Review: Alestorm – Back Through Time

Posted on June 28, 2011 by necromoonyeti

As long as Alestorm keep doing what they do I will continue to be entertained by them. They are incredible musicians and take folk metal down a unique path. The expectations for a band of their sort are pretty demanding though. You can’t just write good music; you have to be funny, kick ass, and do it all within a narrow context–in their case pirates.

Song: Back Through Time

Three albums in, Alestorm were probably feeling the drain on original material. At first they seemed to resolve it. Back Through Time opens with a GWARish novelty. The band stumble upon a portal into the past and wage war against vikings. With lines like “you put your faith in Odin and Thor, we put ours in cannons and whores,” the door was open to develop a clever concept album.

Song: Scraping the Barrel

Unfortunately, and rather irrationally, the new novelty is dropped almost as soon as they introduce it. They got my hopes up for a rival to GWAR’s Beyond Hell, and instead went right back to the same old topics from track 2 onwards. That’s fine, but Black Sails at Midnight really raised the bar from Captain Morgan’s Revenge. “I want more wenches and mead!” was thoroughly sufficient to amuse me on their first album, where pirate metal itself was still a novelty. On Black Sails the lyrics “matured”. They weren’t just silly, they were clever, well crafted, and effective. Epic tracks like Keelhauled and Pirate Song would have amounted to nothing if they were just more mindless clamorings for loose women and alcohol.

So the second track’s chorus of “Shipwrecked! Get drunk or die!” was a definite disappointment, even if it made me giggle. The rest of the album is pretty much the same mundane thing. A few absurd lines that make you smile every time (“Slap that midget with an oar! Remove his legs with a saw!”), and a lot of mindless demands for booze. I mean, it’s not that I don’t like it. Korpiklaani have been doing pretty much the same thing now for seven albums and I still listen to them obsessively. It’s just that I expected a little bit more lyrically out of Alestorm.

At least they know it. “Many have told us that we can’t go on–That one day we’ll run out of lyrics for songs. But when the time comes to write album four, we’ll scrape at the barrel once more!” It’s just that the whole pirate vs. viking thing seemed so promising and they went nowhere with it.

Song: Death Throes of the Terrorsquid

Among the album’s high points is a pretty epic grand finale. It’s something of a conclusion to the Black Sails track Leviathan. They lost to him last time, this time they win, simple enough. The lyrics are decidedly more creative than the rest of the album. That doesn’t exactly make them poetic, but they’re at least sufficient to not make a mockery of what is a really well written song. As the pirates reach their destination and the squid emerges, black metal vocalist Ken Sorceron of Abigail Williams takes up the mic to add a whole new level of intensity that I hope we’ll hear more of on their future releases. “Epic sea battle” isn’t a theme you exactly hear much of in music, and this song is Alestorm’s best effort to date at pulling it off.

But it’s not my favorite track.

Song: The Irish Descendants – Barrett’s Privateers

The only thing I might love more than Irish folk is Irish/Canadian sea shanties. Stan Rogers might not have written Barrett’s Privateers until 1976, but it became an instant, frequently covered classic of the genre, just as authentic as anything written in the 19th century. Alestorm have established a history of cover songs. Whether covering a proper song (Flower of Scotland on Captain Morgan’s Revenge), turning a shitty pop song into something amazing (Wolves of the Sea on Black Sails at Midnight), or just trolling the hell out of us (THIS fabulous atrocity on the LTD Edition of Back Through Time), Alestorm have been consistent about including at least one cover on every album. This is the first time they’ve tackled a song that was truly excellent in its original form however, and they pulled it off to perfection.

Song: Barrett’s Privateers

The fact that Týr frontman and folk metal god Heri Joensen appears to provide a guitar solo in the middle doesn’t hurt any.

All things considered, Back Through Time is nowhere near as good as Black Sails at Midnight and ranks slightly below Captain Morgan’s Revenge, but that’s no reason to avoid it. It’s still an entertaining ride from start to finish, and one I find myself putting on repeat on a regular basis. Check it out.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Beneath the Planet of the Apes (dir. by Ted Post)

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Continuing my look at the original Planet of the Apes film series, we now come to the first sequel, 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Rather blandly directed by Ted Post and featuring only a cameo performance from Charlton Heston, Beneath the Planet of the Apes is rarely given the credit it deserves. Yes, the first half of the film is rather forgettable but once you get through it, you discover one of the darkest films of the 1970s.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes begins with yet another human astronaut crash landing on the Earth of the future. This astronaut is Brent and, as played by James Franciscus, he comes across as a slightly more earnest, far less charismatic copy of Charlton Heston’s Taylor. Brent has been sent in search of Taylor. Anyway, once he lands on the planet, he is quickly arrested by the apes, meets Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (David Watson, stepping in for Roddy McDowall), and then escapes with the still-mute Nova (Linda Harrison). With Nova, Brent makes his way to the Forbidden City where he comes across the ruins of Grand Central Station and discovers that he’s actually on Earth.

