New Music From Alabama Shakes!

When I say new, I should specify I am way behind on this one - looks like it dropped two weeks ago! Funny, as I just listened to Sound & Color for the first time in a while last week and had a moment of forlorn reflection that it's been ten years since that album was released. I don't know if this new track heralds an upcoming album, but I sure hope so. 

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Watch:

Where K and I would normally have seen The Long Walk on opening night this past Thursday, we had the opportunity to see John Carpenter's The Thing on the big screen (our second time) during Regal's Cine: A Month of Masterpieces. This series has me in awe: We're seeing Sunset Blvd tonight (also a second time on the big screen for us), I'm going to try like hell to see GDT's Pan's Labyrinth on Wednesday, then we have Psycho on Friday. And we're still in the second week of the month!!!

However, it's Francis Lawrence's The Long Walk I want to talk about right now. Adapted from a Richard Bachman - aka Stephen King - novella of the same name, with the adapted screenplay coming to us from JT Mollner, the Writer/Director of one of 2024's best films (Strange Darling), The Long Walk feels, in this moment, like the best adaptation of King's work to date. Ten years ago, that might have been a no-brainer until you stop to consider The Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me (I've always heard The Green Mile is up there as well, but I haven't seen that one). But we've had a spate of pretty good adaptations over the last decade, top among them Mike Flanagan's Doctor Sleep and Gerald's Game. In the Tall Grass, and while I don't love the Andy Muschietti IT films, they're better than the original. Castle Rock - while not officially an adaptation of any one King story, is a super solid amalgam of his work. So we're light-years from the days of Langoliers and Needful Things. But The Long Walk feels like it has all of them beat.

I'm largely unfamiliar with Francis Lawrence's work as a Director. Yes, I've seen Constantine, and it puts me in a tough spot, as if they had not based that on John Constantine: Hellblazer, I would have loved it. Some fantastic images and ideas, but it just doesn't work with Reeves as JC and Chas being anyone but a hulking ex-Football hooligan. Other than that, though, looking at Lawrence's IMDB, I see he is mostly known for working with Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. I tried and couldn't get twenty pages into the first book, so I didn't even bother with the films, partially because the entire thing feels like a watered-down version of The Long Walk and Battle Royale. His history doesn't matter, though, because this film is excellent. A complete gut-punch in the best possible way, and King's knack for male camaraderie and how it can be a shortcut to major life epiphanies really shines through in this film. The characters are fantastic, and it hurts to see what happens to them. Cooper Hoffman confirms he is an excellent actor, following in his late father's footsteps, but David Jonsson - wow! In two movies (the other being Alien: Romulus, where he plays Andy, Rain's synthetic "brother"), he has demonstrated charisma and range that have me watching for his next film, genre or not.  

I'd recommend catching this one in the theater. If you want to hear more, hit the widget at the upper right-hand side of this page for The Horror Vision's new episode, where we start with a spoiler-free review, then give ample warning before veering into a full-spoiler comparison between the book and the film. Also available on YouTube HERE. 

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Playlist:

Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain

Hellbender - Hellbender OST

HEALTH - Ordinary Loss (pre-release single)

HEALTH - Rat Wars

David Bowie - Outside

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Entropy - Dharmakāya

Deftones - private music

Godflesh - Streetcleaner

Blut Aus Nord - Shadows Breathe First (pre-release single)

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmoniu - Nahab

Dreamkid - Daggers

Faetooth - Labyrinthe

Alabama Shakes - Another Life (single)

Netherlands - Vapor

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Card:

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

Also, if you head over to Grimm's Kickstarter HERE you'll see his upcoming The Eldritch Lace Tarot Deck you can hit the "notify upon launch" button and then you can get on this seriously unbelievably awesome deck. 

• Queen of Swords

• Six of Wands

• Page of Wands

A major creative period is happening, but it will take clear judgment to navigate. 

I love when these are so spot on. I've been working pretty diligently on Shadow Play Book Two, and there are SO many ideas at play right now. So many historical themes to tie into this century-spanning saga, so it's an immense creative rush, but I have to keep asking myself, "How much is too much?"

New Music from Testament!!!

The first track off Testament's upcoming fourteenth studio album, Para Bellum, is out October 10th on Nuclear Blast Records. You can pre-order a copy HERE.

Fourteen albums? That just blows me away. I've dodged in and out of keeping tabs on these guys. Most of their records still sound fantastic to me, and if this first track is any indication, Para Bellum will be no different.

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Watch:

Last night I saw Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno's 2016 Shin Godzilla on the big screen for the second time in three days.

