I knew nothing about Holy Fawn before last week when I stumbled across them on Apple Music. Listening to their 2018 album Death Spells, I was pretty blown away. The band's Wikipedia page lists them as Black Gaze, which I won't exactly contest, but there is a lot more than that going on here. This entire record is fantastic, and I'm looking forward to digging into their follow-up, 2022's Dimensional Bleed.
Fantastic album names that completely fit their sound, too.
Shortest haul in a while. Enjoy, wallet - you've earned this!
Loving this series, thus far. Not sure how long a trip we're in for on Red Roots - the solicitations on League of Comic Book Geeks stop next month with #5. Hope that's just a "seasonal hiatus."
DeMatteis back to do a What If...? Based on the greatest Spider-Man story ever written? And it's a one-shot? Sign me up!
Watch:
I haven't seen I Sell the Dead since it first hit DVD, back in 2008/2009. Probably watched on a through-the-mail DVD rental from Netflix. So I was super excited when I saw Vinegar Syndrome (or one of their partner labels) had it.
My copy arrived yesterday, so by the time you read this, I've already revisited this one. In a weird coincidence, Writer/Director Glen McQuaid had just ended up on my radar again via one of the more recent issues of Fangoria, where they did a piece about his new film, The Restoration of Grayson Manor, which is making the festival rounds now.
Playlist:
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust
Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula OST
Ministry - Animositsomina
Ministry - Amerikkant
Spotlights - Love & Decay
Boards of Canada - Inferno
Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard of Oz
Carlos Rafael Rivera - The Will Kill You OST
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Ten of Cups
• VII: The Chariot
• XIX: The Sun
Only thing I'm interested in knowing right now is if I'll end up in the ER again - the stone I thought passed apparently did not, because yesterday was ROUGH. The cards don't really work that way, but I'll take these three as a nod to happiness, determination and success as a nod that I will be able to weather the storm on my own.
Despite not caring for the "Quintesson War" storyline very much, I'm liking where everyone landed in the fallout from those events. I think Darak and Solila off the Great Ring and in cahoots with Pythona.
My final issue! All the way to 300 with these guys. Hats off - still the best reboot of anything I've ever experienced.
I finally caught up on this earlier in the month and spoke about it HERE. As I ready myself for this final issue, I'll just say this is also a contender for best of the year. So nice to travel back to the Vertigo 80s with ol' tall, green and swampy.
The penultimate issue before whatever #50 is going to do to change the series. Loving these "young Erika" stories, but ready to get back to the here and now.
The final of Chris Condon and Jacob Philips' first Ezra Cain mystery. Hoping there will be more down the road, although these will undoubtedly read better as trades, so I may refrain from buying any more of this particular series monthly.
I dug the atmosphere and overall storyline for Brutal Dark, and I've said it before and will continue to preach - we need more stories to remind the world that nazis and nationalism are bad. Especially now, when there's a growing number of people in our culture afraid to talk about the unpleasantness of the past.
Another that will easily ride out the year in my top five.
The finale of this wonderful aquatic horror mini-series! Oni still going strong.
Watch:
I'll admit I watched this trailer not expecting to care one way or the other about this flick. It feels a bit like that strain of Horror that includes titles like Afaid and Megan 2.0. That said, there's a jump scare here, though, that made me laugh out loud. In a good way!
Also, what I did not notice at first - this is directed by Rob Savage, and I quite enjoyed both Host and The Boogeyman, so I'm in.
Playlist:
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Shapes of Midnight (pre-release singles)
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu
Melvins - (A) Senile Animal
Carlos Rafael Rivera - The Will Kill You OST
Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - La Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomimi
Pilot Priest & Electric Youth - Come True OST
Zombie - Shape Shift
Boris/Merzbow - 2R0I2P0
Mastodon - Marrow Deep (pre-release singles)
Spotlights - Alchemy for the Dead
Holy Fawn - Death Spells
Ozzy Osbourne - The Ultimate Sin
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Seven of Swords
• Knight of Pentacles
• XIII: Death
Big change brought about by successful ambition. No idea where to apply that in my life, unless it's telling me my ambitious trek to abstain from beer until at the very earliest November 5th to help my liver recover will pay off. And by pay off, I mean grant me the rest of my lifetime happily drinking pints (maybe not every night anymore, though...).
