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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Poni Hoax

 

A couple years ago, while watching the extras on my then-newly received copy of Severin Video's edition of Alex De La Iglesia's Day of the Beast, I noticed one of the film's crew members wearing a Poni Hoax t-shirt. I'd never heard of the band, so I looked them up on Apple Music and then promptly forgot all about them. Until recently. I still don't know much about the band or their discography, but I will soon remedy that. I do know that the entire self-titled record from 2006 is fantastic, combining Post Punk DNA with throbbing synths and moody keyboards. 

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Watch:

Last Friday, K and I made it out to see The Menu. 

I'm posting the trailer here, but I will say, this one was over-marketed in my opinion. You may have noticed that since moving, I go to the theatre more than ever before, and I must have seen this trailer before every movie since August. If you're as sick of it as I am, no need to watch it again, as I'm merely posting it here for posterity's sake.

I dug the film, although I had my issues. 

The plot of The Menu is exactly what the trailer hints at, which I found to be a little bit of a disappointment. You get what you pay for, sure, and maybe in this day and age I've become wrongfully indoctrinated to expect a 'twist' or some sleight of hand in the narrative. Not so here. I accept this and move on, except that doesn't gel for me in regards to the end of the film. I think anyone that goes to see this film will expect Anya Taylor-Joy's charater to live, but being that the plot is what it looks like and Fiennes character has assembled all of these folks to end their lives makes me feel like the movie doesn't earn the right to let Margo live. I totally get the mechanics behind "The Cheeseburger," however, it just kinda feels like cheating, or maybe better put that the film doesn't have the heart to live up to its convictions. It's funny, because I was certainly rooting for ATJ to live, but when I got what I wanted, it felt hollow.

 

Oh well. All in all, a good film and a nice night out at the movies. 

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Read:

Last week, I mentioned finally receiving my copy of Brubaker and Phillips' new Reckless book, Follow Me Down. I have to say, this series is fantastic, containing now five of the best graphic novels I've ever read.

I adore everything about this series. The format is a massive win for comic fans: the fact that Brubaker and Phillips have proven the concept of releasing Hardcovers every six months instead of serializing floppies for eventual collection just proves that there are a lot of people willing to pay for this kind of thing. 

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Playlist:

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose

Rezurex - Skeletons

Scratch Acid - The Greatest Gift

Team Sleep - Eponymous

Gang of Four - Return the Gift, Part 1

The Juan Maclean - Happy House (Matthew Dear Remix)

Rein - Reincarnated

Poni Hoax - Eponymous

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

Eldovar - A Story of Darkness and Light

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Seven of Pentacles/Disks again, eh? Hmm... Well, the card I started with here, the Three of Wands, popped out of the deck while I shuffled, so that seems the point to which the others refer. Three of Wands often asks the question for you, a sort of, "How true to your ambitions/inner map are you at the moment? Seven of Pentacles denotes difficulty in material or "Earthly" matters, and in this case, the wheel tells me I may need to make an adjustment and wait out the ramifications before things realign with how I want them to be.

Hellraisin'

No More Tears turns 30? Shit man, I'm old. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy the hell out of his new, super cool video for one of the best songs on a pretty solid Ozzy album (his best, IMO). The version on the album was co-written by Lemmy - as were several other tracks - but did not feature him on co-vocals, although if memory serves this version with both Ozzy and Lemmy singing surfaced somewhere years later. Either way, I've always really liked this song, and the video is super cool. Reminds me A LOT of Daniel Warren Johnson's Beta Ray Bill series from earlier this year (that I'm still super hung up on).

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NCBD:

Another great week at the Comic Shop -  NCBD has really come to be something I look forward to with rabid anticipation again and being that I psychoanalyze myself constantly, I'm pretty sure this is a nostalgia blanket, something that I needed to reinstate in midst of 2020's uncertainty. Why else would I revert back to following Spider-Man so rabidly for 6 months, pick up a new Defenders series with a bunch of characters I know nothing about or are not particularly keen on, or fall back into an X-book? Being a Marvel Comics fan is what got me through the uncertainty of adolescence, and as such, I've apparently flipped that switch again in order to navigate middle age. Whatever the case, I start looking at what's hitting the stands as early as possible, assemble my list, and then wait with bated breath for Wednesday to come around.

Speaking of which, this week we begin with the return of a new friend I hardly had a chance to get to know before it up and disappeared back in the spring:

Definitely not something I normally go in for, I ended up really digging the first two issues of James Stokoe's Orphan of the Five Beasts, and I'd begun to fear it was never coming back. Speaking of returning titles...

I love The Silver Coin so much, and am extremely pleased it proved popular enough to continue on after what was originally supposed to only be five issues.

The Me You Love in the Dark - ghost fucking, huh? Based on the cover art, there might be trouble in paradise for our heroine.

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Watch:

I've recently been getting into the films of Alex de la Iglesias. My end-of-night movie on Halloween ended up being his 2014 Heist-turned-cannibal-Witches flick Witching and Bitching. Here's the trailer:

This movie is completely fucking insane. I mean, the last twenty minutes is... well, spectacle filmmaking at its finest.

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Playlist:

Opeth - Deliverance

Motörhead - Ace of Spades

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

Allegaeon - Into Embers (pre-release single)

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Card:

Keeping my mouth shut.

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.

'

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.