Møl - Photophobic

 

I totally missed the fact that Denmark's Møl released a new album earlier this year. I'm still fairly new to this band - my fellow Horror Vision host King Butcher turned me on to 2018's Jord two years ago, and though I played it quite a bit that year, the band kind of fell off my radar at some point. Well, this puts them right back in heavy rotation. Wow-what a fantastic blend of styles these guys have - the melodic is beautiful and uplifting and the heavy is fucking BRUTAL! Pick up the new album Diorama digitally at Møl's Bandcamp or a physical copy from Nuclear Blast HERE.

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Watch:

Somehow, I forgot to mention here that last Saturday night, K and I saw Aaron Sorkin's new film Being the Ricardos. 

After the movie let out, I took to social media to proclaim this as most likely the best movie I'll see in 2021. I think that statement was a bit reactionary, but Being the Ricardos is absolutely on the short list for my favorite films of the year.

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NCBD:

A decidedly light week for NCBD, here in the middle of December.  Let's see what I'm getting into this time:

I really dug the first issue of Chip Zdarsky and Jacob Phillips' new Neo Noir Newburn, and I'm looking forward to more from this series. Reminds me a wee bit of Donald Westlake's Parker novels. 

This book is creepy, super weird Cold War Conspiracy fiction that feels like it's about to explode into some crazy Horror and all that's fostering a lot of anticipation in my comic-loving heart. 

Apparently, we're getting a much bigger, more ambitious collaboration from Lemire and Sorrentino over the next year or two, and if Primordial and Gideon Falls is any inkling of what they're capable of, that's damn good news.

More Lemire! With him pretty much doing everything on this one, Maze Book feels like an extremely personal vision, which of course makes reading it that much more enjoyable. For a creator to put this much of themselves into a project, it's just a joy to experience. 

This book is super strange, super gorgeous, and has just been such a nice surprise for something I picked up the first issue for on a total lark. 

Gorgeous holiday cover that playfully evokes the light/dark tone of the old school Turtles book, back in the B&W Explosion days of the 80s. The constant homages to the original series, the ongoing considerations the team that does this book pay to everything that came before this iteration, it all just makes this book the greatest reboot of all time.

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Playlist:

Chelsea Wolfe and Converge - Blood Moon: I

Deadlife - City of Eternal Rain

sunnata - Climbing the Colossus

Boy Harsher - Careful

sunnata - Burning In Heaven, Melting on Earth

Ghost of Vroom - Ghost of Vroom 1

Calexico - Seasonal Shift

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞

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Card:

Another new beginning, or am I just not seeing what's right in front of my face?

Blood Dawn

I had completely forgotten the Chelsea Wolfe/Converge collab album Bloodmoon: I dropped a few weeks back. Thankfully, Heaven is an Incubator just released his Top Twenty-Five records of 2021 and this was on it, reminding me to strap on the ear goggles and disappear into a place both wonderful and strange.

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Watch:

After five episodes, I can absolutely assure you that Showtime's new series Yellowjackets is on the shortlist for my favorite shows of the year. It's not going to beat out Brand New Cherry Flavor, but I almost feel like I should remove that one from the running - it's unbeatable.

 

Yellowjackets seems to be on track to come pretty close, though. This show has me chomping at the bit for each successive episode, which drop weekly on Sundays.

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Playlist:

Van Halen - 1984

White Lung - Paradise

White Zombie - Astro-Creep 2000

Deftones - Ohms 

Calexico - Seasonal Shift

Godflesh - Streetcleaner

Blut Aus Nord - Codex Obscura Nomina

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

Blut Aus Nord - The Mystical Beast of Rebellion

Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God

Møl - Diorama

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Card:

The Airy aspect of Earth - note the bull and its rider, often interpreted as an 'energetic young man.' I have to wonder if there's a message there, or if the cards are mocking me this morning. I'm still struggling with a total lack of energy and the subsequent feelings that, at nearly 46, I'm just getting tired and old. Part of me reads that and immediately says, "Fuck you," to the part of myself that thinks that, and part of me wonders. 

Recently, I've traced the start of this constant feeling of exhaustion to two things: 1) the loss of most of my staff at work, which means all my managerial duties take a backseat to near-constant physical work. None of this is super demanding work, but it's continuous over the course of several sustained hours. Add this to my penchant for only sleeping a little over five hours a night (most nights, with after-work naps increasing in frequency), and there's a definite factor. However, 2) I also can't ignore that the start of this exhaustion appears to match up with my relatively newfound love of fasting. I do 13-16 hour fasts almost every day, and while this almost completely alleviates the stomach issues I've had for most of my life, I also can't help but wonder if it's a contributing factor. 

The good news is we're on a hiring kick at work, so hopefully, this will soon put me back in a place where I don't burn all my energy for the day by noon. I'm not the kind of manager who likes sitting at a desk for my entire day, but eight or nine hours of near-continuous physical strain sure as hell isn't doing me any good.

We'll see. 

