2019: June 20th New Drab Majesty!

Still catching up on all the stuff that dropped while I was radio silent, finishing Shadow Play Book One: Kim & Jessie. If you come here often, you'll probably get sick of hearing the name of my new book, but I'm excited and relieved like you would not believe. The first book of Shadow Play - conceived as a non-traditional trilogy with ample room for spin-offs - took me seven years to complete. Sure, there was about eight months off at two separate intervals during that time, but during that time, I was kind of working on it, too. Letting something you've written sit in a proverbial 'drawer' for the better part of a year and then going back to it, doesn't necessarily mean you're not working on it. Is "Indirect Writing" a phrase? You know, letting the story stew in its own juices?

Anyway...

Drab Majesty's new record Modern Mirror is out July 12, just over three weeks from now, and I am very excited to get my copy of the vinyl in the mail. You can still pre-order this one from the wonderful Dais Records HERE.

**

Yesterday was NCBD, and it proved a fantastic leveler for me. I wrote earlier in the month about a sudden existential crisis pertaining to collecting monthly comics - part of it's space, part of it's longevity, part of it's douchey first-world anxiety - anyway you call it, the accumulation of such a large collection has begun to wear on me in a way I never would have anticipated (and I've downsized majorly on several occasions in my life). But to look at my pull list yesterday and know that I was leaving several titles behind and several others were close to finishing made me feel pretty good.

Garth Ennis' A Walk Through Hell is coming to a close next month, The Empty Man ended with this week's issue 8, and Black Science closes its doors in July. With the elimination of all the mini series, or the series on this list, as well as those most likely not coming back (*ahem* Southern Bastards, I'm looking at you), well, I'm edging my way out of collecting.

That's HUGE.

I'm probably going to end TMNT in seven months at issue 100, switching to digital trades instead, and I may do the same for Seven to Eternity as well. That doesn't leave much. Of course, I'll still buy anything Warren Ellis does, but I'll probably just wait for the trades, like I've been doing with The Wildstorm (still need to read that third volume!). The goal is to have the only periodical-format books I buy be The Walking Dead, Stray Bullets, Criminal, and Gunning for Hits, the last two because they have such a wealth of extra material in their monthly format, the first two because they're grandfathered in and I love them. Even Gideon Falls may fall off, as with this week's issue the story opens up considerably wider and I feel like it might be losing me. I'm getting a Lost vibe, and as much as I enjoyed watching that series as it aired, it's something I never need or want to be reminded of again.

We'll see.

**

Playlist from 6/19:

Blur - Eponymous
Blur - The Best Of
Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino
Arab Strap - The Red Thread
Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun
Blur - 13
Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun
Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables

**

Card of the day:

From the Grimoire: "A positive result dependent on the actions of the Querent." I'm taking this and yesterday's Breakthrough as directly referencing the completion of the book. Next, I have a small 'marketing' plan I intend to follow through on, so hoping the good tidings will flow directly into that.

2019: June 19th - New Chelsea Wolfe!

Holy cow. I don't post in five days and everyone drops something new. What do I start with? Doesn't matter; what a great problem to have!

Chelsea Wolfe announced a new album and tour dates after dropping a new song. As always, Ms. Wolfe has kind of become the dark queen of my heart. I love the fluidity of her aesthetic, the fact that it meshes fine in shades of Desert acoustic, or lavish, droney Doom. Here's the album trailer:



**

Shadow Play Book One: Kim & Jessie is completed! I've ordered a few proofs of the paperback, and once I go through that and confirm everything is tip top, it will be available on Amazon, at The Comic Bug, and hopefully, shortly in Barnes & Noble and any other store that will carry me! Gotta start looking into getting into the Baker & Taylor system. It's all so exciting! What's even more exciting, though, is the cover art, courtesy of my good friend Jonathan Grimm:

Grimm is an amazing artist - he really hit the "Paperbacks from Hell" aesthetic without even being asked to. And folks, he is for hire! Contact him HERE for all your freelance needs. Seriously, he does it all.


