Andy Armageddon

At the midpoint of 2021, a year which has thus far brought both hopeful and more troubling signs for humanity, I’ve put together another batch of offbeat submissions sent in to Scene Point Blank. On to the weird, the wacky, the wonderful! Vitamin – Recordings 1981 I think the first time I really got exposed to so-called “no wave” music … Read more

Well, the train wreck of 2020 is in the rearview, but I’ve collected another selection of submissions that Scene Point Blank received in the past year or so that were worthy of note and a bit off the beaten path. Full speed ahead: the good, the spazz, and the wtf. I should note that some of the links in this … Read more

Each and every week, Scene Point Blank receives hundreds (and hundreds) of submissions for possible coverage. Some of these are really cool (Beck’s collaboration with the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab), some of them are kind of odd (a one man metal group from Zimbabwe offering up covers of Haddaway’s “What is Love” and Toto’s “Africa”), but many of them are … Read more

The year's third month is always a crazy time to be in Austin, what with the South by Southwest Festival taking up March's middle third, but the overall level of chaos seemed to have been raised significantly in 2018. In the day's leading up to the South by Southwest Festival, the city had to deal not only with a particularly … Read more

In the month leading up to the holiday, it's often difficult to escape the near-continual assault of schmaltzy Christmas music. It seems virtually every artist of note in the last half century (and quite a few that are best left forgotten) have, at some point or other, produced some sort … Read more

Though usually panned by the majority of film critics – the mainstream ones anyway- horror films seem to be a Hollywood mainstay that just won't go away. This is hardly shocking – if there's one genre of film in which a low budget doesn't seem to be that much of … Read more

Made in 1957, director Roger Corman's typically efficient low-budget sci-fi flick Not of This Earth came to be regarded as a minor genre classic in the years to come – and mostly for good reason. Dealing with an alien who's come to Earth to evaluate whether human blood can save his … Read more

In the midst of the opening credits sequence for Italian director Dario Argento's 1975 Profondo Rosso (a.k.a. Deep Red), the viewer is treated to a truncated scene appearing to show two figures in shadow in front of a Christmas tree. One pulls a knife and appears to stab the other, … Read more

2021 has been a weird year. I’ve made life changes on a scale that most people couldn’t even envision let alone grasp, and the whole dealing with family members who believe in conspiracy theories thing has made even those basic ties difficult to handle.  Just before everyone settles in for Christmas, … Read more

So some of us here at Scene Point Blank have other gigs going on. I know. Shocking. SPB contributor and podcast host Ian and his band Howardian have a new release coming out on January 21st on Starcleaner Records, the band's 10th album, Too Big to Be Quiet. The release includes a … Read more

Geography. It’s everyone’s least favorite subject, right? Well, indulge yourself for a sec and ponder Irnini Mons, one of the volcanoes on the planet Venus. Oh, I should also mention that Irnini Mons is also the name of a pretty cool four-piece band from Lyons, France. I mean, I get it. It’s … Read more

Since the late ‘90s, Ohio-based trio Delay, featuring twin brothers Austin & Ryan Eilbeck along with Jesse Wither, has stood the test of time, pumping out nifty pop punk that comes alive with bright vocal harmonies and heartfelt lyrics. Following up their 2014 effort Circle Change, the band is gearing … Read more