Salvation Magazine Issue 1 - Magazine - Page 21
Reviews
of when you think of the comics of
your youth. Horror comics aren’t a
particularly new thing either – Eerie Comics, Tales From The Crypt
and Adventures into the Unknown
all starting in the 40s and 50s.
However these days, comics and
their meatier collected format – the
graphic novel, are de昀椀nitely more
than they ever used to be. Although
the biggest genre will always be
superhero comics, horror comics
are still a major, and very popular
read. One of the most imaginative
and well put together currently
being released is Something is
Killing the Children by one of
the top current writers across all
genres – James Tynion IV (Batman,
The Woods). We open on an almost
reassuringly familiar horror trope
– a teenage game of Truth or Dare.
Oddball of the group, James, choses
Truth – to the dismay of his friends.
Skip to an ill-advised moonlight
monster hunt in the woods…
It turns out that kids have been
going missing in Archer’s Peak; an
otherwise sleepy, middle American
town. The few who have turned up
report unimaginable, terrible and
unbelievable things. As does the
sole survivor of this sunset stroll,
James. Enter Erica Slaughter,
who may look like a young blonde
woman with a slight frame and an
alarming habit of taking to a stu昀昀ed
octopus, but is actually a bad-ass,
punk as hell, chainsaw wielding,
monster killing machine.
She’s seen this kind of thing
before.
Hasn’t she?
We’ve got a good, solid, horror
comic here, evocative of Stranger
Things, but by now we know to
expect more from Tynion. We’ve
also got a nice slant on the ‘adults
can’t see monsters; only the young,
the insane and the chosen’ ri昀昀,
with a side of ghostly magicks, a
tantalizing garnish of SECRET
ANTI HERO CABAL, all delivered with ethereal yet bold art by
Dell’Edera (who you may recognize
from The Crow: Memento Mori, or
Loveless), and don’t forget perfectly
atmospheric colours from Miquel
Muerto. It’s not often the colourist
gets a mention in the review but
these are really 11/10.
The initial story arc lasts for the
昀椀rst 3 volumes, and that’s the minimum you’ll want to read if you need
any sense of closure. However, there
are threads left to dangle regarding
what Erica will do next, and how
far reaching and all-encompassing
this mysterious Order of St George
really are. Volume 4 I had hoped
would continue on the path Erica
was forging, but it seems we must
wait slightly longer for that. The
fourth installment actually gives us
the even juicier backstory of our
white haired, green eyed, sassy ass
kicker, and I can’t wait for volume 5.
Lou Hellbaby
HEAVEN
Mieko Kawakami
Paperback 167pages
English Language translated
from Japanese by Sam Bett and
David Boyd Picador 2021
If Heaven is a place on earth then
it’s not in a Japanese school. Mieko
Kawakami’s short novel Heaven has
a much darker tone than Breasts
and Eggs, her groundbreaking
novel of gender,
Motherhood and pregnancy
which mixed challenging ideas with
a gentle humour, in Heaven she
mixes bullying with an escalating
sense of dread and brooding violence. It is not a happy read.
Heaven is centred on a fourteenyear-old schoolboy who has a lazy
eye, this defect and his quiet, unassuming nature make him something of an outcast and the target
for bullying and it is the unrelenting
and vicious nature of this that runs
through the whole story. Initially
I was assuming that, pushed to
the limit, the stories victim, he is
never named, would go berserk
and attack or kill his persecutors,
but Heaven isn’t that kind of story.
Instead, our narrator endures his
torments in the hope that by su昀昀er-
ing the bullies will eventually stop.
Instead the bullying increases.
His torments though are alleviated to an extent when he starts 昀椀nding notes in his desk from Kojima,
a girl in his class who is also being
bullied. She is another outcast, shy,
quiet and awkward she is teased
and mocked but 昀椀nds an a昀케nity
with him.
The two pass notes back and forth
and eventually meet and a quiet relationship begins to develop between
them but all the time a real sense
of dread is building as his torments
and the violence escalate until a
group of boys put a hollowed out
football over his head and use him as
a football. It is only the fear that his
injuries may lead to the bullies getting caught that causes a brief lull in
the violence before his daily tortures
begin to build up again.
Kawakami, has created a dark
coming-of-age story in which two
disturbed and dysfunctional adolescents 昀椀nd not love as such but a
kind of tenderness as they comfort
each other. As our narrator says of
Kojima; ‘I never had another friend
like her. She was the only one’.
Hell would perhaps be a more
apt title…
Nigel Wingrove
LIVE (alternative comedy)
Troy Club Review
The bell rings behind the bar of
Aces and Eights in Tufnell Park,
and a voice proclaims to the throng
that the basement, hosting 20 year
strong alternative comedy night the
Troy Club, is now open.
So if you like comedy, says the
voice, you should come on down
(they even have a card thingy on
the door... ooooOOOOooooh), and if
you don’t like comedy...
Fuck o昀昀.
We all laugh.
All is well, we all like comedy.
We do not fuck o昀昀.
