New Drab Majesty!!!

Wow. Took me a minute, but this new Drab Majesty track from August 25th's An Object in Motion E.P. rocks. Still bummed it's only an E.P., but I'll take what I can get. Pre-order from the always wonderful Dais Records HERE.

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NCBD:

Here's what I'm bringing home for NCBD today:

LOVE this cover. I'm very curious to see where things are headed with this book now that my fears that Kieron Gillen is confirmed for what looks like more than a year's worth of issues (article linked through THIS X-Post)

I thought I'd given up on this Night of the Living Dead series from relatively new (I think) publisher American Mythology, but when I saw it was only going four issues, I figured what the hell. First two issues were by no means bad, just kind of always looking for someone to take a crack at continuing Romero's original Night/Dawn/Day timeline instead of just adapting it, but there's been enough little flourishes here to make it a fun read.

Love this cover! Also, I really enjoy the fact that every time Kang/Leatherhead show up, this book evokes Slasher film techniques!

Holy cow! Michael "Silver Coin" Walsh writing and doing cover duties for this year's TMNT annual? Count me in!

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Watch:

Screambox has really been on fire putting out new content. Unfortunately, despite subscribing for the year back in December, I haven't really watched much on the channel because it is still incompatible with Firestick, my primary interface (for better or worse). I can watch on my computer, however, that doesn't really do any film justice, so I'm biding my time, making a list of all the original content hitting the service that I want to watch. Here's the newest entry on that list:

We Might Hurt Each Other, originally titled Rupintojelis (Pensive), looks like a pretty solid Foreign Slasher that writer Jonas Trukanas and writer/director Titas Laucius apparently based on local Lithuanian legends. I've been in a Slasher kinda mood of late, so this one's calling to me.

We Might Hurt Each Other dropped yesterday on Screambox. Stream (scream) HERE.

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse

Witchskull - The Serpent Tide

Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

Cocksure - K.K.E.P. EP

Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years

Misfits - Static Age

Misfits - Collection II

Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror

        

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Card:

• Three of Disks: Works

• Six of Swords: Science

• Five of Disks: Worry

I could tell the moment I saw the doubled Disks that this is 100% a warning/reminder that the upcoming process of moving my parents to Clarksville is going to be trying. Not that my parents themselves will be, but the process of moving is never easy. Especially not when you're moving people from a house they have been in since 1985.

 

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Immoral & All Seeing

 

I still find myself thinking about Wayne Shorter's recent passing. I'm by no means a huge fan; I say this not to distance myself from his work, but to respect those out there who are much more committed. Truth is, I started dabbling in Jazz when I was still a teenager thanks to Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch, but I was way more into it in my twenties. Since moving, I've gotten back into many artists I've been away from for a while, but I still don't spin enough Jazz to be considered anything more than a passing fan. Yet, this music echoes inside me in a way nothing else does. I don't feel like a have a lot of room in my life for it, which is unfortunate, but Jazz is music that requires attention to appreciate, and as I've aged and the world has fallen apart and injected me with its anxiety, I have less and less attention; it's something I fight for on a daily basis. 

As I said upon Mr. Shorter's passing, there is something in his work - whether solo or his collaborations with Miles Davis - that sounds like a conjuring to me. It puts me in a very particular headspace, and in reflecting on his passing, I'm wondering if there is anyone making music today that might have the same effect. Or if the "Jazz Ritual" sound that Shorter and Davis - especially on Bitches Brew, Sorcerer and The All Seeing Eye - summoned into this world is all but gone now. I feel that's likely, as our world is very different from the one where this music was composed. If there were "Jazz Spirits" or "Demons" that came to this plane as a result, where are they now?

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Watch:

Wow. Now, this is an interesting idea:

 

I subscribed to the channel immediately, and plan on giving this a full go. I was pretty stoked just watching along for a moment, as the music, different voices and sound FX told the story.

          

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Read:

Re-reading Sins of Sinister from the beginning now, because my memory sucks. Also reading again because this week's Immoral X-Men really stayed with me.

