A Poet's Fire

My exit from the music world seemed to coincide with my first English Literature class in junior college. The class, and history, which I am also passionate about, seemed to coincide as well as I learned about Romantic poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and most affectionately, John Keats. I had an excellent teacher, Professor Joczyk, who would praise my ideas in front of the class one day, but would give me 89s on all my research papers in order to push me to do better. She also had this policy about not missing class or she would flunk you. She made an exception when I went to Italy, telling me I had to visit the Keats-Shelley Museum in Rome (which I did).

Long story short, the class fueled my burgeoning fire for poetry. Professor Joczyk had given lessons on Byron and ideas of the "Byronic Hero" and the "solitary man." I sort of morphed myself into this persona, experimenting with my creativity, and soon, I wrote my first poem one night during a complicated time in my life. All of my poems, much like my lyrics, were based on my life, mixed in with whatever I was learning about or inspired by at the moment.

“Rheumatic Roulette” (2/25/04)

How do I love you? Let me count the ways.

Six possibilities, six chambers.

One out of six, spin, spin, sweet spinning,

Round, round, and round, where it stops no one knows.

Dark as midnight, perchance to cease,

This wheel of fortune turning surreal and all too hazy.

This is the darkest winter I have felt in years.

I am longing for the lovely tile,

To swim in a sea of crimson, shores of needles and razorblades.

I’ll be the ghost who creeps into your Bloody Mary bathroom mirror,

The albatross ‘round your ripened neck,

And I’ll look up at you, look in on you,

Look out at you from my smoking barrel in the dark.

“Gods and Guillotines” (3/4/04)

When this war is over I will be canonized,

Sainted; awarded three purple hearts and two bronze stars,

A congressional medal of honor.

For this is a martyr’s game, a four star name.

I’ve seen brothers die, sisters cry,

As they offer me the cloth of their best ball gowns rendered to rags.

For this is a warrior’s game, a four star name.

Commemorate me Caesar of Rome, dictator for life,

Worshiped; roses and doves, feared and loved.

Hail to me provinces and vast empire,

Stretching across the continents to colonize the heathen.

The Tiberius’, Caligulas, Neros come in time,

But for now, this is a deity’s game, a four star name.

Coronate me Emperor of France, dictator of all,

Crowned; scepter and sword, monarch and Lord.

Award to me countries of worth, material goods of gold,

Josephines who never grow old.

Pay to me tribute, from pauper to prince, descended of gods.

For this is a soldier’s game, a four star name.

Crown me King of Versailles, incompetent and broken,

Revolutionized; nooses and forks, stocks and rocks,

The gallows await and I have brought them only cake.

Liberate, liberate! Screams and swollen pride,

Reduced to a punctured agony; a Bastille rightfully stormed.

Antoinettes who never die, Robespierres who draw nigh.

For this is fool’s game, a four star name.

All hail gods and guillotines, a requiem of libertines.

“The Abyss” (3/4/04)

Soft, faint echoes of the world around me,

But they matter not.

This is my time of reckoning, my moment of deep blue vanity.

Vanity, or insanity?

Drip, drip, slip into my comatose haven,

Head resting on the bottom.

Drip, drip, slip into melismatic hums,

Feet propped meticulously near the escape route.

You are my abyss, you spawned this,

Nothing more than an obsession with the Gulf of Spezia.

Drip, drip, slip into slowly-filling lungs,

Then lift up my head and end this fantasy. 

“1000 Ships, 1000 Deaths” (3/4/04)

Dido and Aeneas, Paris and Helen,

Antony and Cleopatra – oh, how history repeats!

A fable, a myth, a leibestod, a tragedy,

And we fit them all, my dear.

Your face launched 1,000 ships of mutiny.

Soldiers and warriors a ‘plenty came to rescue you from the aspic fangs.

I fell on my sword for you,

I was once adored by you.

Octavian’s armies and Achilles’ heels will not keep me from you.

Men will cry, servants will die, but I will endure.

We will live in infamy, cursing the Roman Triumph that follows –

Cursing anyone who dares to keep us apart.

I will die for you, I will kill for you.

I will kill us both to keep us together forever.

“Ode to La Fée”

What myths and monsters paint the night

In hues of ghastly green and the absence of light?

Ghostly white, curdled with the essence of neutral tones,

Bones and skin and bloody knees, the beast finds herself appeased.

Erased from the face of the earth from birth.

Festering sore on the cheek of humanity,

I combat her vanity with a dripping prose,

Flipping her underworld free of all its flaming woes.

Stay the course, live among the light

Though the night is a jealous sprite, dealing only in death and spite.

Fight that Green delight until you find her absent her color,

Sobering valor shall resist her most horrifically shrill holler.

A new voodoo queen shall prowl this scene,

Laveau shall fade where La Fée shall incite parade.

A lavish spectacle, a Bacchanalia of fools

In which fairies and ghouls spawn bottles empty a’ plenty.

And if so vigorous a she-devil should fail to fall abashed,

Then hold still with teeth gnashed, awaiting the foul tempest to pass.

Drink her down, hold yourself still,

And blink not, righteous friend, while baited breaths draw nil. 

“Chloroform Cabaret”

I’ve been rehearsing tirelessly for my chloroform cabaret.

A debutante, a provisional professional,

Perfecting this craft on such daftly-short notice,

Munchausen by proxy, brimming with such gusto, such moxy.

Light on my feet, wiry and elusive,

Conducive to the atmosphere of opening night.

I have recited my lines, rehearsed my scales,

Perfected my pitch, acquired distaste for your rich.

I’ll be performing a cabaret, one like you’ve never seen before.

Cast me with actors and artists, lepers and harlots,

And still I will deliver a show-stopping performance,

A Jacobian tragedy to the tune of the whistling guillotine.

Stage fright will subside for crowd delight,

The bourgeois swinging from the rafters thereafter.

My rotting requiem, my banshee moan, my sardonic slewn,

My stifling wit and cat-like prowess will entrance them for hours.

Wrap your applause with the gauze of your fresh wounds

And assume the worst amidst my seething verse,

And assume the position in my crippling disposition.

Down with the noose of my hallowed gallows.

Nevermind the torches, the pitchforks,

Nevermind the genocide, the flies, the lies.

The show must go on, you see,

So let them eat cake while you shake off the stiff neck.

I’ve been rehearsing tirelessly for my chloroform cabaret.

I’ll burn down the estate with your fate well in mind,

As you stand in the line winding toward that great whistling blade,

I know I played my part to perfection for the revolution encore.

“A Hero Must Rise”

A hero must rise.

When the sun descends, I begin where you end,

Crossing paths with my own shadow to battle my own demons.

In a town that fears sundown, I wear a crown of laurels

Composed of irony, and sympathy, and empathy,

Which was at one time my greatest superpower.

I walk the streets at night

When I should be at home, resting well on my bed of nails,

Surrounded by four walls riddled with arsenic and jagged teeth,

Complacent to abide alongside the creatures that crawl beneath.

My private Turkish prison, my Chinese water torture vacation destination.
There’s no place like home.

I walk the streets at night because a hero must rise,

Even if only to despise what he’s become, contented and comfortably numb.

This S on my chest stands for sadist, you know,

And I’ll make sure to save myself from you on my way back from the fake clink.

Here I come to save the day,

And to flay you all for ever believing in me at all.

“When in Rome, Do As the Comatose”

Buzzing like a swarming apparatus,

The status of this army is susceptible.

Like Septimius Severus, Caligula, Nero,

Roman heroes and tyrants form two zeros.

And we fly the figure eight

And seal a fate that is not unlike karma to our glorious lord.

Point our attack like a divine finger,

Like a lounge singer spitting daggers with her breathless swagger,

With swords drawn I’m a pawn

Of this crucified crusade, leaving me

A canonized, sainted witness

Of the battle among insects, and I’m their Caesar.

Feaster of the feasters among the festering

Honey-roasted combs of the Roman catacombs.

Like a martyr, I’ve fallen for the cause,

Though save your applause for the solder wrapped in gauze when he returns home.

I’ll see you all in Elysium,

Mars will guide you through the horrors of this foreign war.

Store your keepsakes and handshakes deep into the soil

Like my mortal coil, blessed in oil, depicted like a glorified gargoyle. 




