New Music from Corrosion of Conformity!!!

 

New album Good God/Baad Man, out April 3rd. You can pre-order from Nuclear Blast Records HERE. Sounds good up real loud. Would you expect anything else from COC? Nope.

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Watch:

If you want to hit the theatre this weekend and have a ton of fun, my recommendation is right here:

I knew nothing about this film going in - I don't even think I'd heard of it before a week or two ago. Written by David Koepp - whose name I knew I recognized but did not realize from how many movies (Jurassic Park, Stir of Echoes, Presence, Premium Rush) and directed by Jonny Campbell, Cold Storage is a BLAST! Joe Keery, Georgina Campbell, Liam Neeson, Sosie Bacon - we've got a stacked cast, a great setup and an execution that evokes a bit of a comparison to such films as Slither, Street Trash, and Return of the Living Dead. This is kind of the pop version of a splattery outbreak flick, and it just works. 

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Read:

I finally got around to reading Savage Sword of Conan issue 11, the now-fabled issue helmed entirely by Liam Sharp. All I can say - asbsolute masterpiece!

That's a piece of full-page art from the issue, which Mr. Sharp posted on his Substack newsletter The Brave and the Bold - which you can subscribe to HERE. 

This book is just extraordinary, and I do not mean just the art. The storyline is pure Hyperborean Weird Fiction - Conan is injured and enters a liminal realm within which nothing is as it seems. Wolfmen, a beautifully dangerous sorceress, and scheming rulers all vie for his assistance. As usual, the Cimmerian is his own man, even in the face of insanely unfavorable odds. 

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Playlist:

Daydream Twins - Solstice For Embodiment

John Cale - Fear

Corrosion of Conformity - Deliverance

Mr. Bungle - California

Tomahawk - Eponymous

Brand New - The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me

Lamp of Murmur - The Dreaming Prince in Ectasy

Burzum - Filosofem

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Ulver - Neverland

Blut Aus Nord - Thematic Emanation of Archetypal Multiplicity

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

David Lee Roth - Crazy from the Heat EP

David Lee Roth - A Little Ain't Enough

Corrosion of Conformity - Gimme Some Moore (pre-release single)

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Card:

Continuing my newly reinvigorated workings with the Thoth deck:

Note to self: the green light works much better with Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Prince of Wands

• XX: The Aeon

• Ten of Wands: Oppression

The "Airy" aspect of Fire, or MOTIVATION. The Will to change the work, the paradigm, the Aeon and not succumb to the Oppression of the familiar. 

While there's some genuine intuition in this reading, I feel like I've fallen back on rote interpretations and interpretative guides. The added inroads I've made with this deck and Tarot in general just do not seem to want to stick. Part of this is because I am always distracted and I am always anxious. I hate that - I did not use to be this way. Modern Life is Rubbish, though, and it's pretty difficult not to be distracted in this day and age. Oh! What's that - yeah, that's right. I talked a bit about restarting meditation a few months ago and NEVER DID. You think that might help? Yep....

James Gunn's Superman

 

I've really been 'feeling' CDs lately. I think January/February always inspires me to return to a state of mind that reaches through time and connects to the mid-to-late 00s, when the internet was amazing, and the world hadn't yet shifted into a post-apocalyptic paradigm.

At the time, shortly before I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, I was finishing up years of playing in bands and gigging pretty regularly. I met a lot of bands this way, and one of the fiercest was Amherst, Massachusetts' Read Yellow. 

I either saw or opened for these guys at Chicago's Fireside Bowl. Read Yellow had a big, noisy sound slightly reminiscent of Sonic Youth, but that comparison sells Read Yellow short. This band has such energy! When you exist for an extended length of time inside a live indie circuit, one thing you often find - and it definitely plagued a band or two of my own -  some bands who have fireball energy live don't always find a way to translate that to a recording.

NOT the case here.

Although Read Yellow broke up years ago (I just double-checked), their website is still up, which definitely suggests someone in the group understands the need to keep their flame burning, even dimly, for future generations to find.

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NCBD:

BIG week this week at the comic shop. 

This cover says it all! Looking ahead on this book's solicitations, Kirkman is building something epic with Megatron. The increased focus on his volatile madness we've seen over the last few issues is about to burst, and it should make for some awesome reading along the way. Also, I'm still just blown away by Thundercracker defecting to the Autobots. So cool!