From their 2003 second album Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, which I'm not sure I had ever listened to before, despite my obsession with this band starting with Saturdays = Youth and culminating on the follow-up Hurry Up, We're Dreaming. Great record, but it takes a little getting used to. You can steam the entire thing "Officially" on their YouTube page HERE (or just any of the streamers).
Read:
Last week I picked back up on the re-read of Terry Moore's Rachel Rising that I started on New Year's Eve, 2025. I don't know how I got away from it for so long, because although I'd left off on issue 15, I re-read the entire rest of the forty-two-issue series in about a day and a half.
I read this monthly, so while I have all the floppies, there are seven trade volumes collecting the full series and a recently released omnibus. This one is so worth your time. I mean, I think this is, in my humble opinion, the greatest Horror comic of all time. It's that good, and it's all down to Terry Moore's insanely relatable style and, the flip side to that coin, his absolutely nefarious approach to Horror. There are some insanely dark and disturbing themes, images and ideas in this book, but they never feel like they've gone too far. The overall story starts small and becomes brilliantly biblical, and those are two "B" words that usually do not go together in Shawn's world.
The characters are fantastic and, again, so likable and relatable. Anyone who's read Moore's seminal Strangers in Paradise knows how great his characters are and make no mistake, Rachel, Jet, Zoe, Aunt Johnnie and Earl all feel like one fucked up branch of my interior family now, and I'm having a hard time letting them go.
Playlist:
Bauhaus - Gotham (Live)
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Bauhaus - Go Away White
The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer
3Teeth - Eponymous
M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
Russian Circles - Gnosis
Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 (single)
Melvins/Helms Alee - Controlling Data for a Better Feeling Future
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Pinebender - Working Nine to Wolf
Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Queen of Pentacles
• Six of Cups
* Ten of Pentacles
Emotion makes it difficult to rule the Earthly matters. A direct reference to spending money frivilously, of which, I have recently been guilty of. On a good path now, but have some make up work to do.
Rewatched Richard Bates, Jr's Excision last night:
Still hits just as hard as it did the first time.
Read:
Last week, I mentioned I'd begun a reread of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers series for upcoming episodes of Drinking with Comics. I spoke of the pleasure I've found in realizing this doesn't just hold up, but surpasses my initial response upon reading it monthly upon release circa 2005. I also mentioned my surprise that, unlike last time when my favorite titles in the series would have skewed toward the more Occult-based characters (Zatanna, Klarion), this time, I found the two books I'd "tolerated" before now at the top of my favorites list. One of those is Manhattan Guardian; the other is Shining Knight. Shining Knight, in particular, has blown me away this time through, and nowhere is that more evident than in the third issue:
The issue begins with an FBI agent leading a specialist into the lock-up where the LAPD are holding Justin, the titular Knight, last of Arthur's Round Table, flung forward in time after a melee in Castle Revolving. They talk a bit about the Knight's Sword, which the expert classifies as coming from Deep Time, essentially confirming the Arthurian aspect, and then this happens:
I'm only really remembering some of the finer points in the series as I go, so this whole Civilization Iteration angle surprised me. I've always been fascinated by the idea that human civilization has come and gone in great swathes over the history of this planet, and to see Morrison so eloquently tie this idea into this series really made everything about it resonate even more than it already has.
Playlist:
The Caretaker - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia
Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta
Sisters of Black Mountain - Amdusias (single)
Sisters of Black Mountain - Spirits of the Dead (single)
Mastodon - Your Ghost Again (single)
Mastodon - Blood Mountain
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Johnny Jewel - Ageless E.P.
Silencio - End of the Glass (single)
Chryta Bell - Sycamore Trees (single)
Mastodon - Emperor of Sand
Mastodon - Leviathan
Metallica - Garage Days
Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE and Eldritch Lace Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• VI: The Lovers
• Seven of Swords
• 17: The Star
Collaboration opens up new vistas that lead to enlightenment.
