New Music from Jerry Cantrell!!!

 

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!!!

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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. 

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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

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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. 

Suitable Psychos Howling in the Wind

 

Mr. Brown clued me into the fact that Jenny Lewis dropped a new record last week. Totally not on my radar at the moment. I've given Joy'All a few spins - if you dig Jenny Lewis in general, this is for you. I have to say, I'm not taking to this one as easily as I have with her older stuff. Last night I revisited her 2006 collaboration with the Watson Twins (who also, it turns out, have a new album dropping next week!) Rabbit Fur Coat and it reminded me just how much I love Lewis's work. Her voice, lyrics, and arranging.  All that's there on the new album, however, those qualities feel somehow muted. It may just need more listens, which I will surely give it over the upcoming summer evenings. That said, starting with 2014's Voyager - which I adore - I feel like Lewis found a 'sound' and has not veered too far outside it. That's cool. But I miss the days when she mixed things up a bit more. Either way, new Jenny Lewis is still an event to be happy about. You can order the record HERE.

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Watch:

Fangoria posted a teaser for Joe Lynch's new film Suitable Flesh; I've been chomping at the bit for this one, so despite my recent tendency to avoid trailers, I watched this. 

 

It's perfect - gives nothing away, floods us with fantastically menacing images, and then disappears. Not unlike a Lovecraft entity, really. That's it for me, though; I won't be watching any subsequent trailers. No word on exact release dates yet, but if this goes wide, I'll be there day one.

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Read:

I received and blew through Laird Barron's new Isaiah Coleridge novel, The Wind Began to Howl. Outstanding, as always. I'm amazed at Barron's ability to crank out insanely readable iterations of this character that are primarily stand-alone, modern detective stories, but also have begun to develop not only a big picture but a bridge into the Barron mythos we know from his short story collections and previous novel/novellas.  In my memory at least, back at the outset of Book One: Blood Standard, there was little to no direct sign of his strange, dark 'Outer'. It's here in spades now, although introduced and perpetuated in a way that doesn't fully immerse Coleridge in that world. Yet.

 

The Wind Began to Howl is published by Bad Hand Books and is available wherever books are sold!

 

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Playlist:

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Colter Wall - Imaginary Appalachia

Bria - Cuntry Covers Volumes 1 &2

Blut Aus Nord - What Once Was... Liber II EP

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium - Undreamable Abysses

Blut Aus Nord - The Endless Multitude (pre-release single)

Godflesh - Purge

Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat

Roy Orbison - Mystery Girl

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Card:

I'm feeling a pull back to the Thoth Deck in a way I haven't in quite some time. It's good to be back; I love this deck. First one I owned and really, the only one for nearly twenty years. Missi's homemade Raven Deck and Grimm's Bound are the only other Tarot I own. There are thousands of gorgeous or intriguing decks out there, but I collect enough stuff.

Anyway:

• 7 of Swords: Futility - a conflict reaches a natural pause.

• Knight of Swords - Probably from exhaustion at fighting

• 9 of Cups - an understanding, peace or elation is achieved. 

There are a couple open loops in my life at the moment; none directly affect me, but all affect folks I'm close to. Not entirely sure what this Pull is referencing. 

I dabbled in the first act of Blood Magick I've tried in a long time last night. This was to help a friend, and I should say upfront, I use my own blood; I don't hurt other living things. I don't know that this Pull is referencing that. Full disclosure: I never 'ask the cards a question' before I draw. I just draw and read and usually, the result makes its subject known instantly. But this... I'm not sure how to read yet.

Interesting note: Blood begets blood. I had dark, bloody A.F. dreams all night. Two relatively close friends - no one I have ever mentioned in these pages - died of a knife puncture to the throat. This happened in the old practice spot my bands had in the 90s, the studio apartment above my parents' detached garage. The scenario began with one friend, and the dream jumbles events so I'm not sure if it was a suicide or somehow I was the killer. After the agonizing event of the death, we (no idea who the 'we' were, but it was definitely more than just me) placed the body in the bathtub with ice, then fretted over contacting the person's spouse. This was the worst part of the dream, because it seemed even dream me was unsure if I was responsible for the death. Then, in true dream logic, the body became that of someone else entirely.

