Ghoultown

Double set: Life After Sundown and Ghost of the Southern Son

(Zoviet / Angry Planet Enterprises)

It's been long years since I stopped puzzling how these men developed staggering musical proficiency, when all around stank of human decay and gun-hands from the netherworld sprang like wicked phantasms in midnight moments. Wiser, I concluded, to unquestioningly dig the merging of remorselessly lashed metal and arched Morricone airs that alternately hyper-pulse and unfurl in teasing ominousness, as ghastly Old-West-in-twilight-zones sagas bore into cerebra, never to be erased.

(This double-disc set is available directly from Blackburn's Monstro Merch, which is linked below.)

Recommended from Life: "Dead Outlaw," "Against a Crooked Sky," "Werewolves on Wheels," "I Spit on Your Grave," "Thunder over El Paso," "Find a Good Horse," "Drink With the Living Dead," "Under the Phantom Moon"

Videos: "Dead Outlaw"   "Against a Crooked Sky"   "Find a Good Horse"   "Drink With the Living Dead" (visualizer)   "Under the Phantom Moon"

Recommended from Ghost: "Southern Son," "Ghost of the Past," "I Am the Night," "Black on Black," "Blood, Bullets, and Whiskey," "Stick to Your Guns," "Tombstone," "Vanishing Riders"

Videos: "Southern Son"   "Ghost of the Past" (lyric video)   "I Am the Night"   "Stick to Your Guns"   "Vanishing Riders" (animated video)

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Los Fuckin' Surfer Smokers

LFSS   digital EP

(Self-issued)

El Rayo, Davie Allan, and Ennio Morricone walked into a bar. Inside, sunglassed Columbian Beat ministers hailed them.

"I know a studio," someone said. The result is combustible (as Deutschland dynamos recently discovered.)

Recommended: "A Night in Tangier," "Yihaw!," "La criatura del Paramo," "Kumbia Surfin'"

Videos: "A Night in Tangier"   "Kumbia Surfin'" 

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Guitar Slingers

Greatest Hits   Digital-only release

(Diablo Records)

This reviewer rushes when opportunities to tout personal favorites present themselves. And Guitar Slingers - Psychobilly berserkers with Gretsch-batterer Doyley hectoring at their fore - ricochet between that category's perimeters. Various co-conspirators popped in and exited through years covered, but Doyley and lunatic fury were ever constant. Thunderation laughs derisively at speed laws. Trace elements of Morricone and outer-space hijinx percolate with Rockabilly rampage. Roky Erickson's Dr. Rorsach would surely drop his drawings if confronted by this crooked-grinned, LOUD deluge.

Sam Phillips had no idea the extreme to which his chance breakthrough would one day hurtle.

Recommended: "Fuck You," "Boppin' 'n' Shakin'," "Babylon's Burnin'," "Seven Deadly Sins," "Ska Trek Krew," "Fly with the X-ray Eyes," "Django Il Bastardo" Alien Hooligans," "I Feel Psycho," "Geraldine," "Psycho Mad 'n' Proud," "Hellhouse Stomp," "Psycho Cop," "Rise of the Cybermen," "Never Steal the Devil's Wheels"

Videos: "Fuck You"   "Fly with the X-Ray Eyes" (live 2015)   "Geraldine" (live 2014)   "Rise of the Cybermen"

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