**

South Park Season 19 is probably one of the most intelligent examples of social commentary ever. A joy, start to finish. I can't believe this show can continue to remain this relevant. Kudos the Parker and Stone.

**

Two episodes left on Doom Patrol Season One, which I'm now comfortable saying is my favorite comic book adaptation ever. Yep. Ever. I also began re-reading the Grant Morrison/Richard Case run from the late 80s/early 90s that a lot of this show is pulled from. I can't say I'd forgotten how brilliant the book is, but I had forgotten major arcs, so it's cool to revisit. And Branden Fraiser's Cliff Steele is awesome for many reason, but in particular, he reminds me SO MUCH of my good friend Mike Shin that it's uncanny. Speaking of Cliff, one of my favorite Cliff moments occurs at the tail end of the following clip:



Look at that gator jump!

**

Playlist from the last few days includes but probably wasn't limited to:

Henry Mancini - Charade OST
The Doors - Waiting for the Sun
Orville Peck - Pony
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Deftones - Gore
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
Blur - 13
Blur - Eponymous
Blur - The Best of
Various - A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night OST
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
The Temptations - Psychedelic Shack
The Knife - Silent Shout

**

Card of the day:

Breakthrough!

2019: June 14th - Dr. Sleep Teaser

Holy. F*&k. This, this I can't wait for. IT chapter 2 is exciting, but Doctor Sleep directed by Mike Flanagan... words can't describe my anticipation. Which is a little unnerving, because I had a lot of anticipation for Pet Sematary, too, and look how that turned out. That said, I'm still inclined to think the problem with PS was the studio not allowing Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer make the movie they wanted to make, while Flanagan has such a solid, lengthy track record at this point, I'm sure he will be able to do what he wants, just as I'm sure what he wants to do is make a great Stephen King adaptation from a great Stephen King novel.

If you haven't read Doctor Sleep, do so. Now, if you're able. It's fantastic.

And thanks to Mr. Brown, for lending me his copy back when it came out, ensuring I had a chance to read it early on.

**

Hey, hey! That new Baroness dropped today. I'll be listening to it all morning, but tell ya what - this opening track freakin' rules!



**

Playlist the last few days:

Soul Coughing - Irresistible Bliss
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick
Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky - Droneflower
Arthur Ahbez  Gold
King Woman - Doubt EP
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Final Blindness 7"
Finitribe - Make It Internal
Orville Peck - Pony
Helmet - Aftertaste
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Helmet - Size Matters
Helmet - Dead to the World
Odonis Odonis - Post Plague
Spotlights - Love and Decay

**

Card of the day:

Leaving behind the symmetry of the sixes and moving into uncharted - and possibly murky - waters. I'm reading this as caution going forward with the next project, as I have less than three hours of work remaining on Shadow Play before I order the proofs. It's been a hell of a battle to finalize this, and I'm still not convinced I won't be reading it again in full when the proof arrives. Either way, my time on Ciazarn is coming back around again, but where that should feel strong, I've got two shorts hanging on as loose ends. Should I begin with those, knock them out and then dive back into the Dust Bowl? Not sure.

2019: June 12th Marissa Nadler & Stephen Brodsky - For the Sun

Very cool video. That image at 1:15 is creepy as hell. I'd forgotten about this record, so thank you Sargent House for dropping this and reminding me!

**
Not a big day for NCBD today, but that's good. Fits with my existential crisis regarding stuff from earlier in the week. I am, however, really looking forward to the new issue of Gunning for Hits:

The back-matter in this book alone is worth the cost of the individual issues, as loaded into the music business both past and present as it is. Absolutely worth your time if you're a music fan.

**

Playlist from 6/11:

Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Jamiroquai - Return of the Space Cowboy
Orville Peck - Pony
St. Elsewhere - The Odd Couple
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

**

Card of the day:

I will be on the look out, as something I have planned is going to fall flat on its face. Being that I woke up at 2:00 AM this morning, I'd say that's my plans to work on the final edit later this afternoon. Not a total loss, as I used that extra time between waking so early and leaving for work to fix a particularly perplexing chapter.

