Hellboy's Evil Eye

 

From Valkyrie's 2020 album Fear, I dug this one back out recently, and although I did really like it at first introduction, I haven't really given it much play lately. That's changing - this is a fantastic record and one that seems stuck in my current rotation. Also, just realized Valkyrie released a follow-up in 2021 that I haven't heard yet. That's about to change...

You can check Valkyrie out on their Bandcamp HERE or on Relapse Records' site HERE. 
 

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Watch:

I skipped the Neil Marshal Hellboy film from a few years ago because, from everything I read at the time, Marshall's version of the film is not the one that ended up being released. Sure, David Harbour had huge shoes to fill (literally) stepping in as a replacement for Ron Pearlman, but Harbour's no slouch in my book, and I'd expect he did a great job. A few people I know who saw it gave it favorable reviews, but I just don't know - when I read that the Director didn't go to the review because he felt his film had been trifled with, well, I lost interest.

Now we have a whole new Hellboy coming in, and honestly, I'm excited (and I appear to be alone). I won't get my hopes up too high, but seeing that Mignola and Golden wrote the script and were heavily involved, well, that definitely bodes well. Also, hot damn if Jack Kesy doesn't almost look like Pearlman while in makeup. Here's the trailer that Bloody Disgusting posted yesterday; read their more in-depth article HERE.

 

Directed by Brian Taylor, who will forever be in my good book for the Crank films and HAPPY!, it's looking like Millenium Media has pulled off a great new starting point for more Hellboy films, especially seeing that they have definitively stated Hellboy: The Crooked Man is an R-rated Folk Horror Film.

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Read:

The latest issue of Fangoria arrived late last week, and it's killing me that most of the articles inside are about movies I'm already chomping at the bit to see. The newsstand cover is Ti West's Maxxxine, but the subscriber cover is, well, apparently a secret:

I've looked around online, and although the embargo has been broken, it hasn't been broken much, and not by Fangoria itself, so I'm playing it cool and only going to post the cover as they have teased it. Regardless, I LOVE this. 

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Playlist:

Audio Commentary - A Field In England

Zombi - Direct Inject

Valkyrie - Fear

Beyond the Void Podcast: Director of The Coffee Table - Caye Casas 

The Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers and Queers

The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

Tina Turner - Private Dancer

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Four of Cups

• Ten of Swords

• Six of Wands

A solid foundation for emotional support during a climatic time that, ultimately leads to harmony.

Yeah, that's about as vague a reading as I've ever posted here. I'm dancing around shit I don't want to recognize at the moment, and the cards seem to understand that; like they're drawing it out of me. Which, of course, is what they do because the cards aren't magick, they're just windows into our subconscious. 

Valkyrie - Afraid to Live

Easily now my favorite of the records I received from Relapse Records by way of randomly getting their 20th Anniversary's Golden Ticket back in 2020, Valkyrie's Fear is a work of art, and definitely shares more in common with the work of bands like Led Zeppelin than a lot of modern bands do. That doesn't make them better, it just makes them unique. At the moment, this is my favorite song on an album of favorite songs.

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Read:

I finally went back and read Rick Remender and André Lima Araújo's A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance 1-4 in one sitting. I'd read issues one and two as they came out, then forgot about the book, picked up three and four and have basically had them sitting on my reading pile for a few weeks. 

This book is fantastic; it's lean and has a velocity that pulls you page after page in short order, with a bunch of, "wait, did I miss something" moments that are all leading up to revelations that will no doubt draw the story into a cataclysmic conclusion. I can't wait to read more.

I also finished Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy by finally closing out volume three, The Amber Spyglass. Being that the HBO/BBC show's third and final season is soon to be upon us, and being that said show is such a spot-on adaptation of the books, I am very curious how this third installment will look. There are several very strange facets to this third chapter, including but not limited to the Mulefa and Gallivespians, and I can't wait to see how the show approaches them. 

It's insane to think it's been nearly twenty years since the last time I read these books, and I was supremely baffled by how little I remembered of this one. If not for so vividly remember the scene where Lyra and Will release the aging god from his protective litter and watch him dissipate, I would be tempted to think after seeing the second half of the trilogy performed as theatre-in-the-round at the Royal National Theatre's Oliver Theatre in London back in 2003, I neglected to finish this third volume. That doesn't seem to be the case, though, so it's been good re-reading these, especially at a time when ignorance is so plentiful, it gives hope to remember there are intelligent forces at work in the world.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - VFW OST

The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust

Valkyrie - Fear

Odonis Odonis - Spectrums

Fleet Foxes - Shore

Cocksure - TVMALSV

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Card:

I could not have drawn a more perfect card, as only moments before executing this pull, K and I booked 73 nights in Tennessee for Mid-April. This will be the hardest and yet most rewarding journey of my life, and we have just taken the first step on its path! 

Valkyrie - Feeling So Low

One of my favorite albums from my Relapse Records 30th Anniversary Golden Ticket is Valkyrie's Fear. Some call this Proto-Metal, and that fits pretty good for me, although straight-up Hard Rock probably also works, as long as that moniker doesn't diminish the band in any way. Because Valkyrie feels like a very tight four-piece making metal that doesn't slot into the modern broth a lot of the bands I dig sip from. There's a definite 'back-to-basics' with instrumentation, arranging, and vocals, so in that regard they remind me a bit of The Devil's Blood or Baroness. But these guys are their own thing, and I dig it.

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Watch:

I don't remember hearing about Director Chad Crawford Kinkle's new film Dementer before seeing this post on Bloody Disgusting recently, however, with Larry Fessenden's name on top of the video drew me in, so that as I was about to post this trailer last night, I realized Dementer released this very day, so I hit amazon and rented it for a paltry $4.99 - SO very worth it.

The trailer doesn't give anything away, so my elevator pitch would be, "Gummo meets Hereditary." If that sounds as intriguing to you as it does to me, rest assured that although Dementer takes a little bit of a laborious journey to achieve its destination, the destination is 100% worth it, the atmosphere alone inciting a pleasurable Horror movie anxiety the likes of which I haven't had in a while

As an aside, it's been a difficult couple weeks at work - the unprecedented weather in the south basically destroyed FedEx's operations out of their Memphis hub for a fortnight, and with it, made my life a living hell. One of the things that always helps me through a rough day at the office - other than the copious amount of music I listen to on my headphones - is browsing Bloody Disgusting for new movie news. But almost a year after the first major changes due to the COVID-19 virus, the film industry's shut down is finally hitting us in the form of what feels like a MAJOR drought. People just haven't been able to film, and we've run through a lot of what was already in the pipes pre-pandemic, so there's not a lot coming out. First-world problems, I know, but it doesn't change the world from feeling even bleaker at the moment. In contrast to this was my stumbling across Dementer last night and being able to click over and jump right in. 

 

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Playlist:

Jackie Wilson - Higher and Higher

Melvins - Working with God

The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control

Lynch Mob - Wicked Sensation

The Misfits - Earth A.D.

The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - Carnage

Blanck Mass - Animated Violence Mild

The Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup (single)

The Foundations - Baby, Now That I Found You (single)

Various Artists - That Philly Sound Presents The Best of Northern Soul 

Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Queensrÿche - Empire

Keiichi Okabe - NieR:Automata OST

Valkyrie - Fear

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Card: 

The Elevatred (or Macro) view is always the clearest when it comes to details on the horizon.