I spent a lot of time with The Caretaker yesterday. From reading an old interview in an issue of The Wire from 2009, to listening to the entire Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia boxset, which is waaaay OOP but available on Bandcamp HERE.
NCBD:
Wow - seems like every week's pull has been a doozy, and I've been cutting back. So many great creator-owned titles hitting the market lately. Here we go...
I did not love the six-part Quintesson War storyline, though I liked it more rereading it the other day than I did as it came out. Big shake-ups, HUGE really, so I don't know why I was left feeling... underwhelmed.
I really should have waited for this one to hit trade, but I guess after DC holding it on for so long, I wanted to make sure I actually got my hands on it as soon as I could.
The first issue of Red Roots had me. I mean, had me. Second issue was great, but also introduced an element of what miiiight be high fantasy? Let's see how #3 shakes out. I'm hoping for more of a Seven to Eternity than Tolkien vibe.
The twists and turns in the new Condon/Phillips Weird Fiction/Mystery are great. Can't wait to see how this all comes out.
And so the epic battle concludes! This book has been just the right kind of crazy, schlocky, video game fist-fight punch-em-up I'd hoped for when I signed on. Sad to see it go.
Big Sleep news. Matt Pike is out, replaced by Bubba Dupree of Void. Also, Dale Crover from Melvins on drums? This new track is interesting, but there's a lethargy here that feels a bit ominous. I'll have to wait for the full album. In the meantime, this is being released as a flexi disc along with a Sleep comic book, put out by Third Man Records. You can pre-order the comic HERE. The link to the bundle that includes the music comes up 404, so it's probably sold out.
Watch:
From Writer Robert Bolesto and Director Agnieszka Smoczyńska, the team that gave us the delightfully messed up film The Lure (which The Horror Vision and Projexploitation crossed over to cover in great depth HERE):
I can only hope this hits theatres by me, even if it means driving to The Nuart in Nashville. I love that this feels a bit like The Lure, but also strikes me as having similar DNA to Ryan Kruger's Street Trash! There's so much energy on screen, and again, we have someone at work making a trailer who knows how to show us enough to whip us into a frenzy of expectation, but give nothing away.
Read:
I finished the third book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, The Wastelands. Still one of my favorites of the series, but it took me longer to read than I anticipated. Next up: Wizard and Glass, the last of the books in the series that I've previously read more than once.
Once we get past this one, it's all first-time re-reads and not since Wolves of Calla, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower each released. This endeavor has been a long time coming, and I've still got a pretty good head of steam.
Playlist:
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports
John Carpenter - Lost Themes IV: Noir
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Tomahawk - Oddfellows
Melvins/Helms Alee
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Boards of Canada - Inferno
Perturbator - Age of Aquarius
Final Light - Eponymous
Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell
Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid
All Them Witches - House of Mirrors
Converge - Hum of Hurt
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
* Seven of Wands
• Page of Cups
* Eight of Wands
Positive results are the result of good communication. That said, it can be difficult to say what needs to be said to achieve those positive results.
As is often the case, I'm not picking up what the cards are putting down at the moment, so this one will sit on my desk until morning, just as a reminder.
Well, thought I forgot about the whole "Seven Days of The Reverend Horton Heat," eh? That's because I 100% DID forget.
The one that started it all for me. True, Mr. Brown and I had seen the Rev years before opening for White Zombie on the Astrocreep tour (along with Melvins!), but it wasn't until 88.3 WXAV St. Xavier University played "It's Martini Time" that I fell in love with the Rev's guitar sound and overall aesthetic and bought an album.
I still think this track's guitar is among my favorites ever.
NCBD:
Great list today.
Continuing on as my favorite of the Energon Universe books, this cover to Transformers 33 sends shivers of great joy through my body. I still can't get over all the massive changes Kirkman has added to the book - Optimus giving over Prime leadership to Elita One, Thundercracker ditching the 'cons and becoming a 'bot, and hey, let's not forget, what the hell is going on with Megatron? Hopefully, we'll see this issue.
