Sweden's Watain has a new album on the horizon and the new single features Farida Lemouchi from The Devil's Blood and Molasses on guest vocals for part of the song. "We Remain" strikes me as the kind of track you need to hear in the context of the entire album that surrounds it in order to fully appreciate it, but it's a spooky track, with elements of The Devil's Blood and even a hint of Type O in the keys near the end.
Always great to hear Farida's vocals. Also, really cool video, directed by Johan Bååth. You can pre-order the new album The Agony and Ecstasy of Watain from Nuclear Blast records HERE.
Dollar Bin:
After a rough couple days at work last week, I spent about a good half hour flipping through the dollar bins at my home away from home, Manhattan Beach's The Comic Bug. Here's one of the gems I walked away with:
Jim Starlin's Dreadstar, published by Marvel's Epic Comics - sort of their version of Vertigo before there was a Vertigo - was a book I saw on comic shop shelves back in the 80s when I first started going to Heroland Comics in Worth, Illinois (the location attached to the Post Office on the Southwest corner of 11th and Harlem), and All American comics in Orland Park, on the second floor of a long-gone strip mall somewhere around 151st and LaGrange. These were the first two shops I ever frequented, and I'd make my poor Mother wait in the car while I went in and looked around for probably over an hour somedays, soaking in all the books that intrigued me but I couldn't afford to spend my money on. Dreadstar registered as something I might be into but wasn't quite sure; I've always dug SciFi, but when I was younger I was quite discerning when it came to anything I thought might be second-tier compared to my (then) first love, Star Wars*. In the last few years, I've really begun to look at the various waves of SciFi that hit post-Lucas, seeing a lot of it as forming a sort of genre in and of itself. The smelting pool of comics, TSR role-playing games, arcade games and knock-off SciFi movies (Creature, I'm looking at you, albeit with something approximating love) have formed a kind of gestalt in my mind, a nostalgic feeling that there was something very special brewing with the more street-level, hobby/comic shop SciFi than I'd previously given credit. This gestalt has become something of an unachievable haunting; I try to think about it in defining, cohesive terms. I try to channel its atmosphere, tone and texture. I fail to do any of this with any degree of accuracy that allows me to completely possess it. So when I see a book like Dreadstar that I associate with being possibly instrumental to this nearly ineffable sub-genre I loosely refer to as simply Hobby Shop SciFi in my head, I grab it.
Thus, I picked up issues three and four of Dreadstar and sat just flipping through the pages, enraptured by what I'd found for a mere dollar. These books feel like a piece of history. SciFi history. 80s history. My history. And maybe that's what all this comes down to, a nostalgic tickle I can't scratch; a deeply entrenched tapestry of memories and memory triggers that move further away the more I try to reach them. Because, you know, you can't reach the past, you can only catch occasional glimpses from our limited, human perspective. And isn't that what an awful lot of SciFi tries to undermine and eclipse?
*Don't even get me started on how much condescension I reserve for pretty much every iteration of Star Trek.
Balance is definitely something I struggle with these days. It's not just the ever-present, background hum of anxiety and existential horror the world of 2022 elicits, it's my reliance on caffeine and heavy metal to get me through the day, which works, but is also difficult to come down from even 15 hours after I wake up. Sleep is a luxury that I do not get enough of, and my ongoing deficit has been wreaking havoc with my cognitive skills and motor functions. I spend so much time during the day re-revving my engine that it's hard to 'chill' later on. I would resort to smoking ludicrous amounts of dope, except I'm trying not to smoke based on my lung condition, and the tincture I have has unpredictable onset times and effects.
Holy F$*k! My good friend Jacob sent me a link to the new album by The Mysterines yesterday and when I dug into it, I very quickly realized it's freaking fantastic! I hear a bit of Savages, some Polly Jean Harvey, and overall a band I immediately fell in love with. So much so, I just bought tickets to see the band on May 4th at the Peppermint Club, a LaLaLand venue I've yet to attend. This will be my first concert since, well, you know, and I guess it stands as a testament to how much I dig this group that I effortlessly decided to go.
I remind myself constantly that I won't have access to this kind of show soon, so I need to enjoy the things about L.A. that I love now, while I'm still here.
Read:
After burning through all those Lovecraft stories a few weeks back, I became seriously shanghaied by his The Unknown City. This is one I'd definitely read before - and enjoyed quite a bit, might I add. For whatever reason though, this time, it's just not doing it for me.
So, prompted by a conversation with a friend who had just read it for the first time, I decided to re-read The Colour Out of Space. For this, I'm switching back and forth between the Kindle version and the one I have in this old anthology I acquired somewhere long ago at what I'm assuming was a second-hand bookshop somewhere:
This nifty little volume was published by nyrb classics (that's New York Review of Books, not the name of a new Lovecraftian species) and contains stories by Bram Stoker, Ambrose Bierce and Arthur Machen, as well as several other iconic cosmic/folk/weird fictions writers. I've read most of what's in here - this is a shelf volume I pull here and there and read from, and it's a great example of the kind of anthology a publisher can pull together with a coherent theme and a little bit of backing when the contents are mostly - if not completely - in the realm of public domain.
