New Music From A Place To Bury Strangers

 

From Synthesizer, out digitally this Friday, 10/04, with the vinyl to follow on 10/27. You can pre-order the standard album HERE or the insane edition that has a build-your-own synthesizer as the cover direct from Oliver Ackerman's Death By Audio HERE. They even have a test video demonstrating the synthesizer.

   

I'm probably not springing for this, but hot damn, I am tempted.

 

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NCBD:

Really cool pull this week. 

Issue three. This one is taking a bit to get rolling, but tension is beginning to build. 

My money's on an insane body count for the final issue of Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows' Get Fury. Look at that cover!

One more issue after this one. Better to leave us wanting more than to over stay your welcome, but man, it's going to suck seeing this one go.

Something new from Brian Azzarello and Vanesa R. Del Rey. I'm looking forward to giving this one a shot. From the solicitation by way of League of Comic Geeks:

"In nature there are gods older than the devil... Nothing can prepare you for what's coming in this violent, electrifying descent into this bloody, black metal-infused revenge saga. Val, an American metalhead attending a festival in Oslo, begins her penumbrous pilgrimage into the vast depths of vengeance. After her victimization at the hands of a charismatically vile local band, the Old Gods of Norse Mythology guide her along her path in the name of women everywhere."

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31 Days of Halloween:

Regal has partnered with A24 during the month of October for "Eerie Series," a weekly program of A24 films that pair nicely with the season. Last night, I caught Yorgos Lanthimos' The Killing of A Sacred Deer. This was my second time seeing the film, first time on a big screen. 

I haven't seen all this man's films, but I can pretty much guarantee this is always going to be my favorite. It has such a tense, unyielding eye. The camera moves almost all the time; shots start close and slowly zoom out or start afield and slowly crop in. There's such an ominous feeling of dread, and everyone acts slightly out of whack. It all adds up to an offputting, sometimes hysterical experience in trauma voyeurism, and I love it. 

1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

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Playlist:

Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies EP

Dead Man's Bones - Eponymous

Misfits - Static Age

A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head

Cristobal Tapia De Veer - Smile OST

Flipper - Album - Generic Flipper

Odonis Odonis - Post Plague

Beastmilk - Climax

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Card:

Today's card is the 5 of Disks - Worry in the Thoth deck:

Fives represent complications or imbalance; the perfection of the fours shivers with an added element - change is constant, nothing coasts for very long. This creates worry in some, however, this is down to how we look at change. Fives tell us to be ready, roll with the punches, adapt and thrive. Applied to Disks, the change we can expect is usually in terms of monetary or Earthly matters. 

Scary Little Green Men

 

Mr. Brown recently mentioned how much he liked the latest album from Rock Icon Ozzy Osbourne, and it piqued my interest. I haven't really engaged with Ozzy's music in decades, or at least not the music made during those decades. I've always championed No More Tears, and over the last few years, I've grown to have a renewed love of Blizzard of Oz and Diary of a Madman, as well as a new appreciation for two albums I had previously no interest in, 1986's The Ultimate Sin (I've always loved "Shot in the Dark", but the rest of the album fell flat for me in comparison until just a year or two ago) and 1983's Bark at the Moon, even if, yes Sonny, it definitely looks like someone shaved a poodle and then glued the fur to him for the cover shoot. This is the ridiculousness of Cocaine-fueled Hard Rock, and while many of us that grew up loving it as kids reached a point where we simply had to turn a blind eye to the escalating foolishness, there is comfort for some of us in going home again later in life.

My aversion to Ozzy probably also comes from the fact that my high school girlfriend and her two older sisters were SO into the man that one of them had a boyfriend who literally thought he was Ozzy. I mean, he knew he wasn't Ozzy, but he also put it out that he was him, going so far as to have the license plate "I'm Ozzy 1" on his mustang. Perfect for the time, yes, but he was a good guy and I hope he's done well.

Anyway, I guess enough time and distance has come to pass, because in firing up 2020's Ordinary Man, I found I quite liked it. Definitely not going to be a daily jam, but for this morning it's found a place with me, and no song made me smile more than Scary Little Green Men, which seems to encapsulate so much about Ozzy defying ALL expectations - even his own - and making it into his 70s.

Rock on, Mr. Osbourne! I'm glad you're still with us.