2019: June 11th Orville Peck - Dead of Night

It's been a few days since I posted about Spotlights' new album Love and Decay, and in that time, another album Mr. Brown recently recommended to me shot into my top tier of my year as well. Orville Peck's Pony probably won't bump Spotlights from number one, but it will definitely occupy a spot in my favorite albums of the year. Pony is rich in tone and texture; the production is cinematic and windswept, an allusion to the vastness of Peck's interior space, his voice ringing out across dusty plains. And while there are a plethora of influences that serve as way stations along the album's winding route, Peck's own unique persona leaves quite the mark on the outlaw country crooner tableau forged long ago by his predecessors.

**

Over the weekend, as I was finally catching up with the comics I seem to stay perpetually behind on, I experienced a weird existential moment. Since downsizing my digs last year, space has been a continuous issue in my life. A lot of this is due to my obsessive need to make space where there is none; to arrange everything just right. Feng Shui became a marketing term for something I actually believe in, something Ben Horne perfectly encapsulates in Twin Peaks' Season Two when he tells Hank Jennings he believes there is a perfect way to organize the objects in any given space, an arrangement the benefits of which could be untold for those who dwell within that space (I'm paraphrasing; I couldn't find a clip). So my reading and subsequent filing of a few months worth of Punk's Not Dead and TMNT incited an initiative to reorganize things. This in turn spawned a project to make space in my long boxes (which I'm slowly switching out with short boxes because, you know, moving those goddamn things is a pain in the arse!), which caused me to start a pile of books to get rid of. And it was in weighing the suspect books in this context that made me look at each title and think, "I'm forty-three. Will I ever read this again in my lifetime?"

After a few minutes of this line of thinking, the concept really gained weight, creating an inescapable portal through which to view my own mortality. What's more, I began thinking about the space required to house all my comics and I wonder: why do I even do this? Will I ever re-read 100 issues of TMNT? Probably not. Of course, I want to read this stuff as it comes out because there's an excitement to that, and a community. I've always believed in and valued supporting what I love. That said, at what point does having this stuff merely turn into a slowly decaying echo in an enormous empty space?

Thoughts along these lines haunted me much of Sunday, and what's more, I've no real answer. There are books like Criminal and Gunning for Hits that offer so much awesome backwater content exclusive to their monthly installments that I feel 100% warranted buying them as ongoing periodicals. Also, these series tend to be short enough and good enough that re-reads will most likely remain regular occurrences (been meaning to re-read The Fade Out again for months now). And then there's the titles I literally can't wait to read every month: The Walking Dead, Gideon Falls, and A Walk Through Hell. Everything else I read is great, but can I do without it? Could I switch to buying digital collections as they come out? If I do that, what do I do with all my physical copies?

The sad thing is, there are no answers. At least not at the moment. Stayed tuned: I believe this brand of Existential Crisis will, for me, be ongoing.

**
Watchlist:

The Craft
The Dark Backward (three times in two days; there's a bigger post coming about this one)
About a quarter of an old Video Nasty called Nightmare, which I may or may not return to

**

Playlist from the last few days went something like this:

Grand Duchy - Petite Fours
Spotlights - Love & Decay
The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
Hall and Oats - Essentials
Sigur Rós - Takk...
Van Morrison - Essentials
James - The Best of James
James - Laid
The Foundations - Eponymous
Orville Peck - Pony
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper
The Monkees - Headquarters
Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
Canadian Rifle - Peaceful Death
Sigur Rós - Variations on Darkness
Henry Mancini - Charade OST

**

As if in answer to my diatribe above, perhaps I do need to adjust some things...

2019: June 8th Spotlights - Mountains Are Forever

Well, thanks to Mr. Brown, I found my album of the year. It's early, so this could conceivably change, but I pretty much always know my album of the year the moment I first hear it, and brothers and sisters - this is it! And to think, I'd never even heard of Spotlights before, a husband/wife duo whose new album Love & Decay is out now on Ipecac Records and can be streamed or purchased HERE.

