Wide Eyes Towards The Sky

Mr. Brown, our friend Hellman and I hit the Forever Deaf Fest this past Saturday, thus rounding out my Chicago stint. We bought tickets for Plague Bringer - their first show in ten years and the first time any of us had seen the legendary Chicago Industrial-Death band live.

Worth every f*cking penny!

Also on tap, we caught Year of the Knife, who were fantastic as well. 

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There's not a helluva lot Marvel does anymore that I care about, but the 'street level' stuff still hits me in the old-school sweet spot. While I've only seen the first episode of Daredevil Born Again season two, that's a priority now that I'm back from my Chicago jaunt. There's confirmation that DD season three is filming now, Spider-Man: Brand New Day has me cautiously optimistic, giving me the kind of anticipation tingles that the MCU used to give me during its first couple of years. And now... Frank gets an R-rated one-shot!

Bernthal IS Frank Castle to me, and I'm super excited about this. Also, there are apparently some easter eggs in here I would never have caught, one in particular that pertains to the possible eventual relaunch of the X-Men. I know, that's getting into the weeds of stuff I'll probably only avoid and/or be disappointed by. Still, as a now forty-year comic reader, this shit is hard-wired into my blood. 

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Huge haul this past Friday while I was hanging out at Amazing Fantasy Books & Comics. I'm not going to post everything, but here are some highlights:

Here's something I don't think I knew existed, but I had to have the moment I saw it. Props on Amazing Fantasy for always carrying not only the best selection of comics, but an awesome selection of non-comic stuff. 

Oni Press ruled 2025, but I don't think I've read anything from them so far this year. That changes now that I have the first issue of Time Daniel, David Andry and Maan House's Estuary: A Ghost Story. I know nothing about this, but it's another three-issue Oni Press Horror mini-series, so that's all I really need to know. Also, with a quick glance, House's art - which I am unfamiliar with - is as moody and atmospheric as the cover art promises, so this was an easy 'yes.'

I have wanted this for quite some time now, and I was happy to grab it at my favorite shop! Stokoe's art is beyond almost anything else, and when applied to Godzilla, well, it's unlike anything I've ever seen before.

Now here's the only one I had time to read while I was still in Chicago: Matt Kindt and David Lapham's Hero Trade: Project Chimera. I've been keeping an eye on Bad Idea's second-wave releases (I think that's what it's called; basically everything after Planet Death rolled out last year). Despite that, I don't remember hearing about this one. The cover caught my eye, and seeing Lapham's name made me open it and upon doing so, the B&W presentation made me think I was looking at Stray Bullets for a second. 

So yeah, it came home with me. 

This was originally published last year, two issues, and by the time you hit the end of the second issue, you know it's just going to be two issues. Further research shows that there are multiple series within the overall Hero Trade umbrella, starting back in 2020, all two-issue or one-shot length. I liked this enough that I'll probably keep my eyes peeled for future issues or any back issues I can find out in the wild.

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Playlist:

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Jim Williams - Alpha OST

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Melvins & Napalm Death - Savage Imperial Death March

Gorillas - The Mountain

Radiohead - Kid A

Radiohead - Amnesiac

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis - Eponymous

Neurosis - An Undying Love for a Burning World

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

King Gizard and the Lizard Wizard - Infest the Rats' Nest

Anthrax - Anthems EP

Anthrax - Best of Both Worlds

Gylt - I Will Commit a Holy Crime: Tandem

Gylt - In 1,000 Agonies I Exist

Baroness - Red

Baroness - Chicago Music Exchange

Year of the Knife - No Love Lost

Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest

Corrosion of Conformity - Good God Baad Man

Anthrax - Spreading the Disease

Deftones - private music 

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Loud and clear.

The Return of... Plague Bringer!!!

In celebration of the fact that Plague Bringer is back and playing their first show in ten years at this year's Forever Deaf Fest in Chicago on April 1st and I grabbed tickets HERE.

These guys have such a small internet presence. Thanks to the Spreading the Plague YouTube channel HERE for posting this video. Lots of great stuff on this channel - go check it out.

