Showing posts with label Robert Eggers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Eggers. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

New Perturbator Coming SOON!


This particular track is old now - dropped way earlier in the year. That said, I think it's the most recent release from James Kent under his Perturbator moniker. Recently, I went through a big jab on Kent's music and got to thinking that, damn, it's been a minute. Lustful Sacraments dropped in 2021 and Final Light in 2022, so we're due. Then I saw this:

I immediately checked the Blood Music website and found it is down for updates, so that tells me the new record is coming SOON! Perturbator is by far their biggest name - not to take anything away from the other wonderful artists on Blood Music - and it makes sense they would reconfigure the site to accommodate a drop this big. So I'm checking daily and wanted to pass the tip along.




NCBD:

This week's pull is on Thursday, and it's the biggest one in a while:


New book. Not sure I'm picking this up until I hold it in my hands, but I dig the concept and the art. Here's the solicitation blurb from League of Comic Geeks:

"A tormented Oklahoma sheriff and a scrappy photojournalist hunt a serial killer at the height of the dust-choked Great Depression.

In the darkest days of the Great Depression, death stalks the Dust Bowl. As towering dust storms blast the parched Oklahoma panhandle, farmers try to flee the failing town of New Hope, but no one gets far. Battling his own demons, Sheriff Meadows teams up with Sarah, a traveling photojournalist, in a desperate fight to stop a serial killer on the loose — the Death that rides the Dusters."

I'm not going to lie; part of my interest in this one stems from its similarities to a project I previously worked on with Jonathan Grimm. Our never really caught hold of our creative energies, but I'm curious as hell to see someone else work with the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. Scott Snyder and Attila Futaki kind of took this road with Severed - which is excellent - but the setting in that one wasn't quite the character it sounds like here. 


Being that DC books come out on Tuesday, I actually messaged Rick's to see if this came out and it did! Great excuse to re-read the first two and hopefully prep for the fourth and final book, which, as of now, has no solicitation date.


Things are heating up in the Battle for Springfield. We have mutated Cobra Vipers of all varieties, ninjas, robots - after avoiding the absurd for so long, Larry Hama has embraced the SciFi potential of this property with open arms without sacrificing his real-world military background, and it works!


Issue one was pretty cool, so I'm in on this Norwegian Black Metal Horror/Thriller. We've got a dad female fan/photographer, a nefarious band, and a whole lot of Vengeance coming down through the woods.


I think I said the same thing last month, but what the hell - HOT ROD! I felt a little guilty not putting Void Rivals in my Top Ten Comics of 2024 list, but Transformers and Cobra Commander won out on what is at least a partial nostalgic advantage. Still, this book is probably my favorite of the Energon Universe, and it just keeps getting better as those properties we love are enmeshed in Kirkman's new addition. 




Watch:

Tonight! All my dodging and weaving to avoid Robert Egger's Nosferatu trailer pays off when I plop my arse in the theatre and watch it for the first time (pretty sure there will be a return engagement):


My excitement for this one is not super high, not because I think it will be anything short of extraordinary, I'm still just a little baffled Eggers chose to follow The Northman with a remake. That said, my guess is Eggers's version will be less a remake and more his own thing. 




Playlist:

Steve Moore - Christmas Bloody Christmas OST
Windhand - Eternal Return
Windhand - Eponymous
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Mr. Bungle - Raging Wraith of the Easter Bunny
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Dreamkid - Daggers
Perturbator - Bloodlust (single)
Health - DISCO4 :: Part 1
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Cult of Luna - Vertikal I & II
Final Light - Eponymous
Rodney Crowell - Christmas Everywhere
Calexico - Seasonal Shift
Steve Moore - Mind's Eye OST
Steve Moore - VFW OST




Card:

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



Love the way this deck looks under different lighting. 

This spread is basically a cautionary tale - watch out for dogmatic principles and false prophets who appeal to emotion.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

The Cramps Live, 1986

 

The Cramps, live in 1986. One of my greatest musical regrets is not seeing these guys live. Goddamn.

