This past Saturday, April 15th was the 22nd anniversary of Joey Ramone's death, and I totally missed it. I guess I never before put together that Pete Steele died on 4/14 and Joey Ramone on 4/15. I'm a considerably bigger Type O fan than I am a Ramones fan but talk about legendary. Here's one of my favorite Ramones songs in tribute.
Playlist:
Telekinetic Yeti - Primordial
Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Holy Serpent - Endless
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
Church of the Cosmic Skull - Is Satan Real?
The Bridge City Sinners - Here's to the Devil
Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit Vol. 1
I've never seen this before, but I'm sure I must have known it existed at some point. I've never been huge on band DVDs - a lot of time they just show you what dildos they actually are. that said, based on all the interviews and whatnot I've read from these guys back in the day, I'm confident enough that Type O won't be one of those, so I may fire this up later tonight.
Thanks to Phil Zig for posting this on his Channel! Give the man a like and a follow if it suits you.
That's going to conclude the Peter Steele week because as it so happens, we have another anniversary to celebrate tomorrow.
Let's perform sacrilege: I'll take this version of any of these three songs over the original Beatles version any day of the week.
Watch:
Holy shit, I got chills on that final image. Chills - and I have no attachment or experience with the Jane Foster Thor storyline from the books. Trust in Taika.
NCBD:
Small haul this week.
If that isn't the most Metal cover since Daniel Warren Johnson's Beta Ray Bill series last year, I don't know what is.
This cover has me extremely excited to see where Donny Cates is taking this book.
Speaking of books I need to re-read and catch up on, The Nice House on the Lake is long overdue for me to reconnect. I keep toying with the idea of just waiting until the entire thing is out, but I'm kind of chomping at the bit to see where the story has gone in the last two issues since it returned after hiatus, and also to re-read those first six books and see what I missed.
I finally read last month's We Live: Age of the Palladions White #1 and Black #1. I dig it, might be bowing out, but I dig. I think the thing that endeared the first volume of this one to me was how it began as kind of a Girl with all the Gifts apocalyptic story and then, in the last pages of the final issue, became something totally different. Now that the new paradigm has been established, I'm not as interested as I was before. I'll always be thankful I stuck with that first series, though, just to see the transformation.
Playlist:
Various Artists - Nativity in Black: A Tribute to Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath - Technical Ecstasy
Sepultura - Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos (single)
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Perturbator - Dangerous Days
Sepultura - Chaos A.D.
Alice in Chains - Sap EP
Sepultura - Quadra
Card:
I've already been feeling as though there's a shake-up on the horizon. This makes me think it's sooner rather than later.
From the Official Type O Negative youtube channel, here's Blood and Fire. Do yourself a favor and let the playlist take you directly into the track that follows it - hopefully, there won't be an ad - because really these two are two halves of an extremely powerful whole. I can still remember
Watch:
Other than that first trailer that dropped last year for Stranger Things Season 4, I have avoided all subsequent trailers for the upcoming penultimate season. In keeping with this, I was not going to watch this trailer, either.
Then I did.
Wow. I am blown away! This is the show that continually proves the exception to the rule: it's always as good as the hype that precedes and follows it. In fact, in my opinion, each season of Stranger Things is increasingly better than the last, so much so, that I would say this show doesn't get nearly the hype it deserves.
Read:
I took a break from the Lovecraft and blew through Brian Asman's novel Man, Fuck This House. This is a fantastic Horror-comedy that plays with the Haunted House subgenre.
Great characters and a truly unique mechanical approach to how the house interacts with the unwitting family that moves in. The book really cozies you up to the characters and their lives, kicks off the festivities, then sprints for 60% of its length toward a fantastic conclusion. Very suspenseful, but never at the expense of its humorous tone. If you dig Grady Hendrix, you will definitely dig this. Plus, it's $2.99 on Kindle at the moment.
Playlist:
Iwan Rebroff - Na Sdarowje (singt Weisen von Wodka und Wein)
Every Day (Is Halloween) - Playlist #3 "In Fear"
Beach House - Once Twice Melody
Card:
Super appropriate as a reminder that, although I have to do some stuff at work this week I don't like to do, I need to be mindful of how I do it, lest others see me as a dick(tator).
Continuing Peter Steele week, here's "(We Were) Electrocute," from 2003's Life Is Killing Me.
I've always wondered if this song was in some way about Milli Vanilli. I'm not really sure why.
Read:
A Stephen Graham Jones Horror comic from IDW? Sign me up.
With cover art here is by Rafael Albuquerque, and series artwork by Davide Gianfelice (Northlanders, Greek Street, Ghosted), Bloody Disgusting reports this one as follows:
“Earthdivers unites four Indigenous survivors in an apocalyptic near future as they embark on a bloody, one-way mission to save the world by traveling back in time to kill Christopher Columbus and prevent the creation of America.”
Recent events very much on my mind, I can tell you that I LOVE this concept. Here's a rather lengthy video announcement IDW released earlier this week; it mentions several other new titles I'm ear-marking here, particularly Scott Snyder and Hayden Sherman's Dark Spaces: Wildfire.