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NCBD:

What a great week! Let's go:

I really enjoyed issue 3 of David and Maria Lapham's Good as Dead, so I'm charged for #4! This book has some really interesting things going on in the background, and apparently, that's about to go off this issue!

This bi-weekly schedule for GIJOE's Dreadnok War storyline has really given the book the boost it needed! We've got major The Hills Have Eyes vibes in the outback with everyone's favorite grape soda addicts, and now that we've gotten an almost otherworldly, animalistic view of Cobra Commander, the pull on this one has strengthened for me quite a bit. 

I recently covered Tynion and Walsh's Exquisite Corpses on The Dread Broadcast because I think it's a book people need to know about. 

It feels like it's been forever since the first issue of Dan Jurgens, Mike Perkins and Mike Spicer's follow-up to last year's Bat-Noir, Bat-Man: First Knight, which I wrote about HERE. So far, I dig this new series just as much as the first; I could literally read one of these every year and be pretty happy. Batman fits 1930s Noir so well, and these creators really flourish in the style. 

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Finally! The trailer I saw for Damian McCarthy's new film Hokum has hit YouTube, and I can share it! I know, I know - I don't normally like to watch trailers. I saw this before Sisu: Road to Revenge last month and was left jaw agape - another fantastic Neon trailer that shows us so much without telling us anything at all. Now that's how trailers should be!

Especially for McCarthy's films, which, to date, with Caveat and Oddity, are extremely unique and unnerving creations. Hokum - out May 1st - looks to be no different. 

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Playlist:

Tim Hecker - Infinity Pool OST

Bluekarma - The Information

The Afghan Whigs - Gentleman

Frank Black and the Catholics - One More Road for the Hit

Ritual Howls - Ruin

Drain - ... Is Your Friend

Plaguebringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest

Orville Peck - Pony

Radiohead - Kid A

Radiohead - OK Computer

Dreamkid - Daggers

Eldov - A Story of Darkness and Light

Mondo Decay - Nun Gun

Massive Attack - Mezzanine

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Card:

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

• Four of Wands

• Seven of Wands

• Eight of Cups

Don't allow harmony to convince you to drop your guard. 

Some Thoughts on Messiah of Evil

 

Fell back into Chicago's super underrated industrial grindcore masters Plague Bringer yesterday. This band should be so much more well-known in the metal/industrial community than they are. There's literally nothing I can think of that batters me like this album does. From the drawing of breath that opens the first track, I smile and prepare to be undone.

While looking around on their Bandcamp for any sign of recent activity (none), I discovered that in 2017 they released this "Lara Flynn Bringer' shirt and now I am extremely sad that it's sold out, there are none I could find on ebay or etsy, and I'm shit out of luck acquiring one. 

Maybe Plague Bringer will resurface and do another run of it. Maybe. In the meantime, if you dig this kind of sonic madness, PB's Bandcamp is HERE.

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After hearing about Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz's 1973 underrated Horror film Messiah of Evil for the first time back on the old Shockwaves podcast a couple years ago, I started to look around for where to watch the film. The title alone had me, along with the fact that I couldn't remember ever hearing of it before. Back when I was cutting my teeth and really getting into the genre twenty years ago, the two friends who indoctrinated my interest and made it an obsession both had extensive film collections, so the fact that, between the two of them, I don't think either ever mentioned it surprised me. Turns out that's because the film wasn't released on DVD until 2009. That brief mention on Shockwaves sent me into a tizzy trying to track down a streaming service that featured the film. No dice, until two years ago I found it on Prime.

Score, I thought. Only no, no score at all. I started the film and turned it off after only a few minutes because, whatever source the streaming giant culled the film from, the picture quality was unwatchable. Maybe my relatively recent conversion to the Cult of Blu Ray at the time - something I swore for years I would never do - had spoiled me. I've become a bit of a stickler for clean picture transfers, and this one wasn't even what I'd call weak. It was awful. This prejudice is not a bad thing at all, I realize now, except that, for Messiah of Evil, it meant I would have to wait.

