I have always had an interest in subcultures, the fringier the better. In the pre-internet era it required a lot of effort, and more than a little luck sometimes, to find others “like you” if you had extreme interests or views. Often that journey took started with outsider magazines, titles that still had just enough […]
Month: December 2025
Revenge of Calculon – “Casino Fight!” (2025)
“Calculon sent Sonic-Funkatronic to us from a distant planet,” the old man told the young ones sitting at his feet. “It saw that earth had lost its funkiness, that we needed to be get our groove back.” The young ones nodded at the old man’s wisdom. It was said he had actually SEEN Sonic-Funkatronic once! […]
Skálmöld – “Upptaka Frá Bræðslunni 2022” (2025)
Skálmöld have been Iceland’s kings of viking metal for about 15 years now. Their talent wasn’t immediately recognized at home, however – no local labels showed interest in putting out their debut album, Baldur. Instead they had to look to an even smaller market to find a label, signing on with Tutl in the Faroe […]
Rokk Í Reykjavík Soundtrack (1982 / 2025)
Where do I even start? The documentary film Rokk Í Reykjavík explores the Icelandic punk music scene of 1982. It is, quite frankly, a gift – the fact that a marginalized scene populated by young outsiders living in a very insular, small society (Iceland’s population in 1982 was just a bit over 230,000 people) was […]
Naked City – “Torture Garden” (1990)
John Zorn was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2006 – a recipient of the so-called “genius grant”. As near as I can tell, about 15 other people have been named Fellows in the area of Music and Composition. Though I wonder how many, if any, have the words “grindcore” and “avant-garde metal” listed as genres […]