New Music from Low Cut Connie!!!

 

New Low Cut Connie, out today! Buy HERE.

 

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Happy July 3rd, everyone! Also known as Return of the Living Dead day!

I'll be watching this tonight in celebration and jamming the vinyl soundtrack while I type this.

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In other viewing news, I rewatched Gavin Polone and Andrew Kevin Walker's much-maligned Psycho Killer the other night. I love this flick; no, it's no SE7EN, but holding it up against that film is like holding everything Shamalamadingdong does against Sixth Sense.  

I do think I figured out the elements that caused many in the Horror community to lambast this film.

    1) The egregious-as-hell scene with the tank semi that flips onto its side, takes out the fleeing female and then explodes. It's fun, but it's a bit much for a film that otherwise holds itself in a dead serious repose.

    2) The pregnancy subplot. Not needed AT ALL. 

Other than that, man, this one swings so fucking big and, I think, hits it out of the park with such an ambitious third act. Georgina Campbell is always fantastic, and James Preston Rogers is the stuff of nightmares. Oh yeah, Malcolm McDowell is fabulous as a sort of modern Aleister Crowley/Anton Lavey stand-in.

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I am just now, three months into the publication run, getting to read the unearthed and completed finale to Rick Veitch and Michael Zulli's Swamp Thing run from 1988/1989, published nearly 40 years later as Swamp Thing: 1989.

Original proposed Michael Zulli cover for issue #88

Cover to the recently released issue #88

Full disclosure: while I've been aware of the Veitch/Zulli run since I read the Moore run that Mr. Veitch penciled some of back in the early 00s, I've never sought it out and, in fact, I don't think I knew that Veitch walked away due to censorship by then newly combined Time/Warner entity that owned DC Comics, or that those issues never saw the light of day and, in some cases, went unfinished. This reminds me more than a little of that Warren Ellis Hellblazer issue with the school shooting that finally came out back, oh hell, a long time ago now. 

So why was DC so worried about Swamp Thing meeting a certain historic carpenter in 1989? Five words for you:

The. Last. Temptation. Of. Christ.

Here's Paul Schrader, who wrote the screenplay adapting Nikos Kazantzakis' novel, talking about the blasphemous aspect of the story:

   

The effect the film had on Swamp Thing is the big takeaway I have after reading Stephen Bissette's afterward in  Swamp Thing 1989 issue 88, and it makes a ton of sense, even if it is still deplorable. I was thirteen in 1989, but I remember the nightly news hullabaloo surrounding Martin Scorsese's film featuring Willem Dafoe as Jesus, Harvey Keitel as Judas Iscariot and David Bowie as Pontius Pilate. I wouldn't see the film until the early 00s, but I remember that people did not like the way Christ was portrayed, so while absolutely nothing blasphemous occurs in Veitch/Zulli's comic, no corporation was going to publish a comic with the cover above so soon after Scorsese's film.

So what did DC publish instead of the original Swamp Thing issue 88? Well, it's a bit confusing, but apparently Veitch/Zulli's issues 88-91 were shelved and never finished and instead, Doug Wheeler and John Totleben stepped in and continued the course of events that had played out through the early issues of Veitch's run, where Swampy is lost in time. Wheeler's 88 deviates by omitting the Elemental's meeting with Christ, which, again, really only treated the Christ man with the utmost respect.  

Funny that, as far as we've come to see this finally published, they still did not use that original Zulli cover. 

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Playlist:

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

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. 2: Philosophy of Beyond

sunn O))) - Loser

3Teeth - EndEx

The Dillinger Escape Plan & Mike Patton - Irony is a Dead Scene

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Dissociation

Spotlights - Love & Decay

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Card:

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

• Two of Swords

• Page of Wands

• Queen of Cups

New Music from Russian Circles

While I've dabbled in Russian Circles music over the years, it wasn't until seeing them live with Young Widows last year that I really "got it." Hearing this new track from their forthcoming album Nine, out August 28th on Sargent House. Pre-order HERE. 

This is heavy. As. F*CK!

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NCBD:

Great week! Let's get into this right away, as the first book is one I've been waiting on with gritted teeth and several others have felt a long time coming!

