My Top Ten Albums of 2020

 While the world around us went to Hell, I used a constant influx of awesome music to stay sane. There were A LOT of great records this year, here are my favorite ten.

Manuel Gagneux has proven he's not going anywhere, and on Wake of a Nation - an EP with a more robust run-time than some albums - he's begun to shift his work from clever Alt-History to a poignant contemplation on current global events to chilling, heart-pound results.

I've never cared too much about RTJ's other albums - none of it's bad, but none of it is irreplaceable to me - but THIS! Partially because of when it dropped, partially because of how it dropped, partially because they refuse to participate in all the Hip Hop tropes that make me skeptical of the genre, and especially because it's just that good. Killer Mike and El-P can both rhyme like madmen - a lost art if you do a quick who's who of the 'name brands' of rap at the moment - and on top of it, they can actually do so eloquently on pretty much every urgent topic of the day.

Two years ago, when I fell in love with Ms. Rundle's music, it never would have dawned on me how well it would mesh with Thou's. Imagine my pleasant surprise then when the first track from this album dropped. To Thou is one of those "Beautifully brutal" bands that transcend any genre or classification for me, and something about their stoic sonic textures meshes perfectly with Emma Ruth Rundle's dark, contemplative musings.

The most 'balls out' record I heard this year. Infinitely repeatable and perfectly balanced between hooking you and punching you in the goddamn face.

I can't even believe the range on display here. One might have thought Greg Puciato's first solo record would have come out sounding a bit like Black Queen and DEP in a blender.

One would be perfectly incorrect. This is... an evolution not many metal frontmen could ever pull off. I remember the days when I could see Mike Patton's influence on Greg Puciato. Now I only see his own personal creative resilience. 

Recontextualizing so many different sounds from Heavy Music's last twenty-five years: I hear Alice in Chains, I hear Fear Factory, I hear Bungle, I hear Slipknot. Only, that's not all I hear. I also hear a template for a band that sounds like none of those things exactly and nothing like anything I've heard before. And I want more.

The first Bungle album in twenty years is a redux of their demo - which I never gave a shit about listening to even at my most rabid Bungle fan stage - and it's being re-worked and performed with Thrash Icons Dave Lombardo and Scott Ian? There was simply no way this one didn't make it onto the list. Also the best concert of the year, although of course, there haven't been any concerts since about three weeks after I saw them, so that may be slightly skewed.

This band reminds me so much of the kind of bands I couldn't get enough of in the late 90s. I loved the first Exhalants record, then they went and deepened their sound into this and I had to do a double-take. These guys are for fucking real and I will follow them to the ends of the Earth. Which, incidentally, might not be that long to follow them for, but still. 

Another band that just can't do anything wrong. The Deftones continue to push the edges of their sound in unexpected directions, and while there's no mistaking this for anything but a Deftones record, ain't nothing wrong with that at all.

And actually, as my friend Jacob pointed out, there is at least one passage that could easily lead one to believe the tracks had unexpectedly rotated over to a Vangelis song.

I guess I needed some beauty in my life this year, and Fleet Foxes Shore definitely qualifies as the most beautiful new album I heard in 2020. 

It was a weird year, and some of these records I didn't even listen to as much as you would think for them to make such an impression on me. But I've begun spending a good deal of time on narrative podcasts and audiobooks, as well as a fixation on a lot of music that predates 2020. Maybe then, the less-listened to entries on this list won their spot by making such a large impression in so few listens? 

Me and that Nergal

 

I've had a feeling this would happen eventually. Previously, even before I discovered Me and That Man, I tried on several occasions to find what it was about Behemoth that people had become so fanatical about. Unlike Frontman and Brainspring Nergal's more recent project, I just could never relate to it. Behemoth always left me cold, and not in a good way. Friday morning, however, a random algorithmic playlist by Apple Music rotated "Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel" through my ears and suddenly, I got it. 

I've only consumed 2014's highly lauded The Satanist thus far, but the momentum behind that first go-through is enough to have me chomping at the bit for more. Behemoth has a very specific sound, or at least that's how I hear it and why I ended up falling into it so hard. It has a lot to do with the way the bass guitar is played, recorded, and mixed in relation to everything else, but moving out from there, the guitars, drums, vocals, and other accompanying instrumentation feel very much arranged or composed, as opposed to assembled by more conventional means.

