Street Trash, Baby!

 

You can grab this and a bunch of other Ten Athlone goodness directly from their site HERE. From the Street Trash E.P. by Ten Athlone.

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Watch:

Ryan Kruger's Street Trash is, indeed, fantastic. In fact, it's jumped the top ten line and landed somewhere in the center. It's goopy, gory, bombastic and a lot of fun. Also, the characters are fantastic!

I really can't say enough good things about this one. It's true to the 80s Exploitation roots, not over-done production-wise, walking a line between bare bones and full-bore, which is great. It leads to fantastic practical FX right in line with the original and a very DIY underbelly that endears the film and its characters to you even more. 

Ryan Kruger's Street Trash is a $4.99 rental on Prime at the moment. If you're a fan of Pschyo Goreman and/or Hobo with a Shotgun, definitely give it a try. If you don't know either of those films but you want to get your weird on, this will do nicely.

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Read:

My reading has been sporadic at best of late, but I've failed to post about it here. After blowing through Laird Barron's new collection, Not A Speck of Light (from Badhand Books HERE), I side-stepped directly back into his previous collection, 2016's Swift to Chase.

Barron's work brings out the obsessive in me, and I'm reading these stories with the Laird Barron Mapping Project never more than a click or swipe away. There are all kinds of weird connections I've felt the edges of previously but not fully grasped. Also, somehow I never really understood the concept that some of the stories take place in what is called Barron's Antiquity Universe, so I'm gearing up to read all of those in a row soon. But first...

As I finish the last few pages of Swift's final story Tomahawk Park Survivors Raffle, I'm also about halfway through Ivy Tholen's new Slasher novel Mother Dear:

Once again taking place in the town of Belldam, Texas, Mother Dear is rife with the kind of under-the-radar social commentary I've come to expect from Ivy's books. The characters - while unlikeable - are so perfectly engineered that they feel like archetypes and actual people I know all at the same time. The opening death is magnificent, and the insidious manner these spoiled, rich folks burrow into my brain via their "first world, 1% problems" reminds me a bit of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho in approach, if not actual execution. 

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Playlist:

John Carpenter - Lost Themes IV: Noir

Ghostland Observatory - Sad Sad City (single)

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Sumerlands - Dreamkiller

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

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Card:

Today's card is XII: The Hanged Man.

My big take away with this card has always been Four points over one, or reason triumphs over spirituality. Dark ages begin or dreams tripped up by rational thought. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, and I think this card is especially dependent on those around it in a pull. 

In his The Book of Thoth, Crowley writes extensively about this card. A lot of it is the usual impenetrable associations to Elemental forces, initiation, and Astrological forces. One idea that stands out is sacrifice, but not just standard sacrifice. Sacrifice as a form of Baptism or Death. This is, after all, the card of the "Dying God."

Purple Hill Witch

 

Really digging Purple Hill Witch, an awesome Stoner/Doom band from Oslo, Norway, who recently signed to Totem Cat Records, home of so many other fantastic bands! As I get to know the back catalogue, I'm following these guys on IG and salivating at the prospect of the new record!

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31 Days of Halloween:

Rob Zombie's 31 is a polarizing film, to say the least. Even in my own personal conversation about Horror, you know, the one flowing in my head pretty much ALL THE TIME, I have mixed opinions. It starts strong with Doomhead, wears on my nerves with its "King Dong" bag of dick and fuck jokes as we meet the cast, and then really comes up strong again when we get going on the plot. Yet, all that time spent annoying me with character "development" doesn't make me dislike the protagonists at all. What they go through saves them for me.

By the end, I am always intoxicated by 31, and it's often difficult to find something to watch afterward (unless I'm doing House of 1000 Corpses or Devil's Rejects). 

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1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS

5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway

7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats

8) V/H/S Beyond

9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10) Terrifier 3

11) Summer of '84

12) Rosemary's Baby/Suspiria ('77)

13) Daddy's Head

14) Undead

15) Moloch/Tea Cup (episode 1)/ Evil Dead 2

16) Smile

17) Laura Hasn't Slept/Smile 2

18) Terrifier

19) The House of the Devil - Last Drive-in Presentation (original air date April 26, 2019)

20) The Woods

21) Rob Zombie's 31

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Read:

The pre-order went up for the next Laird Barron release on Bad Hand Books. HERE's the link and the solicitation below this amazing cover art by Samuel Araya. 