This did nothing to abate the horror.

The dream flit in and out of several iterations of waking, so that by the time I awoke this morning, I was unsure if the chronology of torment it imposed on my psyche was from last night, or if the dream has been recurring for several nights and I just haven't remembered it until now. As of typing this, I feel relatively certain this only occurred last night. 

Disturbing, yes. However, like bad drug experiences, I dig nightmares. I'm always able to crack a piece of my consciousness off and have it observe from a third-party perspective, even while the rest of me shrieks in horror. 

 

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New Music from Blut Aus Nord!!!

 

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.

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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!

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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. 

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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)

 

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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!"

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X's For Eyes... And That's All

 

I have always carried a torch for a handful of songs from the Phil Collins/80s Genesis catalogue. I know, I know... I don't care. These songs are in my DNA from early life exposure. Also, weirdly enough, a lot of comic book memories are attached to some of them, this one in particular. Not necessarily specific issues, but eras.

The year Tonight, Tonight, Tonight came out - 1986 - was the year I first started reading comics on a regular basis with Larry Hama's G.I.Joe issue #49. The same year, this song appeared in a Michelob television commercial. Something about that commercial primed me to be both a Ministry fan and a Bret Easton Ellis fan, though it's difficult to explain the latter half of that statement. (Ministry's Everyday is Halloween would score a - get this - Old Style Dry commercial, just two years later. My memory so clearly stated it was a Bud Dry commercial that I would have put money on it. Also, who remembered that Old Style had a "Dry" beer? Not me, and probably not Dennis Farina, either. I mean, if he was still alive...)

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Play:

The New Puppet Combo game Stay Out of the House drops June 16th! I've already pre-ordered my copy for Switch. Why? Check out this gnarly trailer:

Oh man, I need to double-down on No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, which I played the hell out of for the first week and a half and then haven't really had time for since.             

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Read:

Blew through Laird Barron's third Isaiah Coleridge novel, Worse Angels and, exactly as instinct suggested, it went from a 4-star to a 5-star rating simply because I did not reread Black Mountain (Bk 2) first. Love this series, and it's put me in mind of tracing some of the recurring characters, so the instant I finished it, I picked up Barron's 2015 novella X's for Eyes.         

I've only read this particular Barron book once before when it first came out, and it's not a Coleridge novel, however, Tom Mandibole makes an appearance, and since he is a major force in Worse Angels, I really wanted to work backward on his character. The first memory I have of him is "More Dark," the closing story in Barron's 2013 The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All collection, where - in my mind at least - it's heavily implied he is a riff on author Thomas Ligotti. I read Barron's work as it's released, and in the past, I haven't kept notes, so I'm hazy on where and how often Mandibole has appeared. Hence the 'working backward.' At any rate, Mandibole shows up in the first two pages of X's For Eyes, as does Sword Industries, the Labrador family and who knows what else. So I'm in the right place until The Wind Began to Howl (Coleridge Bk 3.5) arrives.

 

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Playlist:

Lustmord - Berlin

Low - Double Negative

Ganser - Odd Talk

Les Discrets - Prédateurs

Godflesh - Post Self

Danzig - Danzig III: How the Gods Kill

Alice in Chains - Sap EP

Soundgarden - Superunknown

Huey Lewis and the News - Sports

Phil Collins/Genesis - Collins. Phil Collins. Playlist

Pastor T.L. Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship (Without a Sail)

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

Yeruselem - The Sublime

Pigface - Pigface Live 2019 vinyl

            

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Card:

Heading to Chicago today, so here's a card from Missi's Raven Deck to see me on my way and plot the course of the trip:

Things change; long-standing certainties switch polarity. Life is change, so embrace change. Kill. Your. Darlings.

 

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New Queens of the Stone Age - Carnavoyeur

 

More new music from next month's new Queens of the Stone Age record, Times New Roman, available for pre-order HERE.

My friend Josh alerted me to this one, and I have to say, his "I hear Bowie" observation is spot-on. Not necessarily in how the song sounds (although there's that), but more in the type of experimentation the band's doing. Really cool stuff.

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NCBD:

Nothing in my pull this week, however, issue #3 of Pat O'Malley's Popscars drops, and I'll definitely be picking that up and adding the book to my Pull.

