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Favorite Films: Avant-Garde Trio Kilter Get Off on ‘Stalker,’ ‘Annihilation,’ ‘Street Trash’

Posted in Favorite Films, Features, Interviews, Lists with tags Alex Garland, Annihilation, Favorite Films, John Carpenter, Kilter, Rutger Hauer, Stalker, Street Trash, The Thing on 05/23/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

If your tastes in music are liberal and erudite enough to encompass Khanate and Yakuza, you are living in sin with each passing moment you fail to avail yourself to Kilter. The instrumental metal-jazz trio from Paris and Brooklyn is counting down the hours till Kilter’s new album, Ten Billion Years, arrives via Excursus Production on June 19.

“A concept album depicting nothing less than the birth and death of our solar system, Ten Billion Years unfolds with cosmic-level grandeur, its instrumental compositions exploring spaces between the sounds of John Coltrane, Sunn O))) and Meshuggah,” reads a statement in press materials about the release. That jibes with us; does it for you?

If you’re sold, mark your calendar for a week from today, when Bandcamp hosts a Ten Billion Years listening party a week from today at 1 p.m. ET. And with that sneak preview still a week away, The Bad Penny is casting the spotlight on the burgeoning band by featuring them in the latest installment of our Favorite Films series. If the title doesn’t give it away, the ongoing feature allows musicians to share their favorite movies ever (and we usually publish it on Saturdays).

Buckle up (especially in the case of the first selection) for the picks that Kilter’s Laurent David (electric bass, production); Ed Rosenberg III (bass and tenor saxophones); and Kenny Grohowski (drums) handpicked for their installment of Favorite Films.

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Favorite Films: Dying Remains’ Frontman Treasures ‘The Thing,’ ‘Suspiria,’ ‘City of the Living Dead,’ ‘Wounded Fawn’

Posted in Favorite Films, Features, Interviews, Lists with tags City of the Living Dead, Damon MacDonald, Dario Argento, Dying Remains, John Carpenter, Maggot Stomp, Suspiria, The Thing, Wounded Fawn on 11/29/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Two months in, we’re still savoring the delicious drivel dealt by death-metal band Dying Remains via Merciless Suffering following its mid-September release. We’re also grateful to have recently connected with the Maggot Stomp band and chatted up vocalist/guitarist/bassist Damon MacDonald about its debut LP.

While we had MacDonald on the horn – or the Zoom, or the whatchamacallit – we picked his brain about movies, as we were armed with the knowledge ahead of time that he’s a fan of horror movies. Here are his choice picks:

1. The Thing (1982)

“The first movie that comes to mind is John Carpenter’s The Thing,” MacDonald said. “That was one of the first couple of horror movies I saw when I was young. I think I was 7, and my old man showed it to me, and I was like, ‘This is so cool.’ [My love of horror movies] started there.”

When asked whether he believes in the notion publicly proffered by notably untrustworthy director John Carpenter that there’s a way to determine whether the two guys at the end, MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David), had become The Thing, he replied:

“There was a game that came out tied to The Thing on PS2 and Xbox in 2002 – and it’s been stated that it’s canon – and Carpenter made a jab by having MacReady alive at the end of the game. But it’s still just one of those things that are open to interpretation. You’re never going to figure it out. [There’s also the theory that] the whiskey [the characters drink at the end of the movie] was actually gasoline, but it’s like I don’t know if I buy it.”

When asked to identify his favorite scene in the film, MacDonald said: “The defibrillator scene when [a] stomach opens up and rips [the] hands off [another character is] so sick. It’s gnarlier than the [first] Alien scene with the [chest burst].”