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Wow. Not only did I find this small peak into Orville Peck's life fascinating, but Alfred Marroquín's direction is as beautiful and moving as Peck's narration. I've avoided watching or learning too much about Peck's life, as I think his enigmatic persona compliments the deserted Lynchian Highway of his music. Marroquin balanced exactly the right amount of 'behind the curtain' with spectacle here, and this short Doc is all the better for it.

 

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Playlist:

Behemoth - The Satanist

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis

David Bowie - Live Nassau Coliseum '76

Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA

Anthrax - Among the Living

Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

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Card:

 

Motivation and Drive, which feels spot-on as several projects ramp up here, at the end of what feels like a top-heavy year, as far as productiveness is concerned. There's a feeling of acceleration as we head into the new year, almost an unruliness. Looking at the Prince of Wands, reading the almost out-of-control momentum on the card's face, I'm reminded that recklessness can negate ambition quite easily.

Down When I'm Not

This song literally makes me feel like I'm twenty-five years old again, about to head out with my friends for a night of adventure. 

When I set out to find the track above from Greg Puciato's Child Soldier: Creator of God and ended up finding this collaboration between Puciato and Jesse Draxler. I'm not gonna lie; I'd been putting off deep-diving into this record for the last few months because I wasn't sure where my head would be in relation to this project, which I'd been hearing mixed things about. I knew I would like it, but I wanted to LOVE it. And I guess I waited until the exact right moment because after two full listens, I'm floored. Also, reading about the album, I was reminded of Puciato's Federal Prisoner label, and in looking up their youtube channel, found this little curiosity.

 

I love what this man is doing! The dissolution of The Dillinger Escape Plan a few years ago filled me with nervous, awful energy. They'd been a mainstay in my life, both live and on record, for nearly two decades; when I fell out of most heavy music, they never waned in my heart. I'm happy as hell to see Greg Puciato doing something I consider pretty extraordinary in his post-DEP life. 

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Playlist:

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

The Ocean - Phanerozoic II

Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks...

Fleet Foxes - Shore

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

Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God

Michael Kiwanuka - Kiwanuka

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Card:

Interesting to get a card that signals completion and success at this exact moment when my Beta Reader is back on track and about to finish the penultimate reading of Murder Virus. My original plan to release the book this year have transitioned into a 'first quarter' scheduling for 2021, and I do believe the finished product will be all the better for it.

Slow News Day in Jersey

 

I'm not a huge Fankie Valley and the Four Seasons fan, but this song... this is one of those songs that I've been hearing my whole life and never realized, until a couple of years ago, just how awesome it is. I like some other tunes from Mr. Valley's catalog, but this? This is my favorite.

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How fitting that, last weekend, when K asked if we could watch Jersey Boys, I trepidatiously agreed. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't what we got. This movie's pretty damn great. Props to Clint Eastwood for making it. 

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Playlist:

Tiamat - Clouds

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

James Last - Christmas Dancing

I finished The Black Tapes Podcast yesterday, and while I can't say I liked the ending very much, A) it's open, and B) the journey is MORE than worth it. This is still a podcast I would very strongly recommend. 

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Card:

 

Simple, symmetrical alignment.

Carpenter Brut and David Eugene Edwards

 

 

Carpenter Brut and David Eugene Edwards? Holy cow. I can't wait to see if anything more comes of this, because I love this track. Edwards brings that spiritually stoic sound that his haunted career in 16 Horsepower led to once he started Wovenhand (reminder to self - it's been too long since I checked in on that particular project). Will we get more music from this collaboration? While it is unclear as of yet, I think I might just make a playlist that combines Horsepower with Brut and see how that sounds together.

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NCBD:

Slow week this week. 

This is good since, after the veritable deluge of books over the last few weeks, I have a stack I need to get through.

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Playlist:

Sightless Pit - Grave of a Dog

Beck - Odelay

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Anthrax - Among the Living

Beach Slang - The Deadbeat Bang of Heartbreak City

Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny

Carpenter Brut Feat. David Eugene Edwards - Fab Tool

Daniel Pemberton - Motherless Brooklyn OST

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The View from a Sightless Pit

 

How I missed this record's release a few months back, I have no idea. A collaboration between Lee Buford of The Body, Kristin Hayter of Lingua Ignota, and Dylan Walker of Full of Hell? This record is, as you'd expect, unlike anything else I've ever heard. 

