The Cramps - Surfin' Dead Live!!!

Howzabout one of my favorite tracks by The Cramps to kick off Monday? I'm off Thursday and Friday this week, and you can betcher arse I'm going to be listening to more of these guys! Originally published on - get this - their Gravest Hits album, which came out before their debut full-length, Songs the Lord Taught Us. Think of it the same way Joy Division's Substance Collection is a collection of early singles that predate the recording of their two studio albums. Either way, Surfin' Dead blew up when it was included on the soundtrack for Dan O'Bannon's 1987 Return of the Living Dead. This particular version is from the Smell of Female live album.

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31 Days of Halloween:

I hate that we're not even a week out from the end of October! I'll be cruising directly into Noirvember again this year, and plan to try Dreamcember after that, but 31 Days of Horror is my favorite. 

I must say, for a film I did not care much for upon first seeing, Rob Zombie's Argento-esque Lords of Salem has become a favorite of mine. This film is so insanely blasphemous that it sometimes feels dangerous. Now that's a feat of no small measure. 

Mr. Zombie really created something special with this one. I like most of his films to varying degrees, but there's usually something I roll my eyes at in each one. Not here. This is dead serious in the way it handles its subject matter. That attitude, combined with the stunning setting, cinematography, and John 5's score, really make this a must-watch every year. Hard to believe I lived so long without it.

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1) Incident On and Off a Mountain Road///The Funhouse (theatrical viewing)

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1 Ep 4, "Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone"///Cabin in the Woods

3) Satanic Hispanics

4) Creature From the Black Lagoon 3D///Lucky McKee's May

5) The Strangers

6) [REC]

7) The Autopsy - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities///[REC]2

8) Where the Devil Roams

9) The Roost

10) Good Boy///The Viewing - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities

11) Blood Moon (aka Wolf Girl)///All Hallows' Eve (The Last Drive-In Helloween)

12) The Shining///The Simpsons Ssn 6 Treehouse of Horror V

13) Stream (2024)

14) Creepshow (1982; theatrical viewing)

15) They Live in the Grey///John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (theatrical viewing)

16) Black Phone 2

17) Scream 2///Mayhem (The Last Drive-In Blu-ray

18) The Exorcist

19) The Wolf of Snow Hollow///The Taking of Deborah Logan

20) Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (theatrical screening)///Cellar Dweller

21) The Black Phone///"Dream Kill" (segment in V/H/S85

22) The Transfiguration///Black Phone 2

23) Shelby Oaks

24) Clown in a Cornfield/// Jack-O (The Last Drive-In Splatterween double feature)

25) Ken Russell's Gothic/// Inferno/// Lords of Salem

26) Night of the Living Dead 1990/// Night of the Demons

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Read:

Persistence paid off this week. Previously, I'd cursed Netflix for a seemingly small theatrical opening for Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein. I'd just about given up hope of seeing such a clearly cinematic film on the big screen when, lo and behold, our local arthouse theatre, The Belcourt, added screenings to their website. I procured passes for this coming Thursday, and in the interest of freshening up my recall on Mary Shelley's original novel, I began an impromptu re-read. 

Some readers may recall from previous posts I did a few years back that I have in my possession the hardback edition illustrated by Bernie Wrightson. This one is on display with several other key pieces of Frankenstein memorabilia, so I tend to eye it every day and briefly flirt with the idea of revisiting it. Now is the perfect time.

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Playlist:

Type O Negative - World Coming Down

Lebanon Hanover - Let Them Be Alien

Bauhaus - Burning From the Inside

Perturbator - Age of Aquarius

The Cure - Pornography

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Beastmilk - Climax

Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Suspended in Dusk edition)

Various - Return of the Living Dead OST

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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 live for just a handful more hours! You can go check it out and support it HERE.

• XII: Hanged Man

• Five of Pentacles

• Page of Swords

Decisions will need to be made that might result in a conflict over money. Stay firm and prepare to be combative. Hold your ground and you will persevere.

Perfect timing. Waging a bit of a war with payroll at the moment. 

New Music From Odonis Odonis!!!

From the upcoming self-titled album, due out November 14th on Royal Mountain Records. Pre-order HERE.

Honestly, a lot of what these guys have done since 2016's Post Plague hasn't really stood the test of time with me. Post Plague is just so good that it generated some serious fan inertia. This, however. Wow. I love both tracks the band has released from this forthcoming album, and can't wait to hear the entire thing.

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31 Days of Halloween:

 

I received my copy of Joe Bob Briggs' The Last Drive-In Blu-ray this weekend, and quickly set about watching the first of the two features included. I'd seen Joe Lynch's Mayhem once before - when Joe Bob did it during season one of the show - and rewatching it, I loved it even more. I need to procure a copy of the Steve Moore score, too. 