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31 Days of Halloween:

1) VHS 94 (don't waste your time)

2) The Mutilator

3) Demons 

4) Vortex

5) Possession

6) The Black Phone

7) Slumber Party Massacre

8) Antlers

9) No One Gets Out Alive

10) A Nightmare on Elm Street '84

11) A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010

12) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

13) Satan Hates You

14) Night of the Demons

15) Lamb

16) The Company of Wolves

17) There's Someone in the House

18) A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

19) Titane

20) A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (9, 10, Never watch again)

21) Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (same. Awful)

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Playlist:

Ritual Howls - Into the Water

Electric Youth and Pilot Priest - Come True OST

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Hank III - Straight to Hell

Vreid - Wild North West

Mastodon - Sickle and Peace (pre-release single)

X - Under the Big Black Sun

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Card:

Because this weekend begins the work of preparing to move across the country. Fuck, this is going to take a long time, because we have to help K's Mom prune her belongings, an entire cache of which resides in a storage facility in San Pedro. So guess where I'm spending my Saturday. Considering how fucking exhausted I am from work of late, this is going to Hurt. As good friend Missi would advise - remember to breathe. So simple, but something that we always forget. Or at least I do.

The Dead of Night

 

Had this one in my head all day yesterday, finally had a chance to put it on the turntable later in the evening, as K and I sat outside and enjoyed the cooling night air. Dead of Night seemed appropriate, as by that time, I was up way past my usual Sunday night bedtime.

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Watch:

 

I absolutely loved the first, two-part storyline in the new AHS spin-off anthology, American Horror Stories. It was great to return to Murder House, great to see some familiar frights, and the casting for this one was fantastic. As Lizard in Joe Begos's VFW, Sierra McCormick impressed the hell out of me, and that was definitely held up by her performance in Andrew Patterson's Vast of Night, which I watched about a year ago (maybe; time has lost all meaning). As Scarlett in AHS, McCormick turns in another great performance, and I'm betting in a year or two, she's going to be a pretty formidable star.

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Playlist:

The albums I've been listening to the most are Cyndi Lauper's seminal She's So Unusual, Let it Bleed, and Paranoid. I've been hitting these super hard, and they're really shaping my recent days. It's pretty cool; I've become quite fond of rolling directly from Yeah Yeah, the final song on She's So Unusual, directly in to War Pigs. I don't know what it is about the juxtaposition of sonic textures there, but it really puts a smile on my face.

David Bowie - Hunky Dory

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual

An Autumn for Crippled Children - The Long Goodbye

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

King Woman - Celestial Blues (pre-release singles)

King Woman - Doubt EP

Charles Mingus - Blues & Roots

John Carpenter - Lost Themes

Megadeth - Rust in Peace

Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R 

The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed

Chuck Berry - Berry on Top

Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power

Orville Peck - Pony

 

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Card:

This was definitely the watchword earlier today, however, I've moved past it and emerged into a state of mind that robbed my anxieties of their ammunition. As a result, I'm feeling pretty good.

The Gate Dismal

I'm pretty late checking out Nothing's latest release, which came out last year on Relapse Records. The Great Dismal was included in my Golden Ticket haul from Relapse, and I'm still working through that. A Fabricated Life begins the record, and I won't lie - its slow, soft, dreary sound hasn't been where my head is at. That said, listening to the record on headphones for the first time this morning, I'm able to grasp the nuance and vibe of the song, and it has stirred something within me. Something that harkens back to the first Nothing release, Downward Years to Come, which I discovered back in 2013. I love this band, and haven't spent nearly enough time with them these past two records, so I'll start correcting that today.

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Watch:

 

I stumbled across this short film - really more of a Proof of Concept trailer for a movie I can only hope gets made. Very cool use of CGI, ingenious locations, and what looks like the set-up for an intriguing take on Cosmic Horror. Directed by Matt Sears and written by Ryan Grundy, Mr. Sears' youtube channel appears packed with interesting content. Sub HERE.

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Playlist:

Cinderella - Long Cold Winter

Ghost - Opus Eponymous

Metallica - Kill 'Em All

The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Metallica - Master of Puppets

Emilie Autumn  - Opheliac 

Keiichi Okabe - NieR: Automata OST

 

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Card:

 

Spot on today, as I've definitely been preoccupied with a sort of drifting that has displaced a lot of my creative intent. I'm sure it's just a phase, but it makes me contemplate ideas like, "What if I lose all motivation to write?" which is ridiculous, but, you know, this is the way the mind works.