"Barron returns to Bad Hand Books with an all-new novella in his famed Antiquity setting. (Pretty) Red Nails features familiar hero Isaiah Coleridge—but he’s not at all as we remember him. This is Coleridge with a dark-fantasy twist. A tall, rangy mercenary armed with a deadly iron spear, Coleridge travels the benighted land astride a nameless piebald stallion while the grinning moon watches from above like a patient carrion bird. Alongside Lionel Robard and a battle-scarred war dog, Minerva, Coleridge faces off against a mad wizard and the horrifying Pale Ones on a quest to find the fabled city of Ur. For love. For lust. For pretty red nails."

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Playlist:

Drug Church - PRUDE

Chat Pile - Cool World

Skinny Puppy - Last Rights

Misfits - Static Age

Ministry - The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste

Purple Hill Witch - Eponymous

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• King of Pentacles

• Ace of Swords

• I: The Magician

The King (Prince) of Disks can be a bit of a cunt for matters of Earthly stability. He's a shake-up, a corporate higher-up who stops in to ensure things are running smoothly and routinely finds issues. That said, that kind of pragmatic assessment can lead to enlightenment and enhanced prowess. 

Ritual Howls - Turkish Leather Always Makes Me SMILE, Too

 

Ritual Howl's album Turkish Leather was released ten years ago on September 30th! Holy smokes. If you're not familiar, check out their discography on Bandcamp. Easily one of my favorite discoveries from the last ten years, for sure.

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31 Days of Halloween:

Last night K and I hit the Regal for Parker Finn's Smile 2. I'm not going to post a trailer because last week, before Terrifier 3, I noticed there was a HUGE spoiler image sandwiched in the quick succession of scenes they splice together, and that pissed me off.

That's not Finn's fault. I rewatched the first Smile Wednesday night, and I have to say, third viewing - first at home - Smile not only held up, but I now think it's one of the scariest flicks in recent memory. Sosie Bacon's physical acting - her posture, inflections and facial tics totally sell her anxiety as she spirals, a descent made all the worse by the fact that the movie begins with her patient demonstrating the exact blueprint for what she's about to go through. 

Chills!

So how does the sequel hold up? Well, our theatrical experience ranks as the worst I've had in years, but that's definitely not the film's fault. Blame instead the groups of high school students who walked in and out of the theatre on almost constant rotations. I used to be the guy who would stand up and tell people to shut the fuck up when they were talking during a movie, but nearly coming to blows during James Bond: Skyfall (2012?) delivered the epiphany that I had become part of the disturbance. The theatre is my church, and I've learned to grin and bear it. It's not nearly as hard now that I rarely smoke before a theatrical screening. I have a much easier time letting periphery noise go when I'm not hyper-focused. Also, these kids weren't talking so much as just walking in and out of the theatre, so what do you say, anyway?

Back to the actual movie. Smile 2 is fantastic; it's not as good as the original, but that's just my opinion. My Horror Vision co-host Missi felt this one matched the first film. One thing's for sure - Parker Finn is a Director I will follow from here out. He used the considerably bigger budget for this sequel to really expand his idea in a way that transcends the genre completely and sets up the next movie with a scale that makes me extremely excited.

In a nutshell, it might not make my top ten of the year - a hard thing to do in 2024 from the sheer volume of awesome films released so far this year - but it's fantastic, moves the series forward in a brilliant and exciting way, and should definitely be seen in a theatre. Just try to get a screening where the brats are sure to still be in school. 

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1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS

5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway

7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats

8) V/H/S Beyond

9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10) Terrifier 3

11) Summer of '84

12) Rosemary's Baby/Suspiria ('77)

13) Daddy's Head

14) Undead

15) Moloch/Evil Dead 2

16) Smile

17) Laura Hasn't Slept/Smile 2

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Read:

I finished my third re-read of China Miéville's Perdido Street Station yesterday. Totally blown away again!

Now, onto Laird Barron's Not A Speck of Light, which I received from Bad Hand Books a week or so ago and have been chomping at the bit to read. I'm four stories in and it's just so wonderful to have new stories by one of your favorite authors. Barron's prose wraps around my brain like a massive alien wyrm slowly strangling the light from the sky. 

 

The plan is to read a couple of short stories in this new collection and then start Ivy Tholen's latest, Mother Dear, which I am also dying to tear into!

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Playlist:

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch - Censor OST

Ritual Howls - Turkish Leather

Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor

Bauhaus - In the Flat Field

Ritual Howls - Virtue Falters

Sandrider - Godhead

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Beastmilk - Climax

Skinny Puppy - Remission

My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife

Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Talk About the Weather

Type O Negative - Origin of the Feces

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Card:

Today's Card is IV: The Emperor.

"The Rules that Govern All Life."

