Gory Scorch Cretins

Many thanks to Mr. Brown, who clued me in on the existence of Matt Cameron's Gory Scorch Cretins, a solo album with Melvins as his backing band! Apparently, this came about after a Soundgarden tribute where Buzz and the boys did "Spoonman." All of this is news to me, and I've gotta say I was a little confused when I first saw the cover and title; was this a Melvins tribute? Nope. All original stuff, and they're all great. Furthermore, Cameron - long one of my favorite drummers - makes a fantastic singer! Every track on this is great; I chose this one because it reminds me a bit of Urge Overkill, and for some reason, when I played this for the first time yesterday, that really hit the spot as a final track on the album. 

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Watch:

After picking at it since September - primarily because the show disappeared from the platform I was watching it on and then reappeared on another  - I finally finished the second season of Bryan Fuller's Hannibal yesterday.

I watched the last six or so episodes in a fairly tight burst, and this one is really masterfully done. This isn't something most of the world doesn't already know; I'm ten years late to the game on this one, but man, it burns knowing there won't ever be a season four. 

One of the charms of the show is, of course, watching Hannibal in the kitchen, so I jumped at the chance to post the video above; special thanks to Moonshine Omega - their YouTube channel is an interesting collection of Food and Bevy-related videos from shows we love (there's a cool one of all drinks and food in Jessica Jones Season One!)

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Play:

Having just finished Torture Star/Puppet Combo's Night at the Gates of Hell, I am SUPER happy to get wind of a new game coming our way from them:

As usual, the 80s VHS/Video Nasties influence is a large part of the draw, however, I've really come to prefer Torture Star's games, so I am psyched to be getting another for Switch.

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Playlist:

Disappears - Pre Language

A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head

Fear - Live for the Record

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Baroness - Stone

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Matt Cameron - Gory Scorch Cretins

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Card:

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

• Six of Swords

• XVIII: The Moon

• Six of Cups

The intellectual benefits of balancing the mental and moral components of a conflict lead to emotional revelation. 

No idea what the hell this means at the moment, but as with most of my pulls on this trip (yes, I'm still in L.A.), I'm really just recording all this as data archives for later analyzation. 

Happy Birthday David Bowie!!!

Earth misses You, Starman.

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Watch:

Thanks to some friends, I finally saw David Ayer's 2012 End of Watch.

This one had been on my list for a long time. I remember not really caring about it when it hit theatres, but over the intervening years, several people have told me End of Watch is fantastic. They are correct. I'm still thinking about this flick two days later. Great performances from Peña and Gyllenhaal, and a very realistic portrayal of L.A. 

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Play:

I finally beat Torture Star's Night At the Gates of Hell! I'd been stuck on the final series of stages, an awesome jungle last stand totally inspired by Lucio Fulci's Zombie, but haven't had a heck of a lot of time to play. Fixed that on my flight into L.A. on Friday. I actually beat the game as the plane was landing - that was pretty weird. 

The super cool thing about this game was, upon beating it, two more games opened up in the main menu. The first I moved on to is Evil in the House of Dr. Fleshenstein. Thanks to Mild Goth Daddy you can see some of this one here:

Really digging this game to, even if once again, I'm a bit stumped. I love the environments of Puppet Combo/Torture Star games so much, though, that I don't mind just being immersed in the game, even if I am repeating the same levels over a multitude of times. 

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Playlist:

Drive Like Yehu - Yank Crime

Twin Tribes - Ceremony

Your Black Star - Sound From the Ground

Chris Brokaw - Puritan

Baroness - Stone

Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist

Burial - Untrue

Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right to Children

Fear - Live For the Record

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Card:

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

No time to actually interpret this today. I have a feeling it will be like that for a while, but I'm going to try and go back later and look at this. 

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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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. 

Tonight At the Gates of Hell, Jessica

 

From Dan O'Bannon's classic Return of the Living Dead. SSQ is a band I know nothing about but damned if this song doesn't fit its scene in the movie like a glove. Or lack thereof. Interesting note, singer Stacey Q. is the artist behind the 1986 hit single "Two of Hearts," which was in heavy rotation on popular radio when I was ten years old and subsequently floats to the surface of my brain a couple times a month (at least) ever since. That's the power of radio, ladies and gentlemen.