The book I am most looking forward to - Geoff Darrow's Shaolin Cowboy returns with a new series! Every panel of every issue of every series so far has been a work of unparalleled art, and I expect The Shaolin Cowboy: Staying A.I. Alive to be no different. 

Ordained is an action movie in comic form (already been optioned) and it has not disappointed me yet. Who isn't up for watching a Priest beat the tar out of a bunch of mobsters? 

Jeff Lemire's Minor Arcana returns to start a new arc! 

I'm not a regular FF reader, but my good friend and Drinking with Comics co-host Mike Shin picked this as a book to watch out for a few months back when the solicitation dropped, and here's why: 

"Johnny Storm has had some incredibly bad ideas in his time, but every once in a while he also has an incredibly good idea too. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell which is which until you're neck-deep in their consequences, and by then it's usually too late. We mention this only because in this issue, Johnny convinces his sister Sue to go along with a scheme to use her powers to turn the flesh of his skull invisible, so that when he flames on he can pass himself off as the Ghost Rider and settle some old scores. What could possibly go wrong?"

Now does that sound fun or does that sound fun?

The Event Horizon prequel marches on, and the depravity continues. Loving these covers and the art in general, and I'm looking forward to how this arrives at the starting point of the film. 

Last but not least, I'd all but forgotten about Gabriel Hardman's Batman/Green Arrow/The Question prestige format book Arcadia, but here it is, the final issue. Overall, I think this will read better as a trade, but I'm a sucker for the prestige format, so I'm looking forward to a full reread before cracking into this final issue.

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A trailer for Robert Eggers' Werwulf dropped two days ago and, as per my custom, I am posting it here but not watching it. This one releases on Christmas - CHRISTMAS! - and we already have a trailer? This is bound to get beaten to death well before the film lands, so I am doing my best to avoid all contact for now.

Nothing this man has done has disappointed me in the least, so I want to preserve as unspoiled an experience as I can with this one. 

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Playlist:

Infinity Frequencies - Between Two Worlds

The Caretaker - Theoretically pure anterograde amnesia

Boards of Canada - Inferno

The Atlas Moth - The Old Believer

John Carpenter - Lost Themes IV: Noir

Throbbing Gristle - Once Upon A Time

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: A Dialogue with the Stars

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturian Poetry

Russian Circles - Station

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot Deck, which you can buy HERE.

• Eight of Cups

• Two of Swords

• 01: The Magician

Eight of Cups - the glasses start to spill, the vitality is threatened: Time for a recharge before the spark of creativity returns. 

I'm in the midst of a recharge from writing after doing a pretty straight stint, day in, day out. That is the goal, but it definitely feels like it's time to fill the well.

Mastodon - Jaguar God

 

Thinking about this guy a lot lately.

 

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Rewatched Richard Bates, Jr's Excision last night:

Still hits just as hard as it did the first time.

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Last week, I mentioned I'd begun a reread of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers series for upcoming episodes of Drinking with Comics. I spoke of the pleasure I've found in realizing this doesn't just hold up, but surpasses my initial response upon reading it monthly upon release circa 2005. I also mentioned my surprise that, unlike last time when my favorite titles in the series would have skewed toward the more Occult-based characters (Zatanna, Klarion), this time, I found the two books I'd "tolerated" before now at the top of my favorites list. One of those is Manhattan Guardian; the other is Shining Knight. Shining Knight, in particular, has blown me away this time through, and nowhere is that more evident than in the third issue:

The issue begins with an FBI agent leading a specialist into the lock-up where the LAPD are holding Justin, the titular Knight, last of Arthur's Round Table, flung forward in time after a melee in Castle Revolving. They talk a bit about the Knight's Sword, which the expert classifies as coming from Deep Time, essentially confirming the Arthurian aspect, and then this happens:

I'm only really remembering some of the finer points in the series as I go, so this whole Civilization Iteration angle surprised me. I've always been fascinated by the idea that human civilization has come and gone in great swathes over the history of this planet, and to see Morrison so eloquently tie this idea into this series really made everything about it resonate even more than it already has. 