That's how my entry in the Grimoire begins. Also, it should be mentioned that this is obviously a very Martial card; Crowly writes about this tying into the card as the representation of the physical embodiment of authority. He also drops this little gem:

"... Aires means Ram. At his (the Emperor's) feet, couchant, is the Lamb and Flag, to confirm this attribution on the lower pane; for the ram, by nature, is a wild and courageous animal, lonely in lonely places, whereas when tamed and made to lie down in green pasture, nothing is left but the docile, cowardly, gregarious and succulent beast. This is the theory of government."

No wonder my friends and I tend to regard this card suspiciously! One of the interpretations I lean toward with The Emperor is "It will be decided for you," which sounds a bit chilling now, when juxtaposed with the above passage from The Book of Thoth. Anyway you cut it, the fourth Atu is not a great card to see in many respects, unless of course, you need a third party to get something done for you. 

Seven Days of Shane: Day 3 - Nipple Erectors - All the Time in the World

Before The Pogues, MacGowan fronted a band with Shanne Bradley called The Nipple Erectors (subsequently shortened to The Nips). I first discovered this group in the late '00s, thanks to my Drinking with Comics cohost Mike Shin. This was when my Pogues fervor was at its zenith. The album Bops, Babes, Booze & Bovver stayed in my old school iPod for a few years (I never had a physical copy), but disappeared somewhere along the way. Pretty cool to find them again now, on streaming, and be able to hear the record start to finish (I believe what I had was missing several tracks). 

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Watch:

Julien Temple made a Shane MacGowan documentary a few years back, and I'd kind of forgotten about it until Mr. Brown brought it up after the man's passing. Back on my radar, I fired Crock Of Gold up last night on HULU.

 

I liked this, but I do feel there's a lack of third-party, objective material. Maybe the point was to allow Shane the glory of self-mythologizing himself; why deny the man, he'd been in an awful state at the time this was made and it may have been Temple and Producer Johnny Depp's idea to just bask in the legends that already exist anyway, letting MacGowan grow them to whatever size he saw fit. Not a bad gift for a man trapped in a wheelchair at the end of his life, reaping the rewards of a life of debauchery. It's not like the film doesn't set this up in the first few moments - Crock Of Gold opens with an animated smattering of all Ireland's mythological creatures and folklore, from Leprechauns to Cú Chulainn to Children of Lir to... Shane being handpicked by god to be, "The man who would save Irish music." And, in a way, he totally did. Anyway, if you're a fan or even just curious, this is a nice walk through the man, the myth, the legend.

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Read:

Somehow, I forgot to mention the pre-order the good folks at Bad Hand Books have going for next year's new Laird Barron collection. Not a Speck of Light comes with a signed bookplate.

Sixteen new stories? Wow, and while it's not going to be easy to wait until Q3 next year, talk about arriving at the perfect time of year! Pre-order Not a Speck of Light from Bad Hand Books HERE.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - Christmas Bloody Christmas OST

Steve Moore - VFW OST

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Vol. 1

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

Various - Joe Begos' Bliss Spotify Playlist

Electric Wizard - Wizard Bloody Wizard

Shane MacGowan and the Popes - The Snake

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Card:

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

• Ten of Pentacles (Disks)

• I: The Magician

• XIV: Temperance (Art)

Trump One two days in a row, eh? I'm apparently missing something...

Ten of Pentacles indicates Earthly completion, and I'm betting that has to do with (again) my folks finally being into their place. The recurrence of the Magus, however, indicates something that will need adjustment or patience (not that there's not been call for quite a bit of that already). 

I tend to remain hung up on the "Art" aspects of Trump XIV, however, there is an element of "Things falling into place." So again, the Magician is the missing piece of the puzzle.

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. 

The Doom That's Coming to Gotham...

 

I stumbled across this pre-release track from the new Industrial band Insolent yesterday while writing, and really dug it. The album is titled Drain - which I love - and comes out February 24th via Sentient Ruin. You can pre-order on Insolent's Bandcamp HERE.

 

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Support:

I've been talking about this on recent episodes of The Horror Vision, but Author Laird Barron is in the midst of some pretty serious health problems at the moment. Being a professional writer - and a great one at that - it should come as no surprise to anyone that the man does not have health insurance. Thanks to John Langan (author of The Fisherman) and Mike Davis (from the Lovecraft Ezine Podcast), a GoFundMe went up for Laird. Here's the information; kick in if you can:

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NCBD:

Here are my picks for this week's NCBD:

Dark Web still? Okay, let's hope this is better than issue #17. I feel like, if this had wrapped up faster, I wouldn't be losing interest.

The mini-series end! Creepshow has been an uneven ride, but overall I dug it. Will I return if it does? Not sure...

I hadn't even heard about this one until last week. With the success of last year's The Last Ronin - success the book 100% deserves - this was inevitable. I'm totally down with going back into this world and seeing how we got to where that story took place.