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1) Incident On and Off a Mountain Road///The Funhouse (theatrical viewing)

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1 Ep 4, "Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone"///Cabin in the Woods

3) Satanic Hispanics

4) Creature From the Black Lagoon 3D///Lucky McKee's May

5) The Strangers

6) [REC]

7) The Autopsy - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities///[REC]2

8) Where the Devil Roams

9) The Roost

10) Good Boy///The Viewing - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities

11) Blood Moon (aka Wolf Girl)///All Hallows' Eve (The Last Drive-In Helloween)

12) The Shining///The Simpsons Ssn 6 Treehouse of Horror V

13) Stream (2024)

14) Creepshow (1982; theatrical viewing)

15) They Live in the Grey///John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (theatrical viewing)

16) The Black Phone 2

17) Scream 2///Mayhem (The Last Drive-In Blu-ray

18) The Exorcist

19) The Wolf of Snow Hollow/// The Taking of Deborah Logan

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Read:

Inspired by the seasonal shift in the weather and my corresponding temperament, last Wednesday night I fired up Type O Negative's October Rust and dug Joseph Michael Linsner's Dawn: Lucifer's Halo from my short boxes. 

Originally published in 1997 as a six-issue monthly mini-series through Sirius, at first glance at this book on the shelves, I wrongly assumed this was another in the late 90s spate of T&A books that flooded the shelves of comic book shops. Then, a few months into the run, while hanging out at a friend's house, I saw the series sitting on his coffee table and picked up one of the issues and began to flip through the pages. 

I was floored. 

I sat there and read the first two issues, then drove to the comic shop later that week and grabbed what they had on the shelf. To this day I'm still missing issue #1, but I bought everything Linsner did under the Dawn character after that: Three Tiers, the NY book in '01, Return of the Goddess, etc.  

Dawn is a singular concept. Utilizing religious themes, flourishes of High Fantasy, Horror, and eroticism, this book is visually stunning and intellectually fascinating. There's a tenderness to the romantic elements of the story that really makes me feel for the characters, particularly Darrian Ashoka, who is hopelessly in love with a Goddess and awash in a reality that suddenly includes Angels and Demons of a most violent sort. There's brutality to the violence, and a grandeur to the philosophical elements that really posit Linsner's writing as the product of deep thought and intense introspection, not just directed inward, but outward toward the goal of understanding our rich and tempestuous existence.

And then there's the Art. Nothing I could post here does it justice. Yes, a large part of the art is Dawn herself, but beyond that, JML really breathes life into the Metaphysical realms with a unique and lavish style unlike anything else out there. 

Time to track down that first issue on eBay. 

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Playlist:

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Suspended in Dusk version)

Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery

My Live with the Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

Telefon Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself

Carpenter Brut - Leather Teeth

Miranda Sex Garden - Suspiria

Netherlands - Vapors

Asaf Avidan - Live at the Acropolis

Noga Erez - RADAR Reworked 

Slayer - Live Undead/Haunting the Chapel

John Brennan and the Bigfeet - The Last Drive-In w/ Joe Bob Briggs OST

Various - Return of the Living Dead OST

The Damned - Night of 1000 Vampires

Goblin - Suspiria OST

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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.

• Page of Cups

• X: Wheel of Fortune

• XXI: The World

Intuit change and stay ahead of it. That's the only way to survive the world as we know it today.

Again, I know that's pretty generic, but I'm running on fumes at the moment, so I'll be leaving the cards out on my desk to ponder in the morning.

77s - You Don't Scare Me

Full disclosure - adding this song from the 77s' 1984 album All Fall Down was an eleventh-hour switcheroo. In truth, I don't recall ever hearing of the 77s before last night, when this song played over the closing credits of Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill and Joe Hill's Black Phone 2. 

F*#king track made an impression, to say the least.

I drove home on the 24 with both windows down, around 11:00 PM, blaring this track, and it felt GOOD. About as good as blasting "Rock You Like A Hurricane" felt leaving my first theatrical viewing of Ti West's Maxxxine* last July. Something about an awesome, swanky rock song pumping out the windows into the night air.

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I know that song's not actually in Maxxxine, but it fit the mood of the moment just fine.

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31 Days of Halloween:

There's a lot of trepidation surrounding Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill's Black Phone 2. The trailer looks fantastic, but A) like all goddamn Bluhouse trailers, it shows too much, and B) how do you follow that first film? 

I've been a fan of these two since Sinister. I stand by that one, regardless of that unneeded final scene. The atmosphere is so... heightened. I don't know that the film scares me, but I know it scares the characters. That's something I'm not sure I've ever put into words before, but it's accurate. The success of that first Black Phone film - what these two did with Joe Hill's wonderful but curt short story, it just seemed impossible to follow through on. Not the case. 

As annoyed as I've become seeing this trailer before every movie for the last month or two, somehow, it doesn't actually give that much away. That said, I'm posting this here for posterity's sake; if you haven't seen the film yet, don't watch it. The less you see, the better. Why? Because Black Phone 2 is visually and sonically STUNNING.

That should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Derrickson's career. The two standout additions here are the use of grainy, 16mm film stock that signifies an altered state of awareness and Atticus Derrickson's score.

Both the 16mm technique and Atticus Derrickson carry over from the duo's "Dream Killer" in V/H/S/85. I'm not the biggest fan of that particular franchise; however, seeing that segment on the big screen two years ago is something I reflect on quite a bit. The visual textures Derrickson creates, and the way they're accentuated by the score (and a cameo by Throbbing Gristles' Hamburger Lady) make such a strong sense impression... It's unlike most cinematic things. Same too with Black Phone 2. I'm not saying it's the best thing since The Shining, but this style is unlike anything else I've seen. There's a nostalgic element, but I think that's the atmosphere, not the actual technique. 

Either way, if you dug the first one, Black Phone 2 is well worth your time.

