothic tragedy,—Dead Ophelia is death. With its noise effects and sense of auditory attraction, DBM propels KnK's ground beyond Industrial. Sure, K1 and K2 proclaim to metal listenership, but it is more of a creative coincidence on the Industrial-wise Dead Body Music because—what C21 lost causes?—Gardens of Gehenna was crafting such words that saw the light at the millennial turn—and this was meant as a play for aggressiveness and EBM—especially on the non EBM side of things. Kill!

DOPPELGANGERS XXIV

 Judith beheading Holofernes has various depictions. Here are two of many—the first is the one The Mad Mane Machine presumed the most brutal. Coming second is another that appeared in a horror pulp magazine, even though the maiden seems to be doing the severing here—pure Victorian era, grandeur done away with.

—Artemisia Gentileschi

—Mary Byfield (for 'Penny Dreadful' magazine The Ghost 1983)

SIGNIST (OF WORLDS, ENDTIMELY ENSHADOWED)

  The ouroboros is an enticing concept—ensnaring musicians and artists as a means of expression—metaphorically or ironically. Over-exposure's desensitization make end-users and targets almost immune to a reaction—especially this being the creator's point of concern. That is the much that can happen between 2005 and now, when the blueprint of Of Worlds, Endtimely Enshadowed was realized and articulated. Furthermore, the chained self-devouring snake portrays a continuum in stasis, something of a disheveling reality, accounting for self-begetting.

  Signist is an unforgettable name, incredibly significant where there are myriad bands left, right, and center. From Russia with pluck purpose to pulverize and perpetuate perdition to the rest of the (Metal) world. Largely cast on a Thrash Metal motif that stretches to Heavy Metal and barbaric Deathy Thrash—progressions and changes abound on a lot of the songs. Influences are worn aggressively such as a slight Punk pummeling—on track six—, technicality, and portional synth flourished atmosphere. Interestingly, it is the rhythm that channels the solos. Premonition of the Endless Night's placement was tactful. Other than splitting it into a short intro or insertion of one, the behemoth of cudgeling grooves is allowed to mature into a flounce, the first of a tenacious whirlgig—the kind that Wrust lashes unrepentantly—on an intracion of melodic rhythms which culminate into a Blackened lead, accompanied by blast beats. Played at a Spazmosity Blackened Death range. An acoustic shed follows, making up for the onslaught taking the listener off the nook at the start without warning.

  Stillborn Mind Reflection perpetuates a blackened infusion while track three revives the catchy, contoured and uncompromisingly conking grooves by the advent of Heavy Metal accompaniment. It wouldn't be surprising how much the guitars take center space, especially on this song. Only the 'spongy' cymbals—unluckily quite consistent once or twice—are its downside, including on Bells of Oncoming Winter, the longest and felicitously changing track. There is some featured singing as the album unravels while addition of a synthesized keyboard wells a Darkified feel—with some Post-Thrash occupations. 

  As marginalizing as their logo is—a Pagan/Viking oriented band?—any Power/Thrash cacophony?—it certainly is a pointer to the listener to heed expecting anything—especially to be blown away. With melodies that are almost epically inclined; progressive tincture and bent, its omnipotence forays the floridness abound in a gradual manner—a propitious sculpt on Thrash Metal's mould. A progressive Thrash Metal stomp where Lieveil meets Wrust.

DOPPELGANGER XXIII

  With a circuit oriented logo, it's quite disappointing that MetaVoid is not sci-fi oriented. It could fall into the math fiction section to dispense. That creates a nice backlink to sci-fi. Sharing a hexahedron of the Metatron's Cube, they rep earth—blatantly—of the six elements. Geoda plays more extreme music—the two are progressive Metal bands.

—Djent
—Death Metal

BODYCALL (MECHANICALLY RECOVERED MEAT / STATES OF EXCEPTION

  Bodycall! There is EBM and there is discovering Bodycall. Its mechanical logo symbolises a club crunching menace. Embrace the dark disheveling—

LEERED MYTH CLAIRVOYANCE MACE / MECHANICALLY RECOVERED MEAT.

  BODYCALL - MECHANICALLY RECOVERED MEAT

VITAL BEAM CAME CHOCY - LOCALLY RENDERED

BEYOND CONTROL (2009 COMATOSE MIX)
EXALTED ITS (2900) COMMON CRYO BOON

DISCIPLES OF HEDONE (CLUB MIX)
EXPEND FLUID BLISS (CHIME COO)

YOU AND ME (RECOVERY MIX)
COAX REVERIE (YON DUMMIE)

FOOLS' PARADISE (TOO DISCO MIX)
DISSECT FLOOR AXIOM (AID COOP')

FOOLS' PARADISE (HARSH MIX)
AIR OF RASH HEX (AMISS' PLOD)



Here is a great release I never get enough of. Voy delivers a compelling vocal performance with damn good lyrics—too fitting. Pure hails.