Now published by Sumerian Comics - formerly Behemoth Comics, the fine folks who published Andy Leavy and Hugo Araujo's Osaka Mime, not to mention the Turbo Kid and Spare Parts tie-in books. I met Pat back in 2022 at The Comic Bug when he was in signing issues 1 and 2 of Popscars, then completely independently published. I bought those issues, LOVED them and was supposed to have him on A Most Horrible Library, but then, well, I don't think we've done an episode since. He reached out recently and I need to get back to him and extend an invite to come on my functioning show, The Horror Vision, so he can talk about the book.

Here's the solicitation description:

"Popscars is a gritty Hollywood revenge story about a vigilante badass in a pink ski mask and the famous Hollywood movie producer she is out to kill, who also happens to be her estranged father. In Hollywood revenge is best served in front of an audience. As our pink ski masked killer pushes her way through a Hollywood crowd, prepared to take her shot at her movie producer father, she's quickly swept into a brand new revenge plot orchestrated by her own unsuspecting target."

 

I love the imagery in the book, and the seedy nature of, well, all of it. An exploitation book about exploitation flicks is, by its very nature, a fantastic story.

 

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Read:

I surprised myself by putting off my re-read of Stephen Graham Jones's My Heart is a Chainsaw after I noticed that my copy of Laird Barron's The Wind Began to Howl is due to land any day, and that technically, this book is labeled as "Isaiah Coleridge Novel #3.5." 

Interesting... and also probably a shorter read than clocking through Chainsaw and its follow-up, Don't Fear the Reaper, both of which I'm dying to read. But I've also been chomping at the bit for more Coleridge, and more Laird Barron in general, so I started re-reading Isaiah #3, 2020's Worse Angels.

I've read Coleridge books 1 and 2 twice each, or actually three times on book one, Blood Standard, but Worse Angels just the once, so this is a welcome return to a book that kinda blew me away (like they all do). Also, I'm eager to read it without reading book 2 Black Mountain, in close proximity. I love the entire series, however, Black Mountain was just something else, and because of this, I feel like it warped my only experience with Angels so far. Not this time...

 

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Playlist:

QOTSA - Era Vulgaris

High On Fire - Snakes for the Divine

Decima Victima - Los Que Faltan

The Mysterines - Begin Again (single)

Killing Joke - Fire Dances

Tangerine Dream - Sorceror OST

            

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Card:

Had an inkling to pick the Raven Tarot Deck back up and pull a single card. Here we go:

Temperance, or "Art" in Crowley and Harris's Thoth deck. Another small goad to get my ass back in gear, as my lethargy has crept through the weekend and into the middle of the damn week now. We've had a steady stream of vendors out to the house for various reasons over the last few days, and that continues today. Also, I am once again completely enraptured by Laird Barron's Worse Angels. That said, I need to develop a curriculum. One thing I was pretty taken by in Ivy Tholen's Tastes Like Candy - I mean, besides the awesome Slasher story - was main character Violet's practice routine with her violin. It reminded me of the benefit of commitment to the craft. I've been wanting to work up a schedule that includes not only writing - and of course reading has to be in there - but also guitar, as I've felt a pull back to that after nearly a decade ignoring what used to be my muse. 

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The Wind Began to Howl

A lot of new music coming up lately, although some of it is only new to me. Case in point: that recent viewing of Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla was my first since the advent of Shazam (or since I started using it, anyway), and it was through that film I found the 22-20s, whose entire 2004 self-titled record rules. This is currently my favorite track on the album.

 

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Watch:

Yellowjackets returns in March!

On March 24 - my birthday, no less! To say K and I are excited would be an understatement of extreme measure.

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Read:

I try to severely limit my exposure to social media these days, so I'm late to the game but nonetheless overjoyed to see that Author Laird Barron is home from the hospital and in recovery AND the pre-order is up for the fourth book in his Isaiah Coleridge series. 

Wow, what a cover, eh? This is exciting because, with The Wind Began To Howl releasing from Bad Hand Books in late Spring, I have plenty of time to slot in re-reads of the previous three entries in the series. These are PURE PLEASURE for me, and every time a new entry comes up for pre-order, I go back and re-read the previous ones. 

