New Music from Blut Aus Nord!!!

 

The second track released from the upcoming album Ethereal Horizons, out November 28th on Debemur Morti Records. Pre-order HERE.

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31 Days of Halloween:

I was 100% unfamiliar with John Buechler's 1987 film Cellar Dweller before two nights ago. I'd heard of it, but knew nothing about it. After stumbling across it on Prime the other night, I'd have to say this fits right in there with 976-Evil and The Dead Pit as a lost 80s classic Video Store Horror gem!

Not a 'great' flick by any stretch, but FUN! I've grown to recognize seeing Buechler's name attached to a film as an exciting thing, and this only reinforces that assessment. 

...

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

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

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

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NCBD:

Just four titles this week (I think), so let's talk about the big one first.

Jason Aaron's run is already over? Weird - I don't feel like this book really did what I thought it would do. That's not good or bad, just... I don't even know. Maybe it's the bi-monthly thing that has me feeling so removed from it. Certainly there appear to have been some big changes on the surface, and I did really enjoy the way Aaron took the brothers apart and reintroduced them as a team that is more dysfunctional than we've ever seen before. We'll see how this transitions to the new creative team starting with issue 13.

After finally catching up and reading the first four issues of Chris Condone and Jeffrey Alan Love's News From the Fall Out recently, I have to say, this is the first book I've contemplated dumping before it finishes in quite some time, There was one whole issue spent with people arguing in a diner. I mean, if felt like that "Put on the glasses" scene in They Live, and while I love that film and that scene is hysterically iconic, it's best left not repeating it, because it still tests my patience when Carpenter did it! I don't know - I'm feeling like there's not enough of the story here to go a full six issues so things got stretched out in a way that really killed the momentum, but we'll see. I'm sticking it out until it wraps with issue six. Condone has never disappointed me before, so I owe the man the benefit of the doubt. 

At a glance, this cover gives me all kinds of Uncanny Valley weirdness. 

I've had this book on my mind after watching the 2024 film Stream recently, which was enjoyable, but didn't quite have the scope Walsh and Tynion present in Exquisite Corpses. 

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Playlist:

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

John Harrison - Day of the Dead OST

Testament - Para Bellum

Misfits - Earth A.D. 

Saigon Blue Rain - Oko

Black Tape for a Blue Girl - Remnants of a Deeper Purity

Various - Lords of Salem OST

Count Gorgann - Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Live for the Dead

77s - All Fall Down

Pilot Priest and Electric Youth - Come True 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.

• Six of Cups

• Queen of Pentacles

• Nine of Cups

The ache of memory can cloud the mind, emotion overwhelming the faculties that make the day-to-day decisions. This is how I feel I live sometimes. Is this a good thing? It can be, but here's an instance where I'll actually use the specific image on Grimm's card to help understand what the cards are saying: intoxication. I'm overflowing with emotional bias and it probably is responsible for regularly made bad decisions. Not like, hookers and blow bad decision, but like, I don't need to buy everything that looks like it will make me happy. 

New Music from Blut Aus Nord!!!

From the forthcoming album Ethereal Horizons, out on November 28th 2025 on the always epic Debemur Morti Productions. Pre-order HERE. 

I am so psyched for this release! 

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Watch:

I've been picking at Alien: Earth for a little over two weeks now. From the moment I sat down to watch the first episode, I hated it. It's funny - I love Noah Hawley's Fargo series, or at least what I've seen of it (seasons 1, 2 and 5), but it seems like everything else I try from him just doesn't gel with me (I tried Legion a few years ago and also hated it). Despite the disconnect, though, this is Alien, and because of that, I have tried to hang in there the best I can, hoping for something to latch onto. This past Tuesday night, they delivered. 

Big time.

Holy smokes, did this episode give me everything I wanted! True, I'm a bit disappointed they had to go back to the standard Alien formula of 'Xenomorph loose on a ship' to get there, but I don't care. This was fantastic, and it reaffirmed my hanging in there. Even if I hate the next three episodes, this one made it all worthwhile.

Most of my issues come from the show's heavy focus on Boy Kavaliar and his 'lost boys.' A cunty, twenty-something douche bag trillionaire and his host of synthetics that have had the consciousnesses of sick children uploaded into them. The concept is cool, and it works great with the premise of the show - that governments were done away with as functionless, archaic designs when 'five corporations' stepped up and took control of the globe. That's gotta be a Fugazi reference, right?