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Read:

It's not NCBD yet, but I wanted to post about a couple of books I ended up with last week that I hadn't planned on buying, but my friends at both Atomic Basement and The Comic Bug know me pretty damn well and they often pull extra titles for me if they think I'll dig them. No obligation, of course, but more often than not, they're right on the money. I haven't read these yet, but I'm chomping at the bit to for sure:

This last one was my own discovery, and while I'm not really in the market for any Marvel or Mutant books, this stand-alone (I think) book is kind of a throwback to the old Marvel Comics Presents series in the 80s, except it's in Black and White and Red. And it's glorious.

 

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Playlist:

Daniel Pemberton - Motherless Brooklyn OST 

Sightless Pit - Grave of a Dog

I spent almost all day yesterday plowing through The Black Tapes podcast. MAN! So f*&king good! 

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Card:

This has been a key concept for 2020 and most likely one that will echo out into the new year. I take this pull, on December Eve (yeah, I just made that up), as a reminder that things are not really all that likely to get better just because we flip a calendar and get rid of a jackass. Not pessimism, just realism.

Motherless Brooklyn's Sovietwave

A month or two back, one of my guys at work turned me onto Molchat Doma, a Belarusian post-punk band from Minsk, formed in 2017, whose newest album Monument, was released this year on Sacred Bones Records. Probably because of introducing them into my youtube algorithm, yesterday afternoon I stumbled across a thumbnail for a post titled "1 Hour of Melancholic SovietWave" (HERE). Sovietwave? I immediately clicked on this, and the track I've posted above was the lead-in track, which in turn sent me looking for more by this band, Воскресная площадка, which so far I have been unable to find a translation for. In listening, so far, I'm fascinated, so I intend to explore this a bit more over the coming days (and nights; this music is perfect for after the sun sets).

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Friday night I finally got around to watching Edward Norton's Adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's novel Motherless Brooklyn. Wow. Fantastic film. 

It's been at least ten years since I read Mr. Lethem's novel, and being that I finished my re-read of William Sloane's To Walk the Night yesterday, I moved directly into round two with Brooklyn. In cases like this, where I've read the book but not in a while, I'm never sure if I should watch the film first or re-read the book first, so once again, I'm just going to play it by ear. Either way, both are fantastic. 

Of special note, the music for Mr. Norton's adaptation was done by Composer Daniel Pemberton, with contributions from Wynton Marsalis and Thom York, to name a few (although, as always, I feel like Mr. Yorke's voice is somewhat of an unwelcome sonic element in film scoring and composition, as it is so distinct and unmusical, it usually takes me out of the story immediately). 

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Playlist:

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Oliver Nelson - The Blues and the Abstract Truth

Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come

Ella Fiztgerald - The Best of Ella Fitzgerald Vol. II

True Widow - I.N.O.

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Dogma. Is this good, or bad? 

Never Tear Apart Good Porno

Talk about an album that defines a year in my life. INXS's Kick was everywhere in 1987. I was eleven. I remember some stroke popular kid in my 4th grade class telling me in gym class how his father brought him home, 'the album all the college kids are listening to,' and brandishing the cassette. I assumed it was something stupid because this kid was my antithesis. However, I was wrong, it wasn't stupid at all. To this day, Kick and U2's The Joshua Tree still sound to me the way I physically felt at that time in my life, which is a really cool and kind of spooky thing, like my cells rearrange to some pre-recorded configuration when those sounds are re-introduced to my brain. No where is that more true than on this particular song.

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Keola Racela's Porno dropped on Shudder this past week. This is one I'd been waiting on for a while; I almost went to a screening at some point, pre-COVID (I think - that seems so long ago now, it's like some hazy, undiscovered country). Anyway, I'll be reviewing this one later today on a new episode of The Horror Vision, which will go up Monday, however, let me just say - I really liked this flick, and it had one of the hardest to watch scenes EVER.

 

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Playlist:

Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat

Jenny Lewis - The Voyager

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Dissociation

Nabihah Iqbal - Weighing of the Heart

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Bölzer - Hero

The Ocean - Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic I Cenozoic

Sir Neville Mariner & Academy of St. Martin in the Fields - Amadeus (Complete Soundtrack Recordings)

Opeth - Deliverance

Dance with the Dead - B-Sides: Vol. 1

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

The Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop OST

INXS - Kick 

Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power (1973 Bowie Mix)

David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

I also spent an entire morning at work yesterday diving into The Black Tapes podcast. Can't recommend this one enough. I hooked. 

