Showing posts with label Nintendo Switch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nintendo Switch. Show all posts

Monday, July 22, 2024

Frank Black Teenager of the Year 30th Anniversary Tour

 

Got my tickets to join some of my best friends in the world for Frank Black's Teenager of the Year 30th anniversary tour. Mr. Black even has Lyle Workman back! 




Watch:

Damian McCarthy first impressed the absolute hell out of me in 2022 with Caveat, a direct-to-Shudder film about a man talked into wearing a harness in an old house on a small island in Ireland. The man is supposedly been hired by a friend to watch his niece, but there are all kinds of WTF surrounding that idea, and the film, for all its slow-burn tendencies, rapidly escalates into a terrifying dirge of haunted guilt and bad decisions that culminate in...

Well, read the book. Or, ah, watch the movie. 

McCarthy's new film Oddity was on my radar but just barely, and I was SHOCKED and delighted to find that it opened at our Clarksville Regal this past Thursday. 


So far, it is neck-and-neck with Robert Morgan's Stopmotion for my favorite film of the year. I would post a trailer, but no. PLEASE, go see this in the theatre (it will most likely be gone after this week due to Deadpool) and DO NOT read, watch, or listen to anything about it. Go in blind, and I think this will smack you in the gob the way it did me—so much so that I have tickets to see it again tonight. 




Play:

I've had Playdead's Inside for a couple years now, and while I have played and enjoyed it, it wasn't until this past weekend that I really fell in love with this game. Described as 'dream-like' in all the solicitation copy I've come across, I have to say, that's the perfect description. 

 

A week or so ago, my good friend Maddie messaged me about this game, saying that she remembered I had mentioned it and that she had recently become enthralled. This had me pull the game back out and pick at it off and on for a few days. Then, this past Saturday, I sat down in a darkened room with a beer and Adam Egypt Mortimer's The Obelisk on my turntable and the way the game and the music melded... it was just incredible. I left the sound up so I could hear all the atmospheric sound effects - hurried footsteps through standing water, giant industrial cranes and elevators moving and clanking, explosions, and, yes, dream-like wind and breathing - and my consciousness just folded into this world. It was beautiful. 

I don't want this one to end.




Playlist:

Fear - Live For the Record
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
Black Francis - Svn Fngrs
Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs
Frank Black - Eponymous
Tomahawk - Mit Gas
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Irony Is A Dead Scene E.P.
Ministry - Rio Grande Blood
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity
Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves
The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me
The Besnard Lakes... Are the Roaring Night
Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk
M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us
Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Concrete Blonde - Eponymous
Phil Collins - Face Value




Card:

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


• Knight of Wands 
• Four of Pentacles
• Six of Pentacles

The firey aspect of fire, pure white hot Intellect, stripped of all other human trappings. Here, it's being applied to Earthly matters, as we can see via the two Pentacles or Disks cards that follow. Four of Disks indicates stability, and the Six support or balance. What this tells me this morning is the balancing act I now maintain Monday - Friday may require an extra dose of reasoning to maintain. Not sure if this means this will be a heavy spreadsheet week (I'm only half joking and all cringe when I reference a spreadsheet in relation to the Tarot), or if I'll just have to side step emotional reactions to things that will require logical consideration instead of capricious emotion.

Tuesday, June 11, 2024

By Endurance We Conquer

 

Some classic Thou. I still prefer the album art on the old CD, but I dig that the band eventually aligned all the older records through the artwork.


Something about this image just fits the music so well. It's cold, lonely and a little eerie. 
 


Read:

Two of my old compatriots from the Los Angeles chapter of The Horror Writer's Association are publishing a novel this coming Friday that I'm dying to read. 


Placerita comes to us courtesy of the fine folks at Cemetery Dance are releasing this one. Here's the solicitation from the Publisher's website:

"It's 1928, and something strange is afoot in the desert town of Placerita just north of Los Angeles. When young biologist Alexis Crawford discovers an unidentifiable specimen washed up in the wake of a devastating flood, it begins a journey that will reveal the dark conspiracies at the heart of California and the secret known only to a few: that beneath the City of Angels is an ancient world of tunnels lined in gold, a world that is home to the legendary Lizard People.... Like a cross between 'Chinatown' and the biggest conspiracy theory of them all, Morton and Palisano’s 'Placerita' addresses the intrigue behind 1928’s catastrophic collapse of the St. Francis Dam, corruption, organized religion and saurian urban legends in a fleet new noir that wastes little time in getting to the good stuff." PLACERITA is an intriguing premise, set against the ambiance of the 1920's and steeped in the culture of early 20th century California

You can order this one from the Cemetery Dance website right HERE, or wherever books are sold.




