How about a little Creedence Clearwater Revival to start our day? Woke up insanely early - haven't managed more than five hours of sleep a night in a while - and sat on the back porch with coffee, Ivy Tholen's Tastes Like Candy 2: Sugarless (it's awesome!) and CCR's Cosmo's Factory, which is every bit as awesome an album as the cover photo is awful. But hey, it was 1970!
Watch:
Osgood Perkin's upcoming film Long Legs is one of two flicks coming this summer that I've now seen the teasers for a few times and I can honestly say know how to do a 'teaser' right (Fede Alvarez's Alien: Romulus is the other). Check it out:
These teasers tell you absolutely NOTHING about the film, but 100% get me charged up to see it. I wasn't a fan of Mr. Perkins' previous two films (I tried with TheBlackcoat's Daughter multiple times; it cheats!), but they are well-made films and that's on me. I'm hoping Long Legs blows me right the F away. Certainly seems like it will.
Read:
As I mentioned above, I'm trucking along on Ivy Tholen's Tastes Like Candy 2: Sugarless and it is fantastic!
This one starts out like a typical Slasher sequel and then abruptly takes a left-hand turn. It's not what I thought it was going to be at all. You can order a copy HERE, and it's free on Kindle Unlimited at the moment.
Playlist:
The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre
Moon Wizard - Sirens
Telekinetic Yeti - Primordial
Windhand - Eternal Return
Witch Skull - The Serpent Tide
Jim Williams - Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched OST
Bryce Miller - City Depths
Saigon Blue Rain - Oko
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Ten of Swords
• XV: The Devil
• 0: The Fool
Not exactly the cards I wanted to see with what's on my mind. Ruin, lies/misperception/bad optics/a new journey.
I'm not going to say where I unexpectedly heard this song married to Horrific imagery recently, but man was it effective! Danzig's first four albums stand apart from everything else he's done; as much as I like some of the records that came after Chuck Biscuits, Eerie Von and John Christ left the band and Rick Rubin stopped co-producing, there's just something so perfect about the heavy blues influence on those first four. Of those, Danzig II: Lucifuge will always be my favorite. I'll never forget the first time I saw a friend's older brother wearing a Lucifuge shirt - I didn't know what it was and it kind of scared me in that 80s/early 90s way of, "What the hell is this guy into?"
That's probably around the time the album came out in 1990 and I would have been sixteen. Before the internet, and not so far removed from all the weird fears being a small child during the Satanic Panic instilled in me for a short time. There was a certain... haunted feeling to that era. Everything from the tv news to paperback books to Inside Edition (remember that pile of sh*t?) told you there were secret societies of Satan Worshippers in every neighborhood, just waiting to sacrifice any unlucky folks they happened to target to their dark lord. I actually pine for that feeling now, but not in the way so many do by rejecting everything known in favor of their opinions, fears and fantasies, and empirical data doesn't mean anything to our society as a whole anymore.
Anyway, I cracked Lucifuge out and listened to it over the weekend and it doesn't disappoint.
Watch:
This trailer for the new film Pandemonium popped up in my youtube feed two days ago. I have no pre-existing knowledge of this one, or anyone involved in making it, but I'm definitely intrigued. Here's the trailer I half-watched:
Also, wanted to point out that, thanks to Warren Ellis's newsletter Orbital Operations, I've found the first watchable version of Andrej Żuławski's On the Silver Globe on youtube I've encountered.
I've seen mention for a few years about this popping up for years, but whenever I go looking for it - an irregular occurrence for sure, but one I do periodically undertake, I find ones with awful pictures. Not this, which you can see HERE. I haven't sit down to watch this yet, but it's in the cards for the next few days.
Thanks to Heavenisanincubator for putting this one on my radar to begin with.
Read:
I am about a third of the way through Ivy Tholen's Tastes Like Candy 2: Sugarless and I am here to tell you, it's fantastic!
Full disclosure: We recently invited Ms. Tholen to be a guest on The Horror Vision to discuss her novels, and she not only accepted but also sent us digital advance reader copies. That's a moot point, though, because I'd been waiting for this one regardless. If you read the first, this is a great continuation. If you haven't read the first and you love Slasher Flicks, THIS is for you.
Playlist:
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Black Sabbath - Technical Ecstasy
Moon Wizard - Sires
The Veils - ...And Out of the Void Came Love
The Damned - Night of the Living Damned (Thank You, Mr. Brown!)
High on Fire - Cometh the Storm
Melvins - Tarantula Heart
Ike Reilly - Poison the Hit Parade
Mike Doughty - Live From Ken's House
Danzig - Danzig II: Lucifuge
Nikki Lane - All or Nothin'
Ministry - Hopiumforthemasses
Witchfinder - Hazy Rites
Man Man - On Oni Pond
Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard of Oz
Led Zeppelin - In Through the Out Door
Jimmy Buffet - Good Luck
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Ace of Cups
• X: Wheel of Fortune
• III: The Empress
A bird' s-eye view of this (all I have time for at the moment) is quite soothing to a massive stress bomb that has gone off in my life. Ace of Cups is the card that anchors this to a positive interpretation, something I really needed at the moment. Emotional Breakthrough, "Karma" and Fertility, in an abbreviated three-card reading.
I've been loosely following Ben Frost since 2009's By the Throat. I cheered for him when he landed the score to Dark - one of my all-time favorite shows. I didn't realize he had a new record coming out, but now that I've heard Scope Neglect, it's almost certainly going to make my favorites of the year list, just strictly based on how absolutely different it is from everything else he's done.