            

The thing with the core of the X-Books now, and especially this Event and this issue in particular, is these are no longer superhero books. These are hardcore SciFi. I've talked about my love/hate with genre here before - I don't really go for big, tropey works like Space Opera or High Fantasy, primarily because I just feel like much of those corners of genre just repeat (and expand in some cases; credit where it's due) the most influential work that precedes them. I know there are a million people out there who would tell me I'm wrong, and that's fine. But I avoid those traditional genre lanes and look for stories that do their own thing. By the time we get to the events in Immoral X-Men #3, we're essentially in a deep-space salvage SciFi realm.

Deep-Space Salvage, or DSS for short, is the name I've finally arrived at in my head for those stories that pull me back into the kind of home-brewed, SciFi prevalent in 1980's Hobby Shops and indie comic books. Think TSR and old-school Guardians of the Galaxy. Think comics written by Bill Mantlo. A deep-space enclave where everything is old, rusted, down-and-out. It's the future but nothing is new, progress has flatlined or reversed, and everything is falling apart. That's where Kieron Gillen has taken us in Sins of Sinister.

There are no superheroes here - that's reserved for the regular Monthly X-Book, which anchors the line to its original intent. Instead, here and in X-Men; Red, S.W.O.R.D. before it, and partially at work in Immortal X-Men, we have very meticulous, long-game genre stories that branch off into many different styles and territory, and S.o.S. is definitely DSS.

By the time we arrive at this last panel, page three of Immoral #3, you can see the filth and decay. You can also see a monstrously sized Exodus, now something much more than the mutant zealot we all know and love so well. This issue reminded me A LOT of Daniel Warren Johnson's Beta Ray Bill mini-series from a few years back, and like that series, Sins of Sinister is surprising me with how much I'm enjoying it overall, especially when I didn't read the entire thing (I have not been buying that third title, Nightcrawlers, although I'm thinking about going back and picking it up) or like everything I've read. 

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Playlist:

Gang Starr - Hard to Earn

Godflesh - Slavestate EP

Godflesh - Pure

Godflesh - Cold World EP

Godflesh - Love and Hate

QOTSA - ... Like Clockwork

High On Fire - Surrounded By Thieves

Lustmord - Dark Matter

Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye

Miles Davis - Live at the Filmore West

            

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Card:

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

Circumstances drift and Change rears its head. It will be tempting to interpret this change as negative, but the reminder in the cards today, me thinks, is that interpretation dictates the positive/negative aspect of change. Change is always good in some respects, it can just be mighty difficult to remember and 'see' that. 

 

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Understanding the Day: A Solid Foundation

Another new single/new album announcement my travels have left me behind on. After seeing The Soft Moon live several years ago for their 2016 album Criminal, I can attest to the fact that, as much as I dig Anthony Vasquez and crew's albums, they're way better live. Regardless, I'm psyched for the new album, Exister, which drops 9/23 on the always amazing Sacred Bones Records! Pre-order HERE. 

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Watch:

Saw this dropped and wanted to post it here for posterity's sake:

 

As per usual, I am not watching the trailer, just salivating until 4:2 drops. I still just don't understand how every season of this show is able to get exponentially better than the previous.

 

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Read:

I'm not really getting a lot of time to read while we're out here. Since we arrived, it's been pretty hectic. We almost made an offer on a house last night, but there were two we were interested in that didn't hit the market until today, so we held off. Thing is, the one we almost made an offer on has an open house today, and so does one of the two that goes on sale today. So we could end up screwed. Fine. That'll suck, but I always read shit like that as "Wasn't meant to be." I'm not a believer in Fate, but I have reservations about EVERYTHING at the moment, so I'm happy to let the Universe act as an Equalizer.

No, not that Equalizer. Oh well, you get it. 

Anyway... I haven't had a chance to read much, but I will say, I burned through the comics I bought the other day at Rick's Comic City - GREAT Shop and SUPER nice people - and I cannot get Immortal X-Men #3 out of my head.