Granted, one of the things I probably have so much trouble with here is the fact that this all feels a bit too real. Corporate ownership has weighed heavily on my mind, and this is honestly exactly where I see us going. But the characters in this thread are all very unlikeable and, while that's surely the point, the show spends SO MUCH time with them. Then, when they give us some Alienness, it's akin to what happened in the second episode with the apartment full of rich c_nts partying in powdered wigs and getting slaughtered - off screen, btw - in what felt like an empty gesture; a softball pitch to keep us happy before they just went right back to almost exclusively following the trillionaire and his toys.

Episode four started to come around, and five just blew me away. Part of what I want to see so much more of are not just the Xenomorphs, but the other alien life forms they've introduced on the show. The Eyeball Kid, for instance, is my favorite new thing. Love this 'character' and am eager to find out more about it.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - VFW OST

Jóhann Jóhannsson - Mandy OST

Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power

Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color

Ghost - Infestissumam 

Goblin - 2013 Tour E.P

The Dead Weather - Dodge and Burn

The Body - All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood

S U R V I V E - Mnq026

Fever Ray - Radical Romantics

Cibo Mato - Viva! La Woman

Blut Aus Nord - Debermur MoRTi (single)

Boy Harsher - Careful

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Card:

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

• Three of Cups

• XVI: The Tower

• 0: The Fool

Three of Cups really kind of owns me at this point. I stopped putting individual card metadata in these posts a while ago, but I'm starting to think I should remedy that just to see if I'm wrong or if this card comes up like every three days. That's what it feels like, so let's look at the card a bit more in-depth than usual. 

From Crowley's The Book of Thoth: 

"This card refers to Binah in the suit of Water. This is the card of Demeter or Persephone. The Cups are pomegranates: they are filled bountifully to overflowing from a single lotus, arising from the dark calm sea characteristic of Binah. There is here the fulfillment of the Will of Love in abounding joy. It is the spiritual basis of fertility. The card is referred to the influence of Mercury in Cancer; this carries further the above thesis. Mercury is the Will or Word of the All-Father; here its influence descends upon the most receptive of the Signs. At the same time, the combination of these forms of energy brings in the possibility of somewhat mysterious ideas. Binah, the Great Sea, is the Moon in one aspect, but Saturn in another; and Mercury, besides being the Word or Will of the All-One, is the guide of the souls of the Dead. This card requires great subtlety of interpretation. The pomegranate was the fruit which Persephone ate in the realms of Pluto, thereby enabling him to hold her in the lower world, even after the most powerful influence had been brought to bear. The lesson seems to be that the good things of life, although enjoyed, should be distrusted."

Abundance in Thoth, this card signifies good times and social connections, and Grimm did a great job illustrating that for his card. Mix this with The Tower - a change in paradigms, and the Fool, a new journey, and I'm thinking this may be telling me to make some new friends here in Tennessee, something I've had a relatively difficult time doing. 

The Endlessly Fascinating Riddle of Neptune's Eye

I've made it a mission to fully engage with Blut Aus Nord's Disharmonuium series again. These guys are so out there sometimes - and I mean that in the best way possible - that I still don't feel like I have a grasp on some of their work. And Disharmonium: Undreamable Abysses/Disharmonium: Nahab feature chief among those albums that confound the living hell out of me.

Back in 2018, while reviewing The Dillinger Escape Plan's final album, Disassociation, I mentioned that their music often feels like encountering an extra-dimensional being that I can only grasp in vague cross-sections. That doubles for Blut Aus Nord when they are at their most experimental. The confluence of Industrial and Black Metal on these albums is astoundingly obtuse - this is the kind of music Lovecraft's protagonists occasionally describe hearing in the presence of the Outer Gods. They set a precedent for that with 2011's The Work Which Transforms God - the album that originally drew me to them. The Disharmonium series, however, really pushes that sound into new places. Dark sonic plaguescapes of an almost ungraspable nature. This sounds dramatic, but it's not. Listening to these albums, it's hard to hold onto the music for very long at all; the drums form an omnipresent backdrop upon which the guitars and keyboards (?) bloom and evolve like blood droplets in hot water. Miasma is a word that springs to mind. I'm gearing up for a session where I smoke up and sit in the middle of my floor between my speakers, just concentrate to the best of my ability on the music and where it takes me.

But I haven't found that time yet. 

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Play:

New Metroidvania Moadra looks BAD ASS! Some of these graphics align nicely with what I discussed above regarding Blut Aus Nord, so I couldn't pass up following up with this.

 

This one is hitting multiple game platforms later this year, but, of course, as of now, I'm still only interested in the Switch, so I'm glad to see Nintendo included in the rollout here. You can read more about the game and the other consoles over on Bloody Disgusting HERE.