Bnny

 

A friend of mine posted about Bnny's new album Everything a few days ago. I'd never heard of this artist, so I took a little stroll into her music and wow. Blown away. I spend a lot of my time pretty keyed up on various incarnations of Metal these days - it's just what gets me through the days. But it's always good to counterbalance the chaos with some downtempo stuff, especially when it's this good and desert-flavored.

You can order directly from her Bandcamp HERE. 

As a strange aside, I messaged my cousin Charles last night to see if he'd heard this album and it turns out this was his upstairs neighbor at one point. I love those kinds of synchronicities. 

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Watch:

I don't know if this movie looks good or bad, hard to tell from this trailer. However, it's got one hell of an awesome-looking monster, so I'm in and will remain cautiously optimistic. Honestly, it's the guys in the movie that look like they might take it down a notch or two for me. Why is it that, in the 80s and even into the 90s, action actors could pull off military or tough-as-nails roles without coming off like douche bros, but now, that's almost always the case? What we need to be asking ourselves as a society is, how do we fix that?

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Playlist:

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

Jerry Cantrell - Brighten

White Zombie - La Sexorcisto - Devil Music, Vol. 1

Slayer - Live Undead/Haunting the Chapel

Motörhead - Bastards

The Damage Manual - Limited Edition

Crystal Castles - (III)

Bnny - Everything

Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch - Censor OST

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Card:

A reminder that movement and change are the antidote for stagnation.

New Beach House!!!

 

New Beach House to welcome us back to the land of the waking and working this Wednesday morning. I need it. The album Once Twice Melody drops... well, I don't know that I quite understand the release schedule for this one, so let me just post the pre-order link to the band's site HERE and copy and paste the itinerary directly from the video below: 

ONCE TWICE MELODY RELEASE SCHEDULE 

Chapter One: November 10, 2021 

Chapter Two: December 8, 2021 

Chapter Three: January 19, 2022 

Chapter Four: February 18, 2022 (LP, CD, and cassette available)

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Watch:

Holy F&*k, and that's all I have to say about this. 

I really hope none of this is red herring (I fish I don't particularly care for.)

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NCBD:

Another fantastic NCBD Wednesday. Short and sweet as far as the commentary this week, let me just mention how much I've grown to love Maw over the past two issues, and am very much looking forward to issue #3.

Oh yeah, and Primordial is just the bee's knees at this point. Andrea Sorrentino's art is next level. There are narrative mechanics at work even just in his layouts that represent enormous leaps forward for the medium - leaps I think it will be years before other people build upon. 

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Playlist:

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - The Helm of Sorrow

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Ozzy Osbourne - Ordinary Man

Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God

Emma Ruth Rundle - Engine of Hell

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch: Censor OST

Slayer - Show No Mercy

Code Orange - Underneath

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Card:

Another nod to completion, which leaves me slightly perplexed. That's half the fun, though. I always think of this card as an indication of balance - or at least a suggestion to strive for it. And truth be told, my balance is way out of whack right now. So maybe that's what I need to focus on right now. If it wasn't for this damn day job...

Emma Ruth Rundle - The Company

I'll be totally honest - I totally forgot this record came out. Loading it into Apple Music and going to hit it later tonight, but if the production on "The Company" is any indication, this one is stunning. ERR's voice already has an ethereal quality to it, but this really raw, up-close feeling makes listening to her sing almost voyeuristic. 

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Watch:

Just last week I was talking here about everything releasing on November 19th, but it wasn't until about an hour ago that I realized, HOLY COW - that's in three days! That means Cowboy Bebop is in THREE DAYS!!! Here's musical genius Yoko Kanno going behind the scenes on the music for the show, which is the best music from any show ever.

Wow. I know what I'm doing Friday.

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Playlist:

Odonis Odonis - Post Plague

NIN - With Teeth

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

DEADLIFE - City of Eternal Rain

Bnny - Everything

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full 

Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh

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Card:

Well being. Completion. These things are normally very abstract concepts in my readings, as I tend to interpret everything as being about my writing. However, writing has suffered, what with this insane work schedule, the massive open loop of the move looming, and the often debilitating exhaustion that has come with both of these. I get down about this, and that adds to the weight of things, but then I draw a card like this and realize I'm in control of how much these things affect me. I don't have to stay ten hours at work. I don't have to obsess over the move. I can fight back and clear some time and headspace for myself. 

Odonis Odonis - Shadow Play

 

It's been a minute since I've kept up with Odonis Odonis. Back in 2016, their album Post Plague was a constant in my ears and on my turntable, however, the band's subsequent releases, while good, didn't quite live up to the same high regard I'd assigned them after what I still feel not only sums up a small era of my life but is one of my favorite records of that decade. So I guess that disconnect explains why I totally missed the fact that they dropped a new record back in October, and what's more, it's FANTASTIC. Special thanks - as always - to Heaven Is An Incubator for posting a track from this and alerting me to it. If you dig, you can order one of the thirteen remaining copies (fourteen until I ordered mine) of Spectrums over on their Bandcamp or from the always marvelous Felte Records.

It goes without saying I'd developed an affinity for this particular song, as it shares a title with the series of novels I've been working on for several years now. 

