Home » Entries posted by Stanley Stepanic
Epic Games \ Epic Games Publishing \ first-person survival horror \ PC \ Remedy Entertainment \ survival horror
Alan Wake II (A Novella on Survival Horror)
2023 has been an outstanding year for video games, and no game is better evidence than Alan Wake II. Remedy Entertainment’s latest outing sees the titular character back in action in the world of Bright Falls, with better puzzles, mysteries, and characters (old and returning) to stave off the darkness. Alan Wake II is […]
black ambient \ dark ambient \ dark industrial \ dark ritualistic ambient \ Japan \ ritualistic ambient \ Slithering Black Records
Maris Anguis – Infernal Reign (Black Ambient Soul Purge)
There’s good ambient, and there’s bad ambient, regardless of subgenre. There is no middle. The reason is simple. The artist is either skilled at making music, or merely holds keys on a keyboard. I’ve said this a bagillkillion times. Here we have something even beyond the usual skill, though, something of darkly mythic potential. […]
Ainul Iblis \ Austria \ Estonia \ raw black metal \ Signal Rex \ Switzerland
Burial Moon – S/T (Mystical Darkness Raw Black Metal)
This one surprised me for reasons that might escape the usual listener. I was told once I review too much black metal, but that happened to be a coincidence for the time and now that winter draws closer I have an excuse if I wanna engage. At any rate, I know the tropes, you […]
David Winters \ horror comedy \ Severin Films \ Troma Entertainment
The Last Horror Film (Onanistic Maniacal Horror Comedy)
With the success of 1980’s Maniac, producer Judd Hamilton saw dollar signs in the torrid team-up of the beautiful Caroline Munro and quirky character actor Joe Spinell. As a result, we were graced by the truly bizarre The Last Horror Film (lensed at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival as The Fanatic) less than two […]
Chorus Worldwide Games \ interactive fiction \ LCB Game Studio \ old school PC horror \ text-based adventure \ visual novel
Varney Lake (Pixel Pulp Vampiric Visual Novel)
Oooooo, tasty, bloody, and pulpy. I was pretty excited about Varney Lake, not just for the Varney the Vampire references, but for the fact that it was an old-school PC text adventure horror game. Before it dropped the devs let me check out another title they did prior, Mothmen 1966, which was surprisingly deep. […]
California \ cold wave \ dark wave \ darkwave \ Los Angeles \ synth wave \ synthwave \ United States
Casket Cassette – Love Letters to Ghosts (Nighttime High School Basketball Court Cold Wave)
I tell you what here’s another shat week for promos. I had only a single submission I wanted to review (already done before this one) and in desperation I thought “hey, been awhile since I heard some good Goth licks.” Search a tag and sometimes you come upon gold, this time under the moniker […]
Australia \ death doom \ Headsplit Records \ Me Saco un Ojo Records \ Melbourne \ Necro Frost \ Victoria
Carcinoid – Encomium to Extinction (Smarty Pants Grave-Splitting Death Doom)
Well this one surprised me now, didn’t it? Just the other day I was saying how Australia’s Werewolves pretty much satisfies everything you’d need in death metal from the country, but now I decided to add to the list Carcinoid, which opts for the death doom angle, with some cocky smartypants attitude. On the […]
Amazon Digital Services \ extreme horror fiction \ gore literature \ Harrison Phillips \ horror literature \ Insan Kamil \ insanecamel
Superfan (Boy Band Revenge Gore Fiction)
Parasocial relationships with bands have been a thing since the dawn of time, I’m pretty sure. For young teenagers who love boy bands this is a huge thing; girls love their favorite member, fantasize about them, dream of meeting them, and just breathing the same air. But they always say don’t meet your heroes […]
20 Buck Spin \ California \ Daniel Butler \ erotic death metal \ San Francisco \ United States
Vastum – Inward to Gethsemane (Shameful Death Metal Eroticism)
For some bizarre reason it took me some time to get into this one, but don’t let that fool you, it’s an absolute ripper. I’ll blame the weather or something, because clearly my mind just wasn’t ready for it. Again, strange, because I find a certain site rating this much lower than would I, […]
brutish war metal \ Duje Aljinovic \ nasty war metal \ Profound Lore Records \ Richmond \ Stygian Black Hand \ United States \ Virginia \ war metal
Left Cross – Upon Desecrated Altars (Nasty, Brutish, and Short War Metal)
Here’s a band I knew nothing about until I came across this in the promos. At first I thought it was some bro metal band obsessed with punching (see their name), and then I found out it was actually murderous war metal (redundant, I know) band from Richmond, Virginia, which is quite close to […]