Playlist:
Ghost - Impera
Hyperia - Silhouettes of Horror
Electric Youth & Pilotpriest - Come True OST
Steve Moore - VFW OST
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Metallica - Kill 'Em All
The Mysterines - Reeling
Les Discrets - Prédateurs
Deftones - Gore
Card:
Standstill that requires a dose of either cash or luck or both to achieve a truly remarkable result. I'll keep this in mind throughout the week, as it seems to me there are several possible applications at the moment for this spread.
Today is my 46th birthday, and it looks like the four original members of one of my favorite bands saw fit to get me a little gift. That's right, a new track from Bauhaus, and one utilizing the ol' Exquisite Corpse technique we last saw them employ on my favorite Bauhaus album, The Sky is Falling.
Hopefully, this means we have a new album coming. I personally LOVED the band's most previous album Go Away White - the first post-break-up.
Play:
I surprised the hell out of myself yesterday by ordering a Nintendo Switch. Why?
I think I first got wind of Puppet Combo's low-fi indie games after reading a Bloody Disgusting article a couple years ago. Other than a love for DDR, I haven't played video games since the original Nintendo, so as much as I loved Glass Staircase when I bought it for my computer, I really didn't have the time or gumption to play it. But Puppet Combo's overall 70s/80s horror-inspired games are so damn cool to look at. Well, an article on BD yesterday announced his game Nun Massacre was hitting Nintendo Switch today, and I took it as a sign. Couple with that an interest King Butcher, my co-host on The Horror Vision, has stoked in me with the reviews of the newest Metroid game and Valfaris on previous episodes of our podcast, and I figured it was a win-win.
Plus, how the hell do I pass up a game called Nun Massacre?
Playlist:
Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed (pre-release single)
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Drug Church - Hygiene EP
Spotlights - The Age of Decay (single)
Deftones - Rosemary (single)
Peturbator - I Am the Night
Bauhaus - Drink the New Wine (single)
Card:
I felt like my Thoth mini deck (thank you, Missi!) hadn't been seeing any real action of late, so I decided to do my birthday pull using it. Here we go:
All good signs for prosperity. Which is a relief. Our plans to exit LaLaLand keep getting pushed around. First my medical shit, then the Nashville market - another reason to dislike Angelenos - now work stuff. The move is imminent, however, I also have a CRAZY idea for a short film project that the Universe seems to be telling me to reach for, so maybe I'll be here just long enough to try.
Many thanks to Heaven is an Incubator for posting about the new Blut Aus Nord album Disharmonium - Undreamable Abysses, out on May 20th 2022 from the always awesome Debemur Morti Productions. This sounds like a return to the 777 era of the band, so one track is really just a big freakin' tease.
What a weird coincidence this is. It's not all that often that I listen to Rammstein. They're definitely a band a dig, however, unless it's the two songs on the Lost Highway soundtrack, there's a pretty specific time and place for sure. Late last week I cracked out Rosenrot, and now look - new album Zeit out April 29th! Pre-order the album HERE.
Watch:
This past Saturday, before the return of my annual St. Paddy's celebration, I caught a mid-day showing of Ti West's new film X at the local AMC. I've posted the trailer here before, back when it first dropped, but here it is again:
X is fantastic. Don't read or listen to anything about it, other than me telling you right here to go see this one on the big screen. You won't regret it. In keeping with West's glorious style, this is a very loud quiet film. It's bloody and human and strangely sweet at times.
Dollar Bin:
Back for another Tuesday afternoon digging in the ol' dollar bin:
Despite my allegiance to Vertigo at the time of its release, I had never even looked through an issue of House of Secrets until two weeks ago when I found the first story arc from the 1995 reimagining of DC's House of Secrets. And yet, in spite of that, several of the covers in this arc loom in my comic book knowledge as extremely iconic images. Especially issue #2.
There's definitely an element to this series that makes me see Vertigo's mid-90s style storytelling as very brand specific, however, since nothing I know of looks or reads this way anymore, any problems I had with this first arc - this reinvention's arbitrary relocation of the titular House to Seattle, Washington in an obvious attempt to capitalize on the *ahem* grunge movement, the fact that every character in the book is in a band or fucking someone in a band, the then-current newsworthy societal plot points. Unfortunately, STDs and molestation have always been problems in our society, however, the ignorance and fear that limited allowed them to grow to epidemic proportions became a campaign slogan themselves, and a talking point for societal criticism. Not a bad thing, but also, the approach to a lot of the tv and literature that took a swing at incorporating such a hot button issue often feels trite and misguided. There's a bit of that here, or, I'm just out-of-phase with my residual 90s self.
