Reviews – Visual

Headline, Reviews, Reviews - Visual January 20, 2010

Film Review: Laid to Rest

Robert Hall’s Laid to Rest is a slasher film that doesn’t waste any time on story in order to get to its blood-soaked kill sequences. A young woman (Bobbi Sue Luther) awakens to find herself with amnesia and locked in a casket in a funeral home. After breaking out, she is almost immediately confronted by “Chrome Skull” (Nick Drincipe), a serial killer who records his torturing and killing of young women via a video recorder attached to his shoulder.

Jonathan Smith reviews the recently released straight-to-video slasher horror film Laid To Rest, directed by Robert Hall.

Featured, Reviews, Reviews - Visual January 5, 2010

Suicidal Tendencies: Live At The Olympic Auditorium

Suicidal Tendencies concerts have always been a combination of ultimate fighting, self-help seminar run by the Rev. Mike Muir and communal exorcism of bad mojo. If you’ve attended a Suicidal show you’ve likely left bruised or with a split lip but feeling like you could tackle the New York Marathon. Once I got popped on the side of the head, had a cigarette flicked down my shirt and still had a good time.

Featured, Reviews, Reviews - Visual November 9, 2009

Thin Lizzy: Are You Ready? DVD

Are You Ready? is an interesting visual document of Thin Lizzy during what is one of the lowest periods of their original run. While the band was still a good live act and a decent draw, by the time they released their Chinatown album in 1981 there were many cracks in the machine that spurred the band on. Filmed live in Loreley, Germany by WDR for their Rockpalast program, one of the coolest live music programs on the planet, this nineteen song set is good but not great.

Headline, Reviews, Reviews - Visual October 21, 2009

Anvil: The Story of Anvil

Anvil: The Story of Anvil is such a compelling, amazing film that you don’t need to know anything about these dudes going into it to absolutely get sucked into it. Big time. And now that it is available on DVD as well, I really think that everyone that reads Hellbound.ca needs to get the fuck off their ass and go out and at least rent this for a night and watch it.

Sean Palmerston reviews the new DVD issue of the best rock and roll documentary of 2009.

Featured, Reviews, Reviews - Visual September 3, 2009

Hansel: Lorentzian Lineshaper CD Release Party Live DVD

Like the album Lorentzian Lineshaper, this performance dates from 2006 – Hansel’s first live appearance on Canadian soil (or a Torontonian basement bar, if you want to be more precise). The set list delves further back, delivering a (then) eight-year-old acoustic ditty alongside tracks from 2003’s Respond_Violence and some newer material.

Featured, Reviews, Reviews - Audio, Reviews - Visual August 7, 2009

Augury: Fragmentary Evidence

From the opening explosion sound effect, the Montreal band launch into a slew of technical death metal tracks with a definite black metal influence. Deep growled vocals that rise into high-pitched shrieks accompany some precision guitar playing, but things rarely stay in one particular groove for long.