I discovered this purely by chance and it's AWESOME.
NCBD:
March goes out with a BANG (and other such onomatopoeia). Gonna be a big haul today. Let's dig in:
All of the Rick Remender books I've been following since he left the Big Two behind and launched Giant Generator are either over or ending, and for a moment I was a little worried about where I'd get my fix. I've heard good things about The Scumbag, but honestly, when that book began, I'd had quite enough of scumbags in real life and wasn't really jazzed about reading a book with one as its main character. Maybe I'll go back and check it out at some point, but in the meantime, A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance has earned a place in my heart. This is like the best action/revenge/espionage/crime flick not on the big screen, with a bafflingly endearing main character we know next to nothing about and a bunch of walk-ons that pretty much get aced a few pages after their introductions. This is a fast-paced, widescreen example of the kind of synergy that happens when a writer finds the right artist, as RR did by enlisting André Lima Araüjo.
I love this book! It's a pretty out-there approach to Bruce Banner and Hulk, and it really shouldn't work at all, yet somehow 100% does, right down to this first story arc's title; Smashtronaut! How goddamn METAL is that?
Cautiously optimistic for Kieron Gillen's run to take Hickman's set-up and really do something special. Oh, and look at that, speaking of Jonathan Hickman, he's writing another X-book!
I've never been a huge fan of the vagueries of the "unlimited" books, but with Hickman at the helm AND Declan Shalvey on the pencils, well, I'm all in.
Let's go street level for a minute:
Another great indie crime book from the extended Brubaker/Phillips family. I'm really digging this one and feel pretty certain it's going to end up a streaming show sooner rather than later.
This is apparently a big deal, another female turtle named Venus? I'm unaware of the character but will follow this book wherever it goes.
Double the killer Eastman covers this month with the yearly annual, a tradition I largely eschew, except for with this book.
And I'm hanging around with this new Ghost Rider for at least this second issue. I feel like the tone of the art isn't quite dark enough for the character, however, that first issue may have presented itself that way based on the fact that Johnny Blaze was essentially being gaslit into thinking he was living the perfect suburban life, so let's see if things darken now that the cat's out of the bag and ol' flame head is back in control.
Playlist:
Opeth - Width of a Circle (single)
Nothing - Downward Years to Come
MadLove - White With Foam
Nothing - Guilty of Everything
Year of No Light - Consolamentum
Nurse with Wound - Soliloquy for Lilith
Newsletter Playlist (under construction)
Card:
Okay, this is beginning to feel like someone's set my house on fire and I'm too busy looking for the handle on the faucet to call 911. What the hell are you trying to tell me???
I'll admit - I was pretty disappointed to see this pop up in my youtube feed, click on it and find that it's NOT a cover of the David Bowie classic by the same name. That said, I don't take to very much of the music Opeth makes these days, but I dig this.
Dollar Bin:
Welcome back to the Dollar Bin, one of my favorite corners of any local comic shop to spend some time digging through. This week's find: 1985's Moonshadow!
Talk about a book that's been on my radar for decades - maybe as long as I've been seriously reading comics - yet one I haven't actually picked up until now. Originally published through Marvel's Epic comics - kind of their Vertigo a full eight years before Vertigo existed - Moonshadow's J.M. DeMatteis and Jon J. Muth's coming of age, modern fantasy. I remember leafing through this one when it was still on the stands, probably near the end of its 12-issue run, so circa 1986. I would have been ten. This and Stray Toasters were books that initially confused the hell out of me as a die-hard disciple of Larry Hama's G.I.Joe, however, those books also planted the seeds for me to eventually see the potential that lay in the comic format beyond superhero books. I recently scored issues 1-4 in the dollar bins at the Comic Bug, and am looking forward to reading them.
Watch:
I remember seeing the thumbnail for the first Wyrmwood movie on Netflix for years but never being motivated to watch it. I've had plenty of people whose opinions I trust recommend I do just that, but for whatever reason, I just haven't. Now there's a sequel on the way, and I'm still not certain how I feel about these flicks:
It's not that this looks bad, it just looks kind of repetitive. If anyone out there has seen these and vouch for them - because apparently like five of my good friends aren't enough - let me know.