Love & Decay feels a lot like the MBV album I wanted to hear when I ordered their loooong-awaited follow-up to Loveless back in 2013, the self-titled and unfortunately underwhelming eponymous record. I also hear Soundgarden, Deftones, and a lot of other bands I like in the sound of Spotlights, but never in a way that feels trite or repetitive. This leads me to declare for myself and like-minded music lovers a new classic and a band to follow and be excited for from here out! Always a great day when I can say that!

**

I've talked about Kristen Gorlitz's awesome horror comic The Empties in these pages before, and it's time to talk about it again because Kristen just launched the Kickstarter for issue #3! You can go to the Kickstarter page HERE to read more about it and support it; if you've read the first two issues of The Empties, you'll most likely be like me and not need any more convincing. So good!



**

I finally had the chance to watch the new Criterion Edition of David Lynch's Blue Velvet last night. Wow. Gorgeous transfer. This film never gets old for me; I enjoyed this viewing as much as or more than the countless others I've had since discovering this film back in the mid-90s. What I didn't expect  last night was my reaction to the 53 minutes of deleted scenes included as extras on the disc. I watched a few and really had a sense of inspiration in editing. I mean, you look at all the extra stuff Lynch filmed and you can practically see how making Blue Velvet helped him grow as a filmmaker over the course of its creation; all the Jeffery-at-college and Jeffrey-comes-home stuff that got cut would have, if included, very much weakened the film. The elegance to the progression of events in the version that Lynch released and we all love is so much more apparent and enjoyable after seeing the scenes he cut. And after waiting 20+ years to see this stuff - scenes we never thought we'd see back in the Wrapped in Plastic days - I found I could only watch about twenty minutes of them before I grew exhausted and decided to save the rest for a later date.



**

Playlist from 6/06:

Man or Astro-Man - Intravenous Television Continuum
Spotlights - Love & Decay

Playlist from 6/07:

Man or Astro-Man - Intravenous Television Continuum
Spotlights - Love & Decay
Los Amigos Invisibles - The New Sound of the Venezuelan Gozadera
Pelican - Nighttime Stoties
Bloody Hammers - Under Satan's Sun
Primus - Antipop

Card of the day:

Paradigm shift! Just in time for the next project.

2019: Blood Machines!

This morning I backed the Blood Machines Kickstarter, something I'd not heard of until two days ago. In a nutshell, Blood Machines is a soon-to-be film by French director Seth Ickerman that is based on a video he made for Carpenter Brut's song Turbo Killer back in 2016. You can read more about the evolution of this project and see some more nifty behind the scenes stuff HERE. Backing is officially over for this and the film is fully funded - and then some - so it looks as though this amazing project is going to see the light of day!

Here's the original video that sparked all this off:



**

Watchlist from the last two days:

First episode of AMC's Adaptation of Joe Hill's wonderful lovel NOS4A2. Did not like this at all, but I'll give it a chance. AMC is definitely one of those networks that won't really go all into a show until it's proven to have an audience.

Also, Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace, which I'm always shocked isn't discussed more as the obvious key influence to Dario Argento's Suspiria. Bava crafted a gorgeous Giallo with this film, and it very much satisfies every time I watch it. And the score! Why isn't this available on vinyl? Waxwork or Mondo - I'm looking at you guys. Someone give the music in this film a new great new edition!



Also, caught a bit of Dead Birds last night on Shudder.tv and now really want to go back and watch the entire thing.



