One On One With The GRIM 1

Ed Farshtey is a NYC-based concert promoter and true believer in heavy metal.  Everyone remembers their first. And in the sacred art of metal music, no first is quite as magical as seeing one's favorite band live in concert for the very first time. Ed is in the business of creating these glorious mosh pit memories. I have a special place in my black heart for do-it-yourself promoters like Ed. As you will read in our interview below, the calling of a promoter is an exhaustive, sometimes under appreciated, and definitely unlucrative labor of love. And with a surplus of hungry bands and scarcity of quality stage time, Ed is one of the few show runners who will afford up-and-coming bands a stage to open for headbanging heavyweights, such as Mortician, Deceased and Monstrosity, to name but a few.  How did you get into promoting shows? I did the shows back in the 80's/90's because I was friends with the bands and just wanted to help them get shows. The last one I...

Heavy metal Monday to all ye perverts. I cum to you with tidings of WAR! Path To War, to be specific.  No Man's Land by Path to War I had the grim honor of playing with these bright young infantry men in their native Baltimore in June, and they definitely deliver the heavy artillery in a live setting.  No Man's Land  is the newest campaign launched by these death metal maniacs, a cassette compilation of their demo material, put out by Desert WasteLands.  With a logo reminiscent of Obituary and Dismember, and song titles like "Warhammer," "Hymn Of Chaos" and "Beneath the Treads," you can probably guess exactly what you're getting into. Path To War's musical method of attack is a crunchy, fat, down tuned homage to Bolt Thrower. The tight rhythm section is dense with rumbling double bass drums, and frosty distorted bass tones that would surely bring a grin to Jo Bench's face. The vocals are especially gruff and ring of guttural phl...

Perverts! Welcome back to my lair. This week we have an earth shattering array of death metal. TOMB MOLD - Planetary Clairvoyance Available July 19 via 20 Buck Spin   Planetary Clairvoyance by Tomb Mold Toronto's Tomb Mold wasted no time unleashing the furious follow-up to last year's  Manor of Infinite Forms,  which catapulted itself to many best of 2018 lists, including this grim author's .  Planetary Clairvoyance  shows the band's evolution as songwriters, despite the quick turnaround time, while they retain the fearsome brutality that makes them such a force to be reckoned with. The title track kicks off with a thrashy, punk beat, accompanied by a gutteral "OH" that reminded me of Celtic Frost at hyperspeed. This album will certainly summon a circle of the tyrants in the most pit when they hit the road in the cumming days. My personal favorite is "Accelerative Phenomenae," an infectiously groovy riff colored in the most flattering shade...

This review contains mild spoilers. Finally, a romantic comedy I can invest in! Midsommar  is an engrossing feast for your eyes with enough unsettling moments to keep you awake at night. I saw Ari Aster's  Hereditary  last year, and was impressed by the young director's ability to shock audiences, perhaps, in the same way films like  Alien  or  The Exorcist  did when they were first sprung on unsuspecting viewers decades ago. I'm happy to report  Midsommar  is an equally twisted follow up. And much like  Hereditary,  it deals with harrowing levels of trauma on a personal, familial level. This film is a very bad trip, in just about every sense. It begins with a college student Dani (Florence Pugh) who, within the first 10 minutes, is thrust into the deepest pits of emotional anguish due to a murder-suicide involving her bipolar sister and parents. To make thing worse, her boyfriend, Christian, (Jack Reynor, a ...

HELL-O and welcome back to the most electrifying blog in Corpse Entertainment.  It's totally brutal, and also fitting, that this blog's first album review features the grim and frostbitten innovator of northern darkness, the Immortal, black metal rock star known as ABBATH.  Season of Mist is already streaming the full album ahead of its Friday July 5 release, so I implore you to listen for yourself. This album slays, hard. I had the twisted pleasure of interviewing Abbath back in 2016, although he quickly stole the spotlight with his zany sense of humor and irreverent asides. And yet, he still spoke with a certain air of, well, grimness. "I'm older than Elvis was now when he passed," he lamented. "Suddenly, boom! One day, you look at yourself in the mirror or you feel it and... Wow.  I'm old . " But fear not, oh corpse painted one! Abbath is one of those things that improves with age.  Outstrider is  his strongest albums since  Sons of Northe...