A Lovecraft adaptation in mini-series form, it's been a couple of years since I read the original short story, The Thing on the Doorstep, but I'm really interested in how it will translate here, maybe because we never did get that Richard Stanley cinematic version he talked about doing after The Color Out of Space.

Having just caught back up on this book and found Splinter resurrected, I'm very curious how this is going to play out. On the surface, I don't love the idea of long-dead characters coming back from the dead, but I'm willing to give Turtles the benefit of the doubt. 

Ever wanted to see a priest kick the Mafia's ass? This is the book for you! Loved the first issue, can't wait to dig into number two!

Larry Hama's GIJOE: A Real American Hero hits another milestone, and to celebrate, he's apparently introducing two new Joes! Being that we're free and clear of toy tie-ins, unless Classified wants to take a nod from Hama, I'm pretty intrigued. What would two new Joes in 2026 look like? We'll find out today!

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Watch:

As I alluded to in Monday's post, my ventures into the DC Absolute universe have dovetailed with something... else. Let me explain.

This past Sunday, I woke up feeling burnt out. Reading a Substack newsletter from John Pavlovitz about the absolutely blatant racism of the *ahem* superbowl halftime alternative cooked up by magacunts and kid rock,* I found myself overwhelmed again by the "We can't fix this" mantra that has pretty much played on a steady loop in my subconscious since 2018. I don't doom scroll; I don't really 'scroll' all that much at all anymore, but what I have been doing is looking through the various newsletters I receive in my email. I happened on a new one from Grant Morrison's Xanaduum, and falling into the prosiac embrace of a man whose writing I was once obsessed with, I felt the urge to walk over to the bookshelf and pick up his 2011 treatise on Super Heroes as hopeful, psychological antibodies for the modern disaster.

Not looking to add yet another book to the "currently" or even "soon to be" reading piles, instead, I re-read the introduction and was reminded why Morrison once spoke so strongly to me. The bomb had begun as an idea and humanity had worked to give it material form. So too, could another idea - one infinitely more powerful than a mere bomb - be conjured into our lives to stave off the destructive potential assailing us?

Being that Morrison wrote about this way back in 2011 - when things were infinitely less F*cked than they are now - I had to ask myself, might I not need something like this now? Might I not benefit from exposure to something all-powerful and brimming with, of all things, hope?

It was with that in mind that I hit play on James Gunn's Superman laster that day.

 

All I can say is, always happy to be proven wrong.

In my defense, I have long answered the friends who assured me this film was great and that I was missing out with a patented, "I know it's great, I just don't care." So I simply reached a point in my lfie when I do care, and the film definitely worked its magic on me. 

My good friend Chris Saunders asked me to elaborate what I liked about the film and I rattled off the following list:

- That Nick Hoult's Lex Luthor was clearly designed to look like Grant Morrison was the film's evil doer

- That Coresweat somehow managed to avoid all the stupid foibles all other good-natured attempts at Supes have fallen prey to (from what I saw in Snyder's Batman V. Superman, his wasn't good-natured or cloddish, he (and Snyder) just had too much to prove by taking the chacter dark.

- That Rachel Brosnahan was born to play the role of Lois Lane

- That Gunn cast Wendell Pierce as Perry White

- That Edi Gathegi's Mr. Terrific stole every scene he was in

- That Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner cut and attitude were spot on

- That Pruitt Taylor Vince played Pa Kent

- The Monkeys!

- "Thanks, bitch!"

Honestly, I'm shocked how much I liked this, but I'm not sure why. Apparently, my love of James Gunn far outweighs my detestation of Superman as a character. 

For more, Mike and I discuss the film at length in the latest episode of Drinking with Comics, which I'll embed here in a few hours when it posts to youtube.

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* So proud that my long-time friend Cap'm Jack once cut KR's tires in a Michigan venue parking lot! I loved that story at the time - back when this cunt was first getting national exposure - but I love it even more now.

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Playlist:

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Drab Majesty - Careless

Mr. Bungle - California

Mr. Bungle - Disco Volante

Mr. Bungle - Eponymous

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity

Pixies - Surfer Rosa

Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol.1 

Mountain Realm - Rustborn

Mountain Realm - Frostfall

Atrium Carceri - Kapnobatai

David Lee Roth - Crazy from the Heat EP

David Lee Roth - A Little Ain't Enough

Helmet - Aftertaste

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Corrosion of Conformity - Deliverance

sunn O))) - Glory Black (pre-release single)

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Card:

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

• XVII: The Star

• XX: The Aeon

• XXI: The Universe

The reason I waited to discuss this was so I could have already talked about James Gunn's Superman, Grant Morrison's Super Gods, and this idea that I might be able to use these larger-than-life characters to help assuage the fears and neuroses. 

The Star - thinking bigger can act as cleansing. The figure on the card is literally washing themself in the rivers of cosmic confidence.

The Aeon - Pass from one ruling paradigm to another, or it's never too late to change, no matter how difficult it is. No matter how big a change it requires.

The Universe - Think macrocosmic, not microcosmic.

I'm going to pursue an interest in superheroes again - especially Superman - as a way to try and tip the scales and shake off some of the unhealthy mental 'doom plaque' that's built up since, oh, 2016. I'm going to read and enjoy in an active, not a passive manner, where I imagine the foes the super gods are fighting are the foes to the healthy world I want to inhabit, both in my head and outside the walls of my house. It might be a fool's errand, but it's what Superman would do. (since when do I say things like that? Well, maybe it's time I incorporated that kind of thinking into my life.)

You Absolutely Know More Than I Know

From John Cale's 1974 masterpiece Fear. Cale's delivery in this song is haunting - it's both sarcastic and filled with a tired sense of surrender. Feels appropriate when looking at world leadership from a private citizen's perspective.

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Read:

Somewhere around 2008 I read Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman. I loved about half of that book and didn't care for the other half. No way of knowing if it was the King half I loved, but I'm guessing that, although you probably can't separate a collaboration like this into two completely self-contained 'halves,' that's probably close. Because of this, I never got around to cracking open the copy of 2011's sequel, Black House, and I just kind of forgot about these books. I love King, but I'm nowhere near what I'd call a completist with the man's work. Not because I wouldn't like to be, just because I don't have that much time in my life for his insanely prolific output!

Fast forward to last year, when I picked up a hardcover copy of The Talisman at a thrift store with the intention of sitting down for a re-read. It's not the original cover, but the 2001 edition:

Fast forward to earlier this year, and an article went around the internet where King talked about how the current book he was working on - a third and final book in the Talisman series - might be his last. Then, a few days ago, the press announcement hit for Other Worlds Than These - that third and final Talisman novel. You can read more about that over on the delightful Stephen King fan site Lilja's Library HERE. One thing King talks about here, is how this also ties up the Dark Tower's Mid-World, which King says, "...was always the Territories by another name."

Holy f*ck am I excited!!!

Apparently, although Straub passed away in 2022, the core idea of this one comes from him, and it's certainly nice to see his name on the third and final chapter. That's Stephen King, though. All around great human being. 

Also, the title for the new book comes directly from the very first Dark Tower novel, when Jake Chambers falls to his death and tells Roland, "Go then, there are other worlds than these." 

In some ways, this is one of the most influential and magical literary quotes that I've ever encountered in my life. I read The Gunslinger for the first time way back in early High School, when I found the trade paperback edition with Michael Whelan's gorgeous art in it at the school library. This was early enough in the series that I was able to go to my local public library and find Book Two: The Drawing of the Three (also with Whelan's art) and then wait with bated breath for the third book to come out about a year later. I've toyed with the idea of rereading the Dark Tower books for some time, as while I reread 1 and 2 when 3 came out and then reread 1, 2 and 3 when 4 came out, that cycle of rereading stopped when 5 came out, and I did 1, 2, 3 and 4 in preparation. Of course, due to the years-long hiatus King needfully took on the series after being struck by a car (those were dark years where many of us feared we would never get an end to the series), so 5, 6, and 7 I've only read once, as they came out. Will I have time to do that before I read Other Worlds Than These? Well... maybe. Scheduled for release on October 6, it's not out of the question. First, I'll start with The Talisman and Black House. 

This pushes a bunch of planned reading for the year back, but that's fine. This feels BIG, and I want to be in on it for the full ride, even if just to properly celebrate King and Straub's legacy.

