Don’t know who GBH are? They are a UK82 punk band that was formed in Birmingham England in 1978. They helped shape the sound of British punk and are still touring and making music.
GBH was my very first punk show in late 1989 so their music has always held a special place in my heart. They were seen as just a street punk band by many back then, however if you delved into their releases you would find two albums that did not sound like their others; Midnight Madness And Beyond and No Need To Panic. I actually remember the first time I listened to a Midnight Madness And Beyond tape in my car and being really surprised and pleased that they were singing about a lot of spooky stuff. I was also a fan of The Misfits, Samhain, Danzig, Christian Death, TSOL, Black Flag, Rudimentary Peni and other such punk and deathrock bands. I kind of straddled punk and goth back then, just like I do now.
No Need To Panic released in 1987.
Their album No Need To Panic also really struck a chord with me. What really tripped me out is that I never heard a single person back then mention these two albums. They’d mention one of their more famous albums like City Baby Attacked By Rats but never these two. The music mostly sounds punk but you can definitely hear some deathrock influences breaking though. There are a lot of very heavy baselines and lyrics about horror films, monsters and very unfortunate situations. They are seriously fun to listen to and are forgotten gems. Below are a few songs from the albums that are very good examples of what I have been talking about. Enjoy!
Horror Story
I love the keyboards in this song, and it’s about monsters!
Makin Whips
Love the beginning of this song, so funny!
Electricity Through Space
The intro is a lot fun and reminds me of A Flock Of Seagulls. Space alien takeovers are peachy-keen!
Over the last month or two I have working on yet another denim jacket. This one has no theme and is just a collection of films, bands and other things I am a huge fan of.
I bought this plain black denim jacket from New look, mostly because their denim is pretty good for the price and won’t fall apart after a few weeks of wear. The photo above is of the jacket after I did some bleach work to it. I wanted it to look like something dripped onto it and I am very happy with the results. Remember, not all black clothing looks the same when bleached. Another brand might turn out orange.
The first thing I did after the bleach work was create a hole and sew some neon green fishnet behind it. I wanted all sorts of colours involved because it just makes the jacket look more realistic and wasteland based, rather than something that looks ready-made and too perfect. After that was done I studded black and purple pyramids all along near the bottom of the jacket ending at the front. I went with those colours because I have heavily relied on green and black on my two other jackets. I just wanted something different. Lastly, I cut the ruffle off of a blouse I have never worn and I sewed it onto the jacket below the studs. I roughed up the ruffles with some sandpaper, which created some holes and wear and tear.
The next step I took was trying to figure out patch placement. I hung the jacket in a doorway so that I could look at it all day and it really, really helped me. Safety pins held them in place while sewing them on with green thread. I used the green thread because it made the patches stand out more, and again it is more realistic when it comes to the wasteland. If some of them go on crooked that just makes it look more DIY, which I am perfectly happy with. Out in the wasteland you will use whatever you can find.
Since I have created my own post-apocalyptic/dystopian aesthetic I can make up my own rules as I go along. Which is something that is fun as hell. I will give another update once I am done with the front.
I went down a rabbit hole on Bandcamp last night, and to my surprise I found a band that performs spooky Halloween music called Fright Night Club. Being a huge fan of Nox Arcana I got really excited because I think it’s great that another band is creating unsettling music.
They perform both instrumental and original songs. Some albums are filled with instrumentals, while others are packed with original songs about monsters, horror movies,etc… There are even a few cover songs which is pretty cool! I am currently listening to their album called Creepshow: Re-Scared, which as you can guess from the title is full of sonic landscapes that flesh out the scenes in the film Creepshow. It’s seriously good stuff! I love listening to this kind of music while writing because it gets me in the mood so that I feel extra spooky!
This band has a ton of people contributing songs to the albums, so it is a collective; a spooky version of a band such as The Joy Thieves. I honestly don’t know who the people listed are, but I am betting that at least a few of them are goth or horror-punk musicians. They put out one album every year and also some separately themed albums . They take an obvious cue from John Carpenter, which can only be a good thing! There are lots of keyboards and guitar mixed together which makes for a spooky unsettling journey through a horror filled landscape.
I seriously love this band, as you can tell. Surprisingly all of their albums, save one, are free to download off of Bandcamp. Sit down, because this next part is a bit shocking. There are NINETEEN of them! Their newest one titled Sounds Of The Season Part II, which was released last year, is a name your price album.
So, get your spooky behind over to Bandcamp and check this band out! It’s great spooky music to listen to all year, and to scare the kiddies with during Halloween.