**

Playlist from

Stereophonics - Just Enough Education to Perform
Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible 20
Sigur Rós - 22° Lunar Halo
Sigur Rós - Variations on Darkness
Sigur Rós - Takk
Sigur Rós - ( )
Man or Astro-Man - Intravenous Television Continuum

Playlist from 6/06:

Man or Astro-Man - Intravenous Television Continuum
Spotlights - Love & Decay
Golden - Eponymous
Ennio Morricone - Black Belly of the Tarantula OST
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

2019: June 5th Stereophonics - Mr. Writer

Wow. It has been a minute since I dug into Stereophonics. So long, in fact, that I'd forgotten how great this band is. And this particular track comes from a great album, too, although one that can be difficult for me to engage with, since it mentally and emotionally ties my thoughts back into The Yellow House, a band I was in that I loved, but that ended abruptly. That's tough; bands breaking up are a lot like couples breaking up. There becomes an entire subset of people and music and corridors of thought that you end up having to put to the side to avoid those messy little nerve triggers. With Stereophonics - and more specifically the album Just Enough Education to Perform, which I'm listening to for the first time in at least ten years as I type this - those triggers kick in on the second track, Lying in the Sun. I remember hearing this song for the first time after The Yellow House was already really up and running, playing shows and getting our name out there. I remember hearing this track and thinking, "Hey, that's a lot like what we're doing. Cool." It meant a lot at the time, to have a band that was successful in a way that we wanted to be, that had a similar aesthetic. Stereophonics weren't really all that big in this country, but at the time almost nothing worth hearing was. They had a solid fan base probably everywhere else in the world, and they were cool. That's what was largely missing from the 00s. Not many people were cool anymore; that aesthetic - which granted can go sideways real fast and make you look like a douche - was replaced mainly in the 00s with people yelling and screaming about their prozac, how messed up they were, and the like. Bands like Stereophonics and BRMC were cool.

My introduction to Stereophonics also dovetailed with my first trip abroad: I remember walking into the first hostel in Dublin in January 2002, and this video was playing on the tele. The track has always had the particular ability to spin me back in time to that exact moment, the way the air tasted, the electricity of being somewhere new. Which is always something to be experienced sparingly, so as not to wear out the Magick.

Hearing these tracks this morning, I'm blown away; the songs and my responses to them are a reminder that I am a completely different person today than I was during The Yellow House. Which is precisely how it should be, but it's interesting to step back every now again and remember.

**

NCBD! Very excited for these, especially The Walking Dead. If you're reading it, you know why!

Found out recently this series ends with a double-sized issue #30 in July, so this is the penultimate chapter! Expect even more insanity than we've had, which is really going to be saying something when all is said and done:

Despite initial confusion, I ended up loving the Lapham's Lodger series for IDW's Black Crown. And now, I'm excited to be back with the old gang again in Stray Bullets:

The start of a new, and apparently longer, arc. This book is aces. Read it:

**

About the time I posted yesterday's blog I realized I was sick as fuck and not going to work, so I spent June 4th confined to bed, where I finished Gemma Files' Experimental Film. A powerhouse; such a great novel. Creepy, well-written, and almost clinical in its plotting. I wondered if the climax would go as large as the plot teased, and if so how that would work. There's that moment where, depending on how supernatural or numinous a novel's plot has teased, Speculative or Weird Fiction has to make a decision to either go full-bore, bringing the 'monster' on camera or not. Ms. Files goes all the way with it, and she does such a fantastic job with it. Nothing seems ridiculous. That's the trick. You have to give the reader something they've never seen before and make them believe in it. And Experimental Film does that very well indeed.

**

Watchlist yesterday was another episode and a half of Doom Patrol. SO fun watching Cliff Steele kick nazi ass while Dead Kennedy's blare on the soundtrack. I can't recommend this show enough.

**

Playlist from 6/04:

Cat Rapes Dog - Maximum Overdrive
Tears for Fears - Songs From the Big Chair

**

Card of the day:

Remain open to the influence of the Universe. Pretty sure unexpectedly digging into old Brit rock and staying home from work (and feeling guilty about it) for the second day in a row are the direct manifestation of this draw. I've been sick or not feeling well (read: exhausted) since the 19th of May, and the recurrences from what seems a tiny bug are due, I think, to a lack of rest. So yesterday I didn't leave bed, save for about an hour where I sat in the living room and listened to two records while reading. Also, I didn't allow myself to write at all. I put all the anxiety and expectations and frustrations of this final edit under the bed for a day and just did nothing but read Gemma Files. Today, while once again planning to stay in bed, perhaps I will work on reading the book.

