Joy Division - Atmosphere

I've officially felt the change to my Autumnal self, and as such, Joy Division has been creeping into my daily listening more and more. In honor of that, I thought it pertinent to start the week with a favorite. 

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Watch:

In preparation for the first part of Stranger Things' final season arriving in November, K and I began rewatching the series from the very beginning. With all the delays and general negative cultural cache that's accumulated around this one, I'd forgotten just how goddamn awesome ST actually is. 

In particular, I'd forgotten that they tie Brennan's experiments in Hawins to Project MK Ultra, a topic that has fascinated me for well over twenty years at this point. It's nice to dip back into this and see it holds up to the way I remember it - pretty much perfect. 

For me, a lot of that negative cultural connotation comes from how long this whole thing has gone on. I remember watching Season Four, which I loved, back in the Spring of 2022 and seeing a lot of publicity that the next season would be out the following year. The premiere of Season Five on November 26 will be 3.5 years since Season Four premiered. That just seems crazy to me. So much momentum built up and dissipated, and for what? I'd wager that Netflix had the Duffer Bros. work up a spin-off in the interim, something that could be advertised when the show finally ends with its finale this coming New Year's. That's fine, but man, I don't know - if this show wasn't so damn good, I would have jumped off a long time ago.

But as I stated above, it is that good, so I'll just swallow that annoyance and get on with stoking my fan embers in the two months I have left before November 26th.

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Playlist:

Joy Division - Closer

David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails - Back in Anger 1995

David Bowie - Scary Monsters

Revocation - New Gods, New Masters

Mastodon & Lamb of God - Floods of Triton (single)

Death - Individual Thought Patterns

Pasco 637 - Cuando Acecha la Maldad (single)

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

The Black Queen - Infinite Games

lords. - bleeding out

lords. - single playlist

Telefon Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself

Neurosis - Through Silver In Blood (single)

David Bowie - Outside

Radiohead - Kid A

NIN - Pretty Hate Machine

Annihilator - Never, Neverland

Skid Row - Slave to the Grind

Deftones - private music

The Body - All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood

Intensive Care & The Body - Was I Good Enough?

Netherlands - Vapors

Soundgarden - Bad Motorfinger

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Card:

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

And Grimm's Kickstarter for The Eldritch Lace Tarot deck is now live! You can go check it out and support it HERE.

• Four of Cups

• Seven of Swords

• Knight of Cups

Loss of engagement or apathy as a way to trick my mind out of the rut it's been in the last month or so. I'm not talking about a debilitating rut; I'm getting a lot of outlining accomplished on the Shadow Play sequel, but I've been preoccupied with the internet and my phone in general and that always leaves me feeling like shit. Digital hangover. So I've convinced myself I don't care about those connections anymore, and it's worked wonders. With the way now cleared, I simply have to follow where my nature takes me. Which is, of course, my own personal aesthetic, expressed best through writing. 

Russian Circles - Conduit

Eastside Bowl in Nashville is now easily my favorite venue near me. I was expecting Young Widows and Russian Circles to play on the tiny stage in the room off to the left when you walk in the door, the place where the Twin Peaks Day/David Lynch tribute was held back in February. And while that would have been nuts, instead I learned that Eastside Bowl is considerably larger than I thought. We were directed to the far end of the bowling alley, where an arrow pointing left denoted "Venue." One long, gently sloping, carpeted corridor later, we were standing before a stage in a room that reminded me a lot of a smaller Bottom Lounge. Needless to say, the show was fantastic; Young Widows KILLED it, and Russian Circles... wow. I'm not sure how I slept on these guys so long. I had a few tracks on a mix CD back in the early to mid-2000s, but that's it. Needless to say, I'm a fan now. Here's a favorite track off their most recent record Gnosis that sounded massive live in that room.

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Watch:

Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride received a trailer a few days ago. 

As is my habit of late, I only watched about twenty seconds of this before I shut this off. Don't want to risk overhype or overexposure, both very real threats to a pure theatrical experience in 2025. I can say, I've liked Maggie since Donnie Darko, and I'm super happy to see her in the Director's chair for this. 

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Read:

When I declared the remainder of my non-comic book reading for 2025, I knew there'd be a few minor exceptions. One of those came up the other day, when in preparation for an upcoming episode of The Horror Vision: Elements of Horror on The Company of Wolves, I picked up the beautiful 75th anniversary edition of Angela Carter's collection, The Bloody Chamber, which contains the story Carter and Director Neil Jordan adapted for the 1984 film.

First, Alex Konahin's cover art is magnificent. Second, I feel like I've just uncovered a missing link between old-school folk horror literature, such as Arthur Machen, and 80s authors like Robert Dunbar. I'm limiting myself to the pertinent story for the time being, but I can't wait to rip into more in a few months. 

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Playlist:

Deftones - private music

The Soft Moon - Criminal 

Bohren and der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission

The Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop OST

Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum

The Damage Manual - Special Edition

Russian Circles - Gnosis

Young Widows - Power Sucker

Pelican - Flickering Resonance

Hangman's Chair - Saddiction

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Card:

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

And Grimm's Kickstarter for The Eldritch Lace Tarot deck is now live! You can go check it out and support it HERE.