Yes, that’s right. The first hour of this 95 minutes film is essentially just the first movie all over again. And yes, this film’s (many) critics are correct when they say that this first hour drags and tests the audience’s patience. Obviously, Brent may be shocked to discover he’s on Earth but it’s old news to us and many viewers are probably tempted to give up on this film before Brent even figures it out.

But don’t give up! No, because if you stick with this film you’ll discover that, once Brent figures out where he is, things get really, really fucked up.

Essentially, Brent discovers that the ruins of New York City are now underground. And in this underground city, there are people. But they’re not people like Brent or Nova. No, these are people who have been horribly scarred by radiation. They’ve also mutated to the extent that they’ve developed the powers of telepathy and mind control. Under the leadership of Mendez the Tenth (Paul Richards), they spend their time singing hymns to the Alpha/Omega nuclear bomb, or as they call it “The Holy Bomb.” They keep the Holy Bomb in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

These mutants capture both Nova and Brent. Brent is tossed into a cell and who else is there but Taylor? And Taylor, believe it or not, has become even more sarcastic and scornful than before! Seriously, Charlton Heston frequently spoke about how much he hated this film and it’s obvious in his performance. Heston might not have been happy about being there but the audience is because, even if he is busy hating himself, Taylor brings a jolt of life to the film.

And just in time because the Apes, led by Urko (James Gregory), have invaded the forbidden city! They gun down all the mutants. Brent , Taylor, and Nova manage to escape their prison and all three of them are promptly gunned down as well. As he dies, Taylor manages to set off the Alpha/Omega bomb. We see a blinding white light followed by a somber voice over that tells us: “In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.”

And that’s it! There’s no final credits, not even a black-out. Instead, on that note, the movie just stops.

Now, seriously, tell me that’s not a great movie.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Bad Teacher (dir. by Jake Kasdan)

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, last Friday night, I went and saw the new Cameron Diaz comedy, Bad Teacher. Right now, all sorts of mainstream critics are running out of ways to trash this film but, for the most part, they seem to overlooking one important fact. Flawed and unfocused as this film may be, it’s funny. It made me laugh, it made Jeff laugh, it made my sister laugh, and it made my friend Evelyn laugh. (Of course, according to Evelyn, I laugh at everything, even if it means I’m the only person laughing, but that’s another story. Hi, Evelyn!) It also made almost the entire audience laugh. Admittedly, it was a small audience. I guess everyone else was busy crying at Cars 2. (It’s a Pixar film after all.) As for Bad Teacher, it may not be a great film but it works.

Anyway, Bad Teacher tells the story of a very bad teacher, played by Cameron Diaz. She doesn’t care about her students, goes out of her way to antagonize her fellow students, and shows up to work everyday either hungover or stoned. She’s also snobbish, petty, shallow, and you’d totally hate her except for the fact that 1) you can’t help but admire the way that Diaz throws herself into being as crass and as shallow as possible (she may be playing a vain character but there’s no vanity in her performance) and 2) every other teacher in the school is so annoyingly perky and movie perfect that you can’t help but share Diaz’s disgust with them.

Anyway, Diaz is teaching because her rich fiancée has dumped her. (One of the better jokes in the film is the number of lies that Diaz comes up with to explain why her engagement ended.) She is content to spend the school day asleep while her class watches movies featuring other, better teachers. However, then she meets the new substitute teacher who is really kinda creepy with his constant “up with humanity” perkiness but is also 1) rich and 2) played Justin Timberlake so he’s like totally hot. However, Timberlake is dating Diaz’s sworn enemy, the incredibly upbeat Amy Squirrel (played by Lucy Pond). Diaz realizes that the only way she’ll ever capture Timberlake’s attention is if she can raise the money necessary to get bigger boobs. The rest of the film basically deals with Diaz’s efforts to raise the money for her boob job (among other things, she accepts bribes from parents and embezzles from the school car wash) while continuing to pursue Timberlake and be pursued by the gym teacher (Jason Segal).

That’s actually a lot of plot for an 89 minute film and, as a result, Bad Teacher does feel overly episodic and ultimately disjointed. But so what? I laughed consistently for 89 minutes and that’s the important thing. It’s not that the film itself is filled with witty lines as much as it’s the fact that the entire cast so totally throws themselves into playing these genuinely odd characters. Pond steals every scene she’s in and Timberlake especially seems to be having fun spoofing his own image. If you think that watching people dry hump while fully clothed can’t be hilarious, than you haven’t seen Justin Timberlake in Bad Teacher.

For me, there were two other things that made Bad Teacher a success.

1) It confirms what we all always suspected and knew in middle school and high school — that our teachers were a bunch of horny, pot-smoking degenerates. Admittedly, I used to actually get high with my drama teacher — shhhhh! Don’t tell anyone! — but I’ve always figured that same was probably true of every high school drama student. This film confirms that the history and math teachers were just as stoned.

2) It features this scene, which got laughs and applause from the Dallas audience that I saw it with: