Chat Pile/Haden Pedigo - A Tear For Lucas

From the Chat Pile/Hayden Pedigo 2025 collaboration album, In the Earth Again. I spun this a few times when it first came out, but my head was in a different place then. Yesterday, still suffering from back pain, I took a little bit an a gummy and drew a bath so hot I couldn't even sit down in it at first. When I was finally able to relax, I listened to the entire album and it HIT me. Fantastic record - would have been in my top three had I been in the right headspace at the time. This, the final track, brought me to tears. You can pick this up from The Flenser or either artist's Bandcamp, either HERE or HERE. 

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Watch:

It's been too long since I sat down and enjoyed The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension, but I remedied that last night.

A singular movie experience if ever there was one. There's a reason this film has a cult following. The premise and character are amazing - A brain surgeon, physicist rock star samurai who breaks the 8th dimension and sets free a cabal of aliens trapped inside negative space in New Jersey since 1938! It sounds ridiculous and it is, but the cast is amazing and really make this something you just have to see. Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum, Clancy Brown, Ellen Barkin, Vincent Schiavelli, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Hedaya, John Lithgow and Jonathan Banks... the list goes on. Truly one of the most unique and baffling films of the 80s.

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Playlist:

Windhand - Eternal Return

Sumerlands - Dreamkiller

Zombi - Direct Inject

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Black Braid - Celestial Womb EP

High on Fire - Electric Messiah

Dance with the Dead - Malombra

John Carpenter & Alan Howarth - Big Trouble in Little China OST

Boards of Canada - Inferno

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies - Cathedral

Arab Strap - Half-Told Tales

Marilyn Manson - One Assassination Under God Chapter 2

Chat Pile - Who Loves the Sun

Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo - In the Earth Again

Chat Pile - God's Country

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Card:

One from the Thoth deck:

This week, some of the usual strategies may need to be moved around a bit. 

New Music from Chat Pile!!!

Thanks to a big tip-off from Mr. Brown, I realized that Oklahoma City's Chat Pile dropped a new album this past Friday. I was really hot on their first album, God's Country, back in 2022, then the band kind of fell off my radar. This new one puts them back on in a BIG way; I'd have to say, this is the band I'd vote most likely to take up the mantle currently occupied by Godflesh in my life. With the penultimate Godflesh record arriving in just a few weeks, and the final one coming next year, I have a feeling Chat Pile is more than likely going to enter my regular rotation and stay there.

You can order the new Chat Pile record, Who Loves the Sun, HERE.

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NCBD:

A nice mix of the IP stuff and original series this week. 

This is homework from my DwC cohost Shin. Apparently this fascimile is the book where the Joker went from being the Cesar Romero version to a more psychopathic, modern version. 

The grand finale of the Event Horizon sequel! I've really enjoyed this book, considerably more than the prequel, but it will be cool in a few months to have the final series in this triptych begin and pave the way for an eventual full read-through centered around the film

Underwater action is always appreciated in the GIJOE universe, and this cover has me excited for it!

Odin took a little hiatus but is back. There's so much I love about this book, and dead nazis is only the start! Whatever nether realm these characters have found themselves in is creepy as hell, and this issue's cover is freaking me out just looking at it!

I've been waiting for this penultimate issue of Chris Condon, Andrew Enrich and Charlie Adlard's Of the Earth of a month and hot damn I cannot wait to dig in!

Thundercracker as part of Superion. Robert Kirkman continues to do all kinds of awesome new stuff with these characters. 

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Watch:

I saw Fall 2: Deadpoint this past Monday. This is the sequel to 2024's Fall, which I did not see. Honestly, I initially assumed I would skip this, too, until I saw the trailer on last month's Dread  Broadcast (watch our reaction HERE) and realized, my lack of gusto for this might be a defense mechanism. I mean, supernatural Horror is essentially comfort food at this point, but this? Absolutely terrifying.

The film on the big screen, at least, is just as terrifying and tense as I'd thought it might be. This is going to open a new line of thinking for me: rethink the Horror I dismiss. Next up will be October's adaptation of Daniel Kraus' Whale Fall, which also was an initial dismissal, but subsequently makes me feel really uncomfortable.

