Cry Macho is a powerful elegiac film from Clint Eastwood. At 91 years old, it seems odd to see Eastwood acting in a western, but he still has a lot to say about a genre which he spent much of his life in. He is quite aware of his age and casts himself as a …
Christopher Nolan’s new film, Tenet, was released under possibly the most bizarre conditions a movie has ever been released within. During the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, theaters are often closed, require masks if open, and play films to empty rooms. Outside the theater, people are jobless, sick, or scared of both. Perhaps the oddness of …
Marilyn Manson has charted an amazing, unusual, and controversial path as an artist and musician, but he is one of the most vital commentators on culture in the last 30 years. His rise was met with a mixture of admiration and scorn as he presented original but somehow summative industrial sounds that captured a much …
Night Club is one of the most exciting and interesting of smaller industrial projects, a dark fusion of dreamy sounds with bright electronic edges and frenetic beats. Composed of Emily Kavanaugh and Mark Brooks, the duo make infectiously catchy industrial songs that sound like a dark funeral for pop music. It’s as though the catchy …
His Master’s Voice is a provocative science fiction film from Turkey that places the genre in a much more intellectual setting than is the norm. It is based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem, as was Andrei Tarkovsky’s important classic film, Solaris. Like the film from Tarkovsky, this work asks far deeper questions than does …
Blaqk Audio is a standout EBM and industrial band with deep electronic roots that explore 1980’s sounds better than just about any other project in the genre. That is something of a surprise, because it’s a spinoff and side project from the notable hard rock band AFI, which veers between metal, punk, and new wave …
Some remarks from George Takei at Denver Pop Culture Con prompted me to revisit the classic film, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The film came out in 1991 at the end of the Cold War. The Soviet Union had just been dismantled in the very same year, and the writers built an allegory that …
Combichrist has been making industrial music since Andy LaPlegua started working as a solo electronic artist with the very experimental The Joy of Gunz. The second album, Everybody Hates You, is a landmark for the genre and has some of the most memorable electronic songs ever created. The same can be said of Icon of …
MXMS is an underground two person band that is one of the best artistic expressions in music. Dark, haunting, depressed, and gothic, they call their sound funeral pop. It stands out as deeply poetic and undefinable, with Ariel’s low and smoothly ravishing voice stretching over Jeremy Dawson’s keys played usually in the style of dark …
The 69 Eyes are one the best goth bands to ever grace music. They are the only great goth rock band besides the classics of Bauhaus, The Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. That is a large role to fill and an amazing accomplishment. Coming from Finland, the band has managed to be very unique …