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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 ServicesHERE.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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)
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!"