The finale of this fantastic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Thing on the Doorstep. This story has gotten maybe more traction than any other HPL story in a while, so it's been interesting to see the different takes. Pretty sure Birks/Roberts is my favorite (though I can't help my forlorn wonder at what Richard Stanley's would have been like).
I have zero idea what is going on with this family reunion from the afterlife storyline in TMNT. I mean, I'm following the story just fine; I'm just not sure what this means for the series going forward. I guess one thing to keep in mind is, I don't think this was ever done before. For now, I'll hold my reservations close to my chest and trust in the creative team, as we're almost 170 issues into the relaunch continuity that began back in 2012, and the book has been fantastic for most of that run.
Once again, totally forgot this book was even out there. Going to need a full re-read before getting into this, and I'm wondering if I should just wait until this second chapter runs its course.
Will this actually come out today? This final chapter of Rafael Grampá's Gargoyle of Gotham has been pushed back so many times, I lost count. Still, these are unbelievably gorgeous books that must take a lot of Grampá's heart and soul to produce, so I'm not complaining.
The Energon Universe tightens its stranglehold on my wallet with another book! I never had any of the toys as a kid, but I was always intrigued then and am still now. I've loved the introduction of these characters in the other books, so this feels like a natural evolution.
Looking forward to more of this weird Snake Eyes conundrum. I love that they went all the way back to the first two years of ARAH to show us something Dr. Venom did that we never saw until now. That kind of callback really shows that Hama continues to function at the top of his game, even after 329 issues.
The first issue was solid, and I'm curious what this title will mean for the evolution of SIKTC.
Read:
I'm still working through Stephen King's third novel in The Dark Tower series, The Wastelands. This is my favorite book, so it's a bit amazing to me how long it's taking me to read. I sailed through up to the Doorkeeper in the house on Dutch Hill, where he crosses over into Roland's world. Amazing scene that sort of serves as an act break. After, it's been a bit slower going. Part of that is various other things grasping at my attention - lots of comics to read for DwC, etc. Part of it is also something I only just realized this morning, as I blew through the chapter where Gasher absconds with Jake, leading him into the detritus tunnels of east Lud. This entire post-Jake's section is where the evidence of Roland's world having moved on grows to include people.
Sure, in book one, The Gunslinger, we had the town of Tull, but this is early on in the saga, and Tull feels like a town in a Western, which is what that first book purports to be for it's early chapters, only slowly peeling back the curtain and revealing Roland's world is actually very similar to our own, only a thousand or so years down a timeline where we destroy ourselves with, what I've always assumed, was warfare.
"The ancient, rusty hulks of what had once surely been automobiles stood at intervals along both curbs... There were no tires on any of these eerie hulks; they either had been stolen or had rotted away to dust long since. And all the glass had been broken, as if the remaining denizens of this city abhorred anything which might show them their own reflections... beneath and between the abandoned cars, the gutters were filled with drifts of unidentifiable metal junk and bright glints of glass. Trees had been planted at intervals along the sidewalks in some long-gone, happier time, but they were now so emphatically dead that they looked like stark metal sculptures against the cloudy sky. Some of the warehouses had either been bombed or had collapsed on their own, and beyond the jumbled heaps of bricks..."
The passage above switched on a fairly bright lightbulb when I read it yesterday morning. This is our world. We're not quite there yet, but the fact that, over the intervening roughly two decades since I last read The Wastelands, our world has become an eerily identifiable 're-echo' of Roland's. The key 'tell' here is the fact that the deeper Gasher, Jake, Roland and Oy descend into East Lud and the Tick Tock Man's domain, the more we get a sense that the people who inhabit this land enjoy living amongst the ruins of the old world. That's the thing I always get hung up on when contemplating, "could we actually take things too far?" in our own world, the operative idea being that, at a certain point, all of our in-fighting and disassembling of the mores, conventions and general social reform is going to leave our world covered in detritus and despair and that no one wants that. Only, maybe some people do want that. Maybe some people, to quote Michael Caine's Alfred in Christopher Nolan's film The Dark Knight, "want to see the world burn." We know those people have always existed; however, maybe they're not fringe, ineffectual nothings who can only damage small portions of our society. Maybe they are the people in charge. The same way late-stage Capitalism has seen the advent of destruction economics, maybe there's a big-picture advantage for those in power in destroying everything we've built.
