The Pretty Reckless is a band I believe in. The band’s music overshadows all other angles from which one might examine it, such as celebrity or sex appeal. And that’s as it should be. On its fourth album, Death by Rock and Roll, the band delivers its best so far. Music is for listening, but for those who also like words about music, here’s a track-by-track walkthrough of the album.

“Death by Rock and Roll”

There’s a lot of death on this album, which is no surprise since vocalist and songwriter Taylor Momsen has said in an interview with SPIN that she was so depressed…

WARNING: The following work of fiction based on a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm contains references to graphic violence that some readers may find upsetting, disturbing or otherwise objectionable. Reader discretion is advised.

Brummer dragged the children to the cutting house. He placed a tin bucket on the floor at the head of the worktable and looked around for his tools. As he found each one, he hung it from a nail protruding from the underside of the table. When he had assembled them all, he put his hands on his waist and took a deep breath.

Everything was…

The battle between the United States Army and Modoc Tribe raged across the lava beds, leaving behind the flotsam and jetsam of war. Moaning horses lay in troughs of churned earth. Dead hands gripped fallen standards. Bodies lay in a litter of spilled cartridges, bayonet shards, fragments of clothing, and bits of photographs and letters from home. And onto this field stepped three gunmen in black.

Bo “Bronco” Riley hit the dirt. The hell’d they come from? he thought as he wriggled behind the body of a dead horse and peeked around for another look.

All three of the figures…

From his cover in the darkness, Bishop Diclux watched the witches cavort in the light of their bone-fire. Breasts shook and trembled. Sweat flew from tossed hair. Mouths ejected grunts and spewed wild ululations. Within the flames, a massive form hunkered, turning its shaggy, horned head from side to side in slow, baleful arcs. Diclux, Christian priest in public and diabolical warlock in secret, wrapped a hand around the hilt of his sword.

This was going to be a hunt to remember.

Diclux’s companions this night were his Hammer, eight warriors chosen from his enclave for their loyalty, cunning and…

Originally published at http://gleamingsword.blogspot.com on August 6, 2012.

I would recommend anyone to see Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Director Alejandro Iñárritu is at the top of his craft and pushing Hollywood’s boundaries in ways that few directors today even attempt. It’s engrossing and unforgettable, but it also bugs me.

Forget for a moment the gripping drama about a man wrestling with his demons. Forget about the moving personal relationships. Forget about the cluttered labyrinthine and claustrophobic sets. Forget about all that loud, jazzy drumming that is the score. Forget about Michael Keaton’s bold comeback to the…

Originally published at http://gleamingsword.blogspot.com on August 6, 2012.

About a year ago, just after I started this blog, I posted a note on Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s book In Defense of Lost Causes. Soon after, I put the book aside unfinished and embarked on a series of books in philosophy and revolutionary history to help give me the background I needed to understand Žižek’s book. Now I’ve returned to it and been inspired to post another note.

One characteristic of Žižek’s thought is how quickly he turns to analysis of movies to illustrate his points. In the section titled “Stalinism…

The following post originally appeared at http://gleamingsword.blogspot.com on July 25, 2012 after another mass shooting in Colorado. No doubt the Internet is filling up with a fresh wave of similar posts after yesterday’s shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, in which ten people died.

In the wake of the movie-theater shooting in Colorado, many pundits were quick to declare that it was too soon to use the tragedy for political gain in our country’s ongoing debate about gun control. The same pundits usually then went on to fiercely debate gun issues, but personally, I never agreed with the original injunction…

The cover of the new split by Vulvodynia and Acrania — here styling themselves Vulvocrania — shows surgeons driving a spiked-up ambulance through a bloody mess of people. Just another fanciful scene from the world of slamming brutal death metal or did artist Armaada Art look out the window and simply depict what was outside? Because, let me tell you, it isn’t pretty out there. Societal Lobotomisation may be exactly the EP we need in these times, because it hits the rotten state of the world and hits it hard.

Hitting hard is the history of these bands. Acrania is…