Playlist:
Sugar - File Under: Easy Listening
Quicksand - Distant Populations
The Mysterines - Reeling
Ministry - Filth Pig
Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed (pre-release)
Svarte Greiner - Devolving Trust
Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror
Lower Dens - Escape From Evil
Opeth - Deliverence
Code Orange - Underneath
Card:
Again with the damn Hierophant. What the hell am I missing? What am I so blindly adhering to that it's impairing me in some way?
Holy F$*k! My good friend Jacob sent me a link to the new album by The Mysterines yesterday and when I dug into it, I very quickly realized it's freaking fantastic! I hear a bit of Savages, some Polly Jean Harvey, and overall a band I immediately fell in love with. So much so, I just bought tickets to see the band on May 4th at the Peppermint Club, a LaLaLand venue I've yet to attend. This will be my first concert since, well, you know, and I guess it stands as a testament to how much I dig this group that I effortlessly decided to go.
I remind myself constantly that I won't have access to this kind of show soon, so I need to enjoy the things about L.A. that I love now, while I'm still here.
Read:
After burning through all those Lovecraft stories a few weeks back, I became seriously shanghaied by his The Unknown City. This is one I'd definitely read before - and enjoyed quite a bit, might I add. For whatever reason though, this time, it's just not doing it for me.
So, prompted by a conversation with a friend who had just read it for the first time, I decided to re-read The Colour Out of Space. For this, I'm switching back and forth between the Kindle version and the one I have in this old anthology I acquired somewhere long ago at what I'm assuming was a second-hand bookshop somewhere:
This nifty little volume was published by nyrb classics (that's New York Review of Books, not the name of a new Lovecraftian species) and contains stories by Bram Stoker, Ambrose Bierce and Arthur Machen, as well as several other iconic cosmic/folk/weird fictions writers. I've read most of what's in here - this is a shelf volume I pull here and there and read from, and it's a great example of the kind of anthology a publisher can pull together with a coherent theme and a little bit of backing when the contents are mostly - if not completely - in the realm of public domain.
Playlist:
Ghost - Impera
Hyperia - Silhouettes of Horror
Electric Youth & Pilotpriest - Come True OST
Steve Moore - VFW OST
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Metallica - Kill 'Em All
The Mysterines - Reeling
Les Discrets - Prédateurs
Deftones - Gore
Card:
Standstill that requires a dose of either cash or luck or both to achieve a truly remarkable result. I'll keep this in mind throughout the week, as it seems to me there are several possible applications at the moment for this spread.
I'm doing a bit of mental restructuring and wanted this site to match. This is kind of my forward-facing mental pocket - a place I can tip out the contents of my head and sort it into something shareable with others, so it makes sense that it would grow and change the same as I do.
For S.E.S., I wanted to have one day a week where I could just put up a piece of music that, at that moment or in the moments leading up to it, has contributed to my current mental state. I also wanted to find a way to be more consistent posting without having to throw down the sometimes cumbersome regular format I employ. There was a time when not every post on these pages was as long as the current structure I've been working with for the last few years, and mixing and matching the two should keep my posting more consistent.
Pilotpriest and Electric Youth from the soundtrack of Anthony Scott Burns' (aka Pilotpriest himself) film Come True, which was on my top ten last year and which I am in desperate need of a rewatch.
The vinyl soundtrack is courtesy of Waxwork Records and can be purchased HERE. It's divided between both artists, with several tracks being collaborations or remixes. Here's my favorite credited to Pilotpriest:
A new video from Orville Peck's recently released Bronco, Chapter 1. I can't wait for the entire album to land and my vinyl to arrive. If you haven't already, you can scoot on over HERE to pick one up for yourself.
Watch:
Despite working slightly more than a full day yesterday, I had a pretty damn good 46th birthday. Nothing fancy. Homemade burgers and Demons 2 kicked things off, as I picked up that stunning Synapse Films double feature of Lamberto Bava's two Demons films back when it came out a year or two ago, and still hadn't set eyes on their transfer of the sequel.
Ironic that I could only find Arrow Video's trailer for their restoration of the film, but whatever. The Synapse transfer is gorgeous, and I'm quite happy with everything about it.
Later, to end my night, I threw on one of my recent favorites - Joe Begos' VFW. It'd been a minute since I'd seen this one, but I feel like all the beats are seared into my head thanks to that one magnificent Beyondfest double feature back in 2019.
