Child Sized Coffin: October 2016

Monday, October 31, 2016

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from the Child Sized Coffin!

Friday, October 28, 2016

Transformers: Titans Return Hardhead

Hardhead was the second Deluxe class figure from the Titans Return line I picked up, largely as an impulse/”I haven’t bought a new toy in weeks” purchase. Initially, my feelings on the line were not too favorable, and I was only interested in a few figures. But after handling Skullcruncher and Galvatron, I warmed up to the entire series very fast. In the beginning, I was not at all planning on going in for the Autobot Headmasters, but Hardhead may be the figure that changed that.

Transformers: Titans Return Rewind

By now, I’ve gathered up a couple of Titans Return figures of various size classes. A few Deluxes, a Voyager in Galvatron. And I’ve even wandered into the Scout or Legends class with Rewind here. My sole motivation for purchasing Rewind was to pair him up with Chromedome, when I eventually get him, because, thanks to a More Than Meets the Eye/My Chemical Romance mash up t-shirt from Ript Apparel, my wife is now super amused by the conjunx endura.

That concept is one that has many, many conversational miles on it by now, and truthfully, you’re either a fan of it or you really, truly hate it, a middle position apparently not possible. I myself wasn’t sold on it initially, but eventually came to like it. But, in my own defense, I have never understood the need for Cybertronians to engage in things that approximate human romance-based relationships. That may be more of a topic for a future post, but to cut to the chase, after some time of mainly disinterest as opposed to displeasure, dislike or distaste, I came around to the conjunx endura, and actually find it pretty charming. I am, after all, a romantic at heart, and Chromedome and Rewind seem so genuine, so . . . cute together.

Let me not beat around bushes any longer: I do not like Rewind at all.

The Elite Series purports to be a high end collection of Star Wars figures, aimed at collectors. These are not toys, and are not action figures in the normal sense of the term. Sold at Disney Stores and limited to a handful of characters, the Elite Series seems to be mainly movie tie in merchandise, and is perhaps Disney’s first original entry into the vast Star Wars merchandise universe.

Transformers: Titans Return Galvatron

So, for Titans Return everyone is a Headmaster. While the original *-masters figures contained different types –Targetmaster, Powermasters and Headmasters – the 2016 version boils everything down to a transforming robot who becomes the head of the larger, established Cybertronian. That’s fine, as the *-master gimmick is pretty dopey in general, and streamlining it to only one type broadens the play pattern for the entire line, rather than having it separated by incompatible types. Sure, a Headmaster figure could wield a Targetmaster weapon partner; but if you’re a Powermaster engine, pfft. Get to steppin’. The wide reach of this gimmick is a little concerning, as it spreads to characters like Galvatron who have no history of being *-masters, AND specifically in the case of Galvatron in the IDW comics, really, really hate this kind of augmented Cybertronian, viewing them as abominations trying to compensate for some weakness that needs to be purged from the Cybertronian race. Man, Galvatron was so much nicer when he was just a crazed Megatron upgrade: when they try to make him a totally separate and distinct character, they just focus on the crazy.

Mass Burial – Vomitory, Opus Mortis VIII

The last hurrah for Swedish death metal other guys Vomitory, Opus Mortis VIII, their eighth album if you didn’t know, was released in 2011. Apparently, the band had known ahead of time that this would be their last work, so a fair question winds up being whether or not they were going to leave anything undone in their careers: would this album be more of their standard, or would we see some new ideas since, with the band ending, the risk of alienating listeners would be pretty low.

The penultimate Vomitory album feels like, in some ways, a return to the early Vomitory albums: Carnage Euphoria takes a few songs to get going, as the fourth track “Ripe Cadavers” is the first one that really gets my attention. “A Lesson in Virulence” is a good third song, a usual Vomitory trait, but this time, it’s a slower tune that appears in that slot and that for whatever reason keeps the album from taking off. “Rage of Honor,” “Deadlock” and closer “Great Deceiver” are also quality tunes.

Five albums in, I think it’s safe to make some general statements on the career of the band. Vomitory plays death metal. Vomitory plays death metal very, very well. They have the brutality of the American scene and the melody and guitar work of their native Sweden. Lyrically, they cover a lot of the standard death metal bases of gore, violence and murder, and killing and demons, and war, not content to stick to one content approach like many other bands do. Truly, Vomitory is a smorgasbord of death metal, with something for everyone because everyone likes something.

Album number five for the Swedish death metal machine that was Vomitory. Back in the old days of the early 2000s, I would stop at a local record store every single payday. I would get out of work, deposit my check (in the dark ages before we all had Direct Deposit, miracle that that is….) and head to the same store, regardless of where I was working. Maybe I’d put off my trip until I was on my way out for the evening, but regardless: like clockwork, every other Friday took me record shopping. I would walk around this store and look at practically any and every release that even appeared to be metal related. And every single trip would culminate with me buying a stack of new CDs, often times about one hundred dollars’ worth of new music at a time.

Long, long ago, I owned two Vomitory records: this, from 2002, and its 2004 follow up Primal Massacre. I knew them both as quality death metal records, but was not at all familiar with the band as a unit.

Mass Burial – Vomitory, Revelation Nausea

Oh, 2001. A new millennium was upon us, but we had the same old Vomitory. Whatever that may mean to you, understand that I mean it in a positive way.

Revelation Nausea would feature another new vocalist, this time Erik Rundqvist, who would deliver the growls for the remaining Vomitory albums. His is a good, strong, satisfying death metal growl, closer to the style of Raped in Their Own Blood than Redemption.

The second record by Sweden’s Vomitory, “Redemption” was released in 1999.

Differences from Raped in Their Own Blood are noticeable immediately: the cover art has shifted over to the painted skeleton-in-a-crypt motif, away from the actual picture used for the first album. The music is a bit thrashier than the previous album, and oh, man, a new vocalist. Jussi Linna handles the vocal duties here, and I can’t find out much about him. It actually seems like a brief stint with Vomitory was his only real contribution to the metal scene.

The first ever Child Sized Coffin discography project is dedicated to Swedish death metal band Vomitory. I have a little bit of familiarity with the band, having heard two of their albums a number of years ago,

Vomitory’s first album, 1996’s Raped in Their Own Blood, is a solid piece of mid-90s death metal. Everything about this album says ‘solid death metal’: the cover art is some fairly generic murder scene photo, the kind of thing that in 1996 would have been extreme and all, but looks pretty cheesy today. Ten songs of brutal, straightforward death metal, with the standard titles as well.

Coffin Shaker –Mass Burial Announcement

Hello again, Coffin friends,

About a week ago, I made a post announcing some new features I was hoping to add to the Child Sized Coffin; one of them was a fairly ambitious music project wherein I’d take on an entire discography by a single band. After some deliberation, I am pleased to make the following announcement:

A new feature is coming to the Coffin! Entitled the MASS BURIAL, this new column will focus on reviewing an entire discography from a single band.