less kiss, more piss.

Like most valuable lessons, I need to learn this one again and again; My Castle of Quiet is the show that must remain ever-vigilant, not even a dropper-full of saccharine must be offered, for it leads only to—surprise!—requests for even more saccharine! I know there's some animal that will eat some sugar-substitute food additive, continuously, until it dies, and that's just about as factual as I'm going to get, because the Korrekteur-trolls will come out, and then, well, I just lose it. I'm often careful to use the qualifying phrase, "I think," and you know why? BECAUSE I'M NOT SURE. But in this case, I was sure, I just wasn't married to giving the correct facts about a KISS track, basically a little "FUN" to roll out the show. I KNOW Gene Simmons sings "Great Expectations," and that that song is the last song on one or the other side of KISS' Destroyer album, I KNOW these things, but do I really put my mind to them—no, because my angle was simply that I thought it would be an unexpected treat to open a set of soul-pulverizing doom with a song from Destroyer, involved as I am in a personal, off-air renaissance of the rock albums that mattered to me when I was 10. Fuck the facts, as the band-name goes, I know them anyway, and a correction is still a correction, it's still ultimately rude, even wrapped in a compliment—dog shit, with twigs and candy wrappers embedded remains the same, once you get off the pink bow and the shiny wrapping paper. So, NO MORE FUN on The Castle, because it's a slippery slope to three hours' worth of saccharine, and of course, YOUR requests, la la la! No one, well almost no one, gets my sense of humor. Waaaah! Complete this maze, and press the buzzer for more food. And no offense "Al," but 16 is a little old to be at the front lines of the KISS ARMY.

So, what else happened? You know, as in trolldom not ruining the whole KISS-intro thing for me? Well, listener Rory sent me a kick-ass (literally) link to this Altered Beast video-game clip (see, I missed that whole thing; no offense to anyone, but it were the ladies and consciousness-altering substances that drew my focus back in the bad old days. If only someone had TRIED HARDER to shove me towards SEGA.) Here it is below; Glory!



Man, that's good squishy.

Praise list >>>

Warloghe. A Finnish band not bowling us over with quantity (two full-lengths in 12 years!), but it's quality that counts, and one single Warloghe track, taken occasionally, is guaranteed to make your waistband snap, and your underwear do that thing where it floats around inside your pants. Hell yeah.

Pine Smoke Lodge. A CDr contributed to the show by good friend Todd Watson (who's programming this Castle, anyway?) of much-appreciated, wandering-in-the-dark atmospherics. From the great city of Portland, Maine.

No one but no one asked this week about the screen captcha, from Hammer's Plague of the Zombies (hot trailer!), but even clearheaded men of science must admit that that corpse wandering on the moors is an "undead." Click on zombie & victim up top to access the (quite amusing) comments board, playlist and audio archives for this week's muthagrabbin' horrorcast™, and keep your requests to yo' damn self. Please.