"Dirt Mall Mannequin"
My words are worth nothing until after I'm dead,
So here's to being famous.
Tonight, your name in your own lights,
Your fame ignites to full fruition.
I've reserved your name on the wall of fame
Because I wanted to make you a big star, baby.

You're the next big thing,
New York stars in small town eyes,
LA spin in olive skin.
Roar that feline growl just one more time,
Your grime covered by the limelight.

Mirrors and razor blades, the nightlife that never fades,
Now don't you go and lose your nerve.
Salut just one more time,
But keep the "T" silent so I die a martyr on it,
Crucified for your fame on it.

This life has chosen you,
I have helped you achieve this faux fashion.




"The Fiftiessensation" 
Bombshell Betty, handgun confetti,
Raining down like white lies and hidden agendas.
Blood-speckled windows, self-mutilating innuendos,
Live fast, die young, leave a good-lookin' corpse.

I am the Fiftiessensation, an inspiration
To all those who fall short of my capsized, cup-size catharsis,
Dragster scarf flapping at high speeds
On the high tides of silk, sweat, corset corvette.

Come on, you know you want it,
Live fast, die young, leave a good-lookin' corpse.
Come on, you know you want it,
You can't refuse this Elvis ego, this Marilyn mannequin masochist Betty.

The North Remembers

I have sort of a fascination with all things Scandinavian. Being that I'm Swedish-American, I try to follow the cultural contributions made by my brethren; movies, music, Vikings, Ikea. I recently happened across a hidden gem on Netflix called Autumn Blood. If you were to ask me about it, I would describe it as a Scandinavian movie made for an American audience. The actors either are Swedish or look Swedish. It's a unique film, The Hunger Games mixed with some obscure movie you might come across on the Sundance Channel one night.

Autumn Blood follows the story of the cryptically-named The Girl and The Boy, siblings tending their farm up in some lush, ice-capped, breathtaking set of mountains. While the film, directed by German-born Markus Blunder, was probably shot in Austria or Switzerland, it reeks of Scandinavian overtone, as it features Swedish actors Peter Stormare (Fargo) and Gustaf Skarsgard (Vikings). The movie also features a few German actors, including The Boy (Maximilian Harnisch). Only our heroine, The Girl (Sophie Lowe), is an English actress, though her accent betrays nothing in the few lines that she actually gives us. The sweeping landscape seems to do a lot of the talking for her.

The Girl is a fair, blonde teenager carrying the brunt of her family's chores with a mother who is ill, a brother who is helpful but diminutive, and a father who died at the hands of some unspoken vendetta with The Mayor (Peter Stormare). She milks cows, washes clothes, and shovels slop during the days, but the evenings are built for her and her brother to enjoy general bouts of faux wrestling and stargazing. The Girl also likes to skinny-dip in the mountain lakes, seeing as how she believes herself to be completely alone. This is what gets her into trouble with The Hunter, a villainous townie who just happens to be the son of The Mayor. This immediately inspires ideas of family vendetta, with The Mayor having shot dead The Girl's father in front on her nearly a decade before.

The Hunter is not such a good guy. He takes it upon himself to rape The Girl while no one else is around, leaving her abused physically and mentally. While she tries to cope with the loss of her innocence, her mother passes away of some undisclosed illness. One feature of the film I do like is the cryptic nature of the parents' demises. It fits well with the minimalist dialogue.

At this point, the siblings are living alone on the mountainside farm, and it's not until the The Girl wanders into town to the post office, that The Clerk (German actor George Lenz) sees the bruises and scars on her face and places a call to social services. The Girl and The Boy have seen to the burial of their mother themselves, so this is the time their abandonment becomes public information. As The Girl wanders through the rustic town, she's noticed by The Butcher (Gustaf Skarsgard) and The Friend (German actor Tim Morten Uhlenbrock). Of course, they're friends of The Hunter, and are well aware of what he's done to The Girl. That night, The Butcher, The Friend, and The Hunter head out to the homestead to have their way with The Girl again. With all the monikers and the fairy tale scenery give in the film, this story reminds me of some gritty and obscure Scandinavian or German fable retold in the modern age.

Soon, a social worker makes a house call to the homestead, though The Girl pretends she isn't home. She's not sure who the blonde stranger is, and she doesn't want to turn the three big bad wolves in, causing more problems for her and her brother. The bad guys, afraid that The Girl will snitch on them for what they've done, decide to eliminate the threat. It is then up to The Girl and The Boy to defend themselves. 

The homestead defense doesn't come out quite as you might imagine. It transpires more organically, which I can appreciate. The siblings are chased into the mountain forest, pursued through the heavy brush and up the side of a pretty treacherous waterfall. The Girl doesn't turn into Katniss Everdeen or Lieutenant Ripley in this one, but stays true to the scared orphan she's playing. She simply tries to outrun the baddies, being that's all she knows to do. Scaling the mountainside leads to the crushing death of The Friend, which leaves The Butcher and The Hunter still in hot pursuit. The Girl and The Boy have split up to increase their chances of survival, but this doesn't quite turn out as expected when The Boy is caught by The Hunter.

When The Girl comes across The Hunter, she cracks him in the back of the head with a rock, making him shoot himself with his own rifle. Reunited, The Girl and The Boy make their way to their home, only to be spotted by The Hunter. The ending is a tad anti-climactic, but very unexpected, and overall, satisfying.

Years ago, I came across a Brazilian film called The Three Marias (As Tres Marias), a low-budget family vendetta flick featuring some pretty heavy Catholic imagery. Autumn Blood is the same in that respect, the town in the movie at least subconsciously dominated by the rustic church at the center of it. 

Autumn Blood has a very old world feel to it. If not for the shotguns toted by the characters from time to time, this story could have taken place in the Middle Ages with its examples of simple, harsh living in a rural, rugged landscape. The Girl doesn't possess the drive for vengeance that the Marias did, but she simply did what she had to do to survive. Ultimately, justice (the social worker) and reparation (The Mayor) were on her side to quell the three-pronged attack of the savage men.

Autumn Blood doesn't make my all-time list, but it's memorable for all the reasons I've described above. It's artsy, simplistic, rugged, and very Northern European. As I said, it feels like something made in Scandinavia for an American audience. You can find it now streaming on Netflix. This movie is so obscure that even with the spoilers, I probably won't spoil it. More than likely, not enough people will see this one and it will only be appealing for anyone who looks for the same Euro simplistic storytelling that I do. The performances of Stormare, Skarsgard, and Sophie Lowe are memorable, or as good as they could possibly be given such a minimalistic vehicle. 

Music History 101

Sometimes, I really miss being in a band. I covered a gamut of genres in my time spent in music, and that's probably why I can listen to the new Broken Social Scene and old Zao within the span of about five minutes. I never did anything quite as heavy as Zao, but I screamed just as hard as Dan Weyandt, and with perhaps just as much passion. I miss the catharsis, I miss the camaraderie, I miss songwriting, I miss having the new things I was learning about in the world filter into my lyrics, to be given an outlet that no one but me would understand, but others could obtain to form their own interpretations. I miss PS 150, I miss Sonrise, I miss All Books. After reading about the tenure of Deadguy through the eyes of their drummer, and watching the Zao documentary, The Lesser Lights of Heaven, I was inspired to script out my own musical history, mainly for the sake of nostalgia. I don't know if I'd call this post a memoir, but this is sort of a fleshed out reflection of my time lent to the wonderful world of music.


ISH HALL (1996-1997)
To quote the great Andy Garcia in Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead, "give it a name." That's exactly what we did. In '96, I got my first guitar. I was opened up to a whole new world at that point. I mean, I was terrible, but I had the passion to learn, and if not for Darrell, my next door neighbor, who had always been more of a friend of my sister's than mine growing up, I would've have learned how to play correctly. He taught me simple chords like G, C, D, E, and E minor. He was younger than me, but way more accomplished. We started playing together, mainly Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, and Bush covers, he on lead, me on rhythm. We did this until we were comfortable enough to start writing our own songs.