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Playlist:

The Caretaker - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

Sisters of Black Mountain - Amdusias (single)

Sisters of Black Mountain - Spirits of the Dead (single)

Mastodon - Your Ghost Again (single)

Mastodon - Blood Mountain

The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

Johnny Jewel - Ageless E.P.

Silencio - End of the Glass (single)

Chryta Bell - Sycamore Trees (single)

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Mastodon - Leviathan 

Metallica - Garage Days

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars

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Card:

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

• VI: The Lovers

• Seven of Swords

• 17: The Star

Collaboration opens up new vistas that lead to enlightenment. 

New Music From PJ Harvey!

New single from PJ Harvey! Her first new music since 2023. No definitive album announcement, but I'm pretty sure it's coming. 

The concept for this is, well, a bit staggering. Here's a quote from the YouTube video that explains the genesis of the song:

"The song had already been taking shape as part of Harvey’s next album, when Professor Brian Cox invited her to write a song for his ‘Emergence' world tour. Recorded with a full orchestra at Miraval Studios in Provence, Voyager takes its name from the NASA probes launched in 1977, still traveling through interstellar space nearly 50 years on. The music highlights the interplay between swelling string arrangements and pulsing synthesizer signals stretching out into the cosmos: icy, ethereal, and pensive, yet threaded with an unmistakable humanity. Across it, Harvey contemplates our small, fragile place in the universe; a 'pale-blue dot', a flake of snow, dust in a sunbeam, and finds in that vastness a quiet plea to choose light and to choose love."

Polly Jean is always full of surprises. I love that. 

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I guested on The Average Reviews again last night to discuss Sleepaway Camp, one of the great summer camp slashers ever!

We really had a blast with this, and I even picked up some insights on the film that had previously never occurred to me. 

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When I walked into the comic shop Wednesday night, I had completely forgotten that this was coming out this week:

Here's the solicitation blurb: 

"Legendary comic book creator John Byrne returns to the title he first drew 50 years ago, Uncanny X-Men, with this one-of-a-kind new graphic novel series, X-Men: Elsewhen. This three-volume graphic novel series picks up the story from Byrne’s original run, taking the characters in new and unexpected directions."

This is just crazy to me, and I tore through the first few chapters in short order. It had me GLOWING all night, because despite the lack of Chris Claremont, this felt exactly like that era of Uncanny X-Men, and it was fantastic to revisit.

There are two more of these coming to complete Byrne's new run. The really crazy thing is, Byrne did this for him. He started it and for most of the duration, worked on it without thoughts of publishing beyond his website, Byrne Robotics, which you can check out HERE.

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Playlist:

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

John Carpenter - Lost Themes IV: Noir

Algiers - Eponymous

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

D'nell - First Magic

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST

John Carpenter - Prince of Darkness

John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - Big Trouble in Little China

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

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Card:

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

• Six of Pentacles

• Two of Wands

• King of Pentacles

The Caretaker - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia

I spent a lot of time with The Caretaker yesterday. From reading an old interview in an issue of The Wire from 2009, to listening to the entire Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia boxset, which is waaaay OOP but available on Bandcamp HERE. 

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NCBD:

Wow - seems like every week's pull has been a doozy, and I've been cutting back. So many great creator-owned titles hitting the market lately. Here we go...

I did not love the six-part Quintesson War storyline, though I liked it more rereading it the other day than I did as it came out. Big shake-ups, HUGE really, so I don't know why I was left feeling... underwhelmed. 

I really should have waited for this one to hit trade, but I guess after DC holding it on for so long, I wanted to make sure I actually got my hands on it as soon as I could. 

The first issue of Red Roots had me. I mean, had me. Second issue was great, but also introduced an element of what miiiight be high fantasy? Let's see how #3 shakes out. I'm hoping for more of a Seven to Eternity than Tolkien vibe. 

The twists and turns in the new Condon/Phillips Weird Fiction/Mystery are great. Can't wait to see how this all comes out. 

And so the epic battle concludes! This book has been just the right kind of crazy, schlocky, video game fist-fight punch-em-up I'd hoped for when I signed on. Sad to see it go. 

