Showing posts with label The Kills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Kills. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

The Kills Live From The Basement!!!

 

"Mutha fucka must'a thought it was live music week. It ain't live music week, is it Marty?" 

"Yeah, man. It's live music week." 

Well, Marty and Drexel have spoken. It's live music week. Here's a nice, tight live set from The Kills, originally published on the From The Basement youtube channel, which you should definitely check out and subscribe to HERE.



NCBD:

My picks for this week's NCBD:


After last week's Hellfire Gala, well, shit. I can't wait to see this. I'll admit, I did not expect the landscape of X to be so completely changed in just one issue. Looking at a lot of the books launching after this, I'm not super interested in how the X Bullpen is choosing to explore this new playing field, however, I maintain my hopes that the core books will continue to turn out awesome entries into this aptly named Fall of X saga on a monthly basis.


The final issue of TMNT's The Last Ronin: Lost Years. In comics, possible future spin-offs are pretty common, and in general, I'd say I'm a fan. That said, there's so much of this kind of story out there, it feels a little overdone these days, and I tend to stay away from them. In TMNT's case, I really feel like they did it right. I don't know if I need a constant line of these Last Ronin stories, but I'd definitely be up to revisit the world again at a future date.

A Thessaly one-shot written by James Tynion? Yeah, sure. I want that. Thessaly's always been a Sandman Universe character that fascinates me. She's brutal and sexy and seemingly has no fear, which always makes her showing up a bit fretful for the characters already in play in any given story. Since this ties into the current Nightmare Country storyline, I'm curious to see whose blood Thessaly spills. Also, curious to see her and The Corinthian interact, as I can't remember off the top of my head if that's ever happened before.




Read:

I finished my re-read of Stephan Graham Jones's My Heart is a Chainsaw yesterday and immediately jumped into this year's sequel, Don't Fear the Reaper. It's funny - last year when Chainsaw came out, I was sick, home from work for a week, and read it in three days. This year, I'm not only working, but hammering out a novel, so I had to read it more piecemeal. Didn't affect the sheer joy the novel inspires in me, but I also wanted to state it out loud, so no one out there reading this thinks Chainsaw is anything but one of the greatest Horror novels since Pet Semetery


Only a couple chapters in so far, and I already can feel I am standing at the precipice of a masterpiece. I don't know how I can love the sequel more - and I don't want to jinx it - but the broadening scope Jones starts laying out in Chapter Two: Dark South Mill has me positively giddy with excitement at where the novel will go.
 


Playlist:

Underworld - Beaucoup Fish
The Kills - Live From the Basement
Arctic Monkeys - The Car (thanks Josh!)
Goblin - 2013 Tour E.P.
Zombi - Shape Shift
Mammon XV - Woes and Winter's Breath
Silent - Modern Hate
Meg Myers - Sorry
Steely Dan - Aja
Calexico - The Black Light



Card:

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


• IV: The Emperor
• V: The Hierophant
• Page of Cups

Decisiveness in the face of dogma and institutions we adhere to in our daily lives. In other words, decide against the grain of the life I've set up



Duration:

I've kind of messed up the days I'm doing this report, and this is a week old now, so I'll post the current report tomorrow.


Better. Not great, but better than last week, and I'm making leaps and bounds in the actual mechanics of the ending, which again is known, but not yet written. I've gone back through the entire novel, shoring things up, installing alignments that will hopefully carry me into a successful first draft of that ending.



Tuesday, July 25, 2023

New Music from The Kills!!!

 

From the 7" New York/LA Hex. Took me a bit to warm up to this track ("New York" has a more classic Kills sound). You can go HERE and get this one from Domino Recordings. I'm hoping this means there's a new full-length from the band on the way.

I love the video for this one; it's funny how, as happy as I am to have left L.A., and experiencing what a mixed bag it is going back for work two weeks at a time periodically, all the imagery here feels so familiar that it kind of acts as a balm for the piece of me I left behind there. Don't mistake that for homesickness; as I've taken to telling anyone who asks, L.A. is officially a post-apocalyptic city, and living there amounts to little more than sheer madness to me now. That said, it's something, to be able to walk the streets of a SciFi Dystopian version of one of the world's most iconic cities and see it with your own eyes. All of those textures are present in this video, so much so, it almost feels like the band are characters in a movie the song is from. 



NCBD:

My picks for this week's NCBD!!!


I keep saying I'm going to drop this book, but I'm still here. The previous issue scratched enough of an itch that I can't quite bring myself to jump from ol' Flamehead's ship just yet.


Another year, another Hellfire Gala! Can't wait to see what big changes spring from this one.


Chip Zdarsky and Jacob Phillips's Newburn returns after what feels like a year-long hiatus (might have actually been just that). This is a fantastic crime book, and I'm curious to see where the big picture will go.


