Napalm Death is Caught in a Dream

 

Big decision to make today. Am I going to jump work 30 minutes early and drive up to Eastside Bowl in Nashville to see Deadguy and Napalm Death at my favorite local venue? I'll report back tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a track from the latter's 1987 album Scum. 

I'll admit I'm fairly new to Napalm Death fandom. Not that I've ever had anything against them, but my exposure over the years has been minimal at best, and it wasn't until their recent collaboration with Melvins became available from Ipecac earlier this year that I became intrigued at what I'd missed. So far, while the albums I was faintly aware of and slightly exposed to back in the day - 1990's Harmony Corruption and 1987's Scum - are about what I've always thought they were and albums I would not have 'got' back in the day but fair much better now that I've grown into a bit over the years and absorbed influences and offshoots Crass and Godflesh, some of their newer stuff really strikes a chord with me. In particular, 2022's Resentment Is Always Seismic (A Final Throw of Throes) has made quite the impression on me in only a handful of listens. 

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NCBD:

Super excited for today's pull. Let's get into it:

The cover says it all: Shockwave is back! Hell yes! Can't wait to see what's been happening on Cybertron since Alita One took over as Prime, leaving Optimus de-primed a few issues back. Kirkman is killing it in this series!

One more issue of Simon Birks and Willi Roberts' adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Thing on the Doorstep, and so far, for a story that's received a fair amount of attention in the last few years, this is probably my favorite interpretation. Birks keeps it true to the story but also streamlines things, and Roberts' art is fantastic. Especially his knack for showing us the evil intentions of some of the characters. 

 

With the giant, magic Kaiju running around at the end of last issue, this one can't get into my peepers soon enough. Gene Luen Yang, Fero Peniche and Freddie E. Williams II have really found a way to keep this book evolving, not easy to do after Jason Aaron's run and all its reamapping of the cast. 

Creeping closer and closer to issue 50 and I'm pretty sure some pretty major events for SIKTC. 

From the solicitation blurb on League of Comic Geeks:

"THE SECRET OF SNAKE-EYES REVEALED? As Dawn infiltrates the Terror Drome, she learns a shocking secret about Snake-Eyes from their time in Springfield...one that could doom their future!"

Wait, what now? Holy cow, I didn't realize something like this was even on the horizon! Also, look at that cover art! Wow!

I'll confess, the Dawn Moreno character has never really intrigued me, but this? Based on the fact that the current Snake Eyes is a clone of the original (who died at some point when I was not reading this series), I'd say this could be a pretty huge development. Can't wait to find out more!

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Watch:

K and I saw Mortal Kombat 2 last night, and I am here to tell you this 

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Playlist:

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

The Monks - Black Monk Time

Steeve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST

Drug Church - Prude

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Double Life - Indifferent Stars EP

Napalm Death - Scum

Napalm Death - Resentment Is Always Seismic (A Final Throw of Throes)

Melvins & Napalm Death - Savage Imperial Death March

Low Cut Connie - Tough Cookies: The Best of the Quarantine Broadcasts

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Card:

My first pull with Jonathan Grimm's Eldritch Lace Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Ten of Wands

• IV: The Emperor

• Nine of Wands

It takes strength to overcome the rules that thwart our growth.

A lot of what I'm interpreting as work pulls lately. 

A Drink Before the War

From 1987's The Lion and the Cobra. Outstanding song from an outstanding album. Makes 1987 feel so close I can almost touch it.

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Watch:

It's been a while since I'd enjoyed John Carpenter's In the Mouth Of Madness. I'm guesting on John Trafton and Mile Fortune's This Movie Saved My Life podcast next week for the second part of their 1994 retrospective (part 1 is HERE), and Madness was one of the four films we're covering. 

Maybe it's because I just rewatched Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, too, but I'd never realized the influence that both the NOES and Hellraiser series had on this flick until now. I'm not sure if that influence comes more from writer Michael De Luca (who also wrote Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare) or JC himself, but it's definitely there. Also, and I know everyone who loves this movie knows this, but the brilliance of combining Stephen King's popularity with H.P. Lovecraft's ethos in Sutter Cane is one of the great triumphs of homage to either author, in a world where 75% of Horror is homage to one or the other (or both). I'd add that making Jürgen Porchnow look like Neil Gaiman - who would have been rounding the corner on finishing the original Sandman series for DC's Vertigo at the time, adds just the right amount of prescience about Gaiman's inevitable place in the pantheon King and Lovecraft reside over.

 

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

The Reverend Horton Heat - Whole New Life

The Raveonettes - Sing

Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra

Joy Division - Substance 1977-1980

Black Pyramid - The Paths of Time are Vast

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Card:

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

• Six of Cups - Emotional fulfillment.

• IX: The Hermit - I need a period to regroup. Badly.

• Three of Pentacles - Growth in Earthly terms. Not sure if this is responsibility maturation or windfall. Windfall would be nice.

Never Tear Apart Good Porno

Talk about an album that defines a year in my life. INXS's Kick was everywhere in 1987. I was eleven. I remember some stroke popular kid in my 4th grade class telling me in gym class how his father brought him home, 'the album all the college kids are listening to,' and brandishing the cassette. I assumed it was something stupid because this kid was my antithesis. However, I was wrong, it wasn't stupid at all. To this day, Kick and U2's The Joshua Tree still sound to me the way I physically felt at that time in my life, which is a really cool and kind of spooky thing, like my cells rearrange to some pre-recorded configuration when those sounds are re-introduced to my brain. No where is that more true than on this particular song.

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Watch:

Keola Racela's Porno dropped on Shudder this past week. This is one I'd been waiting on for a while; I almost went to a screening at some point, pre-COVID (I think - that seems so long ago now, it's like some hazy, undiscovered country). Anyway, I'll be reviewing this one later today on a new episode of The Horror Vision, which will go up Monday, however, let me just say - I really liked this flick, and it had one of the hardest to watch scenes EVER.

 

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Playlist:

Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat

Jenny Lewis - The Voyager

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Dissociation

Nabihah Iqbal - Weighing of the Heart

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Bölzer - Hero

The Ocean - Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic I Cenozoic

Sir Neville Mariner & Academy of St. Martin in the Fields - Amadeus (Complete Soundtrack Recordings)

Opeth - Deliverance

Dance with the Dead - B-Sides: Vol. 1

Me and That Man -  New Man, New Songs, Same Shit Vol. 1

The Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop OST

INXS - Kick 

Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power (1973 Bowie Mix)

David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

I also spent an entire morning at work yesterday diving into The Black Tapes podcast. Can't recommend this one enough. I hooked. 

 

Set up in a wonderful homage to Serial's first season, The Black Tapes deals with Paranormal Research and all the familiar hijinx - ghosts, demons, portals to hell. But the story is told through an NPR/This American Life kind of lens and because of that, it resonates in a very different way.

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Card:

Threes and Swords - looks bad on the surface, but really, this is the cutting away of baggage in order to clarify and establish a firm foundation (fours). I've had two intensely productive days of writing and am clearing away a lot of the mental detritus that has had me clogged up these last couple months - fall out from world events, obviously - and am ready to end the year on the same mega-productive note that carried me through the first six months of it.