New Music From Dreamkid

 

You know, Dreamkid's seriously 80s affectations prevented me from adding 2024's Daggers to my top ten list, but looking back on 2025, I've probably listened to that record way more than some of those that made the list. I really root for Dreamkid, and even if he sometimes leaves me a little cold at first, I overall really love his music. 

This track's gonna have to grow on me, but one thing that definitely made my ears perk up is the brief spoken word part near the end - total M83 influence there! Very cool. 

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NCBD:

Big week. Let's go!

This one leads into big things, as issue 23 saw some crazy shit happen on the Great Ring, and 25 is due to kick off the Quintesson War. Huh - weird that, as we'll see below, this month's GI JOE kicks off the "Dreadnok War." Lots of war in Kirkman's Energon Universe these days, but that's to be expected with all the giant robots and laser weapons.

 

James Stokoe's second volume of Orphan and the Five Beasts promises more of Stokoe's insane art and probably even more insane martial arts action! Love this series. Just look at the cover art - how many hours could that have taken? The detail is insane, and when you figure that every page of the interior is of the same caliber, well, breathtaking. That's all I can say.

This entire issue is a Liam Sharpe opus, and I cannot wait! 

Planet Death! I almost forgot about this book. Still pumping out those old school, mid-80s Dark Horse vibes, for sure. 

Jeff Lemire's Minor Arcana returns and I have to confess - I'm considering stepping off this monthly and buying the Hardcovers when they come out. But then I'd have to wait and... I just don't know if I can do that. 

Talk about first-world problems. 

Here it is, folks - the aforementioned Dreadnok War! I love the Dreadnoks and can't wait to see how this is going to go down. Reading between the lines, I think they'll be a body count here. 

Okay, I know I pop in and out of Amazing Spider-Man, so this isn't that weird, right? I think I do it because I need one title that I engage with the way I did as a kid on an allowance, in and out, based on what interests me. This cover? This interests me because that looks an awful lot like Warlock from the New Mutants. I know it's not Warlock, but if it's a Phalanx, this could be very interesting (as long as it doesn't even remotely resemble Phalanx Covenant). 

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Watch:

Saturday, November 1st, I kicked off Noirvember by watching something like nine hours of Nicolas Winding Refn and Ed Brubaker's 2019 series Too Old To Die Young. I finished it Sunday and now I have a great big Refn-sized hole in my life.

This is Refn's version of what David Lynch did with Twin Peaks: The Return, a 13-hour-long movie cut into episodes, or 'volumes' in this case. 

Total. 

Fucking. 

Masterpiece. 

Not going to be for everyone. Hell, it took me three attempts and six years to finally do the entire thing. 

Refn likes to create gorgeous images with ugly content (see Vol. 5: The Fool), and he really wants to punish his audience at times. This is nothing new; you see increments of this in Only God Forgives, Neon Demon and I'm sure some of his other work I'm not familiar with (Pusher alienated me within minutes and I've never gone back). That penchant for beautiful ugliness, combined with his “painting” style will test a lot of people’s patience. n my opinion? It’s 100% worth it. Especially if you’re a Lynch fan, because although his influence is always apparent in NWR’s work, this feels like a love letter to him.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Jimmy and Stiggs OST

Perturbator - Age of Aquarius

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Mastodon - Blood Mountain

Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power

The Cramps - Date with Elvis

Dreamkid - Apocalyptic Love Song (single)

The Leather Nun - Primemover/FFA (single)

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons (pre-release singles)

Blut Aus Nord - 777: The Desanctification

Ritual Howls - Ruin

White Hex - Gold Nights

The Damned - Night of a Thousand Vampires

Opeth - Still Life

The Damned - Darkadelic

Testament - Para Bellum

Young Widows - Power Sucker

Slow Crush - Thirst

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Card:

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

• XIX: The Sun

• Four of Cups

• Eight of Cups

The Triumphant of the Spirit. I like the sound of that. The cards on either side of XIX seem to be telling me to pick up both the bass and the guitar again, something I have ideas for throughout the week during my daily life, and then go blank at night when I have time to actually work on something. Four of Cups is an emotional powerbase, and Eight of Cups is a little bit like that pays off, so I'm thinking I might find it rewarding to put a period at the end of this sentence and then plug in a guitar for a little while, even if I don't have any ideas in my head at the moment. 

New Zeal & Ardor album GREIF out today!!!