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Watch:

A week or two ago, my good friend and Horror Vision Cohost Tori posted a trailer in our podcast group chat. The trailer was for a movie I had not heard of at the time, HIM. I started watching the trailer and had to wonder why she had posted a football-centric film that looked akin to Any Given Sunday.

Then, at about the 41-second mark, the trailer changes. What follows revealed what is now one of my most eagerly anticipated films of the year.

I hate football, but I love films that defy categorization and expectation. HIM appears to be a film that will do both. I've seen this trailer three times now, and where that would normally drive me fucking crazy, each time I just marvel at it, thinking, "What the absolute fuck is this about?"

I don't want an answer. I just want to see it.

Produced by Jordan Peele, this is Written by Zack Akers & Skip Bronkie and Directed by Justin Tipping - three people I am wholly unfamiliar with, making this even more of a mystery.

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Playlist:

The Cops - Free Electricity

Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables

Melvins/Jello Biafra - Sieg Howdy

Black Sabbath - Sabotage

Bluekarma - The Communication

Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God

McKinley James - Live!

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Card:

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

• Six of Cups

• Four of Wands

• Eight of Cups

The joy of completion can lead to inactivity. Keep active. 

Good advice for someone who just finished one book and is pretty hot on the next. Keep it going; don't rest on your laurels. 

New Music From Deadguy!!!

Dreams really do come true! Haha, seriously, fantastic news yesterday afternoon when I saw Relapse Records announced the first studio album by Deadguy in 30 years. Pre-order Near Death Travel Services HERE.

 

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NCBD:

Here's what's waiting for me in my box over at Rick's Comic City Clarksville:

I have been waiting for issue two of Tyler Boss and Adriano Turtulici's Giallo, You'll Do Bad Things, for what feels like forever! Really liked the first issue of this. So much so that Butcher (AKA Anthony) and I did a review over on The Horror Vision after it dropped. Check it out!

Void Rivals going strong. There's big shit coming up soon with the cosmic end of the Energon Universe books, and I, for one, cannot wait to see what Kirkman has in store. The words "Planet-sized" come to mind. I think there may be a race of Unicron-level characters about to be unlocked, but we'll see. Either way, I love how faith and pragmatic survivalism have come face to face in this book.

Final issue of this iteration of Eastman's Future TMNT story, so I'll definitely be going back and re-reading everything up to this point before undertaking this book. 

SIKTC is back! Judging by the solicitation, we're still delving into Erica's past, which makes me think that when we finally return to the present, big things are going to happen quickly. We'll see. I loved the previous volume, "Road Stories," and how it filled in a lot of history. So, even though we all want to get back to the current timeline, I welcome more of this "what came before" story we have going on now.

Mark Spear's Monsters is still a bit of a head-scratcher for me, but that's okay. It's nice to have one of those every once in a while. The first three issues seem to set up a story that is huge in scope, so I'm not sure how long this one is planned to run or if we'll get there. Still, Mark Spears definitely has an original take on the Universal Monsters. 

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Watch:

Great pull today, but I won't be able to grab these until tomorrow night, as I'll have my arse safely ensconced in my local theatre for an advance screening of Lorcan Finnegan's new film The Surfer, which is to be followed by a live stream Q & A with the film's star, the one and only Nicholas Fucking Cage.

Here's the trailer, which I have not watched.

 

I literally no nothing about this one beyond Title/Director/Star, and that makes me SUPER fucking happy! Best way to see a movie!

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Playlist:

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Undreamable Abysses

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Nahab

Mars Red Sky - Eponymous

David Bowie & NIN - Back in Anger 1995

Deadguy - Fixation On A Coworker

Preoccupations - Arrangements

Dum Dum Girls - Too True

McKinley James - Live!

Ghost - Impera

Ghost - Skeletá

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Card:

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

• Seven of Swords

• Six of Cups

• Ten of Cups

Futility - Pleasure - Satiety

No matter how hard you try, the joys of life will run out if you don't stop to recognize when you've had your fill. 

Man, that's more a fortune cookie reading than I'm used to, but there it is. I'm off today, off with the cards, but my writing's on fire, so that's fine. In the meantime, I guess I'll be sure to keep my eyes peeled for when enough is enough. 

Despite recent claims otherwise, "Mexican Caravan" from 1985's Psychic.... Powerless.... Another Man's Sac is probably my favorite Butthole Surfers track, simply because of the guitar. It's always kind of made me imagine Jimmy Hendrix playing while on ten hits of blotter acid. But then, that's kind of what the Surfers do.