• Four of Pentacles

• Ace of Swords

• Page of Wands

Stability seems to waver around me of late, and yeah, that feels about right. I'm constantly fighting back dark shit in my head about the future - my future, the world's future, et al. It definitely feels like a recent breakthrough of Will has me in a slightly better place than I was in a week ago, and the Page of Wands seems to suggest this isn't a fluke but a new beginning awash in inspiration. We'll see... 

September 25, 1980

John Bonham died 45 years ago today.

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Young Widows - Call Bullshit

My friend Chris is in town and we're heading to Nashville's Eastside Bowl tonight to see Young Widows and Russian Circles. Here's a track from the Widows' new album, Power Sucker, which is currently on my best of list for the year. 

You can check out more tour dates and merch for Young Widows on their Bandcamp HERE.

Also, Russian Circles' Bandcamp can be found HERE.

I'm relatively new to Russian Circles, but Young Widows I've been digging on since back when their debut Settle Down City landed in my mailbox. 

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NCBD:

I'm off today so I'll be heading into Rick's earlier than usual to pick up my books. Here's what's coming home with me for NCBD, September 24, 2025:

One issue remains after this month's Void Rivals before we are catapulted into the eagerly anticipated Quintesson War. Crossovers and Events are generally not my thing, but being that the entire Energon Universe is kind of one big crossover, I'm hoping Kirkman and company show the big two how to do these correctly. I've expressed my love of the Quintessons here before, so to have them up front for six issues is going to (hopefully) be a dream come true.

Now one of my most anticipated books each month, Zander Cannon's Sleep continues to keep me hanging on every issue. 

I was just talking about this on a recent episode of The Horror Vision, so I'm overjoyed to see the second chapter of James Stokoe's Orphan and the Five Beasts finally hitting the stands. The art in Stokoe's pages must take an insane amount of time, so I'll be reading this one slowly, with a keen eye on all the details that make Stokoe's work so rewarding. 

I'm behind on Condon and Alan Love's News From the Fall Out, but the first issue left quite the impression, so I'm looking forward to catching up this week and getting current. 

Regarding this cover: As a life-long fan of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with virtually no good adaptations of the source material or even just jaunts with the Headless Horseman, you have my attention, Mr. Spears. Please - the floor is yours. 

As I mentioned in Monday's "Card" section of this page, I'm still putting off my Lazarus reread that is meant to be a welcome refresher before jumping into this final Lazarus series. This series just hits too close to home these days. 

I started buying this Death of the Silver Surfer series for the covers, but the story is turning out to be pretty good, even if we all know there are no real stakes here. Still, even though I don't have much interest in most of what Marvel is doing at the moment, I always keep my eye out for mini-series, as there have been quite a few over the last five years or so that I really liked. The Death of Doctor Strange was incredibly good, and while this isn't that, it's keeping me hanging on from issue to issue. 

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Watch:

Last Saturday night I sat down and watched Brandon Christensen's latest flick, Night of the Reaper. Here's a trailer that won't spoil anything:

This one is a bit of style over substance, but not intentionally so, and it's pretty fun. That said, the "twist" did not feel earned at all, and I'm still a little bit confused as to whether the logistics actually work. Still, this would make a fun Friday night beer bottle flick for sure. 

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Playlist:

Young Widows - Power Sucker

Zeal & Ardor - Eponymous

Hellbender - Hellbender OST

Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears

Young Widows - Settle Down City

Opeth - Blackwater Park

Drug Church - Prude

Led Zeppelin - Live EP

Roy Ayers - Ubiquity

Frank Black and the Catholics - One More Road for the Hit

Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth For Christ Choir - Like a Ship Without a Sail

Butthole Surfers - Rembrandt Pussyhorse

Joy Division - Still

Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician

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Card:

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

Also, if you head over to Grimm's Kickstarter HERE you'll see his upcoming The Eldritch Lace Tarot Deck, you can hit the "notify upon launch" button and then you can get on this seriously unbelievably awesome deck. 

• Queen of Cups

• Queen of Pentacles

• Nine of Swords

An abundance of feminine energy is never a bad thing; Coupled with the Nine of Swords, I take this as a "pay attention to what the women in your life are saying" connotation. 

Opeth Covers Alice In Chains

Being that I'm a fairly big fan of both these bands, I'm not sure how I never came across Opeth's cover of Alice in Chains' "Would?" Now that I have, I have mixed feelings. It's an excellent cover, don't get me wrong. That said, it reminded me just how awesome the AIC original is, and kind of just left me wanting to listen to that on repeat, over and over again.

But I don't listen to Would? or anything else on Dirt on repeat. This is a special album that is very personal to me, and with something like this, I'd be afraid of robbing even just a little bit of its power. 

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Watch:

Last Thursday, K and I took in a screening of Justin Tipping's new film HIM. Produced by Jordan Peele, this one is getting a lot of negative critical reaction. For myself, someone who holds pretty much nothing but disdain for both American football and modern hip-hop aesthetic - two factors that weigh heavily in this one - I absolutely loved it.

I still think this is one of the best trailers I've seen in recent years. It really whets the appetite without giving any actual plot away (though, I would argue, they should have held back some of the imagery divulged herein).

There's a lot about this film that makes me think it's essentially a skin of The Substance, but HIM is dressed in so much surreal, stylized imagery specific to Tipping's vision that it definitely stands on its own. 

