Toxic Zombie Onslaught is OUT NOW

That's right suckers, guess what was unleashed on the world today.


When you get it, let us know what you think. Here's a preview: you loved it.

Pre-order TOXIC ZOMBIE ONSLAUGHT now

To pre-order instantly via PayPal please go to the Stormspell store [ H E R E ]

AWW SHIT, what's this?

Could be Thrashbaby™ and the good people at Stormspell records have a little something extra for the first 150 orders of TOXIC ZOMBIE ONSLAUGHT.

Cheesy Metal Intro & Attack of... video

With this, the last remaining unheard track is revealed. Tell everyone you know that it's the happiest day of your life.

TZO is finally coming soon

TZO's coming soon... like within a month or two, looks like. We're hashing out details with a label and finalizing things. More announcements soon.

The final track count is 10... no covers, all originals this time. Stronger and fiercer than Necromantic Maelstrom, with a much greater riff attack, slightly better production and the same shitty vocals.

Arrangement may vary, but these are the tracks.

1. Cheesy Metal Intro
2. Attack Of The Wrath Of The War Of The Death Of The Strike Of The Sword Of The Blood Of The Beast
3. Toxic Zombie Onslaught
4. Black Metal Sucks
5. Thrash Resurgence
6. I Destroy
7. Predator
8. Cold Steel Machine
9. Office Politics
10. Lich King II

Bad review number 2!

shithead
Originally uploaded by Alex Eales

Thanks to Kevin for notifying me of this. From Metal-Archives.com:

Attention, people, be it pricks or oldies, homeless dicks or Hollywood stars, thrashers or nonthrashers! This is the Shroomie Control Center here, responding to the nonsensically ferocious jaws of praise that grabbed this album and don't let it go! I mean, yeah, I saw fine albums bashed by otherwise fine reviewers, and now I see the opposite thing! I guess that Hulk sniffed some glue and started this thrash band.

I am a fan of the ol' good Bay Area sound, and I don't have problems with humour in music or rawer production. "Then this album should have done the trick!" Noooo, go trick your nuts and hit 'em with a truck, it would give much better results than this album.

Round 1: Raw Production enters the ring, it looks pretty grizzly, it's trebly, it's razor-sharp, it's thrusting its fist towards you!!! But wait, what was that? Oh, no! Raw Production's arch nemesis, Tone Thinness, along with her older sister, Idiotically Thin Guitar Tone, jump in front of Raw Production! So exciting! What is happening right now? Raw Production is beaten to the ground and gangbanged by the two vile characters! What a manky mode to end such a promising fight and knock Raw Production values off!

Round 2: The Skvllfvcking Riffz Gang is hotter than ever! They promised us a masterful display of old-school techniques in order to determine the listeners to bang their heads and bite their tongues. Yes! YES!! The Skvllfvcking Riffz Gang succeeded in almost ripping off the beginning from Vio-Lence's Eternal Nightmare! So old-school, so refreshing, so invigorating! Now it's time for the Bonescrewing Dictator Of Rehashment And Radioactive Boredom to make its appearance! And he has a giant bazooka, omgz! The Gang won't give up, and they try to kick his sorry ass to pieces, but one shot from the Dictator's bazooka is enough to convert them to crappy, repetitive, bland riffs hopping all around the place! And there's the Dummy-Drummy Tiny Magician, trying to do his best in drumming and save the Gang from being lynched by the angry metalhead mob! Instead of grandiloquent, solid, relentless beating, he can only draw a slower than fast general tempo, a few farty "yo homey" breakdowns (a term coined by confrontational writer and thrash philosopher UltraBoris) and stinky cymbal sounds that make everything worse! Pathetic, indeed!

Round 3: The Almighty "Slick Dick Cuntpiercer" Lead Guitar! Oh, wait, he seldom burps a solo, each solo is standard, has been smoked before and will therefore be IGNORED.

Round 4: The Groaning Losertron gives his peak performance! What kind of question is "what performance", you goose? It's screaming! Screaming and screaming and screaming and screaming, only high-pitched screaming, no bleeding. Pointlessness blessed this guy with a nice set of funny lyrics and an even nicer set of lack of talent.