Regardless of little gripes, this first arc was a good read and I was overjoyed to put all six issues into my short boxes for a mere $6.00.
Also, Teddy Kristiansen's art is most definitely iconic and hits the sweet spot created in my soul by similar artists such as Marc Hempel and Peter Gross. There's something so Grimm's Fairytales about this style, and as I intimated above, it's one we don't really see anywhere anymore (if you know of a place to find it, let me know!)
Playlist:
Chelsea Wolfe - Birth of Violence
The Pogues - If I Should Fall from Grace with God
The Pogues - Rum Sodomy & the Lash
U2 - The Joshua Tree
John Carpenter with Alan Howarth - Big Trouble in Little China OST
Judas Priest - You Got Another Thing Comin' (single)
Til Tuesday - Voices Carry (single)
Ghost - Impera
Card:
Past = XXI: The Universe
Present = I: The Magus
Future = 7 of Wands: Valour
Holding fast to a protocol - the word I'm using here in place of the more loaded 'belief' - I have established in a previous moment will put me in the position to successfully recreate something that has changed with time, never been completed, but remained a part of me.
Svarte Greiner's new record Devolving Trust was recorded in the "Once bombed-out Schneider Brewery, Berlin," and the acoustics are as much an instrument here as anything else. This is some serious atmosphere. Absolutely gorgeous in the darkest possible way, this brings me back to a headspace I lived in daily back around 2006. I found this one when comics scribe Warren Ellis mentioned it a few days ago on his Morning Computer, and within a few moments of checking it out, I was enraptured. However, this is not Wednesday-morning-at-work music, so I had to put a good solid listen on the back burner until later.
And later it was. Loooong day Wednesday. It wasn't until about 5:00 PM that I had the chance to really dig in, and as I said, it did not disappoint. Once I was in Greiner's sonic conjuring, I couldn't listen to anything else for the next several hours. Actually, for the rest of the night.
You can pick up Devolving TrustHERE from Miasmah Recordings.
Watch:
A trailer for Brendan Muldowney's new film Cellar dropped a few days ago and it looks fantastic:
I've said it here before, but we need more Ancestral Horror, and this looks like a good start!
Read:
I was completely blown away to walk into the Comic Bug this past Wednesday and meet Pat O'Malley, author of the new comic Pop Scars. I picked up the first two issues, and they're freakin' fantastic! A highly polished, super-bright grindhouse exploitation Hollywood Revenge flick delivered in the comic format, I love this book and can't wait for issue 3.
This book is nuts: violent, funny, pop, and bloody. Very much the kind of book I look for when I'm scouring the shelves of a shop for something new and independent. The plan is to have Pat on an upcoming episode of A Most Horrible Library, so I'll definitely update here when that happens. In the meantime, here's a LINK to his Frightening Tales on youtube.
Playlist:
Svarte Greiner - Devolving Trust
The Pogues - Red Roses for Me
The Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace With God
The Pogues - Rum Sodomy and the Lash
The Tossers - The Valley of the Shadow of Death
Flogging Molly - Float
Exhalants - Atonement
Jim Williams - Possessor OST
New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too
Zeal & Ardor - Eponymous
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
Perturbator - I Am the Night
U2 - The Joshua Tree
U2 - War
Faith No More - Angel Dust
Ghost - Impera
Revocation - The Outer Ones
Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction
Card:
Roll with the punches - I had an incredibly unproductive writing session today. So what? I'm not going to let it keep me from trying again tomorrow.
New music from Drug Church. Mr. Brown recommended these guys to me a few weeks back but they quickly fell off my radar before I ever got the chance to listen to them. When I sat down earlier today to start this post, something just clicked.
There's a distinct 90s indie rock underpinning here - I hear a lot of Bob Mould, especially Sugar-era, only with a huge drum sound that really changes the dynamic of that comparison. Turns out, exactly as Mr. Brown had promised, the entire record is Fantastic; you can order it from Pure Noise Records HERE.
Watch:
The new episode of The Horror Vision Horror Podcast went up yesterday. We gathered this past Saturday to watch Mickey Keating's new movie Offseason, and in my book, it did not disappoint. You can hear our spoiler-free review if you click the little widget at the top right hand of this page, or on your favorite podcast streaming service.
Also, the IndieGoGo campaign for Friday the 13th Fan Film Never Hike Alone 2 is now live! While I'm not a very big fan of the actual Friday flicks, I quite like Vincent DiSanti's films and will definitely be throwing down on this one that brings the Thom Matthews back as Tommy Jarvis for an ultimate showdown with Mr. Voorhees.
Can't wait to get this one in my hands and then watch all three of DiSanti's F13 films in one sitting! Back the campaign HERE.