Play:

Being that before I bought a Nintendo Switch two years ago, I hadn't owned a video game console since the original Nintendo, I missed a lot of games and gaming culture. That's not really an issue - I'm about 10-20% gamer, no more. I just don't have time, as any time I spend on a game is time I regard as stealing from writing. That said, I do steal some time every once in a while, so now that I have a Switch, I'm constantly on the lookout for cool games I missed being ported over. Case in point:


Also, being that my interests lie in the Horror realms, Bloody Disgusting is a great place to find out about stuff like the above. Here's a link to the article on this one. John Carpenter's The Thing as a video game... I've heard some things about this one over the years and am very much looking forward to the creeping fear and isolation.




Playlist:

Thou - Umbilical
Thou - Summit
Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full
The Raveonettes - Chain Gang of Love
Man Man - Carot on Strings
Man Man - Life Fantastic
The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control
††† - Goodnight, God Bless, I Love U, Delete
Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra
The Raveonettes - Observator
Soup Horse - The Choir (Single)
Soap Horse - Carrara 20/10/23
The Ravenonettes - 2016 Atomized




Card:

Back to my mini Thoth deck for today's pull:


• Princess of Disks - Stability; graciousness. Good intent.
• Knight of Swords - Intellectually soaring; intelligence on fire - beast mode!
• Knight of Disks - Industrious and patient.

Returning to work tomorrow will be a challenge, but I'll more than rise to it. 

Saturday, May 18, 2024

Man Man - Alibi

 

From Carrot on Strings, out on June 7th. Pre-order from Man Man's Bandcamp HERE

LOVE having these guys back.


Play:

When I first heard of Puppet Combo back somewhere around 2017 (I think), it was in reference to a game called The Glass Staircase that seemed to have major Suspiria vibes. I did not own a game console of any kind, and I hadn't played a video game since the original Nintendo system (other than some DDR at arcades and a DDR enthusiast friend's house). I dug Puppet Combo's aesthetic so much I bought the game from their website for the computer, and struggled through attempting to play it with the direction arrows on my Mac.

Needless to say, I didn't get far.


Thus, a few years ago when I saw PC's name pop up with the announcement that their games were going to begin porting over to consoles, I bought a Switch solely to play them. First up - Nun Massacre, a game that I've mentioned here before scares the living shit out of me when I play.

Since then, there have been a handful of releases, and I've loved them all. Now, finally, The Glass Staircase is coming to Switch. I know what I'll be doing on May 24th (actually, I'll be driving to Chicago, but I'll probably stay up late the night before to download the game). 


Also available for other consoles as well; read the full article that put me in such a good mood this morning over on Bloody Disgusting HERE.




Read:

Over on The Horror Vision, we recently resurrected Sticks n' Stones, our Folk Horror show that Ray and I started in 2022 with two episodes and then kind of let slip away. A lot happened in 2022, and I'd wanted to bring the show back for a while. Finally, our cohost Anthony (AKA Butcher) brought this up recently, and we recorded a new episode. In prepping for that, I began not only rewatching many of the films in Severin Film's BRILLIANT box set, All the Haunts Be Ours. I also began reading the anthology book that came with the set, All The Haunts Be Ours - edited by documentary filmmaker Kier-La Janisse. 


This turns out to be perfect reading for our first morning in Laurel, MS, as the Air BnB K and I are staying in is referred to as "The Hobbit House." While I haven't really been a fan of Tolkien's work since I was a child, the vibe fits with my reading and this current "Folk" state of mind. Also, I went back and pulled out an old issue of the Weird Walk Zine I've spoken about here previously.


This is a favorite for getting me into the "Folkloric" state of mind; the essay on John Constable's paintings by Justin Hopper, complete with Bauhaus song name chapter stops, really helps. 