1) Incident On and Off a Mountain Road///The Funhouse (theatrical viewing)

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1 Ep 4, "Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone"///Cabin in the Woods

3) Satanic Hispanics

4) Creature From the Black Lagoon 3D///Lucky McKee's May

5) The Strangers

6) [REC]

7) The Autopsy - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities///[REC]2

8) Where the Devil Roams

9) The Roost

10) Good Boy/The Viewing - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities

11) Blood Moon (aka Wolf Girl)/All Hallows' Eve (The Last Drive-In Helloween)

12) The Shining/The Simpsons Ssn 6 Treehouse of Horror V

13) Stream (2024)

14) Creepshow (1982; theatrical viewing)

15) They Live in the Grey/John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (theatrical viewing)

16) The Black Phone 2

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Playlist:

Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out

Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery

Type O Negative - World Coming Down

Odonis Odonis - Eponymous (pre-release singles)

Perturbator - Age of Aquarius

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

Dream Division - The Devil Rides Out

Goblin - Phenomenon OST (Wax Work Edition)

Ghost - Infestissumam

Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh

Cursed Moon - Rite of Darkness

Gylt - I Will Commit A Holy Crime: Tandem

Bauhaus - Burning From the Inside

77s - All Fall Down

Beastmilk - Climax

Throbbing Gristle - Hamburger Lady (single)

Throbbing Gristle - Slut Bait (Live at the I.C.A. London single)

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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.

• Nine of Swords

• VII: The Chariot

• Eight of Wands

Anxiety, Willpower and Action. Meaning, I have to do something about the anxiety currently haunting me. That's pretty vague, but I don't have a lot of gumption in me at the moment, so leaving this here to possibly decode later. 

Ritual Howls - Going Upstate

It hit me today (writing this on Sunday) that Ritual Howls' Into the Water will be ten years old next year. That, in retrospect, made me reflect on how it's now been a decade since everything in my life got rewritten for the better. Not many folks get to start over again and improve their existence exponentially. I did, and these guys were one of the first bands I found waking up in that new life, this record in particular. So it will always be special.

Listening to this, the closing track, in the early night, winding home on the country road that takes me out of Clarksville proper where I sometimes write and into the unincorporated area where we live looked very much like this video. It was just kind of a perfect moment for October. 

Oh yeah, Ritual Howls have a new album dropping on Halloween this year. You can hear the singles and pre-order the Neon Green Vinyl over on their Bandcamp HERE.

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31 Days of Halloween:

1) Incident On and Off a Mountain Road///The Funhouse

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1 Ep 4, "Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone"///Cabin in the Woods

3) Satanic Hispanics

4) Creature From the Black Lagoon 3D///May

5) The Strangers

6) [REC]

7) The Autopsy - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities///[REC]2

8) Where the Devil Roams

9) The Roost

10) Good Boy/The Viewing - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities

11) Blood Moon (aka Wolf Girl)/All Hallows' Eve (The Last Drive-In Helloween)

12) The Shining/The Simpsons Ssn 6 Treehouse of Horror V

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Playlist:

Slaughterhouse - Sick and Tired EP

Gylt - I Will Commit A Holy Crime Tandem

Perturbator - Age of Aquarius

Perturbator - I Am the Night

Deftones - private music

White Lung - Eponymous

White Lung - Sorry

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven

Mark Ronson and RAYE - Suzanne (single)

RAYE - My 21st Century Blues

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

Ministry - Psalm 69

Ritual Howls - Into the Water

Ritual Howls - Ruin (pre-release singles)

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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.

• Page of Wands

• IV: The Emperor

• XXI: The World

Completion. To get there, though, I need the person holding the 'keys' to have an epiphany. Or maybe I'm the person holding the keys? If that's the case, I had the epiphany today. This is all vague, but I'll just say, working really hard on getting Black Gloves & Broken Hearts published by the end of the month. One big roadblock, and it's not me, it's the Emperor. 

Day of the Dead!

 

Started my Thursday morning off with John Harrison's Day of the Dead Soundtrack. There is no way this album isn't a massive influence on Boards of Canada.

This is interesting - this youtube post is from the 2022 Numenorean Music release of the score. Unlike the Waxwork vinyl edition I actually listened to, this changes the opening track of the album from "Main Title" to "Dead Suite," a track that essentially merges the first five tracks from the Waxwork edition. It should be noted that, without doing hardcore research, the Waxwork edition purports to be the definitive edition, and the accompanying essay by Harrison backs that up. From the Waxwork website:

"In 2013, Waxwork Records and composer John Harrison unearthed the original, lost 1985 master tapes containing the complete DAY OF THE DEAD film score from the attic of a recording studio in Pittsburgh, PA. After restoring, mixing, and mastering the complete musical cues for vinyl, Waxwork assembled a definitive and deluxe release of the film’s classic synth heavy score, approved by both the composer and director George A. Romero."

I actually had a bit of fun cueing up the vinyl with this youtube track and playing them simultaneously. In doing so, I was able to note their identical nature until a divergence that occurs at approximately 13:08 on the Numenorean version.

Unfortunately, the Waxwork is often out of print. However, if you go HERE you can sign up for notification when they bring it back, which they do so periodically. I can say this is easily one of, if not my favorite, record I have by them, so it's 100% worth it if you're a fan.