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31 Days of Halloween:

John D. Hancock's 1971 Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a film I've been meaning to watch for years, and I finally got around to it yesterday afternoon. Here's a trailer for the remastered version Scream Factory put out a few years ago:

I didn't love this film the way some of my Letterbxd compatriots do, however, it's a fairly strong entry into the "urban flight" subgenre of the late 60s/early 70s. It's interesting to note that what I'm referring to as "urban flight" really prefigures the 70s error of Folk Horror. This was a direct reaction to a major societal shift in America at that time, where white people who lived in urban areas did what many white people do and overreacted to the influx of minority populations, fleeing "Back to nature" in more rural areas of the country. In the vernacular of the day, this was often referred to as "White Flight," or perhaps more generously, Urban Flight. There's an absolutely killer article by Devin Faraci about this disguised as an analysis of Michael Winner's 1974 film Death Wish in the back of Brubaker and Phillips's Kill or Be Killed, issue number one. Unfortunately, the extras in Brubaker/Phillips's monthlies generally do not get included in the collected editions, so if you're interested, you'd have to hunt this down in a back-issue bin. 

Perhaps as fitting dessert for being racist little shits, 70s Folk Horror often (but not always) arises from transplanting said fleeing urbanites to a rural setting that ultimately has something evil to hide. The evil almost always ties into some kind of Pagan or Naturalism, so I'm not really sure what the message is there other than "be afraid of everything." That said,  this formula worked for a while. More prevalent in novels that were then sometimes adapted to film, the best example of this Urban Flight/Folk Horror that I know of is Tom Tryon's Harvest Home, published in 1973 and was adapted into a 1973 tv miniseries in 1978. I have not yet felt the urge to track down the adaptation, seeing as I felt the novel was so good, to see it reworked for television felt... cheap to me. I might be wrong; maybe it's a banger. But I doubt it.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death definitely uses this same idea, however, I enjoyed the fact that this film is considerably more ambiguous about its rules and even sets up a correlation to a classic monster I did not see coming. Some of the narrative inner monologue we hear grows a bit tiresome, even if there is a question of its veracity, but I'm nitpicking here. The two things about this one I loved the most were A) Orville Stoeber's score, which predates Carl Zittrer's similar score for Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things by ten months and had to have been an influence on it. Children Shouldn't Play's score is one of my all-time favorite scores, so it should be no surprise to hear that the music was what finally roped me into watching this one. B) Speaking of influencing other films I love, Jessica also predates Gary Sherman's Dead and Buried by a decade, and there is no doubt Sherman drew from Jessica in the creation of his Seaside Horror classic. 

Alright, enough of the impromptu history lesson; here's the current tally for my 31 Days of Halloween:

1) When Evil Lurks/VHS 85/Adam Chaplin

2) Tales From the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 6 "Collection Complete"

3) VHS

4) All You Need is Death

5) Slashers (2001)

6) The Beyond/Phenomena

7) The Convent

8) Evil Dead 2

9) The Autopsy of Jane Doe

10) Totally Killer

11) Ritual (Joko Anwar)/The Final Terror/Grave Robbers

12) Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (w/Joe Bob)

13) Never Hike Alone/Never Hike in the Snow/Never Hike Alone 2

14) Puppetman

15) Creepshow Season 4 Episode 1

16) Return of the Living Dead

17) Don't Look Now

18) When Evil Lurks

19) Barbarian

20) Demons 2/All Hallows Eve

21) May

22) Let's Scare Jessica To Death

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Play:

Puppet Combo/Torture Star's Night at the Gates of Hell hit Switch a few months back, and other than the initial release, I don't think I've posted anything else because I haven't had a lot of time to play the game. Last night, I dug in for about two hours and really immersed myself in it. Verdict?

This might be my favorite of the 80s Horror-themed games these folks have released so far (nothing's coming close to No One Lives Under the Lighthouse).