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Playlist:

Alabama Shakes - I Must Be Dreaming

Marilyn Manson - One Assassination Under God Chapter 2

Carpenter Brut - Leather Temple

Chat Pile - Who Loves the Sun

Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST

Jim Williams - Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched OST

Roughly Enforcing Nostalgia - Front Door Doxologies

Fear - Live... For the Record

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine - Enhanced Methods of Questioning

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Card:

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

• Knight of Cups

• Ace of Wands

• Knight of Pentacles

Follow the heart, as it will lead to breakthroughs that. Just don't be afraid to work for it (or through it, if there's pain involved).

I'm not really sure what this is trying to say, but I have an idea it might not be for me at all. 

Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo!

 

Mr. Brown sent this track to me at some point in the last week or two, and I'm just getting around to it now. Holy smokes! With a video directed by Writer/Director of 2014's Faults - fabulous film - Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo have instantly captured my attention.

It's been a minute since I've talked about my growing fascination with Chat Pile here; I got into their 2022 debut full-length, God's Country, late, and their 2024 album Cool World just narrowly missed being incorporated into my best of list last year. Hayden Pedigo, on the other hand, I am not nearly as familiar with, despite a dalliance with their 2021 album, Letting Go, last year, courtesy of a recommendation from my cousin Charles. 

The album, In the Earth Again, is due out October 31st and can be pre-ordered from Computer Students HERE. 

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NCBD:

As always, a lot of great stuff this week, so let's talk about what I'm bringing home for NCBD September 3rd, 2025:

 

Jason Aaron's TMNT continues to drop at a bi-monthly pace and I love him for it! A great relaunch of the 2012 IDW reboot that I'm so fond of that really shines as we follow the four brothers into the trials and tribulations of adulthood (Janika has her own book).

Look at that Mignola cover! This tenth issue of the anthological Savage Sword of Conan apparently begins a new mini-series that will run through all three tales in this issue, all penned by Jim Zub. While dipping into The Black Stone spin-off mini taught me to stick to what's in this main title, I'm here for whatever they have to say inside this bi-monthly mag.

Third story arc, "The Horror Men," comes to a close and Jeff Lemire and Gabriel H. Walta's Phantom Road goes back on hiatus, much to my chagrin. I love this book, and I'm always a bit blue during its off-seasons. 

 

Revisiting Larry Hama's ongoing, now 43-year-long run on this G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero has been loads of fun and does not appear to be slowing down any time soon. Luckily, despite my card-carrying status as a completionist with comics, I feel zero urge to fill in the 150+ issues I missed that would connect the last time I picked up the Marvel iteration in 1994 and the first Image issue going on two years ago. That said, I have begun looking into filling in a few of the gaps for the central part of Hama's original Marvel run, eyeing connecting the dots that would give me a solid run from issue 26 through to issue 126. It's only seven issues, so I figured, why not?

And finally, a new re-start of the flagship Batman book being written by Matt Fraction? Definitely going to give this one a shot, as Hayden Sherman and Dan Watters' "Dark Patterns" is closing out in a few months and it's been so good, it's given me a taste for a regular Bat-book. 

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Watch:

Monday night K took control of the remote and picked a film I'd never heard of before, Phillip Kaufman's 1979 film The Wanderers. 

First, check out this cast: Ken Wahl, Karen Allen, Dolph Sweet (!), Ken Foree, Linda Manz. The list goes on with a lot of people I recognized, but those are the heavy hitters to me. Ostensibly another "The American Teenagers of early 60s" story a la American Graffiti, The Outsiders, etc. The Wanderers does a pretty good job of adding to that pot with likeable characters and an intricate hierarchy of Street Gangs and the characters' allegiances/associations with them. Where this film really stuck in my head, though, is in three key scenes that introduce a definite Horror element. It dawned on me while watching the second of these scenes - a scene where a character stumbles into the Ducky Boys' territory - that this film may have been meant as a metaphor for the changes Hollywood underwent between the 1960s and 1970s. 

First, the Elements of Horror. 