Jones' last three books all blew me away, but My Heart is a Chainsaw proved a level up even for someone already so prolific and accomplished. I can't wait to see how his writing plays out in the graphic format.
Playlist:
The Jim Carroll Band - Catholic Boy
Nurse with Wound - Soliloquy for Lilith
Tones on Tail - Everything!
Skinny Puppy - Last Rights
Nachtmystium - Addicts: Black Meddle, Part 2
Judas Priest - Painkiller
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
Slayer - Live Undead
Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Revocation - The Outer Ones
Card:
I'll be keeping my eyes and my mind open for inspiration or knowledge from an unexpected or previously dismissed source.
I plan to do this every year and always botch it. Not this time! With yesterday the twelfth anniversary of Peter Steele's death, I thought this would be a perfect time to do a week-long retrospective of some lesser-known Type O songs.
1992's "live" album The Origin of the Feces is possibly my favorite album by Type O Negative. It's dark AF but still insanely funny, a tone the band was able to balance for most of its career, starting with this release, which followed their 1991 debut Slow, Deep and Hard. Feces is essentially the live version of the first album, and honestly, it's how I like these songs the best. There's no doubt SD&H had a HUGE impact on me when I first heard it, circa 1993, but that humorous tone just isn't there yet - like Peter and the guys hadn't quite found their voice yet - so when I go to this era, I almost always go exclusively to Feces.
That sounds weird.
Watch:
David Cronenberg returns! Oh man, I want this right. F&^king now, please!
I'm not sure when this drops, but hot damn am I hoping it will be in time for Beyondfest this year, which despite my plans to move out of LaLaLand, I will be returning for NO MATTER WHAT. Seriously, this is their ten-year anniversary, and I am not missing whatever shenanigans those crazy bastards have planned.
Playlist:
Television - Marquee Moon
Wire - Chairs Missing
Drug Church - Hygiene
Burial - Antidawn
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Black Mare - Death Magick Mother
Belong - October Language
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
The Jesus Lizard - Goat
Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Punch the Clock
Card:
Stop fighting what you know and listen past the distractions. There's inspiration amidst the chaos.
I missed posting for the anniversary of Peter Steele's death back last month, but the Drab Four have been on my mind.
It's funny, over the last few years I've fallen into the habit of almost exclusively listening to Type O in the Autumn. Which is weird, because if I was forced to name a 'favorite band' it would probably be them (or Ozzy-era Sabbath). The reason for this weird confinement of their music is something I have been aware of, but not really analyzed.
Until yesterday.
In listening to Type O's final album, 2007's Dead Again, I realized the reason I largely reserve their music for Autumn is that out here in California, we do not have any of the recognizable features of my favorite season. October feels a lot like August, feels a lot like April, etc. After living the first thirty years of you life in the Midwest, the seasons become ingrained in you, in your thought processes and emotions and all kinds of other inner-working, hard-wired stuff. When I moved to the west coast about a year before Dead Again was released, I had to get used to the lack of burning leaves, thunderstorms, and a general sense of what I'll rather dramatically call 'the dying time.' Thus, I established early on a sort of "Internal Autumn" ideal, almost a mantra for my favorite time of year. This usually kicks in during the start of September and lasts through the first week of November. It's how I convince myself that I'm living in Autumn when I'm really not, an homage to the way I lived the years of my life that shaped me. This works, however, I think the inner autumn thing has become more difficult to sustain the longer I'm out here, that much further away from the experience of a real Autumn. Thus, I came up with this idea that if I reserved Type O - still the most Autumn band for my money - exclusively for that time of year, it would help sell this whole charade.
And as is often the case in psychoanalyzing yourself, now that I've picked this apartment, it feels freeing, because I WANT TO LISTEN TO TYPE O NEGATIVE ALL DAMN YEAR LONG.
So let's start here with Profit of Doom, the third - and possibly weirdest - track from Dead Again.
Damn, Pete. We fucking miss you.
Watch:
One of the movies I've been waiting for this year is Maximiliano Contenti's Red Screening, AKA The Last Matinee. I don't know a lot about this one, but check out this bee-oootiful trailer:
I've become quite a sucker for Neo-Giallo, and Horror flicks that take place in movie theatres always work good for me, so I'm jazzed for this one, which will be in theatres on August 6th and VOD August 24th.
Playlist:
Voyag3r - Doom Fortress
Lantlôs - Lake Fantasy (pre-release single)
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Anthrax - Among the Living
Card:
The 8 of Wands always feels like it's a premonition of good things to come, creatively. I need that right now; things have been slow and syrupy and I need to get myself moving again. The idea is in another week or so, since I am now fully vaxxed, I'll begin walking to my writing spot again. This should help me get back on track, so hopefully the card is a good omen.
