Until The Light Takes Us

Like so many genres before it, Black Metal was first delivered to the mainstream consciousness by the sensationalist tabloid headlines of the quick-buck yellow-press. But unlike punk rock and its artschool nihilism, there really was something nasty hiding behind the movement’s smudged corpsepaint and subhuman facade.

Black Metal may have been bastard born of a clutch of early 80’s thrash bands like Venom and Celtic Frost, but it wasn’t until the more defined second wave of the early 90’s broke over Scandinavia, and Norway in particular, that a scene, that was as visually challenging as it was aurally, spiralled out of control when it’s satanic pantomime stepped off the stage and in to the headlines.

With key members of the Norwegian Black Metal scene killing themselves, killing eachother, and taking the torch to the houses of the Lord, the media freakshow blasted the little regarded sub-genre from the underground in to orbit over night, unintentionally glorifying the music’s misanthropic ideals and the villainy of its wayward figureheads to a generation of bored kids.

Satan! Fire! Blood! Distortion! Sounds interesting right? Well it’s just interesting enough to warrant a kick-ass new documentary chronicling the church torching and murder of Norwegian Black Metal’s Glory Years! Check out the excellent trailer to Until The Light Takes Us below.

Crimes Against The Sleeve

I might have been getting a little carried away posting about movies on Standard Love Affair of late. You see I’ve been contributing music pieces to a kick ass site WWW.ELECTRICROULETTE.COM (check it out!!), so I’ve been getting my music fill there. But all that’s gonna change, I swear, take me back. TAKE ME BACK!!

Anyhooo, this post is gonna concern Album Artwork, or rather, Crimes Against Album Artwork by German metallers the Scorpions. Yeah, you know ‘Wind of Change’ or ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’ (an obsession with air displacement?). Well, they’re also known for their hideous and inappropriate artwork. Lots got banned, lots got censored, all should have been burned. Still, these cheese-balls have sold over 75 Million albums, worldwide! Go figure.

Fly To The Rainbow: 1974


Good God! An early show of support for Gay Pride maybe? Perhaps not, but that is some sort of futuristic welder plane surfing through the brown night sky, proudly flying the Rainbow Flag. What does it mean? Let’s ask Uli Jon Roth, Scorpions guitarist:

"Don’t ask me what that cover means… I disliked it from the beginning. It looked ludicrous to me back then and looks just as bad today. It was done by a firm of designers in Hamburg, who had actually done a good job on the Lonesome Crow album before, but I think that time they failed miserably. As for the meaning, I can only guess, but I’d rather not…”

That’s right, looks like Scorpions didn’t exactly have much of a say in their art direction, with label and management pulling the strings. But if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem, so let’s not exonerate the band members completely.

In Trance: 1975


3 Things that go hand in hand: Fish and Chips, Scumbags and Public Transport and Metal and Sexism. The cover of ‘In Trance’ is a beautiful (but tame in contrast to later artwork) example of the latter. This was the first of many Scorpions album covers to be censored. The record finally made it to the shelves of most regions with the lovely lady’s booby blacked out.

Virgin Killer: 1976


This is as bad as they come! I’ve posted a censored version up here so that the authorities don’t think I’m some sort of pederast. That girl on the cover (Jaqueline) is 10 years old in that picture. As if that isn’t bad enough, the Douche-bag Product Manager from RCA, Steffan Böhle, who pushed hard for this cover to happen, is a relative of the kid. It’s been debated whether or not the girl was his Niece or Daughter. Who cares? Let’s just find out where he lives and toss a firebomb through his window.

As you can imagine, an album with a naked, pre-pubescent girl on the cover called ‘Virgin Killer’ rubbed more than a few people up the wrong way. It was sold in sealed black plastic or was swapped for a different image in most countries. Jesus, even Wikipedia got in to legal wrangling because it featured on their site. Do you know what Scorpions rhythm guitarist Rudolf Schenker thought of it? He thought it was a "great thing". I think he’s a “Cunt”.

Taken By Force: 1977


It’s ’77 and the Scorpions decide to give sexist and misogynistic imagery a year off and instead decide upon a photo of 2 children with guns, shooting at each other in a military cemetery in France. Nice touch, Germans!

Tokyo Tapes: 1978


If anybody was ever unclear about the homo-erotic sub context of rock n rollers, thrashing around in leather and aiming their big, electrified phalluses at each other, please allow the Scorpions to clue you in.