THIS RECORD IS BLOWING MY F**KING MIND!!!!!!

From the new Zeal & Ardor album GREIF, out today. Order direct from the band HERE.
 

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Watch:

Ed Brubaker is one of the Executive Producers of Amazon's new Caped Crusader cartoon. I was skeptical about this; Batman is OVERDONE, to say the least, and 

I've watched two of these so far, and I really like it. I'm not going to go on my "Fuck commercials on a service I already pay for" rant anymore - the next stage is acceptance, so I'll just pay $2.99 and go commercial-free. The ads are seriously creating way more mental destabilization than you might anticipate. I've boiled that down to them being continuous reminders of the completely corporate world we live in now, but that's a discussion for another time. In the interim, I'm digging this Caped Crusader show a lot, primarily because it's set in the 1940s. That was a stroke of brilliance. 

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Play:

Whoah. Might be time for me to pick up an Xbox or PS:

 

I'm not sure if that would be a total waste of time, as the amount of time I allocate to gaming now is minuscule, and I don't really want to raise it by much. But this... breathtaking.

 

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Playlist:

Uniform - American Standard (pre-release singles)

High on Fire - Cometh the Storm

Moon Wizard - Sirens

Thee Oh Sees - SORCS 80

Amigo the Devil - Born Against

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Type O Negative - Dead Again

Godflesh - Hymns

The Damned - Night of 1000 Vampires

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2019: April 8th - Too Old To Die Young

I've been listening to Tricky's Maxinquaye a lot of late. An amazingly album built around uncomfortable atmosphere, Maxinquaye remains timeless. Those aberrant sonic elements that comprise many of the tracks will, I think, always feel fresh and groundbreaking. No one does shit like this except Tom Waits, and that's just a different thing.

**

I had a long flight yesterday. An hour and fifteen to San Jose, where I arrived at 5:00 PM and had until 7:55 PM before my connecting flight to Spokane. No problem. Seriously, some people would hate this, but I looked at it as time to write. Hot to trot on Ciazarn, I found an unbelievable business room in the San Jose Airport - with desks and everything - and I put up shop, adding bullet points to my outline and trying to figure this story out. In this regard, I ended up researching everything from the Dustbowl of the 1930s and what States it affected most, to the evolution of the Railroads up until and including the landmark Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad Company court decision of 1886 where the U.S. Supreme Court first ruled a corporation has the rights of personhood. This is, by the way, one of the most detrimental moments in Earth's history, if you ask me, because it makes corporations the dominant species on the planet. But I digress. A lot of these events and ideas may not explicitly occur in Ciazarn, but all of them most definitely inform its world. I think I have bigger plans for this project than I first thought, which is cool.

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Well, FINALLY. Can't wait for June 14th:


Being that this is not only Nicolas Winding Refn, but Ed Brubaker also worked on it - and John Hawkes - I am so in.

Playlist from 4/07:

Boards of Canada - Campfire Headphase
Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
Boards of Canada -
Black Queen - Infinite Games
Ben Frost - By the Throat
Belong - October Language
Barrie - Canyons (single)
Tricky - Maxinquaye

No card today. Running late walking to this week's gig.

2019: January 12th

Missed it again! I wanted to post this yesterday and just be a day late, but I ended up not really having a chance to post at all. Better late than never.

Three years. Wow.

NCBD - another thing I'm late on. Here was the haul this week:

New book by Jeff Rougvie. Who's that you ask? Well, there's a ton of awesome backwater in this one that explains how Jeff worked for Rykodisc in the 90s and was instrumental in putting together their Bowie reissues and boxset Sound and Color. He even worked closely with Bowie himself on these releases, and lo and behold, this is Mr. Rougvie's first comic and it came out with Bowie on the cover on the anniversary of his death! Wow. Bowie doesn't feature into the story of Gunning for Hits, which looks as though it will revolve around Martin Mills, a hitman-turned-Record company A&R man in 1987. This one is chock full o' great inside the music industry that was stuff, and looks as though it's setting up a fun tale to boot!

Another outstanding number one, but with Brubaker and Phillips, is there ever any doubt? Nope.

Another newer book I'm reading. The concepts go deep and I can't wait to get into the heart of the world that author Dan Wickline is building here. I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Mr. Wickline for quite a while last month when he did a signing at The Comic Bug, and Freeze sounds like it is going to be fantastic!