Pre-order your copy from Bad Hand Books HERE. Also, if you do it within the first 30 days since the announcement (which I believe was last week), ALL proceeds go directly to the author, who is recovering at home from his recent health scare (Laird is tweeting about it on his account), and thus, still racking up medical expenses.

Pre-ordering the new Laird Barron reminded me I still had not ordered my signed copy of Stephen Graham Jones' sequel to 2021's My Heart is a Chainsaw from Boulder Books. 

Don't Fear the Reaper dropped a few weeks ago, the second in a planned trilogy; I can't wait to read this one. Chainsaw rocked my world and I'm looking forward to re-reading that as well.

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Playlist:

22-20s - Eponymous

Clouds Taste Satanic - Tales of Demonic Possession

Fvnerals - Let the Earth be Silent

Karl Casey - XX EP

White Hex - Gold Nights

Myrkur - Folkesange

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

It will require a lot of Will to successfully complete a current project. 

Isolation: Day 74 New Jaye Jayle!

From the forthcoming new album Prisyn, out August 7th on Sargent House. This is exciting, as I didn't discover Jaye Jaye until early last year, so this will be the first record released I can experience anticipation for.

Pre-order it HERE.

**

Two weeks ago, my cohost on The Horror Vision and Drinking with Comics, Chris Saunders turned me on to The Magnus Archives Podcast.

Told from the perspective of the newly appointed Archivist for an organization known as The Maguns Archives, essentially an archive for people to log any experiences with potentially supernatural or paranormal phenomena. The idea is, after the person records their experience, the organization then sets out to either prove or disprove the event. The main strength here lies in creator/narrator Jonathan Sims' writing and voice performance. Also, the fifth and final season began at the beginning of April, so if you're like me and you're just discovering this, we won't have to wait between seasons, which, while I think would be a cool experience, is nice to know I'm jumping onto something tangibly finite. Below is the first episode, which I place here as something of a taste:




The Magnus Archives is distributed through the Rusty Quill Podcast Network, and is available on all current podcast platforms, as well as on the website and youtube.

Also, Sims' debut novel Thirteen Storeys is being released this August via UK publisher Gollancz. No pre-order is up yet, but you can read a bit about it HERE.

**

Excited beyond words to have Laird Barron's newest novel Worse Angels arriving this week. I've been waiting for this one alllll year, since the author began talking about it on Twitter shortly after last year's Black Mountain. Worse Angels is the third entry into Barron's Isaiah Coleridge series, and while these have been more straight-ahead, pulp-bred Crime/Noir novels, each book has become increasingly more in-line with Barron's other, "Weird Fiction" work. Worse Angels, sounds as though it moves further into this territory, with a 'stalled super collider' at the heart of a murder mystery.

While I'm waiting for Worse Angels to arrive, I've finished Clive Barker's Damnation Game and moved onto a re-read of the first volume of his Books Of Blood.

This is another I read back in high school, early 90s. Unlike Damnation Game, I remember most of these stories extremely vividly, and am very much enjoying retracing their steps.

**

Playlist:

Revocation - Teratogenesis
Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Ghost - Meliora
Drab Majesty - Careless
Deftones - Gore
Melvins - Houdini
Prince - Sign O' The Times
Pixies - Surfer Rosa
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
Bella Morte - Where Shadows Lie
The Darts - I Like You But Not Like That
Lustmord - Hobart
Various - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night OST

**

Linear thinking and discipline have, indeed, taken up a fairly large portion of my brain of late, and likely will continue to do so.

2019... 2020

Not entirely sure what my impetus was for feeling this song with such gravity on this, the final morning of 2019, but the way the album version is resonating with me at the moment, it felt somehow appropriate. I'm in a very slowed down temp right now, which is unique for me.

One of the reasons I keep this blog, and the reason I started doing the daily playlist log, is to be able to look back from future space and see if I have patterns on a seasonal/yearly/monthly/whatever basis. Because I'm so down-tempo at the moment, I expected to look back at last year and see a lot of slower stuff in those playlist logs, but that's not the case. Perhaps on a larger timeline, some of this will make sense.