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Time Machine GO!!! 1991:

In this past Wednesday's NCBD section, I casually mentioned an idea that kind of occurred to me on the spot but didn't really sink in as to what a profound self-insight I'd inadvertently made, the idea that my reversion to a fairly rabid Marvel Zombie/comic collector had more to do with a return to the things that had made the tumultuous task of navigating adolescent as an unconscious way to deal with the equally rocky navigation of Middle Age. This started with an out-of-the-blue interest in following the last year of Nick Spencer's run on Amazing Spider-Man but has pushed me not only back into following some of the modern X-titles (really, just one and a few mini-series), but a nearly inexplicable longing to rebuy and reread a bunch of the post-Claremont X-men stories, first with 1994's The Phalanx Covenant and now, of all things, the original Onslaught opus.

I want to point out here that these are books that I do not in any way shape or form consider 'good.' Conceptually, perhaps, but writing-wise, not at all. And while Fabien Nicieza had some pretty good chops, when we get into Scott Lobdell territory, well, I just consider that era of X-Men pretty mediocre-to-downright-awful stuff. And yet, here I am, combing the back issue bins at the Comic Bug and reading some of this stuff. And that off-the-cuff comment about reaching back into my past to reconnect with touchstones of my adolescence as a coping mechanism for the Horrors of aging in an era of little compassion and perhaps less tolerance really strikes me now as another instance of how our minds will do what they need to do to cope and survive, even if our personalities are completely unaware of those tragedies. So with that in mind, let me resurrect a moniker from my old Chud days to you about what I'm reading from the past, what I think of it now, and how it holds up.

Okay, granted this 1991's Muir Island Saga is still protected as awesome in my book because it's penned by Chris Claremont, however, it's Claremont's final entry and thus, the gateway to the end of his continuity, or rather the way he approached continuity, so I've always kind of held a grudge against both this series and it's villain, the Shadow King, who for whatever reason, I just could not care less about. That's my 'historical' perspective of this small, four-issue 'saga' that really doesn't feel like a saga at all. A bit short and to the point to be a saga. That said, in this instance, the brevity is good, and unlike the full-blown crossovers and X-Events that began to clog the continuity after the near-perfect triumph of Inferno, Uncanny X-Men 279-280 and X-Factor 69-70 feel like a pretty good story that lines 'em up and knocks 'em down, reworking all the allegiances Claremont had, up to this point, used to divvy up the characters and keep things interesting, paving the way for the 'Blue' and 'Gold' teams that would surface in Jim Lee's X-Men #1 and Uncanny 281, which realigned all the original X-characters like Scott and Jean with the Xavier camp and made X-Factor the new equivalent of Freedom Force, under Valerie Cooper - a character I had completely forgotten about.

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Playlist:

The Neverly Boys - The Dark Side of Everything

Lower Dens - Escape From Evil

TVOTR - Return to Cookie Mountain

The Bronx - The Bronx (IV)

Motörhead - Ace of Spades

Motörhead - Overkill

Converge and Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I (pre-release singles)

High on Fire - Electric Messiah

High On Fire - Luminiferous

Odonis Odonis - Spectrums

Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror 

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

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Card:

A reminder to strike while the iron is hot.

Halloween Kills Pink Milk

Heaven is an Incubator recently posted a new track by Pink Milk, a band I'd never heard of before, but which knocked me out upon first listen. The new album - Ultraviolet - spun about six or seven times this past Saturday afternoon. I literally could not turn it off.

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31 Days of Halloween:

K and I finally saw Halloween Kills. In my world, the only truly necessary Halloween flicks are the original and then Part III: Season of the Witch. But in this world, where there will no doubt always be new Halloween movies, this was a fairly good entry. I'm not sure why so many people dislike it - I actually liked it better than Halloween 2018. The lynch mob stuff strikes me as exactly how that situation would go down in real life. I could have done without the last ten minutes or so, otherwise, solid entertainment. 

1) VHS 94 (don't waste your time)

2) The Mutilator

3) Demons 

4) Vortex

5) Possession

6) The Black Phone

7) Slumber Party Massacre

8) Antlers

9) No One Gets Out Alive

10) A Nightmare on Elm Street '84

11) A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010

12) A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

13) Satan Hates You

14) Night of the Demons

15) Lamb

16) The Company of Wolves

17) There's Someone in the House

18) A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

19) Titane

20) A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (9, 10, Never watch again)

21) Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (same. Awful)

22) The Innkeepers

23) Muppets Haunted Mansion/Freaky

24) Halloween Kills

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Playlist:

Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears

Pink Milk - Ultraviolet

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me

Ozzy Osbourne - Ordinary Man

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Card:

I'm not seeing the entire scope of something that's concerning me.  Something is off. Not sure what that is.

Unto Others - Heroin

 

Thanks to my good friend Jacob for turning me onto Unto Others, even though he did so with a degree of hesitation. And I totally understand that. There's something about this band - and from what I've heard especially this new album - that while I like it, leaves a question of authenticity lingering behind it. Maybe that will dissipate, maybe not. It reminds me a lot of Fear Factory, whose records never quite made the impression on me that a live performance at the beginning of their career did (opening support for Sepultura's Chaos A.D. tour). Either way, for the moment, while I'm getting to know Unto Others, I'm digging it, and especially their new album Strength, which was released a few weeks ago on Roadrunner Records and can be purchased HERE.