 

Set up in a wonderful homage to Serial's first season, The Black Tapes deals with Paranormal Research and all the familiar hijinx - ghosts, demons, portals to hell. But the story is told through an NPR/This American Life kind of lens and because of that, it resonates in a very different way.

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Threes and Swords - looks bad on the surface, but really, this is the cutting away of baggage in order to clarify and establish a firm foundation (fours). I've had two intensely productive days of writing and am clearing away a lot of the mental detritus that has had me clogged up these last couple months - fall out from world events, obviously - and am ready to end the year on the same mega-productive note that carried me through the first six months of it.

Run for the Shore

 

My cousin Charles is a huge Fleet Foxes fan, and although I've liked everything I have previously heard by the band, A) my most recent previous listen was quite some time ago, and B) they long ago fell off my radar. Until Charles messaged me about how much he loved the newest record, Shore. I gave this one a spin last week, liked it, and then did not return to it until yesterday, when Shore absolutely blew me away.
First, the way this record is recorded is gorgeous. There's some real craft here, especially with the vocals and the mixing. Robin Pecknold's voice is handled in a way that makes it feel enormous and intimate at the same time, no easy feat. The instrumentation and arranging is full but organic in a way that gives the depths of most songs a very layered, aquatic feel, so that the music washes over and submerges you. Given the title and cover art, this is most definitely intentional, and very much appreciated. I've always loved aquatic themes and 'flavors' in music, and that goes especially well with the songwriting on this record.

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Watch

Holy smokes. Run, which should have been in theaters this past Mother's Day weekend, is on HULU now. I knew nothing about this one other than Sarah Paulson is in it - always a good thing - until my friend Jonathan Grimm texted me about how much he liked it. An hour and a half and some change later, I couldn't agree more. Don't watch any trailers, don't read anything, just WATCH IT! Wow. Co-writer/Director Aneesh Chaganty is definitely someone who I will be watching like a hawk for whatever he does next.

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NCBD:

Isn't it nice when, every November, NCBD falls the day before a holiday made for eating too much and laying around reading? Yeah, it is. 

So far, I adore this series, so let's continue on. I'm loving all the Autumn-tinted Horror in comics this year, three of them with new installments today!

The Plot is back and I am HAPPY! More dark, Ancestral Horror is exactly what this holiday season needed.

The Best of Raphael book from a few months ago remains one of my favorite comics since I was a kid - something about this oversized format. So of course, I'll be buying them all...

This last one is The Unkindness of Ravens #3. I'm digging this Sabrina-esque story, and realizing today that there's only one more issue, I'm unsure how this is going to wrap in a satisfactory manner. 

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Playlist:

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chamber Be Full

Fleet Foxes - Shore

Genesis - From Genesis to Revelation

Yob - Clearing the Path to Ascend

Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks...

Venue - Desiréena 

Venue - One Without a Second

Death Crux - Mutant Flesh

The Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop OST

Zombi - Shape Shift

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Endings and transformation. 

Nabihah Iqbal - Is This Where It Ends?

 

Nabihah Iqbal released a new single last month, and as anyone who has become as enamored with her debut (post Throwing Shade), 2017's brilliant Weighing of the Heart, would expect, it's pretty damn great. Airy, emotive, and a touch mysterious, with that raw bedroom quality Ms. Iqbal brings to her music, "Is This Where it Ends" was actually released a month before the bandcamp release Blue Magic Gentle Magic, which is all that is left of a second album she had been recording when her studio was burgled. ALL tracks were lost, with only barebones 'work in progress' tracks kept on the cloud, that can not be manipulated. Read about it and support Nabihah Iqbal on her bandcamp by double-tapping the widget.

Let's help this amazing artist find her muse in the face of this extremely crappy setback.

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I finally took my good friend Missi's advice and checked out Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein's Freaks on Netflix. Pretty damn god. Freaks isn't something you haven't seen before, but the way it doles out information, and how it starts cold and leaves you hanging, makes the film feel different, as though it's using tropes and a rather tired formula to do something with a bit more heart. Great performances all around, ESPECIALLY from Bruce Dern.