BODYCALL - STATES OF EXCEPTION

ACE LOFT - BOLTS STEADY LEXICON

REVOLUTION AT YOUR GATES
RATES TO VALUE YOUNG RIO T

DISINTEGRATION (FACTORY MIX)
SIMIAN DOCTOR FIX (GYRATE IN IT)

NAKED LIFE
FAKED LINE / FEED A LINK

DISINTEGRATION
TIED TO INGRAINS

ELECTRO HAVOK
CHEER TO VOCAL

SCIENCE FICTION AND PORTRAYAL: DISTRICT 9

  Majority of humanity is way too fucking stupid. That is reason enough to guarantee disregard from exo-intelligences. Worse still is a risk of exploitation by sardonic life-forms or plots of actual attack and devastation. Cliché as fuck. Yet a possible looming dystopia the planet is likely to contend with. The War of the Worlds may have offered the peculiar novel-ending type of course, but in actuality, Earth is only nuclear weapon strong—a much stratified and small-scale disparity scenario—in terms of arms. Overestimating—an understatement—outer intelligences may only act to reduce surprises. Even disregarding the anthropic principle—since every situation tailors itself to produce unique features and life-forms—on a small-scale, to put evolution, natural selection and mutation into consideration. Humans—not alone.

  Visitation needs not be a Wells-ian kind of approach. District 9 offers a necessitated kind of setting. The planet's habitable space—and one yet to be inhabited—is presaged by overcast intrusion; stranded exo-sol system beings. Distinguishable by their uniformity even across genders. Speculations abound the situations around these prawns. Regarded as servile workers of a superior race, they might as well have come to spread malevolence but fell short of expectations. Their pilot regards Earth's technology as the junk it is, with an aim to restore their mother ship and return home.

  Societal clashes need no introduction. Neither will inter-planetary wars. District 9 relays the havoc on a Terran scale. The stellar proportion is another, if not a precursor to the previous. How prepared is shambolic humanity? From a War of the Worlds' approach, it has everything it needs. —The sun. Huge orbital lenses would be formidable weapons. Their concentrated and invisible heat rays would disseminate dreamless energy at the speed of light—and inflame in seconds; be infallible to disabling of electrical equipment by alien technology—fucking alien fiction, The Mad Mane Machine blames—to protect mother earth. The only downside would be cyber attacks on their functionality, which would be disastrous. This can be overcome at the expense of extra-planetary travel. Dismal when the planet's sick and inhospitable.

  Upheaval will begin with everyone's attempt to cash in on the state of deterioration. And the ordinary citizen will be at the mercy of the forces that be. Everybody caught unprepared and plunged into estopless elegy. Such disparity is sheer as the prawns came armed, shriveling human artillery with bio-enhanced articulation. The planet lays at an edge of colonization. Wipe-out is not a very bright idea, but culling will be the first call.

SYNCHRONICITY AND TIME TRAVEL

  Time travel and its support run-arounds have infiltrated many aspects of film, including the non sci-fi and barely speculative ones. It has rather become a setback that this beloved genre/aspects of it can be fitfully committed across the cine world—as far as drama and comedy took it. How they decide to cover such depends on the film-makers' dedication to the subject. Sadly most partake in its indulgence as a tool for profanity against time travel whose means is to crimp their (you bet weak) plots.

  Better it's to avoid any portal references. Shit's been reduced to lame-assness and lazy options. Other time machines have become secluded. I Will Follow You Down is exemplary of time travel's ailments. No cordial dedication; all appropriation—especially when no grand mystery is being solved. A fucking drama film. Synchronicity may have come at a post-peak period for the processions. Three joint physicists are on a quest to make a time machine but nature has a few revelations for them. Social relations are kept to the significant prospect for the question at hand to proceed unhinged. It has such a throwback setting that comes off clinical in isolation. A Blade Runner atmosphere bleeds in most parts to induce a fear of lead character, Jim Beale, appearing into such a world, or in Archangel's revitalization in X-Men: Apocalypse, a swift mise en scene for the 80s to be beheld—from music to location.