Playlist:

The Raveonettes - Return of the Grievous Angel (pre-release single)
The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
The Raveonettes - Pretty In Black
Amy Winehouse - Frank
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
The Damned - Night of the Living Damned
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue




Card:

Another single card today, this time from my travel Thoth deck that Missi gifted me years ago:


This feels about right, not only because our accommodations are so wonderful (Link to the Hobbit House HERE), but because Laurel has so many trees! The oxygen here is off the charts; what more could beings who live off the stuff ask for? Not much, because we feel wonderful because of it. Let the luxurious reinvigoration begin!

Monday, November 20, 2023

One For the Ages

 
One of the folks I follow on a certain social media app is Vinylchucks. I love this man's posts because, although our tastes don't completely align, he is very well-spoken and reminds me about a lot of music that I tend to forget. 

Case in point - I was always a HUGE fan of U2's War and, to a steadily decreasing degree their subsequent 80s records, but where 1991's Achtung Baby was the death knell for many old-school fans of the band, I thought it was a masterful cocoon from which an entirely new band emerged. Unfortunately, I don't really care for anything else that 'new' band did (subsequent records have their moments for me, but they are sparse, to say the least), but nothing can ever take away what this record and perhaps most specifically this song did for a fifteen-year-old stoner slowly getting into a much wider musical world.




Watch:

If you didn't know it, a new Bobby Fingers video went up last week. As usual, it brings me joy on a level nothing else on the internet could ever hope to match.

As a Patron, I was able to view this three days ahead of the wide release, along with a secondary Patron-only video that shows him making the eyes for this absolute monstrosity!  This is the most talented person online right now, folks, and I'm proud to have contributed funds to the making of this.




Play:

With the very sparse time I have in my life for gaming, I'm still hovering at what I think is the final stage of Torture Star/Puppet Combo's Night At the Gates of Hell. I love this game, and I'm learning that the games Torture Star for the Puppet Combo banner are my favorite. Add to this my immovable position at 80% through the Pilgrimage of the first Blasphemous game, and I don't really have time for anything new on Switch. That's fine because I'd rather wait until the new Horror Metroidvania The Last Faith goes on sale before I buy it anyway. 

But oh yes, I will be buying it.



This definitely looks like they 'skinned' Blasphemous, but I don't care. Talk about some stellar imagery! My cohost on The Horror Vision, Butcher, was one of the original backers of the Kickstarter campaign for this, so he's already playing. Butcher reports the game play is taking some getting used to, as it is closer to Castlevania than Blasphemous, but like me, he's a sucker for this type of game and its nightmarish, Horror imagery.




Playlist:

Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun
Helmet - Left
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust
Turquoise Moon - The Sunset City
The Reverend Horton Heat - Whole New Life
The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs
Deftones - Ohms
Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Talk About the Weather
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Slaughter On First Avenue
Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
††† - Good Night, God Bless, I Love U, Delete
André 3000 - New Blue Sun
Rodney Crowell - Triage
Aerosmith - Same Old Song and Dance (single)




Card:

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


• Six of Swords - Balancing Relationships
• Five of Pentacles - Earthly Conflict
• Ten of Pentacles - Ending an Earthly Concern

There are a few interpretations today's cards indicate, but chief among them is an ending to the big issue in my life at the moment - moving my parents from Chicago down to Tennessee by us. I have earnest money to drop off this week on their behalf; however, a last-minute delay in closing their house's sale has everyone in the family on edge. While I remain optimistic, this is really messing with my folks, as the purchase of the house they found down here is contingent on the sale of their house (contingent on a final inspection for radon and termites, as well, but let's cross one bridge at a time, eh?). The spread above makes me think I need to trust in my optimism. 

Friday, August 25, 2023

New Puppet Combo Game Coming to Switch!!!

Spent a couple hours playing Myrkur's back catalogue yesterday, and it reminded me how much I dig their music. 



Play:

Holy smokes - another new Puppet Combo game coming to Switch! Check out this trailer and the amazing announcement that accompanied it:

    

"Night at the Gates of Hell combines the 1980s Italian zombie aesthetic of Lucio Fulci, with nail biting survival horror gameplay. Players must navigate desolate Mediterranean cities in search of clues, weapons and items to make an escape. Encounters range from crazed cultists to flesh hungry zombies to massive abominations - all must be taken down with extreme precision, because only headshots kill these maggot-filled monsters." 