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NCBD Addendum:

I'm sure anyone who keeps up with this page could have guessed this would happen, but I finally broke down and picked up Absolute Batman. In a true old-school maneuver, I grabbed the just-released Absolute Batman Volume 2: Abomination, choosing to jump in without the first arc's setup, much like buying comics off the stand in the 80s, before the proliferation of the write-for-the-trade paradigm. After reading this, I can say is, okay. Now I get it.

It's all about the BIG picture with this book, which is a plus for a Batman book. Nothing against the story of the week feel of the current Fraction and Jimenez run at all - that feels refreshing, too. But in my eyes, Snyder's Absolute Batman's strength seems to be building toward one big story and it has a lot of interesting elements to the setup that make me rabidly curious. 

- Pennyworth's constant references to "The War."

- Ark M as a blacksite just off the coast of Gotham, the surface-level construction hiding something dark and massive underneath. Also, the fact that this Ark M is literally "Ark: M," which I take to mean number thirteen in a proliferation of similar sites around the globe. 

- Genetically engineered snow dropped on the population to ready them for something nefarious

- Doctor Arkham turning men into monsters for purposes as yet unknown.

And of course, all that ties directly into that 16th issue that introduced this Universe's version of Joker - an ageless Billionaire with a butler, a cave beneath his mansion, and a stranglehold on the globe via economic, military and political posturing achieved over his inhumanly long life.

So yeah, reminder to self that sometimes the hype is earned. So that's two Absolute books I've converted to following in trade over the last month. Absolute WW is still the better book, but this one's intriguing as all get out, and combined they have me wondering if, despite my longstanding loathing of Superman as a character, I should check that one out as well. 

... And that 100% dovetails with something that happened to me/occurred to me shortly after typing the above paragraphs. Something I'll talk more about in Wednesday's post.

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Playlist:

Mountain Realm - Stoneharrow

Mountain Realm - Tribal Alliance

Darkswoon - Thread (single)

The Chameleons - Strange Times

Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest

(Lone) Wolf & Cub - May You Only See Sky

Canadia Rifle - Peaceful Death

Drain - ... Is Your Friend

Exhalants - Eponymous

Slow Crush - Thirst

Various - 85 Seconds Playlist

sunn O))) - Metta, Benelvolence BBC6 LIVE: At the Invitation of Mary Anne Hobbs

David Lynch & Marek Zebrowski - Polish Night Music

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Tamaryn - The Waves

Boy Harsher - Careful

Revolting Cocks - Big Sexy Land

Tool - Ænima 

Mastodon - Blood Mountain

Swann Danger - Deep North

Au Pairs - Sense and Sensuality

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Card:

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

• XVII: The Star

• XX: The Aeon

• XXI The Universe

All Major Arcana - rare for me - means BIG ideas, BIG picture, BIG everything. There are a few interesting connections I can make here, but I'm actually going to wait until Wednesday. Aaaaannnnd... I'll retake and light this picture better.

Better Lovers - Drowning in a Burning World

 

Absolutely LOVING the debut album by Better Lovers, Highly Irresponsible! You can snag the record from the band HERE, or listen on all streaming platforms. This shit will wake you up!

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31 Days of Halloween:

K and I got to see Hereditary on the big screen again last night. My third overall viewing of Ari Aster's breakout debut, and it still totally fucking ROCKS!

The fact that Toni Collete's performance was overlooked by the 'Industry' just solidifies what a pack of cunts they are.

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1) The Killing of a Sacred Deer

2) The Houses October Built (2011)/Texas Chainsaw Massacre (50th-anniversary theatrical screening)

3) Loop Track

4) It's What's Inside/LONGLEGS

5) The Babysitter/Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

6) The Hitcher/Lost Highway

7) GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats

8) V/H/S Beyond

9) Killer Klowns from Outer Space

10) Terrifier 3

11) Summer of '84

12) Rosemary's Baby/Suspiria ('77)

13) Daddy's Head

14) Undead

15) Moloch/Tea Cup (episode 1)/ Evil Dead 2

16) Smile

17) Laura Hasn't Slept/Smile 2

18) Terrifier

19) The House of the Devil - Last Drive-in Presentation (original air date April 26, 2019)

20) The Woods

21) Rob Zombie's 31

22) Carrie 2: The Rage

23) The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

24) Planet Terror

25) Baron Blood

26) The Blob ('88)/ The Thing/Tremors/Abigail

27) Halloween Kills

28) Over the Garden Wall

29) Hereditary

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NCBD:

Not much on my pull today. In fact, only one book. Is this the best we can do the week of Halloween, publishers? Really?

