Dreadstar

 

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.   

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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.

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Destroy:

 

I. 

Can't. 

Fucking. 

Wait.

 

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Playlist:

M83 - Saturdays=Youth

Quicksand - Slip

sElf - Breakfast with Girls

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Drug Church - Hygiene EP

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Love's Refrain (single)

M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming

sElf - Gizmodgery

Prince - Sign O' The Times

David Bowie - Let's Dance

Dance with the Dead - Driven to Madness

Crowded House - Don't Dream it's Over (single)

Suicidal Tendencies - Lights... Camera... Revolution

Ghost - Impera

Revocation - The Outer Ones

Les Discrets - Prédateurs

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Card:

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. 

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?

Pallbearer - Forgotten Days

 

Pallbearer is a band I've dabbled in a bit, but who have never clicked with me. Until this past Saturday morning. Up early despite my best intentions to stay in bed, I made a big 'ol pot of joe and sat down to do some writing, fired up my headphones and somehow wound up listening to the new album, Forgotten Days, two times in a row and thus, cementing an immediate bond.

Order Forgotten Days from Pallbearer's Bandcamp HERE or from Nuclear Blast records HERE.

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Watch:

Holy smokes. Magnolia is releasing a Zappa documentary:   

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Playlist:

Pallbearer - Forgotten Days

Opeth - My Arms, Your Hearse

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife

Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST

Paul Zaza - My Bloody Valentine OST

Orville Peck - Pony

Massive Attack - Blue Lines

Sir Neville Marriner and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields - Amadeus (OST)

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Card:

A new beginning you say? Not entirely, but I like the optimism. 

10 Days 'til Halloween - New Kill or Be Killed

 Holy smokes! New Kill or Be Killed dropped last week and I had no idea! I've still yet to break into Greg's solo record Child Soldier, which dropped a few weeks ago, but I think as soon as All Hallows passes and November settles in, I'll start really digging into this stuff. 

New KoBK Reluctant Hero is out November 20th on Nuclear Blast, pre-order HERE.

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31 Days of Halloween:

1) Tales of Halloween: Sweet Tooth/The Wolf Man (1941)

2) From Beyond/Monsterland: "Port Fourchon, Louisiana"/Tales of Halloween: "The Night Billy Raised Hell" & "Trick"

3) Mulholland Drive/Creepshow (1982): "The Crate"

4) Waxwork

5) Synchronic/Bad Hair

6) Dolls

7) Lovecraft Country Ep. 8/Tales of Halloween: "The Weak and the Wicked" & "The Grim Grinning Ghost"

8) 976-Evil

9) Repo! The Genetic Opera

10) Firestarter/George A. Romero's Bruiser

11) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 1 & 2/Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

12) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 3, 4, and 5/House of 1000 Corpses

13) Masque of the Red Death/Creepshow (2019) Episode 7/Creepshow (1982)

14) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 6 and 7

15) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 8 and 9/Roseanne (88) season 2 and 3 Halloween Episodes

16) The Mortuary Collection/Roseanne (88) season 4 Halloween Episode

17) Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning

18) Lovecraft Country episode 9/The Haunting/Roseanne (88) season 5 Halloween Episode

19) Lovecraft Country episode 10/Tales From the Crypt season 1 ep. 5 "Lover Come Hack to Me"

20) George A. Romero's Season of the Witch

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NCBD

Some great stuff this week.

This book really has been fantastic. Such an interesting, original take on the Zombie genre, and a large part of the story really plays more with mashing that up with a kind of neo-noir crime story. Very cool.

Bebop and Rocksteady? Can't wait to see these two make their return to the book. 

The penultimate issue of Gideon Falls! I'll be sorry to see this one go, but I can't wait to see what Andrea Sorrentino does next!

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Playlist:

Type O Negative - Dead Again

Joy Division - Still

PLaNETS - The Dark Woods

John Carpenter - Lost Themes

Also, new installment of Bret Easton Ellis' new, serialized novel/memoir dropped this week. SO GOOD. Sign up for his Patreon HERE to get in on this.

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Card:

I feel like this week is all about fortitude, so this card makes perfect sense. Between being short at work, my back acting a bit weird again, starting in on writing again, and being on call, my hands are full and two days into the work week, I'm already feeling as though I'm running on empty. That said, I always manage to rise to the occasion.

Isolation: Day 192 - New Sepultura!

 

I had no idea we were getting a new Sepultura album this year! Of course, that's probably because for the most part, the band's been off my radar since, well, since 1993's MASTERPIECE Chaos A.D. While I never took a side in the schism between Max Cavalera and the rest of the band because I didn't follow it that closely, Sepultura lost me with Roots, which has some amazing tracks on it - even korn-boy couldn't sully that track with Patton it - but overall felt like a sinking ship. NOTE: Many people have told me to give Roots another chance, and I suppose now's as good a time as any, what with this new track completely blowing my mind. The new album, Quadra, is available now from Nuclear Blast Records.

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Read:

Dipping back into The Hellbound Heart, and I'm completely smitten with it. My love of Barker is stronger this year than it's been in a while, and revisiting this one on the heel of rewatching the first three movies several times over the few years, I find myself very interested in his adaptation process.

Look at Barker's original cover art; this should have never been changed. I'm currently reading this one on Kindle, but I'll have to keep an eye out for a copy of the original. 

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Playlist:

Angel Witch - '82 Revisited

Dance With the Dead - Near Dark

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (digipak)

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine - White People and the Damage Done

Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power

Isaac Hayes - The Isaac Hayes Movement

Japandroids - Celebration Rock

Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey

Alice in Chains - Dirt

Sepultura - Quadra

Gloom Balloon - All My Feelings for You (single)

John Carpenter - Skeleton/Unclean Spirit (single)

Blueneck - Repetitions
Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours

Uniform - Shame         

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Card:

Different deck, same card as my last draw. I suppose this underlines my explanation from the nineteenth, however, today was a fairly productive day, as I clocked several hours of solid writing time on Shadow Play, Book Two. This is what I always have to remind myself when I start something this big - the Flow will only come if you wait through the off times. Day one might suck; day two might suck; day three might suck, but it won't suck as bad. Then, before you know it, the polarity reverses and the Work gets better and easier, more rewarding. But you have to hammer through the Strife.