Fen's New Album Dustwalker

Somehow a new album by the band Fen came out on January 25 and I missed it entirely!!! Here's the first song I could find on the ol' tubeyou. If you're into good black metal (yes, there is such a thing, quite a lot of it actually!) then this is the band. I reviewed their last record here. To sum it up, the thing sounds as though you are listening to it through a rain storm. It goes great with reading John Crowley's Little, Big as it has a forest tone, all dry branches and soiled, dead leaves, mud trails and flickers at the edge of your vision.

Slayer - Raining Blood Live

Few things get the blood pumpin' like Reign in Blood-era Slayer.

Nick Cave Live @ LA's Fonda Theatre 2/21 Streaming for a few more Hours

The Mindscape of Alan Moore

Wanna Know About our Specials?

We haven't got any.

image courtesy of untajuleil.blogspot.com

Wanna Know what Jason Newsted's been up to?

I had to post this before I'd even listened to it just because Newsted is the only person to make it out of metallica alive who doesn't seem to be full of shit. Much props to Robert Turjillo who totally deserves the success of being in a band as huge as the aforementioned band that should not be but Newsted obviously just became fed up with the bullshit of the other three and left. Glad to see him making music.

Wanna Know What the World Looks Like Through Google Glasses?

Thanks to Joe Hill for Tweeting this.

Brian Eno Doc - Imaginary Landscapes

Thank you to Warren Ellis who tweeted this today.

Tomahawk - Oddfellows Video

Perhaps my favorite song off the new record, although White Hats/Black Hats and Southpaw are up there as well.

Upstream Color - The Score

Shane Carruth put the score to his upcoming film Upstream Color - the follow-up to his BRILLIANT Primer - on his soundcloud page today. Go to see it here.

I posted the trailer for Upstream color about a month or so ago but here it is again because I just CANNOT wait to see this movie!!!

Black Sabbath in the Studio

I have no illusions that "13" - 3/4ths of the original Black Sabbath's first record since the late 70's - will be good, but hopefully I'm wrong. Sabbath's original "Ozzy" years are among the most cherished albums I've encountered in my lifetime, but you know - you can't go home again. The band released a song sometime in the late 90's, I believe it was called psycho man and it was so terrible I'd prefer not to even look it up to confirm that. I'd prefer you abstain from doing the same.

The reunion is not complete as Bill Ward isn't involved, but I can't say the idea of Iommi, Butler and Ozzy recording a new record doesn't intrigue me at least a little bit, thus the video above. You never know. (yes you do!).

Courtesy of blabbermouth

Ghost Becomes Ghost BC, New Album 4/09

Seriously, what is with all the April release dates this year? I mean, it's usually a music heavy month, or at least has been for the last couple of years, but this is getting ridiculous.

Exclaim.ca tipped me off to the fact that due to "leagal reasons' Ghost have changed their name to Ghost B.C. The newly christened band will release their new record - Infestissumam - on April 9th via Loma Vista Recordings.

Sepultura with Mike Patton

In spite of the fact that the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds record is out today, it appears to thus far be a Patton day. The bass drop at 0:29 hits me in the chest every time.

Actually let me go ahead and do all the Patton/Sepultura I know of:

FAITH NO MORE - Poker Face/ Chinese Arithmetic

Naked Raygun - Last Drink

NEW DILLENGER ESCAPE PLAN IN MAY!!!

I had no idea - once again Brooklyn Vegan comes through! "One of Us is the Killer" comes out in May on Sumerian Records by way of the band's own Party Smasher Inc. In the meantime, I'd never seen this before and it was every kind of awesome I thought it'd be and more: Now, if you're unfamiliar with DEP here's one of their songs for a little juxtaposition (watch the singer in the hood at about 0:08):
I first saw these guys open for Mr. Bungle on the original stint of the California tour. I had no idea who they were, all I knew was one minute my friends and I were near the front of the stage waiting for the show to start, the next the lights went out and furious strobes sent the whole room into seizure-mode. Five violently spastic and extremely intense individuals appeared and began to make music the likes of which I'd never heard before. These figures on the stage didn't look like people, they looked like... demons. Demons made entirely of static. I was literally afraid. Years later I was backstage at a show at Chicago's Metro with my friend Dave when we saw the guitar player smash his guitar and send it sailing out into the crowd where it connected with someone's face. 