In a nutshell: Nocturnal Breed, Mastery et al. take the cake for serious thrash assaults! Lich King take the Manboobs Award for being so persuasive, so motivated and so... so... so... so... so covering those two awesome songs by ony veteran act and one incredibly awesome act! They should do only covers, it would be so much better. This album sounds just like a bunch of rehearsals with two excellent covers at the end: a hairy Nenderthal guy with two superb boobs. And this, my friends, is sad.

It got a 35%. Nice! Thanks Eugene from Romania. You're energetic, but you're not as good a writer as you think you are- tone back on the stuff you think is funny by being random and esoteric, because... not so much.

What with all the rave reviews being posted all over the universe, it's refreshing to come across someone that can't see that NM was the best album of the last 167 years. It's like reading a Mad Lib- a silly, fun escape from reality.

Toxic Zombie Onslaught might be up... eventually

Yeah, sorry about that earlier report that it might be up that night. Obviously that didn't happen. I'm still waiting on the vocals and there have been setbacks. Once I get the vocals I'm plugging them in and banging the file up to myspace immediately. Till then, I'm going to cease to hype... I won't say it's coming until it's up.

GTA IV update time.

4288-gta-iv-screenshot-speed-racer
Originally uploaded by The Capester

So I went to the midnight opening and stood in line for about an hour to get my copy. All around me were large beef-fed college kids that looked like the type that would enjoy murdering people in a fantasy world, and I had a dark moment as I contemplated my place in the world. Then I got my copy and promptly got over it, leaving the mall at 12:45 AM.

I downed a deeeelicious Dunkin' Donuts vanilla chai and raced home, then began to play. I've played a lot since, and I've formed some solid opinions. Here they are.

• The main character is great- Niko Bellic is the series' first sympathetic protagonist. You feel for the guy and his situation. You get the ability to choose whether to kill or release some of your mission targets once you find them. Whenever I can I let them go. I'm no saint, I still like plowing through crowds of innocent people on the sidewalk.

• The vehicle handling bugged me at first- pressing the handbrake button makes you swerve and slide all over the road, and there's very little control over the cars. With practice I saw that it just takes finessing, and is that sloppy to make certain that going full speed is a very dangerous affair, to be used in extreme circumstances.

• The graphics are just amazing, especially the little details like the texture of the streets, the way your tires leave skid marks, and damage to cars like blood stains and everyday dents and gashes, maybe bullet holes, etc.

• The lack of fixed-wing aircraft is a sore spot for me. One of my favorite ways to get around in San Andreas was to take a plane to wherever I was heading and jump out overhead, parachuting down and enjoying the sight of an airline jet crashing in the middle of an intersection. It should be noted that the helicopters don't have parachutes either, so... no more skydiving, from what I can tell. That. Stinks.

• I've played the multiplayer a bit by now and I haven't played MUCH but I was almost bored by the action. You can free roam about the city with up to 15 other people, go on multiplayer mission massacres, have team battles, stuff like that. It's fun, but it's not... FUN. I may need to play more.

• No user music collection station. They had this in San Andreas and I used it all the time. It's a real shame, it seems like this would be a simple matter.

• Maybe it's just that I'm a country mouse, but being trapped in the city all the time is wearying and depressing. I liked being out in the countryside in San Andreas now and again, just launching myself off of cliffs at high speeds and dirt biking over rock formations.

• I'm greatly enjoying finding a gas station, standing in front of a pump and shooting it. When you die, you die in slow motion, so when the gas station explodes and you fly for two city blocks and collide into stationary objects it's realllllly fun to watch.

All in all, I'm enjoying the game greatly but it's not video game crack driving the chemicals of my brain. I don't quite understand the run of perfect reviews... that seems a bit much to me. It's a 9.4 out of 10, I'd say.

Toxic Zombie Onslaught might be up tonight

FEARnet.zombie.mask.jpg
Originally uploaded by brianewingdotcom

That's right, the forthcoming classic song that I've been hyping for MONTHS finally has its vocals recorded, and I've been told that I'll have them in my hands as early as this afternoon. T.Z.O. could be smashing your ears into your skull tonight.

Grand Theft My Soul

Grand Theft Auto IV comes out on Tuesday. All the reviews coming in are stellar... largely 10 out of 10. Someone averaged the scores of about twenty reviews and it came out to 99.06%. That's reallllllly good.

I've been a fan of the GTA games since III (which, for those of you not in the know, was three games ago), and this one by all accounts is an unbelievable leap forward. Physics engines, fantastic driving, ragdolling bodies with artificial nervous systems, in-depth story with a sympathetic protagonist, insane multiplayer action, a greatly enhanced targeting system, hours and hours of things to do that have nothing to do with the storyline.

