Okay, newish music from Dance of the Dead, as I've meant to post this one for a while now and keep forgetting. That neon green cross in the thumbnail is something I'd pay to have hanging on my walls, so you can say it caught my eye.
From the new EP Dark Matter, out October 25th. They also have a tour coming up, dates for which you can find HERE.
Watch:
Last night, K and I finally saw Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. This will be the last time I give Mr. Burton A) the benefit of the doubt and B) my time.
Such a waste of a great cast. It's painful to realize that Mr. Burton is very clearly not the same person he was when he made his mark on pop culture, and it's even more painful to watch him try desperately to recapture that person and fail every time. The last movie by him I saw was Dark Shadows, and that, too, made me cringe about his entire aesthetic, which honestly has always been his main appeal. The problem with style over content is, eventually, if it wears out, it's welcome for want of substance.
Happy Monday, October 17th! Here's some Dance with the Dead to wake all our asses up! From the B-Sides: Vol. 1 collection, which is available on the group's Bandcamp HERE.
31 Days of Halloween:
10/1 - Trick 'r Treat
10/2 - Barbarian
10/3 - Hellraiser ('84)
10/4 - Phenomena
10/5 - Hellraiser (2022)
10/6 - The Dark Backward
10/7 - Sick/The Beyond
10/8 - Werewolf By Night
10/9 - Something in the Dirt
10/10 - Let the Right One in Episode 1/Lux Aeterna
10/16 - Spider Baby/101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments/Night's End/Behemoth
Jennifer Reeder's Night's End hit Shudder a few months back as a Shudder original and kind of got pushed right past my radar by all the other titles that came in hot on its heels. Luckily, while browsing back through the "All Movies" heading, I stumbled on it. Fantastic film. a tight 81 minutes, this one really pulls you into the protagonist's inner world with visual cues, then kind of explodes all over the place in the final act. Loved it.
Also, we have the first episode of AHS NYC dropping this coming Wednesday, and I'm pretty excited. I don't think it's any coincidence that this season lands just after David Bruckner's Hellraiser and appears to focus on a lot of the same imagery and even, possibly, an extension of the scene that inspired Barker to write the original The Hellbound Heart.
Will this be American Horror Story's version of Hellraiser? Probably not exactly, but it looks like it will scratch a similar itch.
Playlist:
Boy Harsher - Burn It Down EP
Boy Harsher - Careful
Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Public Memory - Veil of Counsel EP
G.I.S.M. - Detestation
Jammes Luckett - May OST
Goblin - 2013 Tour EP
Claudio Simonetti - Phenomena OST
Jim Williams - Possessor OST
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
Say no more. This is one of those "loud and clear" readings: I haven't gotten shit down with writing in weeks. The second week in LA, when I stayed with friends, fine. That's an excuse. Working, commuting, seeing almost a flick a night and a concert? But I've been back a week tonight (technically a week tomorrow morning) and I've only written once. That has to change. I need to focus my energies on that time, and apply my Will.
New video from Dance with the Dead, and it's really cool! I love the floating first-person perspective used to zoom along deserted, dilapidated forest roads and into old mine shafts. Very cool. Also, those shots are so alluring, I'd imagine it could be difficult to come up with something more narrative-like to compliment it, but a four-minute video of just that perspective stuff would definitely get old. Luckily, the creators knew exactly where to take this one. The "skeleton rave" is a bit goofy, but ultimately totally works for the song, and it gives us a destination for all those traveling shots.
Watch:
Since seeing it pop up on Shudder at the beginning of the month, I've really been wanting to rewatch Alexander Aja's 2003 High Tension. The problem with that particular film, however, is as much as I like everything about the first two acts, the twist or reveal at the onset of the third never worked for me.
Maybe I've just been looking for a reason to try the film again - I seem to watch it about every ten years, always hoping I feel different. That's never the case. However - I recently began listening to the Horror podcast The House That Screams, and I'll be damned if their most recent episode didn't change my view of the film's personality-warping twist.
The important thing is, I think, the idea one of the hosts expresses that the killer is not so much a secondary personality, as it is a personification of Marie's romantic (?) feelings for her friend Alex. Something about this just helped my acceptance of the film's outcome, I think probably because at the time of its release, there had already been so many films that imitated Fight Club's masterful maneuvering of character that any hint of it immediately killed a film for me. The only exception to that was Brad Anderson's The Machinist, and my acceptance of that one only came after a conversation with a friend where they explained their understanding of Ivan as a physical personification of Trevor's guilt. The House That Screams hosts (I'm new to the show and haven't heard enough to know exactly who is talking when) make a comparison to Leland Palmer/Bob. Now, while they don't suggest it's exactly the same scenario as Bob's "inhabiting spirit," I'd never thought of this angle before. That kind of surprises me, being what a huge Twin Peaks fan I am. But hearing it and making the earlier, perhaps more 1:1 comparison with The Machinist, I feel like I'm ready to watch the film again and see how it sits.