Posted to YouTube by Travisbickle1963. Check out their channel HERE - LOTS of awesome stuff.




Watch:

Robert Eggers' Nosferatu gets a trailer (that I'm not watching yet, as this will likely be inescapable in the theatres for the next three months):


Curiosity is driving me mad, but I'm going to attempt to stick to my guns here. I'm really looking forward to this one; I loved The Northman, The Lighthouse and The Witch, and what little imagery we've seen of this remake so far has done nothing to convince me I won't love this as well. 




Playlist:

Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Ritual Howls - Turkish Leather
Various - Rocktober Blood OST
The Cramps - RockinnReelininAucklandNewZealandXXX (Live)
The Jesus Lizard - Rack
Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor
Ganser - Odd Talk
White Hex - Gold Nights




Friday, June 28, 2024

The Dillinger Escape Plan cover Rollins Band's Tearing

One of the coolest moments in last Sunday's Dillinger Escape Plan show at the Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn was when they played "Tearing" from Rollins Band's 1992 masterpiece The End of Silence.  

There's a great write-up on Dillinger and Dead Guy's three-night stand over on Brooklyn Vegan, a site I used to love and frequent a lot more before they succumbed to the same pop-up ad malarky all sites seemingly succumb to now. 




Watch:

K and I caught the new Tom Hardy movie The Bikeriders at the theatre. What is it with recent movies that are fantastic but have terrible names? Underwater? Bikeriders? Come on. 


Ultimately, I won't give the film too much shit, because it was fantastic. Tom Hardy gives another nuanced performance and Austin Butler just nails the "Brooding, silent bad boy" archetype. Jodie Comer is essentially our lead character as the window into the world of Chicago's Vandals, and she also turns in a great performance. Then, we also have Michael Shannon, Boyd Holbrook, Norman Reedus, Emopry Cohen, Karl Glusman, and - maybe the best surprise - Damon Herriman; known to Justified fans as Dewey Crowe! It's an ensemble cast and a lot of damn fun, so I'd say if you can, catch it in a theatre. Plus, you get to see the Robert Eggers' Nosferatu trailer on the big screen. 


This is another recent trailer that gives absolutely nothing away but still fills the screen with sounds and images that make me super excited to see this one when it releases this coming December. Now, if I can just manage not to see it more than once or twice before then...




Playlist:

Ghost - Infestissumam
Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right
USSA - The Spoils
Tubby Hayes Quintet - Down in the Village (Live at Ronnie Scott's Club, London 1962)
Calexico - The Black Light
Forhist - Eponymous
Jim Williams - Possessor OST
Joseph Bishara - Malignant OST
Valkyrie - Fear
The Ravenonettes - Sing
Night Sins - A Silver Blade In The Shadow EP
Thou - Umbilical
Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity




Card:

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


• Four of Cups
• Eight of Cups
• XX: Judgement

Emotional stability through the transformation of emotions during a pivotal sequence. In other words, we choose how we are going to interpret and let things make us feel. You can take things negatively, or you can put some kind of positive spin on it. Obviously, some things are just awful and can't be "spun" any other way. 

This is definitely not for me today, but someone I know. 

Friday, May 5, 2023

Lighthouse Horror as a Subgenre





First, some appropriate music to set the tone:

 

As I originally mentioned in an earlier post today, seeing the trailer for Torture Star/Marevo Collective's upcoming (May 18th!) new game No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, I felt compelled to talk a bit more about Lighthouse Horror as a burgeoning Subgenre. Yeah, I know it's pretty easy to get carried away with subgenres, but I feel like this is becoming as legitimate a 'thing' and there's a wealth of great entries that people interested should know about. 

First: What a spectacular setting, right?  I mean, an abandoned lighthouse island with rocky crags and descending spiral staircases lends itself so well to Horror that I just feel this is made to be. No or limited electricity, an ever-present "man vs. nature" throughline, pervading darkness and let's not forget the isolation - Oh! the isolation! Such tasty morsels for a Horror story to lean into. 