 I'll admit - I haven't gotten very far in Stay Out of the House, however, I'm finding that my interest in these games isn't so much about solving them, as it is just experiencing the amazing environments they put players in. This looks to be no different, so I pre-ordered mine the moment I saw this in my youtube feed!

Night at the Gates of Hell is a full-on Lucio Fulci love letter that drops September 9th!



Watch:

A new trailer for John Pata's second feature-length film, Black Mold, dropped yesterday. 
I've been waiting for this one for a while, although I no longer remember whatever put it on my radar to begin with. This looks as though it will be quite a ride, and I'm hoping maybe this is one I'll get to see at this year's Beyondfest, if all the cards fall in my favor.



Playlist:

Pale Dian - Narrow Birth
Pale Dian - Feral Birth
Myrkur - M
Myrkur - Eponymous
Myrkur - Mareidt
Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Undreamble Abysses
Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium Nahab
Godflesh - Purge




Oracle:

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




• Seven of Wands
• Ten of Swords
• Three of Swords
 
A stabilizing victory over calamity sows new, stronger ties. This, I believe, is a direct answer to a question I have a character in the book stuck in. Only through betrayal and arrival at the precipice of disaster do they find the relationship that will ultimately unlock triumph. 

Or something like that.

Sunday, June 18, 2023

Cobwebs & Night Fever

 
Despite loving this song, I had never seen this video before yesterday, when I stumbled on it randomly. There is something so ethereal, so perfect about Greta Link's voice when paired with James Kent's music; she literally puts me in the world he's created just by having such a human, sensual voice. 




Watch:

I watched the first 28 seconds of this trailer and knew I wouldn't be watching even a second more. Sold! Can't wait to see this, hopefully in the theatre:


If this really does go wide, we're in a pretty damn great for Horror fans in 2023. Flicks like Terrifier 2, Skinamarink and The Outwaters may not be everyone's jam, but they've helped carve a space for low-budget Horror flicks in big box theatres. What's more, The Boogeyman, Evil Dead Rise, Malum and Renfield have helped remind everyone that Horror makes money. As long as I'm within reasonable driving distance of a theatre playing it, I'll be supporting Cobweb in a theatrical setting. 




Read:

As an admittedly rather late NCBD Addendum, I went into Rick's Comic City over the weekend to pick up my copy of the new Brubaker and Phillips Hard Cover Graphic Novel, Night Fever, which came in a bit late on Wednesday, and while I had 100% forgotten about:


The first non-Reckless book this team has done in two years, I have to say, I think this is my favorite story I've read by them. That might just be post-first read embellishment because - Night Fever is a fantastic read - however, the way Brubaker and the Phillips Boys portray and use the dark streets of Paris, 1978 - a location I know nothing about - really captured me. The story is just strange enough to feel a bit "Weird," while still being recognizably this team's own signature style. No one does this the way they do, and I have grown to love it very much. I can't wait for the next Reckless, however, anytime they want to take time off to release something new, I'll be happy with that, too.
         


Playlist:

Almost everything I listened to on this list was on vinyl; that's normally hard for me to do. Trapping myself in the house to write has its advantages, for sure.

Turquoise Moon - The Sunset City
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Final Light - Eponymous
Witchfinder - Forgotten Mansion
Yeruselem - The Sublime
Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium I: Undreamable Abysses
The Obsessed - Lunar Womb
Godflesh - Purge
Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue
Steve Moore - Christmas, Bloody Christmas OST
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST
Richard Einhorn - Shockwaves OST
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vitusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age
Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - May Out Chambers Be Full
Joseph Bishara - Malignant OST
       



Theory/Practice:

Changing the section heading because I'm going to start chronicling different aspects of my Practice, which is nowhere as robust as it used to be, but has been creeping back in around the edges of late. Part of that will be dream journaling because I found writing about the 'blood dream' the other night helped considerably.


All Major Arcana, eh? Universal forces at work:

• 0: The Fool - picking up from his appearance two days ago, this is something beginning...
• XII: The Hanged Man - typically I see this as a very broad-stroke signifier of "Sacrifice," however, it's good to remember that this shows the Pentacle the way I wear mine - one Point over four. From the grimoire: "Dreams are brought Low by Modern Rationality." I no longer remember where I cribbed that from, but I find it interesting that it pops up here after I just mentioned dreams.
• VII: The Chariot - Gathering strength before moving to the next step.
 
