From the forthcoming album, I Want Blood, out October 18th. You can pre-order a copy HERE.
Jerry Cantrell kind of blows me away these days. I can't say I'm the biggest fan of his first two solo records - though I do like them, despite their somewhat uneven listening experience - and although I'm all for Alice in Chains continuing with James Duval, it doesn't always work for me. But between AIC's Rainier Fog, Cantrell's previous solo album Brighten (how has it been three years?), and now this 11th-hour announcement of I Want Blood, I feel the man is unpredictable in the best possible way. Aging musicians from bands that lost a key member over twenty years ago just don't act like this, and I LOVE it!!!
Watch:
Yesterday, K and I finally started Evil's long-awaited fourth and final season.
A) This might be the best show ever (minus Twin Peaks), and B) the writers have definitely been reading Laird Barron. The first episode of Season Four deals with strange happenings at a particle accelerator on the East Coast, and the second has a robot guard dog attacking innocent people. In a way, both of those are right out of Barren's third Isiah Coleridge, Worse Angels, although in the book, it's a robot sentry that attacks Coleridge while he's exploring an abandoned particle accelerator in upstate New York, but the influence is there.
And that's not to say all Evil's charms are limited to homage. This show has been a wild ride, a totally new take on a procedural crossed with X-Files, a demon-of-the-week that strictly adheres to a larger arc. The characters are among my favorites ever in a show like this, and the actual production... the lighting! This is THE BEST television lighting EVER. No joke. It works hand in hand with the set design to create this extremely relatable yet also liminal space the characters live and move within. And the practical FX! Also, Katja Herbers, Mike Colter and Ben Shakir are just fabulous.
Playlist:
Big Black - Lungs
Jim Williams - Possessor OST
Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula OST
Jeff Grace - The House of the Devil OST
Cocksure - TVMALSV
Liars - Drum's Not Dead
Deadguy - Fixation on a Coworker
Mörmaid - Pearlescent Dark
Fvnerals - Let the Earth Be Silent
The Church - Starfish
Mr. Bungle - Eponymous
Suicidal Tendencies - Controlled By Hatred/Feel Like Shit... Déjá-vu
Loathe - I Let It In and It Took Everything
Loathe - The Things They Believe
Mirar - Mare E.P.
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies E.P.
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Ten of Cups
• Eight of Swords
• Ten of Wands
Earthly completion, a profound use of intellect (problem-solving) and completion of that which thou has Willed.
Okay, first, funky 70s lighting courtesy of a late-night photo in my office. Might play around with different lighting for these photos down the road. The aesthetic fits Grimm's Hand of Doom Deck. Which, by the way, there's a coffee table art book Kickstarter starting tomorrow. I'll post here.
As for this morning's cards, it's another nod toward finishing both the free Vol. 4 collection that should drop tomorrow (I think; I still have to iron out some last-minute copyright stuff today) and Black Gloves & Broken Hearts, which I wrote the final sentence of yesterday. I've had the ending for months, I just had to finesse the final chapters to get there. That appears to be where I am now, and I should just need to sort out the epilogue and then go through for a reading edit on two fronts - me and my constant beta reader, Missi.