Lighthouse Horror is interesting because there's a fairly small and finite number of permutations to get the ball rolling. Either someone is being shipped out to a lighthouse because the operator has gone missing/mad/died, or the characters are rotating in for their shift and something horrific transpires. The isolation is a large part of the Horror, and keeping this in mind, the setting is perhaps optimum for slow-burn formulas, especially where the characters' psychological state becomes increasingly unmoored, slowly sinking them into madness. 

Being that the entire purpose of the lighthouse as a structure is to keep away the darkness and act as a beacon to those traveling through it, the subgenre is also ready-made for metaphors, and Lovecraftian sea monsters slot into these tales nicely as well, whether you consider them metaphors or not.

The argument for adding Lighthouse Horror as a subgenre begins, as far as I can tell, in 2017. That's the year Cold Skin by Xavier Gens came out. This takes a Lovecraftian route with its use of a lighthouse location to tell a Horror tale, and it fits like a glove! 

From there, of course, Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse came out just two years later in 2019. This takes the more psychological route with the location, although there are folks that argue there are some Lovecraftian moments sprinkled throughout, just in a decidedly more subtle. The "Can I Play With Madness" themes of this film prove pretty aggressive by the end, and as I've said on this page before, I can't think of a better example of the admittedly overused logline, "A slow descent into Madness."

More recently, Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino kicked off their Bone Orchard Mythos with The Passage, a graphic novel that takes place entirely on a lighthouse island and contains some genuinely haunting images. There are overarching monstrous themes in the Boneyard Mythos - which is still developing in subsequent series - and while I'd say the aspirations are Lovecraft-level, this is 100% Lemire and Sorrentino's own thing, which is refreshing. There are some images in The Passage that rank as the most effective I've seen in a Horror Graphic Novel since Pornsak Pichetshote's Infidel and some very smart uses of a drone to deliver them.

What route will No One Lives Under the Lighthouse take? With first-person games a perfect vehicle to elicit very real paranoic responses from their players, this might be the closest some get to a real lighthouse Horror experience ourselves (let's hope so!) 



Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Perturbator & Johannes Persson are Final Light - In The Void

 

Perturbator and Cult of Luna's Johannes Persson have a new project called Final Light and the first track is F*&king awesome! Imagine Dangerous Days with deep, guttural vocals and you'll have entered the ballpark. I anticipate great things from this one. You can pre-order the album from Red Creek HERE.




Watch:

I saw Robert Eggers' The Northman this past Saturday. I was sober, however, as my cohost Ray and I discuss with Seattle University's Professor of Film John Trafton on the newest episode of The Horror Vision Horror Podcast, the film produced in me a pretty intense altered state. Because of this, I went back yesterday and saw it again, this time stoned AF.


I can't even begin to explain the hallucinatory effect Robert Eggers' films have on me, and this one really ratchets that up. I know some of you aren't ready to hit a theatre just yet, and I don't blame you. That's not going to stop me from suggesting if you're at all on the fence for returning to the big screen, this would be a pretty great film to do it for. 




NCBD:

Here's this week's haul for NCBD:


Yes, I am a glutton. There is a new Amazing Spider-Man and I am going to read it, even though it is probably going to come out 9 times a month. 


I know nothing about this, but the title caught my eye, so I'll give the first issue a whirl.


Finally! The now long-awaited finale of the Miller-esque dystopian near-fture TMNT saga!

I've largely missed the boat on Chip Zdarsky, but I'm glad I've gotten in on Newburn from the jump. This collaboration with Jacob Phillips has so far, been a fantastic, terse crime comic. 


Still not sure how I feel about Frank Castle becoming The Hand's new "murder messiah" or whatever the hell, but I didn't hate the first issue, so I'm coming back for #2.


Saga! 'Nuff said!

I'm going out on a limb here. When I saw the words "Industrial Horror" on the solicitation for this, the 12 issue of a 16 issue run for the current Swamp Thing iteration, I put it on my list. I'll need to (hopefully) pick up issue 11 as well, as from what I see online, this is the second part of a story called "Jericho's Rose." I know nothing about this current ST title, but again, that cover above combined with those words... I have to give it a chance.


