Pale Dian's Feral Birth

 

Somehow, I totally missed that Austin's Pale Dian released a new record last year. I've had Feral Birth on rotation since discovering it a few days ago, and I really dig it. If you missed out on 2016's Narrow Birth, it is well worth your time, as is all of Pale Dian's music. You can order a digital copy of Feral Birth directly from the band on their Bandcamp HERE, or you can hope their label, Green Witch Recordings, does a re-press of the vinyl. If they do, it should be available at the Green Witch Shop HERE.

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Watch:

Yesterday, HBO dropped a new trailer for the upcoming second season of Álex de la Iglesia's 30 Coins, and it looks fantastic!

I love this show so much, I'm not only excited for the second season to drop in October, but to rewatch Season One beforehand. I can't wait to relive this one. Igelsia's take Horror is unlike anything else I've ever seen, with its often-comedic underpinnings offset brilliantly by the creepiest take on Catholicism I've maybe ever seen. 

 

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Playlist:

Cristobal Tapia De Veer - Smile OST

Cristobal Tapia De Veer - Black Mirror: Black Museum OST

Agnes Obel - Aventine

Pale Dian - Feral Birth

Flying Lotus - Yasuke

Mannequin Pussy - Patience

Sandrider - Godhead

Flying Lotus - Los Angeles

Sepultura - Schizoprenia 

Christopher Young & Lustmord - The Empty Man OST

Beth Gibbons, Polish National Radio Symphony Orch & Krzysztof Penderecki - Henryk- Górecki's Symphony #3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs)

Explode Into Colors - Quilts EP

Pale Dian - Feral Birth

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Exhalants - 

Slayer - Decade of Aggression

            

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Card:

• Queen of Swords - Watery aspect of Air, or the Emotional application of the Intellect

• Prince of Cups - Airy aspect of Water, or the reverse of above, Emotions honed by Intellect

• Princess of Wands - Earthen aspect of Fire, or the physical world as manipulated through the Will

I'm looking at this as a direct commentary on my creative week, which, despite some fairly major breakthroughs plot-wise, has been weak. My Emotions undermine my understanding of what I need to do to achieve my goal, I then turn around and overrule my emotions with logic, but only for a short time before the material world around me sidetracks my work and drains my Will.

I'm trying to sell this week to myself as a "recharge." Let's see if that's true.

 

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Duration:

See what I mean? This is... embarrassing. I knew I didn't clock that many hours this week, but this is insane. Granted, my folks were here for five days and I worked, but still. Inexcusable. 

This is 7/14/23 through 7/20/23. Starting today I need to re-engage.

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Tori Amos - Cornflake Girl

 

If you're watching Yellowjackets, you know why I'm posting this. I feel like I totally forgot about this song and Tori Amos in general. I was never a HUGE fan, but respect the hell out of her, and this song has always blown me away.

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Watch:

30 Coins season two!

 

I'll admit - I'm still pretty raw at HOBO MAX for canceling Raised By Wolves instead of just doing that third, final season, and that makes me a bit trepidatious about any show on there having a continuing storyline from season to season. I'll also admit that based on how 30 Coins season one ended, I didn't foresee more to the story at all. I mean, obviously, the final images left things open for more, but it didn't seem essential. Which makes me feel better about another season of the show. I mean, I want as much of this as they'll give me, but I also don't want a dangling cliffhanger. 

ALL of that aside, can I get a hell yeah for this trailer? Can't wait.

 

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Playlist:

Bettye LaVette - The Scene of the Crime

Damon - From the Attic

Le Butcherettes - A Raw Youth

Fvnerals - Let the Earth be Silent

Massive Attack - Mezzanine

Cristobal Tapia de Veer - Smile OST

Mortician - House By the Cemetery EP

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Suck My Kiss (single)

QOTSA - Smooth Sailing (single)

Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

Tori Amos - Cornflake Girl (single)

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Card:

From Missi's Raven Deck:

In this particular moment, this card is a reminder to focus on the world outside myself, because sometimes, that interior space just gets too cyclical and can cause a lot of anxiety,

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New Sleaford Mods!