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31 Days of Halloween:

Ti West's first film, The Roost (2005), is criminally unavailable, and while I have a DVD I purchased from Blockbuster back in the 00s (it even has an embossed Blockbuster logo on the plastic of the inside front cover), this one is almost as hard to find as his follow-up, Trigger Man. Someone put these on Blu-ray! Seriously! 

Anyway, The Roost has become a semi-annual Halloween watch for me - thinking it made its way to annual this year - and I sat down with a vape pen and a beer to enjoy it last night. This one never disappoints, so while looking for a trailer to post, I came across the youtube channel Horror Channel Return, which has it up in full. Again, I can't feel bad posting this, because the film is just not available for people to watch. So I'm reposting it here, with the hopes that you'll buy it when and if you can, but also, that you'll head over to Horror Channel Return and check out the other cool stuff they have up. At a glance, I saw Rocktober Blood, so, yeah, instant sub.

1) Incident On and Off a Mountain Road///The Funhouse

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1 Ep 4, "Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone"///Cabin in the Woods

3) Satanic Hispanics

4) Creature From the Black Lagoon 3D///May

5) The Strangers

6) [REC]

7) The Autopsy - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities///[REC]2

8) Where the Devil Roams

9) The Roost

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Read:

I'll admit, I had a few reservations about the end of Daniel Warren Johnson's run on the Energon Universe Transformers title and Robert Kirkman taking over. In retrospect, that's assinine. Kirkman wrote one of my favorite comic series of all time - The Walking Dead. Not only wrote, but kept it my favorite monthly book from the time I began reading it monthly with issue #25 to the end with issue #193. Favorite because it sustained a level of engagement, surprise and fervor that entire time. That's thirteen years!!!

As a lovely outro to series artist Jorge Corona (see also, The Me You Love in the Dark), he illustrates the first handful of pages, a Decepticon 'pep rally' of the violent sort, as Megatron returns to his rightful (?) place as leader. I LOVE the reasoning Megatron employs here - that all the "Domination! Oppression! and Conquest!" they enact is all in the name of eventual peace. Brilliant! So many parallels...

If this is any indication - and I'm certain it is - we are in for quite a ride, especially with Kirkman also writing the auxiliary Transformers book, Void Rivals. I think things are really about to get fun.

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Playlist:

Ozzy Osbourne - Tonight (single)

Joy Division - Still

RAYE - My 21st Century Blues

Gylt - I Will Commit A Holy Crime Tandem

Slaughterhouse - Sick and Tired EP

Fields of the Nephilim - The Nephilim

Goatsnake - Black Age Blues

Jammes Luckett - May OST

Sam Hain - Unholy Passion

White Lung - Paradise

Slaughterhouse - Fun Factory

John Harrison - Day of the Dead OST

Fred Myrow & Malcolm Seagrave - Phantasm OST

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST

Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

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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.

• Page of Wands

• XIII: Death

• II: High Priestess

Creative Energy leads to a "death" - a complete change in scope for an already established idea. 

Mark Ronson & RAYE

It is rare to find music that you instantly bond with. That turns a Saturday night at 12:30 AM at age 49 into an event you cannot turn off. That makes you open another bottle of beer. That makes your heart pump like you've suddenly, unexpectedly fallen in love. That is RAYE. A chance encounter on KCRW on the way home from a great night out in L.A. that turns into an hours-long exploration of an artist's catalogue and yields a new obsession.

While the song above is the one that got me, I've been listening to Raye's 2023 album, My 21st Century Blues, for the last three days and it is stuck. In. Me. Head!!! Flashes of Hip-Hop and R&B, slick production and layered vocals really make this record stand out. Also exciting is the fact that Raye has a new album releasing next year. The pre-order is up HERE.

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31 Days of Halloween:

After rewatching Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's 2007 film [REC] this past Monday night, I feel I can definitively say that I think this is the single best use of the found footage Horror trope/genre out there. In fact, the only thing that might top it is [REC]2.

 

[REC] gets you to drop your guard early on, and then, when shit goes down, quickly becomes increasingly savage. If you haven't seen these but ever wondered what a demonic possession movie would look like with the contagion mechanics of a zombie film, these first two [REC] flicks are for you.

1) Incident On and Off a Mountain Road///The Funhouse

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1 Ep 4, "Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone"///Cabin in the Woods

3) Satanic Hispanics

4) Creature From the Black Lagoon 3D///May

5) The Strangers

6) [REC]

7) The Autopsy - GDT Cabinet of Curiosities///[REC]2

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NCBD:

This week's pull list over at Rick's Comic City, Clarksville:

One more issue of Batman: Dark Patterns to go after this. One of the best Bat-series I've read, and while I'll be sorry to see it go, with a character that is strip-mined as much as Bats, I'm glad Watters and Sherman are leaving us wanting more instead of overstaying their welcome. 

While I recall enjoying the first issue of this Event Horizon prequel mini-series, I don't remember it. I'm not the biggest fan of the flick - I dig it, but each subsequent viewing since my first has diminished it a bit. That's not to say there's a lot of mythology contained in that film that I'd like to see explored - hence my interest in this series. Like probably everyone else who has seen the film, I want more Hell dimension! This book promises to give it to us. 