Love Drive: 1979


This one is probably best summed up by the guy who created it, Storm Thorgerson: "Not exactly the most politically correct scene you've ever seen. I thought it was funny but women read a different inflection into it now." Playboy Magazine voted it ‘Best Album Sleeve of 1979’. Score!

Animal Magnetism: 1980


Again, super-intellectual Storm Thorgerson, ladies and gentlemen: "That one was funny. I don't think we figured it out. We just knew there was something rude somewhere."

Love At First Sting: 1984


It was major US retailer Wal-Mart that took exception to the cover of ‘84’s ‘Love At First Sting’, depicting a dude simultaneously making out with/tattooing the thigh of this hottie. Polygram, as with many previous Scorpions albums, were forced to issue a “Clean Cover”. You see, when the company that sells the majority of your albums in the USA decides that your record is offensive, you bend over and let them be the daddy. Funnily enough, the Scorpions artwork lost its overly sexual tones following this little incident. They just got crapper.

Moment of Glory: 2000


Following in the footsteps of Metallica’s celebrated collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony on ‘S&M’, the Scorpions decided to take up an offer from the impressive Berlin Philharmonic (first extended in ’95), to perform together. The results were released as the 10 track ‘Moment of Glory’. How did Scorpions decide to celebrate their collaboration with this distinguished orchestra? By releasing the fruits on an album with a T-Rex wearing women’s jewellery on the cover. ‘Moment of Glory’ indeed.

Like I said earlier, after Wal-Mart objected to the sexual nature of Scorpions artwork, their covers went from being Badly Misogynistic to just plain old Bad. Here’s a selection from the rest of their catalogue, enjoy (if you can).

Fangs For The Memories!

I was doing some research on IMDB recently when I came across the profile for a super-low budget, student movie called ‘Avenging Disco Vampires’. It’s a vampire gang movie where ‘The Bloods’ and ‘The Crypts’ (So bad!) battle it out in an old barn that one of the gangs uses as a disco for the undead. The trailer was so shit that it’s not even worth the effort of posting it up here, but the concept of battling Vampire Gangs did get me thinking of my favourite cinematic blood-sucking posses. Here they are!

The Lost Boys



An easy and obvious choice to start off with, but I’m listing them first because our second gang relies on this movie. Obviously ‘The Lost Boys’ was one of the most kick-ass teen movies of the 80’s, packed with bankable young Hollywood roll-a-rounds like Kiefer Sutherland and the two Coreys, as well as the obligatory super hot teen chick in Jamie Gertz. It’s funny, jumpy, cheesy, stuffed with horrendous 80’s fashion, a killer soundtrack and amazing quotes: “My own brother, a goddamn shit sucking vampire. Well you wait until Mom finds out!”



Initially, David’s (Sutherland) gang of cock-rocking vampires come off a bit camp, what with the poodle rock hair do’s and earrings. But that all changes when they pull up on their killer motorcycles and tear up the beach en-route to massacre the Surf-Nazi’s around a campfire, revealing themselves as vampires for the first time.



The way they slaughter their rival gang by swooping down on them from a tree and peeling their scalps off, tearing their throats out and dumping their mutilated bodies on the fire before nonchalantly walking back up the hill in bloodied human form and announcing “Now you know what we are, now you know what you are” is one of the highlights of the film.


Of course, every good vampire gang needs a good leader and Kieffer Sutherland doesn’t disappoint as the charismatic, peroxide mulletted David (although it turns out that he’s not the head vampire). The Lost Boys also score high on the strength of their lair, an old cliff top hotel that was swallowed up into the ground by an earthquake. At night they stalk the eerily lit boardwalk of Santa Carla preying on everything from fat Security Guards to (in true horror film fashion) couples making out. Unfortunately they never murder the muscle-bound sax player with Michael Bolton hair who turned up in Tina Turner videos during the 80’s.

Near Dark



Oh boy, this is my favourite vampire movie of all time, where the word ‘vampire’ is never uttered and none of the usual vamp references (fangs, flight, shape shifting) or killing methods (crucifix, garlic, holy water) apply. Instead, what we are given is a vampire cowboy movie, where a dysfunctional family of blood bolting drifters travel the flatlands of the US getting pissed on claret and hinting at a long existence.



If you’ve never heard of ‘Near Dark’, it’s probably because it had the unfortunate luck of being released a couple of months after ‘The Lost Boys’. The latter had more big name starts, a bigger budget and was aimed at the teen audience whereas ‘Near Dark’ was a broodingly dark and violent modern day Western, bereft of pop culture references and with a more macabre sense of humour. It also suffered from lack of promotion after release, failing to recoup its budget and slipping off the radar.