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Playlist:

Fabio Frizzi - The Beyond OST

Dean Hurley - Flower: Tales From the Occult Library

Hellbender - Hellbender OST

Deftones - private music

Deftones - Ohms

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Give the People What They Want

INXS - Kick

The Bangles - All Over the Place

Billy Joel - The Stranger

Steely Dan - Aja

Deicide - Eponymous

Deicide -  Legion

Russian Circles - Gnosis

Hall & Oats - Do What You Want, Be What You Are (Disc 3)

Kate Bush - Hounds of Love

Chris Isaak - Heart Shaped World

Young Widows - Power Sucker

Kane Parsons - Backrooms OST

Siouxsie & The Banshees - Tinderbox

Ritual Howls - Turkish Leather

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Card:

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

Also, if you head over to Grimm's Kickstarter HERE you'll see his upcoming The Eldritch Lace Tarot Deck, you can hit the "notify upon launch" button and then you can get on this seriously unbelievably awesome deck. 

• King of Pentacles

• Five of Swords

• X: Wheel of Fortune

Abundance, conflict and the inevitability of change. Not liking the sound of that at the moment. I suddenly know A LOT of people who have lost their jobs after working for their respective companies for years. I feel like Alien: Earth has really exacerbated my fears of Corporate life in this world, and now massive layoffs make it hard to dismiss those fears as nonsense. Pushing off that Lazarus re-read for a while longer, too. Don't need any more paranoia than I already have. 

Annihilator - Sixes and Sevens

Some old school Canadian Thrash from Annihilator to punch us in the face and remind us it's Friday! From the 1990 album Never, Neverland. This one takes me back to the days of dubbing random tracks off 88.3 WXAV, St. Xavier University's radio show. So many great musical discoveries.

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Watch:

Wow - I did not expect to find a trailer for Deathgasm II today! 

Really interesting setup for a sequel. I like the Ghostbusters II, "Nothing worked out for us after we saved the world," angle. And the idea of having an undead, flesh-eating zombie in your metal band is, well, how did no one ever think of that before? 

Not sure if this one is going to be in theatres or not, but one can hope. 

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NCBD Addendum:

Walking into Rick's Comic City yesterday, I had zero idea that David and Maria Lapham had a new series from Image hitting the shelves this week. 

A crime comic with a small-town scope, the first issue of Good As Dead sets a pretty mean stage. We meet the Valade Family, who run the local criminal enterprises and own the bridge that puts the small border town of Port Lindon on the map. In the other corner, we meet Sheriff Calhoun, who wants nothing more than to put down the Valades. We get the intimation that the Calhouns and Valades are two of the town's founding families, with something of a Haffield/McCoy history between them. After a couple of catastrophic events play out, Sheriff Calhoun doubles down on getting justice, especially when a pretty severe turn of events leaves him with little more than a week to live...

So yeah, this is going to be great! 

This has that Lapham, modern Southwest Noir flavor BIG TIME, and was a joy to read. There can sometimes be a bit of a disconnect with the Laphams' story compression techniques, but their stuff always wins me over in the end, so here's to at least two more issues (hopefully more, that's all that has been solicited thus far).

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Playlist:

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Jim Williams - Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched OST

The Divine Comedy - Promenade

Alice in Chains - Eponymous

The Soft Moon - Eponymous

Night Sins - Portrait in Silver

Joy Division - Substance

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division - Closer

Joy Division - Still

Inter Arma - Garbers Days Revisited

Ilsa - Preyer

Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain

Deftones - private music

Annihilator - Never, Neverland

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Card:

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

Also, if you head over to Grimm's Kickstarter HERE you'll see his upcoming The Eldritch Lace Tarot Deck, you can hit the "notify upon launch" button and then you can get on this seriously unbelievably awesome deck. 

• Four of Swords

• Five of Cups

• Queen of Swords

Rest and recuperate after a major disappointment. Doing so may force honesty where before there was none. 

Not vague at all. I don't really want to go into it, but I'm reading the 'rest' as holding off on sending a pretty sensitive email until tomorrow morning, when I was going to send it tonight. Never really a good idea to send a sensitive email in the middle of the night with a couple beers in you. 

Netherlands - Deathling

 

I randomly stumbled across the Netherlands on Apple Music a few days ago, and they immediately became a driving force in my musical day-to-day. This album ROCKS! Check out Netherlands' Bandcamp HERE and their physical media HERE.

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NCBD:

Hot damn! It's NCBD! Let's see what I'm bringing home from Rick's Comic City tonight:

Batman: First Knight proved to be one of my favorite titles of the last few years, so I was excited to see we're getting a sequel. I love the oversized format and the 1930s, no-tech approach to Batman. What we get is a wonderfully lush period piece, dripping in Noir. 

You know, Major Bludd has long been a favorite of mine. As a kid, I loved the original figure, but it wore out and never really got a proper update while I was still collecting, so it got pushed to the back burner by other favorites. And while there were some memorable moments with the character in Hama's comics, those too were early on, and ol' Sebastian Bludd didn't really exert a presence again until his failed attempt to impersonate Destro and take over his Scottish empire. Recently, I acquired the latest Classified version of Blud's figure, and I must say, the nice juxtaposition of receiving that figure and seeing this cover has me excited. He's been an integral part of the building of Cobra in this series, and I'm pretty happy with how much 'screen time' he's received. That might all implode this issue, as I'm wondering if he's going to make it out of this skirmish with The Baroness and Cover Girl alive. 