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST

Trailer Punk Podcast - Torture Gallery Interview

John Carpenter - Lost Themes Vol. 1

Leather Strip - The Pleasure of Penetration

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

The Caretaker - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

Algiers - The Underside of Power

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Card:

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

• Two of Wands

• 05: The Hierophant

• Five of Wands

My point of view is my dogma. Break it in half and learn something new.

It Follows

From what I can tell, combing through my metadata, I've never posted anything from the band Silent's 2021 album Modern Hate. My good friend Jacob turned me onto this a few years back, and it's an album I find myself returning to again and again. I chose the above song for reasons that will be obvious in a moment, but the entire album is fantastic. There's some modern Post Punk that relies too heavily on the past, or tries to reduce the "genre" to a checklist. Silent does not do this. They feel breathtakingly authentic. Also, this album reminds me a lot of Savages' 2013 Masterpiece Silence Yourself, which I've kind of stopped listening to because it makes me mourn what could have been with that band. 

UPDATE: Upon writing this, I happened to look up Savages on Apple Music - as I periodically do - just to see if there's any new music. Holy smokes, folks - THERE IS! Any guesses as to what my music pick will be for this Wednesday?

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I will never understand the hate this film gets. K and I rewatched it again this past Friday, and goddamn - It Follows still chills me to the core:

 

There's so much to talk about here: The liminal photography of Gregory Crewdson as a schematic. Disasterpiece's score comes out of the 00s hauntology vibe but with a decidedly more narrative-driven structure. The influence of John Carpenter's original Halloween, which I don't think I ever noticed until this viewing. How the film moves through events at a pace that, while slow and steady, also burns through ancillary information in elliptical edits that refuse to hold anyone's hand and never sacrifice clarity in the doing. A masterpiece, through and through. 

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I am currently rereading Grant Morrison's ambitious Seven Soldiers from 2005 and, to my utter shock, LOVING it. I mean, loving it more than I did the first time (which is surely because the last time I read this, it was in monthly installments. Those publication gaps do not help with Morrison's famed approach to story compression.

I read this series with fervor as it was released in 2005, but I would also say I was definitely suffering from a hearty case of Fan Inertia for Grant Morrison. That wore off some time ago, and in fact, a recent reading of Multiversity had me convinced I would look back and hate this as much as I did that series. I almost sold these issues to avoid experiencing that. 

Boy, am I glad I didn't do this.

Whereas Multiversity just feels unintelligible for most of its run (except maybe for those basement-dwelling, card-carrying life-long DC comics fans that love Booster Gold and late 70s Hawkman comics. I'm being a glib cunt, I'll admit, but there's something so... off-putting about so much of comic fandom, and there are, in my opinion, far more avenues in the DC village than in Marvel's that trade on that level of commitment that wears "off-putting" as a badge of honor. One of the special talents Morrison has always brought to the table is taking cringe-worthy characters and reinventing them as sleek, cool new versions of themselves. Here, he does this in earnest, transforming, for example, both Manhattan Guardian and The Shining Knight into fantastic stories with fantastic characters. And while there's a lot of that, "No time to explain/Story compression" at work, I'm not lost like I was in Multiversity. And I'll say, I fully acknowledge that part of my issue with Multiversity is I'm not smart enough to understand some of what he's doing (the "Watchmen" issue, for example), but I also just feel like there's a lot of that superhero book gobbledegook that I hate; you know, the "final battle, bunch of shit happens, none of it makes sense because we don't fully understand their powers anyway" stuff that you find in my ambitious superhero projects. There is a bit of that in the lead-up to Seven Soldiers - JLA: Classified 1-3, which I began my reread with, but it's excusable once you hit the Zero issue because that just ticks along perfectly. There's even a battle that doesn't feel gobbledy at all (maybe because the heroes all die).

I specifically call out Manhattan Guardian and Shining Knight here because I believe in my first read, I liked those books the least. So far, I've read the JLA: Classified 1-3, Seven Soldiers 0, and the first two issues of Manhattan Guardian, Shining Knight, Zatana and Karion the Witch Boy, and I distinctly remember liking the latter two more than the previous. Not so this time. Not that there's anything wrong with Zatana or Karion, but they don't feel as triumphant because they feel closer to what I would like. I just look at the characters and titles of Guardian and Knight and instantly sense that these books will face a far greater uphill struggle to earn my approval. But they definitely do so, and they do so in spades. 