 

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Playlist:

Yob - Clearing the Path to Ascend

Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat

Jucifer - نظم

Crippled Black Phoenix - Ellengæst 

Pallbearer - Forgotten Days

Death Crux - Mutant Flesh

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A recurring cycle for me these past few months - I touch optimization with sevens, then become weighed down by what the accomplishments - no matter how small - add to the process. Eights are imperfection personified, and distractions - welcome or not - are part of that.

Crippled Black Phoenix - Lost

 

From the new Crippled Black Phoenix record, Ellengæst, which dropped October 9th on Seasons of Mist. You can order the record HERE. Full disclosure: I haven't even heard this record yet. I have a bit of an interested/not interested relationship with this band, and I completely forgot this was coming out.

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Watch:

I had the absolute joy of watching Josh Boone's New Mutants on Friday, and I have to say, I LOVED it. I talk about it on the latest episode of The Horror Vision, which will be on all streaming platforms, youtube,  IGTV, and the little widget in the top righthand corner of this blog by the time you read this. In a nutshell - see it.

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Playlist:

Zeal and Ardor - Wake of a Nation

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

White Lung - Eponymous

Young Widows - Old Wounds

Yob - Clearing the Path to Ascend

Fleetwood Mac - Greatest Hits

Anna Von Hausswolff - All Thoughts Fly

Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets

Windhand - Eternal Return

Corrosion of Conformity - Deliverance

System of a Down - Eponymous

The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night

Etta James - Third Album

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Card:

Completion. Full power. I realized on Saturday that, despite my mental lapses and sagging work ethic, I am very nearly complete with nearly half of the second book in the Shadow Play trilogy. The image from this card is a perfect representation of how I feel when I reflect upon that.

To Walk the Night

 

Glint, the first release from Deafheaven's Ten Years Gone live album , out December 4th on Sargent House. Order HERE.

 

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READ:

For Halloween I did an impromptu re-read of Bret Easton Ellis' Lunar Park, which has become a book I read every couple of Octobers and never tire of. From there, I'd planned to begin Daniel H. Wilson's Robopocalypse, a book my good friend and fellow co-host from Drinking w/ Comics and The Horror Vision gifted me a copy of a few months back. However, something steered me into another impromptu re-read, this time of William Sloane's To Walk the Night. I first read this one back in 2016, and found I already was chomping at the bit to get back into it. 75 pages or so in, it's every bit as great as I remember. Also, the narrator speaks a lot like Hunter S. Thompson - which I attribute era and region - and that familiarity adds a entirely new level of pleasure to the prose.

To Walk the Night was originally published in 1937, and as such, there are many editions of the book that have been published in the intervening years. The most recent I know of, and the edition I have, is in a volume titled The Rim of Morning, published by NYRB Classics in 2015.

The volume also contains the novel The Edge of Running Water, another fantastically dark, cosmic tale of restrained but utterly creepy Horror. 

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Playlist:

Naked Eyes - Promises, Promises (Single)

Tamaryn - The Waves

The Stone Roses - Eponymous

Stevie Nicks - Stand Back (Single)

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Bölzer - Hero

Steve Morse - Bliss OST

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Card:

The 5 of Wands always leaves me scratching my head a bit - there are things about this card that suggest a level of discomfort or discontent with authority to me, and I wonder if that has to do with my recent re-engagement with world news (imagine that, throw out the clown and the news no longer feels like a sideshow). However, there's also something militant about this card, and it makes me wonder if perhaps that might not bode well for the coming restrictions civic leaders are no doubt going to have to impose as the population of entitled cunts that apparently make up a sizable portion of this country's population continue to act like spoiled children.

This is why we can't have nice things, America.

Blackened Metal Hero

My follow Horror Vision host Tori recently turned me on to Bölzer. This album is fantastic! A Black/Extreme Metal band, I was floored to discover Bölzer is a two-piece! This record is fantastic, and mixing/mastering/recording engineers Victor Santura, Michael Zech, and the enigmatic D.G. really knew how to steer the band into a sonic space that more than makes up for any 'missing' instrumentation. I'd say the sound of this album, which really knows how to use an ample but still tasteful amount of reverb, is one of the fullest metal band sounds I've heard in a while. There's a definite 'space' to this recording, and it's big and dark and bold.  