"He thought he was at last beginning to fully understand what that innocuous phrase - the world has moved on - really meant. What a breadth of ignorance and evil it covered."
Jesus Christ. No wonder King hates trump so much - literally the Ticktock man of our world, and he predicted him over thirty years ago.
Playlist:
Boards of Canada - Inferno
Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons
Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST
sunn O))) - Loser
Pilot Priest & Electric Youth - Come True OST
Gnarls Barkley - Atlanta
Boy Harsher - Careful
Blackbraid - Celestial Womb EP
Revocation - New Gods, New Masters
Sinoa Caves - Beyond the Black Rainbow OST
Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Six of Cups
• Queen of Pentacles
• Four of Pentacles
Emotional Balance takes a steady hand on Earthly concerns, something I'm struggling with at the moment, which makes feel isolated.
I saw Drug Church at Nashville's Basement East this past Saturday. Fabulous show! I'd been to this venue once before, back in 2023, and I forgot it's one of the easier Nashville locations to get to, so I'm going to stop being so gunshy about hitting shows there.
The driving here is really prohibitive. There's so many exchanges to get to some locations, and traffic is as bad or worse than LA (believe it!), so there have been a few events I purchased tickets to in the last year that I ended up not going to, simply because, on a week night after a day's work, the thought of doing these drives is daunting, to say the least. Good to know The Basement East is pretty painless.
Anyway, great show, great crowd. I watched a bunch of younger dudes doing full-on stage-dive cartwheels from the stage back into the crowd, and it was amazing. At a high-energy show like this, I miss the pit, but I especially miss surfing. I learned quite some time back, though, that the ramifications to those activities now can be pretty substantial. At 50? Maybe I'm buying my own pity story, but it's best to err on the side of caution, lest I remove myself from the flow of my daily life with crutches or a cast.
"What a drag it is, getting old."
Yeah, but also, I'm mostly okay with it. I mean, I did all that shit when I was younger (never stage dove - it's far more acceptable today. Back in the Aragon Brawlroom days, bouncers would throw your ass out of the show for that shit), and it's cool to see the younger gen do it while I sit back, bang my head and drink my beer.
Watch:
After 8 years, I canceled Shudder. It wasn't easy, because I've really been a huge supporter of them since I signed up back in the spring of 2018. But they had it coming after canceling The Last Drive-In. Ultimately, I understand that Shudder and the folks that run it aren't to blame, that it's the parent company AMC. I also understand that by canceling that and taking the $30 AMC+ deal for a full year, I basically just made the opposite statement I wanted to make.
Here's the deal, though: I've known for a few years that AMC is shitty to Shudder. I mean, you can pay for Shudder, or you can pay for AMC+, which includes Shudder. Not only that, but the Shudder portal on AMC+ actually has more Shudder material than Shudder does.
That's just messed up.
This has been stuck in my craw for a while now. I want to watch a particular movie with Joe Bob, it's not on Shudder, but it is on AMC+'s Shudder. WTF? I held off as long as I could, but by doing that, I've already made my statement. Now, I'm looking at my pocketbook. So it's backward, but it's what I need to do at the moment.
And the first movie I watched on AMC+'s Shudder portal? Nothing I couldn't see on Shudder, but still... Oily Maniac had been on my list for a while, so I dialed up this batshit crazy Shaw Brothers Horror flick and fell down a rabbit hole of whatthefuck.
So really, not much has changed, except I saved myself $69. I would have rather not canceled Shudder, but this is where we are.
Read:
I blew through Brian McAuley's latest novel, Breath In, Bleed Out, over the weekend and loved every twist and turn!
