Heaven is an Incubator posted the new album by Spain's Calderum. I'd never heard of these guys (this guy?) before, or the idea that anyone was meshing Black Metal with Dungeon Synth. I mean, talk about a sound you didn't know you wanted but you've been anticipating for years!
You can pre-order the Vinyl like I did, or the cassette from Death Prayer Records in the UK, just head over to Calderum's Bandcamp HERE.
Write:
I just posted a story called The Bagman Cometh over on the Horror Amino app. I had a lot of fun doing this one, and a longer version will ultimately be included in my forthcoming FREE short story collection Its Soil Be Murder. To read the current version, go HERE.
The piece is a mashup of random pictures from my phone, all used to prompt the story. I really dig this one; it plays with the whole Creepy Pasta/Urban Legend thing, while also bringing back a character from a short story I wrote waaaaay back in the early 00s but still need to publish. Maybe I'll put that in the Free Collection as well.
Back:
Hasbro Pulse began a new Haslab campaign yesterday, and unfortunately, I caught wind of it early enough that I have about a week to struggle with whether or not to cough up $299 to back this:
Christ. One of my all-time favorite figures, the HISS Driver, working treads and the kicker? That fucking working beacon.
Playlist:
Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands
Krallice - Demonic Wealth
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Undreamable Abysses
Ruby Friedman Orchestra - Fugue in La Minor (single)
Pink Milk - Ultraviolet
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Various - The Void OST
Card:
Reminding me to make completely 'Scientific' decisions tomorrow at the home inspection; I must not succumb to emotion for or against the move. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, we go back to LaLaLand and start a new plan.
A couple weeks ago, my good friend Jacob sent me a link to a band called Skywave's album killerrockandroll on Apple Music. It took me until late last week to get around to it, and when I did, my first reaction was apprehension. I liked Skywave quite a bit, but they sounded an awful lot much like A Place to Bury Strangers, and because of that I had mixed feelings. I mean, it even sounded like Oliver Ackermann singing. A lot. I did some quick research and learned there was a good reason the two bands sounded so much alike: Skywave was Ackermann's precursor to APTBS, disbanding around 2003.
As a sound, killerrockandroll definitely scratches the APTBS itch, which is great, because ever since Exploding Head, I've been less than impressed with most of what Strangers release, so now I have a new place to go when I wear Head out and feel like something more.
Watch:
Last week was fairly unproductive, writing-wise. I had a major breakthrough early one morning on my way to work, but after that, the days just took too much out of me. I have developed some kind of chronic, insanely painful back pain that manifests as sharp, horrible spasms when I do things like, well, move. It's not constant, but walking on eggshells and the fact that this hasn't gone away in almost a month has me more than a little afraid and totally exhausted mentally. Every day last week I came home, stared longingly at the spot at the kitchen table where I write during the afternoon, and then collapsed onto the sectional instead. As is my habit on afternoons such as this, I threw on a few movies, mostly conking out before they even began. Most were utterly forgettable. One was great, one good.
First, the great one: Director George Popov's The Droving. I loved it.
This one fits into a subgenre I've kind of created in my head, "British Occult," and shares that tag with films like Colm McCarthy's Outcast, Julian Richards' Darklands, and Ben Wheatley's Kill List. The Droving follows Martin, an ex-military interrogator, home from the desert and looking for his sister, who has disappeared. I have a brief review up on my Horror Amino profile, as well as on my Letterbxd page. Needless to say, I really dug this film, and plan on going back and watching Popov's first film Hex, which stars much of the same cast as this one, and is currently included with Amazon Prime.