  To prevent ending with a thumb up its arse, the film delegates to alternate timelines. Nothing new too. Even the continuous cycle stab. The catch is always the start, the plot's butterfly effect. Which is invariably it's unsealable loophole. The vicious cycle can't start without an alternate universe—that for the liberty of filming and plot progression—has no definite origin. Present is a collision of parallel worlds, and only imagination can grasp the myriad or reduced of differences that make the branes almost similar. Parallel universes being split-seconds of possible options to the maximum extreme. Working with the closest semblance is the only saving grace that produces the desired profile.

  By now every time traveler into the past has related the inescapability of a pre-ordained future. Needless to say, every jump into the wormhole by Jim would only result to other Jims, behind in time from the most recent Jim by a duration of his predecessor's point of decision to leap forth. But timelines are all encompassing and it would be a prize should an—even slightly—older Jim arise forward.

  Moribund unwinding defers as seconds younger Jim overmasters the other. The seamless handling of this situation forfeits the need of extra interpolation. Behoves that the slightly fringed but purposeless Narcopolis is comfortable playing homage than executing itself to relevance—it is shite that disrespects Wells. Time is not easy to fix.

BADBADNOTGOOD AND GHOSTFACE KILLAH (SOUR SOUL)

  Word was that BadBadNotGood got the goat of Jazz purists. Not fucking smooth Jazz listeners. The Mad Mane Machine is yet to find out how their collaboration with Ghostface Killah relates to Guru's Razzmatazz efforts. Ghostface was a choice, solidified by veteran status, appeal, and content.

  Striking a chord of patriotism with the trendy new school Long. Live. A$ap—not something I would really care about—as Starks poses with his country's flag. Could have done better than this. The situation is similar to that of rapper; and producer in the shadows but name. Accessible is the name and mainly a Rap overlay. It may have been released at the golden age of Hip Hop and still fall in line—especially Gunshowers which is a classical case of New York boom-bap. Featuring Etching consistently swordsmithing along his elder. They street along glorifying bath salts that Lefteris rasping about these drugs, alongside their effects on the track Tormenting the Innocent comes close once the "I'm a damn vocalist/my throat so heavy" line drops. Powerful instrumental.

  Danny Brown's egregiously hurtling flow simmers Six Degrees. A cat who has landed features on substantial releases like Cancer for Cure. The Gunshowers Starks profiles the Yapp City Killah. This is the Tony Starks that blew me away—his greatest feature effort. Along saxes, Mind Playing Tricks

reaches for the melodic perfervid percussion—alhough not to the levels of Ghostdini—providing the album's second name-drop for Supreme Clientele.

  Followed by another boom bap slammer—laid back this time—that has Tree sounding like Like Father Like Son Weezy. Syrup. Street knowledge is for fools in the name of Triple 9's Chris Allen. Now rises the need to put the Fallujah kid to rest. Polar a moment as two supers provide a destructuring super-hero but lyrically fair track on Ray Gun. MF Doom's verse is better.

  Nobody would expect sub-par work from Ironman. He is a man one would anticipate with high hopes and fail to bedisappointed. Soul Sour is a short excursion which I would count on the super-hero broke little to no adding to hisrepertoire. Bump this shit everywhere.

CFS (ENOUGH IS ENOUGH)

  Punk is a core genre. Whenever I fall back to splitting. Far as sub-genres go, Electronic can not be out-fashioned. Only Punk and Metal come close enough. The three frothing together The Mad Mane Mane Machine is yet to come across. Aesthetic-wise, it is more than possible.

   Simplicity and melody are the first synonyms that best describe a lot of punk. On a recent forefront is Burnt Cross' execution. Clear and concise fuckin' Punk. Simplistic does not stand for defective (mostly) if still not a relation for all Punk bands. One of those rare outfits that completely stretch and entrench can be portrayed by CFS.

  From the heart of Greece—a Mediterranean region derricking forth music The Mad Mane Machine only wishes it could keep up—is a pinnacle and a paragon—Enough is Enough. Hardly inconspicuous is its flirt with Post-Hardcore commencing the prolapse to eminence. Liakos sounds pissed and gruff, with a rough voice to give the music some ID. The extent may not be much if you consider what Jessie Williams does for her acoustic punk—fucking raspy BM. Descent into the rest of the songs has a heavy Oi! preoccupation and the drums would be home to Milkman from The Netherlands' music. Melody and precision are par, a blend with no oscillation. I was the last to expect a Post-Rock insertion to a Punk band, but what the hell—it is as natch as it could ever be written to be, not a farrago.

  Detractors of Punk should let CFS bear witness. The Metal effications are far and wide. Cexyst speaks of infusions that hit the heart, a reflection of OG BM. But Punk does not need anybody. As for Pop goes Punk . . .