Dollar Bin:
Last Tuesday, I introduced a new weekly feature called Dollar Bin. This is a place where I can talk about all the cool, nostalgic, or just plain awesome items I find while flipping through the dollar bins in the comic shops I frequent. That said, while this week's featured score was indeed found in a dollar bin, it is most definitely not a comic.
I'd never heard of Nyctalops magazine until I brought this one home last week. Nyctalops was a literary Horror magazine dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries published independently in the 70s and 80s. It featured reviews and editorial pieces of contemporary and historic Horror and Weird Fiction and often included short stories by contributors that included Ramsey Campbell, Robert Bloch, and Thomas Ligotti, and many, many more.
This issue is #18, published in 1983, and it features two essays on themes found in the works of Robert Aickman, as well as an essay by famed Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, to name but a few of its treasures. Also, I found it particularly thrilling to note that in the forward to this issue, Editor Howard O. Morris excitedly mentions that the Magazine's printer, Silver Scarab Press, has plans to publish, "... tentatively, a collection of horror stories by Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer."
Today, Horror literature fans know ..Dead Dreamer to be one of Ligotti's most influential works, and I found it super cool to stumble across a reference to it before the polarizing author made his mark.
Playlist:
Ghost - Impera
The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre
Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum
Tones on Tail - Everything!
Ghost - Opus Eponymous
Danzig - Thrall- Demonsweat Live
The Twilight Singers - Powder Burns
Orville Peck - Bronco (Chapter 1)
David Bowie - A Reality Tour
Motörhead - Ace of Spades
Pike Vs. The Automaton - Eponymous
Mad Season - Above
Mutterlein - Orphans of the Black Sun
Jim Williams - Possessor OST
Young Widows - Settle Down City
Revocation - The Outer Ones
Code Orange - Underneath
Deafheaven - Sunbather
Card:
Past = 7 of Cups: Debauch - taken here to mean I'm poisoning
Present = 5 of Wands: Strife
Future = 0: The Fool
I'm not entirely certain how to read this one. I'm tempted to interpret the 7 of Cups as an inverted victory; a good thing that goes too long and turns sour, but I'm not entirely sure how that... wait. Maybe. I'll have to report back on this one. Sometimes it's best to follow flashes of inspiration without thinking about them too much.
Ghost had a big ol' Release Ritual for their new album Impera, out today. You can still order the album HERE. As I write this, it's 11:00 PM PST, so the full album dropped two hours ago when the East Coast hit Midnight.
I'm definitely losing some of the "to hell and back" vibe I had with Ghost, but I still feel like their music is fantastic, even if not always what I want it to be. Oh, how I long for Infestissumam, and to a lesser extent, Meliora ("Circe" is probably my favorite song by the band, or at least a close second to "Year Zero"). Even more than their actual music, I have long been interested in the course Tobias Forge has plotted out for his music. Since Popestar in 2016, it has been my prediction that Forge will eventually do a big budget broadway musical - I really see so much of that theatrical DNA in their records and their live show. Only time will tell. In the meantime, I'm off Friday - when you're reading this - so I'm up late with my first go-through of Impera running through my headphones and it sounds great. Again, not always what I want, exactly, but still great.
Watch:
A new featurette for Marvel's Moon Knight dropped earlier in the week. I'm trying to avoid seeing too much, but I broke down and watched this, can vouch that there are no real spoilers included here. The show begins March 30th, and I find myself counting the days. I want to like this one so much - with MK a favorite character and Benson and Moorehead as showrunners, well, this seems like there is no way it could possibly disappoint me.
However...
I'm still not sold on the way the costume looks on screen. I'm really hoping I get over that, or the images we're seeing are early on in the costume's evolution. I refer back to Netflix's Daredevil here, where at the end of the first season when Matt Murdock transitioned from the Fran Miller-inspired black mask to the actual DD costume, I was totally taken aback, but by the second season the rough edges had been rounded down. Regardless, Moon Knight is really hanging on as a favorite at the moment, and it has A LOT to do with Jed Mackay's current run on the monthly book - issue #9 in particular - which just blew me away. Making the House of Shadows the new Midnight Mission was a stroke of genius...
And then there's this:
I'm a fan of Marvel's Black, White & Blood books, even though I've not actually picked up all that many of them. This, however. Holy shit. I never would have anticipated them doing a Moon Knight installment. I've always tried to be consistent with the character; I missed out on the 80s series completely, cherry-picked at the 90s one, and missed the Charlies Huston series altogether, but loved the entirety of the Brian Michael Bendis run that followed shortly after. Then the Warren Ellis/Declan Shalvey - well, let's just say that's holy in my eyes, and one of the things I've loved about the interpretation since - and what I expect to love about the Disney+ series - is the Mr. Knight persona. That's the kind of genius you expect from a collaboration between Ellis and Shalvey, and I've been continuously happy to see it garnering so much of the character's continued evolution.