Aaaaannndddd... it appears I've become a pretty big Donny Cates fan and am continuing on with his Thor, especially after reading that, A) this month's issue has Odin's funeral and a Beta Ray Bill story, and B) next month this and Cates' fantastic Hulk series SMASH together. 




Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - Deus Salutis Meae
Negativeland - DisPepsi
Calexico - El Mirador
David Bowie - A Reality Tour
Alice in Chains - Sap
Orville Peck - Bronco
Judas Priest - Firepower
Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance 




Card:


Poignant. I've been thinking A LOT about how much I love the woman I'm with, and how, despite the delays, I am looking forward to starting a new life with her OUTSIDE of LaLaLand. It's a push/pull - I'm going to miss a bunch of stuff here, but not enough to stand up against what we have planned for our home. 

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Robert Eggers' The Northman

 Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' score for the upcoming film La Panthère Des Neiges (The Velvet Queen). You can pre-order the score from Invada Records HERE.

The film, which I'd never heard of before, is a documentary described as such:

"In the heart of the Tibetan highlands, an award-winning photographer guides a writer in his quest to document the infamously elusive snow leopard."

I couldn't really find a trailer, so I guess we'll just wait and see. Either way, new Cave/Ellis is always a good thing.




Watch:

Holy cow.

 

I Loved The Lighthouse, but I've found it doesn't possess the same re-watchability that The Witch does. I'm curious to see how this one plays. No matter what, we're witnessing the career of a true cinematic genius, IMO, this generation's Kubrick.

And please, take it easy - I'm not saying Eggers is as realized an artist as Kubrick, just that from where we began with him, he's clearly on a path to become a timelessly celebrated master.
 


Playlist:

Vanessa Williams - Dreamin'
Naked Raygun - Over the Overlords
Ministry - Moral Hygiene
Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me
Nun Gun - Mondo Decay
Belong - October Language
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - In Summer
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Felicia Atkinson - Un Hiver en plein été
Vienna Boys Choir - Christmas Favorites




Card:


Encouraging, especially since A) the company I work for was just sold to a huge surgical company (hopefully a good thing since we've been being passed around by private equity firms for the last decade, the end result of which took focus away from the employees), and B) while navigating a bunch of odd down moments at work while announcements happened and hands were shook I doubled down on NFT'ing.

Monday, June 22, 2020

Isolation: Day 102



Well, I know what I'm doing on July 10th. This looks breathtaking.

One of the things I began working on last year is a collection of short horror stories all based around the horrors of aging. Nice to see kinship in a major motion picture. From all accounts director Natalie Erika James is going to be a force to be reckoned with. That's awesome. Good to have another voice along the lines of Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Robert Eggers to look forward to hearing from. James' shortfall Creswick is a Master Class in the craft, from the acting to the camera to the sound. I'd expect with a larger budget, someone this good will give us a powerhouse.



**

New Jaye Jayle out August 7th on Sargent House. Here's the latest single. Pre-order HERE.



**

Playlist:

Baroness - Gold and Grey
Flying Lotus - You're Dead
Crystal Castles - II
Lead into Gold - The Sun Behind the Sun
Slayer - Reign in Blood
Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
Doves - Lost Soul
Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline
Opeth - Blackwater Park
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Public Enemy - State of the Union (Single)
Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough, Vol. 1
KRS-One - Return of the Boom Bap
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Nexus 6 - Too Late to Tease EP
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Alio Die and Lorenzo Montan á - The Threshold of Beauty
Van Halen - Eponymous
Sault - Untitled
War On Women - Capture the Flag
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Doves - Carousels (pre-release single)
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Zombi - Shape Shift

Saturday, October 26, 2019

The Art of Sleeping Alone at The Lighthouse



Recently picked this up from Burning Witches Records, which is distributed via Mondo/Death Waltz. Super cool electro album. With all the metal I've been listening to lately, I needed a new album like this.