Our practice sessions would consist of he and I sitting in my garage, playing and recording with a tape player, my dad's voice on the in the background every now and then when he came out to harp on me about something. The songs I wrote sounded like the Pumpkins and Hum, while Darrell's were more Dave Matthews merged with Tripping Daisy or something funky like that. When we had our own songs, we needed a name. I think we had a slew of options, but they were all either too quirky or too Smashing Pumpkins inspired, seeing as how I was still sort of obsessed with their "Siamese Dream" album. I wrote songs like "Star"and "Sleep," Darrell composed "Walsh" and "Freak Universal," and together, we wrote a tribute to Nina Gordon from Veruca Salt after I'd drooled over her "Volcano Girls" video. Our song was aptly titled "Nina of Aurora." It wasn't until we went with my dad to a Berkeley High School football game did we have a name. Berkeley's running back, an elusive bruiser named Ish Hall, had an incredible night on the field with the announcer shouting his name ad nauseum. Darrell and I just kind of looked at each other at one point, both recognizing what the other was thinking. Ish Hall was the fortuitous band name we had been waiting for.

We didn't end up being a band as much as a project. We dabbled with a full cast of players, but the commitment level wasn't there for all the members, and frankly, I think we just sort grew out of it. Darrell soon bulked up, got involved with football at Stratford High, and enrolled at the Citadel for college. I lived at home, was working a telemarketing gig, flipping burgers at Burger King, and going to school at a JC. I didn't have too much time on my hands either, but the passion for music was still there. I just needed some time to get better.


SEVENTH VISION (1997-2000)

7V was formed in the summer of '97. My sister and I were hanging with the youth group at church a lot, and hanging with each other quite a bit as well. This was our best friend period. A mutual friend from church named Justin had told us about this Christian club called PS 150 Verse 2 in North Chucktown. It was a bit of a haul, but we made the trek anyway. The place was bought by a guy named Ross, who converted an old warehouse into a sort of night club for youth. Justin introduced me to his school friends, Doug and Johnny. Johnny, strangely enough, lived in my neighborhood, literally right around the corner. Another dude I met at the club, Ben, was into some really cool music in the burgeoning Christian hardcore scene. He introduced me to bands like Zao, Training for Utopia, and Living Sacrifice. My favorite heavy band was Rage Against the Machine, and when Justin, Johnny, Doug, and I talked about forming a band, I told them that I wanted to do something more rapcore. The only rapcore acts in the Christian scene were POD and Every Day Life (EDL). It needed another.

I followed House of Pain pretty religiously for a  long time. As I followed the progress of the members after their breakup, the DJ, Lethal, made his way into a rapcore act called Limp Bizkit. Without hearing any of their stuff beforehand, I took a chance and bought their debut album, Three Dollar Bill, Y'all just because Lethal was in the band. I listened to the album on the way to my first 7V practice in Justin's living room, and was immediately floored and inspired. Johnny and I cooked up some riffs, and my friend Mike and I wrote some lyrics to a song entitled "Crown of Thorns." We rocked for the first time in that living room that day, and what a great feeling it was.

Over time, we'd come up with five or six songs and had been practicing at PS 150, which had quickly turned into a music venue as well. Ross recorded our first demo tape, which we actually sold out of the first night. I think we sold out because we were the only band who was doing rapcore locally and there weren't many Christian acts doing it period. Our stage presence was awful at first, but the more we got comfortable in our skin, the more exciting the shows became. I remember I bought a Freddy Krueger sweater for a Halloween show. Thank God I don't have any digital pictures of that to share.

After we recorded another five song demo at Island Sound in Chucktown, we didn't sell it, but shared it with Ted Cookerly of EDL, whom we had befriended. Ted loved it and had connections with Screaming Giant Records all the way on the opposite coast in CA. I mailed him the demo, he shared it will the label, and the next thing we know, we have a record deal. We recorded our debut album, Shock of tha Hour locally, but the quality of the recording was awful. The label had paid for it, and they were just as disappointed with the final product as we were. They understandably refused to pay for another. I was the only band member living on my own, so all my money was tied up in the rent. Justin, Johnny, and Doug got jobs delivering pizza and literally saved every penny to buy new equipment, and a new recording. The second one was good. We'd actually written a new song between the two recordings and decided it was our strongest, making it the first track on the disc. We re-recorded all thirteen songs again at Island Sound, and the product was for the most part satisfying. We toured with other Screaming Giant bands, Rod Laver and Jesse and the Rockers, and even shot a video is Dallas, TX. On the tour, one hotel was so bad that Justin slept in the van, Johnny slept on a luggage rack, and Doug and I slept on the bed on top of the covers. That hole in the wall literally had a hole in the wall, no lie. We played locally and regionally, and occasionally, remotely in support of the CD. We played with POD, Rod Laver, Luti-Kriss, who later changed their name to Norma Jean, Third Root, and Project 86, as well as some great local bands, such as our pals in Fountain and Source of Our Strength.

Screaming Giant eventually ran out of money and caved, leaving us label-less. We didn't really have the clout yet to just hop into another deal. On the first day of a solo tour, our van broke down, and we didn't have any other means of transportation. I remember sitting with the guys at a truck stop, re-thinking our path as a band, and thinking about the new direction I wanted to go in. I had been listening religiously to the Deftones album Around the Fur, and after a fateful trip to TN with Johnny to see Spitfire, Hopesfall, and 18 Visions, I was introduced to the Incubus song "Pardon Me" for the first time. Brandon Boyd, the singer, had a sort of rappy-singy thing that I absolutely adored, and being that they were the only band really doing that style, I immediately latched on and was ready to write new jams.

Shock of tha Hour track listing:
1. Crossover
2. Cerebellum
3. Quicksand
4. Alarm
5. Sick
6. Forefront
7. F.I.S.S.T.
8. America
9. Days of Sorrow
10. Tha Legend
11. Paydirt
12. My Dark Cloud

I was inspired vocally by the debut albums of Nelly Furtado and MIA, as well as Deftones and Incubus.  I wanted to take the heavy melodies of Deftones and mesh them with Brandon Boyd-ish vocal styles for the songs on our second album, which I later wanted to call The Fall of Fashion. Speaking of fashion, during this time, I was also listening to a lot of Placebo, so the androgyny of singer Brian Molko was sort of an influence on me as well (much to the chagrin of my bandmates). I painted my nails, mascaraed my eyes, and shopped in the girls section of Gadzooks for too small t-shirts riddled in girly, ironic phrases. Doug and I spent a lot at the mall, and our friends at Hot Topic gladly played our five song demo to help promote the new stuff.

We were rejected by Solid State Records, and didn't achieve the following we'd once had. Frankly, Chucktown didn't seem quite ready for the style we were bringing. I felt the new songs were a lot better than those on the debut album, but I also felt like we were sort of ahead of our time. We played with some great bands like Zao and He Is Legend but could never seem to have a stable tour vehicle. Soon after, Doug got married and left the band. A friend of ours, Josh, gladly joined in Doug's place, we added a DJ, Marvin, and we continued on for a bit. We were an odd-looking foursome. Johnny looked like Wes Borland from Limp Bizkit, Marvin and Josh looked like they played in the rhythm section of Coal Chamber, I was for all intents and purposes glammed out, and Justin was the plain Jane.


The day we played our last show, I started selling copies of a solo project I'd done called Plumeria. That was about the only bright spot at the farewell show we played at Sonrise Church. I think we were all ready to do new things, and the band had become more taxing than fun. We didn't fit into a genre anymore, and I think that probably wasn't a good thing for us. I'm not sure folks were ready for the sound we were giving out, being that it was such a far cry from our debut. I actually learned how to scream properly by this time, which would help when the next full band came along.

5-Song Demo track listing:
1. Ave Rose
2. Your Pretty, Hollow Eyes
3. Rockstar
4. ARV 110
5. Something Borrow, Something Blue


PLUMERIA (2000)
There's not a whole lot to say about Plumeria. It was just me with an acoustic guitar. I had so many songs inside of me that really didn't fit the Seventh Vision mold, so I experimented by recording a demo in Johnny's bedroom, making copies, and selling them. I think I sold three or four of them, but have no more at this point. My pal, Tracy, still has one, and reminds me of this every time I talk to her. She always says she's going to mail it to me. Funny thing is, she's been saying that for about five years now. If my memory serves me correctly, I recorded four songs with vocals, and four instrumental tracks. I was really into a band called The Autumns at the time, so they, and Chino Moreno from Deftones, really inspired the project. It was recorded on cassette tape, and the recorder itself was so crappy that it gave Plumeria a really low-fi sound, which is cool looking back on it. As for the name, I had an unnatural affinity for the Bath & Body Works scent - so much that I named a side project after it. The project sounded a little similar to Fog Lake, particularly the track above. Plumeria was melancholic, wistful, and .simplistic.