Things are heating up in Springfield and beyond. Curious to see where the various threads are going to coalesce. I've been into G.I.Joe again in general, as evidenced by the fact that, earlier this evening, I spent 20 minutes lost in a rabbit hole about the character Sci Fi, a character I never owned or knew anything about. 

A new Horror comic from Spectrevision? Sign. Me. Up! Here's the solicitation, culled from League of Comic Geeks:

"Chicago, 1967. Magazine writer Harry Kean is dispatched to rural Indiana to investigate the sudden disappearance of Becky Plume, a local teenager who stepped into the national spotlight with staggering photographic evidence of a recent UFO sighting. Frustrated to leave his developing stories in Chicago—and the wife he’s hoping to win back—Harry sets off to expose a hoax but instead finds himself in a labyrinth of high strangeness involving a missing girl, her boyfriend, a UFO, and some mysterious black-clad visitors circling at the perimeter of a mystery more vast than Harry could possibly imagine."

I have no idea what this new SIKTC one-shot is, but, of course, I'm here for it!

And finally, Robert Kirkman takes over writing Transformers with issue #25. Looks like a potentially significant change in the book's tone, so I'm curious to see how this unfolds. 

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Playlist:

Dreamkid - Daggers

YUNGBLUD - Idols

Burial - Untrue

Telefon Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself

Drab Majesty - Careless

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

RAYE - My 21st Century Blues

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Faetooth - Labyrinthine

Type O Negative - October Rust

Tones on Tail - Everything!

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Spotlights - Love and Decay

Loathe - I Let It in and It Took Everything

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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.

• Queen of Cups

• Knight of Pentacles

• XI: Justice

Strong emotional responses can lead to Willful advances in compensation. 

That's pretty weak, fortune-teller vague, but I'm tired, so that's all I have at the moment. 

New Music from The Cure!!!

Even though I'm pretty sure many of us in 2024 harbor suspicions that our world is winding down, I usually cut the temptation to give that idea any credence by reminding myself that every generation up through time has probably thought the same thing. Blame that on all the fearmongering the Christians used a mentally ill poet named Enoch's writings for. That said, when Robert Smith starts singing about the world ending, I tend to ruminate on the idea with a little more consideration. 

"I know, I know my world has grown old..."

Fucking chills, mate. Fucking chills.

Spending my post-Halloween morning with the new album from The Cure. You can order a copy HERE.

 

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31 Days of Halloween:

Once again, I closed the season with George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead. I picked this ritual up from my good friend/Horror Vision cohost Anthony a few years back, and it has stuck! I can't think of a more meaningful way to close 31 Days of Halloween and Sam Hain than with the movie that birthed the entire modern era of the genre I love. And NoTLD is Public Domain, so it's all over YouTube and I thought I'd post it here today.

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1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS

5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway

7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats

8) V/H/S Beyond

9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10) Terrifier 3

11) Summer of '84

12) Rosemary's Baby/Suspiria ('77)

13) Daddy's Head

14) Undead

15) Moloch/Tea Cup (episode 1)/ Evil Dead 2

16) Smile

17) Laura Hasn't Slept/Smile 2

18) Terrifier

19) The House of the Devil - Last Drive-in Presentation (original air date April 26, 2019)

20) The Woods

21) Rob Zombie's 31

22) Carrie 2: The Rage

23) The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

24) Planet Terror

25) Baron Blood

26) The Blob ('88)/ The Thing/Tremors/Abigail

27) Halloween Kills

28) Over the Garden Wall

29) Hereditary

30) House By the Cemetery - The Last Drive-in Presentation (original air date April 16, 2021)

31) Dog Soldiers/The Exorcist (Theatrical cut)/Halloween (78)/ Don't Go in the House/Pizza Panic Party/Night of the Living Dead

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Playlist:

Type O Negative - Origin of the Feces

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Suspended In Dusk version)

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

John Carpenter & Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST

Moon Wizard - Sirens

Various - My Halloween Spotify Playlist

Siouxsie & The Banshees - Tinderbox

Siouxsie & The Banshees - The Scream

Skinny Puppy - Last Rights

Goblin - Suspiria OST

Danzig - Black Aria

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Card:

A one-card draw for MY new fiscal year:

Enlightenment. Suppressed desires, or perhaps in my case, ideas. The Lightbringer. Also, a warning against following the answers others may offer to you. A good card for a new year. Raising a glass to the idea perhaps most associated with this card, "Worship Thyself!!!"

Better Lovers - Drowning in a Burning World

 

Absolutely LOVING the debut album by Better Lovers, Highly Irresponsible! You can snag the record from the band HERE, or listen on all streaming platforms. This shit will wake you up!

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31 Days of Halloween:

K and I got to see Hereditary on the big screen again last night. My third overall viewing of Ari Aster's breakout debut, and it still totally fucking ROCKS!

The fact that Toni Collete's performance was overlooked by the 'Industry' just solidifies what a pack of cunts they are.

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1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS

5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway

7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats

8) V/H/S Beyond

9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10) Terrifier 3

11) Summer of '84

12) Rosemary's Baby/Suspiria ('77)

13) Daddy's Head

14) Undead

15) Moloch/Tea Cup (episode 1)/ Evil Dead 2

16) Smile

17) Laura Hasn't Slept/Smile 2

18) Terrifier

19) The House of the Devil - Last Drive-in Presentation (original air date April 26, 2019)

20) The Woods

21) Rob Zombie's 31

22) Carrie 2: The Rage

23) The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

24) Planet Terror

25) Baron Blood

26) The Blob ('88)/ The Thing/Tremors/Abigail

27) Halloween Kills

28) Over the Garden Wall

29) Hereditary

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NCBD:

Not much on my pull today. In fact, only one book. Is this the best we can do the week of Halloween, publishers? Really?