Playlist:
The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer
Ministry - Filth Pig
Ghost - Live From the Ministry (Impera Release Ritual)
Mötley Crüe - Shout at the Devil
The Twilight Singers - A Stitch in Time EP
Ghost - Impera
Card:
Taking a break from the Thoth deck and moving back to my beloved Raven Tarot:
A reminder to take knowledge from even the most obscure or upsetting places. This feels like it figures in to my current state of mind, which is about 30% paranoia. I'm looking for answers as to how to continue with my life, how to streamline the next series of large steps I have to take in order to get the hell out of my current paradigm and into what's next. Lot's of setbacks, lots of arrows. But there are always distractions and detractors. The point is to move beyond what we know and just make it happen. Lucifer certainly did.
Alice in Chains' "Nutshell" has always been a devasting song to me anyway, but hearing Lanegan sing it a few days after learning of his passing, well... damn. That's about all I can say.
Thanks to Mr. Brown for sending this one my way.
Listen:
New Greg Puciato record in June, and the lead single is f*&king fantastic!
I've become quite a fan of Reba Meyers over the last two years, and even though I didn't dig that new Code Orange single that dropped a few months back, I dearly want her making music in my life. Her presence her only makes this an even better song than it already is.
Mirrorcell is out June 22nd on Puciato's own Federal Prisoner label, and you can pre-order it HERE.
Watch:
Serial killer stories are not my bag, however, THIS is fascinating:
K and I mainlined Netflix's The Sons of Sam over the last two nights and I have to say, I nearly fell down a rabbit hole. Here's a case that sits at the very heart of the "Satanic Panic" era of our country's history. Watching this put me on a precipice of re-reading Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Fatale, which definitely dovetails with that dark, post-60s vibe I find so fascinating.
Playlist:
Zombi - Digitalis
The Jesus Lizard - Liar
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Miss Machine
sElf - What a Fool Believes (single)
Firewater - The Ponzi Scheme
The Twilight Singers - A Stitch in Time EP
Greg Puciato - Lowered (pre-release single)
Card:
How perfect is this, what with all the Satanic Panic stuff I've ingested over the previous few days:
Take your influences where you find them, it's not wrong to follow your intuition.
Oh my god. Rough day yesterday, then I woke after a recuperative 11 hours and 18 minutes of sleep (haven't slept like that in over a decade, but my body needed it after yesterday, which I will get to shortly) and find Matt Pike's solo album Pike vs the Automaton has dropped! Three songs in, and I love this. I mean, out of the first three tracks, it was tough to decide which one I wanted to post: "Abusive" opens the record, and I loved it the second I heard those opening chords. Track 3, "Trapped in a Midcave" opens with such a throwback to The Art of Self Defense era High on Fire it seemed the natural choice, but in the end, how do you not post the track named "Throat Cobra". Shit, what a great Friday already!
Watch:
First, I LOVE that HBO has titled the second season of their SciFi/Body Horror show Raised By Wolves, Raised By Wolves 2. Episode 4 dropped last night, and as with the previous three and all of season one, I am repeatedly left scratching my head at where any of this is going - in the best possible way. There is NOTHING like this show, and I find there is no way to estimate where any of the plot threads are going, where the beats are landing, or to what lengths it will go to get stranger and more Horrific in a very Ridley Scott's Alien kind of way.
I'm going to go ahead and post the full first episode here - courtesy of HBO's youtube channel.
If you've not seen it, this one is definitely worth your time. And if you dig it but don't have HBO Max, I can assure you, if Raised By Wolves isn't enough to justify the cost of a few months subscription price, then the Turner Movie Classic suburb of the app more than makes it worthwhile.
WTF?:
I saw this on Ghost's youtube channel, called and received a cool little message that included this picture.
I feel like Ghost is going back to their old-school weird, counter-intuitive approach to marketing, and I like it.
Playlist:
Pearl Jam - Vs. *
Justin Timberlake - Justified
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Plagarism EP
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Urge Overkill - Saturation
Urge Overkill - Oui
Pike Vs the Automaton
Tricky - Maxinquaye
Burial - Antidawn
Beach House - Once Twice Melody
...........................
* I still get a chill everytime I listen to the opening track on Pearl Jam's second record, "Go." I've never been a huge fan of the band or even this particular album - Ten is spotless start to finish, Vs has its ups and downs for me, although I love more of it than I don't. But the energy in this opening track and the emotional charge to Eddie Vedder's vocals is powerful stuff, mate.