Okay, then, allow me to talk a bit about some books I picked up while in Chicago over the weekend. As usual, I stopped in at Amazing Fantasy Comics, and so far, my favorite thing I picked up was the first four issues of Horror Anthology Epitaphs From the Abyss.

This is Oni Press's revival of EC Comics, and I wanted to pay special attention to the editorial "mission statement" in the first book:

"From the earliest stages of this project, we've agreed amongst ourselves that it would be a fool's errand to try and produce a knock-off simulacrum of the original EC titles... Instead, we've challenged ourselves to imagine a world where the Comics Code never unceremoniously amputated EC's publishing line at the end of 1955 and, through that lens, what kinds of series and stories EC Comics would be producing for a new generation of readers eager to disturb and discover in the year of 2024."

Talk about the right way to approach an undertaking of this magnitude!!!

Look at these covers, courtesy of Lee Bermejo (issues 2-4) and Andrea Sorrentino (issue 1). Absolutely fantastic, and inside? Well, let's say where the revived Creepshow comic (and show) mostly leaves a lot to be desired, Epitaphs from the Abyss is a great read that takes familiar characteristics of the age we live in and turns them against us (even more than we already do ourselves!). 

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Playlist:

Sumerlands - Dreamkiller 

Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers and Queers

Various - The Daptone Super Soul Revue LIVE at the Apollo

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Dinosaur Jr. - Sweep It Into Space

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

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Card:

Today, we're going to take a look at XX: The Aeon.

From my own personal Grimoire: "The Pivotal Sequence - what comes next is upon you!"

Another note I have that catches my eye right away is "Holography- multiple outcomes contained within a whole."

For Crowley, this card was all about Nuit, arched above Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child. Nuit is the doorway to the new Aeon. So much of Crowley's work revolved around the Age of Horus. Did it come upon us? Probably. Did it affect us? Definitely, although these kind of subtle energies never manifest as anything as gaudy as a flying saucer landing on the white house lawn or some politician tearing away their flesh to reveal a scaly visage beneath (not yet, anyway). These energies creep in through the back door of the human collective unconscious and change the world by changing us over time. I'm reminded immediately of Donald Tyson's bone-chilling essay, "Enochian Apocalypse" (read it HERE). I'm also reminded that in his Book of Thoth, Crowley has this to say, "... the child Horus is born... he is also solar in character, and is therefore shown coming forth in a golden light." To which I drew an arrow and wrote in the margins oh so long ago, "UFO???"

Now, that's not to say I believe in UFOs (or whatever they're called now), but the idea for the card is something arrives that will change your perception of what is real or possible. The very definition of a new Aeon, eh?

Day Tripping

 

Let's perform sacrilege: I'll take this version of any of these three songs over the original Beatles version any day of the week. 

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Watch:

 

 Holy shit, I got chills on that final image. Chills - and I have no attachment or experience with the Jane Foster Thor storyline from the books. Trust in Taika.

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NCBD:

Small haul this week. 

If that isn't the most Metal cover since Daniel Warren Johnson's Beta Ray Bill series last year, I don't know what is.

This cover has me extremely excited to see where Donny Cates is taking this book.

Speaking of books I need to re-read and catch up on, The Nice House on the Lake is long overdue for me to reconnect. I keep toying with the idea of just waiting until the entire thing is out, but I'm kind of chomping at the bit to see where the story has gone in the last two issues since it returned after hiatus, and also to re-read those first six books and see what I missed. 

I finally read last month's We Live: Age of the Palladions White #1 and Black #1. I dig it, might be bowing out, but I dig. I think the thing that endeared the first volume of this one to me was how it began as kind of a Girl with all the Gifts apocalyptic story and then, in the last pages of the final issue, became something totally different. Now that the new paradigm has been established, I'm not as interested as I was before. I'll always be thankful I stuck with that first series, though, just to see the transformation. 

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Playlist:

Various Artists - Nativity in Black: A Tribute to Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath - Technical Ecstasy

Sepultura - Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos (single)

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Sepultura - Chaos A.D.