Okay, then, allow me to talk a bit about some books I picked up while in Chicago over the weekend. As usual, I stopped in at Amazing Fantasy Comics, and so far, my favorite thing I picked up was the first four issues of Horror Anthology Epitaphs From the Abyss.

This is Oni Press's revival of EC Comics, and I wanted to pay special attention to the editorial "mission statement" in the first book:

"From the earliest stages of this project, we've agreed amongst ourselves that it would be a fool's errand to try and produce a knock-off simulacrum of the original EC titles... Instead, we've challenged ourselves to imagine a world where the Comics Code never unceremoniously amputated EC's publishing line at the end of 1955 and, through that lens, what kinds of series and stories EC Comics would be producing for a new generation of readers eager to disturb and discover in the year of 2024."

Talk about the right way to approach an undertaking of this magnitude!!!

Look at these covers, courtesy of Lee Bermejo (issues 2-4) and Andrea Sorrentino (issue 1). Absolutely fantastic, and inside? Well, let's say where the revived Creepshow comic (and show) mostly leaves a lot to be desired, Epitaphs from the Abyss is a great read that takes familiar characteristics of the age we live in and turns them against us (even more than we already do ourselves!). 

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Playlist:

Sumerlands - Dreamkiller 

Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers and Queers

Various - The Daptone Super Soul Revue LIVE at the Apollo

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Dinosaur Jr. - Sweep It Into Space

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

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Card:

Today, we're going to take a look at XX: The Aeon.

From my own personal Grimoire: "The Pivotal Sequence - what comes next is upon you!"

Another note I have that catches my eye right away is "Holography- multiple outcomes contained within a whole."

For Crowley, this card was all about Nuit, arched above Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child. Nuit is the doorway to the new Aeon. So much of Crowley's work revolved around the Age of Horus. Did it come upon us? Probably. Did it affect us? Definitely, although these kind of subtle energies never manifest as anything as gaudy as a flying saucer landing on the white house lawn or some politician tearing away their flesh to reveal a scaly visage beneath (not yet, anyway). These energies creep in through the back door of the human collective unconscious and change the world by changing us over time. I'm reminded immediately of Donald Tyson's bone-chilling essay, "Enochian Apocalypse" (read it HERE). I'm also reminded that in his Book of Thoth, Crowley has this to say, "... the child Horus is born... he is also solar in character, and is therefore shown coming forth in a golden light." To which I drew an arrow and wrote in the margins oh so long ago, "UFO???"

Now, that's not to say I believe in UFOs (or whatever they're called now), but the idea for the card is something arrives that will change your perception of what is real or possible. The very definition of a new Aeon, eh?

Walk on Gilded Splinters

 

From Dr. John's very Halloween-appropriate album Gris Gris, now an annual Autumn listen for me thanks to Mr. Brown. Love this tune, and coincidentally, the posthumous release Things Happen That Way contains a pretty banging version as well. I love both, however, the original on headphones really puts you there.

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31 Days of Halloween:

You know, based on my question about Michael Walsh's Frankenstein issue three last week, I found that I have no real memory of The Bride of Frankenstein. I watched so many of Universal monster movies as a kid that I'd always assumed I'd seen most of them. However, cracking James Whale's 1935 Frankenstein sequel out two nights ago, I realized I may never have actually seen it all the way through from the beginning. 

In particular, the "Little People" sequence kind of dropped my jaw. There's a definite comedic vein that runs through part of this film, and I don't love it. The recurring Minnie character, Dr. Pretorious' aforementioned little people experiments - hardly the same science as our man Henry's, perhaps closer to early IVF - and the Burgomaster shepherding the doddering villagers at the inception of the Bride all rub me the wrong way. That said, the climatic laboratory scenes just may outclass the original film's 'birthing' sequence, and the opening with Lord Byron, Mary and Percy Shelley hanging out immediately made me want to rewatch Ken Russell's 1986 Gothic, an old-school favorite I've kind of forgotten about over the last two decades.

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1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS

5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway

7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats

8) V/H/S Beyond

9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10) Terrifier 3

11) Summer of '84

12) Rosemary's Baby/Suspiria ('77)

13) Daddy's Head

14) Undead

15) Moloch/Evil Dead 2

16) Smile

17) Laura Hasn't Slept/Smile 2

18) Terrifier

19) The House of the Devil - Last Drive-in Presentation (original air date April 26, 2019)

20) The Woods

21) Rob Zombie's 31

22) Carrie 2: The Rage

23) The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

24) Planet Terror

25) Baron Blood

26) The Blob ('88)/ The Thing/Tremors/Abigail

27) Halloween Kills

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Watch:

Tom Savini on the old NBC Letterman show in the run-up to Day of the Dead's release.

I think I smiled for nearly twenty-four hours straight after watching this one. To see Savini go through some of the iconic props in a movie I love, and Letterman react in the way only Letterman can. Wow. 