I'm really looking forward to digging into the rest of the series, and as this reread is homework for Drinking with Comics, I'll post our discussions here when they air. 

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Playlist:

Pilot Priest and Electric Youth - Come True OST

Boards of Canada - Inferno

The Veils - Total Depravity

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

Foxy Shazam - Dark Blue Night

Kyuss - Sky Valley

Blood Mother - Eponymous

Converge - Hum of Hurt

Jucifer - I Name You Destroyer

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars

Silent - Modern Hate

Willie Nelson - Dream Chaser

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Card:

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

I posting a spread that, literally, jumped out of the deck at me. This is a lot more than I normally try to interpret. 

 • Knight of Wands

• Three of Swords

• Three of Pentacles

• 14: Temperance

• Two of Pentacles

Faith and passion are a solid foundation for change through Art.

New Music From Sleep!

 

Big Sleep news. Matt Pike is out, replaced by Bubba Dupree of Void. Also, Dale Crover from Melvins on drums? This new track is interesting, but there's a lethargy here that feels a bit ominous. I'll have to wait for the full album. In the meantime, this is being released as a flexi disc along with a Sleep comic book, put out by Third Man Records. You can pre-order the comic HERE. The link to the bundle that includes the music comes up 404, so it's probably sold out.

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From Writer Robert Bolesto and Director Agnieszka Smoczyńska, the team that gave us the delightfully messed up film The Lure (which The Horror Vision and Projexploitation crossed over to cover in great depth HERE):

I can only hope this hits theatres by me, even if it means driving to The Nuart in Nashville. I love that this feels a bit like The Lure, but also strikes me as having similar DNA to Ryan Kruger's Street Trash! There's so much energy on screen, and again, we have someone at work making a trailer who knows how to show us enough to whip us into a frenzy of expectation, but give nothing away.

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I finished the third book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, The Wastelands. Still one of my favorites of the series, but it took me longer to read than I anticipated. Next up: Wizard and Glass, the last of the books in the series that I've previously read more than once. 

Once we get past this one, it's all first-time re-reads and not since Wolves of Calla, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower each released. This endeavor has been a long time coming, and I've still got a pretty good head of steam. 

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Playlist:

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports

John Carpenter - Lost Themes IV: Noir

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

Tomahawk - Oddfellows

Melvins/Helms Alee

The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

Boards of Canada - Inferno 

Perturbator - Age of Aquarius

Final Light - Eponymous

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid

All Them Witches - House of Mirrors

Converge - Hum of Hurt

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Card:

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

* Seven of Wands

• Page of Cups

* Eight of Wands

Positive results are the result of good communication. That said, it can be difficult to say what needs to be said to achieve those positive results.

As is often the case, I'm not picking up what the cards are putting down at the moment, so this one will sit on my desk until morning, just as a reminder.

Phantom - Out of the Masoleum

Never heard of these guys until the other day when I saw this. Instantly intrigued, so I ran through their 2025 album Tyrants of Wrath and dug it. Their Bandcamp is HERE.

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NCBD:

It's funny how the wheel turns. Not too long ago, I was lamenting that almost everything I read each month is based on a pre-existing IP from my childhood. While I am still seeing that some weeks, there is a whole crop of new creator-owned books I love, and three of the biggest ones have number two issues this week!

Chris Condon and Charlie Adlard. 'Nuff said. The Earth's started with some serious Blood Simple vibes - I talked a bit about that when we reviewed issue one on Drinking with Comics last month (HERE), so I was immediately infatuated. 

Interestingly enough, on the same episode of Drinking with Comics I linked above, I also talked about how James Tynion IV and Marguerite Bennett's Odin has two things I love: 1) Elements that pay homage to Donna Tartt's The Secret History, and 2) dead nazis. Can't go wrong, especially when I have a hunch there are more dead nazis on the horizon. Watch Mike and I talk about that first issue HERE.

Rounding out the new stuff, Andy MacDonald, Matthew and Mark Elijah Rosenberg's If Destruction Be Our Lot might have actually been my favorite of the three. I guess I'm a sucker for Rosenberg's style, and this definitely feels adjacent to What's the Furthest Place From Here storytelling-wise. 