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Watch:

One day last week while I was still sequestered at the hotel in West L.A., I watched Josh Forbes's new movie Destroy All Neighbors and had an absolute BLAST with it! Here's the trailer, which I can now endorse does not give anything away other than a taste of the Hallucinatory 90s Practical FX goodness you can expect from this one!

Produced by Alex Winter, with FX by Gabriel Bartalos (Skinned Deep!), Destroy All Neighbors reminds me more than a little of 1993's Freaked, which Winter co-directed with Tom Stern. This fits in nicely with Butthole Surfer week, as Stern Produced/Directed last year's The Butthole Surfer Movie, and the Surfers were involved with Freaked, starting with lending their frontman to the film's cast to play Cheese Wart. There's a certain tone Freaked employs - a kind of madcap 90s Practical FX and sets grandeur - that is at work in Destroy All Neighbors as well. The opening credits reminded me so much of the 90s, with its swirling, wormhole-like background, that I knew I was in for goodness. 

Neighbors obviously did not have the same budget; no studio is going to give anyone 11 Million to make a movie like this in 2024, but the movie does so much awesome stuff with what they have, that you won't notice unless you're checking while you watch. And you won't be doing that, because you'll be laughing out loud. This is a story we've definitely seen variations of before, but not like this, and not with a Prog Rock obsessive as the lead character (Jonah Ray is awesome!)  

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Re-Release:

Just a quick heads up to any Blut Aus Nord fans out there, Debemur Morti just re-pressed Memoria Vetusta II: A Dialogue with the Stars on vinyl, and it's available both on the label's site HERE (where I ordered it this morning), and from the band's Bandcamp HERE. 

I've been laying off ordering vinyl, but this was a no-brainer. By far my favorite album from a group that has quite a few albums I adore, I have been waiting to grab this one on vinyl for probably over ten years now. 

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Playlist:

Ready for the World - Oh Sheila (single)

Sheila E. - Glamorous Life (single)

Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon

Genghis Tron - Dead Mountain Mouth

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST

Stephen Sanchez - Angel Face

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

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Blut Aus Nord - Queen of the Dead Dimension

 

Another new track from the upcoming album Disharmonium - Nahab, out August 25th on Debemur Morti; pre-order HERE.

This track reminds me A LOT of the material released on Blut Aus Nord's iconic The Work Which Transforms God. It's not the easiest to listen to at first, because it follows very little of our pre-conceived notions of what a song or music can be. That's exactly why I love this band. Bring on the full album - I want to melt my mind with its non-Euclidean sonic geometry!!! 

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Read:

Issue twenty of the new Fangoria arrived in the mail yesterday; always a good day when a Fango shows up!

Most of the main articles are about films that haven't come out yet; the cover story is on Michael and Danny Philippou's Talk to Me; I bought tickets to see this next Thursday, 7/27/23 and I'm fairly stoked. The fine folks at Beyondfest recently did some screenings with the Directors and they can't stop raving about it, so I'm fairly certain this one will be wonderful. Also featured is Cobweb, which I'm driving into Nashville to see on Saturday. Written by Chris Thomas Devlin and Directed by Samuel Bodin, I have high hopes for this one as well. So those are among the articles I'm saving. My favorite parts of Fangoria, however, are the columns, and in just the three I've read so far, I'm instantly reminded why I love this iteration of the Horror Mainstay Magazine so much.

Long-time contributor Michael Gingold discusses writing a new novelization for the 1980 Video Nasty Nightmare for Severin Films, who also just released a restoration of the film. The resurgence of movie tie-in novelizations is fascinating to me, and although I don't read a lot of them - I burned through Brad Carter's Night of the Demon last year, also from Severin - Nightmare is one I'm curious about. The film is hit or miss with me, despite its aurora of grindhouse sleaze that drips from every nook and cranny, but as with Night of the Demon, I have a feeling I will really enjoy reading the story more than watching the film. Whatever your preferred medium for Nightmares, you can order the restored film HERE or Mr. Gingold's novelization HERE. 

Next up was Barbara Crampton's editorial on theatrical screenings vs. streaming. She makes some points I'd not considered until now, mainly that we are seeing the streamers' film production slowing as people return to the theatre. I don't think we'll ever tip the scales back in the direction they were twenty years ago, however, while bombastic (and to my mind at this point, mildly annoying) Marvel/Super Hero flicks carry the main audience on the big screen, Horror is the quiet RBI batter, in my opinion. 