The voice turns out to belong to
50% of the evening’s hosts – occult
comedian Andrew O’Neill. Along
with Leslie (she has a card thingy
on the door) they bring some 11/10
lipstick, spectacular shoes, a truly
natural chemistry between two
extremely hilarious people, and
some of the best alternative comedy
acts you probably haven’t seen
yet… AND THEY DO THIS EVERY
MONTH!
March’s line up had more great
acts than a review of this size can
do justice to. We would not be
happy with ourselves if we didn’t
urge you to seek out the ferocious
energy of Yuriko Kotani (small but
mighty), the poise, elegance, and
genuine hilarity of James O’Donoghue, and the comedy / art / poetry
of Oh Standfast. April’s show had
the special treat of a script readthrough from host Andrew, alongside probably more people than
health and safety would like to be
sharing such a small stage at once
reading the other roles. This was
a sneak peek at Andrew’s occult
sitcom Damned Andrew on BBC
R4. Andrew and Leslie just can’t
stop making us laugh, like much
better dressed Patch Adamses… in
a hospital that’s actually a bar… and
no-one is a doctor. Not that kind of
doctor anyway.
Other acts of note to have recently added to the roars of laughter
include Carol Cates: stunning to
look at, with the voice of an angel,
but delivering songs with words an
angel would never say, and Tiernan
Douieb who is doing his best to stay
positive for his daughter in a mad
mad world.
If you like comedy, you should
come on down to the Troy Club,
physically OR digitally.
And if you don’t like comedy...
Future Troy Club dates (the
second Friday of every month) can
be found on the facebook page @
troyclubcomedy.
Lou Hellbaby
LIVE Marduk / Vader
Support: Impalement, The
Risen Dread
The Garage 14/3/2022
Having been starved of live events
for so long during the pandemic,
and with rules on capacity and
other restrictions only just relaxing,
it has been indescribably wonderful
to get back to gigs… to the point
it would probably be enjoyable to
watch someone’s granddad play the
spoons on stage right now. This was
by no means the 昀椀rst sweaty throng
we’ve been in post-pandemic but
it certainly had the most dry ice,
(somewhat ironically for this genre)
the politest and happiest crowd,
and (fairly expectedly) had the most
beer spilled in front of the bar of
any post ‘Rona gigs so far.
Salvation 昀椀rst featured Marduk in our early incarnation of
Redemption TV in the very early
days, and with them on their 30th
Anniversary tour, on the cusp of our
30th anniversary, we felt that this
gig would be particularly special.
Plus your humble reviewer has
missed more than one Vader show
before due to last minute illness, so
anticipation on the night was at an
all-time high.
The gig was rescheduled from
a January date – probably due to
Covid – and although this had the
plus of meaning restrictions were
totally relaxed by the time it rolled
around, it also had the con that is
was now a Monday and the doors
were at the eye wateringly early
time of 6pm. Our apologies to both
support bands, but due to teleportation not existing we only managed
to catch half of Impalement’s set…
But it was a great sight to arrive
to, and the Swiss blastwerk was
the perfect scent of blood on the
air, preparing for the onslaught of
Vader. This tour marks 25 years
of De Profundis, the 昀椀rst Impact
release in their near 40 years of
existence, and from the moment
they stepped on the stage they had
us in thrall. A wonderful barrage of
death metal, that was over too soon,
with so much energy and power it
was revitalizing to watch.
We’ll be honest, anyone would
have their work cut out to follow
such a clean and well executed set
as Vader, but Marduk are one of
the 昀椀rst bands I’d think of when it
comes to black metal punishment.
But where Vader seem to have only
improved with age, Marduk are,
昀椀guratively and literally, not the
Marduk they were 30 years ago. It
was a really enjoyable set (barring,
IMHO, a couple of complaints
about the drums), with I think all
the songs I wanted to hear (I’ve got
to admit drinks were had, and towards the end is hazy) but it lacked
the almost brash surety of your
attention that Vader commanded,
and personally I’d have put the
bands the other way round on the
bill. I feel pretty miserly to complain
about any gig where the keywords
are Marduk and Vader though, and
it was pretty entertaining to see just
how polite the audience can be at a
black metal gig.
Gigs are back baby, blastbeats
and blasphemy FTW!
Lou Hellbaby
GROWING UP:
Sex in the Sixties
Peter Doggett
386 pages £25.00
Beginning a book on sexuality
with a warning that includes the
sentence, ‘By the standards of
today, these attitudes are clearly
unacceptable, while the behaviour
and language that accompanied
them are equally o昀昀ensive’, is in
itself a warning to me that the
authors’ own prejudices will be fully
on display. Growing Up is not going
to be an objective history of the
UK’s sexual mores, it is an opinionated history which is very di昀昀erent
to an actual history. The author,
has chosen a number of examples
to illustrate just how beastly and
unenlightened things were in the
sixtes and early seventies and then
devotes a chapter to each one to
prove his point.
No decade begins and terminates abruptly, rather it meanders
into the next decade until this timeframe eventually de昀椀nes its own
take on the world and starts again.
