Converge - Dream Debris

From their recently released second record this year, Hum of Hurt. Though I have to admit, I'm familiar with all of about four Converge records, this is probably my favorite track among that lot. Total Cure Pornography vibes on that opening.

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Watch:

I started Giallo July yesterday with a viewing of one I've always heard about but never watched, Pupi Avati's The House with Laughing Windows. Here's a trailer:

This one moves at a pretty slow pace and seems to have taken some visual cues from Argento's Deep Red, which came out the year before, but regardless of that, I really dug this. The setting has A LOT to do with that, but also, I think I was just in the mood for some off-the-beaten-path Giallo. Like the kind that the entire film is in Italian! As I mentioned, the location is fantastic (and I feel like that's the biggest influence from Argento), and the end is pretty Giallo-brand bonkers. This is currently a buy or stream for $3.99 on Prime, and even though we all know buying digital movies is just asking to have your money (and your film) taken away, it's worth it even if you just watch it the once. 

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Playlist:

Tool - Undertow

Savages - Silence Yourself

Killswitch Engage - The End of Heartache

The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

Alice in Chains - Dirt

Anthrax - State of Euphoria

Anthrax - Among the Living

X - Los Angeles

Converge - Hum of Hurt

Inferno - The Antropic Sophisms (On The Heights of Despair)

Windhand - Soma

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Card:

Back to my trusty Thoth deck for today's card.

Took today off to aid in recovery, but I'll be back writing again tomorrow. 

Napalm Death Tiny Desk Concert Fundraiser for NPR!

'Nuff said.

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Watch:

Mourning the loss of Sam Neil, and while there are a ton of genre flicks my mind goes to on reflex, I thought I'd post a trailer from a somewhat recent favorite of his I discovered thanks to Mr. Brown. 

Taika Waititi doesn't always blow me away, but this one definitely does.

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Read:

I finally caught up on Chris Condon, Andrew Ehrich and Charlie Adlard's Of the Earth. Man, this is easily sitting in my top five comics of 2026.

This is sweet Charlie Adlard widescreen comics, and the story by Ehrich and Condon is fantastic. There's a great interview on Fangoria HERE, and we review the first issue on Drinking with Comics HERE. Suffice it to say, major The Thing and Blood Simple vibes, and if you're as big a fan of both of those films as I am and you wonder what the intersection where they meet looks and feels like, look no further.

There's some fantastic prose in each book, as well. Excerpts from a book that gives more context to the Wildcatter myth. This is a monster book, folks, and it is extremely effective thus far.

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Playlist:

Judas Priest - Stained Class

Savages - Silence Yourself

Savages - Paranoid/Prayer (single)

C.na - Eclipse Mechanism (Instrumental) (single)

Anthrax - State of Euphoria

Squarepusher & Z-MACHINES - Music for Robots EP

Chappell Roan - The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess

Chappell Roan - Good Luck Babe (single)

Devil Master - You Worms' Vein Dilusions (single)

Devil Master - Ecstasies of a Never Ending Night

Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid

Thou - Summit

John Cale - Fear

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Eldritch Lace Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Page of Swords

• Nine of Cups

• Nine of Swords

The card that's really sticking out here is the Nine of Swords, known as "Cruelty" in the Thoth deck. I ended up in the ER yesterday morning with what I was told by the attending physician is the worst pain known to humanity, male or female. I didn't know what it was when I went in, but goddamn, was I in bad shape. I do not exaggerate when I tell you I did not possess control of my body for a good three hours. I surrendered that control to the pain. It had me do things I could only observe as if from outside, through a misery-frosted window. I have a fairly high pain threshold, and I tend to handle my pain with obstinate stoicism, but not yesterday. No. A kidney stone brought me down. I was screaming, growling, puking, writhing like a man possessed. In fact, I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that in the Middle Ages, people confused kidney stone symptoms with demonic possession. 

Again, not embellishing here at all.

The Page of Swords and Nine of Cups indicate that all this torment wasn't for naught. I believe I'll have some major insights in the coming days as I continue to convalesce (I haven't passed it yet, but as of writing this at 8:35 PM Thursday night, I have not been in pain since the early afternoon).