Finally, Stephen Graham Jones has a fantastic new entry in his Slasher Nation column that traces the origins of the Final Girl all the way up from the Damsel in Distress of the silent era. Easily my favorite piece in the magazine I've read this morning.

 

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Playlist:

Forhist - Eponymous

Mammon XV - Woe's and Winter's Breath EP

Ruby the Hatchet - Fear Is a Cruel Master

Brainiac - Predator Nominate

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

Gism - Detestation

Blut Aus Nord - Queen of the Dead Dimension (pre-release single)

Genghis Tron - Dead Mountain Mouth

Sepultura - Schizophrenia

Metallica - 72 Seasons

Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Pachouli Blue

Pale Dian - Feral Birth

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Card:

• V: The Hierophant 

• XI: The Hermit

• Five of Cups - Disappointment

Exciting news will turn out to be erroneous, or at the very least not what it seems at first glance.

 

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New Music from Blut Aus Nord!!!

 

Holy F*&k! New Blut Aus Nord and it's a doozy! Was it even a year ago that Disharmonium - Undreamable Abysses came out and blew my mind? How can every record these guys do be so unbelievably different? Listening to this, I feel like Laird Barron's Isaiah Coleridge, finding a secret and otherworldly recording while digging around online for one of his spooky AF cases. Disharmonium - Nahab drops on August 21 via Debemur Morti; you can pre-order it HERE for the EU and HERE for the US.

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Watch:

This past Sunday, with my friend Alex visiting from LaLaLand, K, he and I held a mini Friedkin Fest - we watched William Friedkin's 1977 unsung masterpiece Sorcerer and his equally fantastic and insanely transgressive 1980 giallo Cruising. 

 

I've seen this one several times in the ~ three years since I purchased Sorcerer on Blu-Ray and watched it for the first time. Every time I see this one, it gets better. Case in point - I'd had some ups and downs with the first half of the film on previous viewings, mainly because most of those viewings occurred at night. This time I sat riveted from start to finish and came away thinking the first half is, narratively speaking, as good as the second half. That was a nice feeling, both halves finally making a whole.

 

Cruising is one I just watched for the first time a few weeks ago, and from the moment that viewing ended, I've been chomping at the bit for a rewatch. The twisting and turning narrative, as unreliable as if Bret Easton Ellis penned the screenplay, just blows me away, and despite the fact that this time I took copious notes, I still don't have a solid answer as to who did what. A mystery that, after it's 'solved,' begets another, darker mystery. In other words, the best kind!

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NCBD:

Here are my picks, and I'm excited for all three of them:

Nightmare Country: Glass House has been up and down as a month-by-month reading experience, but I retain faith it will all come together as an eventual whole. 

First post-Armegeddon Game Turtles issue, a very good thing. I didn't read that event, however, from what I glimpsed in the pages of the regular series, I'm curious to see what the new landscape will be. This book often cools a bit for me, then immediately springs back to the top of my pile. We're about due for that. LOVE this cover, but it's a variant, so hopefully I'll manage to snag one.

Despite loathing last week's X-Men: First Strike or whatever the hell it was called (great cover though), my fervor for X-Men: Red, Immortal X-Men, and the monthly X-Men team book remain as high as ever. 

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Playlist:

Godflesh - Purge

Savages - Silence Yourself

Slowspin - Talisman

Deftones - Koi No Yokan

Deftones - Gore

Deftones - White Pony

The Flamingos - Playlist: Best of the Flamingos

Chamber of Screams, Clement Panchout & Mxxn - Murder House (Puppet Combo OST)

Blut Aus Nord - What Once Was

Blut Aus Nord - The Endless Multitude (pre-release single)

 

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Card:

Pulling from Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris' Thoth Deck today:

• Battles over money/earthly concerns - the struggle is within

• XVII The Star - opening up to new influences/ideas/concerns

• 10 fo Cups - The emotional cup runneth over

All this is just to say, "stop spending so much damn money and start saving again!"

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What Hides in the Forhist???

 

I only just learned that Blut Aus Nord's Vindsval has an album under the moniker Forhist. This is straight Black Metal, but it's my kind of Black Metal. I love this and have been unable to stop listening to it for the last few days. 

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Watch:

Very Curious about this one. I'm getting weird Titane vibes, only not in any discernable way. I'm starting to pay attention to what I think will play at Beyondfest this year, this is a certain bet (especially since they tweeted about it after I originally penned the above observation):

Doesn't tell You much, but it tells you enough.

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Read:

With all my flying all over the place the last few months, followed by the preparation for and actual move, I haven't been able to make any progress reading T.E.D. Klein's The Ceremonies, which I started a few months back. Mostly settled, I picked it back up last night and easily fell back into it.

