New Music from FEN!

In 2011, my good friend and Horror-Vision co-host Tori gifted me Fen's album Epoch. This, maybe more than any other album, propelled me headlong into Black Metal. I'll never forget the first time I hit play on Epoch; it was pouring rain - uncharacteristic for Southern California - as I drove home to San Pedro from Borders Books in Torrance where both Tori and I worked at the time. 

The rain was perfect; I've maintained ever since that this record sounds like it was recorded in the rain (whatever that means, exactly, I can't really explain). At the time I was also falling in love with John Crowley's Little Big, and that book, the weather and Epoch combined to invoke a nearly hallucinatory couple of days off. I kept up with Fen through the follow-up, 2012's Dustwalker, then kind of dropped off for no reason that had anything to do with the band. Seeing the release of Monuments of Absence last week, I was blown away by the opening track, which is considerably more severe than anything I've heard Fen do, though as I say, I'm behind a few albums. Looking forward to catching up, though.

Monuments to Absence dropped this past Friday, 7/07/23, so you can head over to the Prophecy Productions website and order a copy HERE.

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Watch:

Bloody Disgusting did an exclusive premiere of the trailer for the new company Neon Noir's first film, That's A Wrap:

Beautiful colors abound, so they definitely nailed that element of the classic Giallo aesthetic. I watched enough of this trailer to know I will be checking it out when it releases August 25. You can read Bloody Disgusting's full article about That's A Wrap HERE.

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Playlist:

Ghost - Stay (single)

Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

QOTSA - In Times New Roman

Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh

Godflesh - Pure

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse

Fen - Monuments to Absence

Fen - Epoch

Drab Majesty - Careless

Drab Majesty - The Demonstration

Final Light - Eponymous

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Forhist - Eponymous

Type O Negative - October Rust

Type O Negative - World Coming Down

Cocksure - Be Rich

INXS - Kick

Tennis System - Technicolor Blind

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Card:

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

It's been a minute since I handled the Bound deck, so I tapped into it for this morning's Pull:

• Knight of Pentacles - The Will as applied to Matter; Fire/Earth

• Knight of Wands - The Will as applied to Will; Fire/Fire 

• Page or Princess of Wands - Matter applied to Will; Earth/Fire

That's a lot of wink-wink about my Will, eh? I read this as a reminder to be present and apply patience, lest my Will, pulled taut, snap and leave me rudderless for a while. Long story short, I need a reset in order to carry on.

 

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David Bowie

6 fucking years. Wow.

I'll never forget it. I had just staged an intervention with my eventually-to-be ex-wife. Her parents flew out from the Midwest and the three of them were staying with me, in what used to be our home (and thankfully was now just mine). Her stuff was stacked all over my living room, and I'd graciously given up my bed so everyone else could have a good night's sleep after their long ordeal and drive out of the high desert. In other words, my life appeared to be in a shambles, but in reality, the shambles was well and truly behind me. She was probably at her lowest point, but I was on an upswing. I'd had a fabulous weekend. I had prospects for a social life. I had friends. I sat on the chaise lounge watching Chef starring John Favreau with my outgoing father-in-law (nice guy), trading texts and emails with prospective new love interests, friends, laughing and drinking beer well into the night, even though I had to be up at 4:30 AM for work.

Cut to when my first alarm went off. I was sleeping on the couch, my phone was beside me on the floor. I snatched it up as soon as I heard that tell-tale wake-up chime and silenced it. This would have been before I switched to an iPhone, so I was in Android country. Not sure how that factors, other than it's a detail I remember, so it fills the scene in. A moment later the phone buzzed again - too soon to have out-distanced my snooze - and when I picked it up, I saw a text from my friend Tori. It said, simply:

Dude. David Bowie died. 

I felt at that moment that all the progress I'd made, everything, was for naught. David Bowie taught me how to age - how to grow older with grace. How to navigate life's unending menagerie of madness with tact. I'd just exhibited this lesson in the two-and-a-half years it took my marriage to end, to get to the point where I was, about to send my ex and her family off into the negative zone outside my own peripheral existence. And now, my teacher was dead.

Fuck.

Six years later, we return to the same stage - it's Sunday night while I'm typing this, the long-delayed love of my life curled up on the sofa by my side, Black Star playing on the stereo. I lost three cats, gained one, started a bunch of podcasts, ended one big one, gained friends, lost some, turned my back on others. Life continues to throw its curve balls at my head, and I duck and pop back up and smile.

Just like David Bowie taught me.

 

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Watch:

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Playlist:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞

Huey Lewis and the News - Sports

Tennis System - Technicolor Blind

Tennis System - Lovesick

Tennis System  - Bitter (Single)

PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

Depeche Mode - A Question of Lust EP

Boy Harsher - Careful

Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

Fleetwood Mac - Tusk

Beach House - Once Twice Melody (Disc 1)

Felicia Atkinson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Un Hiver En Plein Été

Fleet Foxes - A Very Lonely Solstice

Chet Baker - Baker's Holiday

The Yellow House - Refurbished

David Bowie - Black Star

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Card:

Transformation. 