**

K and I saw The Lighthouse yesterday. Hmm. A lot to unpack. I'll link to my Letterbxd review HERE, and go on to say I've heard quite a few movies described as "a descent into madness" before, but this might be the most descending of any of those. Beautifully filmed. I mean beautifully. Looks like a movie from the 30s, even right down to the aspect ratio. If you're interested, see it in the theatre. Just for the shots of the waves breaking against the rocks.




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
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW
10/06: Halloween III: Season of the Witch/Night of the Creeps/The Fog
10/07: Halloween 2018
10/08: Hell House, LLC
10/09: Dance of the Dead (Tobe Hooper; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 3)
10/10: Creepshow Episode 3
10/11: Jenifer (Dario Argento; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 4)
10/12: Poltergeist/Phenomena
10/13: AHS 1984 Ep 4/In the Tall Grass
10/14: Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78)
10/15: Rabid (2019)
10/16: Wounds
10/17: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/18: Creepshow Episode 4
10/19: Ed Wood/AHS 1984 Ep. 5
10/20: Sinister/Sinister 2
10/21: Uncanny Annie
10/22: Scream
10/23: Simpsons 666: Treehouse of Horror
10/24: Jennifer's Body
10/25: Belzebuth/The Lighthouse/Halloween

**

This past Wednesday I did another signing/release party for Shadow Play Book One: Kim and Jessie at The Comic Bug in Manhattan Beach, and it went very well! I sold almost every copy of both Kim and Jessie and my first book, A Collection of Desires: 7 Tales of Modern Horror. I also moved quite a few Kindle copies of the new book, which was by design; trying to hit the new and noteworthy chart. Special thanks to Mike, Jun, Ben, Gerald, Luis, and all those awesome Comic Bug people, not to mention everyone that came out to support me.

Thanks to K for the picture!
**

Playlist from the last few days:

John Carpenter/Alan Howarth - Halloween III: Season of the Witch OST
Tones on Tail - Everything
Oh Baby - The Art of Sleeping Alone
Ulver - Teachings in Silence
Ritual Howls - Their Body EP
Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor
The Veils - Total Depravity
Sleep - The Sciences
The Sword - Age of Winters
Ministry - Filth Pig
1000 Homo DJs - Hey Asshole
Ozzy Osbourne - The Ultimate Sin
The Nukes - Why Things Burn
Bauhaus - The Skys Gone Out

**

Card of the day:


Both a reminder to listen to Sisters of Mercy today, and, despite having work today and the best Halloween party of the year tonight, a reminder to indulge a little of my creative energy today.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

2019: July 30th - The Lighthouse Trailer



I know a lot of folks hated Robert Eggers debut film The Witch. I love it, and I am very much looking forward to Egger's follow-up The Lighthouse. And after what feels like forever, we now have a trailer. With a New York and Los Angeles release date of October 18/19th, I'm expecting this to be at this year's Beyondfest, and it will definitely be one of the major screenings I attempt to get tickets for.

**

Rick Remender's Black Science is ending in September with issue #43, and that means it's time for me to re-read this reality-shattering opus from the beginning. I've loved this series, however at some point I coasted a few months without reading a few issues and when I came back, I realized I was lost. It happens when you have a story with so many different dimensions. Thus, I figured I'd wait until we were a month or two out from the end, and then re-read. Starting from the beginning again really re-triggered everything I love about the series: Matteo Scalera and Dean White's art; Grant McKay's narration and dialogue; and the 70s-ish deep fantasy overtones. The creatures/world building in this one are INSANE. Case in point:




Black Science is available from Rick Remender's Giant Generator via Image Comics in a variety of formats. If you love deep, non-Tolkien derivative fantasy, give it a try.

**

Playlist from the last few days:

Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
The Streets - Original Pirate Material
Ministy - Psalm 69
Shellac - The End of Radio
Lightning Born - Eponymous
Golden - Eponymous
TV on the Radio - Staring at the Sun EP
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes
Revolting Cocks - Big Sexy Land
Revolting Cocks - Cocked and Loaded
Gibby Haynes and His Problem - Eponymous
Tamaryn - The Waves

**

No card today.