Did you know there is a Dario Argento-directed film with a heavy metal soundtrack? It seems hard to believe that anything could improve upon the aesthetic perfection that his typical repertoire of sonic accompaniments achieve in cultivating a dense atmosphere of creeping danse macabre... and such skepticism is warranted because the 1985 film Phenomena (released with the title Creepers in the US) starring Jennifer Connelly, about an American teenager who uses her psychic powers to spoil the splatter-streak of a serial killer who is menacing a Swiss boarding school, doesn't actually benefit in any way from having Iron Maiden and Motorhead on its playlist- even if such coteries would seem like a compatible to the average horror fan and coke-blasted studio executive alike. Argento soundtracks are Goblin's turf, after all, and it's audacious to dethrone the Cherry Five of gore-mountain when they have the home crypt advantage- not to say that it couldn't have happened, though. Had Aggressive Perfector been stalking around three decades earlier, they might have been a suitable substitute for the job (and maybe if they could catch a jetstream through a wound in the fabric of space-time, they still could be). Despite their name paying a spiritual tithe to the thrashing blood-god Slayer, Aggressive Perfector are much better compared to groups like Venom or Merciful Fate, as the Manchester trio rarely sacrifice their penchant for camp and grimy theatrics for the sake of impressing the listener with their speed and ferocity on their debut LP Havoc At The Midnight Hour- not to say that they don't sound threatening, just their promises of peril are balanced with seedy sense of mirth. Aggressive Perfector is playing fast and loud to the cheap seats, tossing rotten meat to blighted swine, and drawing vitality and rich motivation from the chaos they reap in the surrounding squalor. They are a dragoon of sewer-zombie biker-bards, spreading the disease of perverse epicurean horror like a pox of oozing scuppers dotting the hull of listing ghostship. Gruesome giallo guardsman, eliciting a chuckle before replacing most of your teeth with their fist. Aggressive Perfector is the last thing you'd hear on a Saturday night before your blind date turns into a werewolf and eats you alive at the stroke of the midnight hour.