I love this flick so damn much. Both this and Begos' Bliss are films I feel like I could watch every day. In lieu of that, I tend to just toss them on when I can, to re-experience not just the film, but that glorious final Beyondfest at the Egyptian, my favorite place in LaLaLand, now owned by Netflix.
Play:
Not only did my Nintendo Switch arrive yesterday, but I was able to pick up Puppet Combo's Nun Massacre from the online game store!
The game, like Glass Staircase before it - which I'd bought on my Mac a few years ago and quickly gave up on without a controller - is a bit difficult to get used to for someone who hasn't ever really played 360, immersive games, but very well worth the pangs of the learning curve. The atmosphere is stellar, and when the titular Nun takes to stabbing you to death, things get pretty intense. Definitely recommended for anyone who digs Horror and Games. Reminds me a bit of my all-time favorite Video Game, Shadow Gate, which still influences my personality endlessly, despite not having played it in decades at this point.
Despite all this love I'm heaping on Nun Massacre, however, it was another game I picked up at the same time that I spent the most time with. Thanks to a recommendation by my Horror Vision cohost King Butcher, I grabbed Game Kitchen's Blasphemous:
The image of that giant baby with its eyes stabbed out, held by a monster as it tears a person limb from limb sealed the deal. This is some insane shit, and I'm absolutely in love with this game, which was obviously designed by a bunch of Metal Head Stoners (my people) who were very much influenced by the Castlevania series, which, back when I played video games on the original NES system, was a favorite (especially part 2: Simon's Quest).
Playlist:
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed
Drug Church - Hygiene
Quicksand - Slip
White Lung - Paradise
Every Day (is Halloween) Playlist (Reveal in upcoming April 4th Edition of the newsletter)
Card:
Back to my Thoth mini. My intention was a three-card spread, however, this card literally jumped out of the deck at me:
A solid foundation to build from takes good, strong effort and clear thinking. Pertinent, as we just had another phone conversation with our Tennessee realtor. Things are moving forward, and I'll post more about it here when our machinations fully lock into place.
Today is my 46th birthday, and it looks like the four original members of one of my favorite bands saw fit to get me a little gift. That's right, a new track from Bauhaus, and one utilizing the ol' Exquisite Corpse technique we last saw them employ on my favorite Bauhaus album, The Sky is Falling.
Hopefully, this means we have a new album coming. I personally LOVED the band's most previous album Go Away White - the first post-break-up.
Play:
I surprised the hell out of myself yesterday by ordering a Nintendo Switch. Why?
I think I first got wind of Puppet Combo's low-fi indie games after reading a Bloody Disgusting article a couple years ago. Other than a love for DDR, I haven't played video games since the original Nintendo, so as much as I loved Glass Staircase when I bought it for my computer, I really didn't have the time or gumption to play it. But Puppet Combo's overall 70s/80s horror-inspired games are so damn cool to look at. Well, an article on BD yesterday announced his game Nun Massacre was hitting Nintendo Switch today, and I took it as a sign. Couple with that an interest King Butcher, my co-host on The Horror Vision, has stoked in me with the reviews of the newest Metroid game and Valfaris on previous episodes of our podcast, and I figured it was a win-win.
Plus, how the hell do I pass up a game called Nun Massacre?
Playlist:
Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed (pre-release single)
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Drug Church - Hygiene EP
Spotlights - The Age of Decay (single)
Deftones - Rosemary (single)
Peturbator - I Am the Night
Bauhaus - Drink the New Wine (single)
Card:
I felt like my Thoth mini deck (thank you, Missi!) hadn't been seeing any real action of late, so I decided to do my birthday pull using it. Here we go:
All good signs for prosperity. Which is a relief. Our plans to exit LaLaLand keep getting pushed around. First my medical shit, then the Nashville market - another reason to dislike Angelenos - now work stuff. The move is imminent, however, I also have a CRAZY idea for a short film project that the Universe seems to be telling me to reach for, so maybe I'll be here just long enough to try.
Many thanks to Heaven is an Incubator for posting about the new Blut Aus Nord album Disharmonium - Undreamable Abysses, out on May 20th 2022 from the always awesome Debemur Morti Productions. This sounds like a return to the 777 era of the band, so one track is really just a big freakin' tease.