Alice in Chains - Sap EP

Sepultura - Quadra

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Card:

I've already been feeling as though there's a shake-up on the horizon. This makes me think it's sooner rather than later. 

Dreaming of A Dream Away

If you listened to Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards, you know that it ended this week. And if you listened to that ending, you'll know why I posted this song. 

*The counterargument says Bret is referencing Blondie's "Dreaming", but I feel that one mindful comparison between these songs makes it pretty clear that he's referring to this one).

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NCBD:

ASM #73: One left after this. I have NO idea what the hell is about to happen, but I sure as hell am enjoying the build-up. 

Deadly Class #48: Each of the last two issues literally dropped my jaw at one point, so we'll see. My guess is the series will end at 50 and Rick Remender is just being very protective of that fact. There's also a part of me that thinks this might be the end. We'll see. The book definitely feels as though it's winding down, and with it being the last of the original Giant Generator books Remender launched back in 2014 (I think) when he announced his departure from Marvel and sole focus on creator-owned stuff, it definitely feels like we're in the home stretch.

Defenders #2: The first issue was pretty cool, and Javier Rodriguez's art very much reminded me of J.H. Williams III's art on Alan Moore Promethea, which is a HUGE compliment and HUGE pull for me on this one. Rodriguez creates a very interesting and unique visual world, and I can't wait to see more of it.

The Last Ronin #4: At this point, I'm definitely needing a reread of the entire series just to get the proper context for this new issue. I'll end up reading it anyway (I won't be that ill-prepared, as Last Ronin is, at its heart, a classic story archetype, which is why it's so damn fulfilling to begin with), and save the reread for after the next (final) issue hits. 

The Me You Love in the Dark #2: I really loved the set up in issue one, so let's see where this one goes. Rooted in what feels like classic Haunted House tropes, I'm pretty sure this will do anything but hit the standard marks. 

MOTU: Revelation #3: Super tight story so far, a perfect accent to that Netflix series, which I find it hysterical to watch all the MEN cry about its storyline following... gasp! - a girl! Gimmie a break. One of the best things about the new show is I only had to hear "By the Power of Grayskull!" Once. Well, twice, but if you watched it, you know what I mean.

The Nice House on the Lake #4: No idea where this one is going, but I'm really enjoying how it appears to be taking its time, developing the situation through the development of the characters

Star Wars: War of the Bounty Hunters #4: This one's been so-so story-wise, but it makes up for that by being the first comic I've read featuring the one group of SW characters I never get tired of: The Bounty Hunters! (obviously)

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Playlist:

K's Zeal and Ardor Playlist

Miranda Sex Garden - Fairytales of Slavery

K's 60's Playlist

David Essex - Rock On

T. Rex - The Slider

The Cars - Eponymous

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Card:

Moving into a new chapter. 

The Empty Spoils of Power

 

This one's been in my head since I broke out Ice-T's sophomore record Power a few days ago. Interesting how something that, technologically speaking, sounds so archaic, could be so catchy. Is there hope for those old-school 80s sounds yet? You know, the ones that came preloaded on consumer-grade Casio keyboards by the time we hit the mid-90s? The Night Court bass, Pan Pipes and the like? Maybe. I believe that's what a contingent of artists that hovered around the moniker Hypnogogic Pop attempted in the 00s, but in many cases, that attempt failed. IMO. Hearing this track now though, perhaps the time is ripe for someone new to come along and reclaim some of these weird 80s textures.

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Watch:

Having read the two comic series as they came out, the first in 2014, the second a year or two ago, I enjoyed Cullen Bunn's The Empty Man, so when I saw there was a movie, I became both excited and hesitant. Then I saw Lustmord did the OST, and I knew I had to watch it.

I dug this one. The ending fell a bit flat for me, but overall, Director David Prior really conveys a heavy sense of forbidding that was a blast to experience. There's a great sense of dread - made palpable at times by Lustmord's brand of creepy cosmic textures. The funny thing is, in watching this, I don't believe it felt so much like an adaptation of the material from the comic, as much as it did the comic if it had been a novel by Laird Barron. 

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Playlist:

 

Christopher Young and Lustmord - The Empty Man

High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings

John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - Halloween III: Season of the Witch OST

ILSA - Preyer

Roy Ayers - Ubiquity

 

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Card:

 I'll be paying special attention to Big Ideas today.