As the seventies didn’t really shrug
o昀昀 the sixties until ’75 or ’76 so the
sixties emerged in the late 昀椀fties,
昀氀irted with morality a bit and then
got swinging. So rather than take a
linear approach, Doggett begins by
referencing two cultural milestones
of 昀椀fties culture, Roger Vadim’s 昀椀lm,
And God Created Woman (1956),
starring a young and feline Brigitte
Bardot and, Vladimir Nabokov’s
novel, of forbidden desire, Lolita
(1955).
He does this to establish and
highlight the ’nymphet’ and set
up what is essentially the tenet
of the whole book, that it is not a
celebration of the sexual revolution
but rather an exposé of its darkside.
A vili昀椀cation of the decades chief
villain, white men and a lament for
women who Doggett says were,
“sacri昀椀ced to the predatory needs
of the male libido”.
The nymphet in this instance,
a young girl/woman who is, to the
men of the time, a sensual mix of
innocence and simmering sexual
desire personi昀椀ed by the fourteenyear-old Sue Lyon in the 昀椀lm version of Lolita (1962). Here Doggett
tells a sorry tale of exploitation that
is both sordid and, given the age of
the desired ’nymphet’ bordering
on the paedophilic. Indeed, in the
forward to a photographic book,
Six Nymphets (1966), the nymphet
is described breathlessly as a ‘sexchild...more waif than woman’.
From this low point one
progresses through the sixtes with
more and more examples of mans
exploitation of women recounted,
including the Perfumo A昀昀air, in the
pages of OZ magazine or in 昀椀lms
like Al昀椀e (1996) or Blow-Up (1967)
where the male antihero shags
borderline miniskirted nymphets
with gusto. So much so that one
increasingly sees women as hapless
victims unable to fend or act for
themselves. It is as if female sexual
desire could only respond to man’s
sexual manipulation and objecti昀椀cation. Women’s desire and the
sense of sexual adventure o昀昀ered
by the arrival of the Pill seems to
have mysteriously vanished in this
history?
Without question when recounted now these descriptions and
attitudes to women, homosexuality
and ethnicity can seem barbaric,
but that is to judge them against the
moral criteria of today. The events
and opinions of sixty years ago are
not only of another era but they re-
昀氀ected the context of the time. Men
and women navigated their way
through life and had relationships,
good and bad, as they have always
done and some, unfortunately fell
by the wayside or got burnt. But
the power of attraction is timeless
and whilst this study makes for an
interesting read it is not a history of
the sixties or the sexual revolution.
That book is still to be written...
Nigel Wingrove
Ghost & Twin Temple at the O2 Arena
11/04/22
On a dreary Monday night in
London what better to lift your
dark spirits than the kings of camp
satanism themselves; Ghost. With
their largest UK headline gig to
date and possibly more costume
changes than Lady Gaga, Tobias
and co brought the Impera pantomime to Greenwich in style.
But before Ghost graced
the stage Twin Temple were
tasked with kicking o昀昀 the whole
shebang with their unique sound,
self-described as satanic do-wop.
Opening with an occult ritual
they won over the crowd instantly as they dived into a distinctly
non-metal but satanic set of
catchy tunes. Vocalist Alexandra looks the part in a winged
eyeliner, black and red mini dress
and sky-high beehive hair, inviting
many comparisons to the late
Amy Winehouse, also based on
her similar vocal range. Husband
and guitarist Zachary James looks
equally impressive dressed in a
50’s style sequin embellished suit
and slicked back hair, he doesn’t
speak and allows Alexandra to
pull the focus. After their vampire
movie- esque intro In Lvx they
go full force into Sex Magick, an
upbeat 50s tune that gets the
crowd dancing. Only on stage for
30 minutes I could have listened
for a lot longer, I will de昀椀nitely
be looking out for a smaller gig
to get up close and personal with
this band, next time will be on
the Dogtooth stage at this year’s
Download festival and I’ll be
there for sure! Next was Uncle
Acid & the Deadbeats but
I will admit that after the queue
for the toilet and then the bar I
missed most of their set and so it
wouldn’t really be fair to review
them. And so, to the main event,
by the time Ghost take to the
stage the crowd is buzzing with
anticipation. As the curtain drops
and the 昀椀rst notes play a cheer
scream goes out worthy of the
biggest pop acts. Tobias belts out
banger after banger working his
way through the various incarnations of his stage persona, while
the nameless ghouls that make up
the band play with e昀昀ortless zeal
in their new steampunk get up.
As the evening romps along we
see sequins, pyro, epic light shows
and costume changes that all together make one hell of a headline
show echoing predecessors such
as Kiss and Alice Cooper. This
is clearly the band’s bid for the
big time. The main thing I’ll take
away from this show is the sheer
fun, it’s a ray of fucking sunshine
gleaming through the musical
landscape of metal that can often
be dark for darkness’s sake. Wall
to wall hits 昀椀ll the set list, after
6 albums they have reached the
point that the whole set is full of
hits and no misses.
A solid 9/10 evening.
Pippen Ravenscourt
Salvation/19