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Playlist:

Various - My Halloween Spotify Playlist

Rodney Crowell - Eponymous

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Nico Vega - Lead To Light

The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland

Skinny Puppy - Last Rights

Skinny Puppy - Remission

Double Life - Indifferent Stars EP

Dr. John - Things Happen That Way

The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me

Dr. John - Gris Gris

Entropy - Liminal

Spotlights - Love & Decay

White Zombie - La Sexorcisto - Devil Music Vol. 1

Drug Church - Prude

Better Lovers - Highly Irresponsible

Entropy - Dharmak​ā​ya

YUNGBLUD - Eponymous (single)

The Streets - The Irony of It All (single)

YUNGBLUD - Eponymous

Soundgarden - Down on the Upside

Bandsplain Podcast - Soundgarden Parts 1 & 2  (HERE and HERE)

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Purple Hill Witch

 

Really digging Purple Hill Witch, an awesome Stoner/Doom band from Oslo, Norway, who recently signed to Totem Cat Records, home of so many other fantastic bands! As I get to know the back catalogue, I'm following these guys on IG and salivating at the prospect of the new record!

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31 Days of Halloween:

Rob Zombie's 31 is a polarizing film, to say the least. Even in my own personal conversation about Horror, you know, the one flowing in my head pretty much ALL THE TIME, I have mixed opinions. It starts strong with Doomhead, wears on my nerves with its "King Dong" bag of dick and fuck jokes as we meet the cast, and then really comes up strong again when we get going on the plot. Yet, all that time spent annoying me with character "development" doesn't make me dislike the protagonists at all. What they go through saves them for me.

By the end, I am always intoxicated by 31, and it's often difficult to find something to watch afterward (unless I'm doing House of 1000 Corpses or Devil's Rejects). 

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1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS

5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway

7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats

8) V/H/S Beyond

9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10) Terrifier 3

11) Summer of '84

12) Rosemary's Baby/Suspiria ('77)

13) Daddy's Head

14) Undead

15) Moloch/Tea Cup (episode 1)/ Evil Dead 2

16) Smile

17) Laura Hasn't Slept/Smile 2

18) Terrifier

19) The House of the Devil - Last Drive-in Presentation (original air date April 26, 2019)

20) The Woods

21) Rob Zombie's 31

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Read:

The pre-order went up for the next Laird Barron release on Bad Hand Books. HERE's the link and the solicitation below this amazing cover art by Samuel Araya. 

"Barron returns to Bad Hand Books with an all-new novella in his famed Antiquity setting. (Pretty) Red Nails features familiar hero Isaiah Coleridge—but he’s not at all as we remember him. This is Coleridge with a dark-fantasy twist. A tall, rangy mercenary armed with a deadly iron spear, Coleridge travels the benighted land astride a nameless piebald stallion while the grinning moon watches from above like a patient carrion bird. Alongside Lionel Robard and a battle-scarred war dog, Minerva, Coleridge faces off against a mad wizard and the horrifying Pale Ones on a quest to find the fabled city of Ur. For love. For lust. For pretty red nails."

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Playlist:

Drug Church - PRUDE

Chat Pile - Cool World

Skinny Puppy - Last Rights

Misfits - Static Age

Ministry - The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste

Purple Hill Witch - Eponymous

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Card:

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

• King of Pentacles

• Ace of Swords

• I: The Magician

The King (Prince) of Disks can be a bit of a cunt for matters of Earthly stability. He's a shake-up, a corporate higher-up who stops in to ensure things are running smoothly and routinely finds issues. That said, that kind of pragmatic assessment can lead to enlightenment and enhanced prowess. 

Drug Church - Demolition Man

 

BIG thanks to Mr. Brown, who clued me into the fact that comic writer Patrick Kindlon's band Drug Church has a new record out! Kindlon is kind of the pinnacle of the evolution of Punk Rock to me at the moment: he writes wonderfully subversive and thought-provoking comics, and he sings in an awesome band that has a social awareness that reminds me a bit of Fugazi, although turned somewhat inward. Really great stuff.

You can order the record HERE.

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31 Days of Halloween:

Not much to say about my viewing over the weekend. Rewatching the original Terrifier, I'm merely reminded how great the second and third entries are with an actual plot, although Leone's FX work is still great (although subdued by lack of budget), and it's interesting to see the Victoria character's origin again, given what she's become. That was Friday night; Saturday was Ti West's The Houe of the Devil with Joe Bob from The Last Drive-In episode aired during the first season of the show, back in 2019. House is normally a film I prefer to watch uninterrupted, but this is my second viewing in the last few months (I watched it when Maxxxine hit theatres, too), and I'd never seen Joe Bob 'do' the film, so it was time. Very cool factoids throughout.

Last night, I re-watched Lucky McKee's The Woods. This was his 2006 follow-up to May. May is one of my all-time favorite films. The Woods is... not a bad film by any means. However, something about it feels very hollow to me. I don't remember how I felt about this one when I first saw it upon the initial DVD release, but it definitely didn't move the needle with me this time. 

I feel like I am running out of time this month. There's been a couple not-so-great viewings, and there's a ton of stuff I want to get to. Might have to organize the remainder of my viewings. 