Characters I've always loathed and found nothing but boring:

1) Charles Xavier

2) Magento

3) Mystique

4) Destiny

Characters I now find endlessly fascinating: 

See 1-4 above.

I love the graphic representation Kieron Gillen and Lucas Werneck used to show us Destiny's Precognitive sight and at the same time tease possible future events. Also, I loved how big they went with the one future they did show us, simply because they're never going to show us it again.

What the hell is that? Giant Exodus possessed by The Phoenix Force eating Mr. Sinister (who manages to re-set the timeline first anyway?) This is some crazy shit, but the craziness is fleeting compared to the "game of thrones" going on and the character development. As Dave Buesing from Comic Book Herald points out in the most recent "Talking Krakoa," this is the first deep or probably even good character study on Destiny EVER in X-comics. That says a lot. 

Then there's Mystique, I've never cared for her. When the original X-movies began to use her as a major character I always kinda scratched my head. Even for years after that, whenever I would dabble with an X-book again, I never bought Mystique's post-movies position as a now-major character. All that has changed. Hickman started it, and Gillen is CRUSHING it continuing this fascinating series.

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Playlist:

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - 1957-1972 (Live)

The Blues Brothers - Briefcase Full of Blues

16 Horsepower - Low Estate

Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain

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Card:

Okay, based on my brief run-down of the last few days above, this is a sight for sore eyes. 10 of Disks: Wealth doesn't promise anything, but "A solid foundation" definitely equates to "A good home" in my mind, always has. So okay, let's go out and find a fucking house!

Immortal Funhouse

 

Goddamn if I don't still love every track on Deftones' 2012 (ten years!!!) Koi No Yokan.

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Watch:

 

Tobe Hooper's 1981 carnival-themed slasher flick Funhouse just came back to Shudder, and I had forgotten how insane this flick is. The third act climax alone is enough to leave me going, "Jesus, this is totally f*%king coo-coo. If you haven't seen this one - or if like me it'd been a while - it's definitely a good time to revisit.

 

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Read:

I spent the latter half of this week completely enraptured by and re-reading the first issue of Kieron Gillen's Immortal X-Men. 

One of the things I liked least about this new, Krakoan era of the X-books is the change in the portrayal of Mr. Sinister. I have always been a HUGE fan of the old-school Sinister introduced in the Claremont-era of Uncanny, with his limited appearances enhancing his, well, sinister aspect. He reeked of dark schemes and unparalleled violence. Now, however, Sinister almost feels like comedic relief at times, and I experienced a considerable degree of cognitive dissonance at this new persona during HoX/PoX. However, Gillen has changed that with this issue, which is entirely from Sinister's perspective and drops the Godfather of all reveals in the book's final page. I literally exclaimed out loud when I reached the end, and have been picking at the ramifications ever since.

 

I've been so into this, I did something I never do - I took to youtube to try and find people talking about this. (I'll be honest, I'm so tempted to try and restart Drinking with Comics, call it the Immortal Drinking with Comics, and only talk about this, however, there's a host of reasons I can think of not to do that, so I'm staying on the sidelines and listening to others talk. So far, this is the best video I've found.

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Playlist:

The Mysterines - Reeling

The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers

King Woman - Doubt EP

Cypress Hill - Back in Black

Perturbator - I Am the Night

U2 - The Joshua Tree

U2 - War

Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral

Entropy - Liminal

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

Jim Williams - Titane OST

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

David Bowie - Scary Monsters

Ghost - Impera

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Ghost - Infestissumam

The Besnard Lakes - ... Are the Roaring Night

Boy Harsher - Careful

Jackie Wilson - Higher and Higher

Tears for Fears - The Tipping Point

Quicksand - Slip

Deftones - Koi No Yokan

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Card:

Past: Making ideas actionable

Present: Continue to work at what I've put in motion

Future: The work isn't enough. This will require an inner guidance, known to most as intuition. 

Pretty spot-on with what I'm working on, which I believe is soon to reach its conclusion.