Young Widows - Decayed

From the recently released, DECAYED: Ten Years of Cities, Wounds, Lightness, and Pain, a compilation of rare tracks, B-sides, split releases with various artists, and stand-alone singles from across Young Widows' career. You can pick this up at their Bandcamp, HERE.

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NCBD:

A nice, short week:

Always a good day at the shop when I bring home a new Savage Sword. 

Red Roots is one of the sleepers of the year. Loving this book. As far as the solicitations I've seen, next issue is the last, but I'm hoping that's just a season break.

Zartan. We can always use more Zartan! I'm telling you. Him, Scrap Iron and Copperhead. Give me a sitcom with the three of them running a damn bar in the everglades and I'd be one happy MF.

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Watch:

Rewatched Panos Cosmatos' Mandy last night. Just because.

I've posted this trailer here before, but what the hell. This film never ceases to amaze me.

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Playlist:

John Carpenter & Alan Howarth - Big Trouble in Little China OST

The Cramps - Gravest Gravy

The Cramps - RockinnReelininAucklandNewZealandXXX 

Roughly Enforcing Nostalgia - Front Door Doxologies

Marilyn Manson - One Assassination Under God Chapter 2

The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium

Young Widows - DECAYED: Ten Years of Cities, Wounds, Lightness, and Pain

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Matthew Pusti - Onslaught OST

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Blut Aus Nord/Aevangelist - Codex Obscura Nomina

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Card:

Still on the Thoth deck. Here's another single card pull:

Overindulgence. A direct answer to a question I have been asking myself all day about replacing beer with cookies.

John Carpenter - Cathedral

I'm not sure I ever posted about it here, but early in the year John Carpenter announced a new album and an accompanying graphic novel. Cathedral - the fifth record for Carpenter as a recording artist, accompanied by Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies - is the soundtrack to a graphic novel based on a dream the auteur says he had. I pre-ordered this from Sacred Bones and after receiving it a few weeks back, I have to say, this is probably the best Carpenter album not associated with a film.  Here's the obvious single from the record, which plays like one of those great Carpenter film themes. 

A few nights after receiving this, I sat down and read the novel while listening. It's pretty good. I haven't been very interested in some of the other comic work I've seen come out over the last decade or so from Carpenter, but I tuned out his films after the 80s as well (with Cigarette Burns being the one exception I can think of). Overall, though, I enjoyed this entire experience. 

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Watch:

Running on empty tonight, so I'm just going to post the original, 1981 trailer for my favorite Slasher flick: 

I just watched this again last night, and it never disappoints. I think one of the main thing that sets The Burning apart from other slashers of the era - other than Tom Savini's awesome FX - are how likable the camp characters are. For the most part at least. 

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Read:

Last week I put paid Stephen King's penultimate Dark Tower novel, The Song of Susannah and immediately cracked open the seventh and final novel in the series, The Dark Tower.

I'm approaching the resolution of this series - the second time I've taken the entire journey, and the first in one consecutive collection of readings - with some trepidation. I don't want it to end. And for the final book, this one hits the ground running; the opening scene with Jake and Callahan at the Dixie Pig really telegraphs that we're approaching the end, and shit is getting heavy. Very much looking forward to this re-read in particular, because even more than with Song of Susannah, I have only read this once, and not since its original publication, way back in 2003.

I will say, right off the bat, there is a lot of deus ex machina in these last two entries in the series. I know King took great pains to build that in when he wove himself and our world into the story, but Ka is starting to do a lot of really convenient things for our Ka-tet. And that's fine; not really a complaint, just an observation I would not have been astute to make upon my first reading of these last two books.

