From the LONG-AWAITED album Private Music, out August 22nd. Order HERE. Easily one of my most anticipated albums of the last five years, I'm absolutely stoked we're getting this next month. I cannot wait to put on headphones, smoke some pot (increasingly rare) and listen to this record from start to finish.
NCBD:
HUGE haul today. Let's dive in:
Oni's resurrection of EC comics continues to evolve. No sooner did Epitaphs From the Abyss end, than the the Grave Digger has passed the proverbial Horror mic to his cohort, The Tormentor, for the new series Catacomb of Torment.
New Z News! I still have barely scratched the surface of the backlog of issues I picked up in Chicago last month, but good to no it's still going.
Has this series had the best covers of 2025? Maybe. I'm still loving that this is bi-monthly and wondering how we lucked into that? Reminds me of the old 80s Turtles, when it would come out bi-monthly or... maybe later. Either way, it's been very cool to see Jason Aaron come on board with the brothers completely pulled apart and slowly... oh so slowly... put them back together.
Oh man. Crisis time - Phantom Road's current arc, The Horror Men, ends next issue and the solicitations on League of Comic Book Geeks ends there, so that means, with Lemire having all the irons in the fire he does, this series is about to go back on hiatus.
One of my most anticipated books when it's dropping, it's hard to imagine going another couple of months without Phantom Road. But I guess we do what we have to do.
I have been waiting for Imperial issue 2 for what feels like months! I loved the first issue, and cannot wait to jump back in, especially with Hulk's proclamation of "War" at the end of the first issue!
This whole "Baroness as a Joe" scenario continues despite the hope last issue's cover instilled in me. Oh well, I'll just shut my mouth because at this point, there's probably no way I'm not going to continue this series. The one silver lining is the burgeoning friendship between Clutch and Hound. LOVE that development A LOT! Hear Mike Shin and I talk about this on the new episode of Drinking with Comics, HERE.
\Speaking of the latest episode of Drinking with Comics, I convinced my cohost, Mike Shin, to read Ben Winters and Leomacs' Philip K. Dick amalgamation, Benjamin, and he loved it! What's not to love? PKD lived an absolutely fascinating life, and, in retrospect, it blows my mind that it took this long for someone to use that life as fodder for a fictional story! Issue two drops tomorrow, and I cannot wait!!!
Two episodes from the finale and I have to say, Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin's Hell Motel (i.e. Slasher, season six) might just be the Horror Event of 2025! Every episode has been fantastic, but this week's? Chef's fucking kiss!
This show is so expertly plotted. A perfectly maddening Whodunit? combined with all the beautifully brutal flourishes Slasher is known for, the combination just works so goddamn well! Also, while I gave props to Martin and Carpenter up front as the creators, lest it not be forgotten that the inimitable Adam MacDonald directed all of these nasty little fuckers.
Playlist:
Ty Segall - Possession
Deftones - White Pony
Deftones - Saturday Night Wrist
Deftones - Eponymous
dan le sac Vs. Scroobius Pip - Angles
Drug Church - Prude
Hangman's Chair - Saddiction
YUNGBLUD - Idols
Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium
Ozzy Osbourne - Patient No. 9
Blind Willie McTell - Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order (Vol. 1)
Willie Nelson - Oh What a Beautiful World Songs of Rodney Crowell
Reggie Watts - Fuck Shit Stack (single)
Jogger - Nephicide (single)
Mi Loco Tango - Rocco and His Brothers (single)
Abby Sage - Smoke Break (single)
Abby Sage - The Rot
Crystal Castles - II
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Nine of Swords
• IX: The Hermit
• Nine of Wands
Two nines? Not sure this has occurred for me before. Climax and accomplishment? That combined with the Hermit actually lead me to believe this is a direct acknowledgement by the cosmos (ie my inner self) that I've earned the break I've taken, through the accomplishment of finishing my book and the culmination of Sweetie's existence. But it's almost time to really tune back in,.
As the wait for the next Perturbator album announcement languishes on into June, I find myself drawing even more inspiration from his previous albums than previously. Which is really saying something because since discovering James Kent's music circa 2015, thanks to Bloody Disgusting, Perturbator and all of his side projects have become integral to my own creative process.
In particular, 2019's Lustful Sacraments continue to fascinate and inspire me. There's such an amazing evolution here; not content to remain defined by a genre he helped popularize the modern version of, Kent has moved away from the sound of his earlier records and really begun incorporating new elements into his compositions. My two favorites of Kent's records so far remain this one and his 2022 collaboration with Cult of Luna's Johannes Persson (Final Light). Where I'd consider Dangerous Days and The Uncanny Valley to be the two best examples of modern "Synthwave," I'd say Kent's newer work is unlike anything I've heard prior. Oh the places these records take me!