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Watch:

Hoping to catch this one at some point this weekend:

 

I've begun to get a bit suspicious of A24, and I'm not really sure that's fair. It started with Saint Maud's original trailer, which felt as though it was screaming the proclamation, "THIS IS THE NEXT HEREDITARY!!!" Because of that, I skipped seeing it at the 2020 Drive-in edition of Beyondfest, only to watch it earlier this year when it hit streaming and, turns out, I really liked it. So I don't know what my problem is. Hopefully, Lamb will prove me 100% wrong.

 

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31 Days of Halloween:

1) VHS 94 (don't waste your time)

2) The Mutilator

3) Demons 

4) Vortex

5) Possession

6) The Black Phone

7) Slumber Party Massacre

8) Antlers

9) No One Gets Out Alive

10) Nightmare on Elm Street 84*

11) Nightmare on Elm Street 2010

12) Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

13) Satan Hates You

14) Night of the Demons

* Followed by The Movies That Made Us: Nightmare on Elm Street; not a Horror flick, but worth noting

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Playlist:

Type O Negative - October Rust

Unto Others - Mana

Unto Others - Strength

Allegaeon - Apoptosis

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Card:

A quiet moment of union amidst an ever-expanding storm of chaos. 

Emma Ruth Rundle - Blooms of Oblivion

 

New music from Emma Ruth Rundle, off the fourth-coming album Engine of Hell. Pre-order HERE.

 

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31 Days of Halloween:

1) VHS 94 (don't waste your time)

2) The Mutilator

3) Demons 

4) Vortex

5) Possession

6) The Black Phone

7) Slumber Party Massacre

8) Antlers

9) No One Gets Out Alive

10) Nightmare on Elm Street 84*

11) Nightmare on Elm Street 2010

* Followed by The Movies That Made Us: Nightmare on Elm Street; not a Horror flick, but worth noting

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Playlist:

The Ritual Howls - Into the Water

Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers + Queers

Trouble - Snake Eyes (single)

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me

Ghost - Prequelle 

Dr. John - Remedies

King Woman - Celestial Blues

Steve Morse - VFW OST

Type O Negative - Origin of the Feces

Type O Negative - World Coming Down

Type O Negative - October Rust

Specimen - Azoic

The Final Cut - Consumed

The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland

Fields of the Nephilim - The Nephilim

The Wake (US) - Nine Ways

Anthrax - Spreading The Disease

Unto Others - Mana

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Card:

 

Always a welcome image, although I really have no idea how to interpret this at the moment. Things have been slow AF since I returned from Nashville/Chicago. As I write this, it's the first time I've been able to sit down and work on writing. The day job has been difficult, to say the least, and it's draining my creative juices on a pretty much continuous fashion. Ad to that almost a week straight of Beyonfest - NOT complaining - and I just haven't had time to set anything up for success. 

Mastodon's Drinking Tears Again

 

This very well might be my favorite Mastodon song ever. I'm sure some folks will say the band is mellowing I can't wait for Hushed and Grim to drop on October 29th (pre-order HERE).

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Watch:

I was just getting back into town when VHS '94 premiered at Beyondfest yesterday. This one was kind of off my radar for a while - I have mixed feelings about the original VHS series -  overall I do very much enjoy them, but there's no arguing that as the series progresses, the results become an average of diminishing returns. Still, now that this new, 90s-set entry has arrived, I find myself excited to see it. 

VHS '94 hits Shudder tomorrow.

 

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Playlist:

The Allman Brothers - Idlewild South

Windhand - Eponymous

Black Sabbath - Sabotage

Black Sabbath - Children of the Grave

Small Black - Cheap Dreams

Ghost - Hunter's Moon (single)

Mastodon - Teardrinker (single)

Converge and Chelsea Wolfe - Blood Moon

Various - The Devil's Rejects OST

The Black Queen - Infinite Games

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

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Card:

The last two weeks I have been given over to eating and drinking to excess. Now, who does that sound like to you? Putting things back into a regular routine and moving forward on multiple projects I just haven't had a chance to get to. Still, the temptation is always there, no?

Monolord - The Weary

I'm not a huge Monolord fan - in fact, I kind of don't understand why I don't like them more than I do based on all the ingredients they create their music with. I think it has a bit to do with how fanatical I am about Windhand, and the fact that you can really only listen to so many Doom/Stoner bands and feel a unique rush from them. Whatever the case, by saying all this, it is definitely not my intention to derate or downplay them. Monolord is a solid fucking band, with a couple really great records. I just get winded listening to them after only a song or two (most of the time).

This new track, however, is fantastic and feels just different enough that maybe this is their release I'll really become hung up on. Either way, Your Time to Shine drops October 29th on Relapse Records, and you can pre-order your copy HERE. 

