More fabulous Dungeon Synth from Mountain Realm, distributed by Cryo Crypt Records. I LOVE this one - there's something about the synth tones employed that induces a wonderfully dreamy lethargy in me. You can grab the digital for $5 over on Bandcamp. Perfect for what I've been reading (below).
Watch:
Well, Stranger Things is over. I feel like, overall, Season Four is still my favorite. Five had some ups and downs for me, but I think a lot of that had to do with the release schedule.
Those first four episodes Netflix dropped around Thanksgiving blew me away - especially the very end of four. Then the three we got last week... I feel like the creators had to slow things down to address a lot of dangling character threads that probably could have been woven more evenly throughout the entire season. And those Christmas episodes could have easily been one long episode instead of three. But the finale made up for it. Not necessarily the Vecna-related stuff, which was fine. What the Duffers did REALLY well, though, was all the after-the-final-battle stuff. K and I sobbed, and it felt great.
We're recording a full-spoiler discussion on the final four episodes this weekend, so that will go up next week. In the meantime, here's our discussion of Season Five, episodes 1-3.
Overall, I really loved the entire series. Totally worth the hype.
Read:
I blew through the second book in Nathan Ballingrud's Lunar Gothic Trilogy, Cathedral of the Drowned, and I can honestly say this was the best novel I read in 2025.
Ballingrud's marriage of Horror, Weird Fiction and Science Fiction/Fantasy is seamless and unparalleled, primarily because, over the course of his career, he has honed his prose into a tight and ethereal style that so confidently conjures abstractions he can put you anywhere he can imagine. This novel continues the story begun in 2024's Crypt of the Moon Spider, advancing the race of sentient but eerily quiet Moon Spiders and further exploring the bizarre, reality-shifting properties of their webbing. Ballingrud takes us from the horrors of the Moon to a burgeoning gang war in Red Hook, New York, to Jupiter's Io moon, all teeming with life, gore and questions of what it means to exist as a sentient being.
Playlist:
Radiohead - OK Computer
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
Idles - Crawler
Willie Nelson - Oh What a Beautiful World: The Songs of Rodney Crowell
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads
Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow
Ulver - Neverland
Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain
U2 - War
Card:
One Card for 2026 pulled on NYE:
I've been studying the Thoth deck again for the last few weeks, so I felt it only right to do my New Year Pull with that. This is a definite nod to take the high view; avoid knee-jerk reactions and try to see things from a macro perspective. Use insight, intellect and Will, not emotion.