As if I didn't have enough to read, I've also begun a re-read of Peter Milligan and Chris Bachalo's Shade The Changing Man, the classic Vertigo stalwart from 1990.

This book is nuts. The Kennedy Sphinx? Absolutely terrifying in the best possible way. I can't wait to dig back into the first three trades of this.

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Playlist:

Roy Ayers - Ubiquity

Stevie Wonder - Greatest Hits Vol. II

Blanck Mass - In Ferneau

Forhist - Eponymous

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

Boris and Merzbow - 2R0I2P0

Japandroids - Celebration Rock

Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1

Small Black - Cheap Dreams

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin I

Led Zeppelin - IV

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Card:

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

Lost of conflict, sacrifice and planning may end up wasted in the end. How appropo, as I woke up with what I'm certain is COVID, thanks to K's Mom being diagnosed with it two days ago and then hobbling around the house, coughing without a mask.

Angel Olsen - Big Time

 

New Angel Olsen. 

Despite seeing a lot of praise for Ms. Olsen in my peripheral for years, she wasn't really on my radar until my cousin Charles professed his adoration for her 2019 album All Mirrors, which is fantastic. This new single feels like it hits a sweet spot between Patsy Cline and Sharon Van Etten, and I dig it. The new record, Big Time, is out June 3rd on Jagjaguwar, and you can pre-order it in whatever form you chose HERE.

 

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Dollar Bin:

Well, how about this one, huh?

I still have a copy of one issue from the Temple of Doom adaptation Marvel did at the time of the film's release, but I don't even think I'd heard of this Further Adventures of... book before, although it's no surprise this existed based on how popular the Indiana Jones flicks were. I found five or six of these in the dollar bin last week, and although I haven't had a chance to actually read any of them yet, I've spent a few spare moments flipping through them, and they're great.

This particular mid-to-late 80s cover format for Marvel Comics is always going to be my favorite; I love the placement of the logos, the Marvel Comics Group banner along the top, and the character box in the upper left-hand corner. Just seeing these makes me feel happy.

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Fleeting:

Blut Aus Nord recently repressed their first Memoria Vitusta album and it's available on their Bandcamp in a gorgeous "red with subtle yellow marble" that will undoubtedly be gone quickly, maybe before I finish typing this.

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Playlist:

Rammstein - Zeit

Bloc Party - Alpha Games

Ozzy Osbourne - Ordinary Man

Ozzy Osbourne - The Ultimate Sin

Jim James - Eternally Even

Jerry Cantrell - Brighten

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Card:

Oh yes. It will take me strength to get through this day.

New Music From Blut Aus Nord!!!

 

Many thanks to Heaven is an Incubator for posting about the new Blut Aus Nord album Disharmonium - Undreamable Abysses, out on May 20th 2022 from the always awesome Debemur Morti Productions. This sounds like a return to the 777 era of the band, so one track is really just a big freakin' tease. 

Pre-order the album HERE.

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NCBD:

A light week this week for NCBD. Good. I spent quite a bit last week.

Saga! So happy to have this book back in my life, and awesome to see Lying Cat on the cover this month.

The fourth issue of X Deaths of Wolverine was the best one so far and has had me anxious to read this finale. 

A new stand-alone Horror anthology? Like, in the vein of The Silver Coin perhaps? Whatever the flavor, how the hell do I pass up a cover like that?

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Plastic:

I can't believe they made this:

And I can't believe I got one without paying through the nose. So damn cool.

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Playlist:

Drug Church - Hygiene EP

Entropy - Liminal

Author & Punisher - Krüller

SOM - The Shape of Everything

Johnny Marr - Call the Comet 

Metallica - Ride the Lightning 

Revocation - The Outer Ones

Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed (pre-release single)

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

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Card:

I'm taking this as a considerably more literal interpretation than I normally would, throw up some horns and jam some Slayer today.

My Favorite Albums of 2019

The order is, for the most part, negotiable by day. However, Orville Peck's Pony is absolutely the best and my favorite record of 2019.

Beth Gibbons/Henry Gorecki - Symphony No. 3 - Admittedly, I'm a bit of a rube when it comes to orchestral/classical music. I know what I like, but I don't necessarily know how to find it. Imagine my surprise when I saw Beth Gibbons name attached to this one. Gibbons, along with legendary composer/conductor Krzysztof Penderecki and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra deliver a rendition of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 that makes my heart both swell and sing with all the force of a cinematic thunderhead. Also, fantastic writing music.