Still really digging this book. Obviously, at least partially inspired by Rob Zombie's 31 - of which I seem to become more a fan of every October upon viewing - Exquisite Corpses differs in one big way. For a book about a bunch of competing homicidal maniacs dropped into a small town for a game of mass murder, this book is FUN! That's right, I said it. FUN! There's a palpable sense of dread at times, but it's often undercut with some pretty amusing peeks behind the curtain of the game and its players.  

Anthology Horror at its finest, Oni's rejuvenation of EC Comics continues to thrill me each and every month. 

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Watch:

Honestly, all I needed to see of Yannis Veslemes and Dimitris Emmanouilidis's She Loved Blossoms More was the still image on the trailer's thumb, and I was sold. 

No reason to risk ruining any surprises this one may have in store - I have a feeling there are many.

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Playlist:

Hellbender - Hellbender OST

Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain

The Jesus Lizard - Rack

Deadguy - Near-Death Travel Services

Netherlands - Vapors

Alice in Chains - Eponymous

Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere

Blood Incantation - Hidden History of the Human Race

Deftones - private music

Comic Tropes - Robert Kirkman Interview 

Testament - Shadow People (pre-release single)

USSA - The Spoils

Hall & Oats - Do What You Want, Be What You Are (Disc 3)

Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman

Will Haven - Carpe Diem

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Card:

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

Also, if you head over to Grimm's Kickstarter HERE you'll see his upcoming The Eldritch Lace Tarot Deck you can hit the "notify upon launch" button and then you can get on this seriously unbelievably awesome deck. 

• Eight of Pentacles

• King of Wands

• III: The Empress

Concentration. Yeah, it's at a premium these last few days. From the Grimoire: The purest manifestation of Fire in the deck, thus strong. Unchecked can be imbalanced. That's the concentration key. Imbalance. Now, let's try and tie those two cards to III: The Empress. Also from the Grimoire: " She is the inferior Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, all that is symbolized by the visible house of man" - A.E. Waite.

How do I reconcile this? My problem at the moment? Too much social media. Luckily for me, it's like fast food - I don't use it much, so even a little can be too much. But I'm fairly certain that's what's killing my concentration. Remember all those epiphanies to start meditating again? Yeah, never happened. Would probably help. 

New Music From Alabama Shakes!

When I say new, I should specify I am way behind on this one - looks like it dropped two weeks ago! Funny, as I just listened to Sound & Color for the first time in a while last week and had a moment of forlorn reflection that it's been ten years since that album was released. I don't know if this new track heralds an upcoming album, but I sure hope so. 

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Watch:

Where K and I would normally have seen The Long Walk on opening night this past Thursday, we had the opportunity to see John Carpenter's The Thing on the big screen (our second time) during Regal's Cine: A Month of Masterpieces. This series has me in awe: We're seeing Sunset Blvd tonight (also a second time on the big screen for us), I'm going to try like hell to see GDT's Pan's Labyrinth on Wednesday, then we have Psycho on Friday. And we're still in the second week of the month!!!

However, it's Francis Lawrence's The Long Walk I want to talk about right now. Adapted from a Richard Bachman - aka Stephen King - novella of the same name, with the adapted screenplay coming to us from JT Mollner, the Writer/Director of one of 2024's best films (Strange Darling), The Long Walk feels, in this moment, like the best adaptation of King's work to date. Ten years ago, that might have been a no-brainer until you stop to consider The Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me (I've always heard The Green Mile is up there as well, but I haven't seen that one). But we've had a spate of pretty good adaptations over the last decade, top among them Mike Flanagan's Doctor Sleep and Gerald's Game. In the Tall Grass, and while I don't love the Andy Muschietti IT films, they're better than the original. Castle Rock - while not officially an adaptation of any one King story, is a super solid amalgam of his work. So we're light-years from the days of Langoliers and Needful Things. But The Long Walk feels like it has all of them beat.

I'm largely unfamiliar with Francis Lawrence's work as a Director. Yes, I've seen Constantine, and it puts me in a tough spot, as if they had not based that on John Constantine: Hellblazer, I would have loved it. Some fantastic images and ideas, but it just doesn't work with Reeves as JC and Chas being anyone but a hulking ex-Football hooligan. Other than that, though, looking at Lawrence's IMDB, I see he is mostly known for working with Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. I tried and couldn't get twenty pages into the first book, so I didn't even bother with the films, partially because the entire thing feels like a watered-down version of The Long Walk and Battle Royale. His history doesn't matter, though, because this film is excellent. A complete gut-punch in the best possible way, and King's knack for male camaraderie and how it can be a shortcut to major life epiphanies really shines through in this film. The characters are fantastic, and it hurts to see what happens to them. Cooper Hoffman confirms he is an excellent actor, following in his late father's footsteps, but David Jonsson - wow! In two movies (the other being Alien: Romulus, where he plays Andy, Rain's synthetic "brother"), he has demonstrated charisma and range that have me watching for his next film, genre or not.  