The game goes all-in on 80s Horror tropes by even including nudity! I mean, that was not something I'd ever expected to see in a game, but topless women are indeed one of the major ingredients in 80s Horror, so hats off for taking it that far (while it's possible that, since before buying a Switch in 2022 I had not played a video game since the original Nintendo, I am just being naive and nudity filtered into the gaming experience a long time ago, but I doubt it). Also, the violence and gore are cranked to ten, which makes sense - the creators have stated this game is a love letter to the films of Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei, so again, to fully expand on the quantifiable criteria of those films, you can't really half-ass the gore. And as usual with Puppet Combo/Torture Star, the sound is exquisite and a major part of the scares in this one. Like Nun Massacre, Night at the Gates of Hell conjures an anxiety that I haven't felt in Horror since I was a kid watching many of the films I love for the first time.

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Playlist:

Halloween Spotify Playlist

Rein - Reincarnated

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom

Twin Temple - God is Dead

Huey Lewis and the News - Sports

Orville Peck - Bronco

Billy Joel - The Stranger

Tear for Fears - Songs From the Big Chair

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - Lawless OST

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Card:

I'm going to Missi's Raven Deck for a single card this morning; just want a big picture at the moment:

Trump XIV is Art in the Crowley/Harris deck, and that's generally how I think of it. However, here I'd have to say the message is clear and has way more to do with the actual act of "Tempering," as in expectations. After a wonderful but exhausting weekend with my sister, her husband and my parents in town looking for houses, I think we're all caught up in the panic of moving on short notice (they have to be out by November 15th) and not seeing things for how they actually are. My parents especially need to temper their expectations of how this is going to change their lives, but also, I also think the rest of us have to work with them on that while adjusting our own sense of how this is going to go. I have no doubt they will find 'the right' house, however, it's going to take more time than they currently have. This means accepting the idea of putting their things in storage and having them move in with us for a bit, so they can actually see houses here without having to drive down for the weekend and then leave again. 

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. 

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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!

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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.

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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

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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.

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. 

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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. 

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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.

         

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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

       

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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.
 

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X's For Eyes... And That's All

 

I have always carried a torch for a handful of songs from the Phil Collins/80s Genesis catalogue. I know, I know... I don't care. These songs are in my DNA from early life exposure. Also, weirdly enough, a lot of comic book memories are attached to some of them, this one in particular. Not necessarily specific issues, but eras.

The year Tonight, Tonight, Tonight came out - 1986 - was the year I first started reading comics on a regular basis with Larry Hama's G.I.Joe issue #49. The same year, this song appeared in a Michelob television commercial. Something about that commercial primed me to be both a Ministry fan and a Bret Easton Ellis fan, though it's difficult to explain the latter half of that statement. (Ministry's Everyday is Halloween would score a - get this - Old Style Dry commercial, just two years later. My memory so clearly stated it was a Bud Dry commercial that I would have put money on it. Also, who remembered that Old Style had a "Dry" beer? Not me, and probably not Dennis Farina, either. I mean, if he was still alive...)

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Play:

The New Puppet Combo game Stay Out of the House drops June 16th! I've already pre-ordered my copy for Switch. Why? Check out this gnarly trailer:

Oh man, I need to double-down on No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, which I played the hell out of for the first week and a half and then haven't really had time for since.             

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Read:

Blew through Laird Barron's third Isaiah Coleridge novel, Worse Angels and, exactly as instinct suggested, it went from a 4-star to a 5-star rating simply because I did not reread Black Mountain (Bk 2) first. Love this series, and it's put me in mind of tracing some of the recurring characters, so the instant I finished it, I picked up Barron's 2015 novella X's for Eyes.         

I've only read this particular Barron book once before when it first came out, and it's not a Coleridge novel, however, Tom Mandibole makes an appearance, and since he is a major force in Worse Angels, I really wanted to work backward on his character. The first memory I have of him is "More Dark," the closing story in Barron's 2013 The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All collection, where - in my mind at least - it's heavily implied he is a riff on author Thomas Ligotti. I read Barron's work as it's released, and in the past, I haven't kept notes, so I'm hazy on where and how often Mandibole has appeared. Hence the 'working backward.' At any rate, Mandibole shows up in the first two pages of X's For Eyes, as does Sword Industries, the Labrador family and who knows what else. So I'm in the right place until The Wind Began to Howl (Coleridge Bk 3.5) arrives.