2019: June 4th Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Trailer!

To say I have extremely high hopes for this one is an understatement. I know, I know; that's never a good idea. That said, when was the last time GDT let us down?

**

Good news! Just to prove I'm not an anti-DC Comics curmudgeon, I watched the first two episodes of the DCU app's Doom Patrol last night and it is AWESOME! So happy for this. A fabulous cast, dark yet often hilarious vibe - thanks in large part to Alan Tudyk's narration - and stories ripped right from Grant Morrison and Richard Case's seminal early late 80s/early 90s run, but altered in a way that really keeps the spirit of the book's madness. Such a joy to have this. Also, watching this made me realize it's probably been 12 or 13 years since I originally read Morrison and Case's run, so I'm starting that today. More like this DCU, please!



**

Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - In the House of Strange Affairs
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult -  Confessions of a Knife
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - I See Good Spirits, I See Bad Spirits
Earth - Full Upon Her Burning Lips
Man or Astro-man? - 1000X
Man or Astro-man? - Intravenous Television Continuum
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. 1: △△

**

Card of the day:

Pure Will is what will be required from me to competently finish the novel; I've read this thing now multiple times, but it's been multiple versions as I've refined the plot. This was my first heavily plotted novel (my first novel that's going to see the light of day in a published capacity), and as such there's plot detritus hanging around my head from other versions. This final, post-Beta Reader go-through is to catch any last minute spelling or grammatical errors, neither of which should be possible at this point, as a human Beta Reader can miss something - though Missi didn't miss much - but Scrivener, Grammarly, and Vellum should not. I'm finding the first two have indeed missed a few small errors, and it's freaking me out. There's a predilection for reading absent-mindedly when you have had this much contact with something, and thus I'm requiring Pure Will to stay as focused as possible while reading. I'm roughly 40% of the way through, so I've adjusted my goal to end-of-week I order the first proof, so we'll see.

2019: June 3rd Chelsea Wolfe Covers Roky Erickson (RIP)

I've been so ensconced in my little final edit bubble, I only left the house this weekend to run errands on Saturday, and I've had the phone on Airplane Mode for the better part of the last three days. This means I did not know Roxy Erickson passed away on May 31st.

I wasn't as exposed to Roky's music as many, but I discovered the 13th Floor Elevators in my Ex's CD collection in the 00s and was immediately drawn to the sound, if only in a small way. The Elevators always seemed like a band I hadn't known I knew about, if that makes any sense. Their music - or what I knew of it through that one "Best of" disc - felt like an archetypal piece of Americana that informed a lot of the other, more top-level stuff I was into. And I believe that's exactly what it was. In 2014 I covered a Post-Elevators Erickson song in a band I was in (I Walked with a Zombie), and during that period, I did some subsequent digging into Erickson's music and found what I believed was one of the quintessential "Nuggets" artists. If you're unfamiliar with Nuggets, there's an entire subset of bands and artists that carved an archetypal niche in 60s Rock music, referred to mostly as Psychedelic. Many of these bands never made it beyond the status of Garage Band. Many of them became better known in the modern era through radio shows like Little Steven's, and subsequently a series of Anthology albums titled Nuggets. In this way, these bands and their aesthetic became an aspect of left-of-center popular cultural, and that's where the Elevators and later Roky's music lived until it began to inspire an entire new generation of artists in the 90s and, more so it seems to me, the 00s, when bands like The Black Angels brought them a little farther into the cultural vernacular of Rock Music.

Anyway, I'm dangerously close to talking about things I'm mostly unfamiliar with. Chelsea Wolfe's cover is gorgeous; a fantastic send-off. Roky Erickson, Rest in Peace.



**

Watchlist report: Well, I made it through everything from Friday morning's list I am likely to, plus some. Here's the scorecard:

Godzilla - skipped it. Not a huge fan by any means, and despite the fact that the film looks beautiful and fun-as-hell, after deciding against it Friday night, we just couldn't find the time to go see it amidst my editing schedule.