Unlike many of my friends, I did not grow up with Godzilla. Certainly, I knew what the monster was. Who doesn't? The big G has occupied a fairly lofty space in the cultural lexicon for longer than I have been alive. I'm not sure that, without that layer of nostalgia, I'll ever be able to go back and embrace the Godzilla movies of the past (maybe, though), but between this and Minus One, hot damn am I a convery. This movie is STUNNING. Some of the best effects I have ever seen theatrically. They build a world and destroy it and, although I know I'm not watching half a dozen skyscrapers in Tokyo topple, I believe that's exactly what I'm seeing. 

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Read:

I'm halfway through Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and to complement it as research for Shadow Play Book Two, I've also procured a $10 Kindle copy of Richard Ellmann's celebrated biography of Wilde, Oscar Wilde:

This is often shown titled as Oscar Wilde: Pulitzer Prize Winner; however, I find that adding the book's accolade to the title is a bit churlish, to say the least. 

I've pretty much accepted that despite the literal tower of books on my 'to-read' pile, the remainder of my 2025 reading will most likely be reserved specifically for research. Two exceptions are the Nathan Ballingrud and Laird Barron novellas due next month. Other than that, I'm all in on researching both Victorian and Elizabethan England, which have winnowed their way into my novel as main characters of the second act. 

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Playlist:

Windhand - Eternal Return

Sleep - Dopesmoker

White Zombie - La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1

Steve Moore - VFW OST

Blackbraid - Blackbraid III

Testament - Infanticide AI (single)

Mastodon - Leviathan

Testament - The Gathering

Portishead - Third

Faetooth - Remnants of the Vessel

Hall & Oats - Rock 'N' Soul, Part 1

Deftones - private music

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Card:

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

• XVII: The Star

• XX: Adjustment

• Eight of Swords

Struggling interrupts the path to enlightenment. 

That's a pretty vague interpretation, but I'm picking up what I'm putting down. This is a work-oriented Pull, letting me know that the theoretical middle finger roadblocks I'm throwing in certain folks' direction are perhaps counterproductive. I would argue that corporate backstabbing and rigamarole are also counterproductive, but that's just it - stop pointing that out and try to work past it. 

Fuck Buttons Came From the Woods

 

A little Fuck Buttons to start the day. Been awhile since I jammed these guys. Still one of the best electronic shows I ever saw - circa 2010 at LA's Troubador.

 

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Watch:

Tell me this doesn't look like a bowl of fun:

 

Yeah, the 80s Summer Camp Slasher has been done to death, and maybe this won't work as well as the trailer suggests, but when done correctly, with a dash of something new, this genre still makes my blood sing. There's a full write-up over HERE on Bloody Disgusting.

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Playlist:

C-Building Kids - Shitting in the Urinal

Cocksure - Operation C.O.C.K.S.U.R.E.

Metallica - Hardwired

Karl Casey - XX EP

Fvnerals - Let The Earth Be Silent

Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport

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Card:

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

In order to transform, Understanding and Balance are required. This is kind of what I'm in the middle of at the moment - I've been on a tear working on Shadow Play Book Two, and it's transforming before my eyes. However, while wholly invigorating, the actual act of this Transformation can lead to an overzealous tendency toward flights of fancy. The writing must remain balanced and joined to the inherent understanding I'm developing - in other words, let the book talk through me, and don't get in its way.

Sabbath Lads

For my fellow Sabbath Lads. Ozzy has never sounded so serene.

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Watch:

The season opener of John Favre's The Mandalorian was so chocked full of goodness that I thought, for a moment, I might explode. Thankfully, someone is doing something cool with Star Wars.

Also, now that I've restarted my Disney + sub, I'm really looking forward to Wandavision. So much so, I think I'm going to start re-watching the MCU from the beginning, filling in those gaps I've missed along the way. What stoked my excitement?

I feel like I am about to very much re-engage with Marvel. 

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NCBD:

Pretty light week. 

A new series from Aftershock Comics, Miskatonic looks like it will pit J. Edgar Hoover's "Red Scare" against the seedy underground world of Lovecraftian Death Cults. How could I not want to read this?

The old reliable, every-month-is-better-than-the-last.

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Playlist:

Selim Lemouchi and His Enemies

Opeth Deliverance

I found an excellent podcast recently that has become increasingly important to the research aspect of writing Shadow Play Book II and spent some time listening yesterday. Mexico Unexplained is a series of quick but amalgam of informative historical facts and subsequent conjecture, and it's fascinating. Go to their site HERE. 

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Card:

Patient and stable. Also, coming out the other side of that solitude we started today's post off with.