I’ve been doing a lot of serious posts lately so I feel like it’s time to have a little fun. These are the YouTube channels that I regularly watch to entertain myself. Most are morbid in nature, which should come as no surprise. If you aren’t curious about tragic deaths, historical mishaps or cemeteries then this post probably isn’t for you. Here are my top five favourite channels, in no particular order.
Arthur Dark takes you on video tours of the graves of the famous and infamous located around Los Angeles. They are very informative and he even does themed episodes like the one above, which is about the graves of the people who were involved in The Twilight Zone series. I have spent entire days watching these and I still haven’t seen all of them. This is an excellent channel to binge watch all day because you won’t get bored.
Scott Michaels is the most famous ‘death hag’ in the Los Angeles area. He used to run Dearly Departed Tours, which was a tour that took in locations mostly related to tragic celebrity deaths. He also used to run a small museum of all of the celebrity related objects that he collected over the years, including the car that Jayne Mansfield was in when she died. His videos are really well done and span from tragic historical events all the way to tales of the celebrities he has met over the years. He is a fount of knowledge and a very nice guy who has raised money to buy gravestones for forgotten celebrities.
The Illuminaughtii is mostly focused on exposing scam companies and the people involved in them. Mainly they are about MLM pyramid scheme fraudsters and she really doesn’t hold back. She also rants against companies and people who are generally awful; racists, sexists, and turds such as Ben Shapiro. This is the channel to watch if you want to learn how to easily spot problematic companies.
This is a channel that details all of the horrific events that have happened throughout history. If you can think of a disaster they have probably covered it. I’m really into morbid historical events and there are topics here that I have never heard of before. The content is very well done and not overtly gruesome.
Stephanie Harlowe runs a channel that is mostly about historical and current true crime cases. In my opinion she has the best true crime channel because she does a lot of research and is very concise when it comes to details. She will admit when she thinks something is unproven, instead of just running with a fact that’s totally untrue. She sometimes also does videos on supernatural occurrences, which is a lot of fun.
This record has been in my top ten favourite albums for about thirty years, and it is frequently number one on that list. In my humble opinion this is the best album that Glenn Danzig has ever made, a pinnacle that he will never reach again. It’s the perfect blend of punk and goth music, and I would even venture to say that this is one of the best deathrock albums ever made. I would definitely place it above Specimen’s Batastrophe and Christian Death’s Theater Of Pain. Yes, I went there.
I found out about Samhain in a very strange way. I went to an amusement park a couple of weeks before I graduated high school in 1989 with some metal friends. I was wearing my Sex Pistols Holidays In The Sun shirt. Back then they weren’t as well known as they are now, trust me on that. With all of that being said a girl walked past me at some point while wearing a Samhain November Coming Fire shirt and called me a poser. During that time I was also into The Dead Kennedys and 7 Seconds, so I was in no way a poser. What she said didn’t affect me as much as the appearance of her shirt did. I stored the band name Samhain in the back of my brain for future reference because I thought maybe they would be as good as their shirt looked.
Later in 1989 I very briefly dated a guy who had a Misfits poster in his room even though he didn’t listen to them. I knew who the Misfits were during that time but I hadn’t gotten around to listening to them yet. I know that sounds strange but I was into so many bands at that point that it was difficult to buy all of that music and the albums of bands I wanted to try out at the same time. Back then you actually had to buy the music if you wanted to own it. I mean you could get some tapes off of your friends but it was always a goal to actually legally own the music and support the band at the same time. After I broke up with that guy I went and bought the Misfits album Legacy Of Brutality. My friend Sheri was also really into the Misfits during this time and she is the person that introduced me to the band Danzig.
The man, the myth, the legend.
I remember going to the Rasputin’s music store in San Lorenzo in early 1990 and buying the Danzig and Danzig II: Lucifuge cds. The store had separate sections for goth, punk and just about everything else, which actually made it really easy to find music. I remember looking through the punk section and coming across the name of a band that looked familiar: Samhain. I cold bought November Coming Fire on cd that day and it was quite possibly one of the best music based decisions I have ever made. I’m not overstating that by any means. Back then I cold bought a whole lot of music on the recommendation of other people or by seeing somebody strange wearing a band shirt.
Usually when you hear an album for the first time you will pick out certain songs above others or maybe not even like some of the songs. I liked every single song on this album the very first time I listened to it. The song order has a certain flow to it. For example the song To Walk The Night is slow and quite introspective, perhaps the most traditionally goth rock sounding song on the whole album. While the next song Let The Day Begin is more quick paced and takes you slowly out of the bleakness, all the while singing about darkness and the evil that is coming. The very next song Halloween II is a Misfits cover which is sung completely in Latin and takes you to the place where the last song’s events were leading you to.