Equal parts a Slasher and a Mystery, this book had me guessing and wincing almost all the way through. The writing is crisp and lean - no fat here, so the plot pulls you right through. The characters, too, who are fantastic, are a great mix of folks you root for and folks who, well, maybe deserve the awful deaths they get. And the deaths? Breathe In, Bleed Out has some diabolical kills. One in particular, which I'll just say involves heat and a rattlesnake, really impressed - and disgusted - me.
Playlist:
Steve Moore - Jimmy & Stiggs OST
Sleep - Sleep's Holy Mountain
Converge & Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I
High on Fire - Electric Messiah
Converge - The Dusk in Us
Converge - Love Is Not Enough
Nun Gun - Mondo Decay
Drug Church - Hygiene
Drug Church - Prude
Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk
Drug Church - Paul Walker
Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury - Drokk
Vitalic - OK Cowboy
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Three of Swords
• Five of Cups
• Five of Pentacles
Not gonna lie, I'm a little freaked out by this pull. We'll see.
No word on the new album yet, but this track is rad!
NCBD:
Big week. Let's get into it.
Perfect timing! I usually hang on to these Savage Sword issues until I have a chance to really sit down and enjoy them, and I just did that last weekend with issue 13 and was left wanting more.
This pretty much speaks for itself if you're a SIKTC fan. Looks like this is a three-issue mini-series that will no doubt help spin off big changes coming up in issue 50 of SIKTC, and as much as I've enjoyed these last few "young Erica" storylines in the flagship book, I'm pretty anxious to see how the whole thing is going to evolve. Thinking that starts here.
I know nothing about this new number one for Excommunicated, other than it's on Vault, and I miss Vault! Here's the solicitation blurb:
"When a faithful nun and a festering demon are each excommunicated from the church — and from hell — because of a botched exorcism, they must work together to uncover a sinister plot that endangers their lives and the world."
Definitely sounds like a 'me' book, so I'm giving it a shot!
I loved the setup of the first issue of Estuary: A Ghost Story, so I'm back for more. Nothing like an underwater ghost story.
As I mentioned, I wasn't able to score the free one last week for FCBD because I don't go anywhere near a comic shop on FCBD. Looking forward to this enough that I have no problem paying for it.
This is the issue we've been building to, and funny how it kind of dovetails with the current season of Daredevil: Born Again, which wrapped up last night (but which I haven't watched yet at the time I'm writing this).
I love this Fraction and Jimenez Batman series, and I love that they're playing the GCPD against them.
Watch:
llimage/textsddj
I'm putting this new Evil Dead Burn trailer here for posterity's sake, but I won't be watching it of my own volition.
Most likely, I'll see this a number of times at the theatre, but I'm really going to attempt to minimize exposure to the film before it's release, lest what happened with Evil Dead Rise happen here. As of now, I am very excited for this film! So excited, in fact, that I started re-watching Ash vs. Evil Dead from the beginning the other night. I know this is a completely different side to the Evil Dead Universe than anything with Ash (as it should be), but I never did get around to Ash vs Evil Dead season three, so now's the time.
Playlist:
Cristobal Tapia De Veer - Smile OST
sunn O))) - Loser
Art Brut - Brilliant! Tragic!
Killing Joke - Eponymous
Blood Mother - Eponymous (pre-release singles)
Converge & Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Mind Control
Type O Negative - October Rust
Tyler Bates & Chelsea Wolfe - X OST
Flying Lotus - 1983
Pepper Adams - Encounter!
Cage & Aviary - Migration
Vitalic - OK Cowboy
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
I realized recently that I never posted anything from Gylt's latest album, In 1000 Agonies I Exist. You can grab this over on the band's Bandcamp page. Both this and 2024's I Will Commit A Holy Crime: Tandem are fantastic records that infiltrated my regular rotation last year after my trip back home to L.A., when friends first played these guys for me. I would very much like to see Gylt live at some point.
Watch:
I caught the late show for Damian McCarthy's Hokum last Thursday night. I've been all but salivating for this one. Here's the 'final' trailer, released last week.
So how was it? Did I get what I wanted? Oh my god, yes!