New Music from Queens of the Stone Age featuring Nikki Lane!

Holy cow! New QOTSA and it features Nikki Lane! No idea if this heralds a new album on the horizon, but it's been a few years since In Times New Roman, so I'm guessing we'll see something sooner than later.

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NCBD:

Great pull this week, with a couple of last-minute surprises!

Still walking that road to SIKTC 50. Digging this series - LOVE this cover - but as I've mentioned before, I'm in need of a reread all around to really cement some of the finer points of the rather intricate continuity that runs between all these books.

I cannot believe that, after re-reading the entire series last week, it ended up timed to coincide with the release of a new Rachel Rising one-shot!

The climax to our introduction to the energon-fueled Dire Technology of Crystal Ball. Smart money says this issue ends with Destro making a deal with the lord of illusions, but we'll see. 

Tracking to be in my top five of the year. I LOVE If Destruction Be Our Lot. So much!

Crap! A reminder that I completely forgot issue 2 of Chris Condon, Charlie Adlard and Andrew Enrich's Of the Earth! I mean, I walked into Rick's last month expecting it, but apparently their copies were damaged, and I guess they never got more. 

As has become my inadvertent habit, I just read the previous issue of Savage Sword a few days ago, so it was no surprise to find this slated for today. I don't know exactly how that happened, but I have kind of marveled at my unconscious mind's accuracy with this pattern. 

Here's another one I didn't see coming! New Last Ronin one-shot! Interesting, as just before seeing this, I decided to cancel my TMNT pull for this month's number 20, which is actually the 300th "Legacy" issue. I hate all this Legacy counting, but whatever, at this point I'm used to it. I will, however, still be picking up one-offs like this.

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Watch:

I so want this to be good. I was a weekly BEE Podcast listener for years before Ellis surprised everyone during the pandemic by reading his work-in-progress The Shards every week, and I've listened to those broadcasts at least twice since. This is the perfect Ellis novel to adapt, in my opinion. There's just one thing giving me pause.

Ryan Murphy.

I was never a die hard AHS fan; I love the Hotel, Roanoke and 1984. I jumped off Coven after three episodes, was mostly happy with the first two seasons, and had mixed feelings about Double Feature. Whatever the Cruisin' knock-off season was proved the last straw for me, and watching all the low-brow, tabloid series he's pumped out since (with the exception of The Beauty), I just can't help but feel hesitant about this.

We'll see on August 5th, I guess. I'm really hoping it works, though. Ellis is one of my favorite Authors, he's written some of my favorite novels - The Shards is one - and there's not an adaptation out there that I favor. 

Help me Ryan Murphy, you're my only hope.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST

Yerusalem - The Sublime

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Spotlights - Alchemy for the Dead

Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula OST

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Ghost - Skeleta

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Mastodon - Marrow Deep (pre-release singles)

QOTSA - Easy Street (single)

Spotlights - Seance EP

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Eldritch Lace Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Five of Cups

• Knight of Swords

• Four of Swords

Grief. Drive. Rest.

I haven't talked about this yet, but last Friday I was diagnosed with Fatty Liver Disease. It's actually not as severe as it sounds, but I have to stop drinking beer and really change my diet for the next several months to allow my liver to heal. After that, I'm planning to scale the drinking back. I've been doing 2-6 beers a night for over 20 years, so this really isn't a surprise. And it's a lot better of a diagonsis than the scare that led up to this suggested. I can stop when I need to - K and I just did a three-week hiastus in March - but the thing is beer is my nightly ritual. I don't chase intoxication, I just LOVE beer. Good beer, of course. But part of that love now means I have to let it go for a while, so we can be reunited when I'm healthy again.

All my jokes about Keith Richards' liver have come home to roost.

Also of note, found this card face up in the deck after I laid out the cards above, figured that was worth interpreting. 

In light of the reading above, I'm reading this as growing pains, as I have many.

