Sunn O))) Pyroclasts

The description of this album is one of the more intriguing musical ideas I've seen expressed by any band in recent memory. This is kind of what I wish Tool had to say about Fear Inoculum; a band's Intent with a given piece of music can completely alter the way I look it/listen to it. I used to think Tool thought this deeply about their music. I am no longer sure of that, in regard to Maynard and the boys. Sunn O))), however, continue to express the hell out of me.

Also, recorded by Steve Albini. Always a damn good thing.

You can pre-order Pyroclasts at Southern Lord Records HERE.

**

31 Days of Horror:

10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31

10/02: Lords of Chaos

10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1

10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3

10/05: Bliss/VFW

10/06: Halloween III: Season of the Witch/Night of the Creeps/The Fog

10/07: Halloween 2018

10/08: Hell House, LLC

10/09: Dance of the Dead (Tobe Hooper; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 3)

10/10: Creepshow Episode 3

10/11: Jenifer (Dario Argento; Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 4)

10/12: Poltergeist/Phenomena

10/13: AHS 1984 Ep 4/In the Tall Grass
10/14: Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78)
10/15: Rabid (2019)
10/16: Wounds
10/17: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/18: Creepshow Episode 4
10/19: Ed Wood/AHS 1984 Ep. 5
10/20: Sinister/Sinister 2
10/21: Uncanny Annie
10/22: Scream
10/23: Simpsons 666: Treehouse of Horror
10/24: Jennifer's Body
10/25: Belzebuth/The Lighthouse/Halloween
10/26: Murder Party
10/27: AHS 1984 Ep. 6/Arsenic and Old Lace/(The Fair Haired Child Masters of Horror Ssn 1 Ep 9)

**

Playlist from 10/27:

Alice in Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here
Fields of the Nephilim - The Nephilim
Billy Idol - Greatest Hits
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets

**

Card of the day:

I needed this, which seems to be a running theme with my Pulls of late. A direct reference to a short I've been picking at for almost a year; I finished it, realized the story had gotten away from what I intended (in a bad way), and have periodically gone back and re-worked it over and over. I nearly finished it last night, and when later mentioned the new direction to K, who expressed bewilderment that I had removed some of her favorite elements. In thinking about it, I realize the story was all but finished last year, my real problem was with the ending, which I should be able to synthesize if I go back and master all of the ingredients along the way.

Dean Hurley - Low Harmonic Fanfare/Growth

This track puts you in my exact headspace at the moment. Holed up in the business center in San Jose Airport - a layover on my way to Chicago - I've had a restful day of low impact/low stress. I arrived at Long Beach Airport an hour and a half early and spent most of that time sitting absolutely still, regulating my breathing, giving Tool's Fear Inoculum a second chance. Turns out it's fantastic, and designed around what I would guess is a formidable, uncompromising vision. That said, I've come away from two repeated listens with a newfound respect, but still feeling I'm only ever going to make a connection in it when I'm sitting in an airport, sitting perfectly still. Which isn't often.

**

My life reached a stress pinnacle and I had to rethink how I do this blog. My work day is now overflowing, and the writing/business of starting a publishing imprint draws much of the rest of my time. I'm still going to do these entries as often as possible, I just don't know that it'll be every day. Or even every other day. We'll see. But anyone who reads, I thank you for doing so, and there will always be more awesome to come.

**

Beyondfest 2019's lineup is a dream come true. Well, I've been going for something like five years now, and it's always a dream come true. Here's the list - my order of priority is as follows:

• Joe Begos double feature of Bliss and VFW, with Begos, Josh Ethier, and probably a lot more of the cast and crew present. A few years ago when Begos came to Beyondfest with Mind's Eye, I think he brought like, everybody. It was pretty fucking awesome. I can't wait. Highest priority.

• Tom Atkins afternoon triple feature of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Night of the Creeps, and John Carpenter's The Fog, with Atkins in person. Let me say that again: with Tom Atkins in person. 'Nuff said.

• Richard Stanley's The Color Out of Space, with Stanley in person. SOLD.

• Joe Bob Briggs - How Rednecks Saved Hollywood. Joe Bob in person, doing the lecture he's becoming very sought after in city after city to do. This man is a low-fi genius, and I look forward to hearing him do his thing in person.

• Tammy and the T-Rex- the newly restored 90s kid's movie that, turns out, was really a heavily edited, gorey A.F. revenge movie where a girl's murdered boyfriend's brain gets put into the body of a T Rex. I haven't seen this in either form, but I've heard it discussed on Shockwaves and I'm IN. Also, it immediately follows the Joe Bob, so that should be nice and easy to maneuver.

There's also a handful of free showings I might try to make, and some unannounced dates, at least one of which I'm crossing my fingers will be The Soska Sisters' in person screening their remake of David Cronenberg's Rabid. That would also get high priority in my book. We'll see. The last three years, getting tickets to a lot of these screenings becomes difficult because every year, Fandango crashes. This year, apparently, they've moved ticket sales to Brown Paper Tickets. Hopefully the handle everything better.

