Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Cassette Review: Sanguelia "Axeman Holocaust"


[£4 // Edition of 50 // https://sanguelia.bandcamp.com/album/axeman-holocaust]

Immediately upon seeing the artwork for this cassette I feel in love with "Axeman Holocaust".    It's got that slasher movie poster vibe to it that makes you say, "I don't know what this is and I don't care because it looks cool".   Really, artwork for music of any kind (Cassettes, records, CDs and everything else) is kind of dying off as if you go to any of the mass retail places that sell music (Which is your Target, Walmart, Best Buy type of stores that sell CDs) you'll see a bunch of CD covers that are just the artists standing around and some silly fonts.    Whatever happened to album artwork is an issue all its own, but this cassette by Sanguelia is an example of how something can lure you in even before you hear a single note because, yes, a lot of people do tend to judge books by their covers.

As this has a cover image as such I do think of this as being a soundtrack of sorts and in that regard I am not wrong based on the track titles.     There is also a certain overall vibe to these songs that might tell a story but this is where the difference between a soundtrack and a score comes in, as the soundtrack is merely songs fitting of the general vibe of a movie and the score could actually help inhance the story.    So while these songs would not be out of place in whatever you imagine the movie plot to be, they certainly don't reveal the entire story the way a score would.

The music in here is of a prog rock vibe as there are drums and synth, which can also be synthwave at times.   Normally I'd hear something similar to this and put it into some category of other movies (And being as this is a soundtrack it seemed too easy, right?) which could include "The Breakfast Club", "Beverly Hills Cop" or simply that key from "Masters of the Universe".    The thing here is that this cassette does not really fit into any of those genres I've kind of created and as such I just believe this would be a really great movie to see.

When Side B starts you can start to feel more of a horror vibe to the sounds and it brings out the idea of Jason Vorhees and even then that comes out with that John Carpenter feel to the movie but it still somehow maintains its own unique voice.    It reminds me a lot of the movie "Hatchet", which in many ways resembles and seems like a apt tribute to classic horror movies while maintaining its own sort of place in horror movie history.

What would be the movie poster has the tag line "The axe swings and the heads will roll on this deadly night of terror" and it's somewhat fitting as you can imagine this as being from the 1980's but not the same as any other soundtrack of that time, and yet it also blends that horror element to it which just sort of enhances it to me.     Being a fan of both of these factors- a genre and a time frame- when combined it does sound every bit as rocking awesome as you would expect and thus this creates a truly unique sound that must be experienced at loud, headbanging levels.







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