The Calabrese brothers have transformed. In their last album, The Traveling Vampire Show, they possessed the identity of every vampiric horror available and let the album bleed out of its sleeve. The newest iteration transmorphs the vampires as agents of death into the black monster of sin and destruction himself.

Calabrese gets all confusion out of the way in the first track of the album, appropriately titled “They Call Us Death”, labeling the demonic three as a “pack of wolves” “beyond the veil of days”. With this in mind, we are put on the slaughter line through the myriad of death-centric beliefs and themes that are pervasive in the album, all steeped in carnage and often despair. Calabrese is the narrator winking at its victims just before the death knell. They know why death has come and are savoring every moment left.

The romantic motif of the last album is maintained but perverted by the bitter cloak of death’s impatience, evidenced best in “Black Anthema”. Death “knows you secrets” and “knows your weakness” all the while reminding you that “your world is burning”. Once you know there is no hope, it opens you up to try to harness the wailing vocals or street-cracking drum hits.

Which leads us to the sound of the album: everything here was more or less present on the previous album but the quality and intensity has been increased ten-fold. The vocal work is crawling with sepulchral wails and whoa-s; and while the theme has changed from vampires to death, the guitar and bass are lively and livid, careening through the 12 mostly-under-three-minute tracks. One track in particular, “Blood of the Wolf”, stands out because of its contrast to the rest of the album in terms of grit. The breakneck-paced song is about a beast of carnage incarnate in which graveled vocals carry the rage and ferocity of the lupo. It quickens your heart and pulls your vocal chords out, leaving you in the dirt. “Deep in the Red” is another track that courses into your brain with its driving bass and drum line. The images of blood, hate, and poison are vivid as you are “crippled inside” as “we fall apart”.

Other themes that the album holds include occult summonings as in “Summon the Beyond” or “Violet Hellfire”, the Earth as infinite and life as finite as in “Loveless God” and the afore mentioned “Blood of the Wolf”, as well as death as the only real definition of life as in “Within the Abyss” and “Endless Night”. Now, it might look like I’m reading too much into what might just be a deadly rockin’ good time, but I don’t think Calabrese has done anything by accident here, nor do I think that this album has to go beyond killin’ shit and rocking if you don’t want it to. I do think that this is straight courtroom evidence that Calabrese is an unstoppable entity in any form, be it death or vampires, and remains the world’s greatest HORROR rock band.

Article by Christopher Friedrich

Filed under: Undead News by Undead Fiction
No Comments »

By Jared Taylor Smith

A lot of people tend to give too much credit to their zombies, or just simply not enough. There are too many zombie stories and films that leave their characters unexplained. After all, when it comes to zombie stories and films, the main character isn’t the last action hero or the half naked chick that manages to escape the clutches of the undead; the main character is the zombie.

Now normally I do not like calling zombies, zombies. I feel like the term has been beaten into the ground to the point where it has finally reached the level of pirates and ninjas. I like to call them the undead, walking dead, the dead, corpses, whatever. By the way, if you like pirates, ninjas, green zombies, and werewolves you might want to stop reading and leave the site before you begin crying in pain because no such content exists here, sorry.

Anyway… Everybody likes their zombies a certain way and everybody has a different interpretation on how they should look or move. Are they green or gray? Are they the fast ones or the slow ones? Do they eat brains or all living tissue? It all really depends on a person’s undead preferences. A lot of people like the funny zombies that are greenish, only eat brains, and manage to magically express the fact that they want to eat them.

Let’s be realistic for a minute or two. When the zombie apocalypse happens, and believe me people, it will, what are they really going to be like? Well honestly, they will probably not really be dead. Wait! Don’t stop reading just yet! I know that is not what you wanted to hear but let’s face it, how can a dead corpse really walk around? When the outbreak really happens, they will most likely just be humans with rabies. They will probably be fully functional, talking, breathing, conspiring zombies, hell bent on killing us all no matter how.

But where is the fun in that? The walking dead are so much cooler than the walking or running living. That is why when I write about zombies, I like to keep some realism in the mix along with the undead aspect. My zombies are the completely dead and reanimated all flesh eaters. They look like any normal dead corpse would. Pale, grayish, pasty, and depending on what happened to them at the time of death: bleeding, broken, limbless, etc.

How long ago the zombie first died plays a large role in how it functions. If a zombie has been around for a while it would have been decaying for a while as well. What keeps it going is the brain and as the brain rots away it loses the function that those pieces of the brain control. So just before a zombie’s “second death,” as I call it, the zombie can barely walk or do anything, but it will keep after the living’s flesh until it can no longer function. If the zombie is fresh and has not lost any limbs or has not experienced extensive brain damage it will be able to move fairly well. Obviously when the host dies and reanimates, some brain cell loss would have occurred, so they are by no means fast or coordinated. Because of extensive brain damage during first death and reanimation, they cannot learn. They simply retain basic instincts and can possibly get used to certain things out of habit.

So how did it all begin? Was it nuclear? Perhaps it was stem cell research? Or did some dumb ass military truck with only a dinky chain holding back barrels of the flesh-eating apocalypse take a turn too hard by a creek? The answer is all of them. Nuclear stuff really isn’t to be messed with because it mutates things. Stem cell research really isn’t to be fiddled with because if crazy miracle cures can be had, something horrible like zombies will eventually balance out the equation. And finally yes, there are so many idiots in the world; one of them is bound to end up in a truck full of canned zombies.

The anatomy of a zombie is not rocket science. They can be whatever you want them to be. However, they should not be green and mumble braaaiiinnsss while they walk around with their arms out like mummies. My zombies won’t be anyway, and that is precisely why this is called The “Anatomy of My Zombie”. If you don’t like it, go back to playing that terrible video game, “Stubbs The Zombie” and fighting over which “Twilight” team people should be on.

Filed under: Undead News by Undead Fiction
No Comments »

The king of the walking dead turned 70 on Thursday, February 4th. Undead Fiction would like to take a moment to say, happy birthday George! If it were not for you, we all  would not be the die hard zombie fans that we are today.

Filed under: Undead News by Undead Fiction
No Comments »