**

Another minor logistical problem with buying tickets to Beyondfest this Saturday is, about the time they go on sale, I'll be at Scary Perry's Halloween Store for their Scare Faire. Jonathan Grimm and I have a table - he'll be hocking prints, magnets, stickers and who knows what else with his unbelievable art, I'll have copies of both A Collection of Desires: 7 Tales of Modern Horror and the just-released Shadow Play Book One: Kim and Jessie. Unfortunately, due to some printing errors, I won't have as many copies as I would like, but there's a solid twenty of each, so if you're interested, come on down!

**

Playlist from the last couple days:

Budos Band - Burnt Offerings
Jenny Lewis - The Voyager
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Joy Division - Closer
The Ocean - Rhyacian: Untimely Meditations (2017 Version)
The Ocean - Aeolian
The Ocean - Precambrian
The Ocean - Anthropocentric
The Ocean - Heliocentric
Twin Temples - Shadows
Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind
Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual
White Hex - Gold Nights

2019: August 30th: The Dead Milkmen - Smokin' Banana Peels

I had a difficult time choosing what track to end my Dead Milkmen Appreciation Week with, but in the end, it was always going to be this track. Why? Well, because I can relate; one time Senior Year, I stumbled across some friends at the party house where we all used to hang out, and saw they were removing banana peels from the oven and rolling them into joints. Perplexed and adventurous, I inquired and then partook. I don't know if what happened had to do with the peels, or the fact that one guy had laced them with Tic (tick?)- something I still have no idea what the hell it is. It was a looooong night. And as usual, the Milkmen nail it. Although really, they're kinda making fun of morons that smoke banana peels, but hey, I was pretty dumb at times as a rebellious teenager. We all were, to one degree or another.

Go out and pick up a Milkman album, download one on Apple Music, stream one on Spotify. Whatever. The point is, this is one band that deserves a lot more recognition than they get.

**

The new Tool album is out, and I may eat my words later on, but after 75% of one listen, I turned it off. My knee-jerk reaction is that all my grudges against them over the last several years have been confirmed and they've released a completely forgettable record that, honestly, I can't imagine giving a second go-round, though I will, just to give them the benefit of the doubt. Part of my major problems is every song has approximately the same tempo, so it all kind of blends together. Oh well, win some, lose some. The Ocean kind of took over as my go-to prog metal band a few years back, anyway, so I've spent the day listening to their 2010 masterpiece Anthropocentric.

**

Playlist from 8/29:

The Dead Milkmen - Metaphysical Graffiti
Led Zeppelin - Eponymous
The Ocean - Precambrian
The Ocean - Phanerozoic I
Type O Negative - Dead Again

**

No card or spread again today. Work has been insanely busy, I've been eeking these posts out on my lunch breaks.

2019: New Tool Track!

I definitely dig it - reminds me a lot of Lateralus. That said, listening to this removed from the context of an entire album that will eventually surround it makes me think listening to this would be like never hearing Lateralus and listening to Disposition. What this has done is make me anticipate the full album on a considerably more rabid note.

August 30th is soon.

**
Ticked off episodes 6 and 7 of The Boys last night. I was warned about the 'fingering' episode. Wow. This show is, as Butcher might say, top gear.

**

Playlist from 8/08:

Catherine Wheel - Ferment
Tool - Fear Inoculum (Pre-release single)
Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST
Twin Peaks Playlist
Revolting Cocks - Big Sexy Land
Revolting Cocks Trance Playlist*
Tool - Undertow

* Comprised of No Devotion, Attack Ships on Fire, Something Wonderful, and Can't Sit Still. Great writing playlist, even though I ended up getting f*ckall accomplished yesterday. Still, I showed up and put my ass in the seat.

**

Spread of the day:

Lots of strong, Feminine energy, lots of "Big Ideas" or Influences, and all Earth/Kingdom/Malkuth. Technically, 9s are Yesod, or Foundation, but that very much informs ten. Very good signs that, despite a frustrating day yesterday, I am on the right track.

2019: August 4th - Tool!

I've been pretty persnickety towards Tool in recent years. With all the half-teased information about an album that never seemed to materialize, I remained skeptical even through last week's announcement of Fear Inoculum's imminent, August 30th release. When I saw that the band put up Hush, a song from their first EP Opiate which I have, for whatever reason, listened to a handful of times but never really gotten into, the new artwork - which is fantastic - I mistook it for a new Tool track.

Whoops!

Seeing Opiate on Apple Music this morning I decided to take a break from the Opeth binge I'm currently going through and dig in. In the meantime, here's that re-mastered audio for Hush. Shame on me for thinking after this long, Tool would release a 'single' ahead of the album's release. I'd actually prefer that, only twenty-four days out, they just wait and drop it all at once.