Fast forward to last week when I fired up Shudder and found that not only had they added Messiah of Evil, but the picture quality is gorgeous! So after a few false starts over the last five days or so, I finally watched the film last night. I was not disappointed. 

First, I don't know if it's just the similarities between Phillan Bishops's electronic score for the film and Carl Zittrer's for another under-seen film from the 70s I adore, Bob Clark's inimitable Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, but Messiah of Evil's score made me warm to the film immediately. Add to that the fantastic settings - most especially our heroine Arletty's missing father's home on the beach, the design behind which was created by artists Jack Fisk and Joan Mocine, the former of which would go on to work with David Lynch on Mulholland Drive and Paul Thomas Anderson on There Will Be Blood and The Master, and I could not take my eyes off the screen. If you read this blog, you'll know how important both Lynch and PTA are to me, so you can imagine what a harmonic charge I felt realizing there was precedent here that fit with my own personal film aesthetic.

There is not a lot of information about Messiah of Evil out there on the internet. However, in regard to the design and look of the film, I found what I feel is the holy grail over on Dr. John Trafton's website. His article Messiah of Evil: Film and the Influence of L.A. Pop Art absolutely blew me away. Mr. Trafton's wealth of knowledge on not only Los Angeles' history, but Film, Pop Art and the overall social fabric of the City of Angeles post-1940 makes for fantastic reading. I can't recommend this enough, whether you want a deep-dive into Messiah of Evil, or just an interesting read that focuses on Art can influence Cinema; you can find the article HERE.

Messiah of Evil has a real work-with-what we have vibe; Katz and Huyck smartly use a lot of California's most attractive and, when shot right, surreal asset: the beach. The sound of the waves is nearly omnipresent here, and if you've ever stayed in a town where that is indeed the major sonic background, you'll know it makes for a heightened, slightly surreal experience. The constant sound of the ocean seems to work in contrast to the everyday world we humans have made for ourselves, especially here in LaLaLand where commerce is god. This makes sense when you think about it; the ocean has always been a transcendent experience for me because to sit on the beach and quietly listen to the waves, you're literally sitting on the edge of humanity's world, listening to the planet breathe. In other words, this is one of the few experiences available to us where humanity is dwarfed by the larger organism that birthed us: the Earth. 

It's worth mentioning that this oceanic setting firmly establishes Messiah of Evil in a sub-genre I have recently become quite enamored with, the aptly named Seaside Horror. I guess I've always been mildly aware of the feel of this genre-within-a-genre, however, it wasn't until Joe Bob Briggs showed both Dead and Buried and Humanoids from the Deep on his Last Drive-In double feature this past season that I fell in love with both and gained an understanding of the Seaside Horror aesthetic as a style for which many filmmakers have contributed entries. The idea of a double or triple feature with Messiah and either or both of these films, or John Carpenter's The Fog or even Dan Gildark's Cthulhu makes me nearly giddy with excitement. Hell, perhaps I should look into organizing a Seaside Horror Marathon?

Finally, another aspect of this film I found fit its tone perfectly was the Night of the Living Dead references in regard to its ghouls. Messiah seems to split the difference between zombies and vampires, which is cool because I don't know how much of either creature I need to see again at the moment. Mr. Trafton talks at length about this in the piece I linked to above, so I'll just implore you to go read what he has to say, while I wrap up this rather lengthy post and get on with working on the sequel to Shadow Play.

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Playlist:

Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous (pre-release singles)

Exposé - Greatest Hits

Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 (single)

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Jethro Tull - Benefit

The Smiths - The Queen is Dead

Peter Gabriel - So

Slope - Street Heat

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Windhand - Soma

Van Halen - Eponymous

U2 - War

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Mannequin Pussy - Perfect EP

Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest

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In some respects, I have been listening to my own personal dogma and not to my intuition. This is a nice reminder to be aware of that. We all need help thinking outside the paradigms we draw up for ourselves.