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

"Scary Christmas"   "Mister Jingle-Horse"  digital tracks

(Self-issued)

"Suck blood and destroy, but always wash your hands," is the counsel proffered by these jolly ghouls. Their singasong Yuletide ditties splatter happy crimson all over newly fallen, white mush. True, Zombina and hideous hangers-on historically tend most often toward unrelieved themes of grotesquerie, ones to which forsaken wraiths surely pirouette under lunar rays.  Here, though, twisted notions are bedecked in festive fineries. That merry glaze almost obscures diabolism. Almost. 

Karaoke Videos: "Scary Christmas"   "Mister Jingle-Horse"

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Darkscene

Stormtroopers of Love

Go Go Graveyard

(Love Ghoul Records)

Fresh word holds that SOL are auditioning new voices, as Dr. Harder has stepped (amicably). (The outgoing lyric blaster is featured here.) Whoever is settled upon will have to bring unquenchable fires of uncanny origin; the Danes specialize in monstrous Psycho too distant from humanity to concern itself with any dystopic aftermath of universal storm.

Recommended: "Making Love in the Crematory," "Demon Lover," "All Bad," "Straitjacket Stomp," "Resurrection," "Don't Leave Me (in This Coffin)," "A Monster Like U," "Mutant Lover"

Videos: "Making Love in the Crematory"   "All Bad"   "Don't Leave Me (in This Coffin)"   "Mutant Love"

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Bad Billy Records

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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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Bloodsucking Zombies from Outer Space

"Evocation"   three-track single

(Schlitzer-Pepi Records)

Monstrosities grieved the 1962 shuttering of Paris's infamously ghoulish Théâtre du Grand Guignol. Were it yet extant, BZFOS could serve as its house band. For, amid flamboyant gore props and waxen heads falling under medieval axes, group members (themselves calculatedly grotesque) could monger the palatial poisonous they cultivate. Stitched together for imperial sweep are Goth, Psychobilly, Horror Punk, and related strains that pulse upon stone floors. It's probable that claw marks imprint synth keys and fretboards.

Recommended: "Evocation," "Van Helsing Syndrome," "Monster"

Video: "Evocation"

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Army of Zombies (BZFOS fan club)

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The Crabs 

RAW 2 - The Remixes   CD or cassette

(Self-issued)

UK sparkplugs who once stomped and swiped determinedly. Brusqueness, brevity, and kick-ass dispatch are necessary components of dyed-in-leather Punk, as are crudity and curled-lip contempt for polite-society strictures. All that comes from the heart - schlepping along three fingers of cheeky outlook. 

Preserved cuts are practice-session ones. "Recorded as a 3-piece by simply placing a 1980's consumer tape recorder with built-in mics at the front of the rehearsal room and letting rip - this lo-fi d.i.y. masterpiece has now been remixed for your listening pleasure," was the group's description on Get Music's site.

Recommended: "R.A.M.O.N.E.S.," "Celibate Blues," "Swampthing"

Video: "Swampthing" (live, penultimate gig, prior to early '90s disbanding)

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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

Darla

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