 

From the forthcoming album Spare Ribs, out January 15th on Rough Trade. Pre-order HERE. Thanks to Mr. Brown for reminding me about this, as the Mods are always one of those bands that slide right off my radar when I'm not actively listening to them. 

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'Cast

My perpetual co-host Chris Saunders and I recently started an all Horror comics and literature spin-off show under The Horror Vision umbrella. The first episode of A Most Horrible Library went up early Monday morning, with more to follow on a somewhat regular basis.

 

This show is kind of our way of going back to substituting a new show for where Drinking with Comics left off; I'm still hoping to resurrect that after things go "back to normal," as it is primarily a live show, however, I'm not really one who believes things will go back to normal anytime soon, so in the interim, we have this as an outlet to talk about all the great Horror-centric reading out there. A Most Horrible Library will release under the same stream as the regular Horror Vision show, so no need for a new subscription.

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Watch:

After working our way a little over halfway through the fourth, apparently final "part" of Netflix's The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina over the last two nights, K and I rounded out our Monday night with the first of two episodes HBO dropped yesterday of Alex de la Inglesia's 30 Coins.

Holy smokes - this episode had the best monster I've seen since The Ritual a few years back. Mind-boggling and totally terrifying. I'm really looking forward to watching this one weekly.

Currently watching 1993's Body Melt on Amazon Prime. I've been feeling run down and a back-ache/stomach pain combination's reduced my sleep to less than I need to function, so I took a re-set day from work and plan on doing pretty much nothing. I actually started trying to rewatch Adam Simon's Brain Dead, which is also on Prime, however, the transfer to digital looks like it came off a deteriorated, second-hand VHS, with that dreary old 4:3 aspect ratio that doesn't work on anything not filmed to specifically have that effect. In looking it up, I see that Shout/Scream Factory transferred Brain Dead a few years back, so I'm hoping that pops up somewhere; I've never seen Brain Dead in its entirety, and it's been on my list for a while.

So far, Body Melt's doing the trick, though, and while I'm rarely interested in what Vinegar Syndrome releases, there are exceptions, and this would be one of them, and they did a pretty good job cleaning this one up for the digital age.

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Playlist:

Massive Attack - Mezzanine

Orville Peck - Pony

Soundgarden - SOMMS

Them are Us Too - Remain

Thou - Rhea Sylvia

Mrs. Piss - Self Surgery

The Blues Brothers - Briefcase Full of Blues

Muddy Waters - Electric Mud

Turquoise Moon - The Sunset City

Goatsnake - Black Age Blues

Goatsnake - Trampled Under Hoof

MF Doom - Operation: Doomsday

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris

Van Halen - 1984

Iress - Prey

The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once

Belong - October Language

David Bowie - Scary Monsters (And Super Freaks)

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Card:

First spread of 2021:

The Queen of Swords is definitely a defining force in my life, or at least has been over the last year or two. One of the reasons I do all this logging is so I can look back through the blog and track influences and the like, and when I search Queen of Swords, I see it came up five times in 2020. Thus, reading in the conventional Past-Present-Future positions, we see the Queen of Swords or the Airy Part of Intellect, ie sharpened perception as the Present and the Idea as a concise statement fortified by Knowledge (Past; 6 of Cups) and the balancing of the many tiers of that Intellect/Idea as a challenge to be overcome (Future; 10 of Wands) in the near future. 

Loathe - Two Way Mirror

 

My god, these guys are like the Bloc Party of Post Metal. This is, of course, one of the albums I discovered directly after putting up my 'best of 2020' list last week. The way Loathe move between noise, atmosphere, super intense metal, and melodic vocals is seamless and an absolute joy to listen to, especially on headphones.