M83 - Beauties Can Die

From their 2003 second album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, which I'm not sure I had ever listened to before, despite my obsession with this band starting with Saturdays = Youth and culminating on the follow-up Hurry Up, We're Dreaming. Great record, but it takes a little getting used to. You can steam the entire thing "Officially" on their YouTube page HERE (or just any of the streamers).

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Read:

Last week I picked back up on the re-read of Terry Moore's Rachel Rising that I started on New Year's Eve, 2025. I don't know how I got away from it for so long, because although I'd left off on issue 15, I re-read the entire rest of the forty-two-issue series in about a day and a half. 

I read this monthly, so while I have all the floppies, there are seven trade volumes collecting the full series and a recently released omnibus. This one is so worth your time. I mean, I think this is, in my humble opinion, the greatest Horror comic of all time. It's that good, and it's all down to Terry Moore's insanely relatable style and, the flip side to that coin, his absolutely nefarious approach to Horror. There are some insanely dark and disturbing themes, images and ideas in this book, but they never feel like they've gone too far. The overall story starts small and becomes brilliantly biblical, and those are two "B" words that usually do not go together in Shawn's world. 

The characters are fantastic and, again, so likable and relatable. Anyone who's read Moore's seminal Strangers in Paradise knows how great his characters are and make no mistake, Rachel, Jet, Zoe, Aunt Johnnie and Earl all feel like one fucked up branch of my interior family now, and I'm having a hard time letting them go. 

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Playlist:

Bauhaus - Gotham (Live)

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Bauhaus - Go Away White

The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer

3Teeth - Eponymous

M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts

High on Fire - Electric Messiah

Russian Circles - Gnosis

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 (single)

Melvins/Helms Alee - Controlling Data for a Better Feeling Future

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

Pinebender - Working Nine to Wolf

Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Queen of Pentacles

• Six of Cups

* Ten of Pentacles

Emotion makes it difficult to rule the Earthly matters. A direct reference to spending money frivilously, of which, I have recently been guilty of. On a good path now, but have some make up work to do. 

Jogger - Napping Captain

From their only full-length album, 2009's daunting masterpiece, This Great Pressure. This one  is not on any streamers, and it's a goddamn shame, because in quiet moments when I fall under its spell, I think it might be the best album of the 00s.

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Watch:

Evil. Dead. Burn. Holy cow.

Mean. Not Terrifier mean, but brutal nonetheless. I believe I read a pull quote recently where either Robert Tapert or Bruce Campbell championed this as the most brutal in the series, and yeah, that's accurate. Which is saying something, given how brutal Fede Alvarez's film is. This is a dower, bleak film with mostly unlikeable characters and that rubbed me wrong at first, but eventually, the absolute bezerk approach to this won me over and I've already snagged tickets to see it a second time.

I was a pretty big fan of Director Sébastien Vaniček's previous film, Infested, and this felt like it had a lot of what I would now identify as his own unique style and worldview. 

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Playlist:

John Carpenter - Lost Themes III

Sinoa Caves - Beyond the Black Rainbow OST

Blackbraid - Blackbraid III

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

Jogger - This Great Pressure

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Livin in the USA

Butthole Surfers - After The Astronaut

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Card:

Just one from the Thoth deck today:

Take control. 

Sisters of Black Mountain!!!

 

My friend Justin recently interviewed LA's Sisters of Black Mountain on his Trailer Punk Podcast. The idea of an all-female, Giallo-inspired group hooked me, and I have to say, I'm currently digging on their music quite a bit. You can check out the band on Bandcamp HERE and listen to the interview HERE.

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NCBD:

This week's pull looks like it could have been from my early 80s childhood! Let's get into it!

So now, this is pretty cool. I've never had a chance to read this issue of The Amazing Spider-Man that introduced The Punisher, but I've seen the cover on the wall behind a hundred comic shops. These facsimile copies are really neat for getting your hands on pieces of otherwise prohibitively priced items.

Titlating cover, bringing back Dr. Arkville and all, but all I really want is to see what Megatron is turning into inside that chrysalis!

Second issue of MASK! Not much else to say yet, but I dug the ruined space bridge at the end of issue 1, so let's see where this goes!