**

This weekend, I attended Midsummer Scream. Really cool Con. I'd definitely offer the criticism that they need to really step up their organizational parameters next year, but overall, very cool. Overall though, very cool. I was able to see a panel on Witchcraft and Magick - very timely as I've begun to move back in that direction myself - as well as Shockwaves podcast live, and a kind of post-script panel for The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell, which K and I are both fans of (K more than me, I thought she was going to explode with excitement when McConnell took the stage). The panel consisted of Moderator and Showrunner for the now bafflingly cancelled show, Kirk Thatcher; Michael Oosterom (Rankle); Mick Ignis (Edgar); Colleen Smith (Rose and Cousin Evie); and Darcy Prevost (Production Designer). Really fun panel, and they reminded us that McConnell currently has a youtube show called From the Mind of Christine McConnell and a Patreon.



**

Playlist from the last few days:

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Shake the Sheets
Primus - Frizzle Fry
Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey
Grimes - Oblivion
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Volume II: Philosophy of Beyond

**

Again! Three-card spread this morning:

Queen of Swords again! This time, I'm reading it as it's influence is moving past me, so I need to be ready for a new paradigm, one that may result in a steadying of my skills and mindset. This is great, in that I've got a couple of big decisions on the horizon, and making them from the right place mentally and emotionally should result in success!

2019: May 7th - New Tool Song (Live)

I'll admit that I am skeptical as all hell about new music from Tool. I love the band, or perhaps that feeling is better expressed in the past tense; the idea that it's been 13 years since 10,000 Days makes me wonder. Then again, I understand how life runs away with your time. I would have preferred to hear this as an actual album track, instead of a live one with a lot of close-talking crowd noise, but at this point, curiosity got the better of me.

**

Tommy from Heaven is an Incubator has a fantastic article up on Entropymag. In it, he juxtaposes his long-time love affair with the SXSW festival from his life before having children to his life with children. It is one of my favorite things I've read so far this year. Read it HERE.

**

NCBD tomorrow and here are my picks for the week:

Lodger has perplexed me. I've enjoyed it, but I'm confused and feel as though I'm missing something. My plan is to sit down and reread the entire five-issue run later this week and see how it pans out.

LOVE this John McCrea alt cover. Good to have Deadly Class back; if you haven't watched the SyFy show yet, it's all up streaming on the network's app and it is fantastic.

This book just gets better and better.

The return of the sleeper hit from 2018. Can't wait.

**

Playlist from 5/06:

Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Chasms - The Mirage
Chasms - On the Legs of Love Purified
White Zombie - Astro Creep 2000
Marilyn Manson - The Pale Emperor
King Buffalo - Longing to be the Mountain
Tomahawk - Anonymous
Nachtmystium - Black Meddle II: Addicts
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Atrium Carceri - Cellblock

**

Card of the day

Emotional purity that can cloud the head, alter the perception of self, in both good and bad ways. This feels like a direct reference to incidents with peripheral people in my life that have affected my own. And this interference, as I'll refer to it, has pissed me off enough that it has clouded my own emotional stability, and thus, my headspace. I had an extremely unproductive day writing yesterday. I 'punched in' and put in the time, but felt utterly useless. That's okay, that happens sometimes, and from my experience you just have to deal with it. You suck up the bad, knowing the good always follows and outweighs it. But that doesn't make it any less frustrating and, eventually, hellishly introspective to sit and peck at the keys for two hours with nothing that feels like a result following from it.

Incidentally, I also suspect these periods follow rabid involvement in slightly frivolous music. I'm not connecting with much sonically right now, as I come off my Rob Zombie binge, and it bugs me. This Atrium Carceri is the new thing in a while that feels like it is moving and inspiring me.

Decoding Tool's "Holy Gift"

I found this about two months ago. It's been some time since I've listened to Tool. They're a band I love but I have a very specific mindset that I have to be in in order to listen to. Part of this is because they are not a 'passive' listening band. Tool is very engaging with their music, I cannot just put them on in the background. I wrote a massive chunk of my first, unpublished novel to Lateralus and to this day it remains my favorite of their records. This was a time when I was also really falling into Magick and the album fit perfectly - the enigmatic way in which the band conducts itself lends to their mystique, as does a lot of the little 'hidden' things they do in their music and on their website. If you're interested in what I'm talking about go here. That's a link that was hidden on their site back around the time Lateralus dropped. How many famous rock bands spend time talking about/doing this kind of thing? To some it would be an act, the whole Magick thing, or a fashion, but to Tool and their inner circle there has always seemed to be the air of research into our world, and in keeping with this Tool's Holy Gift makes perfect sense.

There is a video here that explains the concept, but the basic gist is that the Fibonacci Sequence is integral to the record Lateralus - it contemplates or draws upon it in several places. Could there then be some hidden meaning/message in re-arranging the track listing of the record in accordance with Fibonacci's numbers?