If I were a religious man, I'd clasp my hands, get on my knees and thank God. But I'm not, so I'll just stick to playing it 24/7.

(Popfrenzy)

The self-titled debut album of Canadian five-piece Black Mountain was one of 2005’s neglected gems. Their follow-up, the diamond-sharp supermodel-beautiful In the Future, marks them as one of the best bands on this ball of rock and thawing ice, and marks frontman and songwriter Stephen McBean as a god among men.

For those who care about this sort of thing, you could play Spot The Influence, identifying echoes of Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and who-knows-what-else on In the Future. Of course, you could just forget that stuff and treat your ears to the first masterpiece of 2008. It’s that good.

Squadron leader Rogermore buzzes the boys at Old Henley.Today's featured product is the playstation game 'Victory Wings: Zero Pilot Edition' brought to you by the good people at Sammy Microtronix, home of the clinically insane. The game is set during the bitter months and years of the Crimean War at the turn of last century, when men constructed mechanical 'flight birds' and sat boldly astride them, flying over enemy positions and loosing great vats of boiling oil and sharp pointed darts at the helpless victims below, before wheeling sharply about and high-tailing it home to safety and hot todgers and mash for tea. As most people know, the Crimean War was fought during the late 1500s between two rival Persian tribes, with the fierce dispute centering around ownership of precious salt deposits on the slopes of Mt Garafaldo. In truth, Victory Wings allows one to pilot a splendid Spitfire against the Huns in a spectacular recreation of the Battle of Britian.

Each breath an act of valour.

The sun's blotted out, the trees are bare and burnt, and everything’s swathed in ashes. This is the setting of Cormac McCarthy's The Road – post-nuclear-war America, or at least what used to be America. What's left is a charnel house. Barren earth, ash-choked rivers, corpse-littered landscape.

The story starts several years after the apocalypse. Already everything’s slumped into horrific, gut-churning violence. Those unlucky enough to survive creep, starving, through a hellish landscape, hiding from the cannibals that stalk the countryside, and battling just to see the next day, and the next. Amid this panoply of horrors, the smallest act of endurance is the rawest act of bravery.

McCarthy’s protagonists are a father and his young son. (They’re never identified by name.) Cold and starving, they travel the road south, heading for the coast. They sleep huddled together beneath a tarpaulin or in derelict houses. They scavenge food wherever they can. The father coughs blood and clutches a pistol. Two bullets left.

The jacket tells you everything you need to know.

When my missus and I visit the video store for supplies, we generally pick a few weeklies each. Last Sunday I opted for a brace of Deep Space 9 Star Trek videos. Hours of culture there.

She rented a brace of possibly the worst movies ever -- Swept Away, starring Madonna (I just couldn't watch) -- and Little Black Book, starring the truly insufferable Brittney Murphy and that actress from Texas who talks out the side of her mouth with some kind of lisp. Is it Holly Hunter? Jesus she shits me. I'd like to get her and Heath Ledger in a movie together. Nobody could understand what the fuck was going on.

Anyway, I decided to give Curb Your Enthusiasm a rest on YouTube for a while, and watch it too.

Looks different with his clothes on.

In the new Australian film The Book of Revelation, Tom Long plays a dancer who is abducted, raped, and brutalised by three women.

Adapted from the novel of the same name by acclaimed English author and recent Writers’ Festival attendee Rupert Thomson, TBOR is the story of Daniel, who, on his way down to the shop to buy a packet of cigarettes for his girlfriend, is accosted by three strangely dressed women.

When Daniel regains consciousness, he’s chained to the floor in a bleak, bare room. What follows is 12 days of graphic psychological and sexual abuse. When the women, who throughout the ordeal remain masked, release him, Daniel’s former life falls apart, and he embarks on an obsessive search for the three women who abducted him.

Che: tough guy effect ruined by grin.Regular readers will no doubt roll their eyes at the inclusion in Song o' the Week of yet another band featuring ex-Kyuss members. To them I say 'Arrrr!' and ask them to take a listen to The Day The Pirate Retired, performed by Brant Bjork's excellent band Che.

While guitarist Josh Homme and bassist Nick Oliveri went on to form heavy rock bands after the split of Kyuss, one-time drummer Brant Bjork concentrated on recording more chilled out blues with his bands The Operators and The Bros.

Before the solo albums, though, back in 2000, Bjork picked up his guitar and formed Che featuring another ex-Kyuss drummer, Alfredo Hernandez, and Unida member Dave Dinsmore on bass.

Santa Claus: no match for the Hammer.

I love the humour of 70’s blacksploitation films, Mel Brooks and early Woody Allen, so I had a few good laughs with this one.

This is a ‘Jewsploitation’ comedy. Now the good thing about this is, that we all know making fun of stereotypes has been funny for thousands of years and that this film is no exception.

The Hammer (Adam Goldberg) known to his mother as Mordechai Jefferson Carver, is as the tag-line says “Part man. Part street. 100% kosher”. The “certified circumcised private dick” is assigned to save Hanukkah, which is under threat from the evil son of Santa Clause, who dethroned the old man and is determined to put an end to the Jewish holiday.