Sunn O))) - Life Metal - PERFECT writing music, but beyond that, Sunn O)))'s Life Music, produced by Analog hero Steve Albini, contains a lot of rewarding textures that only reveal themselves after in-depth and multiple - and I mean multiple - listens. Easily my favorite record Sunn O))) has put out since 2009's Monoliths and Dimensions.

Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell - A late entry, this album is as calming as it is strange. Of course, at first glance, the strange is less than apparent, buried behind the subtle, acoustic pop sensibilities on display in the making and arranging of this record. But there's some pretty strange choices here when compared to what you get at first glance, and without having much of a history with Ms. Del Rey's earlier works, this one began as a curiosity for me and quickly grew into a calming obsession.

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen - As much as I love Blut Aus Nord, I've come to terms with the fact that I don't love everything they put out. After a couple years of albums I've tried repeatedly to connect with and failed, Hallucinogen hit me from the opening chord and held me all the way through its runtime. My favorite thing they've released since 2012's 777 Cosmosophy.

The Thirsty Crow - Hangman's Noose - Yes, I am good friends with one of the members of The Thirsty Crows. Yes, I co-host two podcasts with him. Yes, I love his band. Do I love it because he's my friend? Yes, but that's not the only reason I love The Thirsty Crows. I also love them because they are A) Awesome live, and B) the only Rockabilly/Psychobilly band I have identified with since I was head over heels in love with The Reverend Horton Heat back in the mid/late 90s. That scene has broadened considerably, and while I dig a lot of it, I don't love any of it like I love the Crows. Their music is catchy AF, and dusty in a way that feels familiar and pleasing, like leaving the Joshua Tree Saloon at two in the morning hammered out of your skull and meeting people with drugs in the parking lot. "Drinking and drugging 'til six in the morning," yeah, I can't live that life anymore, but I can enjoy wicked ass thrashabilly songs about it.

Federale - No Justice - Another sun-drenched album, this one with enough cinematic flourish as to play like a Robert Altman flick from the 70s. No Justice is up there with my most listened to records this year, and it's been an absolute pleasure learning every nook and cranny of these songs.

Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone - What do you get when you have a band with a terrible name releasing an album with a fantastic name? Apparently, a hell of an album. Poppier than everything else represented here, this one scratched an itch that had lingered the last few years, a good dance/electro record with pop sensibilities and fantastic arranging, eschewing bubble gum for a kind of Neon Noir Dance Floor feeling.

Spotlights - Love and Decay - Beautiful beyond words from start to finish. Epic, haunted, brash, and polished, I absolutely love this album.

Boy Harsher - Careful - Dark LaLaLand electro that feels like old Revolting Cocks did the music for an alternate version of David Lynch's Lost Highway.

A dream, a lover's return, a haunted highway at night. Orbison, Lynch, Williams. Desert, tavern, danger. Pony is a place that I have always wanted to go to and now cannot stay away from for very long.

RIP Sid Haig

Moments after I posted yesterday's page here I learned that Sid Haig passed away. This seemed inescapable after all the reading I'd done late last week about why he had such a small role in Rob Zombie's 3 From Hell, and sure enough, one week to the day after the film's release, we lost Captain Spaulding. I can think of no great tribute than the scene I've posted above; other than the intro to Way of the Gun, this is possibly my favorite to any movie ever.

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This record is absolutely fantastic!

After stumbling across it's premature release late last week and posting about it here, I ended up truncating my first listen; last week was my on-call shift at work, and during those weeks I always refrain from smoking, which I knew I wanted to do for my first go-through on this one. So yesterday, after turning the phone over to the next person in the rotation, I returned home after work and hit the ol' dugout, then put on my headphones and lay on the bed listening - and I mean full-attention, not doing anything else listening - to the album all the way through.

It's epic. My favorite Blut Aus Nord record since Memoria Vetusta II, probably because this feels like a direct sequel to that record, even more than Memoria Vetusta III does. Epic, cosmic, and majestic,  Hallucinogen takes me straight to the stars, and I love it.

**

NCBD: This will be the first week in number of weeks that anything I read comes out, so I'm pretty excited:

After mis-reporting it last month, here it is, just in time to coincide with my re-read of the series: Black Science ends with issue forty-three!

Two Remender books in the same week - always a great thing!

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Playlist from 9/23:

Air - Talkie Walkie
Carpenter Brut - Leather Teeth
Rob Zombie - Hellbilly Deluxe 2
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

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Card of the day:

Despite not having a formal writing session yesterday, I did a pretty good deal of research and I had a massive breakthrough on a major aspect of the overall Shadow Play story. It would seem the suggestion for today is to do a little housekeeping and translate some of those notes into actual story Bible material.