Swamp Thing - Disliked this very much. The usual DC shenanigans of getting the look down and then putting only the most perfunctory work into building characters and story. Swampy's origin itself has been altered in a way that's so convoluted by the end of the pilot, it doesn't bode well for the future, imo.

Ozark - Season Two Finale - FUCKING BRILLIANT.

The Perfection - I'd purposely avoided reading anything about this film, but had been anticipating it for a few weeks, since I heard about it on the Shockwaves Podcast. Loved the first half, felt the second half became something that betrayed that first part. Not terrible, but uneven and thus, frustrating.

Deadwood - FUCKING BRILLIANT. A fitting, beautiful end to one of my all-time favorite series.

**

Playlist from 6/01:

Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Zeal and Ardor - Live in London
Zombi - Shape Shift
Zombi - Spirit Animal
Bloody Hammers - Lovely Sort of Death
Bloody Hammers - Under Satan's Sun

Playlist from 6/02:

Sunn O))) - Domkirke
Steve Moore - The Mind's Eye OST
Jóhann Jóhannson - Mandy OST

No card today.

2019: June 1st Bloody Hammers - From Beyond the Grave

Bloody Hammers is a band Jonathan Grimm just turned me onto. Really cool stuff. They've got a new album out June 28th from Napalm Records, you can pre-order it HERE.

**

All that debating on what to watch last night, and we ended up getting through one episode of Ozark before K fell asleep; that's about the time I realized we actually went into yesterday with three episodes remaining, not two. Once she was out, I put on Swamp Thing and promptly fell asleep, too. So yeah, epic fail.

**

Playlist from 5/31:

The National - High Violet
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Faith No More - King For a Day
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Wasteland
The Cure - Pornography
Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets
My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - 13 Above the Night

**

Card of the day:

"Unfailing determination toward your goal."

That shakes it. The two major adjustments on Shadow Play will be done by the end of the weekend and the book will be submitted for Proofs on Monday.

2019: May 31st Dark Season 2 Trilogy Trailer

Just under a month until the second season of Netflix's Dark drops and they reveal it's going to be a finite story done in three seasons? I really couldn't think of better news for this show. Dark already feels extremely symmetrical, so it's awesome to hear that symmetry goes all the way through into its DNA. And why do I get the feeling that the 'Everything is connected' line is going to be especially true for Dark? Can't wait!

**

Tough decision for this evening: Godzilla: King of Monsters, Swamp Thing or the Deadwood movie? All three premiere today; the very definition of First World problems.



Or



Or



Whatever our decision, in preparation, I signed up for my 7-Day Free Trial of the DCU app through Firestick last night. Really had to fight the urge to start Doom Patrol, but that has to wait a little bit; we still have two episodes of Ozark left to watch. The general plan is binge Doom Patrol and keep the subscription for the duration of Swamp Thing. Also, I noticed the 2015 Constantine show is on there; not a perfect adaptation of the character storywise - as I remember the episodes range from fantastic to terrible - but Matt Smith is perfect casting as John Constantine, and from the few episodes I did watch back when it aired, there were some gems. So while we have the DCU, might as well take advantage and re-watch and finally finish that series as well.


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Playlist from 5/30:

How to Destroy Angels - Welcome Oblivion
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
Bloody Hammers - Lovely Sort of Death
Ritual Howls - Into the Water
Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Jaye Jayle -No Trail and Other Unholy Paths
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
Isaac Hayes - Tough Guys OST
Marilyn Manson - AntiChrist Superstar
Monolord - Rust
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Sigur Rós - Variations on Darkness

**

Card of the day:

Old paradigms dissolve, new ideas shape the future. My Beta Reader is all but finished with Shadow Play. The art's done (I'll reveal it here soon); all I need to do is one last concentrated read through and it's go time!

2019: May 30th - 3 Days Until NOS4A2 Premieres!

