Annihilator - Sixes and Sevens

Some old school Canadian Thrash from Annihilator to punch us in the face and remind us it's Friday! From the 1990 album Never, Neverland. This one takes me back to the days of dubbing random tracks off 88.3 WXAV, St. Xavier University's radio show. So many great musical discoveries.

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Watch:

Wow - I did not expect to find a trailer for Deathgasm II today! 

Really interesting setup for a sequel. I like the Ghostbusters II, "Nothing worked out for us after we saved the world," angle. And the idea of having an undead, flesh-eating zombie in your metal band is, well, how did no one ever think of that before? 

Not sure if this one is going to be in theatres or not, but one can hope. 

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NCBD Addendum:

Walking into Rick's Comic City yesterday, I had zero idea that David and Maria Lapham had a new series from Image hitting the shelves this week. 

A crime comic with a small-town scope, the first issue of Good As Dead sets a pretty mean stage. We meet the Valade Family, who run the local criminal enterprises and own the bridge that puts the small border town of Port Lindon on the map. In the other corner, we meet Sheriff Calhoun, who wants nothing more than to put down the Valades. We get the intimation that the Calhouns and Valades are two of the town's founding families, with something of a Haffield/McCoy history between them. After a couple of catastrophic events play out, Sheriff Calhoun doubles down on getting justice, especially when a pretty severe turn of events leaves him with little more than a week to live...

So yeah, this is going to be great! 

This has that Lapham, modern Southwest Noir flavor BIG TIME, and was a joy to read. There can sometimes be a bit of a disconnect with the Laphams' story compression techniques, but their stuff always wins me over in the end, so here's to at least two more issues (hopefully more, that's all that has been solicited thus far).

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Playlist:

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Jim Williams - Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched OST

The Divine Comedy - Promenade

Alice in Chains - Eponymous

The Soft Moon - Eponymous

Night Sins - Portrait in Silver

Joy Division - Substance

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division - Closer

Joy Division - Still

Inter Arma - Garbers Days Revisited

Ilsa - Preyer

Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain

Deftones - private music

Annihilator - Never, Neverland

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Card:

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

Also, if you head over to Grimm's Kickstarter HERE you'll see his upcoming The Eldritch Lace Tarot Deck, you can hit the "notify upon launch" button and then you can get on this seriously unbelievably awesome deck. 

• Four of Swords

• Five of Cups

• Queen of Swords

Rest and recuperate after a major disappointment. Doing so may force honesty where before there was none. 

Not vague at all. I don't really want to go into it, but I'm reading the 'rest' as holding off on sending a pretty sensitive email until tomorrow morning, when I was going to send it tonight. Never really a good idea to send a sensitive email in the middle of the night with a couple beers in you. 

Isolation: Day 116 - Transmissions After Zero

Over the weekend, I finally got a chance to check out the Brainiac Doc that's now streaming on Prime. Transmissions After Zero is a fantastic slice of Midwest, indie rock history. I'll never forget the day Mr. Brown first played me Brainiac's Bonsai Superstar. The vocals reminded me of a cross between Marilyn Manson and Adam Sandler's Excited Southerner character (NOTE: This was before Sandler had become an affront to good taste). The music too, especially the guitars, hit the sweet spot between melodic and completely angular and dissonant.



I love all Brainiac's records, and the death of Mr. Taylor was one of the most tragic moments of 90s music history. This doc 100% does both Taylor and the band's legacy justice.

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Another flick I watched over this past weekend is Jason Lei Howden's Guns Akimbo. Howden has already earned a place in heaven for his 2015 Heavy Metal possession flick Deathgasm, and now this? Akimbo is freakin' nuts; the absolute heir to the Crank series' throne for meth-level madness. Samara Weaving can do no wrong in my eyes at the moment, and Radcliffe gives a great performance as Miles whose punishment for being a worthless internet troll is to have two guns bolted through his palms and made to play in an underground death match internet series. Sound insane? It is:



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Playlist:

Lustmord - Hobart
Battle Tapes - Sweatshop Boys EP
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Zombi - Shape Shift
Brainiac - Smack Bunny Baby
Van Halen - Eponymous
Brainiac - Bonsai Superstar
Brainiac - Hissing Prigs in Static Courture

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Card:

Everything needs time and consideration. This dovetails nicely with my early morning realization that the short story I've been wrestling with off and on for over a year now, isn't working out the way I want it to because I've been trying to shoehorn a 10K words at least into under 6K. Accepting this and re-approaching it from that perspective, things may turn out better.

Isolation: Day 34 Code Orange

Mr. Brown turned me on to Code Orange's new record Underneath a few days ago, and it's been quickly becoming a staple. The album is all over the place as far as textures; so many influences in these guys that, in a way, I feel like they're the bridge between reclaiming some of the cooler elements in late 90s/early 00s metal - most of which was ruined by near constant narcissism and ostentatious infusion of hip hop aesthetics - and bridging those elements with the groove-heavy pioneering of mid-period Sepultura, the speed of and precision of DEP, as well as the latter's occasional penchant for incorporating glitch-like electronic elements.

Underneath dropped on Roadrunner Records recently; if you're interested you can order it HERE.

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Speaking of metal, yesterday I re-watched the Joe Bob Briggs presentation of Jason Lei Howden's Deathgasm. Man, I love this movie.



Letterboxd

Also, I finally watched the John Carpenter/Tobe Hooper anthology Body Bags. Not sure why this one took me so long to get around to. Fantastic. The cast really surprised me, with a slew of B-Level actors whose chops were never more apparent than at the direction of two Masters of Horror.



Letterboxd

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Playlist:

Killing Joke - The Fall of Because
Killing Joke - Night Time
Code Orange - Underneath
White Lung - Paradise
The Rolling Stones - Goats Head Soup
The Babies - Our House On the Hill

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Card:

From the Grimoire: "Saving Money." Fitting. Stimulus landed today and all but a tiny bit of it went directly into Savings. I'll stimulate the economy when we buy a house. In the meantime, a portion of the remainder of the government pay-off for ineptitude will be spent on Kindle editions of William Gibson's The Peripheral and it's recently released follow-up, Agency.