NCBD:
Here's this week's pull, with a side note that I'll be stopping at my shop in Chicago to grab some stuff as well.
The final issue of the gloriously resurrected EC's Horror Anthology series Epitaphs From the Abyss doesn't sting so much now that I've read Blood Type and realize Oni will be continuing this brand with full-issue mini-series anthologies, as well as the new anthology Catacombs of Torment, out July 16th.
Life is good for Horror fans. It's good for comic fans. And it's especially good for Horror comic fans!!!
The first issue of James Tynion IV and Michael Walsh's Exquisite Corpses was kind of a cross between Rob Zombie's 31 and
Judging by this cover, one of the plot points of this book that has kind of irked me may finally be resolved with this issue.
"The Horror Men" has proven a fantastic arc for the overall Phantom Road mythology. I love seeing some of this world's history, especially because it feels like learning about the start of this weird in-between place will carry over to big things when we move back to the current timeline with Dom and Bev.
I should finally be picking up my Z-News backlog this weekend when I'm in Chicago. Can't wait!
Another new book from Oni Press, this one sounds as though it's modeled after Phillip K. Dick's life, so I'm definitely giving it a try. Here's the solicitation from League of Comic Geeks:
"More than just a writer, more than just a science-fiction icon, Benjamin J. Carp was a cultural revolutionary. Across 44 novels and hundreds of short stories-including the counterculture classic The Man They Couldn't Erase-Carp pushed the boundaries of literary respectability for the sci-fi genre and his readers' perception of reality itself . . . until decades of amphetamine abuse and Southern California excess finally ended a mind-bending career that always just escaped mainstream success. He died in 1982.
Until 2025 . . . when Benjamin J. Carp awakens, alive, in a burned-out motel on the fringes of Los Angeles. He remembers dying. He knows he shouldn't exist. Is he a dream? A robot? A ghost? A clone? A simulation? In his own time, Carp pondered all of these scenarios intensely through his fiction-and, now, as he treks from Studio City to Venice Beach and onward into the paranoid sprawl of 21st-century Los Angeles, he will be called to investigate his greatest mystery yet: himself.
In the tradition of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly and Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice comes a uniquely fascinating and hilariously deranged excursion into the metatextual nexus where existence and oblivion, past and future, genius and madness, and glitter and grim reality all meet just beyond Hollywood Boulevard . . ."
Watch:
Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter's new series Hell Motel premiered on Shudder with two episodes yesterday and I have to say, so far, I love it! The setting, lighting and camera work are top-notch, as is the writing. There are some very intriguing plotting mechanisms at work here, and they made for a pretty thrilling two-episode premiere. We're going to be covering this weekly on The Horror Vision - first episode will drop next Monday, then every Wednesday thereafter (the show airs on Tuesdays).
From what I've seen of the two creators' other series, the anthology Slasher, it appears to be a bit of a mixed bag. That said, I've only watched Flesh & Blood and two episodes of Ripper. I loved the former but did not care for the latter. I dig these guys' style overall, though; there's something of a Channel Zero-meets-AHS, with the influence of AHS being more dominant but little flourishes here and there that make me think of Zero.
Top all this off with the fact that Adam MacDonald looks to be the series Director (he did the first two episodes but is listed as "Director" on the series' main IMDB page) and you've got a great schematic. And they deliver, big time. I watched episodes one and two TWICE today and found I liked it more the second time around.
Playlist:
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Various - Learn to Relax: A Tribute to Jehu
Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja
Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
John Harrison - Day of the Dead OST
Tangerine Dream - Sorceror OST
Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell
Hangman's Chair - Saddiction
Young Widows - Power Sucker
NIN - Pretty Hate Machine
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Nine of Swords
• Ace of Pentacles
• Eight of Cups
The Nine of Cups can denote Cruelty, Bad Dreams and/or Violence. Ace of Pentacles is a breakthrough in Earthly concerns, nad Eight of Cups is poison. Sounds to me like the Earthly breakthrough - i.e. success - may be arrived at through violence or poison. That's a scary sentiment; I've long held people who use violence or hurtful machinations as a way to get what they want are the definition of evil. I realize while typing this that this Pull is a reminder to tread lightly with certain people at work, as I deal with a lot of "Corporate People" and those are often the people who operate in this capacity.