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Watch:

 

Beyondfest announces their line-up tomorrow. It's 9/29-10/11, so I will be out of town during roughly half of it. I think at this point, the movie I want to see the most is Julia Ducournau's Titane. This is one of those films I have read next to nothing about and the trailer, which I saw on the big screen before The Green Knight last month, looks amazing without telling you anything about the film.

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Playlist:

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Ghost - Enter Sandman (Cover)

Monolord - The Weary (pre-release single)

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Metallica - Eponymous

White Hex - Gold Nights

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Card:

Affirmation that although I keep rewriting the same damn section of the new book, my efforts are not wasted. 

Mastodon - Pushing the Tides

 

New Mastodon before year's end and it's a double-fucking-album! In general, double albums don't work out so well, but Mastodon inspires enough faith in me that I don't think that will be the case with Hushed and Grim, dropping October 29th. Pre-order in the band's store HERE.

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Watch:

Hell, what haven't I watched in the last two weeks? Laid low by what definitely turned out to not be COVID-19, I still spent a week and some change on my couch. I read three books (well, read one and finished reading two others), and watched something like 15 flicks. For most of those, you can see my Letterbxd. What I specifically want to mention here are two readily available new flicks that I absolutely loved, Ben Wheatley's In the Earth, and James Wan's Malignant.

 

I loved this flick. Wheatley seems to never disappoint - I even dug his recent remake of Hitchcock's Rebecca he did for Netflix - and this is a bit of a return to his previous dabblings in UK Occult/Folk Horror, only this time, with a technological twist I found very much needed. Folk Horror is becoming a bit like Steampunk, i.e. there's a checklist of images and themes associated with it, and all a filmmaker needs to do is add those ingredients to produce an entry in what is becoming a somewhat tiresome set of tropes. A Classic Horror Story attempted to do this as well, I believe, but failed, while Wheatley conjures what could easily be seen as a sister-work to some of what Warren Ellis did with his and Declan Shalvey's comic series Injection.

I had no interest in seeing this but changed my mind for review purposes (The Horror Vision's deep-dive on Malignant drops tomorrow). In a nutshell, the only things I liked about the first 33 minutes of this flick were DP Michael Burgess' cinematography and Joseph Bishara's score. Then, around 40 minutes I understood what Wan was doing and totally fell for the film. 

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Playlist:

The Cars - Eponymous

T. Rex - The Slider

Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting

Concrete Blonde - Eponymous

Electric Wizard - Dopethrone

Sleep - The Sciences

Ghost - Prequelle 

Powerplant - People in the Sun

Pearl Jam - Vs.

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

An Autumn for Crippled Children - The Long Goodbye

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Anthrax - Spreading The Disease

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Mastodon - Pushing the Tides (pre-release single)

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

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Card:

This makes sense - I've recently found a new path into the second Shadow Play book, which was very much needed. 

The Joy Formidable - Interval

Another single from the forthcoming album Into the Blue, which is out Friday, August 24, but which you can still pre-order on the band's website HERE.  

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Watch:

I don't know anything about this new Mike Flanagan Netflix show Midnight Mass except that it's Mike Flanagan. 

What else do I need to know?

Also, it looks like this might fit into the Seaside Horror subgenre I've grown rather fond of recently, so that's pretty cool. And really, Netflix has a damn good track record with Horror these days, so I'll definitely be watching this one when it drops.

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Listen:

The new episode of The Horror Vision is up. This time, we do a deep-dive into James Gunn's Horror DNA. From writing the screenplay for the Dawn of the Dead remake to Slither, Belko and even a bit on his Troma roots. Check it out!

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Playlist:

Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog

The Black Queen - Infinite Games

The Joy Formidable - Into the Blue (pre-release singles)

Deftones - Koi No Yokan

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Card:

A larger perspective. Ritual and union. Hmm... not entirely sure how to read this. It may point toward an idea I've had kicking around in my head now for about a week, but I'm unclear if it would be an allusion to it being a valid engagement, or a waste of time.

Jerry Cantrell - Atone

The youtube algorithm surprised me Saturday night by throwing the new Jerry Cantrell single my way. I had no idea this album was on the horizon, and despite my hot/cold relationship with Mr. Cantrell's other solo albums - all of which I like, but none that have really stuck with me like, say, the previous AIC album did - I really liked this song. What's more, and this is extremely rare, the video really helped drive home how I felt about the song. I feel like Cantrell is aging both as a human and a songwriter in a very elegant manner, and that brings great joy to my heart. Alice in Chains was, after all, birthed in a pretty severe amount of trauma.

The album, Brighten, drops on December 17. You can pre-order it HERE, though all the vinyl appears to be sold out at this point.

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Watch:

Rewatched a couple of movies this past week that I'd been wanting to for quite some time. First, I finally picked up a copy of Dan O'Bannon's 1984 classic Return of the Living Dead on Blu-Ray. Despite my posting the Scream Factory trailer here, the version I purchased was the MGM release, simply because I didn't want to shell out $35 for it.

