The Angry Red Planet

Captain...The Klingons have surrounded URANUS!

(Sharawaji Records)

Snort derisively at the 2022 instrumental work's asinine title, and no counterargument will be registered from this quarter. Turning to the contents, though, one finds an entirely other story: Six-string pyrotechnics set off conflagratory spectacularness, adventuring at warp speed and scrambling down unforseen corkscrews. Sensationalistic manners of Psychobilly, Morricone musings, surf hullabalooings, New Delhi bazaars -- and something perhaps answering to descriptor 'RockaPsychedeliaBilly' -- bashthrash from within brainpans hopelessly hooked on Science Fiction stuntery, as 1960s one-lung auteurs force-fed it to drive-in backseat grapplers.

Even were title "Geosynchonous Orbituary" the sole feature that track had going for it, a crown would be merited. But so much more of intriguing consequence throbs within. 

Recommended: "Captain...The Klingons Have Surrounded Uranus," "My Organ (Intro) Trailer Park Rendezvous," "The Crawling Eye," "Ghost Train," "Private Eye," "The Abyssal Ass Fish," "Desert Winds," "Geosynchonous Orbituary"

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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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Blackburn's Monstro Merch

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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