One thing I appreciate about being 'turned down' is once I'm vibrating at a slower level, I'm able to ingest slower things in more profound ways. When I'm dialed into speed metal, if I put on Godspeed You! Black Emperor or the Gorecki/Gibbons record, it would disappear in my wake. At the level I'm at right now, I can see more micro-detail, and that's led to some pretty great listens of new and old music alike. I've fallen off over the last month or two in keeping a daily log, primarily because I've really been hunkering down on the outlines for books two and three of ShadowPlay; I've revamped a lot of two based on a new take I've had on three's main arc, and it's taken a lot of work. You'll see a lot of what I've been listening to in a minute, but this slower tempo has both hurt and helped my work of late. I go deeper when I work, but I also feel more tired more often, so there have been more than a few days of my coming home from work exhausted and just crashing. This is the calm before the storm. Or at least I hope that's what it is. Just as man cannot live by Metal alone, Man can also not vibrate too slowly for too long; if you know anything about hummingbirds, when they sleep they can turn down to the point that they slip into what's called torpor, which is a sleep so deep they run the risk of never awakening. Eerie, but prescient, I think.

**

I have a tie for the best book I read this year.

 The second book in the Gravedigger Chronicles by Alan Campbell only trumps the first because of the escalation of the narrative and where it goes; both are fantastic beyond words. I was so impressed with these it's really hard to boil it down to a review, the narrative is immersive as hell, and it goes so many weird places. I mean, the imagination on this author is bar none. I really hope the third book, which Campbell says is done but which the publisher of the first two books Tor opted not to put out, eventually sees the light of day, because, you know, The Art of Hunting ends with the mother of all cliffhangers.

In preparation for the second in Laird Barron's Isaiah Coleridge series I re-read 2018's Blood Standard; both are fantastic, but Black Mountain begins to inch us closer to Barron's trademark Weird Fiction stylings, and from what the author has said on social media, the forthcoming third really gets us into a darker, stranger place, so I can't wait for that. Someone option this and make it into a True Detective-Level show NOW please!

Aaaannddd... one more...

.... because Gideon The Ninth was an extremely fun, pleasant surprise.

**

I did my favorite non-horror flicks here a few days ago, and I did my favorite Horror flicks on the latest episode of The Horror Vision. Here's a quick image from my Letterbxd:

Also, the best tv show I watched this year was easily DCU's Doom Patrol. And I watched quite a few fantastic shows. Doom Patrol took the cake, though. And the donkey.



I never thought I'd live to see the day when someone brought Grant Morrison's DP run - complete with Danny the Street - to the small screen. When I get down on the state of the world, I try to remember that.

**

Playlist:

The National - High Violet
Beth Gibbons/Henry Gorecki - Symphony No. 3
The National - Trouble Will Find Me
Lana Del Rey - Norman Fucking Rockwell
Neon Kross - Darkness Falls
Young Widows - Old Wounds
Huey Lewis and the News - Sports
Full of Hell/Merzbow - Full of Hell

**

2019: August 20th Scott Cooper's Antlers

Based on a story by Channel Zero creator Nick Antosca and produced by Guillermo del Toro, this looks fantastic! I know a lot of hype out there right now in upcoming horror flicks is for The Lodge, but that one doesn't get the benefit of the doubt from me, simply because, as well-made as Goodnight Mommy was, I severely disliked it in a manner that makes me think Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz's horror aesthetic is diametrically opposed to my own. Not a judgement, just means while I can appreciate their craft as creators, I'm not a fan. But who knows, maybe The Lodge will change that. Regardless, this teaser and the names on the banner push this one up there with Joe Begos' Bliss and Chelsea Stardust's Satanic Panic as among my most anticipated horror flicks of the year.

Oh yeah, and of course there's The Lighthouse, but that bloody well goes without saying. With a schedule announcement imminent any day now, looks like I may have to take some PTO for Beyondfest this year.

**

I've put a pin in Damien Echol's High Magick for a bit because I'm actually following his suggestions as I re-map my daily world to accommodate Magickal Practice. I will be spending a few months creating and adhering to some of the breathing practices he outlines in Section Three of the book. This is something I've always been bad at, and I think, the reason my results have been spotty in the past. This time, I can tell you that keeping a regular practice of Four-Fold Breathing has filled my last three weeks with sometimes scary reserves of energy. It feels good.