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Playlist:

Carter Burwell - Blood Simple OST

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

The Fixx - Reach the Beach

Arab Strap - The Red Thread

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies - Cathedral

The Ocean - Precambrian

The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

Claudio Simonetti, Massimo Morante & Fabio Pignatelli - Tenebrae OST

Carpenter Brut - Leather Temple

Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss

The Cramps - Psychedelic Jungle

Foxy Shazam - Dark Blue Night

The Cramps - Gravest Gravy

The Fixx - Phantoms

Turnstile - GLOW ON

Killswitch Engageg - The End of Heartache

Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears

Spotlights - Seance EP

Sepultura - Arise

Rammstein - Reise, Reise

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Card:

From my Thoth deck:

Let things develop before making another move. Not going to lie, this is not a super welcome card to see right now. 

Blood Incantation - The Stargate

2019's Hidden History of the Human Race put Blood Incantation on a lot of people's radar, mine included. I dug the record, but probably not as much as the legions that ranked it as or near their album of the year. Since then, they'd fallen off, as I'm not even certain I knew they had a 2022 record (Timewave Zero; named after Terence and Dennis McKenna's theories of novelty and emergence, which I was once obsessed with). Recently, Mr. Brown mentioned these guys had a new one, so I sought out this year's Absolute Everywhere on Apple Music earlier today and gave it a listen. Then I went looking for a track to post and saw I had no actual idea how ambitious this band is. Holy shit. Tangerine Dream? Michael Ragen, DP for Panos Cosmatos' The Viewing? Knights? Space Ships? Cosmic Horror???

What the absolute fuck? There are moments on this album that are among the heaviest things I've heard, and moments that remind me of 90s electro-psychedlic group The Orb. Mind thoroughly blown.

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Watch:

Holy smokes! Steven C. Miller's Werewolves hits theatres this weekend, and after seeing it Thursday night, K and I are both chomping at the bit to see it again! A LOT OF FUN!!

This movie 100% knows what it is, shortcomings and all, and just leans into it. There's a lot of macho shit in the opening few moments, which rubbed me a bit wrong at first. Then there's a scene where Grillo's character is introduced as a Micro Biologist, and I suddenly understood the M.O. here - Werewolves is essentially a Stallone flick from the mid-80s, and realizing that freed me to embrace it for the insane ride that it is. Once we move past the handful of transformations we see - remember the set up here is that a Super Moon is going to cause BILLIONS of people to become werewolves for one night - most of the FX are gloriously practical. 

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Playlist:

Final Light - Eponymous

Dance with the Dead - Dark Matter E.P.

Dance with the Dead - B Sides: Vol. 1

Drug Church - Prude

Sort Sol -w/ Chelsea Wolfe - Life Took You For A Freq. (single)

Sylvaine - Nova

Fen - Epoch

Ulver - Liminal Animals

Antibalas - Where the Gods Are in Peace

Moon Wizard - Sirens

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Windhand - Eponymous

Shellac - To All Trains

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Sumerlands - Dream Killer

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Card:

Today's card:

Here are two little bits from the Grimoire:

"Intense passion to create, but its children are monsters."

And the equally intriguing, if far more vague:

"The Darkness of the Raging Sea."

The second bit is an obvious observation from The Book of Thoth, truncated from Crowley's meaningful (less?) meanderings about the background of the card's image. To me, the "Seven-ness" of this card hits the lights first; completion. But this is a warning, and that's to "Understand the solutions" you employ to achieve that solution, as you may solve one issue and create something worse, hence the choppy waters.

2019: July 1st (Sweet) Mental Revenge

This song got me through some shit a few years back, and it came up in my mind last night. I hadn't realized it's actually a Waylon Jennings cover, so here's that version, too:



Gram Parsons and the Burrito Bros. have been drifting back into my thoughts, so I think I'm easing into a bit of a country jag. Been a while, and I'll welcome it. Also, my first pilgrimage to Joshua Tree National Park in about five years is coming up in August, so that's probably what's pushing me back to this music. Might even dust off the acoustic.

Might.

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Playlist from 6/30:

Godflesh - Love and Hate in Dub
Godflesh - Songs of Love and Hate
Thom Yorke - Anima
Black Polygons - Lobélia
Orville Peck - Pony
The Flying Burrito Brothers - The Gilded Palace of Sin
Roy Orbison - Sings Lonely and Blue

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Card of the day:

A storm's a brewing...