Martin Gore - Mandrill

New instrumental album from Depeche Mode's Martin Gore dropped last Friday on Mute. This is the first I'm hearing about it, but I am digging it! Order HERE.

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INTERVIEW:

As I mentioned last week, Chris Saunders and I recently had the chance to sit down with comics scribe and artist Jeremy Haun on The Horror Vision's A Most Horrible Library podcast. Available on all streaming platforms, our site, and youtube, it turned out to be a really interesting discussion:

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Watch:

I've been off work since Saturday afternoon. K and I took a "mental health week," which I for one needed very badly.  We've watched a lot of stuff in that time, which is all logged on my letterboxd. Two of the highlights were:

 

Much thanks to Mr. Brown on that one. Such a delightful film.

Terminal is a bit of a mess story-wise (although not enough to take away from the experience), but is absolutely gorgeous to look at. That usually isn't enough to get me on a film's side, but Simon Pegg goes a long way, and the obvious Guy Ritchie love helps more than it hurts. Ms. Robbie is pretty great in this one, too (as she usually is).

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Playlist:

Let's do something different. Let me take you back to last February when I wrote in these pages how I'd received a Golden Ticket from Relapse Records. This was a random win, based on my pre-ordering of Steve Moore's OST for the 2019 Joe Begos film Bliss. The contest was held to commemorate Relapse Records' 30th Anniversary, so needless to say, there's been a ton of Relapse bands in my playlist of late, as I slowly work my way through all this glorious vinyl. 

Razor - Armed and Dangerous

Genghis Tron - Board Up the House

Portishead - Dummy

Valkeyrie - Fear

Zombi - 2020

Boris and Merzbow - 2R0I2P0

Bangles - Different Light

16 - Dream Squasher

Nothing - The Great Dismal

Helmet - Meantime

Human Impact - Eponymous

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Dream Division - The Devil Rides Out

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

The Blueflowers - Relapse EP

The Blueflowers - Circus on Fire

Raspberry Bulbs - Before the Age of Mirrors

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Card:

Such an appropriate card, as I will be returning to work this morning after five days off and, as management, need to deal with two employees in a considerably more severe disciplinary fashion than I am used to. Enforcing common sense makes me salty, so I will have to keep my more... robust approach to the language in check.

Chelsea Wolfe & Emma Ruth Rundle - Anhedonia

 

Moments after finishing my first listen to Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou's entire new EP The Helm of Sorrow (I was holding out for my vinyl to arrive, but gave in), I log onto youtube and see the two Doom Goddess's have joined forces! Is Anhedonia a harbinger of a full-length to come?

I certainly hope so! In the meantime,  I'll play the hell out of this track, because it rules.

Buy from Sargent House HERE.

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READ:

A Most Horrible Library is the newest podcast under The Horror Vision umbrella, and my co-host Chris Saunders and I spent a good two hours last night on Zoom talking with comics writer/artist Jeremy Haun. Jeremy's recent book, The Red Mother, wrapped up with its twelfth issue, and I can tell you, it's fantastic. Especially if you're a Clive Barker or Dario Argento fan.

   

Jeremy is an extremely personable, and very interesting guy. He's a HUGE Horror fan - which endeared him to Chris and I immediately, and he has a bit of a mythology brewing that appears in a lot of what he writes. That mythology - the Four and Seven - also shows up in the short comic stories he publishes via his Patreon, which I subscribed to. Jeremy writes, draws, letters and inks these Haunthology books, and I'm super excited to read them because I'm a sucker for mythologies, and The Red Mother really made an impression on me. 

 

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Playlist:

Credence Clearwater Revival - Eponymous

Small Black - Best Blues

Tomahawk - Tonic Immobility (Pre-release single)

Tomahawk - Eponymous

Tomahawk - M.E.A.T. Single

The Jesus Lizard - Lash

The Jesus Lizard - Liar

The Soft Moon - Black Sabbath (Single)

The Soft Moon - Criminal 

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

Boy Harsher - Country Girl Uncut

Cocksure - K.K.E.P. EP

exhalants - Atonement

Gwar - Scumdogs of the Universe

The Replacements - Tim

Small Black - Duplex (Single)

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - The Helm of Sorrow

The Bangles - A Different Light

Drab Majesty - Careless

Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh

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Card:

I'm writing this Thursday night and it's raining in LaLaLand. As you've no doubt heard me say before, that's pretty rare. I'm on New Retro New Wave tonight, splitting the decades between the 80s and the previous, jumping from The Bangles to Drab Majesty, to Deth Crux, all on vinyl. It's glorious, and I stop to have K try and take a photo of me standing in the rain with my Israeli Military issue gas mask, really just as an excuse to stand out in the rain for a while. When I come in, I draw this card.

I'm burned out from several insanely close COVID scares at work and all the stress that goes with them and the stupid fucking humans responsible. Luckily, by the time most of you read this, I'll be well into my Friday. Then I'll have a quick and painless (I hope) four hours on Saturday, and I'm off until Thursday. Five year anniversary with K on Monday, and three days to be even more of a Hermit than I already am. It will be glorious.

Rob Zombie's Narcoleptic Sunday

While scrolling through instagram a few days ago, I stumbled upon the fact that there's a new album coming from Rob Zombie in March. I've posted my conflicted musings about Mr. Zombie in these pages before, and that more or less remains. Do I like this song? Well, here's the thing. This stuff is made to be played loud in a room with distractions. Other people at a party, or, since we can't do that at the moment, while you're cleaning. Just plugging in the headphones and focusing too much on Rob Zombie's songs make a lot of them disintegrate into the broad-stroke caricatures they are. Even this video feels lazy; notice there are no wide shots to place Zombie or his band on the stages or even in the same room that the brief, initial, establishing stage shots set up. Now, this is obviously due to COVID, so of course, I don't want to bag on them for being safe. It just could have used something else; most of RZ's vocals are delivered in Extreme Close Up shots with no context, and they're delivered with next to no energy. This robs the video, and subsequently the song, of the momentum the guitars and rhythm ride. 

I'm really reading too much into this, aren't I? 

Anyway, a new track drops in a few days, so we'll see how that is. I usually click into an RZ groove for a week or so every year or two, play the hell out of the White Zombie stuff I dig, then cycle through his solo albums (Or better yet, curated playlists of the standouts from those albums), and then move on. Pre-order The Lunar Injection Kool Aid and Eclipse Conspiracy HERE from Nuclear Blast Records.

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READ:

After burning through the entire 12-issue run of his The Red Mother comic from Boom! Studios, I sought out a copy of Jeremy Haun's 2007 graphic novel Narcoleptic Sunday:

About 70% through it, this one is great, too. A B&W Noir, Sunday kicks off with the "guy meets girl, guy sleeps with girl, guy wakes up and girl is dead" Noir trope and pretty much just steps on the gas from there. This is an especially interesting achievement in a story where the lead character has what appears to be a form of the titular sleep disorder, and as such falls asleep at random moments. 

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Playlist:

The Smashing Pumpkins - Gish

PM Dawn - Set Adrift on Memory Bliss (Single)

Small Black - Duplex (single)

The Cure - Disintegration

The Bangles - Different Light

The Jesus Lizard - Lady Shoes 45 single

The Jesus Lizard - Wheelchair Epidemic 45 single

Rob Zombie - The Triumph of King Freak (pre-release single)

Gwar - Scumdogs of the Universe

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Human Impact - Eponymous

Ministry - The Last Sucker

 

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Card:

Back to my full-size Thoth this morning: 

Uncompromising honesty; Balance. I can't help read something like this as advice to stock my personal arsenal with altruistic accouterments for the day.