Blackened Metal Hero

My follow Horror Vision host Tori recently turned me on to Bölzer. This album is fantastic! A Black/Extreme Metal band, I was floored to discover Bölzer is a two-piece! This record is fantastic, and mixing/mastering/recording engineers Victor Santura, Michael Zech, and the enigmatic D.G. really knew how to steer the band into a sonic space that more than makes up for any 'missing' instrumentation. I'd say the sound of this album, which really knows how to use an ample but still tasteful amount of reverb, is one of the fullest metal band sounds I've heard in a while. There's a definite 'space' to this recording, and it's big and dark and bold.  

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Podcast

 

A new episode of The Horror Vision went up last week. I've recently moved beyond just the audio component of the show, and started making extremely rudimentary 'videos' for each episode. The plan is to eventually make a more involved video, or - gasp - do something similar to DwC, but with that show slowly creeping back toward reappearance, where I'll find the time remains to be seen. Until then, enjoy us talking about the genre we love, and if you dig it, leave a comment and let's talk Horror!

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Watch:

Tuesday after work I rented Jeremy Gardner's new film After Midnight. Produced by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead - Benson has a small supporting role in the film - Gardner wrote and co-directed this one, as well as starring in it. As it stands now, After Midnight will almost definitely finish 2020 as my favorite film of the year.

 

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Playlist:

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Lake Street Dive - Making Do (Single)

Bölzer - Hero

Zombi - Shape Shift

Zola Jesus - Stridulum

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Card:

Back on track, big time.

2019: Numenorean - And Nothing Was the Same

My good friend Tori recently turned me onto Canadian band Atmospheric Black Metal band Numenorean. Now, those qualifiers I placed before the band's name - which I culled straight off the tags on their Bandcamp - approach a description of Numenorean, but they certainly do not define the band. The new album Adore, recorded over the span of three years and released recently on Seasons of Mist, is an exploration of the crossroads of so very many different musical styles within the ever-widening sky of 'Metal' and 'Shoegaze'. Numenorean have a very unique sound that encompasses elements of so many ideas. The first two tracks have definite moments that make me flashback to The Cure's Disintegration. I hear Deafheaven, Fenn, old school Iron Maiden, Second Wave Black Metal, etc, etc. The point is, the record is fantastic and if you agree, spread the word!

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A little over a quarter of the way through Gemma Files' Experimental Film, the book has slipped its spell over me completely. There's nothing genre here; back in my bookstore days, I would imagine this shelved under Fiction/Lit instead of Horror. There's nothing wrong with genre. In fact I love it, read it, and write it. However, there is a different feel to more literary works that utilize Genre ideas. Experimental Film is one of those. Files brings you into her First Person Narrator's world, rife with the onset of Middle Age, an Autistic Son, and a career path that requires a lot of spec work and not much in the way of compensation. This of course complicates the other aspects of her life. The over-arching narrative drive, that there is an isolated house in Northern Canada where a millionaire's wife may have used early, highly volatile Silver Nitrate Film to accomplish Occult Phenomena in the  early Twentieth Century, is seeping in around the edges, and how any of the former relates to the latter, other than it's our Narrator's obsession and attempt at making a mark in the Academic world researching it, is unclear at this point. What is clear, is that the dark things I can feel on the horizon of this novel will occur in the same clearly written and beautifully rendered examination of occurrence as the daily ups and downs of the Narrator's life. Call it a slow burn if you want; Experimental Film reminds me more than a little bit of the work of Bret Easton Ellis, and I am enjoying it very, very much.

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Watchlist from 5/25 was the remainder of Season One of Ozark, on into the first two episodes of Season Two. Jesus, this show is strong; it remains to be seen if Season Two will weave so many dramatic plot points together as Season One, but it's certainly off to a good start.

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Playlist from 5/25:

Sunn O))) - Life Metal
The Veils - Total Depravity
The Yellow House - Refurbished
The Pogues - Red Roses For Me
The Police - Outlandos D'Amour
Isis - Celestial
Ghost - Prequelle

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Card of the day:

From the Grimoire: "The Lunar Pull on seemingly unconnected processes." Well, we're currently in Waning Gibbous, the first phase after a full moon. So we're slowly moving beyond revelation. Also, this card has several 'face value' applications, the most obvious of which in terms of Magical Significance, is the Scarlet Lady riding the Seven-Headed Beast of Revelations. This is the destruction of what came before, and the approach to a new paradigm. There is also a transition from Severity (Geburah) to Mercy (Chesed). But really, all this is just me playing an endless guitar solo; showing off, because I don't have any idea how this card applies to me at the moment.

Or maybe I do...