NEVER UNTIL NOW (2001-2002)
By the time Seventh Vision ended, I was back in college but still looking for a new band. I wasn't quite as zealous about it this time around, but Johnny and I still had a passion for making music. We did a lot of hanging out at this time. We were best friends, spending Friday nights eating Chinese buffets and pestering my cat, Danny Boy (who ironically hated Guinness). Doug was married and Justin was the lonestar, so Johnny and I were really all we had. Seventh Vision had played a few times with a local punk band called Never Until Now, and had become friends with their members. We really got to know each other one night after a show in upstate SC at a Waffle House. Good times, really bad coffee. I sadly don't exactly remember how it went down, but Never Until Now had lost a member to another band. That member sung and played guitar. One of the remaining members told me as much, and I offered to be their frontman. Much like Dan Weyandt and Ross Cogdell of Zao, Johnny and I were a package deal. We joined the existing three piece as a revamped Never Until Now. They were already heading toward a more emo sound, and in the later incarnation of 7V, my singing had improved a bit. The NUN guys wanted me to sound like Davey Havoc from AFI, but I was really into Glassjaw at the time. We meshed influences from Glassjaw, AFI, and Thursday to produce a sort of punky, ultra-melodic brand of screamo.
The pre-existing members had to have been skeptical about Johnny and I. We were a guitar and vocalist coming from a band that was absolutely nothing like Never Until Now. Knowing that fact, I was excited, but I was nervous, as I felt like I had a lot to prove to them and myself. Strangely enough, we practiced in our drummer's girlfriend's guest house. Though they were a bit younger, I bonded with each member in our own unique ways. I knew they were still skeptical of my singing and screaming, as you can't really hear how they sound playing on a practice PA. It wasn't until we went in to record a three-song demo that the guys finally got to hear me. I didn't sound like Davey Havoc, but there were no complaints. We spent 48 hours in the studio to record three songs. We all got goofy, delirious, and I thrashed my voice by doing too many takes of my favorite track on the demo, "If These Walls Could Speak, They Wouldn't."

It was strange. Never Until Now sticks out in my mind as the more successful band, even though we never left the East Coast. Seventh Vision had a record deal and a music video, but Never Until Now had such a good local following that it compensated for the lack of national accomplishments. We played with bands like Paint the Sky Red, Yellowcard, and a host of other great local bands like Summer Rerun and Quench. We played at churches, bars, venues, and one time, in a kid's backyard with no PA system. We played with a bunch of old, staticy TV sets stacked up on our guitar amps, adding an eerie but interesting ambiance. I think we wrote six songs in a year, which is not really not that good. But those songs were really so good. Three of our guys, John, Jonathan, and John (I sometimes announced us from the stage as Four Johns and a Will) were in their final year of high school, and they composed songs that far exceeded their years. At one point, Jonathan left to tour with Farewell to Fashion, so we asked Justin of 7V fame to fill in. One night after a show at the Music Farm, John and John told me they were also leaving at the conclusion of the set. That was the weirdest show I've ever played.

3-Song Demo track listing:
1. Goodbye Cruel World
2. If These Walls Could Speak, They Wouldn't
3. Epic Le Fin

SCARLESS (2002-2003)

By the time Never Until Now ended, Doug was back in the picture, ready to reform Seventh Vision. Justin was down, and Johnny and I, distraught over NUN but ready to play music again, were optimistic. Doug had a sort of enigmatic charm in which he could kind of talk you into anything. We didn't want to be called Seventh Vision anymore. We were the same band with the same members, but we were different people with different influences. Deciding on name was not an easy process, and by default almost, we went with Scarless. I was still listening to a lot of Deftones, Glassjaw, and At the Drive-In, while Johnny was still into the screamo stylings of Never Until Now. We sort of merged the styles into one with Scarless, the heavy crunch of his absolutely sick guitar tone the glue that bridged the genres. No more rapping, no more sing rapping. In Scarless, I sang and screamed, my lyrics heavily influenced by the things I was learning about in college and how they filtered their way into the ups and downs of my life. For some reason I can't recall, Doug left the band again, and that sort of zapped out my passion for playing heavy music.

7-Song Demo track listing:
1. My Two Sides, My Open Diary
2. Farewell to Thee
3. Actium Novena
4. Caesar and His Rosary
5. Nothing to Come Home To
6. Drama
7. Icepick

SLOW MOTION PICTURE (2003)

I had a brief stint with this band when me and a fella named Lee, the drummer for local band Quench, starting talking about the bands we listened to. I was really into Sigur Ros and The Autumns at the time, I'd just gotten a new telecaster guitar, and I was ready to trade in my mic for an ax. We were really a four-piece jam band, sounding something like an Explosions in the Sky cover band. We were dreamy, ethereal, and shoegazy, but due to inconsistent members and lack of a consistent singer, we fell to the wayside. We took a great promo picture, though I regretfully don't have a copy of.

POLLUX (2003)

Pollux was formed when Doug and I started hanging out again. I used to go over to he and his wife's apartment in Summerville after school and hang out for hours, talking about 7V, Scarless, and old times. He asked what I had been listening to at the time and I told I was really into this band Denali. They were part Sigur Ros, part Portishead, and they wrote just really good, somber, atmospheric songs. I had already delved into the genre with Slow Motion Picture, so I was eager to play some more guitar. Doug said he could play bass, and Becky took up piano and vocals. One night, I brought over some new Plumeria songs I'd recorded and showed them to Doug and Becky, thinking maybe we could do something with them. To add more moodiness and ambiance, Doug and I programmed a some beats, some sonar chimes, and other atmospheric effects around the song. Becky learned the lyrics, came up with some piano parts, and soon, we headed to the studio to record a three-song demo. The lyrics of the songs themselves, based solely on dreams I'd had, already meant a lot to me, but hearing the outcome of our studio session sounded like some new ethereal band covering my Plumeria tunes. I loved it. But the ups and downs of being in a band can pull you into different directions, and that's exactly what seemed to happen.

3-Song Demo track listing:
1. Pinstripes
2. Icepick
3. Sur Mes Levres

PAX ROMANA (2004)
Pax Romana means Roman peace, which I'd learned in college. I'd become quite the historian, especially when it concerned Roman history. Pax was perhaps my most original bands, but ultimately short-lived. Much like Ish Hall, it had been more of a project, my friend Randy and I playing all the instruments. Randy and I were hanging out a lot, going to a lot of shows together and seeing a lot of movies. I also had a piano in my house and liked to compose a lot of really somber pieces, thanks to my newfound fondest for Frenchman Yann Tiersen, who'd completely done the music for the movie Amelie. I had also just gotten an accordion, and was learning to play when Randy and I decided to start something.

2-Song Demo track listing:
1. When in Rome, Do As the Comatose
2. Antony and Cleopatra

Randy didn't play an instrument, but much like Doug, he was great on FL Studio. I brought him over to my place and showed him the song on the piano. We then created some sounds and beats to fit around it, I added acoustic guitar and accordion accompaniment, and we had our first song. I was into this tune by The Crimea called "Opposite Ends," in which the guy did sort of a rhythmic singing, sort of rappy. It was way different. His way of doing it was even different from the way I did it in 7V. Randy and I had a mutual friend who had some recording equipment, and we took our FL track, my accordion, guitar, and a keyboard to his house and recorded. At the end of the track, Randy did what he did best, screaming the words I was singing in tandem with me. I loved the track. It was so different from anything I'd heard before, and to be honest, I really don't remember why we stopped playing. The year of 2004 was a really crazy one for me. I got really into my college courses, started writing and performing poetry, and eventually, I started to write my first novel. I never went back to music, transferring my lyric writing to the world of prose.

Top 10 Hardcore Albums

I made this list a few years ago, though I enjoyed looking at it so much, it got a little stale. Plus, a new band with a new album entered my life and forced its way onto this list. Speaking of the list, it covers the gamut of the hardcore genre - hardcore punk, metalcore, mathrock, thrash, and grindcore. Heavy underground music first entered my life in 1997, and since, it's played a seminal role in my life. Many wouldn't agree with the direction of my list, or the order, but there are certain things I tend to look for when it comes to heavy records. Here are my revamped top 10 favorite hardcore albums of all time.

