Storm Corrosion - Storm Corrosion Review

One of my biggest regrets last year for this blog was never getting around to reviewing Grace for Drowning at the time of its release. In short; it was a fantastic album that improved on everything Steven Wilson had begun with Insurgentes and would was easily in my top five albums for 2011.

With another year, the ever productive Wilson has another release, this time a long awaited collaborative effort with Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt. The duo, under the moniker Storm Corrosion, has previously promised something unlike anything they have previously released.

Stupidly, I didn’t pay much attention to that statement and fully expected something that might be an epic combination of something like Porcupine Tree with Opeth or Wilson’s solo efforts with Bloodbath.

The point is, I was looking forward to Storm Corrosion and upon giving the album enough listens; I have come to two conclusions:

Top Ten Horrifying/Disgusting/WTF Moments in Resident Evil

2012 is a big year for gaming. Each week there’s something new to behold, a story about the next big thing, hints of the direction huge series’ will take in their steady evolution, how the big three console developers plan to one-up each other and claim victory in this crazy little thing called the “console wars”

One of 2012’s biggest releases Reece and I will be looking out for is Resident Evil 6. The long running survival/action-horror series had its humble beginnings as a shoddy Playstation title with player controlled characters that moved like tanks against mindless, shambling, grotesque zombies and worse in a haunted, claustrophobic mansion.

But since its humble beginnings; Resident Evil has mutated into one of the biggest franchises in gaming. Expanding it’s horizons with tighter gameplay, a less cheesier story and some absolutely horrifying moments, Resident Evil holds in it’s decaying hands a legacy that spans just under two decades of critical adulation and a cult following which can’t get enough of stopping Bio-Weapons from taking over the world.

With the eighth title on the horizon as a potential Game of the Year, this is Retcon-Nation’s top ten, most horrifying, disgusting and complete WTF moments in the main series, from Zero to Five (excluding Revelations as neither of us have played it yet).

The Avengers Review

Reaching the end of The Avengers (or Marvel’s Avengers Assemble for us apparently easily confused brits), it finally dawned on me why Josh Whedon was put at the helm rather than say; a director with more summer blockbuster experience than the guy who directed Serenity.

Heck, someone who directed one of the five movies that have led us to this huge team-up would have been the logical choice. But, like the medium this film is adapted from; logic goes out the window or, so it seemed, because there is method in the studio’s madness and that is;

Feeder - Generation Freakshow Review

Ask a Feeder fan if they can pinpoint the moment the band went from one of the UK's most prosperous and consistently entertaining bands to another casualty the old age foe called Father Time and you're liable to get one of three answers. Joe public will ask you not ask them about the fetish over combining their partner's spiralling diabetes and obsession with combining gorging hot dogs and doggy style. You then give them several "famous" songs and immediately, they wonder "What ever did happen to the band that did Buck Rogers?"

The logical fan will say they blame the midpoint of Pushing the Senses; when the band's attempt at capturing Coldplay, Snow Patrol and Xenu forbid Take That's audience with melodic and harmless pop-rock from their previously well established NME Rock/early nineties grunge routes didn't simply not work, but demonstrated every shortcoming the band managed to patch over with their previous four very good/excellent albums.

Then there's the cult follower who can't believe you would insinuate the band is anything other than the bestest, most greatest thing in the whole world and that you must be a total microscopic flaccid dick for thinking anything other, before they and the surprisingly quick mob appear with pitchforks and torches to vivisect you with immediate intent.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists - Review

Sometimes, I wonder with the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, why pirates haven't become a sub-genre of their own? Then of course, you have to think back to the days of where pirates were on the hollywood list of things to avoid at all costs (as Roman Polanski, Disney prior to PotC and Renly Harlin have discovered the hard way).

The Ting Tings - Sounds from Nowheresville Review

There's no easy way of saying this...ok that's a flat out lie, because for a good while now, I've been tempted to summarise The Ting Tings follow-up album with something short and sweet to prevent me from having to keep playing it.

Sleigh Bells - Reign of Terror Review

When people ask me what album's I'm looking forward to for 2012, one of the first answers that comes up is the next Sleigh Bells album. See, two years prior, the duo figuratively exploded on the music scene with a debut album that was so fresh, so new and so different, it stood-out from it's peers.