Card:
One of the things I love about the High Priestess, and this Raven Tarot High Priestess my friend Missi made me, is the inclusion of Joachim and Boaz, the two pillars from King Solomon's temple. They represent Love and Understanding, Knowledge from unifying the two. When I look at this card, I see the Kabballahistic tree of life between the two pillars, and the High Priestess sitting in front of the image, occluding several of the sephiroth. Not just any sephiroth, either. She is blocking the lower spheres of perception, making it difficult to discern the path from where we are, to those higher planes of consciousness at the summit of the tree. This card, then, often reminds me that although the path to my intended goal is unclear, unifying disparate information, or simply acting out of love and understanding, will reveal the path I need to take. This is especially pertinent at the moment. The 'rough day' I referenced above - now two days behind me as I type this final part of this post - involved a failed biopsy on my right lung. Long and the short of it is, I have had a condition known as sarcoidosis for several years now. Actually, probably more like a decade +, it just took the doctors a bit to figure out what it was. Sarcodosis is a chronic inflammation disease, and not necessarily as troublesome as the word disease implies. However, it's something you keep tabs on. So every 6 months or so, I go in for CT scans so my Pulminologist can track the amount of difference between my pulmonary inflammation - has it increased or decreased. At one point, they tried treating it with the steroid prednisone, however, that produced a side effect that gave me terrifyingly blurred vision, thus, my doctors promptly removed me from the treatment.
During the pandemic, I did not see my Pulminologist. Also, I'm a typical male in the respect that I hate going to the doctor and following up on this type of shit. Whatever. I have already excepted that this is probably what will eventually kill me. Fine - let's just push that off as far as possible, right?
Anyway, this past October I went in for my first CT scan since May 2019, and in reviewing the images, my doctor saw a 1cmm shape that, "may be nothing, but let's be sure."
Yes doc. Let's be sure.
So a biopsy is ordered. Or it was supposed to be. November came and went and I never heard from the doc's office. We moved into December and I figured now it's the holidays, so I'll wait until January. Come the first week or so of 2022, I start calling to talk to someone.
I cannot get through. At some points, there's not even an answering service on the line, it just rings and rings. I start to fear the doctor has died or retired or something. Then I get a phone tree, and am able to leave message.
I never hear back.
Okay, what the absolute fuck, right? Finally, about three weeks ago, I finally get someone. They transfer me to an amazing woman in booking that is mortified at my experience when I describe it to her. She sets out to book the biopsy as soon as possible, does, and I go in this past Thursday. Only, the little fucker they need to access - via a 26cm needle inserted through my back into my lung - is behind a fucking rib. We spend a great deal of time practicing various combinations of my holding my breath, exhaling, etc, all to try and get the doctor performing the procedure a shot at accessing the spot in question. During this, my right lung begins to collapse.
Needless to say, that's where we stop.
I spend the better part of that day in the hospital on oxygen, having X-Rays every two hours to make sure my lung is reinflating on its own.
It is.
During this time, I have nothing to occupy my time, so I spend six or seven hours basically meditating; practicing very specific, purposeful deep breathing. I figure it's good for me all around, and should hopefully help my lung regain its proper shape. I am trepidatiously discharged that evening. I'm in pain and still somewhat short of breath, but I'm markedly better. I watch episode of Raised By Wolves 2, then turn over and go to bed at about 7:00 PM. I sleep 11 hours and 18 minutes and wake up feeling great. The pain in my back, side and chest that came from the inserting part of the procedure is reduced by about 60%. My breathing feels better still. I go in at 9:00 AM for another X-Ray and talk to the doc afterward. The lung is still partially collapsed, but I have a follow-up with my Pulmonologist on Monday and we will decide how to proceed.
Which brings me back to the High Priestess.
This has, as I feared it might, paused our move. Not for long, but the path to our goal has become obscured. I have to figure out how to get a sample of this damn thing, and I'm pretty sure it's going to require being put under and attached to a machine that can breathe for me. Not a fan of this idea, however, if it will provide the results, it has to be done. I already know the other option is, since this might be nothing, to wait and see if it gets bigger, which would be alarming but would also, in theory, make it easier for them to get a sample. Not sure I want to wait, though, especially because once we move, I'm fairly certain I will be switching to a PPO insurance plan, which traditionally includes more out of pocket expenses.
But I want to charge forward, cut a path through to the results I want as fast as I want them, because I want out of this fucking state. I want to be closer to my friends and family in Chicago, and I want to get away from the place where liberals act exactly like conservatives, and ubran expansion continues unchecked into realms that will absolutely damage the infrastructure of the city and, consequently, its inhabitants' lives. Elected officials in most states suck, but California - and LaLaLand in particular - is off the fucking charts. I need calm, less traffic, and some semblance of sanity.
Among the many albums that dropped last week, Chicago's Urge Overkill released a new record. Oui is 12 tracks of classic Urge. Order HERE.
NCBD:
Big week this week for NCBD:
I'm about due for a full read-through on Home Sick Pilots, which is just a crazy fucking book that I love in pretty much the same way I love Saga. Both books are so original, so unique, they just blow me away.
I am SO into this new Hulk book.
Joe Hill. 'Nuff said.
The conclusion of our Lemire and Sorrentino's weird AF cold war animal astronaut epic.
