Frontier Partisans

The Adventurers, Rangers and Scouts Who Fought the Battles of Empire

Zombie Tools — Welcome To The Post-Apocalytic Jungle

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A while back, one of you fine Frontier Partisans mentioned an outfit named Zombie Tools. I completely missed the Zombie Apocalypse bandwagon and actually find the whole trope tiresome, so I never followed up. My bad. I love these guys.

Zombie Tools is a band of brothers formed under the auspices of the trickster god Loki, bound together by a common passion for blades, science and art. And beer. And metal music. And beer. We’ve been making blades as Zombie Tools since 2007, when, during the production of a zombie-themed Halloween horror show for a local bar, founders Maxon McCarter, Joey Arbour and Chris Lombardi hit upon the notion of combining the young, emerging “zombie apocalypse” mythos with their young and emerging aspirations as blademakers. At the time, most people thought the idea was pretty stupid. Time has proven them right in the wrongest possible way.

I cannot resist people having a shitload of pure FUN creating and wielding wild, badass and highly durable and functional blades. Especially when they indulge in pulpy prose in their product descriptions. Dig:

If you have the huevos to wander the narrow street of the barrio late, late at night, when tequila worms dream in the bellies of snoring whores, you can sometimes hear slurred songs stumble out the doors of certain cantinas, songs in the style of the narcocorrido, that tell the tale of the knife, El Choppo. Forged in the high mountains to a family that looked up to dirt, El Choppo was raised thwacking at banana trees and cane, chopping kindling for the stove, and fighting back a forest avowed to reclaim all fields. However, it became clear from an early age that El Choppo was destined for more than the work of a common machete. With a soul etched by acid, and a stout, 17-inch blade, El Choppo, like many a great blade of character, used whatever means were near to hand to hack out an empire. Did he intimidate? Of course, hijo, he was a two-foot long knife! Mutilate? Go ask the cabrón who once gave him the finger. And worse? Those who might say no longer have tongues in their mouths, and those who would judge him should, as your abuela says, never judge another knife until you have ridden in his sheath. El Choppo has a spine of 5160 steel and ships sharp as a snake bite in a Kydex sheath (leather sheaths now available).

Not terribly drawn to the swords — I’m a knife-and-tomahawk guy by FP heritage. Speaking of tomahawks — Trauma Hawk is as solid a pun as El Choppo. Well, played, lads.

Their tribute to the pure American Bowie knife is The Felon. Outsized, weird and wild.

And then there’s the oversized kukri…

I find myself utterly charmed. Not enough to pop for $300 of new blade just now (kid off to college, remember?) But maybe enough to hit Netflix for The Walking Dead. Hear tell it’s good…

Hey, it’s not a tiresome trope, it’s a Mythos. And I really do like that kukri.

Comments

  1. Brian H says

    I think the whole zombie thing is an interesting (?) pop culture version of the apocalypse cults that Americans have dabbled in since we were pilgrims. Walking Dead is a little much, but I did notice that the more interesting story lines had less to do with zombies and everything to do with how society re organizes itself (too predictably sometimes in a “takers gonna take” way).

    Reply

    • JimC says

      Good point on the apocalyptic cults. That seems to be a common human thing. I actually am interested in the notion of how a society that has broken reorganizes itself. I have always wanted to delve into the ways in which Europe coped with the trauma of the Black Plague — but that’s a total side trail and I’ve never explored it.

      Reply

  2. Matthew says

    I was never much into the zombie apocalypse thing. Personally, I always preferred the old fashion voodoo kind of zombies. You know the ones from Haiti.

    I’m pretty sure zombie started in comics with the Walking Dead. I never actually read it despite my comic geek status. My favorite zombie comic was Eric Powell’s the Goon which could be described as gangster vs. zombies, but that actually does not describe how weird and wonderful the comic is.

    Apocalypse cult thing is interesting. I was actually just reading about how into the occult the Nazis were.

    Reply

  4. lane batot says

    ….And I don’t know about no ZOMBIE Apocolypse, but I am REALLY beginning to put more stock into a theory of my own, that SOMETHING(Pollution? Food additives? Stronger UV rays from the thinning ozone?–that you hardly hear about anymore, but spawned that silly but kinda scary movie decades ago–“Day Of The Animals”!) is turning people into psychopaths and sociopaths–there certainly has been an upsurge on them at my workplace, and elsewhere I’ve noticed. None of them have tried to physically BITE me yet, however. And if they eventually do, hopefully their condition isn’t transferable like rabies…..

    Reply

  6. Breaker Morant says

    A couple of years ago (in my pre-FP days), I read a bio of Simon Bolivar and today I just watched a movie about him. I was reminded that the most fascinating subject in the Bolivar book were the marauding horsemen of the Llana (known as Llaneros). These guys were straight out of FP lore. I think they switched sides a couple of times and so forth.

    I was most reminded of the Comanches in Blood Meridian and they were also Zombie-like (hey, I got back to the topic.)

    Reply

      • Breaker Morant says

        The movie was “The Liberator.” Unfortunately, the movie did not cover the Llaneros, it simply mentioned the name of their commander as an ally of Bolivar, which jogged my memory.

        Wikipedia of “Jose Paez” who was the commander:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Antonio_P%C3%A1ez

        >>>>”Páez, a soldier at heart, started moving up the ranks by winning year after year several engagements against the royalists with his band of marauding llaneros (plainsmen). He came to be known by the nicknames of “El Centauro de los Llanos” (The Centaur of the Plains), and “El León de Payara” (The Lion of Payara) or (The Lion of Apure).”<<<>>”When the Wars of Liberation started, the Spanish enlisted the Llaneros, playing on their dislike of the criollos of the independence movement. Bolívar realized that the plains were critical to success in the wars of liberation – they offered freedom of movement, as well as the capacity to feed his army.

        He therefore sought to enlist the Llaneros to his cause and gradually succeeded by enduring the same hardships as they did – the Llaneros called him culo de hierro – or “iron buttocks” – for his endurance on horseback.”<<<<

        Dang it, now I am on the Llanero trail.

        Reply

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