The stories are mostly good, but this is a weird product from an editing and packaging standoint.

It has random-ass stock cover art that has nothing to with any of the stories (an almost obligatory feature of small press books), stories that don’t really make sense with each other, and a blurb on the back promising three “short novels”. Mangled Meat‘s first “novel” is 21 pages long, the second “novel” 31 pages long, and the third “novel” is 51 pages long, so yes, these are short novels. Maybe Deadite Press will publish the dot that I used to finish my last sentence and call it a “short vignette.”

“The Decortication Technician” stands out like a cockroach on a wedding cake. It has no gore or sex, but it manages to evoke a Ray Bradbury sense of wonder. In the far future, a man must dissect an alien that is like nothing he’s seen before. The writing is sometimes clunky and graceless, but it manages to create a believable futuristic world in 20 pages, and I enjoyed the big reveal at the end. To spoil it a bit, it’s like the ending of Anthony Boucher’s “The Quest for Saint Aquin” reversed. This story is good stuff.

“The Cyesolagniac” is about a guy who fancies pregnant women, and how his fetish lands him in hot water (figuratively and literally, unfortunately). Disgusting in places, and has a cute ending. I didn’t like how Lee tries to make a boring and run-of-the-mill fetish sound like the most taboo thing in the world. “Heyton sat in the chair with his pants down. A glance across the squalid room revealed his pitiful reflection in the mirror: a ludicrous caricature. The magazine shook in his hands. If my dear dead parents could see me now…” You’d think the guy liked fiddling kids or something.

“Room 415” is about a well-meaning beta male who has been cheated on, and now finds himself unable to get an erection unless he sees women being hurt. He falls in with a crooked pimp and a retinue of high-priced escorts, with nasty results. There’s some fun gore porn at the end, but I found the story to be a long car ride for a short day at the beach: long and slow, and the payoff at the end isn’t worth it. There’s lots of overly-detailed description of luscious tits and asses spilling out of translucent lingerie, etc – I get the sense that Lee was typing the story one-handed. Apparently this is the “nice” version of the story, and there’s an alternate version somewhere with a far darker and more misanthropic end.

Mangled Meat is an interesting collection. It doesn’t take more than twenty minutes to read, so it could be worthwhile if you find it cheap somewhere. The first story is the best and the last story is the worst, but they’re all at least somewhat readable. It’s not really what it was advertised as, but I could see myself reading more of Edward Lee’s short s…er, novels.

Large numbers of movies get released and make no money. The traditional indie counter-manoeuvre is to spend no money making the movie in the first place.

Mad Max was such a movie, and the result is a classic. The series really finds its voice with The Road Warrior, but the first one is good, too – an edgy and stylish movie that combines a peak oil-induced apocalypse with Australian muscle car culture.

The setting is familiar, and the Mad Max franchise made it that way. Civilisation is winding down due to depleted fuel reserves, and road gangs have turned the roads into battlefields. Max Rockatansky is an officer in the collapsing house of cards that is the local police force, and he’s getting uncomfortably happy with the violence his job requires. When a fellow officer is burned alive in an ambush, he begins a transformation into a vigilante who doesn’t just throw away the rulebook, he does wheelies over it with his supercharged Pursuit Special.

After an energetic opening scene that hurls cars around and showcases the series’ love of outrageous trash talk (Ayatolla of Rock and Rolla, etc), Max hits its stride: a gritty and atmospheric movie with solid writing and acting. Considering the budget, the action scenes are impressive and occasionally spectacular – but the thing that really brings this movie together is the characters.

Gibson is particularly good. He’s calm, but it’s a calm that makes you uncomfortable. He seems like a benign cloud cell that could mutate into a hurricane. He doesn’t overact – far from it, he’s usually quieter than he needs to be. But he has a strange power over the screen, and his quietness is part of what makes the final scene so chilling.

There’s a bunch of crazy desperadoes with ridiculous names like Mudguts and Toecutter, and they’re also handled with a nuance that isn’t typical in this kind of movie. I like how Nightrider goes from insane tirades to tears, and Johnny tries to escape Max’s vengeance by claiming mental problems. The villains have a nice bit of…humanity, which reminds us that Max himself might not be too far behind.

Max isn’t perfect. As an emotional experience it has an odd plateau-like quality, and it lacks a big epic scene like the road chase of the second movie or the Thunderdome battle of the third. The music hasn’t aged too well. Mad Max has an ill-fitting jaunty score that makes me think of Adam West punching out bad guys with “WHAM!” and “POW!” appearing on the screen.

But the movie is still impressive for what it is. Few films do so much with so little money (imagine if Blair Witch had car stunts), and it’s influence etc cannot be overstated. The odd thing about Max is that you’ve witnessed its spirit even if you haven’t seen the movie, because so many of its ideas have seeped into the work of other directors.

There’s lots of bad music these days. I don’t mind that, but what bothers me is the lack of interesting bad music.

Where’s 2013’s answer to such moments as 2:34 in Korn’s biggest hit? Where’s Faith no More and Mike Patton when you need them? Where are the modern rejoinders to “CRAAAAWWWLIING IN MY SKIIIIN” and “LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOOOOR” and other inspired fits of stupidity for when you’ve got too many brain cells? Why does all modern bad music feel equivalent entertainment-wise to staring at a wall?

The first two Slipknot albums were ass and I will hate them forever, but they were memorable. The third was half shitty songs and half songs that I unironically enjoy. This album showcases a new style for the band…or a lack of one. Slipknot has no identity of their own any more. They sound indistinguishable from Chimaira, Lamb of God, and Machine Head. All Hope is Gone is like an album created by a committee.

Opening song “Gematria” writes a big quod erat demonstrandum on this hypothesis. The band doesn’t just use cliches, these use every cliche: It has Machine Head aggro-groove, FFDP-esque tough guy vocals, ultrahardcore breakdowns, and obviously the song itself goes nowhere. You can hear the band asking themselves “well, rapping on metal records isn’t cool anymore so…uh…this is what kids today like, I guess? No? Well about this?”

“Psychosocial” is a more cohesive song with an annoying chorus. “Sulfur” and “Butcher’s Hook” are filler hovering at the outer edge of listenable. “Vendetta” has stupid verses and a stupid chorus and a stupid middle section, there is not a single second of this song that I like.

We get an extra-heavy dose of Slipknot’s softer side this time around. “Dead Memories” is probably the best of the bunch, sounding like Alice in Chains. Then in descending order of quality is “Snuff”, “Child of Burning Time”, “Wherein Lies Continue”, and the worst song on the album, “Gehenna”, which sounds like Kid Rock trying to make a Mr Bungle song or something.

“This Cold Black” is a good song. That is not sarcasm. Somehow things work this time. Every now and then the three neurons this band has between them connect in an interesting way and produce good music. You can’t read too much into it.

The band has barely any use for four of their nine members this time around. There’s not much custom percussion, turntable scratches, or sampling. They sound like just a regular five piece band playing regular five piece music. They traded out the funny lyrics they just to have about Corey Taylor’s shitty childhood and replaced them with lyrics about politics. “ America is a killing name, it doesn’t feel or discriminate…Start a war in another backyard, and we’ll destroy your house of cards“…when I want opinions on the Iraq war, I definitely go to a bunch of people wearing clown masks.

Slipknot used to be a bad band with an amusing side. Now they’re making music so weak and boring that, by the end of All Hope Is Gone, even it seems to be asking you to turn it off.