 

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Playlist:

Lustmord - Berlin

Low - Double Negative

Ganser - Odd Talk

Les Discrets - Prédateurs

Godflesh - Post Self

Danzig - Danzig III: How the Gods Kill

Alice in Chains - Sap EP

Soundgarden - Superunknown

Huey Lewis and the News - Sports

Phil Collins/Genesis - Collins. Phil Collins. Playlist

Pastor T.L. Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship (Without a Sail)

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

Yeruselem - The Sublime

Pigface - Pigface Live 2019 vinyl

            

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Card:

Heading to Chicago today, so here's a card from Missi's Raven Deck to see me on my way and plot the course of the trip:

Things change; long-standing certainties switch polarity. Life is change, so embrace change. Kill. Your. Darlings.

 

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Druids - Shadow Work

 

 From Druids' 2022 Shadow Work, an album I just discovered and which is blowing me away. Released via The Ocean's Pelagic Records, these guys fit that aesthetic like a glove, although I'd say they're a bit closer in sound to super stoner group Shrinebuilder than the Post-Metal of The Ocean. Either way, this entire record is fabulous, so it was tough to choose a track to post. Luckily, Pelagic has a full stream up. You can order this one direct from the label's website HERE.

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NCBD:

Another short but sweet NCBD. Here are my picks:

Black Tape's fourth and final issue! I still haven't read three, so sometime soon I'll sit down and burn through the entire arc. Love that Shout At the Devil homage cover!

Still one of my favorite reads every month now that the status quo has resumed, Boss and Rosenberg's What's the Furthest Place From Here has to be the single most intriguing 'world' I've come across in a comic in a long time. 

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Play:

Here's a hilarious little commercial Puppet Combo made for their summer sale, which began yesterday!

 

I can't play any of this stuff on my computer, otherwise, the "Buy All" for $25 would be a total no-brainer! The direct link to the sale on Puppet Combo/Torture Star's website is HERE.

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Playlist:

The Teardrop Explodes - Kilimanjaro

Spotlights - Alchemy for the Dead

Druids - Spirit Compass (single)

Druids - Shadow Work

Final Light - Eponymous

Nun Gun - Mondo Decay

Ganser - Just Look At That Sky

Ganser live Audiotree Session

          

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Card:

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

• Eight of Pentacles (Disks) - Transformation of Earthly materials/goals

• 14 Temperance - Art in Thoth, this often denotes a mixing of two or more different ethos to create the desired result. In this case, I'd read it as branching out from a safe routine/style.

• 17 The Star - Totality and fulfillment. 

I think this is a direct reference to something I just started working on. I'm taking an old collaborative project from 2018 and stripping it of the ideas that were created jointly with someone else, trying to extract the prose and rework it into a High School Giallo I've been thinking about for at least as long. There's a lot of good prose that I wrote in this - the other party was involved conceptually and with story, but not with any of the actual writing. There's a good 100k words - a lot of it was the product of what I since learned was overzealous 'word stuffing,' but a lot of it is good. So why waste it? Why not transform that Art into a lucrative project?

 

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A Slip of the Nun's Blade

 

This old NIN song from 2008's The Slip popped up in my feed this morning and it kinda hit the spot. I'm in Dayton, Ohio - a city I adore but don't make it out to all that much anymore. I spent a lot of time here in the late 00s, though, so seeing this track surface felt a but like the Universe giving me a thumbs up.

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Watch:

I watch Amoeba Music's What's In My Bag periodically, but special thanks to Mr. Brown for pointing me toward this episode with Seal. I'm starting the video at a particular point near the end; watch that and then start it over if you want to hear this beautiful man gush about Bowie, Alice in Chains and a host of other music:

 

I don't know very much about Seal's music. I avoided it a lot when I was younger and more limited, however, at some point, I realized you just can't argue with the greatness of "Kiss From A Rose." That led me to wonder about listening to some of Seal's full albums, which I haven't really done yet, and I'm not really in the headspace to do at the moment. I'll get to it eventually, though.

