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Chicago’s “The Loop” Signs Off After 40 Years In Most Metal Way Imaginable!

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Bizarrely mirroring the hilarious rock-comedy Airheads, Chicago’s classic rock station WLUP was replaced by Christian music programming and signed off last week one last gesture: giving the devil horns to the new owners.

According to Ultimate Classic Rock who compiled numerous fan reports and videos, the last three songs played before the station nicknamed “the Loop” signed off were Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil,” Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast”, and AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell”!

The site added a little backstory, explaining that WLUP was founded in 1977, and drew national attention two years later with the infamous Disco Demolition Night. In a pyrotechnic protest against the popular dance music craze, the station actually blew up a pile of disco records that fans brought to Comiskey Park, home of baseball’s Chicago White Sox. Unfortunately, things got out of hand when some of the 60,000 fans in attendance overwhelmed the security team, charging and damaging the field and forcing the cancellation of the second half of the night’s doubleheader.

“We tried to break new ground, to break the rules, to be different and had amazing, talented people,” former station impresario Jimmy de Castro told the Chicago Tribune. “We had a hell of a lot of fun.” After earning a spot as the city’s third most popular station in 1979, WLUP slipped to 15th in the latest Nielsen survey for Chicago, with a 2.9 share.

Horror movie fanatic who co-founded Bloody Disgusting in 2001. Producer on Southbound, V/H/S/2/3/94, SiREN, Under the Bed, and A Horrible Way to Die. Chicago-based. Horror, pizza and basketball connoisseur. Taco Bell daily. Franchise favs: Hellraiser, Child's Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Scream and Friday the 13th. Horror 365 days a year.

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‘Lost Themes IV: Noir’ – John Carpenter Announces New Album & Releases New Music Video!

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Lost Themes IV
(l-r) Cody Carpenter, John Carpenter, Daniel Davies - Photo Credit: Sophie Gransard

John Carpenter has been teasing big news for a couple weeks now and all has been revealed this morning. Carpenter is back with Lost Themes IV: Noir from Sacred Bones Records!

Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.

John Carpenter called the first Lost Themes album “a soundtrack for the movies in your mind.”

From John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies, Lost Themes IV: Noir is set for release on May 3 via Sacred Bones Records. The album pays tribute to Noir cinema!

In conjunction with the announcement, they’ve shared a music video for the album’s first single, “My Name Is Death”, a miniature noir film directed by Ambar Navarro, starring Natalie Mering (Weyes Blood), Staz Lindes (The Paranoyds) and Misha Lindes (SadGirl). “Noir is a uniquely American genre born in post-war cinema,” states Carpenter. “ We grew up loving Noir and were influenced by it for this new album. The video celebrates this style and our new song, My Name is Death.”

Sacred Bones previews, “The scene-setting new single marks new territory for Carpenter and his cohorts, propelled by a driving post-punk bassline that is embellished by washes of atmospheric synth, pulsing drum machine, and, at the song’s climax, a smoldering guitar solo.”

“Sandy [King, John’s wife and producer] had given John a book for Christmas, of pictures from noir films, all stills from that era,” Davies says of the lightbulb moment for Lost Themes IV. “I was looking through it, and I thought, ‘I like that imagery, and what those titles make me think of. What if we loosely based it around that? What if the titles were of some of John’s favorite noir films?’ Some of the music is heavy guitar riffs, which is not in old noir films. But somehow, it’s connected in an emotional way.”

Sacred Bones notes, “Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes the songs on Lost Themes IV ‘noirish’ is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone. The noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it.”

“It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that became the initial Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts,” the label explains. “Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released close to a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums and the scores for David Gordon Green’s trilogy of Halloween reboots. It helped that they grew up in a musical environment. Daniel’s dad is The Kinks’ Dave Davies, and he would pop by the L.A. studio – the same one the Lost Themes records are made in today – to jam, or to perform at wrap parties for John’s films. That innate free-flowing chemistry helps Lost Themes IV: Noir run like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”

Here’s the full Lost Themes IV: Noir track list:

1. My Name is Death
2. Machine Fear
3. Last Rites
4. The Burning Door
5. He Walks By Night
6. Beyond The Gallows
7. Kiss The Blood Off My Fingers
8. Guillotine
9. The Demon’s Shadow
10. Shadows Have A Thousand Eyes

The following physical variants will be available:

  • Sacred Bones Exclusive Red on Clear Splatter vinyl w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Silver Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Sacred Bones Society Exclusive on Black and White Splatter on Clear w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Silver Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • All retail Transparent Red, with a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Indie Exclusive Tan and Black Marble, w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Rough Trade Exclusive Oxblood Red and Black Splatter, w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Shout Exclusive Black and Clear cloudy, w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Black LP, with a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • CD
  • Tape

You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now!

Lost Themes IV Noir

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