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Podcast

 

A new episode of The Horror Vision went up last week. I've recently moved beyond just the audio component of the show, and started making extremely rudimentary 'videos' for each episode. The plan is to eventually make a more involved video, or - gasp - do something similar to DwC, but with that show slowly creeping back toward reappearance, where I'll find the time remains to be seen. Until then, enjoy us talking about the genre we love, and if you dig it, leave a comment and let's talk Horror!

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Watch:

Tuesday after work I rented Jeremy Gardner's new film After Midnight. Produced by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead - Benson has a small supporting role in the film - Gardner wrote and co-directed this one, as well as starring in it. As it stands now, After Midnight will almost definitely finish 2020 as my favorite film of the year.

 

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Playlist:

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Lake Street Dive - Making Do (Single)

Bölzer - Hero

Zombi - Shape Shift

Zola Jesus - Stridulum

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Back on track, big time.

Nobody Wants to Party with Us, says Mrs. Piss

 

I did not find out about Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie's new band Mrs Piss until a week or two ago, and since, their debut Self-Surgery has become a record I simply cannot turn off. Available on the always great Sargent House, you can order the record HERE.

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Having just seen the original Castle Freak for the first time within the last year or two (Thanks, Joe Bob!), I'd read about Barbara Crampton's work producing a remake and became immediately interested. It's not often one of the original cast members in a seminal film take on such a labor of love, and the fact that the cast member in question is possibly the greatest Scream Queen of all time only adds to my interest. Why remake this film? I can only assume Ms. Crampton has good reason to throw her hat into the project, and judging by the trailer, we should have a new iteration of Stuart Gordon's somewhat odd modern take on the H.P. Lovecraft classic in just a few short weeks.

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NCBD

First, the return of Rick Remender and Jerome Opena's dark fantasy epic has become even more exciting now that they've announced Seven to Eternity will be ending in just three short issues. I love this book, and I've missed it incredibly.

We Live is an Aftershock book getting a lot of press. On a whim I grabbed the first issue last month, dug it quite a bit, and now I'm hooked. Love this cover on issue two. 

A 'zombie book' that is very much not about zombies, Dead Day continues to make me smile.

Die! Die! Die! may be a book I've continued to read out of inertia, but that doesn't mean I'm not still enjoying it. "GI Joe but totally nuts" is really the only way to describe this one.

I mistakenly never added Jason Howard's Big Girls to either one of my pulls at Atomic Basement or The Comic Bug, and as such, it has been a pain in the arse to find since I picked up the first issue. If I hadn't stumbled across a copy of #3 last week, I would have probably given up and waited for trade, but since I'm only missing #2 now, I'm making the attempt to go monthly again, just to support Howard, whose art I adore.

And finally, this is a new one I'm considering picking up. A sequel to Vault Comics' Fearscape, which I did not read but keep hearing good things about, I thought I might grab the first issue of A Dark Interlude and the Fearscape trade. 

This is definitely the biggest NCBD is a while. I still have storage concerns, but they've kind of taken a back seat to 'the passion' again.

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Playlist:

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

The Clash - London Calling

The Bronx - Eponymous (I)

Fleet Foxes - Shore

The Foxies - Anti Socialite (single)

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God

Steve Moore - Bliss OST

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Card:

Really, not necessarily a new journey or undertaking, as a direct indictment of how fucking lazy I have been of late. I just can't seem to get my discipline with writing back online at the moment; it's been a struggle now for the last few months, and I really need to do something about it

The Filth and the Fury

 

Last night, I showed K Julien Temple's Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and the Fury for the first time. This was my third time seeing it, first in probably ten years. It reminded me just how much I love the Pistols, a love that wasn't always there, but came on strong after readng Tour Manager Noel Monk's tour bio Twelve Days on the Road, which I have now slotted up for a re-read sometime in the new year. Love them or hate them, Never Mind the Bollocks still stands as possibly the most pivotal 12 songs ever recorded.

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Watch:

 

Along with The Filth and the Fury, this weekend we also watched Floria Sigismondi's film The Runaways, the 2010 biopic about the all-female rock band of the same name. I'd seen this one before, back when it first hit video. The Runaways was my first inclination that Kristen Stewart could act, and although the film still looks to me as though large chunks were edited out before release, it's a great story about an awesome band I don't listen to nearly enough. One of K's favorite groups, I've definitely picked them up more since we started dating, but I really need to dig in on my own.

