The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The holiday season is upon us. 

Some very ill-informed may tell you: hold up, holiday season doesn't start until Thanksgiving!  Calm yourself!  But these horrible wet blankets would be leaving out festivities that predate all other upcoming celebrations by a millennia or two.  I'm talking about Halloween, and it's the reason for the season.

Granted, it's a bit less fluffy than Christmas.  For on the days surrounding October 31, anything coming down the chimney will more or less be met with a machete.  While it does not attract throngs of family and/or loved ones, it does deliver throngs of strangers in costume to your door, begging for candy. 

Gone are the feasts, gone are the bells of the Salvation Army, gone is the heavy-handed solemnity accompanying the holiday, replacing any fun with guilt... There are no haunted house hayrides at Christmas.  Thanksgiving gives you pie, but little to no chance of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  I'll stab my eyes out with a butcher knife if I see It's A Wonderful Life one more time, but I've seen every Friday the 13th at least eight times.  Leaves are turning and that's magic.

But there is one aspect of the later holidays that reigns superior: the presents.  For those of us that
truly revere Halloween, we wake up on October 31 and look under our Jack-O-Lantern and find... nothing.

Let's change that.  You and me.  All our friends.  Let's work to give Halloween the come-uppance it so truly deserves.  Let's legitimize this fucker.  Start a movement!  Head out right now, get in your car or your skateboard or your what-have-you and commercialize the hell out of this holiday!  Okay, just kidding about that last part, but let's you and I discuss the perfect Halloween holiday gifts!

 

HOLLOW SHOTGUNS by Khalid Patel

From The Walking Dead to 28 Days Later, it does not suck to be a zombie right now.  In fact, over heaven, reincarnation or nirvana, it's my preferred possible afterlife.  The undead have experienced several outlets recently, from film to graphic novel to television, but with Britain's Khalid Patel, they now reign supreme on the written page.

My first thought is that a book like this should never be published.  Not in a cookie-cutter world of sequels and knock-offs.  Not where Twilight and sparkly vampires rule pop culture can a voice and writing style so unique be allowed a chance.  No, this kid breaks some rules and he breaks them across people's faces.  This is no ordinary novel.

One thing that will strike you like the stock of a shotgun is the prose.  The writing style is so unique that it immediately removes you from your comfort zone and places you in Patel's world and does so abruptly, just as the apocalypse would.  One can only imagine Khalid leaving a wake of writing instructors, all of which pulling out their hair.  Sit back and enjoy a bit:

                "Cade observed the rundown abodes. The ambience altered the moment South Grove was speared, as if a cauldron beneath the borough amassed the droplets of satanic substances from the snarling syringes. Then when anyone traversed, the Grove retched the mixture as imperceptible mist. The prey abruptly felt agitated some, oblivious why. Yet the Grove knew. And soon it would harvest enough discarded joints, needles, blood drips for a most noxious concoction, spewing it as fog in the dead of night, blanketing slumbering dwellings, killing residents in dreams of drug overdoses, STDs. Nightmares of assaults, stabbings. Thenceforth the South Grove Beast would rise, crawl for every abode. Devour. One. By. One. Then- Wait, now it's getting idiota... thought Cade, scattering his reveries."

 

I mean, who writes like that?  Who can keep up this insane style of prose for an entire book?  It's like watching Anthony Burgess and Irvine Welsh club the shit out of each other with a thesaurus.  My personal copy is dog-eared and lain waste with highlighter, as I've sat front row for this celebration of the English language, watching this man slay phrase as if it were hordes of the undead.  Oh, and did I mention: ZOMBIES GET KILLED!

I won't go into detail of the plot, in order to preserve the experience, but it's about five troublemakers who comprise "The Set" - a group reminiscent of Alex's droogs in A Clockwork Orange - who find their community set to siege by, you guessed it: ravenous zombies.  The imagery in this tome could take on the best horror novel and I strongly recommend it.

BUY KHALID PATEL'S HOLLOW SHOTGUNS AT AMAZON

 

THE MISSION CREEPS: HALLOWEEN

For Tucson's horror-noir rockers, Halloween is not just a holiday, it's a lifestyle.  Following up their successful first two albums, In Sickness and Health and Dark Cells, the band released their long-awaited follow-up Halloween earlier this month.  And finally, the Mission Creeps delivers this holiday exactly what it has needed for some time: an anthem.

The title track "Halloween" provides just that and with the traditional The Mission Creeps sound.  The bluesy guitar, the hypnotic and powerful bass, the clever, catchy, witchy lyrics... It's something you could imagine Gomez Addams and Lily Munster dancing to during their rockabilly days.

But this album has a few surprises in store especially for the holidays.  Along with the sound they are most well-known for, they've had a bit of fun in the recording studio with this album.  Film scorers and operators of haunted houses will especially love the treats packed into this album as they seemed to have explored the nuance of every spooky sound their machines and voices could make.  From "The Butcher" to "Dragging the Body," there are instrumentals and experimentals that evoke no other word than "spook-tastic."  The thirty-minute "Land of the Departed" could be played on a loop at the front porch during Halloween and would challenge only the bravest of children to approach your door.

Also included are sounds captured from a real paranormal investigation in one of Bisbee, Arizona's most haunted locales... proof that The Mission Creeps are definitely the real deal!

Frontman James Arr's smooth voice and challenging lyrics are one of the draws to the album, and we get a teaser there with their title track, "Witches" and "Dragging the Body."  Bass mastermind Miss Frankie Stein in no way lets us down, as her signature surf sound pounds the pulse of the music.  Released on a funky flash drive, we are also treated to three extra tracks, the episode of the paranormal investigation, and some of the slickest album artwork ever.  (One of the extra tracks is "Midnight Blood," the title track from their upcoming album which, man, I can't &^#*ing wait to hear...)

Get spooky ever spookier with this album.  BUY "HALLOWEEN" by THE MISSION CREEPS AT THEIR WEBSITE.

 

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So, despite the attempt at commercialism with this blog post, everybody remember the reason for the season and go out and scare the shit out of as many people as you can, or dress up like a slutty nurse, vampire, or garbageman.  Just remember not to accept any candy with the wrapper compromised.