I am sitting here gnawing my fingernails down to the second knuckle waiting for this thing to come out. Tomorrow (Monday) I'm going to start calling around and see if I can find a place that's doing a midnight release.

Here's an example of what the physics look like now, in this case being what happens when you crash at high speed on the dirt bike.


I'm salivating like a fire hose with a face.

A hearty fuck you for some very special people.

The THRASHING LIKE A MANIAC tour is dead, or so my close personal sources say. I'm not sure what's even cool to reveal, so I'll just say that promoters and certain record company types got in the way and bogged down and eventually killed what would have been the coolest thrash show I had ever seen. The bill was amazing and I doubt I'll ever have the opportunity to see something like that again, living in western Massachusetts like I do. These kinds of things don't happen out here. Sure, I might get to see (band) or (band) or maybe even the two together, but those four bands on one show? That was once in a lifetime for out here, and it died because of egos, money and top billing arguments. I'd love to name the companies at fault but I'm trying to court some of you bloodsuckers at present.

So. Fuck you and die to the people that cockblocked what may have been the coolest concert experience of my life.

The new song hits tonight

Office Politics premieres on Thrash Unlimited Radio tonight at 8pm Pacific.

Change your pants... you've just shit them.

New Lich King song is a week away

LK_Logo_Flame.jpg
Originally uploaded by TomMartinArt

And I know you're all excited. Yes, in my capacity as the frontman for the greatest thrash metal band in the world I come up with a lot of brutal shit. This time, though, I've been entirely outclassed by Diamond Plate's Konrad Kupiec, a sixteen year-old shredder that put me out to pasture with his guest soloing. This is coming up in Office Politics, which should be a Thrash Unlimited exclusive very soon, mostly likely Friday the 18th.

Office Politics

I'm a white collar death machine with murder on his mind
A psychopathic madman caught up in the daily grind
Inter-office enmity has brought me to this place
I want to take a Sharpie and then stab it in your face

Backstabbing chickenshit has gone over my head
Told the boss about the files that I knew I should have shred
Now I'm in my cubicle and darkly thinking how
I could end this punk with pain and settle back and disavow

I wish it were five o'clock
Wait for you out in the parking lot
I could kill you
I will kill you
I will finish the job you should have done for yourself

Mosh!

Take a ride to Staples on my lunch hour just to check
If they're selling something I could use to stab you in the neck
Maybe human resources has something I could read
That'll help me practice policy while causing you to bleed

I take my glasses off and I loosen up my tie
It's almost time to go and help a brown noser to die
Say goodnight to Bob and take the elevator down
Grab a tire iron and then put it in your crown

You know you asked for this
Fight for your life, stand and try to resist
I can kill you
I will kill you
Put down your briefcase and ready yourself for the pain

Spider season has begun again

DSCN1361.JPG
Originally uploaded by TomMartinArt

I live in a section of a building that's adjacent to both the basement and a crawlspace. My door is on a side of the building that doesn't get a lot of sunlight. The result, as I saw last year, is spiders. I get spiders. They don't freak me out that much, but sometimes I get the really big ones. The inch-long ones you might see crawling on Indiana Jones' back. They've popped back up since the recent bout of warm weather here, and now I'm swimming in spiders again. Just two nights back I came home to find two big ones just hanging out on my door. I didn't want to open the door because they'd skitter in... eugh.

A few years back I was in a kill-free phase where I wouldn't set any kinds of traps or squish anything- ants, spiders, mice all got a pass. That time of animal empathy is over for me. I'm a tissue-grabbing spider-squishing machine. If you read this, you little hairy shits, just know that I'm going to crush you like I'm the Gorax from The Ewok Adventure. He had a spider too, but that spider had the good sense to keep its distance. Learn from him, and don't try to use ewok magic items or trick me into falling down the chasm I keep in my house.

Dream: Movie trailers

First, know that my dreams are often bizarre and always include celebrity guest stars. This one isn't as bizarre as most but oh, it's chock full of the famous folk.

All right. I can't even remember what order these were in, so I'll just rattle them off as best I can. The jist: I was watching some movie and noticing that the trailers were taking forever. They were those maybe four minute long trailers you sometimes see.