10. Die On Mars - The Callous Daoboys (2019)

The Callous Daoboys, an obvious play on the NFL team the Dallas Cowboys, entered my life just recently, and since peeling off the onion layers of this album, I've listened to little else. There are several elements that make this album, and this band in general, special. For one, the sextet features two females, one on guitar and the other on electric violin. For another, vocalist Carson Pace takes some serious chances with his vocal style, which comes off equal parts old school Every Time I Die, Dillinger Escape Plan, and The Chariot. Lastly, while the band clearly wears its influences on its sleeve, it ventures into unexplored territory with manic screams and whimsical yells, odd little interludes, and the breakneck pace of the Daytona Speedway. 

Die On Mars is solid from beginning to finish, well-orchestrated while commenting on overzealous evangelicals and the pretentious tendencies of socialite status. The Daoboys have a great sense of humor in doing so, which is presented in full on their videos for standouts "Fake Dinosaur Bones" and "Blackberry Delorean." I was pleased to find that the Daoboys had already found their genre groove by 2017, when they released two very solid EPs, Animal Tetrus and My Dixie Wrecked. The ATL band flaunts their Dixie home state for sure, but in unconventional ways. "Blackberry Delorean" ends with Carson Pace screaming at us to "stay out of Georgia." This is the most fun I've had listening to a hardcore record since Every Time I Die's 2003 gem, Hot Damn!

9. The Shape of Punk to Come - Refused (1998)

Scandinavia, and Sweden to be more specific, has two particular brands of hardcore. It usually revolves around a Norwegian metal sound, and the post punk stylings of bands like Blindside, Selfmindead, and the band who inspired those two to exist, Refused. The band first came to my attention with their video for "New Noise." I then bought the album to find it filled with intricately creative guitar riffs, sound clips, and a general attitude of revolution. This album is a revolution in itself, as Refused stumbled onto something all their own here.

The album kicks things off with "Worms of the Senses/Faculties of the Skull," where the four-piece "took the first bus out of Coca-Cola City." Throughout the rest of the album, the creative riffs mesh well with the screeching vocals and the jazzy, punky beats, emoting as much energy from the disc as they did from the stage. "Protest Song '68" makes the drums a focal point, and guitarist David Sandstrom cooks up some nasty riffage in "Refused are Fucking Dead." The Shape of Punk to Come pushed the boundaries of hardcore music long before there was a real need to, and certainly long before it was cool. This is one of the most dynamic efforts out there. 

8. Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest - Zao (1998)

If there were ever a case for a cursed band, it might just be Zao. Plagued by a history of clashing visions, studio deadlines, and conflicts of personality, Zao was the best band to constantly function with a revolving door policy. The fun began in 1997, when the band gained its ground in the Christian hardcore scene. Drummer Jesse Smith was the only member who wanted to reach a more secular audience, and feeling called for a more ministry-driven outlet, the other three members took their leave. Smith, who lived in WV, talked Brett Detar, who played guitar and sang for PA screamo act Pensive, into joining Zao on guitar. At the time, Pensive was recording a split EP with a local PA band called Seasons in the Field, which featured Dan Weyandt on bass and Russ Cogdell on guitar. This is when Brett Detar pulled in Weyandt, and Weyandt in turn roped in best friend and bandmate, Cogdell.

What they created was a thing of beauty. Weyandt was more than just a bass player. He was also a raspy screamer, and a pensive, tortured poet, scripting lyrics about the tragedies he was enduring in his life. Zao shifted its focus from the first iteration, though they never lost a step. If anything, they gained one. They never managed to bring in a bass player for the record, but they didn't really need one. Weyandt's trilly rasps rip straight through the middle of opening track "Lies of Serpents, River of Tears," written about the hypocrisy he and bandmates experienced at the hands of their church elders. "To Think of You is To Treasure an Absent Memory" is about the suicide of a close friend, and "Ravage Ritual" could have been taken straight from the book of Revelation. The album is groundbreaking, a watershed moment in hardcore history, an often imitated sliver of metal brilliance. Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter places it inside his top 5 albums of all time.

7. Something to Lust About - Scarlet (2003)

Scarlet/Spitfire front man Jon Spencer is one of my favorite hardcore front men. His lyrics are cynical and swanky, glamorous and guttural, both in Scarlet and Spitfire. He first started in Spitfire, then left for Scarlet, and the band recorded this blistering, genre-bursting EP - one of two EPs to make this list. On Something to Lust About, Spencer focused on the glamorous macabre, with lyrics like "let me smear your makeup, let me break your face, let me break your porcelain face." The line is likely exaggerated, but it's effective nonetheless, the band making the most out of its thrash meets mathrock meets dark industrial sound.

Scarlet recorded their first EP, Breaking the Dead Stare in 2000, then a full-length LP in 2004 called Cult Classic. Neither could touch the raw, gritty rhythm of 2003's Something to Lust About, which incorporated electronic beats and keys with their searing brand of metal. Spencer's throaty screams erupt through the recording, unique and instantly recognizable. Scarlet and Spitfire are Spencer's claims to fame, and it's only regrettable that he's no longer part of the hardcore game. Something to Lust About was a great sample of what the band could offer, and I could have only hoped that the LP the following year would be in the same vein in terms of quality. 

6. Screamin' With the Deadguy Quintet - Deadguy (1996)

While Deadguy is known more for their Fixation on a Coworker LP and Work Ethic EP featuring legendary screamer Tim Singer, it was its final iteration, and final EP, Screamin' With the Deadguy Quintet, that got my attention. The sound was completely different, more bold and daring. Singer left, along with one of the guitar players, leaving second guitarist Crispy in line for a more direct role in the songwriting process, and bass player Pops to move over to vocals. His sonic growls come off high-pitched and guttural within the same breath.

The guitar work on the EP is unorthodox, from the creative guitar riffs to the discordant clean strums layered over over the top of the brutal electric chugs. Crispy adds backing howls and randomly muttered chimes on "Turk 182" and "(Escape From) the Fake Clink," a feature that comes off like the maniacal ravings of a mental asylum patient. The gimmick works for the style of music, which only forces me to wonder why the band decided to call it quits, and what the future would have promised for the Deadguy quintet. I first came across the track "Turk 182" on a Victory Records sampler way back in the day, making Deadguy one of the first secular hardcore bands I got into.

5. The Big Dirty - Every Time I Die (2007) 

Following 2006's Gutter Phenomenon, ETID seemed to be sticking with a certain sort of theme with The Big Dirty, the band's fourth studio album. I've seen the band live three times, once on the tour for this record. During the set, they played standout track "We'rewolf" twice, as they, and the crowd, adored it. Every Time I Die is still going strong today, with the three core members, vocalist Keith Buckley, guitarist Jordan Buckley, and guitarist Andy Williams, still at the helm of the organization.

Keith Buckley is a poet, an English graduate from the University of Buffalo, his wordplay vibrant and his cynical chimes front and center on tracks like "No Son of Mine," "Pigs is Pigs," "We'rewolf," and "Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Battery." Keith paints portraits with his lyrics, creating images of absurd little skits playing out like random dreamscapes. The Buffalo, NY troubadours incorporate southern rock stylings into their deep and dark chugga chuggas and harmonic squeals, with Keith's high screams and gritty growls and soaring croons guiding the mayhem. The Big Dirty is a fun record, and even some of the weaker tracks, "Rendezvoo-doo" and "Rebel Without Applause," still claim interesting song titles. 

4. Jesus Christ Bobby - Minus (2000)

 Pronounced Mee-noos, this Icelandic noise troupe came into my life via recommendation. An Icelandic-American guy named Yosef recommended the band when we were talking about other Icelandic bands like Sigur Ros and Mum. I blindly went out and bought the album, and was far from disappointed. I couldn't understand a single word screamer Krummi was saying, but it didn't really matter. His sonic hisses were as brutal as the chaotic music flailing about behind him. Track two on the record, "Leisure," utilizes industrial machine guitar noise over the second guitar as it rips off a nasty little riff. Lost somewhere between Norwegian metal and Sweden's hardcore punk was Minus' brutal brand of Icelandic heaviness.

Since the borderline sacrilegious title Jesus Christ Bobby, the band has slipped with subtlety into a new genre in which Krummi trades in his sonic screams for a decent singing voice. 2003's Halldor Laxness and 2007's The Great Northern Whalekill saw to this departure, which attempted to reach a more mainstream audience with a more Guns 'N' Roses-type feel. It's decent, but it could never touch the raw, all-or-nothing brilliance of their debut album, taking listeners on an ride across their uneasy tundra.