If I was into tattoos, I would get the image of the Silver Coin on my bicep.
I didn't love the previous issue of TMNT, but they never stray for long.
What's the closest thing to the Furthest Place from here.
Modok? Okay, I'll allow it for now. However, I'm really only interested in him when he's voiced by Patton Oswalt.
Now that our move is 'in the books' so to speak, I'm seriously considering dropping all Marvel titles and just going with a subscription to Marvel Unlimited. I'm not sure how much time I'll have to read, and I'm not sure how close I'll be to a Comic Shop, but at least with a sub, I'll have access to literally thousands of titles to read whenever I want.
Now I just have to pull the trigger on buying a good tablet.
Read:
When I finished reading Phillip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass over the weekend, I was extremely tempted to immediately jump into Pullman's La Belle Sauvage, the first volume his new HDM sequel series, The Book of Dust. However, I have a stack of other books and authors I've desperately wanted to crack into, so instead, I finally started:
Max Booth III has been on my 'want-to-read' list for some time, especially Carnivorous Lunar Activities, which, along with Preston Fassel's Our Lady of the Inferno, kicked off Fangoria's fiction imprint that coincided with their brand relaunch in 2019. I loved Our Lady of the Inferno, and I mean, like, really loved, and about a quarter of the way through, I'm loving this one as well.
Playlist:
Urge Overkill - Oui
Orville Peck - Bronco (pre-release singles)
Boards of Canada - In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country (EP)
Urge Overkill - Saturation
Liz Phair - Never Said (single)
CCR - Eponymous
Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual
Deafheaven - Infinite Granite
Mastodon - Hushed and Grim
Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery
Beach House - Once Twice Melody
Card:
I'm sure I've said this here before, but I always look at this one as a reminder to roll with the punches. Dogma is bad, and it's not just a staunch adherence to religious or political ideologies. It's thinking there's one way and only one way for anything. There's not. This is especially poignant as we are informed by our realtor in Nashville today that, in the market of the moment, if we're coming in looking to buy a house with a bank loan instead of cash, we will be asked to waive all inspections. Anything that's not "here's the money now," and we won't be able to compete. Long and the short of that is, we're no longer looking in Nashville and its immediate suburbs, but moving a bit more outside those areas. Not far, just far enough to make sane decisions.
New Orville Peck in April? Sign me right the f*&k up! Of the three songs from Bronco that Peck dropped last Friday - thanks to Mr. Brown for cluing me in on that - this is my favorite. All three are great, though, and you can pre-order the album HERE.
Watch:
July 22, 2022.
The trailer for Jordan Peele's Nope dropped the other day, and it looks as though it once again proves Mr. Peele knows how to make a trailer that makes his audience salivate without showing or telling you really anything that the movie is about. I keep seeing references to this being his "Alien Invasion" movie, but if you think Nope is going to be as cut and dry as that, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Or, perhaps more eloquently stated, "Nope."
Playlist:
Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous
Urge Overkill - Oui
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
The Ronettes - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes
Orville Peck - Bronco (pre-release singles)
Card:
Outta Time suddenly seems like the perfect song for today's post:
In undertaking this move, it would be easy to let all of the stress, planning, discussion and interaction overwhelm me. This happens. What I'm reminded of in drawing this particular card at this particular moment, is not to be seduced into inactivity or take the easy way out. I like my job a lot, and while I am mostly taking it with me, it would be so much easier to stay where we are and keep living the good, fairly easy life K and I have carved out for ourselves over the last six years. The important thing is to lean into the fray and meet this challenge head-on because once on the other side of it, our lives will be infinitely better.
The new Zeal and Ardor album is out and after three listens this morning, it's already on my shortlist for album of the year. I am perpetually blown the f**k away by how this man's sound evolves. It would be so easy for a band with this DNA to tread water, but that is most definitely NOT the case.
Read:
This isn't the edition I have, but I love this cover
I realized recently that, for all the fiction by H.P. Lovecraft I've read over the last thirty-odd years, I don't think I'd ever read The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. I'm about halfway through the novella at this point, and two observations:
1) This one definitely sates the thirst for Lovecraft imagery and overall style/tone, however, it is not a very good story, and does not feel all that different than quite a few of his other stories.
2) This is easily the most racist of HPL's work that I've read.
The racism, coupled with the redundant prose, has made this one a bit of a chore. However, I intend on trudging on until completion. As I have gotten older and been exposed to more and more Weird Fiction and Horror, Lovecraft becomes more about the concepts and less about the writing. He just wasn't that good.
Watch:
The season finale of The Book of Boba Fett was everything I could ever want from a Star Wars story.
Now, we'll all just have to wait until the third season of The Mandalorian premieres.