Speaking of Ed Brubaker, in his most recent newsletter - which you can sign up for HERE - he describes Warren Ellis and Jason Howard's Cemetery Beach as a multiple-issue-long chase scene. He's not wrong, and it's awesome!

Playlist from 1/11:

Steely Dan - Alive in America
The Black Angels - Death Song
Grinderman - Eponymous
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Baroness - Purple
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
The Knife - Silent Shout
Moderat - II
Apparat - The Devil's Walk

Card of the day:

This is, I believe, a direct acknowledgment of a character in the book, so I'll take it as an, 'on the right path, mate!' kinda thing.

2018: October 12th

Here's a track off one of my seasonal go-to's this time of year, The Final Cut's 1992 Consumed, which also happens to be my pick for today's edition of The Joup Friday Album, which you can read over HERE on Joup.co.

Continued 31 Days of Horror last night with Killer Klowns form Outer Space. Man, John Vernon is the shit, isn't he?

31 Days of Horror:

10/01) Summer of 84
10/02) Rope
10/03) Dreams in the Witch House
10/04) Crash
10/05) The Fly
10/06) Re-animator
10/07) Night of the Demons
10/08) Species
10/09) The Roost
10/10) The Convent
10/11) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Tonight? I'm thinking either George A. Romero's Day of the Dead or Dario Argento's Phenomenon. But we'll see.

I didn't talk about NCBD yet this week, primarily because I've been too busy to stop in and pick up the one thing that came out on my pull. But oh what a 'one thing' it is:

This original Hardcover Graphic Novel from the creators of recent favorites of mine Fatale, The Fade Out, and Kill Or Be Killed, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies ties into the Criminal Universe in a small way via that series' first arc, Coward. Interestingly enough, I just read Coward for the first time a few days ago. I couldn't have timed that better if I'd tried! Criminal is the only Brubaker/Phillips series I've yet to engage with, and this little serendipitous jaunt should catapult me further into it nicely. Thanks to my good friend Joe.Baxter for lending me his trades and getting me started!

Playlist from yesterday:

Monolord - Rust
The Black Queen - Infinite Games
In Solitude - Sister
Blut Aus Nord - Memorial Vetusta II - Dialogue with the Stars

No, that damn second part of the novel still isn't finished, but I did come up with the plot point I believe it has always been missing. The somewhat clunky elements that haunted a certain character's motivations have now been replaced with what I can joyously say is a new, elegant arc that puts everyone where I need them to be for the plot to resolve in part three. I spent a good deal of time yesterday re-writing chapters in part one in order to massage this element in and it sent me skyrocketing into the second half with renewed vigor. So here's to that!

Card of the day:

Mind distracted at times you say? Why yes! All that writing time yesterday was hard-earned in between being distracted by this and this and this.

Bastards!

2018: June 28th

My friend Anthony recently turned me on to these guys. Powerful stuff.

Final issue of Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips' Kill or Be Killed came out yesterday. Great series. I didn't LOVE the end, would have found it more fitting with the severity of the series if it had ended at the end of issue 19, HOWEVER, I didn't not like having 20 end the series, and I get why they did what they did. Brubaker and Phillips have proven themselves so I don't question their work, I just enjoy it.

Watched a really cool little movie on Shudder last night. Sweet Sweet Lonely Girl is an exercise in both atmosphere and restraint, and it is definitely worth your time if you like retro, slow-burn films bristling with soft dread you know is going to go tits up before the end.

The new Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying is up HERE.

Playlist from Wednesday, 6/27/18:

The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse
PLANETS - The Dark Woods
NIN - Bad Witch
FMLYBND - Letting Go
The Effigies - Remains Nonviewable
Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right
Wrong - Feel Great
The Atlas Moth - The Ache of Distance
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

Card of the day:

Aim for the light and remain optimistic.

Nicolas Winding Refn's To Old To Die Young

via Bloody Disgusting. Now this is a teaser trailer! Now please.

For The Love of Comic Books...

... is a new column I started on Joup. It's the replacement piece for Thee Comic Column and meant to be considerably more interactive with my fellow writers at Joup. In this inaugural edition I talk about Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips and Elizabeth Breitweiser's new series from Image, Kill or Be Killed. It's awesome. Read my thoughts here.

Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's Velvet...

image courtesy of http://benjaminherman.wordpress.com/

... is on tap in this week's Comic Column on Joup, right here. Great espionage book that really just has to be made into a movie or I will freakin' scream.