After an initial setback getting my hands on the first issue of the latest installment in Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino's Bone Orchard Mythos, I acquired and read Tenement issue one last week. LOVED it, and now I'm fortunate enough to be able to dig into issue two so soon after what proved to be a very provocative set-up.  
The final issue of The Seasons Have Teeth! This series was a surprise hit with me, and I can't wait to see how it ends. The monsterizing of each individual season has been super cool, and from the glimpses shown across the various covers for issue 4, Winter may be the most insane design of all. 




Watch:

While I ended up coming down on the "Yes, I like this," side of the fence for David Gordon Green's Halloween Requel trilogy, I will say hearing that his next project was basically doing the same thing for The Exorcist excited me. I've never seen Exorcist Two: The Heretic, and despite trying four or so times, I abhor the monstrosity that is William Peter Blatty's Exorcist III. I know at some point in the early 00s, two cuts of a prequel came out, but I've never bothered with those either. So, being that I have always considered William Friedkin's original cut of The Exorcist the scariest film ever made, I would like to see someone who has proven he can learn from others' mistakes and give us new installments in otherwise lifeless, iconic franchises.


Pretty sure this will be fantastic. I wasn't so sure of that at the beginning of the trailer (yes, I watched it, but I won't ever watch it again, and when it comes on the next time I'm at the theatre, I'll be getting up to leave the room).




Playlist:

Forhist - Eponymous
Witchfinder - Forgotten Mansion
David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music
Ruby the Hatchet - Planetary Space Child
Rick Derringer - All American Boy
SQÜRL & Jozef Van Wissem - Only Lovers Left Alive OST
Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle
Sigur Rós - Ágœtis Byrjun
Sigur Rós  - ( )
Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone
The Kills - New York/LA Hex 7"
NIN - With Teeth
Portishead - Third
Metallica - 72 Seasons
Crystal Castles - II
Chelsea Wolfe - Spun
  


Card:

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


• VII: The Chariot
• Knight of Pentacles
• XV: The Devil

Emerging victorious from a trying time; sheer force of Will pulls me up and out of the darker side of my brain. A perfect encapsulation of this past Sunday/Monday, when I underwent what I can only describe as a complete Bi-Polar, manic episode. Keep in mind, I've never experienced or been diagnosed with Bi-Polar. I've always considered myself lucky that my brain chemistry, for the most part, has been even. Not sure what happened over the course of those two days, but I think it had to do with too much caffeine and too much social media/phone in general. I'm backing off communicating for a while; this won't affect this blog, but if you know me and I don't answer messages online, don't take it personally. I'm trying to put my head back on straight.



Monday, June 28, 2021

Halloween The Kills Vs. Candyman and the Midnight Boom


How about some music from The Kills to kick off our week? Kinda fits with one of the trailers below, so why not. Also, I was inspired to dig out Midnight Boom for the first time in quite a while yesterday and it's probably not going away any time soon. The Kills been absent from my listening habits of late, time to change that. I love this album.




Watch:

I was finally able to sit down and watch Damian McCarthy's feature film debut Caveat the other day on Shudder. WOW. If Censor is almost guaranteed to end up in my top ten of 2021, I'd say the same for this one. I absolutely loved the suspense Caveat creates and sustains with limited location and budget. I can't wait to see what McCarthy does next, especially since this will no doubt net him a bigger budget:


Also, a couple of HUGE Horror Movie trailers dropped since my last post. First up, Halloween Kills, which, as I've stated here previously, I have some reservations about, but will definitely be plopping my arse into a theatre seat opening weekend, regardless:  

 

Next, a movie I have no idea what to expect from but am pretty excited for nonetheless.

 

Finally, this isn't a movie, but I've been waiting for it for a while now:






Playlist:

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Pixies - Trompe le Monde
Pixies - Doolittle
Valkyrie - Fear
Pixies - Beneath the Eyrie
The Kills - Midnight Boom 
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey
Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun
The Darts - I Like You But Not Like That
Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone




Card:


 When things are too good to be true, we second guess them? This is (maybe) a direct commentary on my hemming and hawing about putting my first story on Nosleep. I know the story is good, however, I keep second-guessing how it will fit in with their guidelines. I'm posting the first installment Tuesday no matter what, so I guess we'll see. And with so definitive a statement, why worry?

Friday, April 29, 2016

The Kills - Heart of a Dog



New Kills. 'Nuff said. Not a huge fan of these types of videos, but here I really like how and where they utilized their backgrounds.

June 3rd is the new record (pre-order here), which I've rabidly been waiting for since seeing them live for the first time last year at Pomona's Glass House. They're not playing LA on their current tour - San Francisco is the closest they're coming and as much as I'd LOVE to road trip up, that is not in the cards at the moment.  But if they come near you go. Trust me.