Face.

Heartbreakers - Pirate Love

I'm relatively new to Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. They'd been on my radar ever since first reading Noel Monk's 12 Days on the Road circa 1996/7 - an awesome book about the Sex Pistols only US tour (the half of it they played that is) written by the band's tour manager (Monk). Anyway, everybody in the first wave of British punk seemed to look up to Thunders and his band - for better or worse - but somehow their music always seemed strangely out of reach to me. Fast forward to about three months ago on a Saturday. I was home listening to Henry Rollins' weekly radio broadcast on NPR affiliate KCRW. Mr. Rollins played a Heartbreakers song - I forget which one it was but it really grabbed my attention. Then our gracious radio host went on to talk about how the good folks at White Trash Soul Blogspot had gone through the many different editions of the band's record L.A.M.F. that are available (French, Italian, German, etc) and compiled what they believed to be the best composite edition, culling from all those different sources for each song's individual best possible mix.

Talk about a labor of love!!!

The site then made this ultimate edition of L.A.M.F. available for free download - you can link to it right from that site linked above. When you go there you'll also see that the white trash soul folks break down everything about the different records and how/why they chose what they chose. It's fascinating. And the end is result is fantastic listening.

NPR Streaming Thurston Moore's Chelsea Light Moving

courtesy of bowlegsmusic.com

Go here and hear the self-titled debut album from Thurston Moore's post-Sonic Youth band Chelsea Light Moving. The album is out March 5th on Matador. I'm posting this from work, so I won't be able to even hear this until about six hours from now, but I had to pass it on, courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan.

Four Tet + rocketnumbernine

Found this via pitchfork a little while ago. Begs for a certain state of mind. Reminds me of the outro to a traffic song or something. That probably sounds ridiculous, but there's a 70's vibe run through an EDM paradigm.

Or something.

Alice Donut - The Son of a Disgruntled X-Postal Worker Reflects On His Life While Getting Stoned In The Parking Lot Of A Winn Dixie Listening To Metallica

Oh! Great title, great song to match. All hail Alice Donut!!!

I stood outside by the window - Mom lay bleeding on the sofa - Dad dry heaved in the kitchen

I didn't wanna deal

he passed out on the formica - she held an ice cube to her lip - she stared vacant at the screen 

she didn't wanna deal

I drove behind the Winn Dixie - smoked a bone and listened to Metallica - as loud as I could stand it

I didn't wanna deal

I started thinking - he's just biding his time - X-postal worker
eaten up inside - unemployed and disgruntled - eaten up inside


waiting for nothing
waiting for a sign
waiting for nothing
waiting for his time

one day he'll snap and kill her - then he'll shoot me while I'm sleeping
then he'll drive to the office - and kill'em all before he shoots himself

he was still passed out as I entered - she was locked up in her room
locked up and waiting - another day

I ain't gonna deal

Artaud

image courtesy of 50watts.com

Listening to the new Fat Man on Batman podcast where Kevin Smith interviews Grant Morrison convinced me to re-read Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth for the first time in ages. Reading the afterward got me thinking about how ever since hearing the Bauhaus song below I've wanted to look into Artaud.

Batman, Incorporated #8 (Spoilers)

Oh my! I am very curious about this upcoming issue of Batman, Incorporated which - despite there being apparently a lot of hate for the book - I REALLY like.

Morrison's Batman run, which started somewhere around 2005, was overall fantastic. However I thought what really knocked it out of the park was the short-lived run on the post-Final Crisis Batman and Robin title that featured Dick Greyson as Batman and Damian Wayne as Robin. Batman, Inc. was the book that seemed to carry on that thread and tone for me, a sister book if you will. But Grant has made it clear that he's leaving Batman altogether soon and as we wind up, no one is really sure what is going to happen or how the ongoing conflict with Leviathan is going to end.