It's always a good Wednesday when there's a new issue of Saga waiting for me.

I've been kind of excited for this one. Full disclosure: The 'twist' at the end of Immortal X-Men #10 seems like too big a swing that is just going to bring this whole carefully balanced house of cards down around Gillen's ears, but I hope not. 

The end to a fantastic mini-series that, I thought, harkened back to the way Chris Claremont did X-book miniseries back in the day. 

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Watch:

It's been quite a few years since I last read Mike Mignola's The Doom That Came To Gotham mini-series.  A prestige-format, 3-issue mashup of H.P. Lovecraft's The Doom That Came To Sarnath and Mignola's Gotham By Gaslight timeline (I think), I loved this series when it first came out back in 2000-2001. 

Now, it appears there will be an animated adaptation:

I've seen a few of the other Batman animated adaptations. Well, I've seen The Dark Knight Returns and didn't necessarily love it. But I think I'll definitely give this one a chance whenever it hits HOBO MAX. 

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Playlist:

Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands

Off! - Free LSD

Bonny Doon - Longwave

Cocteau Twins - Heaven Or Las Vegas

Cocteau Twins - Garlands

Realize - Machine Violence 

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Ghost Bath - Moonlover

Insolent - Inner Tomb (pre-release single)

Godflesh - Post Self

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Card:

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

Man, that emotional breakthrough is really insistent, isn't it? What aren't I doing? Or is is something I am doing that shouldn't be? Looking at Old Scratch and then Justic, I find myself wondering if I'm mistakenly waiting for something I am not due to receive? 

The Empty Spoils of Power

 

This one's been in my head since I broke out Ice-T's sophomore record Power a few days ago. Interesting how something that, technologically speaking, sounds so archaic, could be so catchy. Is there hope for those old-school 80s sounds yet? You know, the ones that came preloaded on consumer-grade Casio keyboards by the time we hit the mid-90s? The Night Court bass, Pan Pipes and the like? Maybe. I believe that's what a contingent of artists that hovered around the moniker Hypnogogic Pop attempted in the 00s, but in many cases, that attempt failed. IMO. Hearing this track now though, perhaps the time is ripe for someone new to come along and reclaim some of these weird 80s textures.

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Watch:

Having read the two comic series as they came out, the first in 2014, the second a year or two ago, I enjoyed Cullen Bunn's The Empty Man, so when I saw there was a movie, I became both excited and hesitant. Then I saw Lustmord did the OST, and I knew I had to watch it.

I dug this one. The ending fell a bit flat for me, but overall, Director David Prior really conveys a heavy sense of forbidding that was a blast to experience. There's a great sense of dread - made palpable at times by Lustmord's brand of creepy cosmic textures. The funny thing is, in watching this, I don't believe it felt so much like an adaptation of the material from the comic, as much as it did the comic if it had been a novel by Laird Barron. 

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Playlist:

 

Christopher Young and Lustmord - The Empty Man

High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings

John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - Halloween III: Season of the Witch OST

ILSA - Preyer

Roy Ayers - Ubiquity

 

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Card:

 I'll be paying special attention to Big Ideas today. 

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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: August 25th New Chromatics Video

This new Chromatics video popped in my youtube feed yesterday. Directed by Johnny Jewel, this is a really cool piece that expertly masks what I have to assume is a low production budget. As with his music, Jewel knows his style and tone and has become at creating and adhering to it on the cheap. NOT a criticism.

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Friday night I saw Ready or Not. FANTASTIC! Go see this one - Dark, fun, and gory in all the right places. More of my thoughts - as well as the thoughts of two of my Horror Vision co-hosts - will go up later today in our new episode. I will post a link on tomorrow's page, but in the interim, here's the trailer again. So good.




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Today is day three of my Dead Milkmen Appreciation Week. This time, I'm shooting for what is most likely an obvious favorite of all Milkmen fans, Stuart, from 1988's Beelzebubba. This track basically constitutes the sonic equivalent of comfort food for me.



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Back on Laird Barron's Black Mountain, 50+ pages in, The Croatoan is a fascinating boogey man.

Being that both Isaiah Coleridge novels were released a year apart starting in 2018, I'm really hoping Mr. Barron is going for a hat trick and that a third hits next year. Coleridge is a fantastic character in both definition and execution, and his supporting cast is no less endearing, so it's only a matter of time until someone scoops this up for a series.


Playlist from 8/24:

The Dead Milkmen - The King in Yellow
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
Perturbator - B-Sides and Remixes
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Nabihah Iqbal - Weighing of the Heart

Card of the day:

Because my world currently revolves around my Art, and the alchemical act of balancing it with my regular life (two faces).

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.

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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.

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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)

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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.