Here's a nice little 666 injection into your Christmas Holiday. Posted by the Kilkim Žaibu festival. Great channel - check 'em out HERE.
Watch:
If there's one subgenre based on location I love, it's Horror set in the Irish countryside. Director Peter Vass's upcoming film Banshee looks to have the quiet atmosphere I love in spades. Check out this trailer:
I'm unfamiliar with Vass and everything about this project, but after watching this, oh do I yearn to know more! You can check out the film's socials via the YouTube link.
Read:
As I approach the finish line on Isabel Cañas's The Possession of Alba Díaz, I realized that my first read of 2025 is probably going to be a long-overdue re-read of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's classic The Difference Engine.
I pulled my old beat-up paperback off the shelf a few nights ago and set it aside in preparation. It's easily been 15 years since the last time I read this one, and I think it will help me nail the Victorian England portion of Shadow Play, Book Two, which I'm hip-dip in at the moment and needing some authenticity.
Playlist:
Metallica - Kill 'Em All
The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses
The Ocean - Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Dreamkid - Daggers
D'Nell - 1st Magic
James Last - Christmas Dancing
Various - I'll Be Home for the Holidays
Bob Rivers - Twisted Christmas
Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Vince Guardaldi - A Charlie Brown Christmas OST
Rodney Crowell - Christmas Everywhere
Bing Crosby - Merry Christmas
Calexico - Second Shift
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• XVII: The Star
• XIX: The Sun
• Seven of Pentacles
Hope, clarity and assessment. That pain turned out to be another example of the bane of my middle age - gas. I'm alright now and ready to turn the volume up on my eating and drinking over the next few days.
Wow! I have not heard this in a very long time! I first heard this via the Operation Rock n' Roll compilation cassette I spoke at length about HERE. The band's 1991 eponymous debut turned out to be their only album, but it's pretty great. I never made it past the two singles back in the day - not for lack of interest, but hey, we didn't have the luxury of streaming back in 1991, hahaha - but I'm listening to it now and it feels a lot like what I'd pretty much always assumed: a bit of a female take on Gwar without the Horror Fantasy theatrics.
Watch:
I had an impromptu Jeremy Saulnier weekend this past Friday and Saturday. Started Friday with Blue Ruin, which I'd not seen since somewhere around the time it first hit streaming.
This 100% holds up to the fairly lofty place that first viewing gave it in my head. I don't know if I've ever seen a revenge film with such heartfelt emotion. As big as this goes stakes-wise, Blue Ruin always feels grounded in the real world, with real people who do the things I think many of us would do in such a dire situation.
Next up, on Saturday I finally got around to Saulnier's 2024 film Rebel Ridge.
This is one I'd rather not post the trailer for. I'd not seen it before viewing, and after watching it just now, I have to say, just go in as blind as possible. Saulnier's not reinventing the wheel here; he never is. The point is, he has such a unique style as a filmmaker who marries Suspense and Action. This one is about as tense as Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners, and that's saying something. Outstanding performances all around, but Aaron Pierre is just magnetic beyond words.
Read:
I blew through a re-read of Nathan Ballingrud's Crypt of the Moon Spider, the first book in his Lunar Gothic Trilogy on Saturday. I've been meaning to get around to re-reading this and picking up part two since it came out in October. Instead of giving the bezos corporation more money, I drove over to our local independent book store, Clarksville Book Shop, and asked them to order me Cathedral of the Drowned. I can't wait to read this one.
In the meantime, however, I grabbed this off the store's shelves and am already over 100 pages in:
I knew nothing about this novel or author Isabel Cañas, for that matter, but if there's one predilection I tend to exhibit more or less consistently, it's going in blind. So far I'm pretty deeply immersed. Here's the solicitation blurb:
"When a demonic presence awakens deep in a Mexican silver mine, the young woman it seizes must turn to the one man she shouldn’t trust… from bestselling author Isabel Cañas.
In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family’s isolated mine for refuge. But safety proves fleeting as other dangers soon bare their teeth: Alba begins suffering from strange hallucinations, sleepwalking, and violent convulsions. She senses something cold lurking beneath her skin. Something angry. Something wrong.
Elías, haunted by a troubled past, came to the New World to make his fortune and escape his family’s legacy of greed. Alba, as his cousin’s betrothed, is none of his business. Which is of course why he can’t help but notice her every time she enters a room or the growing tension between them… and why he notices her deteriorate when the demon’s thirst for blood grows stronger."
Playlist:
Carter Burwell - Blood Simple OST
Vitriol - Eponymous
Jim Williams - Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched OST
Testament - Para Bellum
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Dance with the Dead - Driven to Madness
Meg Myers - Sorry
Perturbator - Age of Aquarius
John Coltrane - Blue Train
Odonis Odonis - Eponymous
Coleman Hawkins - Wrapped Tight
Cycle Sluts From Hell - Eponymous
Archspire - Carrion Ladder (single)
The Ocean - Fluxion
Oxcar Peterson, Joe Pass & Ray Brown - The Giants
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Queen of Cups
• Knight of Cups
• Two of Pentacles
Pursuit of artistic endeavors can only be upheld with compassion for the world around you and the adaptability that requires. Because, in 2025, compassion can be a difficult thing. Maybe not for those in your immediate circumference, but definitely for the world at large.
This is a fairly banal, vague reading, but there's something here. While I'm typing this, the Ocean's refrain, "Tonight we celebrate the human stain" echoes through my ears and makes me wonder if there might be a way to use art to connect to someone who I don't see eye to eye with. You can ask what's the point, but at the same time, partisanship and cynicism have all but bankrupted our culture and society. While art remains pure. Is there a way to use that purity to reach beyond our broken means of communication?