Speaking of reading, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I arrested my first read of Laird Barron's second Isaiah Coleridge novel, Black Mountain, to re-read last year's Blood Standard. For a book I first read barely a year ago, this is already my favorite read of the year. For the second year in a row. I can't wait to dig into that second volume, probably by week's end!

**

I spent the last few days in Joshua Tree. First trek out there in four, almost five years. It feels good to stand and sweat in the desert, as it catalyzes a very cosmic perspective.

We stayed at the Joshua Tree Inn, of course, in the fabled Donovan Suite, no less. It goes without saying then that I christened the room with this classic track, first put on my radar by George A. Romero's criminally underrated Season of the Witch:



**

On podcast news, my co-host Anthony Guerra and I released a brief review episode for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and 47 Meters Down: Uncaged. Spoiler-free. Check it out, we might save you some $$$:

The Horror Vision on Apple

The Horror Vision on Spotify

The Horror Vision on Google Play

**

Playlist from the last few days was largely curated by my cousin Charles, who drive K and I out to JT, so some of the specifics of what we listened to is lost. I'll do my best:

Donovan - Season of the Witch (Single)
Calexico - Even Sure Things Fall Through
Kevin Morby - Oh My God
William Tyler - Modern Country
Whitney - Light Upon the Lake
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
Al B. Sure! - Nite and Day (Single)
Jenny Hval - Blood Bitch
Chris Connelly - Night of Your Life
Hamilton Leithauser - Black Hours
Daniel Rossen - Silent Hour/Golden Mile EP
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Jaye Jayle - No Trail and Other Unholy Paths
John Carpenter - Big Trouble in Little China OST

**

No card today.

2019: August 8th - New Jaye Jayle Track!

I've kind of come to think of this band as the American version of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. In a very short period of time, Jaye Jayle have endeared themselves to me in a way few bands do. It's the 'Storyteller' aspect.

**

Unbelievably, after only three chapters I put Laird Barron's Black Mountain to the side. Nothing against the book, but I paused to reconsider re-reading last year's Blood Standard, the first Isaiah Coleridge novel. I tend to forget things - character's names and whatnot, and in the case of books like these, they're so f'ing pleasurable to read, why not? Anyway, while I paused to consider this maneuver, I picked up Damien Echols' High Magick, and it dovetails so perfectly with my recent rekindling of Magick Practice, that I'm going to knock it out before going back to the Barron books.

A fantastic book on Magick; probably the most approachable example I've seen since Phil Hine or Grant Morrison's old Pop Magick essay on his website, except Echols' book is even more approachable, without ever giving an impression other than he knows exactly what he's talking about. And this is great for me at the moment; there's such a sense of pragmatism, unlike any other author I've read on the subject of Magick.

**

Playlist from 8/07:

Shrinebuilder - Eponymous
Anthrax - Stomp 442
Algiers - The Underside of Power
The Flaming Lips - Hit to Death in the Future Head
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Waxwork Records - House of Waxwork Issue #1
Jaye Jayle - Soline (Single)

**

Today's spread:

Queen of Swords AGAIN! Couple this with Princess of Wands and we're looking at the Earthy Aspect of Fire - the Practical honing of Intellect - and the Watery Aspect of Fire - the Emotional temperance of that same Intellect. I'm trying to put together where my Intellect - some flexing of sharpened awareness or acumen - may have been exerted of late. Princess of Wands is a volatile card; I'm tempted to read this as a warning, that the path to those ten cups - an achievement in Earthly matters - will be rocky, but ultimately bested if I remain sharp like the Queen of Swords, who I believe I am going to take on as something of a Deity.

2019: August 3rd - Satanic Panic Trailer!

I've been waiting this one for what feels like an eternity! Written by Grady "My Best Friend's Exorcism" Hendrix and directed by Chelsea Stardust, Satanic Panic is possibly my most eagerly anticipated film of the year. And now we finally have a trailer! This, along with Joe Begos' Bliss and a host of other films I can't quite bring to mind at the moment are all looking likely to play at Beyondfest this year, and I can't wait!