Hokum is an excellent ghost story, and it's about haunted people as much as it is about a haunted place. The locations, as with all McCarthy's films, are gorgeous beyond compare. There are some legitimately frightening sequences here. One in particular, involving a circle around a four-poster bed, was the first example of a filmmaker creating a sustained sequence of fear in years.
That's my favorite, and it is rare. It's just really difficult to scare an adult with a ghost or monster movie when just living in this world means we operate with a low-grade level of sustained fear 24/7. But McCarthy pulls it off beautifully.
There are also some really great jump scares here. One in particular really got me.
Playlist:
John Cale - Fear
John Cale - Slow Dazzle
The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses
Portishead - Third
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
The Soft Moon - Criminal
The Misfits - Walk Among Us
Electric Youth and Pilot Priest - Come True OST
Corrosion of Conformity - Good God/Baad Man
Frank Black and the Catholics - One More Road for the Hit
Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Beach House - Bloom
Ghost - Ceremony and Devotion
NIN - The Slip
Gylt - I Will Commit a Holy Crime: Tandem
Slow Crush - Thirst
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• XV: The Devil
• Eight of Cups
• King of Wands
Adhering to your own dogma will drain your vitality, so have the presence of mind to recognize your own bullshit and subvert it.
Direct reference to a new project I've dubbed Film50.
I've felt drawn back to several 90s female artists recently, and PJ Harvey is a big one. I don't remember when I first heard To Bring You My Love, but I know it was an instant "all-timer" for me. That said, it's also one that takes me to a very specific inner place, a place I don't often necessarily find myself drawn to these days. Lately, though, I'm all about it.
NCBD:
Another fabulous Wednesday pull from Rick's Comic City in Clarksville. Let's take a gander at what will be waiting for me after work:
For whatever reason, it feels like it's been months since the last issue of Thundarr. Excited to get back into this, as there's potentially some really interesting stuff going on in this book.
Here's a surprise - the unreleased "Swamp Thing meets Jesus" by Rick Veitch and Michael Zulli finally sees the light of day as a four-issue series starting this week and published monthly for the next three months. Reminds me a bit of when Vertigo made a big deal about finally releasing that Constantine story that caused Warren Ellis to bail on the book after only two thin trades worth of what could have been a long and completely brilliant run. For as groundbreaking as they wanted to be perceived as back in the late 80s, I don't think DC had fully acquiesced to Karen Berger's autonomy until after Sandman proved the brand.
We come to the end of the Sssilent Missions event with a Firefly issue. No better way to end things, in my opinion. Like Copperhead, another of my all-time favorite characters.
Another facsimile edition for Larry Hama's original ARAH series, this time issue 14, which I believe is the first appearance of Laird Destro!
One thing I learned years ago is to stay the hell out of comic shops on Free Comic Book Day, which is this coming Saturday. So I'm not sure I'll actually be able to walk away with this, or if I should just wait for the not-free version that drops next Wednesday.
J.G. Jones and Phil Bram's dustbowl epic Dust to Dust finally comes to a conclusion with issue 8, and I'll be jumping in and rereading this one from the start sooner rather than later. I reread the first half a few months ago, but have held off on the subsequent issues due to publishing delays. I want a full-on, one-sitting reread on this one.
Watch:
While I now approach all YouTuber-turned-Filmmaker Horror movies with a certain degree of trepidation, I finally saw the trailer for Kane "Pixels" Parsons' Backrooms from A24, and I have to say, I'm excited and hopeful. This looks fantastic. I've expressed my fascination for the YouTube version of Backroomshere previously, and this film looks like the consolidation the admittedly sprawling episodic series needs to really lock in its power. Also, the inclusion of such a top-tier actor like Chiwetel Ejiofor adds significance, as does having Mark Duplass on board.
John Carpenter w/ Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST
Deafheaen - Lonely People With Power
The Cure - Pornography
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• IV: The Emperor
• Two of Pentacles
• VIII: Strength
Structure, collaboration on a project, and instinct.
I have lingering questions about a particular collaboration, and I think I just got my answer. Well, the cards don't answer questions; they just point you to the answer you already know.