Watch:
I am happy to report that Andrew Lobel and Michael Mohan's Immaculate is a fantastic time at the theatre, and I absolutely love and adore them and the studio for releasing this one Easter weekend! What do the dissenters say about that?
Well, that's a bit much. Not sure a movie could ever be *ahem* pure evil, but then, these people are prone to embellishment, yes? Either way, I very much enjoyed this one and put up a new episode of The Horror Vision Presents: Blood & Coffee on it.
I'm developing the Blood & Coffee series as a series of short, spoiler-free video reviews I can knock out by myself when the other members of the show are indisposed or not interested in the flick. I think Immaculate is getting a bit of resistance from the Horror Community simply based on Sydney Sweeney, however, as I talk about in the review, she was instrumental in this one getting made, so while I'm not about to sit through a lot of what she's been in so far, she's A-OK in my book.
Read:
I finished Malcolm Devlin's And Then I Woke Up on Saturday. Fantastic book. Reminded me a lot of David Moody's Hater.
And Then I Woke Up is a really interesting angle on the now pretty saturated Zombie/Hate Virus trope, and definitely feels like it breathes some fresh life into the subgenre. If you're a fan of those types of stories, give this one a go. I think you'll dig. Reiterating a hearty "Thank You!" to my Horror Vision co-host Ray for gifting me this one.
Next up: A re-read of Ivy Tholen's Tastes Like Candy, which I read for the first time last year and LOVED. Imagine my delight when, a few weeks ago, Ms. Tholen announced a sequel is heading our way on April 22nd!
Couldn't be more excited about this one!!!
Playlist:
Ben Frost - Scope Neglect
Zombi - Direct Inject
Money Mark - Mark's Keyboard Repair
Miranda Sex Garden - Carnival of Souls
Man Man - Life Fantastic
Local Natives - Gorilla Manor
Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
Card:
Back to Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris's Thoth deck for the Pull today:
• Ace of Disks
• X: Fortune
• VI: The Lovers
The struggle against the process of monetary enlightenment is difficult, but not without reward. Lean on someone else.
For reasons that will be obvious to anyone who watched the Yellowjackets season two finale this past Friday. I've already posted The Horror Vision's discussion on youtube and all streaming platforms. Crazy good and this song was a perfect choice to end the episode and season.
Watch:
I finally watched Huesera: The Bone Woman the other day. Pretty solid flick. I ended up wanting a bit more in the story department, however, filmmakers rarely go wrong giving us less instead of more. This is the slowest of the slow burns but is peppered with some genuinely freaky moments and images, chief among them the giant Mary statue at the start of the film (you see a bit of it in the teaser below, but that doesn't quite do the scene justice).
Directed by Michelle Garza Cervera, Huesera: The Bone Woman is streaming on Shudder and well worth your time, when you're in the mood for a film that settles in and slowly turns up the heat.
Read:
Last week, I finished Chuck Palahniuk's The Invention of Sound. I would recommend this one to any old-school Palahniuk fan or new reader interested in his work. This is classic form Palahniuk - The Invention of Sound reads exactly the way I remember Choke, Lullaby, Diary reading when I first started seeking the author's work out in the late 90s/early 00s. That might be a bad thing if you've just recently read a bunch of his work, however, if you're like me and haven't read anything he's written in a while, this will remind you of what you loved about his older books.
I've always thought the key to Palahniuk is not reading a bunch of his books in a row. Not an easy thing to do when they move so quick and have such propulsive style and ideas. However, there seems to be a law of diminishing returns if you binge his stuff, or at least there is for me and quite a few other fans I've spoken to about this over the years. Anyway, none of that should be taken as criticism; I love the man's work and I love this book.
After finishing that, I was set to go into a re-read of Stephen Graham Jones's My Heart is a Chainsaw as prep to then read the recently released sequel, Don't Fear the Reaper, however, something drew me to a novel my good friend Jesus had sent me quite some time ago, Ivy Tholen's Tastes Like Candy.
This book is fantastic! A slasher novel that revolves around a group of incoming Senior girls at a Texas High School who get picked off one-by-one in an closed carnival. I blew through Tastes Like Candy in four days, and it really only took me that long because I had friends in from out of town for the holiday weekend. My Goodreads review is HERE, however, suffice it to say here that this fit right in with all the other well-known authors I've been reading this year. Great stuff! The author's website is HERE if you want to check out her work.
Playlist:
The Hives - Tyrannosaurus Hives
Dir En Grey - The Marrow of a Bone
Queens of the Stone Age - Emotion Sickness (pre-release single)
Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
The Effigies - Remains Unknowable
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)
Ozzy Osbourne - Patient No. 9
X - Los Angeles
Blut Aud Nord - Disharmonium: Undreamable Abysses
Druids - Shadow Work
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age
Trombone Shorty - For True
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Knight of Cups - Controlling Emotion with Will
• Two of Pentacles - Earthly Partnership
• Three of Swords - Growth of conflict or complex relationship
As always, keep in mind the interpretations I lay down for individual cards are a combination of grimoire research strained through personal circumstance. That said, I'm fairly certain this is reminding me of my current project (again), which has been on the backburner over the long weekend while friends were in. I have a fairly complex legal/business relationship in the novel, and I really need to work that out before proceeding.