I'm starting to wonder if it was that big of a thing for Aaron to die so early on in this series, if we were bound to spend this much time in the past where he's still alive. Either way, the road to issue 50 winnows, and I'm hoping for some big stuff to coalesce out of what's building in The Fall of the House of Slaughter. 

And we close the week with one of the aforementioned childhood IPs, although expertly adapted to the present day (and a middle-aged reading base) in the pages of the Energon Universe. 

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At some point in the last year or so, I caught wind of Russell Bates and Matt McDowell's 16mm Sheila and the Brainstem, then quickly forgot about it again. That's okay, because I randomly came across Severin's announcement for the upcoming release. Here's the trailer:

Part Repo Man, part... I'm not quite sure, but I'm curious as all hell to see this one. No date yet, but it's a'coming. 

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Playlist:

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosophy of Beyond

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

The Devil's Blood - Come, Reap EP

Boards of Canada - Campfire Headphase

Deafheaven - Lonely People with Power

Revocation - New Gods, New Masters

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

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Card:

One card from Thoth tonight, because I'm tired.

Yeah. Need to make some changes. 

Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat - Day 7: Nurture My Pig

 

This one here... this had to wait until the weekend (technically, I'm posting this on Monday, but I penned the post itself between Saturday and Sunday). This is a hard-drinking song right here. I LOVE this track - easily in my top 3 from these guys.

 

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I rewatched Jennifer Reeder's Knives and Skin this past Saturday night. Man, one of the most insanely original films I've seen in years. 

 

I may have mentioned this here before, but I feel like Reeder and Jane Schoenbrun are kind of helping fill in the gaping maw that David Lynch's death left in my life. These two Directors are so original, their work so breathtaking and of the twenty-first century, they help me contextualize the last twenty years in ways Lynch helped me contextualize the first thirty of my time here. Also, Knives and Skin was filmed not far from where I grew up, so that's pretty awesome to see here as well. 

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Although I picked up and started reading Absolute Wonder Woman Volume 2 back when it hit stands in... November? I shelved it until I knew we were going to cover it 

Possibly even better than the first volume, this pretty much cements Hayden Sherman as my favorite working comic book artist. 

Possibly even better than the first volume, this pretty much cements Hayden Sherman as my favorite working comic book artist. The story evolves in a very natural way from the events in the first volume, with a recording of the Teratryde's death sound falling into the wrong hands, and Diana seeking out information that another Amazon is being held in a government Black Site called Area 41. Said site is built atop an ancient maze, and we get all manner of wonderfully odd and horrific maze denizens from Thompson and Sherman. 

Also, an interesting take on Zatana, a character the Absolute Universe introduces in a decidedly more horrific manner than the regular DCU does. 

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Playlist:

Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. II: Philosophy of Beyond

John Carpenter w/ Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

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

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Ruin of Romantics - Velvet Dawn

Marilyn Manson - Exit Wounds (pre-release single)

Mastodon - Your Ghost Again (single)

Metallica - Garage Days Re-Revisited

Mascara - Hla-11Tf (single)

Double Life - Indifferent Stars (single)

King Woman - Doubt EP

Flying Lotus - 1983

Massive Attack - 100th Window

Phantom G.D.L. - Tyrants of Wrath

Deftones - private music

Beak> - Eponymous

Belbury Poly - From an Ancient Star

The Smiths - Eponymous

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Card:

Back to my tried-and-true Thoth Deck for today's spread:

• Knight of Swords

• XIII: Death

• Prince of Wands

Use intelligence to guide changes ahead into fuel creativity.

Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat - Day 6: Psychobilly Freakout

Chalk this up to the Mandela Effect (it's real!), but if I remember correctly (possibly a no right there), my good friend Sonny V. had Smoke 'Em if  You Got 'Em on either cassette or CD, and I remember it having a completely different cover. Could be wrong, because I can't tell you what I remember about the cover, just that it was way more raw than the one used on the reissue. Either way, awesome track!