This family of bloodsuckers is headed up by the excellent Lars Henriksen who plays the ancient ‘Jesse Hooker’ (“Let's put it this way: I fought for the South. We lost.”) , alongside his onscreen squeeze ‘Diamondback’ (Jenette Goldstein). Check them out below after a scorching from the morning sun.



Another key member of the gang is the show-stealing ‘Severn’ (Bill Paxton), the sadistic maniac of the bunch who loves to toy with his prey because it makes them “Taste Better”. Paxton, Henriksen and Goldstein also starred alongside each other in ‘Alien’, which is showing at a cinema in one of the towns that the family rolls through. Paxton excels in a scene where the group take out a bar full of bikers and cowboys, slashing the bartender’s throat with his spurs and proclaiming the resulting spurt of the red stuff to be “finger-lickin’ good!”



Vehicle wise, the gang steals a number of motor-homes and vans as they go along, blacking out the windows with spray paint, gaffer tape and tin foil whenever they get caught out in the daylight. There are some great scenes of the vamps burning up in the sunlight and shots of the sparse landscape that gives the feel of a story being played out in an uninhabited land.



This really is a great film folks, a welcome drift from the usual vampire flick clichés and was directed by ‘Point Break’ Helmswoman Katherine Bigelow, as her debut feature. Nice to see the ladies getting in on the horror action! Buy it! Buy it now and lend it to me as I seem to have misplaced my copy!

30 Days of Night



I’ve only just come across this movie in the last 12 months, initially giving it a wide berth on release because of Josh Hartnett’s run as the main character. How wrong was I? Very wrong! Hartnett is ok, but it’s the gang of vampires, ‘The Nosferatu’ and settings that reign supreme.



‘30 Days of Night’ is set in the Alaskan town of Barlow, where for a month each year, the area is plunged in to darkness. When said time of year rolls around, most of the townsfolk split for lighter climes but there remains a skeleton community, including the sheriff, Hartnett. The place is buried under snow (which up’s any movie’s ‘creepy rating’ straight away) and when a large, mysterious ship drops anchor out in the ice sheets, you know there’s going to be trouble! Subsequently, this ship is a nod towards Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, who also arrived on new land in a ship (also copied in the 1929 silent film ‘Nosferatu’).



So, as you can guess, the sun goes down, the vampires come out and start their 30 day feast. ‘The Nosferatu’ are a terrifying bunch lead by Holly Johnson look-a-like ‘Marlow’, speaking in a gut churning ancient dialect and dressed like 1950’s Eastern European proles. They’re fast, intelligent and bloodthirsty without remorse. They’re there to feed, then leave.



The violence is swift and brutal, and once ‘The Nosferatu’ have knocked out the electricity supply to the town, goings on look a lot worse in the glow of the snow. Hartnett does his best to save the remaining townsfolk from the savages, but ends up having to kill a few of his own before they turn into vampires themselves. There’s a brilliant scene where he has to decapitate his friend and colleague with an axe, which takes several swings.
Check! Out! This! Shit!

There’s also a great nod to the legend of the vampire, as the ‘Nosferatu’ look to slay everybody in town and then flee without turning any of the towns folk and leaving the returning community in the dark as to what wiped out the town, perpetuating the ‘myth’ of the vampire. That’s some classy shit!

The Lost Boys may have the bikes; Near Dark the spurs and shades, but ‘The Nosferatu’ have got the scares, and that’s what it’s all about!



Talking about blood-sucking in the snow, keep your eyes peeled for the release of Swedish vamp flick ‘Let The Right One In’. It’s going to be the highlight of the year!

Sneaker Gimmicks: The Good, The Bad and the LA Gear!

So I was at my local Supermarket on the weekend, and this little kid comes whizzing past me and rounds the corner of the toiletries aisle, travelling at a decent speed on a pair of those roller shoes with the wheels in the soles. She must have been about 10 years old with more balance than I could muster on my deck when I finally put it down around the age of 15.

I managed to subdue my jealous rage long enough to wonder if I was that age, would I have a pair of those? I was always down on roller-skates because the looked so girlie and Rollerblades made me want to puke. But the wheels on these roller shoes were nicely concealed within the shoe and could be dropped like landing gear. That would have been attractive, but unfortunately, the shoes that housed these gimmicks were pig ugly. That got me thinking again, about all the gimmicky sports shoes that were marketed to me and my generation as kids. Then the nostalgia really kicked in like a hot quilted wave of morphine. The past is my junk, y’all!