I have always liked both goth and punk music but not that many bands have achieved the feat of seamlessly bringing the two genres of music together. The only other band that I can think of immediately is TSOL, whose two albums Dance With Me and Beneath The Shadows are also favourites of mine. However, what Glenn Danzig did with this album is bring it to a higher level by adding into the mix some very dark theming and lyrical content. It’s like the album is in its own dimension of darkness where no light can reach it. November Coming Fire taught me that it was okay to unabashedly embrace my darkness and relish in it. Don’t be a goth who claims that they are totally normal on the inside, because I’m not. Don’t be a punk who always thinks that non violence is always the answer, because it’s not.
If it wasn’t for November Coming Fire I wouldn’t be the very darkly inclined woman that I am today. Never heard of Samhain or November Coming Fire? Give the below a listen, you won’t regret it.
Since this year has been absolute shit for just about everybody I really hope that you have a spooky Halloween. I know that trick or treating has been cancelled in some places which makes sense, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have some fun. Having a horror film marathon can be very spooky and a great time, so please don’t be in despair. Life will get better and you should be able to scare some children next year.
Scammers are trying to crawl their way into your dark dead heart.
I will not be posting any photos of these products or linking anything in this post. I don’t want anybody to misunderstand me and buy products off of a scam site. This post is being made as a warning because I don’t want any of you to be scammed.
I love Halloween, it is my favourite time of year, and I am sure that plenty of you feel the same. I have noticed that there seems to be a ton of companies on Facebook right now supposedly selling some very cute Halloween products, more than I have ever seen in previous years. It really looks like the scammers out of China, Vietnam,etc… aren’t doing so well, probably because of the virus, so they are latching on to whatever trend that they think is hot right now. Ads for goth type clothing and Halloween products have been choking up my feed.
It is very easy to tell that these ads are fake. They cut off the heads of models, feature the exact same items as multiple other ads, their page was created recently, their English is very stilted, and if you click on their page transparency link they will more than likely be out of China, Vietnam or other countries in that area. These kind of ads will link to a company of a different name, that is used by a lot of the other fake companies. Basically it’s drop shipping, but the products are either badly made or you will never receive anything at all.
I know that there are a few real companies that advertise on Facebook. However, with the amount of fakes being such a high percentage it is just more safe to not buy anything off the ads at all. Facebook doesn’t really seem to care about any of this since they are being paid by these fake companies to advertise. I report every single fake ad I see on there and about half of the time they are taken down. All of this could be avoided if they would bother to look into these companies before their profiles and ads are approved, but I guess that would be just too much work.
Don’t let these scammers take advantage of you and if you see such ads report them as being fake and a scam. If you have a lot of time you can even report the fake company’s page. Stay safe out there.
Hello everybody! I hope all of you are having a very good day and that things are fine in the location of the wasteland that you call home. Having issues with zombies or mutants? Remember, things could always get worse! I’m joking…or am I?
Years ago I ran a horror film blog. It got a lot of attention and I had a lot of fun writing articles and connecting with the people who read it. In fact it is because of that blog that I met my husband. Towards the end of its run I had a horror film blogger guy, jealous of my success, doxx me. It was then that I realized that running that blog was no longer any fun so I moved on. A few years back I started a post-apocalyptic/dystopian themed blog, but I soon lost interest because my field of discussion was way too narrow.
So, basically I have created this blog because I have a whole lot to say about different topics: music, films, current events, history,etc… I knew that I would get bored really fast, just like the last time, if I started yet another blog about only one subject. If you can write about only one topic that’s cool, I just can’t do a blog with that kind of format. Also, I chose blogging rather than vlogging because it is more easy for me to type out my thoughts rather than voicing them. Plus, I really can’t be bothered to look ‘good’ for the camera. I know that not everybody cares about their image, but the pressure is there just the same. It would end up pissing me off.
Right now we are living in very perilous times. There is an actual world wide pandemic taking place, the effects of climate change is killing the planet, and there are multiple right wing politicians quickly leading their countries down the road to fascism. As a fan of both the post-apocalyptic and dystopian genres of films and books I feel like I am living in one of them, and I know that I am not alone in this. I think that it is very important to have your voice heard right now during this time in history. I would love this blog to be discovered in one hundred years time and it be a reference as to what life was like right now.
I really hope that all of you enjoy this blog and find it interesting enough to interact with. In the wise words of Sarah Connor from the Terminator series of films “There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.”.
