Eating the Flesh of Robots

One of the records Mr. Brown lent me in our recent record swap is The Flesh Eaters 2018 album I Used to Be Pretty. Holy cow, is this a burner of a record! If you dig the track above - my favorite at the moment - check out the entire record.  

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Watch:

I've been in a bit of a rut with watching anything other than Happy! the last few days, and when I finished season one, I found I wanted something more. One of the things I found is Netflix's Love, Death + Robots.

I have watched this show before, although not in any consistent capacity. I've had Sci-Fi on the brain, though, and my decades-long avoidance of most animation that's not Cowboy Bebop seems to be falling away - never understood what that was all about, anyway - so this slotted in nicely.

Previously, only a few of these really left an impression, particularly Season Three's In Vaulted Halls Entombed, which I've watched quite a few times since it came out a year-and-a-half ago (the whys of my obsession are obvious if you've seen it). This time, however, I'm playing through entire seasons and really enjoying what I'm seeing, particularly The Very Pulse of the Machine, Life Hutch and The Drowned Giant. Oh, and Three Robots. Yes, that's a fantastic piece of post-apocalyptic satire right there. 

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Read:

I finished Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw's The Dead Take the A Train and am definitely placing it among my favorite novels of the year. So much fun, and all while being Hellraiser/Evil Dead level GOREY! This is the first book in a series, and I'm down for all of them that follow. 

Still riding high off that, I ordered Cassandra Khaw's Nothing But Blackened Teeth and started that. 

Look at that cover! 

About a quarter of the way through, and I can say Ms. Khaw may be one of my favorite modern Horror writers. She has a descriptive flair I am head over heels in love with, and her characters feel so very real. The set-up here is fantastic, with a wealthy twenty-somethings friend paying for his small group of friends to stay at a supposedly haunted ancient Japanese estate. I can already tell things will probably get Hellraiser-level bloody, and with a narrator I'm not entirely sure I'd consider reliable, all kinds of hell seems poised to break loose.

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Playlist:

David Bowie - Black Star

Donny McCaslin - Beyond Now

Sen Morimoto - Diagnosis

Opeth - Blackwater Park

Zombi - 2020

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Card:

I'm finding I don't have the bandwidth at the moment to concentrate on involved Tarot readings, so I've been utilizing Missi's Raven Deck for single-card Pulls. Here's today's card:

On the lookout for obscured influences or hidden agendas, so that's (sadly) a "work-related" reading. Also, and perhaps more probable, what am I missing?

The Dead Take the A Train Straight Through the Spider Labyrinth

November is nearly over, and I realized I have not posted any Opeth yet. For that matter, I hadn't even listened to them until whatever day last week I began this post. Back around 2006/2007, Opeth became a big winter band for me, with the time change and early night that directly follows Halloween a welcome signifier that it's time to crack out Deliverance, Blackwater Park and the Candlelight years.

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Watch:

I did a bit of online Black Friday shopping last week. Nothing huge, but there were a few titles from boutique Blu-Ray labels I haunt online that I could not pass up. 

First up, Synapse Films has a 4K restoration of one of my all-time favorite films, Mike Mendez's The Convent. I have no interest in the 4K, but the release includes a standard Blu-Ray, and I've been waiting some time for this one to get a proper clean-up and re-release:

Next, and this is a somewhat blind buy, one of Severin Films' secret titles for their Black Friday sale is Gianfranco Giagni's 1988 nightmare The Spider Labyrinth. This is one I've never seen, but I've seen a certain amount of buzz steadily build for it in the backwaters of the Horror Community, with Italian Filmofiles clamoring for a proper digital release (which the film never received before now). Check out the trailer below, and although I've become fairly anti-spoiler, I'm pretty sure there's no way to spoil the absolute madness of this one.

 

Finally, although this isn't a new title, it's one that's been on my radar for a while, and after watching Michael Venus' 2020 film Schlaf (Sleep), I forked over the dough for this gorgeous release from Arrow Video; for $20 how could I not?

If I were to elevator pitch this flick to you, I'd say it's kind of a cross between Anthony Scott Burns' Come True and the possibilities I saw inherent in Stewart Thorndike's Bad Things (which admittedly did not work for me, but had some very interesting potential insofar as location and plot). 

Here are the purchase links if anyone is interested:

Synapse Films: The Convent

Severin Films: The Spider Labyrinth

Arrow Video: Sleep

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Read:

Richard Kadrey has released two books this year, and I've been wanting to read both, so after finishing Michael Wehunt's Greener Pastures, I slipped into The Dead Take the A Train, a collaboration with author Cassandra Khaw, whose Nothing But Blackened Teeth has been on my to-read list for the last two years or so and has now jumped to the top of that list based on the 65% of A Train I've read in the last few days.

Here's the solicitation blurb:

"Julie is a coked-up, burnt-out thirty-year-old whose only retirement plan is dying early. She’s been trying to establish herself in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs, exorcize the nastiest demons, and make deals with the cruelest gods to claw her way to the top. But nothing can prepare her for the toughest job yet: when her best friend, Sarah, shows up at her door in need of help. Keeping Sarah safe becomes top priority. Julie is desperate for a quick fix to break the dead-end grind and save her friend. But her power grab sets off a deadly chain of events that puts Sarah – and the entire world - directly in the path of annihilation. The first explosive adventure in the Carrion City Duology, The Dead Take the A Train fuses Cassandra Khaw’s cosmic horror and Richard Kadrey’s gritty fantasy into a full-throttle thrill ride straight into New York’s magical underbelly."

It's been some time since I read Richard Kadrey's Butcher Bird, but I loved that novel and have followed the man on soc.med ever since. He's a bright spot in the increasingly noxious online world, and it's great to 'catch up' with his writing over a decade since I began.*

Also, that cover has to be one of the most gorgeous I've seen in some time (artist James Jirat Patradoon's website is HERE). 

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* I've always wanted to read Sandman Slim, however, much like Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden books, I have grown to baulk at starting so lengthy a series, in case I love it and it consumes the next year of my life.

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Playlist:

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

Frank Black and the Catholics - Snake Oil

Opeth - Deliverance

Misfits - Collection II

Rodney Crowell - Christmas Everywhere

Godflesh - Purge

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

U2 - Achtung Baby

Justin Hamline - Worst Locals Ever

Steve Moore - Gone World

The Cramps - Smell of Female (Live)

Lord Huron - Long Lost

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Card:

I've been off the clock here since last week, and I am tired. Had a new round of the COVID booster yesterday, and it just hit me like a ton of bricks, so just one card from Missi's Raven Deck today:

I'll be double-verifying all information that crosses my path today and, perhaps conversely keeping an eye out for ways to slip mainstream corridors of thought.