3. Self Titled - Zao (2001)

There's an interesting backstory to Zao's fourth studio album, Self Titled. After Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest, guitarist Brett Detar left to purse his side band, The Juliana Theory, and to get away from control freak drummer, Jesse Smith, the only original Zao member. Guitarist Scott Mellinger joined in his place and the band recorded their third album, Liberate Te Ex Inferis. After touring the album, screamer Dan Weyandt left to accept a tattoo apprenticeship, and guitarist Russ Cogdell left with him. Down to Mellinger and Smith, the two headed to the studio without a single song written between them. On the drive from West Virginia to Pennsylvania, the two laid down the bones of the album in the car on the way to the studio. 

What makes this record so unique is that the two young men crafted an album last minute in the studio, Mellinger incorporating reverb and delay for a more ambient, atmospheric guitar sound, and Smith taking on a set of electronic drums. The result was Zao's most experimental album to date, completely different from anything they'd done on their previous efforts. The two talked Weyandt into flying in and recording vocals after all the music was completed. He had nothing written specifically for the songs, but utilized the books of poems and disjointed writings he'd been keeping. The result was a happy accident that is my personal Zao record. "Five Year Winter" sounds closer to the old Zao, while "A Tool to Scream," the experimental "Witchunter," and the Jesse Smith-composed "FJL" venture into completely uncharted territory for the band. Deftones guitarist Stephen Carpenter touted Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest, so Scott Mellinger, who strangely resembles Carpenter, allowed the Deftones influence to seep through in his guitar work on Self Titled.

2. Self-Help - Spitfire (2006)

I came across Spitfire after Zao allowed them to invade their time slot at Cornerstone Music Festival. I bought the EP of the then three-piece Spitfire, and bought their full-length debut a year later. Before Jon Spencer rocked out in Scarlet, he made a stop by the Spitfire camp to record The Slideshow Whiplash EP. The band then broke up, Spencer joined Scarlet, Spencer left Scarlet, then Spitfire reunited, this time with Norma Jean axe man, Scottie Henry. Self-Help sounded like a nice, natural continuation of The Slideshow Whiplash with a better recording, along with the specific style Scottie Henry had brought with him. Longtime Spitfire guitarist Matt Beck had weaved in and out of the band over the years, but made his presence once again known on this record. He's one of the best hardcore guitarists I've ever heard, technical and ready to bring everything from heavy chugs to frantic three-finger leads. 

A friend, the same one who introduced me to Every Time I Die's debut Last Night in Town, told me about the upcoming Spitfire album, and the day it was released, I pounced on it. I found the guitars equally stylistic of both Henry and Beck, and the lyrics and vocal stylings uniquely Jon Spencer from his Scarlet days. Original drummer and bassist Chris Raines and Jimmy Reeves rounded out the line-up on tracks about society's dog eat dog mentality ("Meat Market"), a fantastical meeting with an angel ("Life and Limb"), overzealous faith healing ("Leap of Faith"), and a desperately-futile romance ("U.V.I.V."). When Scottie Henry left the band and Scarlet's "Dangerous" Dan Tulloh joined, the band headed back to the studio for a follow-up effort, a darker, more dismal Cult Fiction. It had a very different feel, and only standout track "Crossed" could match the frenzied regalia of Self-Help. 

1. Hot Damn! - Every Time I Die (2003)

If the average listener were to take on The Big Dirty and then Hot Damn!, they'd swear ETID was featuring a different front man. This is hardly the case. Between Hot Damn! and ETID's third album, Gutter Phenomenon, Keith Buckley took vocal lessons to help him with his scream. The new scream sounded great, and while the one he owned the band's first two albums, Last Night in Town and Hot Damn! sound unpolished and undeveloped, there is something endearing about it all the same. The song composition on this record is excellent, the vocals are great, and the lyrical content is poetic and unmatched and underappreciated. I read in an interview with Keith where he claimed that his words would be worth nothing until after he was dead. If that's not a poet's mentality, I don't know what is.

Hot Damn! starts fast and frantic with the hospital room rampage "Romeo A Go-Go," with lyrics like "your hopeless romantic now helplessly rheumatic, poets grinding teeth to powder, all my vowels are getting lost in the gauze, misinterpret courting for the cursing of a drooling fool." Keith knows his literature and loves to create uneasy skits with his lyrics, meshing hospital rooms with romance, Viennese waltzes with fat and happy executions, a ship captain with a crew of mutinous rats, and the final thoughts of an unrepentant killer. Despite having found his scream at this point, Keith sounded great nonetheless on this one, something authentic and feral about his early vocal style, with a great singing voice to boot.

Top 5 TV Shows

Straight off the heels of my top 10 horror flicks comes my top 5 TV shows, syndicated or streaming. This was not an easy task, as so many shows like Sons of Anarchy, Boardwalk Empire, Peaky Blinders, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones get honorable mentions. If they're only getting honorable mentions, which shows could I possibly like better than these? Well, I'll tell you.

5. Daredevil (2015 - present)

As you can see, this show doesn't have a thing to do with actual devils, but more to do with a blind man from comic lore combating evil and injustice in an only-slightly far-fetched, contemporary version of Hell's Kitchen, NYC. The series started much like the original comic book did, with lawyer-by-day, vigilante-by-night Matt Murdoch, a.k.a. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen, attempting to clean up the lower west side enclave of New York City he grew up. He uses an ad hoc homegrown black outfit - a very grounded, very believable approach to the on-screen comic book hero. I grew up with Daredevil swooping through the pages of my comic books, so when I found out Netflix was green lighting the series, and that Boardwalk Empire alum Charlie Cox was at the helm, I was eager to take a look

Matt and his college roomy and best friend, Foggy Nelson, have decided against trying to get on with an already established law firm, but to create their own. They're an upstart organization with no clients, which makes Matt's illustrious apartment a little hard to believe. I guess he must've had a rich uncle leave an inheritance or something. But, that's really small potatoes. After Matt saves her, Karen Page soon joins the firm as a sort of paralegal, and the three set out to clean up Hell's Kitchen one needy client at a time - Matt just does it from both sides of the law.

All crime in the city seems to lead back to the larger-than-life character of Wilson Fisk, and though it takes him awhile, Matt eventually finds out and the two play cat and mouse. Fisk's underworld business interests are mixed with the Chinese, the Japanese, and a brood of Russian human traffickers, who Matt deals with personally in one of the best on-screen fights I have ever seen.

Eventually, Rosario Dawson's Claire Temple comes into the picture. She's a night nurse at a local hospital who finds Matt in a dumpster and reluctantly patches him up. The tension is there between them, but the complexities of their lives stand in the way of a burgeoning romance.

One of the things I really enjoy about the show is Matt's vulnerability, without the mask, sure, but especially with it. He can see without seeing basically, and though he possesses some mean martial arts skills, he gets hurt, he gets cut, and he gets stabbed. He's just a man, and the show creators brilliantly portray that. Season 1 took a very grounded approach to telling Daredevil's origins, which makes it such an interesting show. As I said, everything, save Matt's apartment, is believable, from the espionage to the twilight battles with ninjas. Yes, Daredevil makes a ninjas kinda cool again.

Season 2 resumes absent Wilson Fisk, but plus a new get-up for Daredevil, which is certainly more familiar to the average comic fan. The evolution of the superhero costume was fun in the first season, but honestly, how many times could Matt get cut up and continue to buy new long-sleeved black shirts before the local five-and-dime started to get suspicious? Something had to give.

We're soon introduced to Matt's old flame, Elektra, and Frank Castle, better known to the comic world as The Punisher. The creators pulled no punches with The Punisher, as he is brutal, disenfranchised, and has an arsenal of weapons at his disposal. He's cleaning up Hell's Kitchen himself, though he's doing it the opposite way that Daredevil is. While Matt may maim and cripple, Frank plays for keeps, executing gangsters and underworld players in the name of his murdered family. He is sort of a single incarnation of the Boondock Saints, a one-man executioner who can be singularly defined as an anti-hero if there ever was one, just like he was in the comics. Everyone knows that eventually, he and Matt will collide, but the showrunners also find a way to add Foggy and Karen to the mix, who crusade to save the life of Frank in the courtroom.

