The youtube algorithm surprised me Saturday night by throwing the new Jerry Cantrell single my way. I had no idea this album was on the horizon, and despite my hot/cold relationship with Mr. Cantrell's other solo albums - all of which I like, but none that have really stuck with me like, say, the previous AIC album did - I really liked this song. What's more, and this is extremely rare, the video really helped drive home how I felt about the song. I feel like Cantrell is aging both as a human and a songwriter in a very elegant manner, and that brings great joy to my heart. Alice in Chains was, after all, birthed in a pretty severe amount of trauma.
The album, Brighten, drops on December 17. You can pre-order it HERE, though all the vinyl appears to be sold out at this point.
Watch:
Rewatched a couple of movies this past week that I'd been wanting to for quite some time.
First, I finally picked up a copy of Dan O'Bannon's 1984 classic Return of the Living Dead on Blu-Ray. Despite my posting the Scream Factory trailer here, the version I purchased was the MGM release, simply because I didn't want to shell out $35 for it.
This film is a rarity to me: despite the comedic elements, RoTLD remains one of the most disturbing and frightening flicks I know. There's something to the starkness of the sets that creates an isolated feeling that permeates and really adds to the siege elements. Also, the entire idea that the dead are compelled to feast on the brains of the living because, as the torso-zombie lady says, "The pain of being dead," really disturbs me. Especially after Freddie dies and begins to repeatedly scream, "It hurts! It hurts!"
Next, a few months back when Severin announced they would be remastering and releasing Gabriel Bartalos's Skinned Deep, I pre-ordered it. This is one my friend Dennis gave me back in the day, part of the original Fangoria's "Gore Zone" three-pack that also included the Irish zombie film Dead Meat, and The Last Horror Movie. I sold most of these back when my life was imploding in 2014 and had pretty much assumed Skinned Deep was something I had to consign to the aethers of the post-physical media world.
Enter Severin.
This is an extremely bizarre take on the backwoods slasher film that transports the crazy family of killers to the plains of the Southwest (I think). Watching it Saturday night, there's a really unique, really heightened 'You're where you don't belong" feeling to the flick, to the point that, combined with the over-the-top characters, I felt an almost dream logic over the entire story. I ended up conking out near the end, so I have to go back this week and watch it again.
Playlist:
Metal Church - Blessing in Disguise
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
The Replacements - Tim
Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun
Peter Gabriel - So
The Maness Brothers - Tammie Jean (single)
Cloud Cruiser - I: Capacity
Card:
This card always tells me to stay stream-lined, keep my head down in the fray, and refuse to relinquish what I've set my sights on.