First up, I’m not a sneaker ‘Head’, but I do love my kicks! I recently hooked up with a pair of gold and black Yo! MTV Rap’s Puma Clyde MC Shan editions (with the Brooklyn Bridge in black suede around the heel). My girlfriend hated them, but then she got on board Christmas time when she got me a pair of Metallic Silver Nike Blazers. Welcome on board Baby!



Both these shoes are redux versions of models from back in the day, just updated with a bit of colour but keeping the vintage look. However, manufacturers also seem to be keen on updating the gimmicks of the past, which, in hindsight, look ugly and awkward these days. So let’s start with the re-launch of....................drum roll...................................LA GEAR LIGHTS!


Here’s the old ones, remember when these came out? Shit, lights in your daps? That was pretty far out! Although, I feel that I need to add that while the concept of Red LED’s flashing in your shoe every time your foot hit the floor may sound kinda fun, in reality, LA Gear Lights and LA Gear in general, were far from cool.

Here’s the advert for the re-launch of lights. The ad looks good.....that’s about it.


A quick note on the extent of LA Gear’s un-coolness: They had a line of Michael Jackson endorsed sneakers in the 80’s. You’d bet that at that time, a pair of trainers worn by the King of Pop, THE GREATEST ENTERTAINER WE’VE EVER HAD, in his PRIME, would be shifting significant units and would be (amongst the kids at least) getting some props. The fact that LA Gear also had Paula Abdul on the payroll and her Editions for girls (The Sunblossoms!!!!!), outsold Wacko’s ‘Moon Rockers’ goes to show what kind of Rep LA Gear had.



Lately I’ve been noticing lot’s of ‘Smart Shoes’ on the racks. Adidas have their ‘1’ range, which feature a microprocessor that can make 5 Million calculations per second, recognises what kind of ground you are running on and adjusts their cushion systems accordingly! Here they are. I’m not sure I can get behind a trainer that I need to turn on/off or insert batteries in to. In theory, they should make Converse Chuck Taylor’s look like the Swiss Clogs, but instead end up coming off like the supercomputer from War Games. “Do You Want To Play”? No!

Another jogger smart shoe on the shelves at the moment is the Nike + range, which link up to your I POD and send data on your workout to your unit. I’m not sure I need that kind of info from my shoes, but while this sounds a bit space age, Nike weren’t the first shoe manufacturers to develop this concept. Check out the Puma RS Computer Shoe!!!!



Super 80’s! You needed an Apple computer to download your data from the shoe’s onboard pedometer. Check out the 16 Pin Connector. Does that look like the controller connector from the Sega Master System to anybody else? Woof!

Puma also made a hair brained attempt to revolutionise the lacing systems in sports shoes by introducing the badly designed ‘Puma Disc’ system. A friend of mine had a pair of these and the plastic fishing line that they used to pull the shoe tight under the disc snapped almost immediately, rendering the shoe floppy and useless.



Adidas were pretty consistent in their development of the sports shoe as well, offering things like interchangeable coloured Neoprene Socks which slip in to the shell of their basket ball boot (no good for outdoor ballin’ when the rain starts fallin’), the Adidas ‘Torsion Bar’, a cut out of the sole, which was supposed to allow the shoe to bend and twist with the contours of your foot (step in a Dog Egg with these on and you knew all about it!); and the Adidas ‘Predator’ football boot (both with studs and in Astroturf versions). These had cleated blades on and around the toe for ‘Curling’ the ball, as promoted by David Beckham. As far as I can remember, Beckham was able to curl the ball just fine without a boot that looked like Shane MacGowan’s smile.



Of course, we couldn’t go through the annals of Kickology without giving an honourable mention to the Reebok Pump’s! Awwww, bless dear Reebok, their shoes were damn ugly. Even their ‘Classic’ range was dogshit, and that’s supposed to be your ‘Banker Design’. The only thing that Reebok ever did right was the Basketball shoe, and they more than made up for their gross range with the Reebok Pump!

The idea that inflating your shoes was going to allow you serious ‘Up’s’ was always going to be a tough one to sell. But for sheer coolness of the pump idea, Reebok, I salute you! Once these babies’s became super popular with the ballers, Reebok started rolling the range out to other sports like Tennis. Check out the ‘Court Victory Michael Chang’ (remember him?) editions below with the B-Ball Pump replaced with a Tennis Ball. Then they got super gimmicky with the launch of the Reebok ‘Glow’ line, which I thought were Kick-ass (in a Tron way), though I really dug the black, white and red ‘Paydirts’ the most!



