Customer Reviews

The Scream

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Out of all of their books, The Scream remains my favorite work by these two authors. I bought this at a used book store, not expecting much more than an afternoon's entertainment. To my delight, I discovered a thought-provoking treatise on censorship, Christianity (and this book *isn't* anti-Christian), abortion, and demonically inspired heavy metal music.

The plot is pretty straightforward, and follows three main vectors:

1. The protagonists, all part of a heavy metal band, are fighting the extreme censorship attempts of fundamental Christian televangelists.

2. The antagonists, a heavy metal band inspired by a demon from another dimension, are trying to bring their matron through to this reality.

3. One of the protagonists, Jesse, finds herself accidentally pregnant and must wrestle with her beliefs, dreams and desires over whether to terminate her pregnancy.

In the hands of less skilled authors, these plots could have become sophomoric and boring. Guided by Skipp and Spector, they are instead intense, exciting, horrifying and enthralling. It was especially nice to see a book on this topic that didn't just mindlessly bash Christianity (a topic I'm fully sick of, even though I'm not Christian), but instead approached the subject with a true understanding of the problems of narrowmindedness and greed.

Don't worry, splatterpunk fans -- there's also a lot of blood and gore, violence and insanity. My only regret is that Skipp and Spector didn't do a soundtrack for The Scream -- I'd love to hear the music in their heads.

Skipp and Spector are rock and rollers at heart and this is their rock and roll horror novel (with a nod towards heavy metal). Like the music, it assualts your senses and in the end you know you've had one heck of a ride. This is the boys at their best.

America, The Late Eighties: A war for the hearts and minds of a nation rages between the forces of the religious right and the liberal left; as televangelists lobby the government to implement draconian legislation that will effectively censure the constitutional freedom of expression of shock-rock artists, musicians themselves go to ever greater lengths to voice their opposition. Rock front-man and Vietnam veteran, Jake Hamer, finds himself caught in the crossfire between the two factions as he orchestrates "Rock Aid": a huge stadium-rock extravaganza designed to benefit artists threatened by the exhortations of the moral majority; but as Hamer puts the finishing touches to the benefit concert in place, a wave of horrific violence sweeps the country - much of it apparently inspired by the music of the wildly popular and deeply mysterious pseudo-Satanic metal group, "The Scream". Is it posturing for publicity or are "The Scream" really as committed to their apocalyptic doctrine as they seem? The answers will plunge Jake Hamer and his loved ones into a nightmare...the depths of which they can scarcely imagine.

I had a ball with "The Scream" as it perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the mid-to-late eighties. I was a teenager at the time this book is set and can only too clearly remember the battles that were fought in the public domain over what and what could not be considered artistically permissible; memories of the "Ozzy Osbourne" and "Judas Priest" suicide trials and the more or less entirely futile exploits of the censorious Tipper Gore rose inexorably to the surface as I ploughed through it. Skipp and Spector themselves, who were hailed as the notorious bad-boys of the newly christened "Splatterpunk" movement at the time, also clearly relished the chance to eviscerate the consciousness of Reaganite America and they did so with aplomb.

But to write S&S off as mere "Splatterpunk" authors has been to always do them a major disservice. Frankly, they're two of the finest writers ever to grace the contemporary horror genre; quite literally, when they were on top of their game, which they were for the majority of their career, they were easily the equal of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Joe R. Lansdale and any other young Turk working in the genre that you care to mention. They also stood head and shoulders over most writers working in the field. Their prose, characters and style pops and crackles with all the ferocity of a good Guitar solo...or possibly a human heart being fried in a pan.

Given the recent vogue for all things eighties, I'd love to see HBO dust this novel off and make it as a miniseries; but only on the understanding that it remains a period piece and that they eschew CGI effects in favour of the truly gruesome (and far more convincing) prosthetic creations of someone like Rob Bottin, Tom Savini or Screaming Mad George.

If you like a good horror novel of the truly visceral variety, pick this one up.

Metal fans, and the young and heart, will be drawn to THE SCREAM for its portrayal of the rock and roll lifestyle both stadium and club variety. Obviously inspired by Stephen Davis' HAMMER OF THE GODS and like journalism, Skipp and Spector whipped up a righteous concoction that just bubbles over with greenish lava froth. If Satan really had a say in what metal sounds like, do you think He would have permitted those of little brain power to approach his altar? I don't think so my friends! The suspense gathers in the final chapters, as the members of the SCREAM (the band, not to be confused with England's PRIMAL SCREAM) approach the coming apocalypse with stiff upper lip and a variety of hallucinatory experience.

They used to be the two authors you could really count on to really scare the living daylights out of you, but then something happened--something twisted snd sick--something that broke the bonds which it had been thought no man was born strong enough to put them asunder. And ever since then, there really hasn't been a good thrill book and we've taken to watching old re-runs of Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Come back you guys, reunite, everyone else has done it, you can too!

I love books written about the nineties in the late 80's - and this is one. I found this tale involving sexual mind control through sound to be a real turn-on here and there, and also an amazingly authentic prediction of one sort of music that ended up turning on the Youth of America - "cyberthrash", as Mssrs. Skipp & Spector coined it.

You may wish to look for it at your local used book bin since it seems to be out of print; I found my copy at a Goodwill outlet here in Frisco.

Now I regret trashing the poster that came inset at the front of the book the last time I cleaned house...looks like I'll probably never find another one, now.

The only thing I didn't like about this story was the many, many slams on fat people. Seems every time the authors wanted to portray someone as stupid, annoying or sexually uptight that person was described as being fat, with one set of words or another. That's the only reason I didn't give it a five star review. Hopefully these two guys have grown out of that lame attitude by now - maybe they've gained some weight themselves in the last 11 years, who knows? Or at least perhaps they've noticed that women don't have to have flat stomachs to be sexually active. Well, one can hope, anyway.

The Scream contiinues to be my favorite Skipp and Spector book, right up there with The Light at the End and The Bridge. It shows an excellent balance between the different storylines as well as dishing out the splat in the ways that few can.

My one complaint when reading the book was that I didn't have a soundtrack to listen to. A CD by The Scream would have been perfect companion material. Well, going by how they were described, there is a band who is strikingly similar to The Scream. The band's name is Crisis. Karyn Crisis is not Tara Payne exactly but close. Exotic-looking with a voice that can bounce between melting butter and shattering steel, backed up by a band with it's own dark, heavy feel with touches of the beautiful mixed in. Check out the Strangeland soundtrack for an excellent cover of Twisted Sister's Captain Howdy, exhibiting Tara's...I mean, Karyn's, vocal ability.

This book pits rock groups and religious fanatics in a struggle of will. The heavy metal fun begins when two groups square off. This book also provides a vietnam war backdrop complete with violent flashbacks. A must read for philadelphians. Overall a fun frolic through rock hell.

First S&S book I ever read. Captivating writing, a little iterminable about the capers of the Jacob Hamer band but overall one of the best pieces of horror writing I have read next to "It".

Their best book is "The Light at The End" but this is a very close second.