Meanwhile, Elektra pulls Matt into her illegal schemes, trying to win back the heart that's being tugged in the direction of Karen, and of Claire. Matt has been gifted and flawed with sheepishly but rugged good looks, and though he can't quite see them completely, Matt knows they're real lookers too, leaving Foggy out to dry as the comical big brother type. Elektra and Frank both teeter on other side of the law than Matt, though he doesn't even seem to give up on them, doing what he can to make sure both never see the inside of a jail cell. Frank does eventually make it to prison, though I will refrain from showing his far more bloody fight scene ala Matt's hallway scene above. Season 2, and Season 1 for that matter, are neatly woven and compelling, somehow introducing lots of characters and intricately setting up their different relationships and interactions. Netflix sets the bar high with Daredevil, by far, in my humble opinion, the best superhero outing to make onto the big screen or the small one.

















4. Vikings (2013-present)
This was a show I was initially excited about. I love the concept of a TV show about the Vikings. My ancestors were Vikings from the eastern coastline of Sweden, so it would be great to see them represented in a mainstream manner. While the first episodes of Season 1 were a little weak, the show soon gained ground and turned into quite the weekly event. The show is a family saga chronicling the rise and ultimate fall of Norwegian earl come king, Ragnar Lothbrok, his multiple wives, and their sons. Vikings is sort of Godfather-type piece, only set in the Middle Ages in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. Ragnar is played expertly by Aussie actor Travis Fimmel, an incredible actor on the show, giving Ragnar his own Ragnar quirks and specific looks. Fimmel seems to be a character actor, wearing the Ragnar skin like its his own, speaking with the show's default Norwegian accent, which is also present in every other Viking, Ragnar underwent many looks on his long but ultimately fateful trip through the Viking universe, from undercuts to mohawks to tattooed bald head. The creators really do a great job of aging him and handling the passage of time well.

The show gives us a whole host of subsidiary characters. Shield-maiden/Earl Lagertha was once married to Ragnar, but seems to be flourishing without him alongside her band of female warriors. Ragnar and Lagertha's son, Bjorn Ironside, has strayed away from the village in a quest to find himself and to become a man, encountering berserker assassins and salivating bears. Bjorn begins as a young boy, doted on by his father in the first season, but steadily to a fair but brutal man with his own wife and child. This show handles the passage of time better than any other saga I've seen on TV before.





Floki is quite an interesting character, who began more as a snickering savage and ended up a thoughtful, conflicted journeyman. Floki is played by Swede Gustaf Skaarsgard, brother of Alexander and son of international star, Stellan. Floki makes his bones as the village shipbuilder, crafting expert raid vessels with an ax in his hand. His tall, gangling frame is menacing when climbing the hills of the battlefield.












Post-Lagertha, Ragnar shacked up with Swedish queen Aslaug to cement an alliance that didn't stick, though she still bore him four sons. The most interesting of these are Ubbe, who is a spitting image of his father, and Ivar, crippled from the waste down but in possession of some undeniable charisma. After all, Ivar is none other than Ivar the Boneless, one of the most fearsome Vikings in history. He is very close with Ragnar, and Ragnar himself chose Ivar to take over him when he one day meets his maker.


One of the most interesting things about the show is Ragnar's overwhelming sense of duality. So much of Viking culture was based on the will of the gods and holy Seers, sort of like oracles, inhabiting the villages. In Season 1, Ragnar forms a close bond with Athelstan, a monk abducted from Britain who comes to see the beauty in pagan living. While he begins to question his faith, so does Ragnar, and the looming questions of existence stick with the troubled king up until his epic demise. Throughout the series, Ragnar wrestles with losing his wife, losing his daughter, losing his brother, and losing his brother from another mother, Athelstan. Ragnar begins to questions the will of Odin, Thor, and company, but also begins to question whether or not there actually is a god at all. He eventually becomes resolved to the fact that man is in charge of his own destiny and decides his own fate, which is exactly what he does.

Ragnar meets his end at the hand of an old enemy, but his sons soon come for the blood of the brutal English king, calling for the unquestionably sadistic "Blood Eagle" method of execution, reserved for the most reviled enemies of the Vikings.


This show has strong storytelling and stunning cinematography, serenading the rites of painted-up Vikings with tribal drums and Mongolian throat singing, which makes for an absolutely gripping combination.
Further seasons will be about the rise of Ivar and Ubbe, and while I one time wondered what kind of future Vikings might have without Ragnar, he seems to have left things in the capable hands of his sons.




3. The Following (2013-2015)

I don't really remember how I stumbled onto The Following, but when I did, it certainly left a lasting impression on me in its short 3-season existence. I'm a Kevin Bacon fan, and I think I became one thanks to this show. I was already familiar with James Purefoy, who played Marc Antony is HBO's Rome. In The Following, he played arch-antagonist Joe Carroll, the English professor and Edgar Allan Poe enthusiast who turned his passion for the macabre into the serial slayings of women. The only man to ever take him down was FBI agent Ryan Hardy, played by Bacon. The show was penned by horror maestro Kevin Williamson, who famously created the Scream franchise, among others. Being a big fan of that series, especially the first one, there was no way I wasn't going to give this one a go.
The basic premise of the show is that Carroll, ultra charming and handsome and undeniably English, has established himself a massive cult following of copy-cat serial killers. They look normal, but their sadistic tendencies materialize from FBI waiting rooms and crowded subways. They are faceless, unpredictable, and ultra-violent. They are highly-organized in their quest for mayhem, all in a sick devotion to Carroll. It's hero worship taken to the most extreme of extremes. People love Joe, some of which he gives serial killer lessons, and others who swoon at the thoughts of his equating beauty to chaos. Some even carry out their heinously random acts of violence wearing masks of Poe and of faceless expressions. Ryan tries to exit the FBI after his first brush with Joe, but the multiplying crimes have compelled him to take a step back in. He is flanked by fellow agents Mike Weston, and his niece, the tough by vulnerable Max Hardy.

Season 2 is just as good as Season 1, and though Season 3 finally gave us the death of Joe Carroll via lethal injection, it took a bit of a dip, which is probably why there's not a Season 4. I guess that Joe was more of a crucial piece to series than some thought, and ironically, Joe once said to Ryan that without me, there's no you. The Following gives us some pretty horrific crime scenes, ala Se7en, and what seems like random acts of violence in the streets, all part of some message sent by the Joe the legend himself. This is an edge-of-your-seat-type of series, unpredictable and even a bit scary, which is exactly what I might expect from Kevin Williamson.

Danish actress Connie Nielsen of Gladiator fame comes to Season 2 as a damsel in distress and leaves Joe Carroll fan number 1, along with her creepy, murderous twin sons Mark and Luke Gray. Every season gives us a new nemesis along with Joe, and more plot twists that put Ryan and family in harm's way.




2. Spartacus (2010-2013)
One of, if not the best thing about Spartacus: Blood and Sand was the richly-textured, poetic language created by the showrunners. It's sort of a contrived way of speaking, sort of like Shakespeare and Keats copied and pasted their writings together and loaned to the ancient world for the uses of hefty dialogue. It's surely a rarity on TV nowadays, and I think STARZ did a fantastic job of roping in an audience of all shapes and sizes with the language, the chiseled gladiators, and scantily-clad women. For those who don't know the story of the historical Spartacus, he was a warrior from Thrace (modern Bulgaria) who was taken prisoner by the Roman Republic and forced to fight as a gladiator in the Roman city-state of Capua. The show uses the angle of Spartacus' dead wife to fuel his rage, but history only tells us that he organized and led a massive slave revolt against the Roman Republic that nearly brought it to its gargantuan knees.

Tragically, following the completion of the first season, Spartacus actor Andy Whitfield passed away from throat cancer. With the success of the first run, fans wanted more. The showrunners developed a prequel season, entitled Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, focusing their story not on Spartacus and his revolution, but a wine and women-fueled gladiator, Gannicus. He was joined by first season subsidiary Crixus, and I have to admit that it was just as good as any season following the first.