New Blut Aus Nord Released Three Weeks Early!

Holy cow - I didn't even know this was coming! Read about the whys and wherefores of the early release HERE. Meanwhile, I'll be clicking over to Debemur Morti's North American Shop to pick this one up (even though I missed out on the awesome pink and purple splatter variant! Drat!)

At a very early first listen, Hallucinogen appears to be the first Blut Aus Nord album in a while that really grabbed me right off the bat. That makes me super happy.

Also, I'm noticing Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry is back in stock on Vinyl. That's been a long time coming! Can't wait for this package to arrive - two of my favorite album covers ever in one box!

Terra Tenebrosa - Ghost at the End of the Rope

I'm on the Debemur Morti mailing list and I found a link to this in my inbox today. The Blut Aus Nord circa The Work Which Transforms God influence is obvious but not overplayed. I need to hear more, but thus far I dig this.

You can pre-order the new album The Reverses here.

Blut Aus Nord Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

I completely forgot this came out!

Although I've been unable to track down a copy of the first chapter of Blut Aus Nord's Memoria Vetusta, the second one is neck and neck with the band's masterpiece The Work Which Transforms God as not only my favorite BAN album but my favorite black metal record of all time. Where TWWTG is a journey away from convention and an amazing example of what metal can be, Memoria Vetusta II, subtitled Dialogue with the Stars, is the height of perfection when it comes to the classic, regal black metal the likes of which was often hinted at and attempted by too many stalwart death metal bands of the 90s to mention. This third and apparently final chapter of the Memoria Vetusta cycle is a continuation in spirit and a stunning example of Vindsval's continued mastery of tone and technique, not too mention his wonderfully poignant disregard for what anyone else in the scene is doing/saying/making.

If you dig it buy it, and if you know where I can find a copy of the gatefold vinyl (sold out in their label Debemur-morti's online merch shop and virtually nonexistent anywhere else) please leave a comment and let me know!

David Bowie's Love is Lost

Released the day before Halloween this one was right on time as it is some spooky stuff. Bowie continues to amaze me even when I'm not in the throws of a Bowie-binge. I watched this with the sound low and Blut Aus Nord on in the background and it fit, what the hell does that say?

That Bowie can still go as dark as anybody out there.

Now, what the hell is this video that I found on Gigwise all about -

New Blut Aus Nord - What Once Was... Liber III

Okay, it's obviously going to be a very metal sort of day. Cool, fits with my Midwest, October mindset. So about a week or two back Debemur Morti - possibly the best Black Metal label out there - sends out an email I read and haven't had a chance to get back to since. It was an update on new releases. One of those is the new Blut Aus Nord, What Once Was... Liber III. How does this band continue to put out this amount of great stuff? In '12 we not only had the final part of the 777 trilogy but also the second of the Liber... What Once Was series. And now there's the third Liber and it sounds - as all Nord does - just down right amazing. Follow the link back to the Debemur Morti bandcamp and get the entire digital album or pre-order the vinyl or CD - out Friday the 25th here.

image courtesy of http://www.nwnprod.com/

Windhand - Woodbine

I've never heard Windhand before, but I saw the album cover on Brooklyn Vegan here and had to know if it sounded like it looks. It does. What's more, from the opening note of this track I knew I loved it. Then the vocals kicked in and I REALLY LOVED it. Spectral, thick and heavy but melodic. Reminds me a little of The Work Which Transforms God-era Blut Aus Nord (the vocals more than anything else) meets Electric Wizard. Really cool. Here's the trailer for the album out soon on Relapse, and if you hit that BV link up top there's some more information on that always awesome site!

Blut Aus Nord The Work Which Transforms God 10th Anniversary Vinyl

Yep. Grab yours here at Debemur-Morti I ordered mine today. There's either the 2x12" LP version or the double, gatefold CD (which is limited to 777 copies- NICE).

Now, I'm pretty sure these are packaged w/out Thematic Emanations of Archetypal Multiplicity, HOWEVER, there is a cover of Godflesh's Mighty Trust Krusher. I've posted the original below - Emanations and The Work... were my first experiences with the wonder that is Blut Aus Nord, and one of the first things I noticed as I fell into their black orbit was the obvious influence Godflesh and Justin K. Broadrick in general had on Vindsval. Well, no where can that be heard more than on Streetcleaner's The Mighty Trust Krusher. I can't wait to hear what Nord's version of this classic sounds like.

Special edition releases July 5th.