Next, the good one was Director Dan Bush's The Dark Red. Here's the trailer:
This one took a while to win me over. Being distributed by Dark Sky Films I should have given it the benefit of the doubt from the start, but I found it on Prime and, honestly, the movie algorithm they use has started to make their 'Recommends' list look like the ass end of the Horror Section you'd see at Hollywood video back in the early 2000s, when a ton of cheaply made crap horror flix began to fill out the shelves of the Horror section (Dark Night of the Scarecrow anyone? How about Alien vs. Hunter?). Anway, The Dark Red is pretty solid. The tone switches in the third act, and even though it's a bit jarring, that final act really turns everything that came before on its head. Which turns out to be both good for the viewer and the excitement factor in the flick, a little bad if you're really paying attention. Full disclosure, I nodded off a bit, so my issues may be mine, and I can't help wonder if I'd seen this under better circumstances, if it would have totally wowed me. One thing is for sure, the actor Bernard Setaro Clark blew me away with his supporting performance, and I'd definitely like to see more of him.
Playlist:
Deftones - Diamond Eyes
A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
Santogold - Eponymous
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - Ancestral Recall (pre-release single)
Continuing this somewhat - to me anyway - fascinating record of the music I wake up with in my head, because there's always music there when I open my eyes to a new day, today it was one of the more nuanced tracks from 2016's Total Depravity by The Veils:
I say nuanced and I do not mean it in a negative way; every track off Total Depravity is marvelous, and what's more, The Veils are very good at doing that that thing that I love: all the tracks add up to make an outstanding full album, one that resonates on multiple harmonic levels when listened to as a whole. We're talking sonically, thematically, and overall aesthetically, this record shines. In fact, I'd call it one of the best 'albums' I've heard in years.
Playlist yesterday was sparse. I finally found my CD copy of Shellac's most recent record Dude Incredible so that may be going into regular commute rotation for a while:
The Soft Moon - Criminal
Shellac - Dude Incredible
Deftones - Gore
The Doors - LA Woman (original vinyl pressing - used to be my Dad's and has THIS little nasty on the back of the bright yellow record sleeve).
I pre-ordered Dude Incredible on vinyl back when it was released and Mr. Albini and crew included as something of, I think, a philosophical statement on their preference for analog over digital, a totally unlabeled copy of the album on disc. Lately I've had the strongest hankerings for Shellac while in the car, so although it's been a while since I've pulled the vinyl out at night, during the day I'd several times been frustrated to discover I had no idea where the disc was. I even feared, due to its unmarked facade, its possible loss in the great divorce tally/purge of 2015. Then a couple days ago I pull out 1000 Hurts on disc and there's the unlabelled missing album on top. I very much count this as a win.
Last night K and I tried to watch both Good Time and It Comes at Night but failed at both. Part of this may have been due to a certain persnickety fatigue six long days of work surrounded by LA commutes had left me with by the time I'd prepared dinner and had a few Smithwicks, but I definitely feel it this lack of connection was not entirely on me. Both films are distributed byA24,whose films I normally fall right in line with, but with my shortage of time to appropriate for watching movies these days, I feel fairly certain I won't be giving either of these another chance. Instead, we're seeing The Philadelphia Story on the big screen this afternoon, thanks to Turner Movie Classics and Fathom Events, and steering tonight's Sunday Night Feature to Dark Song, a film several good friends have given near rave reviews of, and which I'd waited on since first reading about on the Horror Amino community, where there's a wealth of awesome horror information updated on pretty much an hourly basis.
Card of the day:
A lot in my Grimoire about this one, however most of it presupposes the card's value in a spread, in relation to other cards, especially Disks and its representation of Earthly matters. Specifically I see one relating to gambling. I'll keep this in mind, however the one point of primary interest here is the note that the Three of Swords can indicate, "... a current period of unhappiness, not necessarily one to come."
Two reasons for this note's perceived poignancy at the moment with regards to my existence:
I'm not in the best of moods today due to a certain lackadaisical approach to property management by the cunts that run the building that I will soon be moving out of, and two, the "... not necessarily..." part really helps when looking back at the last few days' cards and tracking their ongoing juxtaposition with my moving situation: knowing the Futility of the current situation with finding a new place forces a decision to be made; accepting the Change that will come with that decision, and now the suggestion that unhappiness will not necessarily follow on the tide of that Change, well, the pieces are in motion and I'm helping to keep them that way. My contributions pail in comparison to K's near constant attempts to stay in contact with the other parties involved.