I'd recommend catching this one in the theater. If you want to hear more, hit the widget at the upper right-hand side of this page for The Horror Vision's new episode, where we start with a spoiler-free review, then give ample warning before veering into a full-spoiler comparison between the book and the film. Also available on YouTube HERE. 

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Playlist:

Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain

Hellbender - Hellbender OST

HEALTH - Ordinary Loss (pre-release single)

HEALTH - Rat Wars

David Bowie - Outside

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Entropy - Dharmakāya

Deftones - private music

Godflesh - Streetcleaner

Blut Aus Nord - Shadows Breathe First (pre-release single)

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmoniu - Nahab

Dreamkid - Daggers

Faetooth - Labyrinthe

Alabama Shakes - Another Life (single)

Netherlands - Vapor

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Card:

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

Also, if you head over to Grimm's Kickstarter HERE you'll see his upcoming The Eldritch Lace Tarot Deck you can hit the "notify upon launch" button and then you can get on this seriously unbelievably awesome deck. 

• Queen of Swords

• Six of Wands

• Page of Wands

A major creative period is happening, but it will take clear judgment to navigate. 

I love when these are so spot on. I've been working pretty diligently on Shadow Play Book Two, and there are SO many ideas at play right now. So many historical themes to tie into this century-spanning saga, so it's an immense creative rush, but I have to keep asking myself, "How much is too much?"

Drug Church Live in Dublin!!!

In 2001 I saw one of my favorite shows ever at Whelans, possibly because I had just flown in to Dublin that morning and was running on adrenaline and lust for the Irish girl I'd flown across the world to visit. Not everything worked out great, but I got to see Damien Frost, New Prayer Breakfast, and another band I'm blanking on at the moment at one of the coolest venues I've been to. To find this Drug Church show posted from there was a blast, and it really just made me remember, A) how much I want to go back to Ireland and, B) how much I want to see Drug Church live.

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Watch:

Last night, K and I got to see John Carpenter's The Thing on the big screen for the second time. This is a film that never fails to fill me with inspiration, to blow me away, to remind me just how amazing cinema can be. Also, how the greatest works of art are often not appreciated at first. The Thing bombed upon release; reflecting on that now, it seems unbelievable, but it's a fact. Kinda gives me a little hope. 

Anyway, whenever I watch The Thing, I follow it up with Simon Gesrel's video for Zombie Zombie's Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free. It's almost as impressive as Carpenter's film (in a totally different way).

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Playlist:

Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain

Blackbraid - Blackbraid III

Joy Division - Still

Mastodon - Leviathan

The Soft Moon - Criminal

Dreamkid - Daggers

Nabihah Iqbal - Weighing of the Heart

Gram Rabbit - Music To Start A Cult To

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Sterolab - Oscillations From the Anti-Sun (disc 3)

The Jesus Lizard - Down

The Jesus Lizard - Rack

Cibo Matto - Viva! La Woman

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE. Grimm's newest deck looks maybe even more awesome than The Hand of Doom (hard to believe, but I said it). Head over to his Kickstarter page for the upcoming The Eldritch Lace Tarot Deck and hit "Notify me upon launch." This looks amazing! 

• Page of Wands

• Six of Pentacles

• Ten of Wands

Lots of Will being distracted by a perfect earthly set up. Seems like money getting in the way, like it always does.

Interesting. I found out yesterday the yahoos in the payroll department of the corporation that I work for neglected to set up the health care benefits I signed up for in 2025. Correction - they started taking the money out in January, then stopped in February. Now I owe over 1500. This fact has destabilized me with anger, and I'm fairly cetain that's what this pull is referencing. 

Seal's Crazy About Bryan Fuller's Dust Bunny and So Am I!!!

I've been hearing this track a lot on my Peloton lately, and I really dig it. I have very little knowledge of Seal other than I dig the Rose song that became the ubiquitous Homecoming track in the '90s. My good friend Dave is a pretty big fan, and we share a lot of common music - everything from Cynic and Dillinger to Timberlake's first record. I may need to look a little harder at Seal. 

Also, the lyrics really prove prescient to 2025, and this track was released in 1991. Damn!

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NCBD:

Daniel Warren Johnson's final issue as writer of Transformers, and Skybound is making a hell of a big claim in the solicitation:

"This is it. And the new era of TRANSFORMERS begins with the most shocking ending to ANY comic book this year!"

I've already seen the cover they solicited for Transformers 25, and Optimus is on it. That said, if we look back at how Kirkman  - who is taking over writing duties as of 25 - handled the end of The Walking Dead, we see that he's not adverse to soliciting fake covers to keep a mystery! I, for one, support that level of misdirection in the age of spoilers, and cannot wait to read DWJ's outro! What a fantastic run this has been!

CalExit returned last month after a nearly 8-year absence. It took me a few days to dig out my copies of the original series, and while I have them slated for a re-read soon, I haven't gotten around to that yet. Looks like next month's issue #3 is the final for this new series, so we'll see where it goes from there. I gotta say, I miss seeing Black Mask comics on the shelf. Let's hope this is the start of something. 

The final issue of Blood Type. Can't wait to see how this shakes out - and what EC might have in store for us next!

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Watch:

Bryan Fuller makes his Directorial debut this December 3rd with Dust Bunny.

I can tell you, I only watched the opening few seconds of this and I didn't need to watch any more. It's got that softly lit Bryan Fuller look, and that's enough for me. 

