7 Days 'til Halloween

I received an email alerting me to the fact that the copy of Mr. Bungle's Raging Wraith of the Easter Bunny shipped yesterday. Oh glorious day! I cannot wait to double down on this one when it lands. 

---

---

---

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

21) The Omen

23) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait/Masters of Horror: "Sick Girl" (Lucky McKee)

24) Joe Bob's Halloween Hideaway: Haunt/Hack-O-Lantern

---

---

---

Playlist:

Zeal and Ardor - Wake of a Nation EP

Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - Ancestral Recall (pre-release single)

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - The Valley (pre-release single)

Deftones - Ohms 

Mr. Bungle - Sudden Death (pre-release single)

---

---

---

Card:

Speed and negligence can bring about severe troubles. A great reminder on a day I woke up late for work.

Isolation: Day 151

It's official! October 30th, Mr. Bungle's The Raging Wraith of the Easter Bunny is out via Patton's Ipecac Recordings. Thanks to Mr. Brown for the heads up, because I've been slammed all week and would have completely missed the chance to snag a copy of that Ruby Red 2 LP vinyl! Pre-order HERE.
While I've been a Bungle fan since Brown turned me on to their self-titled debut back in High School, and I spent a good deal of my time on Napster in the late 90s downloading bootlegs of their older, demo stuff, I never really got into the original, thrash version of the band. That said, seeing these songs a few months ago, played by musicians who are older and wiser, I became convinced if they recorded it, Easter Bunny had the potential to be one of the greatest thrash records to come out in decades. If Raping Your Mind is any intimation of what is on the rest of the record, I'm pretty sure I was correct.
Sure, I'd love another weirdo Bungle album eventually, but in the meantime, I'm welcoming this one with open arms.
**
NCBD this week was another no-go for my pull, which is fine, because I haven't picked up my books in two weeks now. One of the companies I always look forward to checking is Vault, and this week, I notice a collection for a series I'd not noticed previously. This looks pretty damn interesting, and I've ear-marked it for a little research.

This collection just came out, however, I'm going to look for the individual issues first, as I love the art and design of the originals' covers. Here's an example:

There's such a throw-back feel to this, but not like a comic, more like the old paperback books I used to read as a kid. LOVE this.

**
Playlist:
Concrete Blonde - Eponymous
Concrete Blonde - Free
X - Wild Gift
X - Los Angeles
Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once
Contours - Essential 
Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST
X - Under the Big Black Sun
The Birthday Party - Hee Haw
Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
Hank III - Straight to Hell
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey
Francesco Zampaglione and Andrea Moscianese - Tulpa OST
Brainiac - Smack Bunny Baby
Vitalic - OK Cowboy
Aerosmith - Pump
Airiel - Molten Young Lovers
Moderat - II
Reverend Horton Heat - Liquor in the Front
Brainiac - Hissing Prigs in Static Couture
Afghan Whigs - Gentlemen
The Bangles - All Over the Place

**
Card:

Let's do another multi-deck spread:

For this one, I used one card from the Raven Deck, and two from my mini Thoth - both decks gifts to me from my good friend Missi, who now has my new book Murder Virus - that's the name I'm sticking with - as my first beta reader. Missi Birthday was yesterday, so there's a lot of her energy in this spread. The Tower is a toppling of old conventions, though here I don't take it as pointing to the 'Old Guard' publishing industry, but my perceptions of it. Work is the hard work and determination I need to maintain (another query sent a few days ago), and Lust is a warning about the lust of result. Those of you who know anything about Magick know lust of result is one of the major blockades to achieving one's Will.

Self - What a Fool Believes

Last week was a much-needed respite for me. My good friend Dave was out, and we bounced between hanging out at home watching movies and taking in two of the three Mr. Bungle Raging Wraith of the Easter Bunny shows at LaLa Land's Fonda Theatre (one of my favorite West Coast venues). We drank a ton of great beer (me), and artisanal Gin (him), and generally just acted like two friends who don't see each other nearly enough and welcomed the chance to hang out and act foolish. And as usual when I see Dave, certain songs/groups followed us wherever we go. One of those songs was Michael McDonald's What a Fool Believes. McDonald had a bad rep for about a decade and a half, mostly thanks to a certain early 00s comedy, but whatever you feel about him and his music, he's a great song writer. This is the pinnacle of truth to that statement, but of course, Matt Mahafey makes everything better than it already was.

Especially with toy piano.

**

Congratulations Joker. I haven't seen Parasite yet, but I was glad to see Todd Phillips' masterpiece clean up - including Hildur Guonadottir receiving best score. I'm still not thrilled about this one having a sequel on the horizon, but when you're film grosses over a billion dollars, well, that's inevitable.