Read:
Re-reading Warren Ellis & Declan Shalvey's painfully short run on Moon Knight. Goddamn, I wish they'd stayed with it for at least twelve issues.
The good news, of course, was the relationship between Ellis and Shalvey that started here went on to give us three GLORIOUS volumes of Injection, and further went on to launch Shalvey as not only a top-tier artist but a pretty damn great writer as well. I'm still thinking about Bog Bodies after re-reading it middle of last year.
Playlist:
Ghost - Impera
Orville Peck - Bronco
The Cure - Faith
Greg Puciato - Lowered (single)
Tennis System - Technicolor Blind
Isobell Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday at Devil Dirt.
Mad Season - Above
Revocation - The Outer Ones
Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum
Card:
Okay, I love this spread:
To see such a clear narrative offset by instructions that don't just make sense in the course of my current life, but in the course of the nature of the cards, is almost breathtaking.
Past = Princess of Swords: Confusion and chaos. This is my exact mindset of late. I'm fighting myself, my intuition, everything.
Present = Queen of Wands: Not a fan of this card, however, you look at that calming hand on top of the Lion and you get the picture. Reel it in, son. Tame your inner fires and FOCUS.
Future = Prince of Wands: Here's where the beauty emerges. These two cards are in sequence in the deck. One tells you to tame the Lion, the other shows it under your control, pulling you forward.
New Dance with the Dead on the horizon! The new album Driven to Madness is out on January 10th. No pre-order I can find yet, but I love the track.
Watch:
I finally made it around to watch Alex Winter's Zappa documentary last night. Really well-made flick that served as a fantastic refresher for me - I read Zappa's autobiography back in the mid-nineties and, while I found it endless endearing and fascinating, twenty-something years later, I just don't remember much about it. Enter Winter's doc and I feel like I have reconnected with a lot of what I learned to love about Frank Zappa. I'm no die-hard, however, the music by Zappa - and specifically The Mothers of Invention - that I like, I really like. And I like it even more when I hear the man who wrote it talk about the process and intention behind such unique, amazing music.
Playlist:
Nun Gun - Mondo Decay
Liars - The Apple Drop
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes
The Police - Outlandos d'Amour
Windhand - Eternal Return
Chicano Batman - Invisible People
Zeal and Ardor - Devil is Fine
Miami Horror - Illumination
Zonal - Wrecked
Zonal - Eponymous (single)
Zombi - Shape Shift
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Ghost of Vroom - Ghost of Vroom 1
The Police - Zenyatta Mondatta
David Bowie - Stage
Kadavar and Elder - Eldovar: A Story of Darkness and Light
Umberto - Prophecy of the Black Widow
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Dance with the Dead - Driven to Madness (pre-release single)
Dance with the Dead - Into the Abyss
Card:
Hmm... possibly a nod toward a strange new venture that I have started in the world of NFTs? Too early to tell, but perhaps this is a suggestion I continue.
Possibly my favorite track from an outstanding album, Dance With the Dead's 2016 The Shape.
Watch:
Last night, K and I watched Brian Duffield's Spontaneous. Wow. Just wow. Duffield - a writer on a bunch of stuff I love, like Underwater, The Babysitter, The Babysitter: Killer Queen (which, admittedly I haven't watched yet, but it's on the list and when the gang's back together, you can't go wrong, right???) - makes his directorial debut here and he KILLS IT. I mean, seriously kills. The Terminator shooting Linda Hamilton's roommate kills, if you know what I mean. Here's the trailer, but my suggestion is, just go pay $2.99 to rent it on Amazon. Best three bucks you're gonna spend all year.
As the wait for the next Perturbator records near neigh interminable lengths, and the knowledge that James Kent is leaving his former 'genre' behind, I've begun to clamor for more dark, brooding synthwave. Bandcamp remains a fantastic place to find what I'm looking for. Case in point, this week's Sunday Bandcamp spotlight on Dance With The Dead. I haven't made it very deep into their discography, but after absorbing Near Dark yesterday, I intend to do so in the very near future.