My read on this is jumbled and not all that easy to put into a paragraph or two. I think it has a lot to say about what I consider my "Practice" now, which is my life. When I got into The Occult, it was after being wooed by big, bombastic workings by Grant Morrison, tales of Jack Parson's in the desert, and of course, Aleister "I'll fuck anything that moves" Crowley. Back then, my Practice was more hands-on, occurring in self-made liminal spaces. As the fervor for drawing sigils and reading every text available cooled, as I stopped semi-regular iterations of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram and the like, I can look at the last ten or so years as my Practice waning, or, perhaps what this Pull reminds me, I can look at it as I simply massaged Magick into my daily life in a way that has seen me succeed in almost everything I've tried, in some way or another. Not always the success I want, but success is tiered in the overly complicated modern world. Certainly getting out of L.A. when I did has shown itself a success, and it's with that mindset that I must carry forth into the next "journey," whatever that may be.
 


Friday, March 25, 2022

A Blasphemous Nun Massacre at the Hexie Mountains!

 

A new video from Orville Peck's recently released Bronco, Chapter 1. I can't wait for the entire album to land and my vinyl to arrive. If you haven't already, you can scoot on over HERE to pick one up for yourself.




Watch:

Despite working slightly more than a full day yesterday, I had a pretty damn good 46th birthday. Nothing fancy. Homemade burgers and Demons 2 kicked things off, as I picked up that stunning Synapse Films double feature of Lamberto Bava's two Demons films back when it came out a year or two ago, and still hadn't set eyes on their transfer of the sequel.

 

Ironic that I could only find Arrow Video's trailer for their restoration of the film, but whatever. The Synapse transfer is gorgeous, and I'm quite happy with everything about it.

Later, to end my night, I threw on one of my recent favorites - Joe Begos' VFW. It'd been a minute since I'd seen this one, but I feel like all the beats are seared into my head thanks to that one magnificent Beyondfest double feature back in 2019. 


I love this flick so damn much. Both this and Begos' Bliss are films I feel like I could watch every day. In lieu of that, I tend to just toss them on when I can, to re-experience not just the film, but that glorious final Beyondfest at the Egyptian, my favorite place in LaLaLand, now owned by Netflix.




Play:

Not only did my Nintendo Switch arrive yesterday, but I was able to pick up Puppet Combo's Nun Massacre from the online game store!

 

The game, like Glass Staircase before it - which I'd bought on my Mac a few years ago and quickly gave up on without a controller - is a bit difficult to get used to for someone who hasn't ever really played 360, immersive games, but very well worth the pangs of the learning curve. The atmosphere is stellar, and when the titular Nun takes to stabbing you to death, things get pretty intense. Definitely recommended for anyone who digs Horror and Games. Reminds me a bit of my all-time favorite Video Game, Shadow Gate, which still influences my personality endlessly, despite not having played it in decades at this point.

Despite all this love I'm heaping on Nun Massacre, however, it was another game I picked up at the same time that I spent the most time with. Thanks to a recommendation by my Horror Vision cohost King Butcher, I grabbed Game Kitchen's Blasphemous:


The image of that giant baby with its eyes stabbed out, held by a monster as it tears a person limb from limb sealed the deal. This is some insane shit, and I'm absolutely in love with this game, which was obviously designed by a bunch of Metal Head Stoners (my people) who were very much influenced by the Castlevania series, which, back when I played video games on the original NES system, was a favorite (especially part 2: Simon's Quest).




Playlist:

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed
Drug Church - Hygiene
Quicksand - Slip 
White Lung - Paradise
Every Day (is Halloween) Playlist (Reveal in upcoming April 4th Edition of the newsletter)




Card:

Back to my Thoth mini. My intention was a three-card spread, however, this card literally jumped out of the deck at me:


A solid foundation to build from takes good, strong effort and clear thinking. Pertinent, as we just had another phone conversation with our Tennessee realtor. Things are moving forward, and I'll post more about it here when our machinations fully lock into place.

Thursday, March 24, 2022

New Music from Bauhaus

 

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.