Speaking of Joaquin Phoenix, one of the movies I watched while Dave was visiting was Lynne Ramsay's 2017 You Were Never Really Here. Not what I expected, and deeply affecting. I really enjoyed this one, despite subject matter that would normally make me cringe. Ramsay knows how to handle the intensely disturbing pockets of our world just right, and seeing this has me considering watching 2011 We Need To Talk About Kevin, a film I have completely avoided for eight years despite all the accolades, because, well, I'm a wimp and everything I've always heard about this one makes me think it will burrow way too deep beneath my skin.



**

Five episodes into Netflix's Locke and Key and I'm digging it quite a bit. Quite a few of my friends are considerably more invested in the comic than I - I finally read the series this past December/January - and most of them have reservations. So far though, I'm enjoying it, even if it is a little more "CW" than it should be.



It's really interesting to see how Mike Flanagan's Haunting of Hill House and its success have affected titles that pre-date it in other forms, specifically here Locke and Key. The show definitely has a similar feel, and that's no accident. Flanagan's show was an unmitigated smash, and stands as one more example of why the man has become such a stalwart in the Horror genre.

**

Playlist - pretty much all thrash of late, thanks to those Bungle shows:

SOD - Speak Spanish or Die
Anthrax - Spreading the Disease
Testament - The Gathering
Anthrax - Among the Living
Me and That Man - Songs of Life and Death
Slayer - Reign in Blood

**

Card of the day:

Fertility and the idea of creating something new; propagation. Fits exactly with an insight I had into a stalled project from last year, which I may spend some time outlining soon.

2019: August 17th: Mr. Bungle Returns!

NOTE: I've been attempting to post this for several days. Busy week.

This past Wednesday, my first alarm woke me as it always does at 4:07 AM. I keep my phone outside of arm's reach from where we sleep, just to ensure I don't just roll over and silence the alarm. I do, however, get up, snooze, and lay back down until one of the subsequent seven alarms finally rouse me from slumber completely. This particular morning, when I picked up the phone, I saw a push notification from Bandsintown that Mr. Bungle had announced a new show. Still mostly asleep, I dismissed this and when I finally did make my way to the kitchen to feed the cat and put some coffee on, the image of the notification was gone, wafting away as if the contents of a dream. You can imagine my surprise then, when I finally checked my messages, I saw that Mr. Bungle's return was indeed a reality.

Nineteen years ago I saw Mr. Bungle - then easily my favorite band ever - on two tours for their third and final album, California. After that, the band dissolved, the members went their separate ways, and I figured that maybe we would one day see some form of reunion, but more than likely not. Needless to say, as I dug deeper into the circumstances that prompted the unlikely reunion and saw that three of the five core members - Mike Patton, Trey Spruance, and Trevor Dunn - would be joined by Dave Lombardo and Scott Ian, reality shook for a moment and the feeling that I may still be trapped in a dream settled over me. When I read further and saw the new lineup would be performing Bungle's High School demo tape The Raging Wraith of the Easter Bunny in its full, my jaw dropped. I mean, what the absolute fuck?

I'll admit, although there is a lot of pre-first studio album Bungle material I dig, the material on Easter Bunny doesn't really fall into that category. It's juvenile and largely painful to listen to, especially when juxtaposed with what the band became later in its existence. But the idea of seeing these five men re-work and possibly really make something of this material fills me with hope! Although tickets are already selling at a premium and they're not even really on sale yet - only about 25% of the overall seating was allotted for the pre-sales that sold out in seconds - I am happy to say my good friend Dave secured us each one. February 7th is six months away, but I am overjoyed to be going on this adventure with Mr. Bungle once again. Is it nostalgia? Probably, but I also think we're probably in for one fantastic fucking surprise.

**

Playlist from the last few days:

Duck - Kaiser Chiefs
Time Stays, We Go - The Veils
Windhand - Eponymous
Waxwork Records - House of Waxwork
Wasted Theory - Defenders of the Riff
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Bluebob - David Lynch and John Neff
Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors
Iggy Pop - Lust for Life
Anthrax - Among the Living
Budapest Festival Orchestra - Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird Suite
Budapest Festival Orchestra - Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka: Part I
Opeth - Deliverance
Orville Peck - Pony
Mr. Bungle - Disco Volante
Windhand - Eternal Return
Sleep - The Sciences
Opeth - Dignity (Pre-release single)
Opeth - Heart in Hand (Pre-release single)
Monolord - The Bastard Son (Pre-release single)
Revolting Cocks Playlist

No spread or card today.