 

This film is a rarity to me: despite the comedic elements, RoTLD remains one of the most disturbing and frightening flicks I know. There's something to the starkness of the sets that creates an isolated feeling that permeates and really adds to the siege elements. Also, the entire idea that the dead are compelled to feast on the brains of the living because, as the torso-zombie lady says, "The pain of being dead," really disturbs me. Especially after Freddie dies and begins to repeatedly scream, "It hurts! It hurts!" 

Next, a few months back when Severin announced they would be remastering and releasing Gabriel Bartalos's Skinned Deep, I pre-ordered it. This is one my friend Dennis gave me back in the day, part of the original Fangoria's "Gore Zone" three-pack that also included the Irish zombie film Dead Meat, and The Last Horror Movie. I sold most of these back when my life was imploding in 2014 and had pretty much assumed Skinned Deep was something I had to consign to the aethers of the post-physical media world.

Enter Severin.

This is an extremely bizarre take on the backwoods slasher film that transports the crazy family of killers to the plains of the Southwest (I think). Watching it Saturday night, there's a really unique, really heightened 'You're where you don't belong" feeling to the flick, to the point that, combined with the over-the-top characters, I felt an almost dream logic over the entire story. I ended up conking out near the end, so I have to go back this week and watch it again.

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Playlist:

Metal Church - Blessing in Disguise

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

The Replacements - Tim

Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun

Peter Gabriel - So

The Maness Brothers - Tammie Jean (single)

Cloud Cruiser - I: Capacity 

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Card:

 

This card always tells me to stay stream-lined, keep my head down in the fray, and refuse to relinquish what I've set my sights on.

Mannequin Pussy is Perfect

Somehow, I completely missed that Philadelphia's Mannequin Pussy has a new EP out. You can pick up Perfect over on the group's Bandcamp. As I have come to expect, the five songs are perfect individually or taken as a whole. There's more of that 90s flavor they wear on their sleeve, but as with the band's other releases, this is not tribute or referential music. Mannequin Pussy is the real deal.

And I'm happy to have been able to write that last sentence.

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NCBD:

One of the things I've realized as I delve back into the Spider-Man issues I grew up with is that the draw for me to Spidey was always weighed heavily on his rogue's gallery, most of which use visages straight out of Halloween or Horror Movies. I know for a fact that the first Spidey comic I ever bought, Amazing #289, was based on the Hobgoblin. Since then, Venom, Jack O' Lantern, Green Goblin and so many others that escape me at the moment all piqued my interest because of their macabre personas. And now we have Kindred, who is kind of a cross between the Hobgoblin and Doctor Octopus, except with giant millipedes instead of metal arms. Creepy A.F.

The final issue of what may be my favorite series of the year. Marvel, please give Daniel Warren Johnson his own monthly book with either Bill or one of your other, lesser-used cosmic characters.

Another fifth and final issue. I'm interested in seeing if this one is going where I think it's going.

Peter David's Symbiote Spider-Man returns, and this time, we're going into the Crossroads storyline that the criminally underrated Bill Mantlo penned for the Incredible Hulk title during his early 80s run on the title. I just completed my collection of and re-read that Hulk story a month or two ago, so I'm psyched at this book popping up and playing in that sandbox!

Last weekend, I re-read the first That Texas Blood storyline and found it's about a hundred times better than I remembered, and I remembered really liking it! One subsequent issue into the new arc left me wanting more, so here it comes.

These TMNT annuals are always pricey but also always worth the extra dough. Plus, I'm excited to see the Rat King again! 

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Playlist:

Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest

Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk 

Mannequin Pussy - Perfect EP

Iress - Prey

Dead Milkman - Welcome to the End of the World

John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST

King Woman - Celestial Blues

 

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Card:

 Probably a good idea, as a newfound love of Session IPAs has precipitated an increased nightly beer count on my part. When I told my GP how many beers a night I drink (2-4, maybe as many as 8 on the weekend if we have company) during a recent physical, she did a bit of a double take. Annual routine bloodwork bears out my health, but this card reminds me it's never a good thing to tempt fate. Which is a figure of speech, as I don't believe in fate.

New Zeal and Ardor!

How long do we have to wait until this new Zeal and Ardor album drops? The correct answer is too f*&king long! 

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READ:

This has been a strange year, because over halfway through, and I've read very few actual novels. Instead, all my reading time is spent reading comics. Not a bad thing, and this certainly isn't the first time this has happened, but between starting the A Most Horrible Library podcast, and the brief resurrection of Drinking with Comics, I've fallen back in love with the medium in a way I haven't felt in years, specifically Marvel Comics, which I thought I'd left behind me after the 2015 Secret Wars event tapped us old-timer Marvel Zombies on the shoulders and whispered, "The old continuity you cling to is gone. Rest easy, this is for a younger generation now."

I've been digging in back issue bins for the first time in at least 15 years. I've also been seeking stuff out on eBay, both in attempts to fill in long-forgotten gaps in series I'd thought I'd given up on. It's made me realize I've come to regret giving away or selling back so many comics over the years. And I've been re-reading a bunch of old-school series as I acquire these missing pieces.