Now, the above cover is awesome, but there's another one that's been leaked and potentially has a MAJOR spoiler on it, though we all know what appears on a comic's cover is often hyperbolic and not necessarily a direct translation of how the same concept appears inside. If you want to see that cover go ahead and go here and scroll down a bit. You'll see it.


DC's solicitation for Batman, Incorporated can be found on their website here. There's also a lot of speculative articles on newsarama. Issue #7 killed one of my favorite peripheral Bat characters - Knight of Knight and Squire, a duo both Grant Morrison and Paul Cornell did a spectacular job with. As Morrison's run on Batman, Inc. is winding down we may be in for some shocks. Especially as the Bat-stuff he's writing is, I think, the only DC book that takes place in the old DC continuity and not the New52

Godflesh Cover: Like Rats by Mark Kozelek

Many thanks to Tommy at the WONDERFUL heaveisanincubator for posting this. Mark Kozelek has always hovered at the far corners of my awareness but I'm completely unfamiliar. Then I see this - A GODFLESH cover!!! And it's awesome.

For comparison sake (and cuz I love to post anything Godflesh):



and finally, a live version from Justin and crew:

The High Confessions - Chlorine and Crystal

It's been nearly three years since the debut album by Chris Connelly, Sanford Parker, Steve Shelley and Jeremy Lemos, collectively known as The High Confessions. I want more.

This song, the album closer, reminds me a lot of the tone of The Cure's Pornography. Let's juxtapose this with a track so maybe you can see what I mean. A good creative day for me is sitting down and writing to first Turning Lead into Gold with the High Confessions, then Pornography. It doesn't get much moodier than that.

Azar Swan - Lusty

Wow. I found this via Brooklyn Vegan. The group's website is here, there's a few more tracks on it. I know nothing about Azar Swan (apparently formerly known as Religious to Damn) but that needs to change.

The Return of Bendis & Maleev's Scarlet

image courtesy of multiversitycomics.com

If you're not reading this you should be. Trust me. I just wrote a piece on it for Joup in my weekly comic book column. Link to that here.

Sooooo good it's got me wanting to pull out my Daredevil and Alias runs by these guys and give them a looooong overdue re-read.

Playmobile Joy Division Perform Transmission (and...)

This is fantastic - if you watch, they even have the Playmobile Ian Curtis dance a bit like In Curtis did.

I've been having a very Anglophile year thus far, what with all the Pulp, Smiths, Eddie Campbell, Alan Moore, Gary Spencer Millidge, etc. A couple weeks ago it was a brief but rabid Joy Division jag that has come back around today. I've been dying to go out and buy a copy of Control, the brilliant 2007 biopic written by Matt Greenhalgh, directed by Anton Corbijn and based on Ian Curtis' widow Deborah Curtis's Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division. That film is available on Vimeo in segments, the first I posted below, however how do you watch this kind of beautiful B&W in segments? Control is brilliant and beautiful but very sad. There's a fabulous scene where they had the actor who played Curtis walk the actual walk rom home to work that Curtis did every day - detail such as this makes for greatness, and even though by the end of the film the tone is as dower as it gets, for Joy Division fans, Anglophiles and rock history buffs Control is a must-see. And the above, which I found accidentally on youtube, should help take the edge off the dark stuff.
Joy Division story (Control)-part 01 from jomenz on Vimeo.

Alan Moore & Mitch Jenkins Made a Movie

What I've done is posted the prelude, "Acts of Faith" first, then the main event, Jimmy's End. I haven't watched these yet - they were published online at the end of last November and apparently I've had my head up my ass in regards to Mr. Moore since the most recent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book (which was awesome and which, there is a new book set to hit comic and book stores next month - Nemo: Heart of Ice. Between these films, Nemo and my foray into Gary Spencer Millidge's Strangehaven prompting me to pull out his Alan Moore tribute book Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentlemen, I'm having a very Moore 2013 all of a sudden!!!)

I'll shut up now. Enjoy.