Let's wash that 80s Metal taste out of our mouth, shall we? Kinda tastes like Marlboro Lights mixed with Boon's Farm and Aquanet. Here's the first single Author/Punisher released from the forthcoming album Krüller, out on Relapse Records next Friday! Pre-Order HERE.
Watch:
After rewatching Scream 2 and seeing part 3 for the first time back in October, I have to say, everything but the original seems like they are most definitely not for me. The franchise feels like Friends with a murder. Because of this, it was with great reluctance I went to see part 5 a few days ago. But lo and behold, Radio Silence turned in a really fun, gory AF flick that I had a blast with. And they manage to make "Meta" interesting again.
Playlist:
Ministry - Filth Pig
Ministry - Twitch
Soul Coughing - El Oso
Cypress Hill - Back in Black (pre-release singles)
Cypress Hill - Black Sunday
Depeche Mode - Christmas Island
Ghost - Meliora
Ghost - Popestar
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Anthrax - Among the Living
Author/Punisher - Krüller (pre-release singles)
Brand New - Daisy
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Abigail Williams - Walk Beyond the Dark
Card:
This card is so where I'm at right now. So many distractions and I'm finding it impossible to concentrate. I've upped my daily meditation regiment for the next few days after missing the last few, and knuckling down on enforcing mental discipline.
First single from the forthcoming album Impera. Man, it's been a minute... glad to have Papa and crew back. You can pre-order Impera HERE, but a word of caution - be careful. Their prices seem incredibly cheap this time around - I've always felt Ghost's merch was crazy expensive - but they really hammer you with add-ons while you're checking out. I fell for it (happily), but be warned.
New Dance with the Dead on the horizon! The new album Driven to Madness is out on January 10th. No pre-order I can find yet, but I love the track.
Watch:
I finally made it around to watch Alex Winter's Zappa documentary last night. Really well-made flick that served as a fantastic refresher for me - I read Zappa's autobiography back in the mid-nineties and, while I found it endless endearing and fascinating, twenty-something years later, I just don't remember much about it. Enter Winter's doc and I feel like I have reconnected with a lot of what I learned to love about Frank Zappa. I'm no die-hard, however, the music by Zappa - and specifically The Mothers of Invention - that I like, I really like. And I like it even more when I hear the man who wrote it talk about the process and intention behind such unique, amazing music.
Playlist:
Nun Gun - Mondo Decay
Liars - The Apple Drop
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes
The Police - Outlandos d'Amour
Windhand - Eternal Return
Chicano Batman - Invisible People
Zeal and Ardor - Devil is Fine
Miami Horror - Illumination
Zonal - Wrecked
Zonal - Eponymous (single)
Zombi - Shape Shift
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Ghost of Vroom - Ghost of Vroom 1
The Police - Zenyatta Mondatta
David Bowie - Stage
Kadavar and Elder - Eldovar: A Story of Darkness and Light
Umberto - Prophecy of the Black Widow
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Dance with the Dead - Driven to Madness (pre-release single)
Dance with the Dead - Into the Abyss
Card:
Hmm... possibly a nod toward a strange new venture that I have started in the world of NFTs? Too early to tell, but perhaps this is a suggestion I continue.
New music from Boris and it's once again nothing like anyone would have expected. Also, super happy to see Sacred Bones releasing this! How awesome is that? The album "W" is out January 21, and you can pre-order it HERE.
Watch:
Finally, confirmation we have a second season of Raised By Wolves on the horizon!
This show just below me away in 2020. I mean, where the hell can it go from here? Well, we finally get to find out.
NCBD:
A fairly easy-going NCBD this week. Good news after last week's unexpected haul.
I still adore this "Best of" TMNT series, and I can only imagine what might be in this Shredder volume.
Chris Saunders and I talked about our love for the first issue of this book back on the most recent episode of A Most Horrible Library. Can't wait to dig into issue #2!
I think Inferno is my most anticipated book each month at the moment, and that's crazy. Here's another cover I will never be able to purchase - a co-worker just paid $50 for it before it even goes aftermarket - but that doesn't mean I can't post it here so I can relive its glory at some later date.
This book is the bees' knees, and this cover totally reminds me of an 80s Creepshow throwback. Love it.
Playlist:
I couldn't even begin to catalogue everything I've listened to since my last post, so here's yesterday's playlist and whatever else I remember:
Ethyl Meatplow - Happy Days, Sweetheart
Mike Patton - Mondo Cane
Marilyn Monroe - Some Like it Hot
Sparks - Plagiarism
FFS - Eponymous
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (And Super Freaks)
Mastodon - Hushed and Grim
Grimes - Visions
Grimes - Art Angels
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Sonic Youth - Dirty
Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker - Diz 'N Bird At Carnegie Hall
Bohren and Der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission
Card:
Reflecting my empathic feelings for a friend who lost his beloved cat and the friend who works at the animal hospital that had to tell him. Really took me aback yesterday, reminding me how transient these little loved ones we cling to are.