I remember seeing a full-page ad for this book back when I was a kid and thinking it looked troubling. A mutant kid killing one of his friends/teammates? Wow. I only read New Mutants here and there as a kid, so a lot of the character development was lost on me when I did pick up the book, and I never quite understood how Fallen Angels fit into the overall continuity of the ongoing Mutant Books, most penned by my beloved Chris Claremont still at that time. Now I know.

Fallen Angels was a New Mutants spin-off mini-series that ran back in 1987. A couple years ago I found issues 5-8 somewhere and picked them up, but it wasn't until two weeks ago I tracked down 1-4, and now completed, I've finally been reading this weird little adventure that features Roberta DaCosta AKA Sunspot and Warlock - always a character that made me go "WTF?" when I was a kid. Like a lot of comics from this era, this is a bit over-written, however, once you adjust to the difference in style, it's pretty fun.

This is a more recent title. A five-issue series by Jason Latour, Robbie Rodriguez and colorist Rico Renzi. Robbie and Rico are the visual team responsible for the short-lived but fantastic Vertigo series FBP, aka Collider. I fell in love with their style on that book, and when they came up with the initial design for Spider-Gwen - a character I shouldn't have really cared about at all at the time based on my reading habits - I gushed. 

I love this character's design. 

At the time of the series, and when it came out, I bought issues 1 and 2 and then stopped. Recently, I found 3-5 in the bins at The Comic Bug and started reading through it. Pretty cool alternate universe set-up, where Peter Parker is dead, Gwen was bitten by the radioactive spider, and Frank Castle is a cop! Also, MJ and Gwen play in a band called, what else? The Mary Janes, and have a hit song called "Face it, Tiger."

I don't know that I'll go back and read anything after this small series, but these five issues are bringing me great joy at the moment, so who knows?

With my recently reestablished love of Spider-Man, I've been going back in and just snatching rando issues from the three 80s series I would read off and on, and which I'm realizing I am missing so many issues I once had. In particular, I've been finding quite a few issues of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man, most issues in the 130s and 140s. Here's a recent acquisition that ties together several other disparate issues I had, so I can now read a short little stint. Remember: back in the 80s and before, trade collections were next to non-existent, so the editorial edict for these books wasn't for the creators to do 5-issue arcs. What we'd get is one-offs, larger threads that played out amidst the monthly stand-alones, and, in Spidey's case, arcs that ran across all three of his titles at the time (Web, Spectacular, and of course, Amazing). 

The good news is, almost all of these books run between $2.99 and $3.99, so it's not like I'm breaking the bank. And sifting through the back issue bins has been a strangely calming routine. I can get all stressed out at work, stop by the bug and spend 30 minutes flipping through issues, and all that bad shit is gone when I walk out the door.

Also, motivated by the "Book Club" section on the latest episode of the Marvel's Pull List podcast, I decided it was finally time to re-read Grant Morrison's New X-Men run, so I dusted off the first of my three hardcovers and blew through the first arc E is for Extinction, as well as the 2001 annual that introduced Xorn. Oh, reading this is making me remember just how much I love Morrison's take on the X-Men.

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Playlist:

Anthrax - Among the Living

Dio - Holy Diver

Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 (single)

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

King Woman - Celestial Blues (pre-release singles)

Jethro Tull - Benefit

Ministry - Animositisomina

Godflesh - New Flesh in Dub Vol 1

Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Mastodon - Crack the Skye 

 

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Card:

I'm back on the journey into Shadow Play, Book Two, and for the first time since last year about this time, I am IN! The book is occupying a lot of my thoughts and time, and what's more, I finally found the voice for a new element I'm adding. Also, there is way more written than I thought, and it's way better than I remembered. So while I'm still letting a new nosleep series idea percolate, my main focus has finally shifted back to where I need it to be!

New Deafheaven track - The Gnashing

Not gonna lie, at first listen to this latest track off Deafheaven's forthcoming album Infinite Granite, I was left pretty underwhelmed. It's nothing to do with the clean vocals - I loved Great Mass of Color from the first time I heard it, but this one felt a bit boring. That was in the car last night on the way to a backyard (second) viewing of Cody Calahan's new flick Vicious Fun - which incidentally is even better the second time through. Today, however, I strapped in the headphones and fired The Gnashing up for a second time, and I have to say, I dig the hell out of this track. I think it will play even better in the context of the entire album, but for now, I'm in.

I LOVE that George has embraced clean vocals. I mean, I'm hoping there will still be fierce, growling moments on the album, but in the meantime, it takes some serious stones for these guys to put themselves out there with these two singles, and I applaud their fearlessness, creativity, and choice of producers in Justin Meldal-Johnsen.

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Watch:

To borrow a term from Dr. Rebekah McKendry, Here's a Bold Horror Statement: I think Fear Street: 1978 is in my all-time favorite Summer Camp Slashers, right behind Robert Hiltzik's original Sleepaway Camp and Tony Maylam's inimitable The Burning! Goddamn, are these flicks BRUTAL!

 

1978 starts slow, but man, it takes the body count to places that I don't know if any 80s slasher did. No one is safe, the ax hacks and knife stabbings are prolonged and fully visible on-camera (somehow without feeling icky mean), and the thing in the cave... I mean, that's totally new territory for a slasher, as far as I know. 