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Watch:

 

Alex De La Iglesia is a filmmaker who I've known about for nearly 20 years now but never seen any of his movies. And there's a lot of them. To go back to the early 21st century, when I still lived in Chicago, my good friend and brain trust behind Darkness Brings the Cold Dennis is one of two friends who really stoked my love of Horror movies. Dennis had an enormous collection of DVDs and a wealth of knowledge for the genre at large, and one of the films he always touted as a favorite was one he couldn't update from his old VHS copy, for which he did not have a player. This was Iglesias's 1995 Day of the Beast. Without even knowing anything about this one, I was intrigued based on the name and cover image, which Dennis had on a badass shirt:

After a recent conversation with Dennis, I finally sought out some of Iglesias's films and added them to my Amazon Watch List. Just in time, because the other day the trailer for his new HBO series made its rounds in our Horror Vision text thread, and I was BLOWN AWAY. Whatever that is at 1:19 will be in my nightmares for years to come. It reminds me a bit of that thing at 21 seconds into the American Horror Story: Coven opening credits sequence. 

Either way, January 4th can NOT come fast enough. 

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NCBD:

Holy cow, there were A LOT of new comics for me yesterday. I divide this between the two shops, so I'm spreading my support around, but here's a combined total of what I picked up:

This series continues to be one of the funniest things I've read in a while. Super light, super creative, each issue reads like a chapter in a big-budget action film. 

A recommendation from my Drinking w/ Comics co-host Mike Wellman, this one takes place in Chicago and totally nails its look at feel. Hell, I've been to the Globe Pub, so that got me right away.

 

The previous issue of this new Locke and Key mini series nearly made me cry, so I'm looking forward to some closure before we do next year's crossover with Sandman.

Miskatonic #2, wherein we get a ton of new characters from all kinds of H.P. Lovecraft stories involved in what is shaping up to be a really complex, interesting blend of historical fact with Lovecraft's literary legacy. 

Eddie at the Bug recommended this very independent book to me, and the moment I saw it, I knew I had to have it. Artist Alex Ziritt - who made a huge impression on me with Space Raiders a few years back - offers some truly unique style when designing his visual worlds, and from the brief flip-through I did upon picking this one up, looks like Night Hunters is no different. 

I totally forgot the new Brubaker/Phillis HC was landing this week until I walked into the shop. Perfect timing, as I finally just read their previous one, Pulp, over the weekend. It won't take me nearly that long to dig into this one, that's for sure, as I loved Pulp, and it definitely put me in the mood for more from these guys.

Two issues left after this one, and once again, I have NO idea where this is going. Some definite surprises in this chapter, and more of that gorgeous art and deep character development the Opena/ Remender team seems able to deliver flawlessly.

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This final one, We Live #3 from Aftershock Comics, just turned this series from an on-the-fence read to something I Love. Definite shades of Day of the Dead and Girl with All the Gifts, this issue supplants the first two chapters' more Fantasy approach with an equal measure of Horror. This book feels like something new, something that blends a lot of different influences and genres for a unique effect. We Live has also proved its ability to continuously surprise me, so from here out, I'll be waiting for each subsequent issue with the kind of excitement few books these days inspire in me. 

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Playlist:

Swans - The Seer

Howard Shore - Crash OST

Portishead - Third

Richard Einhorn - Shockwaves OST

Amesoeurs - Eponymous

Opeth - Deliverance

Anthrax - State of Euphoria

One Stroke Baron - 

Loathe - I Let It In and It Took Everything

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Card:

 

This is certainly how I feel at the moment, having spent nearly $70 on comics today. I'm kind of beating myself up over it. It's such a weird feeling, to balance in your head what you want and what you need. I'd imagine my peers with children have an easier time staying on focus as far as needs/wants. I'm not jealous, but I definitely think that, as I age and find myself pretty much able to buy whatever I want within my realms of interest - none of which is extravagant, mind you, but definitely adds up - I feel occasional pangs of guilt at, well, I guess at not spending the money one something more important? This, however, begs the question who decides what's important.