Zombina and the Skeletones

Horror Shorts   digital

(Self-issued)

Whimsical - in a creaking-stairs, swinging-bare-bulb sort of manner - 'Bat Face' is the fifth entry in the group's fright flicks spree. As if their cracked-mirror approach to musicalizing (the result being Horror Punk that digs rubber masks) weren't sufficiently magnetic, the videos compiled here encompass graphic art, footage sliced from drive-in trash epics, and band members' own thespian stabs.

The above is madcap monsterism on substances unknown. Beneath toil musicians whose work suggests Ramones energy, Hammer-soundtrack knowingness, and Go Gos-gone-ga ga Pop mesmeric knack.

Videos "Fiend Without a Face"   "2 Scoops of Brain"   "Nightmare Castle"   "Do You Want to Be My Death"   "Bat Face" 

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Zombina and the Skeletones

Videos "Fiend Without a Face"   "Two Scoops of Brain"

Zombina and the Skeletones

I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, B-sides and rarities 2008 - 2024    

(Ectoplastic Records)

Advisory: '80s and '90s synthy endeavorings in the New Wave styling popular in those eras are best put behind later Psycho flamethrowers. The latter are the wonderfully ankle-twisting consequences of Alternative Cryptland cavorters, eccentricism mongers, and a gang of jackhammers hopped up on speed, meeting up in a cauldron (with Whit Bissell and Robert Vaughn), and conspiring to wreck the joint. So frantic are the thunderings, so compelling to utter fracture TheBeatTheBeat that, should walls crack wide and flooring crash in, none but the strictly cubic would notice.

(Though presently on break, Mistress Zombina and her morbid accomplices will play a summer show with the March Violets.)

Recommended: "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein," "Touch Me and Die," "Love Like Blood," "Teenage Caveman vs Gargantua," "Zombie Crush," "Sea of Heartbreak," "Last Chance Dance"

Videos: "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein"   "Touch Me and Die"       "Sea of Heartbreak"   

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pandora

Zombina and the Skeletones

A Chainsaw for Christmas   digital EP

(Self-issued)

Initially materializing online in 2006, and now re-emergent, A Chainsaw for Christmas lends kicky unsettlingness to reigning snowball vibe. "The band under your bed" perpetrates a Pop/Psycho/Garage/Goth four-way, with tittilating spookiness being the infectiously aberrant issue. One fantasizes ornaments dangling from Dr. Frankenstein's towering creation.

Recommended: "A Chainsaw for Christmas," "Come On," "Evil Science," "Dead Alive"

Videos: "A Chainsawfor Christmas"   "Come On"   "Dead Alive"

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Zombina and the Skeletones

In Sinistereo

(9x9 Records)

Last month, guitarist/singer Doc Horror explained to Joyzine: "The impetus behind recording Zombina and the Skeletones' In Sinistereo in the first place was the enormous backlog of unused songs that we’d amassed over the years. Old demos that we loved and always intended to eventually flesh out, but would get passed-over every time we would start recording a new record…"

Though researchers have repeatedly fed these tracks through arcane computerized processes, they remain baffled as to why any were ever discounted. A Horror Punk/Psychobilly graft with Power Pop intuitions, majestic countenance, and arched eyebrows throws back its ebony cape. Mysteriously abandoned songs' compilation in this "quadrilogy" (combined are all tracks from four previous In Sinistereo EPs) totals positive product.

Though dire atmospherics hang like cobwebs, and despite darkness, airs dance entrancingly. Fetching melodies unfurl in spectacle, unleashing mesmeric mistiness whose capacities derive from synth/monster beat/guitar aggressions channeled by calculation. Vocals at once winsome and chilling sound sirens bewitching. And, a smirk playing about his mouth, Baron Von Saxophone sidles from hidden passages' cover.

Rather than squandering energies with laboratory thingamajigs, the eggheads should have shuttered windows and unearthed any Maila Nurmi broadcast.

Recommended: "(All I Wanna Do is) Decompose (with You)," "Phantom with the X-Ray Mind," "I Hate Humans," "Whatever You Do, Don't Fall in Love," "Kill!!!," "Ramon," "The Crawling Love," "The Stakeout," "Stalkin'"

Videos: "Phantom with the X-Ray Mind"   "I Hate Humans"   "Kill!!!"   "The Stakeout"

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Piccadilly Records

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Zombina and the Skeletones

The Call of Zombina

(9x9 Records)

Being a lifelong devotee of horror cinema (both classic and drive-in detritus sorts), the present writer is reminded of director/co-producer Tod Browning's 1931 Dracula. (The titular menace was, of course,  interpreted by ominous icon Bela Lugosi.) Throughout The Call of Zombina, cobwebbed circumstances in which eerie misdoings seem imminent abound. The magnetism that lurks is as much the product of somber tones as august movements. Dark passages hurtling and implicitly sinister are brewed judiciously; the effect is deliciously fearsome imbalance. 

Recommended: "Blood Rite For the Resurrection of a Sleeping Countess," "Cemetery World," "The Black House," "Vampire's Kiss," "Don't Kick My Coffin," "I'm Horrified!," "Valley of the Shadow," "Dead Birds,"  "Ghost Train II: Oblivion," "No Wonder I'm Always Anxious"

Videos: "Blood Rite For the Resurrection of a Sleeping Countess"   "Ghost Train II: Oblivion"

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