I just realized that AMC's adaptation of Joe Hill's NOS4A2 premieres this Sunday. How the hell did I miss this trailer!?! I can't wait for the show, as the book is probably my favorite Joe Hill novel. Well... Heart-Shaped Box might be neck-and-neck with it, but they're both exceptional, outside-the-box horror fiction.

Of course, this comes at a super busy watch-time, as K and I are still working our way through Ozark; on Season 2 now and it's really getting dark. Literally. I noticed last night that, where Season 1 was had a very blue pallet, Season 2 is shot extremely dark; almost darker than anything I've seen in this level of show. Not a complaint though, because it works! It's a tonal accompaniment to the characters' descent into their maelstrom that reminds me of Paul Schrader's Autofocus, which begins very pastel and slowly grows into darker and darker hues as Bob Crane's descent into addiction. Boy does it work. And Friday I'll be signing up for the DCU app for the duration of Swamp Thing. Also on the slate for that subscription window is a binge on Doom Patrol. And now we're adding NOS4A2! This might be the very definition of First World Problems, not having enough time to watch all the things I've been looking forward to, but that's what I come here to talk about; I'll leave politics and the rapid decline of civilization for limited real-world encounters, because I'm pretty fucking sick of seeing it discussed online!

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New episode of The Horror Vision is up! Topics of discussion include but are not limited to Mike Mendez's The Convent, Emma Tammi's The Wind, Pledge, The Nest and Valencourt Books' Paperbacks from Hell subscription service, the newest installment of Mortal Combat, and a whole lot more!

Apple
Spotify
Google Play

Or just catch us on our website, The Horror Vision.com

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Watchlist from the last few days has been Ozark Season 2, David Cronenberg's Rabid, and actually, last weekend I had a viewing of Cronenberg's Videodrome, one of my all-time favorite films.

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Playlist from 5/28:

Earth - Full Upon Her Burning Lips
Earth - Primitive and Deadly
Wasted Theory - Warlords of the New Electric
Wasted Theory - Defenders of the Riff
The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
Primus - Frizzle Fry

Playlist from 5/29:

PJ Harvey - Uh Huh Her
Natural Snow Buildings - Night Coercion into the Company of Witches
Numenorean - Adore
Anthrax - Persistence of Time

**

No card today.

2019: May 28th Earth - Datura's Crimson Veils

Full Upon Her Burning Lips, the new album by seminal Doom/Stoner/Grunge band Earth dropped last Friday, and it's fantastic. First track, Datura's Crimson Veil is a one of the best lead-ins of the year. I was late to the party with Earth; 2014's Primitive and Deadly was the first album I got into by the band. That record had a very particular meaning to me at the time of its release, and the sound of Dylan Carlson's guitar on that record is forever ingrained in my psyche in a very positive way. It's no surprise then, as Full Upon... feels like a direct follow-up to Primitive (not necessarily a given with a band that has been around this long and reinvented itself as time has gone by; think Swans), I was immediately taken with the new album's sound. You can order directly from Earth's label Sargent House from anywhere in the world via their shop's web portal HERE.

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I finally dragged myself to the coffeeshop on Sunday and put in a solid couple of hours writing. It wasn't the most productive day, but the first day back after a hiatus never is. That's not what it's about; you have to re-establish the ritual and the inertia. Then yesterday knocked me back a peg. No problem, because as I write this I already feel as though today will be a productive day, I'll simply have to work for it.


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Playlist from 5/26:

Mastodon - Once More Round the Sun
Minsk - The Crash and the Draw
Minsk & Zatokrev - Bigod
The Cure - Disintegration


Playlist from 5/27:

Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours
The Doors - LA Woman
Drab Majesty - The Demonstration
James Brown - Hell

Card of the day:

With so much time off from writing, I'm frustrated by too many ideas, by being over-worked, and losing sight of my ability to organize. I have to take the first steps to introduce order - in this case the ritual of writing - and just suck it up until I am 100% back on track.

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!

**

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.

**

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

**

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...