I'm digging this Manchurian Candidate storyline with Snake Eyes primarily because it takes us allll the way back to near the very beginning of the original series. 

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Watch:

The Giallo City-Wide Fever recently popped up on my radar, and I've been thinking about it non-stop. Currently streaming on a "channel" I'd never heard of before, Midnight Pulp, I'm planning to grab a subscription this weekend so I can watch. Here's the trailer:

You can read more about this one over on Bloody Disgusting HERE.

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Playlist:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven 

Vitriol - I-Vii

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

Low Cut Connie - Livin in the USA

Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST

Ghost - Skeleta

Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

Mastodon - Blood Mountain

Russian Circles - Gnosis

3Teeth - Eponymous

Sisters of Black Mountain - Singles Playlist

Niro - Porto Venere (Thanks Tommy!)

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Eldritch Lace Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Seven of Cups

• 06: The Lovers

• Nine of Swords

Too many ideas create anxiety, making it hard to relax. Seek the arms of your person to help. This is HUGE. For just over a week, I have had insane sleep anxiety, and it's driving me crazy. 

QOTSA on KEXP

 

Been trying to get to this QOTSA KEXP session for what feels like a few weeks now, so I'm putting it here and hoping to listen before this posts. Thanks to my good friends Mr. Brown and Mr. Joshua (Mr. Joshuan? Thank you, Mr. Joshua) for putting this on my radar, as my algorithm did not.

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Watch:

A trailer dropped for the next Bobby Fingers video. It's been a long time coming, but I can tell you that, as a member of his Patreon, there was a period between the previous two videos where he actually suspended Patreon payments because he wasn't working on anything, so that, plus the fact that he's posted numerous teaser images and updates, suggests that something BIG is coming. 

I'm with you regardless, Mr. Fingers, but The Wait is killing me!!! After the Jeff Bezos boat episode and its cinematic flourish, I'd predicted we might very well be getting a short film from Bobby Fingers within too long. Is this that? K and I went through the trailer twice, trying to interpret the imagery for clues (one of the Patreon subscribers' previous updates, from late last year, teased the next video would involve Mrs. Fingers and Rats. "Lots of rats."), But, thankfully, the trailer provides a lot of seemingly disparate elements, and we did not read into the comments to see any of the guesses that end up there.

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Read:

Last Wednesday, I walked into Rick's Comic City Clarksville to find that they'd pulled all the issues of Marvel's early 80s ROM: Spaceknight comic from their back issue bins to have ready for the inevitable hunts that will come after Robert Kirkman recently announced ROM is joining the Energon Universe in an upcoming issue of Void Rivals (we talk about it on Drinking w/ Comics HERE). Fortunitous for the, as the issues that had magically matched up with several I already possessed, so for a very nice price, I brought home well-loved copies of ROM 35, 49-61.

This is further down the "Hobby Shop Sci Fi" well I prattle on about now and again, and while it's cool that Kirkman is bringing it back around again for a new audience, I'm beholden to the old run. Bill Mantlo plays all the editorial Shooter-era edicts a book like this suffered from and still manages to create a unique, engaging story.

Although I will say, I am not much of a fan of the Starshine character in her original form. I much prefer the bloodthirsty version that takes the stage in issue 51, after her hometown is massacred by Dire Wraiths.

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Playlist:

DJM Trio Project

FILM50 Project

Quicksand - Bring on the Psychics (pre-release singles)

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Butthole Surfers - Pioughd

The Besnard Lakes - ... Are the Roaring Night

Foxy Shazam - Dark Blue Night

Etta James - Second Time Around

Ghost - Skeleta

Dio - Holy Diver

Savages - Silence Yourself

Bee Gees - How Deep is Your Love? (single)

Blonde Goblin - Worlds to Burn

Russian Circles - Gnosis

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Page of Pentacles

• Eight of Wands

• King of Pentacles

Advice to strike while the iron is hot in regards to Earthly concerns. Literally JUST did that before I drew these cards. The master of abundance represented by the King definitely feels appropriate.