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Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat - Day 5: I Can't Surf (Live, 2009)

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Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat - Day 4: Bales of Cocaine

From 1993's masterpiece, and the start of the three-album trifecta that would endear the Rev to me for life. The Full Customs Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat was produced by Gibby Haynes, and I'm not sure you need to know anything more to understand this record. As with Liquor in the Front and It's Martini Time, I love every song on this record. This might be my favorite, though. 

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Watch:

Aaron, one of my fellow panelists from The Dread Broadcast, recently posted an interview with Hokum Director Damian McCarthy on his A&B Horror Movies show.

This is a fantastic peek behind the veil with one of my favorite modern Directors. Aaron always does great interviews, but this is one of the best. 

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Play:

I picked up Tormented Souls for Switch a few nights ago when I saw it on sale for $4.99. I don't remember how this one ended up on my wishlist, but looking at it now, holy cow. Check out the trailer:

Between the haunting piano and the mishapen, masked antagonist, I'm picking up major Fulci vibes! I'm planning to start playing tonight. 

I've recently become obsessed with recapturing the magic of Friday nights from just the last few years. It's funny how quickly feelings for a time and place slip away and recede into an "era." Specifically, I'm still reeling a bit with the echoes of Shudder canceling The Last Drive-In. Some of my favorite Friday nights since moving to TN have consisted of getting off work, writing, picking up burritos and heading home to drink beer and watch Joe Bob and Darcy. Once that final movie ends, if I'm able, I retreat upstairs and fire up a game. That's the intention this evening, when I'll pick something from AMC +'s TLDI catalog, watch and then fire up Tormented Souls for the first time.

Sounds like a killer Friday night to me. Hmm... maybe I'll even do House By The Cemetery (if it's still on there).

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Playlist:

Émilie Leviensaise-Farrouch - Censor OST

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

John Harrison - Day of the Dead OST

Jozef Van Wissem and Sqürl - Only Lovers Left Alive OST

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

Algiers - The Underside of Power

Darren Smith & Terrance Zhunich - Repo! The Genetic Opera OST

Flying Lotus - Yasuke

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Card:

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

• Ace of Swords

• 16: The Tower

• Ten of Wands

A breakthrough of intellect leads to an overturned habit. This, in turn, leads to an abundance of new focus.

Holy shit could I use this right now. 

Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat - Day 3: Starlight Lounge

Posting this later than usual, but I had back-to-back podcasts last night, and I'm not used to the day-by-day scheduling anymore. Starlight Lounge, from the 1998 album Space Heater.

 

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Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat - Day 2: It's Martini Time

Well, thought I forgot about the whole "Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat," eh? That's because I 100% DID forget. 

The one that started it all for me. True, Mr. Brown and I had seen the Rev years before opening for White Zombie on the Astrocreep tour (along with Melvins!), but it wasn't until 88.3 WXAV St. Xavier University played "It's Martini Time" that I fell in love with the Rev's guitar sound and overall aesthetic and bought an album.

I still think this track's guitar is among my favorites ever. 
 

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NCBD:

Great list today. 

Continuing on as my favorite of the Energon Universe books, this cover to Transformers 33 sends shivers of great joy through my body. I still can't get over all the massive changes Kirkman has added to the book - Optimus giving over Prime leadership to Elita One, Thundercracker ditching the 'cons and becoming a 'bot, and hey, let's not forget, what the hell is going on with Megatron? Hopefully, we'll see this issue. 

The finale of this fantastic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Thing on the Doorstep. This story has gotten maybe more traction than any other HPL story in a while, so it's been interesting to see the different takes. Pretty sure Birks/Roberts is my favorite (though I can't help my forlorn wonder at what Richard Stanley's would have been like).

I have zero idea what is going on with this family reunion from the afterlife storyline in TMNT. I mean, I'm following the story just fine; I'm just not sure what this means for the series going forward. I guess one thing to keep in mind is, I don't think this was ever done before. For now, I'll hold my reservations close to my chest and trust in the creative team, as we're almost 170 issues into the relaunch continuity that began back in 2012, and the book has been fantastic for most of that run.

Once again, totally forgot this book was even out there. Going to need a full re-read before getting into this, and I'm wondering if I should just wait until this second chapter runs its course. 

Will this actually come out today? This final chapter of Rafael Grampá's Gargoyle of Gotham has been pushed back so many times, I lost count. Still, these are unbelievably gorgeous books that must take a lot of Grampá's heart and soul to produce, so I'm not complaining. 