I've been in full October mode, and of course, that means lots of Type O Negative. This song, the final track on their final album before Peter Steele's death, really hit me this morning. Released in 2007, I've always really liked Dead Again, but I never quite warmed up to it as much as Life Is Killing Me, their previous and my favorite of their albums (I just take Bloody Kisses out of the running for that - it's perfect and stands on its own in a timeless continuum of awesome). Last year at this time, however, I felt myself coming around a bit more, and this year, well, I may now consider it the band's best album (again, eschewing BK). The song structures and arrangements are fascinating and far from obvious; listen to the soft countermelody Josh plays on the climax of this track - I feel like one in a million rock keyboardists would write something like that there.
That said, this increased infatuation with Dead Again is what makes hearing Steele sing "All Hail and Farewell to me..." at the end of the song so emotional - I'm willing to bet the reason Dead Again took me so long to fall completely in love with is I'm a bit of a saver. In other words, living with the knowledge that this was their final album (I had a hunch even before Steele passed), I believe I saved this album to have one last record to fall in love with over the years. Now that this love has come to pass, I'm sad. But only so sad, because none of Type O's record ever get old.
**
The second episode of Shudder's Creepshow aired last night. Fantastic! There's a ton of schlock here, but that's how it's supposed to be. I especially liked "The Finger," with DJ Qualls. Breaking the fourth wall doesn't often work, but it did here. As a complementary flavor, K and I followed Creepshow with the first episode of the first season of HBO's Tales from the Crypt. Unlike many of my contemporaries, I didn't see much of this show back in the late 80s/early 90s when it aired. This episode, The Man Who Was Death, proved relevant in several ways. First, William Sadler is one of the stars of Joe Begos' VFW, which we'll be seeing tomorrow night at Beyondfest, and two, Sadler's out-of-work executioner narrates this episode by continuously breaking the fourth wall. A great double-feature in a weekend that will be filled with double and triple features!
**
31 Days of Horror:
10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
**
Playlist from 10/03:
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Various - Lords of Chaos Soundtrack (Playlist)
Sisters of Mercy - Floodland
Miranda Sex Garden - Suspiria
Neon Kross - Darkness Falls
Claudio Simonetti and Fabio Pignatelli - Phenomena OST
**
Card of the day:
Taking this as a nod that spending yesterday after work catching up on sleep instead of working was the correct plan of action. I feel revived, refreshed, and ready to continue outlining Shadow Play Book Two!
... fucking someone else. From the intro to the Scottish deviation on the second chorus, the only problem with this version and the entire live Origin of the Feces is it kind of makes it hard to listen to Slow, Deep and Hard. So good.
Oh yeah, the best thing about this record? It's not actually live. Here's the story; it makes me laugh every time. I think I read somewhere else that after the studio fees, the band used the money the label gave them for the 'live' production on vodka.
As I sit at my computer typing this morning I'm listening to Swans's The Glowing Man, disc one. It's very zen and flows perfectly from my half hour of mediation and ongoing efforts to put proverbial pen-to-paper. But in the background there's a growing sense of unease, as if I've remembered something but not fully realized it yet. Then it hits me: April. April 14th.
Interestingly enough, upon waking this morning I spent an hour or so finally reading the first trade of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's The Wicked and The Divine, which centers around the death and rebirth of gods as rock stars.
Peter Steele, I miss your music. I love what you gave us and will want more until I follow you out to the next big Halloween Party. To commemorate your passing here's an absolutely shattering live version of one of the songs I always go back to. Love You to Death illustrates how Steele - and by extension Type O as a whole - could pen beautiful, emotionally resonant epics and place them beside their pitch black satire without ever breaking the overall tone they perfected over the course of almost, but not quite, twenty years.
As I come to the end of Mark Yarm's wonderful book Everybody Loves Our Town I find myself drawn once again back to my favorite band from that era, Alice in Chains. In that return I realized a major oversight in my record collection. I do not own the AIC unplugged.
Now, I know why I don't own it - its association with empty-v. However, Everybody Loves Our Town has made me re-think this.
The book is word of mouth - in other words it is comprised entirely of interview snippets conducted and arranged by Mr. Yarm and in the last chapters as those firsthand accounts address the death of Layne Staley there's a quote by AIC bassist Mike Inez that reads, "We discovered at that show that songs like "Sludge Factory" were even heavier acoustic. Layne that night was so haunting. His voice, especially his performance on "Down in a Hole," it still brings a tear to my eye. There was a couple times I had to pull my eyes off of Layne and remind myself, Hey, I'm at work. Instead of being a fan here, I better concentrate on my bass chords. He was just so mesmerizing."
I have a powerful relationship with Alice's music, and Staley's death was the first of two rock star deaths that have actually affected me (the other being Peter Steele's from Type O Negative). Staley reminded me of my best friend Jake, who died a looong time ago. Anyway, that quote from Mr. Inez made me really want to see/hear the performance in question so I went youtube.
Wow.
Nutshell, the second track off of 1993's Jar of Flies ep just kills me every time. But it's even more powerful here. All the tracks are fantastic, but that one and Sludge Factory - which since the first time I heard it has been one of my favorite Alice tracks - are just killer.