Next week will bring the final chapter, and I can't wait. After that, I'm very curious to see what else Director Leigh Janiak has in store for us.

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Playlist:

Etta James - The Second Time Around

Paul Zaza - My Bloody Valentine OST

Frank Black and the Catholics - Dog in the Sand

Deafheaven - The Gnashing

Reverend Horton Heat - Liquor in the Front

Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws

White Zombie - La Sexorcisto

Sunken - Livslede

Numenorean - Adore

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Card:

 

Definitely in need of the illumination this suggests is around the corner.

New Ministry!

I haven't been this excited for a new Ministry album in quite some time. I'm loving this song; the "fuck the police" samples seem a bit overdone, but the old-school flavor of the music grabbed me immediately (Thanks Mr. Brown!)

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READ:

Parts 1 & 2 of my first Reddit Nosleep serialized story is now up. You can read it HERE. It's kind of about a Haunted Garage. Kinda.

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NCBD:

Big Day for comics. Again.

"Get April!"

JUST reading the core title, but so far, for my first modern Star Wars series, I'm digging this one. I mean, the last issue we had 4-Lom and Zuckus. I've been waiting for an expansion on those cats since I was like four years old.

Can't wait to read this AND see the film, which I believe should be available to rent on Prime.

The Silver Coin recently got "renewed" for more issues beyond this initial four-part run, and I am totally stoked for more.

Been a minute, and this awesome BW&B series totally fell off my radar.

More Spidey, 'Nuff said!

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Playlist:

Windhand - Eternal Return

Ministry - Animositisomina

Ministry - Good Trouble (pre-release single)

The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia

King Woman - Celestial Blues (pre-release singles)

Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death

Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun

 

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Card:

Big picture. Now that the Nosleep is going, I'll take this as a nod in the right direction as yesterday I dove back into Shadow Play, Book Two.

The New King Woman is Vicious Fun!

 

Holy cow! A new King Woman track dropped two days ago and it's a doozy! Bloody Disgustingt mentioned an Elizabeth Bathory vibe, and while I definitely see that, even more I see the influence of Joe Begos's Bliss. Either way, Celestial Blues is out July 30th on Relapse Records, and you can pre-order it HERE.

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Watch:

After watching Cody Calahan's Vicious Fun last night, I'm thinking this may end up as my favorite movie of the year. If not numero uno, it's up there. What is for sure, at least thus far, is Ari Millen - who some will know as Mark/Ira/Rudy/a bunch of other clones on Orphan Black - seems cinched as my favorite performance of the year

 

This one's a BLAST, and I can't recommend it enough.

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Playlist:

The Kills - Midnight Boom

The Kills - No Wow

Entropy - Liminal

The Casket Lottery -  Survival is for Cowards

King Woman - Celestial Blues (pre-release singles)

King Woman - Created in the Image of Suffering

Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

King Woman - Doubt EP

Megadeth - Rust in Peace

Led Zeppelin - I

Led Zeppelin - IV

King Woman - I Wanna Be Adored (single)

Cloud Nothings - Attack on Memory

Chairlift - Something

Polica - Give You the Ghost

Turquoise Moon - Sunset City

 

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Card:

 

Crash Course? Brain Surgery? Either way, I will try to keep my wits about me today.

Slope

 

This is a 'Thank the Universe for my friends" post, because both of the two things I'm posting here, I NEVER would have found and/or given the time of day to without my friends. First up, Jacob, who sent me Slope's new album on Apple Music yesterday and totally picked up the later part of my day. This album rules! It starts almost like NIN's Broken, with a slowly building noise, then leaps into something that initially sounded a lot like nu-metal to me. I was just about to click off when the first change in the song hit, and I was roped back in - and from there, I could no stop. This record is fantastic - reminds me SO MUCH of Infectious Grooves' debut album, which I desperately wish I still had, 'cuz it's streaming on nothing. In the interim, Slope will help (or push me to buy the CD on ebay for $20 - I had the cassette).

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Watch:

MODOK - First: Patton Oswalt can do no wrong.

MODOK has long been a joke between myself and my good friend Joe.Baxter, the other half of on-again-off-again musical project Christian Fisting. In fact, if you could go to the Christian Fisting website (which is down) , you would see that MODOK even figured into our fake 'origin story' that we wrote for ourselves back in, oh, 2011 or so. Anyway, apparently Joe and I weren't the only people who found MODOK comical, and I glad of that after seeing this INSANE Marvel/HULU collaboration. Part Robot Chicken, part... I don't even know, I'm laughing my ass off as I watch this. And that's not very easy to do. 

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Playlist:

Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Jackie Wilson - Higher and Higher

Tom Waits - Rain Dogs 

Alabama Shakes - Sound and Color

Blur - Parklife

Windhand - Eternal Return

Slope - Street Heat

K's 70s Playlist 

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Card:

 

Clearly, I'm on repeat, going around and around, because I keep getting The Devil card from this deck. Until today. Unless this is just another way the deck is telling me what I'm apparently not hearing.