**

Recently, I wrapped up Robert S. Wilson's Ashes and Entropy Anthology from Nightscape Press. The final story, I Can Give You Life, by Paul Michael Anderson finished the book perfectly, and - I think - ended up my favorite story in a book filled with stories that rabidly competed for that title. Either way, buy it HERE and read your goddamn hearts out; Anthologies do not get any better than this.

And now, of course, I need a new book to read. Luckily, I have one I've been chompin' at the bit to get to for months. Black Mountain, Laird Barron's second installment in the Isaiah Coleridge novels, and three chapters in I can't put this one down.

**

Playlist from the last few days:

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Shake the Sheets

Motörhead - 1916

Aerosmith - Pump

Anthrax - Sound of White Noise

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper

U2 - War

Tool - Undertow

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Opeth - Blackwater Park

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Pusher Man (Single)

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Mind Control

Frank Sinatra - Moonlight Serenade

**

Card of the day:

Okay, this one is definitely trying to tell me something, and I've been pretty lax on listening. A promotion at work and the first draft of Ciazarn has consumed most of my time. Today we're heading to Midsummer Scream, but I'm putting Crowley's Book of Thoth in my backpack so I can start digging into this one a little more earnestly. 

2019: January 1st

I've been hitting the Calexico pretty hard since Mr. Brown gifted me that Twentieth Anniversary vinyl edition of The Black Light. Their 2001 album Even Sure Things Fall Through still holds its place as my favorite record by the band, opening its sonic maw and swallowing me multiple times yesterday morning, a nice ending to 2018 that should help me segue into a peaceful and creative 2019.

2019, eh? Insert trite colloquialism about how fast the hands of the clock move here.

I finished 2018 reading the eldritch horrors of August Derleth, only to began 2019 reading about the real-life horrors of hatred in Christian Picciolini's autobiography White American Youth, a memoir of a youth spent organizing racial hatred in America and how the author escaped before it was too late.

I can't put this book down. Picciolini's  raw, unpleasant accounts are sociologically fascinating, but also enlightening in a true WTF way, as his accounts of places I know in the city I grew up in pave the way for my own personal realization to the dark underbelly of a burgeoning national hate movement in 90s Southside Chicago. A movement that was happening parallel to my own group of friends and our interest in Chicago punk rock. I didn't know Picciolini, but he was something of a boogey man in my youth. The skinhead thug brother-in-law of a high school friend whose house we partied at pretty much 24/7 Junior year, there was always frightened whisperings that while we filled my friend's two-level home with bong smoke, Picciolini might show up at any moment with a Buick of skinheads bent on kicking our scrawny asses for 'polluting our precious white bodies with drugs from the inner city.' The book and Picciolini's evolution out of the skinhead movement, his formation of the non-profit organization Life After Hate and its dedication to fighting racism, were a total surprise to me; Mr. Brown sent me a copy of the book last March, the first I'd heard Christian's name in twenty-five years.

I've begun and discarded several television shows recently; FX's Legion came highly recommended, but after four over-wrought episodes, ultimately just annoyed me. And the SyFy adaptation of Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson's Happy proved to be the funniest thing I've seen in yeaaaars for two episodes and then just kind of left me uninterested (I may go back to it; it's that funny). Finally K and I went back to Channel Zero: Candle Cove. We started this one before we left for Chicago and then kind of forgot about it. While there's some rough edges to the overall presentation, conceptually Candle Cove is right up my alley, and I'm eager to wrap up this first season and see how good the Anthology series becomes as popularity increases and, reciprocally, so does the show's budget.

Here's a clip of the titular phantom kid's show that runs through the first season storyline of Channel Zero; something about the close-up superimpositions of the character's faces freaks me right the fuck out:



Oh wow, and I almost forgot. Last night I realized for the first time that May 2019 brings another Laird Barron Isaiah Coleridge novel! The new literally made my New Year's Eve! You can pre-order Black Mountain here.

Playlist from 12/31:

Calexico - Even Sure Things Fall Through
Mark Ronson - Version
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Graham Reznick - Robophasia
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
Anthrax - Persistence of Time
Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission

Card of the year:

Interestingly enough, both K and I received the same card. Spiritually aligned. The big idea here is the saving of money (both pulls of XVII were preceded by Princess of Swords, as if to help direct the reading). To quote from a source, "Make your plans for the future and risk a new beginning in which you set long-term goals."