Welcome back to another edition of Face Riff. It’s been a while since my last installment, and I would like to apologize to my New Year’s resolution for slacking on my productivity. Better luck next year, I suppose. All procrastination aside, The Dillinger Escape Plan is about a week deep into a two month-plus tour with The Deftones, and already we have collectively devastated vast portions of the Pacific Northwest and Canada. The weeks to come will undoubtedly bring more of the same, and for those lucky enough to have gotten tickets to this mostly sold-out tour, expect to have your mind blown like that dude in Cronenberg’s SCANNERS.

On the horror front, we here at Face Riff (and by we I mean me) strive to secure the ties between horror and heavy music. This love affair between the movie and musical macabre traces all the way back to the ’60s when a little band from England decided to borrow the title of Mario Bava’s infamous horror trilogy and dub themselves Black Sabbath. From then on, this relationship has continued to flourish and the two have been inseparable like Duane Bradley and his BASKET CASE of a Siamese twin brother. Bands like Cannibal Corpse, Necrophagia and Mortician (just to name a few) took this love affair and ran with it like a bimbo in a slasher flick, and the world has been a better place because of it.

Recently, I had a chance to catch a screening of AFTER PARTY MASSACRE, a film that celebrates metal and horror like no other film in history. Plain and simple, this movie was made by metalheads and is for metalheads and horrorphiles alike. Shot on location at Cleveland’s notorious Peabody’s metal club, this film is eerily reminiscent of how I’ve spent a majority of my adult life, aside from the severed limbs and dildo-cide, of course. With a dimly lit bar, stickered toilets, blaring music and belligerent drunks, at times I felt I was watching my own home movies. In addition, this film has live performances from Incantation and Soulless, a soundtrack featuring tons of brutal electronica and death metal and enough blood, boobs and more boobs than you can shake a boob at. At times, the film lacks coherence, but makes up for it with its genuine ambiance and fun-time nature. So, if you love death metal and slasher flicks (and boobs), check out AFTERPARTY MASSACRE and do your part to further cement these two miscreant genres together.

Flash-forward to the present day and the steamroller that is the Dillinger/Deftones tour continues to smash the country. We even got dubbed with one of those fancy Hollywood-esque power couple names—Dep/Tones. I took this opportunity to express my love of music and horror with a custom guitar pick designed by great friend Dave Graw at Gentlemen and printed by Jim Dumlop. THE EVIL DEAD franchise has always been a shining example of a DIY ethic transforming over time and developing into some of the greatest horror movies of all time. This ethic has had a lasting impact and influence on me and seemed a fitting visage to symbolize my love for horror films and music. There are several thousand picks to go around, so get out to the Dep/Tones tour and claim one for yourself. Until then, stay brutal and bloody!!!

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