The Energon Universe tightens its stranglehold on my wallet with another book! I never had any of the toys as a kid, but I was always intrigued then and am still now. I've loved the introduction of these characters in the other books, so this feels like a natural evolution.

Looking forward to more of this weird Snake Eyes conundrum. I love that they went all the way back to the first two years of ARAH to show us something Dr. Venom did that we never saw until now. That kind of callback really shows that Hama continues to function at the top of his game, even after 329 issues. 

The first issue was solid, and I'm curious what this title will mean for the evolution of SIKTC. 

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Read:

I'm still working through Stephen King's third novel in The Dark Tower series, The Wastelands. This is my favorite book, so it's a bit amazing to me how long it's taking me to read. I sailed through up to the Doorkeeper in the house on Dutch Hill, where he crosses over into Roland's world. Amazing scene that sort of serves as an act break. After, it's been a bit slower going. Part of that is various other things grasping at my attention - lots of comics to read for DwC, etc. Part of it is also something I only just realized this morning, as I blew through the chapter where Gasher absconds with Jake, leading him into the detritus tunnels of east Lud. This entire post-Jake's section is where the evidence of Roland's world having moved on grows to include people.

Sure, in book one, The Gunslinger, we had the town of Tull, but this is early on in the saga, and Tull feels like a town in a Western, which is what that first book purports to be for it's early chapters, only slowly peeling back the curtain and revealing Roland's world is actually very similar to our own, only a thousand or so years down a timeline where we destroy ourselves with, what I've always assumed, was warfare.

"The ancient, rusty hulks of what had once surely been automobiles stood at intervals along both curbs... There were no tires on any of these eerie hulks; they either had been stolen or had rotted away to dust long since. And all the glass had been broken, as if the remaining denizens of this city abhorred anything which might show them their own reflections... beneath and between the abandoned cars, the gutters were filled with drifts of unidentifiable metal junk and bright glints of glass. Trees had been planted at intervals along the sidewalks in some long-gone, happier time, but they were now so emphatically dead that they looked like stark metal sculptures against the cloudy sky. Some of the warehouses had either been bombed or had collapsed on their own, and beyond the jumbled heaps of bricks..."

The passage above switched on a fairly bright lightbulb when I read it yesterday morning. This is our world. We're not quite there yet, but the fact that, over the intervening roughly two decades since I last read The Wastelands, our world has become an eerily identifiable 're-echo' of Roland's. The key 'tell' here is the fact that the deeper Gasher, Jake, Roland and Oy descend into East Lud and the Tick Tock Man's domain, the more we get a sense that the people who inhabit this land enjoy living amongst the ruins of the old world. That's the thing I always get hung up on when contemplating, "could we actually take things too far?" in our own world, the operative idea being that, at a certain point, all of our in-fighting and disassembling of the mores, conventions and general social reform is going to leave our world covered in detritus and despair and that no one wants that. Only, maybe some people do want that. Maybe some people, to quote Michael Caine's Alfred in Christopher Nolan's film The Dark Knight, "want to see the world burn." We know those people have always existed; however, maybe they're not fringe, ineffectual nothings who can only damage small portions of our society. Maybe they are the people in charge. The same way late-stage Capitalism has seen the advent of destruction economics, maybe there's a big-picture advantage for those in power in destroying everything we've built.

"He thought he was at last beginning to fully understand what that innocuous phrase - the world has moved on - really meant. What a breadth of ignorance and evil it covered."

Jesus Christ. No wonder King hates trump so much - literally the Ticktock man of our world, and he predicted him over thirty years ago.

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Playlist:

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST

sunn O))) - Loser

Pilot Priest & Electric Youth - Come True OST

Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta

Boy Harsher - Careful

Blackbraid - Celestial Womb EP

Revocation - New Gods, New Masters

Sinoa Caves - Beyond the Black Rainbow OST

Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire

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Card:

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

• Six of Cups

• Queen of Pentacles 

• Four of Pentacles

Emotional Balance takes a steady hand on Earthly concerns, something I'm struggling with at the moment, which makes feel isolated.