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1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS

5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway

7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats

8) V/H/S Beyond

9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10) Terrifier 3

11) Summer of '84

12) Rosemary's Baby/Suspiria ('77)

13) Daddy's Head

14) Undead

15) Moloch/Tea Cup (episode 1)/ Evil Dead 2

16) Smile

17) Laura Hasn't Slept/Smile 2

18) Terrifier

19) The House of the Devil - Last Drive-in Presentation (original air date April 26, 2019)

20) The Woods

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Listen:

My friend Justin interviewed Chris Connelly on the latest episode of his YouTube show, Trailer Punk Podcast. Check it out!

Listening to this, I'm reminded I've still never tracked down a copy of Connelly's 2010 novel Ed Royal, and now I realize he has others! No excuses... 

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Playlist:

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Oranssi Pazuzu - Live at Roadburn

Oranssi Pazuzu - Värähtelijä 

The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland

Perturbator - Nocturne City EP

The Body and Dis Fig - Orchards of a Futile Heaven

Various - Halloween Spotify Playlist

Orville Peck - Pony

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

Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula

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Ritual Howls - Turkish Leather Always Makes Me SMILE, Too

 

Ritual Howl's album Turkish Leather was released ten years ago on September 30th! Holy smokes. If you're not familiar, check out their discography on Bandcamp. Easily one of my favorite discoveries from the last ten years, for sure.

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31 Days of Halloween:

Last night K and I hit the Regal for Parker Finn's Smile 2. I'm not going to post a trailer because last week, before Terrifier 3, I noticed there was a HUGE spoiler image sandwiched in the quick succession of scenes they splice together, and that pissed me off.

That's not Finn's fault. I rewatched the first Smile Wednesday night, and I have to say, third viewing - first at home - Smile not only held up, but I now think it's one of the scariest flicks in recent memory. Sosie Bacon's physical acting - her posture, inflections and facial tics totally sell her anxiety as she spirals, a descent made all the worse by the fact that the movie begins with her patient demonstrating the exact blueprint for what she's about to go through. 

Chills!

So how does the sequel hold up? Well, our theatrical experience ranks as the worst I've had in years, but that's definitely not the film's fault. Blame instead the groups of high school students who walked in and out of the theatre on almost constant rotations. I used to be the guy who would stand up and tell people to shut the fuck up when they were talking during a movie, but nearly coming to blows during James Bond: Skyfall (2012?) delivered the epiphany that I had become part of the disturbance. The theatre is my church, and I've learned to grin and bear it. It's not nearly as hard now that I rarely smoke before a theatrical screening. I have a much easier time letting periphery noise go when I'm not hyper-focused. Also, these kids weren't talking so much as just walking in and out of the theatre, so what do you say, anyway?

Back to the actual movie. Smile 2 is fantastic; it's not as good as the original, but that's just my opinion. My Horror Vision co-host Missi felt this one matched the first film. One thing's for sure - Parker Finn is a Director I will follow from here out. He used the considerably bigger budget for this sequel to really expand his idea in a way that transcends the genre completely and sets up the next movie with a scale that makes me extremely excited.

In a nutshell, it might not make my top ten of the year - a hard thing to do in 2024 from the sheer volume of awesome films released so far this year - but it's fantastic, moves the series forward in a brilliant and exciting way, and should definitely be seen in a theatre. Just try to get a screening where the brats are sure to still be in school. 

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1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS

5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway

7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats

8) V/H/S Beyond

9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10) Terrifier 3

11) Summer of '84

12) Rosemary's Baby/Suspiria ('77)

13) Daddy's Head

14) Undead

15) Moloch/Evil Dead 2

16) Smile

17) Laura Hasn't Slept/Smile 2

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Read:

I finished my third re-read of China Miéville's Perdido Street Station yesterday. Totally blown away again!

Now, onto Laird Barron's Not A Speck of Light, which I received from Bad Hand Books a week or so ago and have been chomping at the bit to read. I'm four stories in and it's just so wonderful to have new stories by one of your favorite authors. Barron's prose wraps around my brain like a massive alien wyrm slowly strangling the light from the sky. 

 

The plan is to read a couple of short stories in this new collection and then start Ivy Tholen's latest, Mother Dear, which I am also dying to tear into!

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Playlist:

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch - Censor OST

Ritual Howls - Turkish Leather

Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor

Bauhaus - In the Flat Field

Ritual Howls - Virtue Falters

Sandrider - Godhead

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Beastmilk - Climax

Skinny Puppy - Remission

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife

Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Talk About the Weather

Type O Negative - Origin of the Feces

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Card:

Today's Card is IV: The Emperor.

"The Rules that Govern All Life."

That's how my entry in the Grimoire begins. Also, it should be mentioned that this is obviously a very Martial card; Crowly writes about this tying into the card as the representation of the physical embodiment of authority. He also drops this little gem:

"... Aires means Ram. At his (the Emperor's) feet, couchant, is the Lamb and Flag, to confirm this attribution on the lower pane; for the ram, by nature, is a wild and courageous animal, lonely in lonely places, whereas when tamed and made to lie down in green pasture, nothing is left but the docile, cowardly, gregarious and succulent beast. This is the theory of government."

No wonder my friends and I tend to regard this card suspiciously! One of the interpretations I lean toward with The Emperor is "It will be decided for you," which sounds a bit chilling now, when juxtaposed with the above passage from The Book of Thoth. Anyway you cut it, the fourth Atu is not a great card to see in many respects, unless of course, you need a third party to get something done for you.