The Ducky Boys appear in three scenes in this film. The first is while the main characters are driving and accidentally encroach on the Ducky Boys' side of town. The film takes place in the Bronx in 1963, and up until this key moment, it's a representation of NY in the 60s that's right in line with most of the other movies like this have painted. This, however... there's something so intentionally nightmarish and surreal about this scene that I was immediately taken aback. While watching, I assumed Kaufman had chosen this route to convey the 'we're out of our territory' fears of a teenager in the 60s whose entire world revolved around their block. Taking into account the next two scenes that feature the Ducky Boys—the one where a protagonist is killed while in their neighborhood, and the other, the climactic gang battle at the end of the film, which the film does a great job of subverting until the Ducky Boys arrive. It was a combination of these two scenes that led me to my second point. Is The Wanderers a cinematic metaphor for the changing American Film Zeitgeist in the 1970s? 

The film goes from the streets-of-New-York, day-in-the-life Golden Age of Hollywood storytelling trope to the more epic, artistic weirdness of the New Hollywood era. 

If this was intentional and not just me reading into things, The Wanderers is a piece of genius cinema that is content to masquerade as 'just another 60s West Side Story throwback.'

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - VFW OST

The Cure - Pornography

Deftones - Diamond Eyes

Radiohead - Kid A

How to Destroy Angeles - Welcome Oblivion

The Knife - Silent Shout

Kane Parsons - Backrooms OST

Chat Pile/Hayden Perdigo - Radioactive Dreams (single)

Deftones - private music

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Card:

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

• VIII: Strength

• Page of Swords

• XIII: Death

New Music from Chat Pile

 

Chat Pile blows me away. I won't pretend to have clocked a lot of hours on their stuff, but the handful of rotations I've given their first full-length, God's Country, affected me deeply. I've heard comparisons to King Missle, and there's an element of that in lead vocalist Raygun Busch's approach, for sure. Except, as much as I like some King Missle, their music is largely about being clever; there's no soul-searing vitriol mixed in like there is here. Also, the music sounds like The Jesus Lizard and Thrall in a blender with a can of dirt-streaked brown paint. That bass sound! 

The new album Cool World is up for pre-order now HERE.
 

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Watch:

Stumbling across the trailer for the Butcher Brothers Consumed this morning, I could have sworn I'd posted about this film at some point in the past. I couldn't find anything, though, so here we go:

This one doesn't exactly look like my cuppa. However, if there's a Wendigo involved, I feel like I have to investigate. I'm not familiar with the Butchers' work, but I believe The Hamiltons is Masters of Horror season one, which I bought on a digital sale a few years back, so I'll have to check that out soon. Meantime, I've added Consumed to the list.

(I have to admit, the title drew my eye because I thought for a second we were finally getting that adaptation of David Cronenberg's BRILLIANT novel of the same name. No dice.)

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Read:

After beginning last Spring (I think), I finally jumped in and finished my re-read of IDW's Cobra series from the 2010s. I'd read the series monthly, but not since, and I wasn't quite prepared for the insane level of head-fuckery this book takes on, especially once it gets to the Las Vegas chapter. 

The idea of a small unit housing Tomax Paoli as a prisoner in his own Casino, exploring intel he's giving them they know is tainted but have to act on anyway, is a great start, but by the time the series restarts the final time as The Cobra Files, the level of deep psychological control Paoli - whose twin brother Xamot was killed very early on in the series - exerts through his malicious mental influence on several team members is downright frightening.

This book really pulls no punches, and once again, I am utterly floored by what a fresh, dark take on the property IDW allowed Mike Costa and Antonio Fuso to take with this book. I never got into the other IDW Joe titles and still don't really have any interest in doing so. This, however, is one for the ages.

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Playlist:

Danzig - Danzig II: Lucifuge

Sam Hain - Unholy Passion

Sam Hain - Final Descent

M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us

Tomahawk - Oddfellows

Japandroids - Celebration Rock

Idles - Joy As An Act of Rebellion

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Card:

Back to my trusty old Thoth deck for a while. I've been missing it:

• XX: The Aeon

• XI: Lust

• 10 of Wands: Oppression

"Taking the pill will open your eyes." The pull of unconnected processes. Oppression (read at face value). This points to a theory I'm developing for a story that is quite important in my understanding of how to navigate this world of corporate dominance.