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Playlist:

Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses

Type O Negative - Origin of the Feces

Tones on Tail - Everything (Disc 2)

Windhand - Eponymous

Chasms - On the Legs of Love Purified

Perturbator - Age of Acquarius (pre-release singles)

Joy Division - Still

Year of No Light - Ausserwelt

Drab Majesty - An Object In Motion

Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror

Mastodon - Leviathan

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Crystal Castles - II

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Card:

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

• Six of Swords

• King of Swords

• King of Pentacles

Choose between Science and Money.

Some really tough, specfically vague readings lately.

Blackbraid - God of Black Blood

From the ripping new album Blackbraid III, which is destined to be in my top ten of the year. Awesome video to boot - not too often I can say that. Order your copy of the album HERE.

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Watch:

Somehow, it's probably been close to 20 years since I last watched my DVD copy of Caro and Jeunet's The City of Lost Children. It's amazing how, just like I wrote about rediscovering Man Man's Life Fantastic last summer, something I once loved so much could slip to the wayside and go so long without a viewing. 

This film is still every bit as magical as it was the first time I saw it, circa the early 2000s. Released in 1995, the internet show the original, Sony Pictures Classics' DVD was first released in 1999, and I did not acquire my first DVD player until somewhere either near the end of 2000 or the beginning of 2001. This was one of the first DVDs I ever purchased, as the film had been covered in the Wrapped in Plastic David Lynch/Twin Peaks magazine due to Angelo Badalamenti providing the film's score, and all the stills and the write-up had me ravenous to see this film. Ron Perlman is fantastic as One, and all of the children are grand. What really steals the show, though, is the set design. This is a Steampunk Fantasy world unlike anything realized on film at the time. I'd argue that Caro and Jeunet's film is still one of the most unique visions I've had the pleasure of beholding, and I can only hope that, since this December marks the 30th anniversary of its original release, someone might hold a retrospective screening at one of the theatres in Chicago (cuz it ain't gonna play in Tennessee). 

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Read:

I am, frankly, all over the damn place with my reading at the moment. 

While I've dedicated the remainder of my year for the written word to all the research I need to do for Shadow Play Book Two, I'm leaving comics/graphic novels as an outlet for pleasure reading. In 2024 I began a Sandman re-read that got me through the first three volumes, and now, since finishing Netflix's second season adaptation, I've knocked out Season of Mists and, this past weekend, A Game of You.

I'm fairly certain this is only the second time I've read this fifth collected volume of Sandman, so while I did remember it as I went along, Barbie and the cuckoo's story is nowhere near as familiar to me as the first three or four volumes of the series. One of the strengths of this series is its supporting cast, and that is on full display here, as Morpheus only appears twice, for a considerably shorter time than one might imagine for a book that carries his name. 

Barbie's story was an interesting one to continue, a thread pulled from back in The Doll's House, where we first met her living with Ken in the house where she and several other memorable characters acted as roommates to Rose during her search for her brother. 

Of particular note here is Wanda's story. Although Netflix did use this character, they eschewed all of A Game of You, lifting her instead as a character in what would ultimately come from the "Dream and Delirium" road trip story from Volume 7: Brief Lives. I had zero problems with this change, and in fact, found Indya Moore's portrayal of the Wanda character quite affecting. It's important to note the different cultural contexts that distinguish the two versions of Wanda. In the comic, the character first appeared in The Sandman issue #32, published in September, 1991. The character is far more masculine here, despite their Transsexual disposition. That makes sense; the creators were no doubt playing off a cultural zeitgeist of the time, where trans people had a much harder time identifying in public and transitioning (not that they necessarily have it easy now, but I would think '91 would seem like the Dark Ages compared to cultural awareness today). Juxtapose that with Wanda in the show, who, in present-day New York, would have a considerably more established and possibly even 'mainstream' support network than the Wanda of 1991 would have ever had. 

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Playlist:

Deftones - private music

Blut Aus Nord - Shadows Breathe First (pre-release single)

Blut Aus Nord - Debermur Morti

Blut Aus Nord - 777: Cosmosophy

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Revocation - New Gods, New Masters (pre-release singles)

Chris Connelly - White Phosphorus (Chris Connelly Plays Throbbing Gristle)

Ruelle - Emerge

bunsenburner - Reverie

Russian Circles - Gnosis

The Cars - Eponymous

Godflesh - Post Self

Giraffe Tongue Orchestra - Broken Lines

Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours

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Card:

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

• Three of Swords

• Ten of Pentacles

• IX: The Hermit

Introspection leads to unhappiness, but that unhappiness leads to long-term security.

Well now, that's a pickle, but it seems like something I should try and figure out, now doesn't it?

New Music from Blut Aus Nord!!!

From the forthcoming album Ethereal Horizons, out on November 28th 2025 on the always epic Debemur Morti Productions. Pre-order HERE. 

I am so psyched for this release! 

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Watch:

I've been picking at Alien: Earth for a little over two weeks now. From the moment I sat down to watch the first episode, I hated it. It's funny - I love Noah Hawley's Fargo series, or at least what I've seen of it (seasons 1, 2 and 5), but it seems like everything else I try from him just doesn't gel with me (I tried Legion a few years ago and also hated it). Despite the disconnect, though, this is Alien, and because of that, I have tried to hang in there the best I can, hoping for something to latch onto. This past Tuesday night, they delivered. 