The first by far was the best, and it wasn't just because of Andy Whitfield in the lead role. The storytelling and dialogue were absolutely remarkable and the supporting characters were strong. Crixus, former champion from Gaul (modern France), pictured to the left, started as a villain, and though his friendship with Spartacus didn't burgeon until the end of the season, his head-over-heels romance with house slave Naevia made us like him before were supposed to, making his alliance with Spartacus that much more gratifying. Naevia was played by a different actress by season 3, but in my humble opinion, there was only one. The character herself was a love-struck house slave in season one, and a brutal warrior by seasons 3 and 4. It was like two different incarnations played by two different actresses.

Spartacus also changed actors by the third season with the passing of Andy. He was replaced by Liam McIntyre, who was good and even resembled Andy Whitfield a bit, but there was no out-doing the first season even when the gladiators and slaves assembled their lowly army against Rome.

All around, it was a great season and it is, and will continue, to be missed. The writers simply ran out of story after the fourth season and to try to continue it would've been silly and borderline sacrilegious to history. Gannicus of the prequel joined the gladiator army by season 3, as did their former trainer from season one, Oenomeus, as did Naevia, and as did every other slave girl and conquered Roman noblewoman who grew partial to the radical cause of Spartacus.





1. Penny Dreadful (2014-2016)
Ever feel like there was a show out there that was made specifically for you? I have a soft spot in my heart for Gothic horror fiction, which is why I own some of the classic greats like The Italian, Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is actually my favorite all-time novel. At a time when I was teaching Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne, two American Gothic giants, Showtime released Penny Dreadful. To feature Dracula, Frankenstein, and his infamous monster was almost a given, but to also throw in the character of Dorian Gray made this show a must watch.

Vanessa Ives (Eva Geeen) is our main character, a tortured, faithful young heroine who is on a mission to quell the evils that haunt her. She must also retrieve her childhood friend, Mina Harker, from some otherworldly abductors. Mina is a main character of Bram Stoker's Dracula. In the classic tale, the is the object of the suave bloodsucker's affection. Dreadful gives us not only Mina, but for a brief time, Abraham Van Helsing. It takes off with Vanessa and Mina's father, Sir Malcolm Murray, recruiting American gunslinger, Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), who has a few secrets to keep from his employers, to help track down Mina.

An ungodly brood come out to meet them at a docked ship from Egypt, and after killing a vampire, the gang recruits Doctor Victor Frankenstein to investigate the body. 
One interesting thing the show did with Frankenstein was that they made him an Englishman, deviating from the classic version which penned him as an Austrian. He's into his own macabre work, which no one else really knows. He's into re-animating dead humans, namely the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but ultimately decimated Proteus, who gives way to Frankenstein's earlier monstrosity, Caliban, or, The Monster.
I thought the production made Caliban a little too pale, though he's ultimately a great character with a tremendous duality, learning the brunt of the English language courtesy of the Romantic poets. The poets have a huge influence on the show, from the Monster to Frankenstein himself quoting them from show to show. 

Once Frankenstein examines the body, he finds Egyptian hieroglyphics underneath it's black skin. The team summons eccentric, French-muttering Egyptologist, Ferdinand Lyle. He ultimately finds that the hieroglyphics are from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which only means that they're dealing with something far more ancient, and far more sinister, than they thought.

Ethan soon comes across Irish immigrant prostitute Brona Croft, who is fighting a losing battle with tuberculosis. She likes Ethan, but she really likes money as well, which brings her into the bed of portrait-loving Dorian Gray, the young, immortal aristocrat of Oscar Wilde's timeless novel. I thought the producers did a great job casting Dorian, making him a young, handsome, often coy character, who enjoys the liberty of excess. The producers seem to have taken this idea and run with it. He enjoyed some excess in the novel, but the show makes him a straight up libertine, which is probably a more realistic version of how Dorian would be if he were a real person in a socially-repressed Victorian society. 

Then, when Ferdinand throws a little soiree, Vanessa and Dorian meet and they immediately are attracted to one another. But this is when Vanessa finds out she's no good for anyone. Evelyn Poole, AKA Madame Kali (Peaky Blinders' Helen McCrory), something between Alistair Crowley and Elizabeth Bathory, conducts a seance and Vanessa is chosen and possessed by evil spirits. Ferdinand later translates more hieroglyphics to find a resurrection spell for Amun-Ra and Amunet, to reunite them and bring the end of humanity. Vanessa, through the possession, may be a reincarnated version of Amunet, as Lyle finds that the Egyptian god and goddess are hunting her. 

The Monster is an evil creation of Victor Frankenstein. But is he really that evil? We soon get a glimpse into his lonely life, filled with stares and glares at his read eyes, pale skin, and scars. Let's not forget that he was created as a human jigsaw puzzle, limbs and pieces from the random dregs of society. He has all the best parts of all the poor, criminal class of Victorian society. We see this evil side of him, but it is really his fault? We also see a beautiful side to him, quoting the Romantic poets and searching for a lover to fulfill his loneliness. He reaches back out to Victor, his creator, and insists that he make him a mate. The viewer could see from a mile away that this lover was going to be the dying Brona Croft, Ethan's ill-fated lady. But how the creators went about this was not so easy to see. I thought Brona's reanimation would result in a rift between friends Frankenstein and Ethan, but they spun it a completely different way. She is brought back as Lily Frankenstein, who Victor slowly falls in love with. 

Vanessa tries her hand with Dorian, though it doesn't work out, being that she knows she's a marked woman. Van Helsing relays what he knows about vampires to Frankenstein, but is killed by Caliban, who promises to slay everyone close to Victor if he doesn't make him a mate. In this, we see a duality in the Monster, the brutal killer in his nature, but also the hopeless romantic, gentle and soft-spoken. As he assimilates more into society, he begins calling himself John Clare, who was a lesser-known Romantic poet. Victor tries to kill his regrettable creation, but feels sorry for him instead, agreeing to help him. 

It seems as if Mina has only been abducted as bait to draw in Vanessa instead, and in her time as a captive of the undead, she's become one of them. Sir Malcolm is then forced to kill his own daughter, as she's not really his daughter anymore. Ethan, approached by two men of the Pinkerton Agency, are laid to waste when he snaps and shows us who he really is - an American werewolf in London.

I'll save myself a lot of time by not recapping the entirety of the 3 seasons. The characters progress naturally, or at least as naturally as a troupe of highly-unnatural literary figures can. Strangely enough, Ethan never finds out about Brona bringing brought back from the grave as Lily. Her transformation is interesting, as she relearns the English language in an English accent this time, and eventually shacks up with Dorian Gray to create an army of revolutionary prostitutes. But before all that, Dorian captures the heart of a young transgender woman by the name of Angelique. He spends the entire second season with her before killing her.

Madame Kali rears her ugly head in season 2 as ring leader of a coven of witches, ones who are covered the occult symbols and can blend into walls. They plague Vanessa for Madame Kali, who ends her nights smoking and bathing in a pool of blood. By season 3, we're taken to the American West with Ethan and his witch/demon lover and Kali's daughter, Hecate. She proves her love for Ethan by following him all the back to the states. Meanwhile, Vanessa meets and falls of Alexander Sweet, who is actually Dracula - the master who has been tracking her every step since season 1. John Clare also remembers he once had a family and reunites with them, only for his young son to die of tuberculosis. If we never pitied the Monster before, we surely do by this time, the tears he cries human enough to break our hearts. We're also introduced to Dr. Henry Jekyll, Frankenstein's roommate in college. Disappointingly enough,we're never given Mr. Hyde. In to help Vanessa is not only Dr. Seward of Bram Stoker lore, but a thanatologist (doctor of death) and supernatural specialist, Catriona Hartdegen (Perdita Weeks from As Above, So Below). 

Midway through season 3, showrunner and executive producer John Logan announced that it would be the final season. He said that there was really no more story to tell, which is true, in a sense. For Vanessa, for Ethan, he's right, though why introduce half-English, half-Indian Dr. Jekyll without ever showing us Hyde? Why introduce a strong female character like Catriona only to quit the show? I think the viewership really wasn't what it should've been, being that Dreadful was such a niche show. Penny Dreadful spits poetry, as well as literary and historical allusions, which certainly isn't for everyone. It's a shame. I'll miss Penny Dreadful, named for the penny horror comic/literary stories of the day. It's a true Gothic delight, filled with creaking mansions, growling shadows, pools of blood, and nods to the finest characters that the literary world had to offer in 1891. The best season was definitely the first, though it was interesting to see the witches and to watch the Monster's transformation to Caliban to John Clare, a grotesque, homeless man with an aching, poetic soul.