Of course, no sports shoe manufacturer can, or ever will be able to hold a candle to Nike. The undisputed KING OF THE KICKS! I guess their association with Michael Jordan was the biggest shot in the arm you could ever get. Their Air Jordan’s, as far as I’m concerned, are the cornerstone of ‘Street Wear’ and should rank as one of the Untouchable Classics of late 20th century fashion. Check out a quick evolution of the Air Jordan below.



Of course there was more to Nike than the Air Jordan. Rollcall: Air Force, Air Max, Dunks, Flights, Zoom, SB’s....the list runs away with your girl and your dog!

I remember when the Nike Air Max 180’s came out like it was yesterday. The cornerstone of Nike development has always been the Air Bubble since they developed it back in 79, but for the 180 they dropped it down from the mid sole until it was flush with the ground and visible from below. Woooooooooooooooooo, that blew my mind. So did the colours, white, blue and PINK! A bold move in ’91. All my friends were crazy over this shoe, but there was only one kid at our school who had a pair. You know those kids who get everything, he was one of those guys. What did the Douchebag do? He used to play football on the tarmac with them on and purposefully drag his shoes on the ground until the toes ripped and the bubble popped. Broke my heart in two!

Forget that guy though, ‘cause I also had a pair of Nike’s that nobody else had, the little known Nike Air Force Command PUMPS! I found them at a market and was blown away by the fact that Nike had developed a Pump, but kept it on the downlow (so to speak) so not to look like they were ripping Reebok off. I snapped them up relatively cheap and then wowed my pals. The pump was on the side of the boot and there was a little black button at the back for deflating the air pockets. They also came in white and (a rad!) neon yellow with black paint splashes. God I wish I still had them.

The shoes developed a cred of their own when ‘White Men Can’t Jump’ was released and Woody Harelsson was the only other guy to be rocking a pair.

It was another Nike shoe that introduced me to one of my best friends, still best buds to this day some 16 or so years later. When I bumped in to this short nerdy kid from my school on a dinner break and saw he had the same pair of grey and red suede Nike Court Force high tops as me, I asked him where he got them. “Vegas” apparently! I got mine in Cardiff and thought he was a cunt. Here’s me and him today, ‘Bro’s Before Ho’s!!

The Lost Art of Poster Art

Remember when you were a kid and you used to hang around in your local video store (mad props to Terry at Gelli Video!), scanning the shelves for hours, taking in all the titles and making lists of the movies you were going to watch, and in what order? No? Surely not just me?



Anyway, back in those days, (and I’m talking about the 80’s/early 90’s here...again), the poster or cover artwork of a film that I’d never heard of, never read the synopsis to, never heard of the star, could bend my mind to the point of obsession. Maniac Cop 2 (below) was a personal favourite!



Let’s jump straight to the point here. I guess what I’m getting at is that the art of poster art is dead. Since Photoshop reared its ugly head, every gimp with a Mac is a ‘graphic designer’. What happened to the illustrator’s man? The guys that used to create those kooky old movie posters that seem to make the heroes more heroic, monsters more terrifying, turn ladies in to vixens. Here’s an example. Check out how great Bridget Nielsen looks on the poster to Red Sonja (bad remake coming soon folks!!) compared to what she looks like in the movie. She’s the bomb in Rocky 4 tho!



And check out this poster for the film Madman, which had me shitting my pants as a kid. The thought of Madman Marz sitting in a tree outside my bedroom window turned me into a sobbing little fool!



But when he finally appears in the film, check out the shit make up job we’re landed with. He looks like Santa in a K Hole. What a jip!



The actual quality of the film doesn’t matter; we’re talking about the artwork here. If great artwork on an album can coerce you in to buying it, an aural medium which can never represent the art on the sleeve, then you know a great film cover will have you snatching it from the racks.

Look at the poster for the blockbuster vampire flick Twilight.



Now check out the poster for 80’s vampire love story Near Dark. It’s not an illustration, but I think I’ve illustrated my point. Which would you rather see?



Back in the day, good artwork sold films. Now we have access to trailers on TV, online, even on our phones. I guess this kinda negates the need for eye catching posters. Boo-Hoo for us!

Jesus, I’ve gone off on one completely. This post was intended to shine a light on some classic Sylvester Stallone illustrated posters. Here they are. “Noyce one Slllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”!