One was Reese Witherspoon in BLUE SEA. It was a documentary about the Blue Sea but it also had a romantic comedy plot thrown on top. Kinda like pineapple & ham pizza- it's ridiculous but some people like it. So in this, Reese Witherspoon plays a young marine biologist whose hand is bitten off by a shark. She then finds true love. The trailer showed the shark bite and I think she said "ouch." The action then cuts to a gorgeous camera shot under the Blue Sea, it's a sea that's about twelve feet deep all around. It's a deep cobalt blue and there's no vegetation, just silt and fish. A skull drifts by for some reason. The documentary narrator says "In the Blue Sea, life is harsh, but those living here have adapted to its unforgiving conditions. The temperature of the sea only rises by two degrees in the summer."

I hit NEXT on my DVD remote. This is already the fifth trailer, I'm getting sick of this.

The next one's a comedy / social satire about a world where a zombie plague has been overcome and the remaining humans use them for silly entertainment / labor means like in the end of SHAUN OF THE DEAD. This one's about a baseball league that positions zombies in the outfield. The trailer's not clear about what rules changes this brings to the game, but they show a batter hitting a zombie in the outfield and yelling "dammit!" Suddenly I'm in the trailer and I and a group of (researchers? physicists?) colleagues are posted at a research base in some arctic-looking cold place. I have no idea what we're doing there, but we're standing outside some garage-sized building watching some zombie baseball-related thing off-camera. Someone says let's go inside. Inside, there's a vent blowing heat and everyone stands near it. Jenna Fischer is there and we're having a conversation. I say "Oh, I'm so sweetly shy" and the conversation ends. Then quite suddenly a caller to our radio show calls in. I sit down at a desk and put on headphones. He's shipped me a fruit roll-up, which is what you have to do if you want to be a caller on our radio show. I say "Hi, you're on the air" and he begins to talk while I eat the fruit roll-up he sent. I don't listen to a thing he's saying. All my concentration's on the fruit roll-up.

There were others, I just can't remember them.

Revenge movies

I Netflixed DEATH SENTENCE with Kevin Bacon and it’s most of the way through. I recently saw THE BRAVE ONE with Jodie Foster and it’s pretty much the same thing. As I’m sitting here, I’m thinking about revenge movies and how they don’t give me what I want. Movies like the two I referenced above are gritty and semi-realistic, with good people torn apart by violence and going out to get revenge. They make their first kill and it seems to happen accidentally, even tragically, leaving the protagonist with a mournful realization of the impact of violence. At this point they can’t stop and / or the criminals are onto them, menacing them right back. Eventually, they’re chastised by detectives that are on their trail with speeches like "Do you really think going out and shooting (villain) is going to bring (loved one) back?" The entire time, the hero’s face is a mask of regret and despair.

I hate crap like this. Why? I love revenge. Or, rather, I find it to be a terribly useful coping mechanism. It’s something I’m told is one of the darkest things about me... I’ve got a gleeful perspective on hardcore revenge. If I see Jodie Foster shoot the guy that shot her fiancé, I don’t consider that revenge... I consider that a terrible waste. The guy got a relatively painless death and likely winked out of existence. Revenge like what I think that guy deserved was hours and hours of unbelievable Hostel-esque torture, during which his tears were spit on by a grinning Foster. Most revenge movies have the protagonist going through far more anguish than the people they go against. I want a movie where the good guy gets RE. VENGE.

There are movies where the good guy cuts unflinchingly through his oppressors, but they’re mostly glamorized action movies. KILL BILL, PAYBACK, GLADIATOR, THE CROW, etc.. That’s fun, don’t get me wrong, but they’re genre films on something I’d like to see a serious take about: a protagonist who takes revenge and enjoys (or at least gains solace from) it in a realistic and gritty style, based on the world we live in and without bullet-dodging and cartoony dialogue. Hammers, fingernails, drillbits and kneecaps.

Maybe I need to rent A TIME TO KILL. I could use that kind of unrepentant vigilantism. It would do me good.

Let's begin with this crap

Hi, I'm Tom the Lich King guy. You probably know me by my awesome album NECROMANTIC MAELSTROM that you bought four or five copies of. I'm going to start keeping a bloggy thing here, mostly because I'm bored, but also to see if I can't be one of those bloggers that gets a dopey following. I don't do enough bitching on Thrash Unlimited, time to bitch it up here.