Big time.

Holy smokes, did this episode give me everything I wanted! True, I'm a bit disappointed they had to go back to the standard Alien formula of 'Xenomorph loose on a ship' to get there, but I don't care. This was fantastic, and it reaffirmed my hanging in there. Even if I hate the next three episodes, this one made it all worthwhile.

Most of my issues come from the show's heavy focus on Boy Kavaliar and his 'lost boys.' A cunty, twenty-something douche bag trillionaire and his host of synthetics that have had the consciousnesses of sick children uploaded into them. The concept is cool, and it works great with the premise of the show - that governments were done away with as functionless, archaic designs when 'five corporations' stepped up and took control of the globe. That's gotta be a Fugazi reference, right?

Granted, one of the things I probably have so much trouble with here is the fact that this all feels a bit too real. Corporate ownership has weighed heavily on my mind, and this is honestly exactly where I see us going. But the characters in this thread are all very unlikeable and, while that's surely the point, the show spends SO MUCH time with them. Then, when they give us some Alienness, it's akin to what happened in the second episode with the apartment full of rich c_nts partying in powdered wigs and getting slaughtered - off screen, btw - in what felt like an empty gesture; a softball pitch to keep us happy before they just went right back to almost exclusively following the trillionaire and his toys.

Episode four started to come around, and five just blew me away. Part of what I want to see so much more of are not just the Xenomorphs, but the other alien life forms they've introduced on the show. The Eyeball Kid, for instance, is my favorite new thing. Love this 'character' and am eager to find out more about it.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - VFW OST

Jóhann Jóhannsson - Mandy OST

Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power

Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color

Ghost - Infestissumam 

Goblin - 2013 Tour E.P

The Dead Weather - Dodge and Burn

The Body - All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood

S U R V I V E - Mnq026

Fever Ray - Radical Romantics

Cibo Mato - Viva! La Woman

Blut Aus Nord - Debermur MoRTi (single)

Boy Harsher - Careful

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Card:

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

• Three of Cups

• XVI: The Tower

• 0: The Fool

Three of Cups really kind of owns me at this point. I stopped putting individual card metadata in these posts a while ago, but I'm starting to think I should remedy that just to see if I'm wrong or if this card comes up like every three days. That's what it feels like, so let's look at the card a bit more in-depth than usual. 

From Crowley's The Book of Thoth: 

"This card refers to Binah in the suit of Water. This is the card of Demeter or Persephone. The Cups are pomegranates: they are filled bountifully to overflowing from a single lotus, arising from the dark calm sea characteristic of Binah. There is here the fulfillment of the Will of Love in abounding joy. It is the spiritual basis of fertility. The card is referred to the influence of Mercury in Cancer; this carries further the above thesis. Mercury is the Will or Word of the All-Father; here its influence descends upon the most receptive of the Signs. At the same time, the combination of these forms of energy brings in the possibility of somewhat mysterious ideas. Binah, the Great Sea, is the Moon in one aspect, but Saturn in another; and Mercury, besides being the Word or Will of the All-One, is the guide of the souls of the Dead. This card requires great subtlety of interpretation. The pomegranate was the fruit which Persephone ate in the realms of Pluto, thereby enabling him to hold her in the lower world, even after the most powerful influence had been brought to bear. The lesson seems to be that the good things of life, although enjoyed, should be distrusted."

Abundance in Thoth, this card signifies good times and social connections, and Grimm did a great job illustrating that for his card. Mix this with The Tower - a change in paradigms, and the Fool, a new journey, and I'm thinking this may be telling me to make some new friends here in Tennessee, something I've had a relatively difficult time doing. 

Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo!

 

Mr. Brown sent this track to me at some point in the last week or two, and I'm just getting around to it now. Holy smokes! With a video directed by Writer/Director of 2014's Faults - fabulous film - Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo have instantly captured my attention.

It's been a minute since I've talked about my growing fascination with Chat Pile here; I got into their 2022 debut full-length, God's Country, late, and their 2024 album Cool World just narrowly missed being incorporated into my best of list last year. Hayden Pedigo, on the other hand, I am not nearly as familiar with, despite a dalliance with their 2021 album, Letting Go, last year, courtesy of a recommendation from my cousin Charles. 

The album, In the Earth Again, is due out October 31st and can be pre-ordered from Computer Students HERE. 

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NCBD:

As always, a lot of great stuff this week, so let's talk about what I'm bringing home for NCBD September 3rd, 2025:

 

Jason Aaron's TMNT continues to drop at a bi-monthly pace and I love him for it! A great relaunch of the 2012 IDW reboot that I'm so fond of that really shines as we follow the four brothers into the trials and tribulations of adulthood (Janika has her own book).

Look at that Mignola cover! This tenth issue of the anthological Savage Sword of Conan apparently begins a new mini-series that will run through all three tales in this issue, all penned by Jim Zub. While dipping into The Black Stone spin-off mini taught me to stick to what's in this main title, I'm here for whatever they have to say inside this bi-monthly mag.

Third story arc, "The Horror Men," comes to a close and Jeff Lemire and Gabriel H. Walta's Phantom Road goes back on hiatus, much to my chagrin. I love this book, and I'm always a bit blue during its off-seasons. 

