Aussie 'cinema-core' innovators The Gloom In The Corner are gearing up to release their new album Trinity. As the October 28 release date gets nearer, the band are descending deep within the Rabiit Hole dimension and diving straight back into the unholy trinity’s harrowing track through the hellish underworld with the new single Pandora’s Box.
Pandora’s Box sees The Gloom In The Corner once again rejoin the Ronin, Girl of Glass, and Queen of Misanthropy as they hunt for one of literature’s most infamous artifacts.
The second of the three mythical items needed to portal the cast back to Earth, retrieving the sunken object was clearly no easy task. And, depicting this struggle, the impactful track takes on the perspective of the character Rachel Barker as she’s submerged in a frozen lake, fighting against the elements as well as her own internal turmoil dragging her down.
Featuring vocalist Lauren Babic of Canadian metalcore outfit Red Handed Denial to help narrate Rachel’s chaotic headspace, Pandora’s Box not only adds to Gloom’s ever-expanding lore, but sheds light on the real, and sometimes difficult-to-talk-about struggles that people may encounter when battling mental illness.
To honour the release of Pandora's Box and celebrate both the imminent arrival of Trinity and the onset of spooky season, we caught up with The Gloom In The Corner's Mikey Arthur to find out what his five favourite horror movies are and he did not disappoint with his selections or his reasoning.
Mikey Arthur's Five Favourite Horror Movies
EVIL DEAD II
"'Evil Dead II' is my number one. 'Hail To The King' on 'Trinity was named after Ash Williams from the 'Evil Dead'series. Everyone has been like: “Oh, it’s named after Avenged Sevenfold”. But it’s named after Ash Williams and the Army of Darkness. It just has that perfect balance to me of being somewhere between tongue-in-cheek cheesy and having actual horror elements, which is really cool and wasn’t being done at the time. All the moving head stuff and the talking hand and that scene where the entire room erupts into laughter, all that kind of shit - there’s just so many iconic scenes and lines from that film that I can’t not include it. Whenever people ask me: “What’s your favourite film of all time?”, my mind immediately goes to Evil Dead II."
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
"'A Nightmare On Elm Street is another one because the original was the first of the proper classic horror films that I got into, besides 'Evil Dead'. And to'me, everybody’s always talking about 'Friday the 13th' and 'Halloween' and stuff like that. To me, those are all cool and I like the villain, but they’re just kind of slasher films to me. Whereas 'A Nightmare On Elm Street' it kind of does something different with that slasher genre that had already been done to death by the mid-1970s or 1980s after 'Halloween'. For me, it's the zany main antagonist and just the setting, it’s actually in that supernatural kind of horror realm as opposed to just a dude chopping up teenagers. So that’s why 'A Nightmare On Elm Street' is up there for me."
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
"‘The Cabin In The Woods’ is up there too, it takes the piss out of the whole horror trope kind of aspect, that whole situation of setting something up at the cabin in the woods, like what ‘Evil Dead II’ and ‘Cabin Fever’ did, and I guess to a certain extent what ‘Friday the 13th’ did too. This one just takes that whole thing and takes the piss out of it. And what I really like about it is the underlying theme of how Hollywood and a lot of the audience itself views horror, the way that horror just constantly gets churned out, and for a while there wasn’t a lot of thought process put behind it. It used to be: let’s just make a slasher film, or let’s just make “this” kind of film, or “that” kind of film. ‘Cabin In The Woods’ is kind of taking shots at that and it takes shots at the audience itself too – and it just has a lot of fun with it. It could have been done in a way which was really on the nose…I mean, it is done on the nose, but on the nose in a way that it’s not offensive, it’s just being too smart for its own good. I feel like it balances it perfectly, and it’s a lot of fun."
BONE TOMAHAWK
"‘Bone Tomahawk’ is up there, I think that’s probably one of the few films that has still really gotten under my skin. It’s not necessarily a “horror” horror film, but it’s set in the late 1800s and this girl gets kidnapped by a tribe of cannibalistic Native Americans and the rescue party goes out to find her. Some of the scenes in the movie are just really unnerving. I’m not really a person who gets scared or feels like if a movie has gotten under their skin that it’ll stick with me for a long time. But that’s probably one of the few films that has. Just because of the sense of realism and shit like that. It gave me the heebie-jeebies for a long time, in fact it still gives me the heebie-jeebies so I’ll have to go back and rewatch it and see if it still has that effect on me."
SCREAM
"My last one is ‘Scream’, it’s one that I’ve gotten into a lot more recently because of my partner, it’s her favourite horror film or favourite film of all time. But I love it because, much like ‘The Cabin In The Woods’, it just takes the piss out of the slasher genre, or the whodunit genre. And even at that time, it was the late 90s, that genre had been done to death. And Wes Craven was just like: “This fucking sucks, they’ve taken that whole genre and just flogged it do death. I’m gonna do something different and just take the piss out of it and purposely implement these horror tropes and talk about it at the same time”. It's perfect, to me, I just love the way that film carries itself, and even to this day I still think it holds up 20ish years later."
HONORABLE MENTIONS: MIDNIGHT MASS, INSIDIOUS, GREEN ROOM, THE THING
"I’ve got a couple of special mentions too, I’ve got ‘Midnight Mass’. I know it's not a movie, but that miniseries on Netflix is fucking insane. And it touches on so many different religious aspects too, which resonated for me growing up in a Christian household. It’s just done so beautifully. I’ll also shout out ‘Insidious’ because if it wasn’t for ‘Insidious’, I probably wouldn’t be scared of all of the horror films that are coming out lately. I watched ‘Insidious’ and I was like: “It can’t get any worse than this!”. And then it did. There’s a film called ‘Green Room’ which is about a band, a punk band in the 80s that goes and plays at a fascist club and they get locked in a green room by the patrons of said club and get hunted down. It’s kind of like ‘Bone Tomahawk’, it’s not necessarily like “horror” horror, but it’s just the effects and the way that it gets under your skin that’s so unnerving. I definitely recommend that all bands go and watch that one. And then we’ve got ‘The Thing’ as well, John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’. I recently watched that film and damn that film holds up so well considering it’s from the 1980s. It’s a classic whodunit, but it’s awesome, I love it."
Trinity will be released on October 28 via SharpTone Records. It is available for pre-order now.
Trinity Track Listing
01. From Heaven To Hell
02. Obliteration Imminent
03. Ronin
04. Black Rot
05. New Order
06. Clutch
07. Pandora’s Box
08. Behemoth
09. Gravity
10. Red Clouds
11. Nor Hell A Fury
12. Gatekeeper
13. Hail To The King
Pandora's Box has been added to our Metal Maniacs playlist