 

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Play:

I have become obsessed with Puppet Combo's Nun Massacre! This game scares the crap out of me. Here's Survival Horror Network's no-commentary walk-through; I won't be watching it, as I want to experience all this for myself, but I guarantee if you're a Horror Movie fan and you sit down, maybe ingest some mind-altering party favors and watch this in the dark with headphones or the sound up, this will affect you the way you want Horror Movies to.

 

Nun Massacre induces a paranoia that I really appreciate, and as I alluded to above, this game has the effect I long for back from the days when I discovered a lot of the Horror Movies I love now, but as an adult, very few new ones provide.

 

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Playlist:

Black Sabbath - Technical Ecstasy

Dorthia Cottrell - Death Folk Country

Danzig - Eponymous

Church of the Cosmic Skull - Is Satan Real?

The Sword - Warp Riders

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Judas Priest - Painkiller

Bill Withers - Apple Music Essentials

High on Fire - The Art of Self Defense

Chamber of Screams - Murder House (Original Puppet Combo Soundtrack)

Karl Casey - (White Bat) XX EP

QOTSA - Rated R

 

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Telekinetic Yetis & True Detectives

 

Telekinetic Yeti's guitar tone is beyond anything I've ever heard before. I've been throwing last year's Primordial on here and there for the last year or so, and I dug it, but something happened this past week and I just can't live without it now. 

That tone!

I've recently begun playing guitar again after an almost eight-year hiatus, and as I run scales and modes and just generally fall in love with the instrument again, I'm listening to a lot of music specifically for tone. There's Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and this. Those are probably my three favorites at the moment. 

I've also discovered the band's 2017 album Abominable.  You can hear how they hadn't quite dialed in their tone and sound just yet, however, that doesn't prevent it from being another awesome long player! 

You can order Telekinetic Yeti's monolithic slab of music from their Bandcamp HERE, or, if you want vinyl like me, from Tee Pee Records HERE.

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Watch:

True Detective always revs me up and then ends up disappointing on some level. I mean, Season One is among my all-time favorite things, but I hate the ending. Hasn't stopped me from watching it nearly ten times since it came out, though. Season Two... well, let's never speak of that again. And I loved Season Three but it also ended so soft and convienent that it robbed some of the thunder.  

This new Season, however, has Iss López as show runner and, if I heard correctly, director. If you've seen López's film Tigers Are Not Afraid, you probably understand why I have such high expectations for this. Kind of the same high expectations I had for Season Three when they originally announced Jeremy Saunier would be series director. Saunier had some form of disagreement with showrunner/creator Nic Pizzolato (surprise), and bowed out after only two episodes. Pizzolato handled most of the directing for the remaining episodes, and I thought he did a mostly fantastic job, but I still wonder what that season would have been like if Saunier had been aboard for the entire thing.

Anyway, no hard date on the premier yet, but I'm betting August or October. Either way, I'm in.

 

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Play:

I had not played video games since the original NES - well, I did my fair share of DDR back in the early aughts - until I came across Puppet Combo and his game Glass Staircase. The game had a very Argento vibe, and Puppet Combo's love of 80s Horror VHS struck me as so endearing I couldn't say no. That was five or so years ago and although I bought it, I couldn't really figure out how to play it effectively on my computer. I was happy just to support them, though.

Fast forward to my birthday last year and I saw that Puppet Combo's newest game at the time, Nun Massacre, was getting a Switch release. I plunked down the money and ordered a Switch, bought the game, but ultimately became frustrated adjusting to its play peccadilloes and kinda forgot about it in my obsession with Game Kitchen's Blasphemous.

 

This is the newest game, and I guess it's only available on Steam, which is something I'll most likely never tap into. Still, wanted to spread the word and share this awesome trailer.

 

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Playlist:

Metallica - 72 Seasons

Telekinetic Yeti - Primordial

Telekinetic Yeti - Abominable

Church of the Cosmic Skull - Is Satan Real?

The Sword - Age of Winters

High on Fire - Death is this Communion

The Sword - Gods of the Earth

The Sword - Warp Rider

Ruby the Hatchet - Fear is a Cruel Master

Ruby the Hatchet - Planetary Space Child

         

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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)

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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.

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. 

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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?

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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)

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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.