 

Revisiting Larry Hama's ongoing, now 43-year-long run on this G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero has been loads of fun and does not appear to be slowing down any time soon. Luckily, despite my card-carrying status as a completionist with comics, I feel zero urge to fill in the 150+ issues I missed that would connect the last time I picked up the Marvel iteration in 1994 and the first Image issue going on two years ago. That said, I have begun looking into filling in a few of the gaps for the central part of Hama's original Marvel run, eyeing connecting the dots that would give me a solid run from issue 26 through to issue 126. It's only seven issues, so I figured, why not?

And finally, a new re-start of the flagship Batman book being written by Matt Fraction? Definitely going to give this one a shot, as Hayden Sherman and Dan Watters' "Dark Patterns" is closing out in a few months and it's been so good, it's given me a taste for a regular Bat-book. 

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Watch:

Monday night K took control of the remote and picked a film I'd never heard of before, Phillip Kaufman's 1979 film The Wanderers. 

First, check out this cast: Ken Wahl, Karen Allen, Dolph Sweet (!), Ken Foree, Linda Manz. The list goes on with a lot of people I recognized, but those are the heavy hitters to me. Ostensibly another "The American Teenagers of early 60s" story a la American Graffiti, The Outsiders, etc. The Wanderers does a pretty good job of adding to that pot with likeable characters and an intricate hierarchy of Street Gangs and the characters' allegiances/associations with them. Where this film really stuck in my head, though, is in three key scenes that introduce a definite Horror element. It dawned on me while watching the second of these scenes - a scene where a character stumbles into the Ducky Boys' territory - that this film may have been meant as a metaphor for the changes Hollywood underwent between the 1960s and 1970s. 

First, the Elements of Horror. 

The Ducky Boys appear in three scenes in this film. The first is while the main characters are driving and accidentally encroach on the Ducky Boys' side of town. The film takes place in the Bronx in 1963, and up until this key moment, it's a representation of NY in the 60s that's right in line with most of the other movies like this have painted. This, however... there's something so intentionally nightmarish and surreal about this scene that I was immediately taken aback. While watching, I assumed Kaufman had chosen this route to convey the 'we're out of our territory' fears of a teenager in the 60s whose entire world revolved around their block. Taking into account the next two scenes that feature the Ducky Boys—the one where a protagonist is killed while in their neighborhood, and the other, the climactic gang battle at the end of the film, which the film does a great job of subverting until the Ducky Boys arrive. It was a combination of these two scenes that led me to my second point. Is The Wanderers a cinematic metaphor for the changing American Film Zeitgeist in the 1970s? 

The film goes from the streets-of-New-York, day-in-the-life Golden Age of Hollywood storytelling trope to the more epic, artistic weirdness of the New Hollywood era. 

If this was intentional and not just me reading into things, The Wanderers is a piece of genius cinema that is content to masquerade as 'just another 60s West Side Story throwback.'

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - VFW OST

The Cure - Pornography

Deftones - Diamond Eyes

Radiohead - Kid A

How to Destroy Angeles - Welcome Oblivion

The Knife - Silent Shout

Kane Parsons - Backrooms OST

Chat Pile/Hayden Perdigo - Radioactive Dreams (single)

Deftones - private music

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Card:

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

• VIII: Strength

• Page of Swords

• XIII: Death

The Body - Lathspell I Name You

Somehow, I missed that The Body had a new album come out a few months back, even though by now I should know to expect a new release at least once a year. Oh wait, All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood is a reissue? Wow. Well, new or old, this one is yet another challenging masterpiece from these guys, its majesty crystallized in this final track.

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Watch:

I rewatched Toby Wilkins' 2008 film Splinter over the weekend. I had only ever seen this one once before, back when my good friend Grimm came out and visited me in 2011. He's the one who turned me onto this film, and rewatching it after so long, I had to message him a note of thanks. I don't know how I haven't rewatched this once more, but it's definitely on my permanent radar now. 

The creature FX in this film are outstanding. Sure, the filmmakers are a bit coy with the camera on the monster at times, but that gives this really intense, "What the fuck did I just see?" feeling that helps to put you in the place of the characters. In fact, it's Nelson Cragg's camera work that makes me think of Samy Inayeh's work behind the lens on another creature-feature favorite of mine, Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski's 2011 masterpiece The Void. I'm writing this Saturday afternoon, and I'd wager by the time this posts on Tuesday, I'll probably have rewatched Kostanski & Gillespie's film, too.

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - The Mystical Beast of Rebellion

Blut Aus Nord - 777 - Sect(s)

Blut Aus Nord - Codex Obscura Nomina

Anthrax - Persistence of Time

Anthrax - Stomp 442

Deftones - private music

Ruelle - Emerge

Dead Man's Bones - Eponymous

Man Man - Life Fantastic

The Dead Weather - Dodge and Burn

The Body - All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood

Spectral Tilt - Sleepers (single)

lords. - Bleeding Out (single)

lords. - aven (single)

leaving_forever & stream_error - nobody home

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Card:

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

• XVIII The Moon

• Three of Cups 

• Knight of Cups

A lot of emotion can obscure what you're looking for. 

Not sure how to read this one. Work-related? Maybe. Also, Thinking it might be for someone else, but who that would be, at this point, I'm not sure.