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Playlist:

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes

Dance with the Dead - B-Sides: Vol. 1

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife

Death Valley Girls - Under the Spell of Joy

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicenter

Horseback  The Invisible Mountain

Curtis Harding - Face Your Fear

Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years

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The cups runneth over. Let's hope so. 

New Melvins!

 

New Melvins? Yes, please!

Pre-order the new album HERE, out February 26 on Ipecac Records!

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Friday morning I woke up and rented Bryan Bertino's new film The Dark and The Wicked on Prime. Great flick. I didn't 100% connect with it the way I had hoped, however, I probably had some pretty unrealistic expectations. That said, it's a very well made film, even if I did kind of think all the atmosphere and tension didn't quite "pop" the way it tried to. Definitely worth supporting, though, and Bertino is one of the best modern filmmakers working in Horror, in my opinion. 

I also finally made it around to Benson and Moorhead's episode of this year's season of The Twilight Zone. "8" is great. I still don't dig the overall feel of the series, and as much as I dig Jordan Peele, he just doesn't have the same wry manner needed to fill Rod Serling's shoes, but I did like seeing an Octopus kill off a team of Arctic research scientists. 

Despite my misgivings on the series, I'm glad someone's doing it, because anthology shows like this help employ a lot of filmmakers, and whether I watch them or not, it makes me happy they exist.

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Playlist:

Opeth - Watershed 

Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wraith of the Easter Bunny 

Barry Adamson - As Above So Below 

Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope To the Sky 

Miserable - Uncontrollable 

Anna Von Hausswolff - All Thoughts Fly

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Fen - The Dead Light

Hoseback - The Invisible Mountain

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Opeth - My Arms Your Hearse

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What I've been doing to myself again with writing. I did nail some important backstory in a scene yesterday, but I could have got a lot more done had I not kept flitting around, being distracted by menial tasks that totally could have waited. 

Sudden Death!

 

The first official video from Mr. Bungle's The Raging Wraith of the Easter Bunny, which coincidentally, I just got done listening to at work before I clicked over to youtube and discovered this. Loving the record so far.

 

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For some reason, I have Aliens/Prometheus on the brain today, and I realized I've never watched these deleted scenes.

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Playlist:

NIN - The Downward Spiral

Beck - Delay (Deluxe Edition)

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun

Opeth - Watershed 

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Be careful, consider options, do not rush.

Sabbath Lads

For my fellow Sabbath Lads. Ozzy has never sounded so serene.

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The season opener of John Favre's The Mandalorian was so chocked full of goodness that I thought, for a moment, I might explode. Thankfully, someone is doing something cool with Star Wars.

Also, now that I've restarted my Disney + sub, I'm really looking forward to Wandavision. So much so, I think I'm going to start re-watching the MCU from the beginning, filling in those gaps I've missed along the way. What stoked my excitement?

I feel like I am about to very much re-engage with Marvel. 

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NCBD:

Pretty light week. 

A new series from Aftershock Comics, Miskatonic looks like it will pit J. Edgar Hoover's "Red Scare" against the seedy underground world of Lovecraftian Death Cults. How could I not want to read this?

The old reliable, every-month-is-better-than-the-last.

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Playlist:

Selim Lemouchi and His Enemies

Opeth Deliverance

I found an excellent podcast recently that has become increasingly important to the research aspect of writing Shadow Play Book II and spent some time listening yesterday. Mexico Unexplained is a series of quick but amalgam of informative historical facts and subsequent conjecture, and it's fascinating. Go to their site HERE. 

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Patient and stable. Also, coming out the other side of that solitude we started today's post off with. 

1996 Called

I'm not really a Beck fan. I mean, I harbor no ill will, and I say this in spite of the fact that I still stand by his 1996 collaboration with the Dust Brothers - Odelay - is in my mind one of the greatest records of the 90s. But other than that? Well, there's the odd track here or there that I'll catch somewhere and that makes me say, 'You know, let me give that guy's other albums another chance,' but it's always for naught. But Odelay. FUUUAAAAHHHHCKKK. It's still brilliant. I'm generally not in the headspace for it, but when I am, well, once 'Devil's Haircut' kicks in, it always seems like I'll be listening to it for days. But that doesn't ever happen. I guess that's kind of the bane of albums you know so well and love so much - they become such a part of you that it almost feels redundant to physically go back to them too often. Yesterday was one of those 'Odelay' days, but this time, I decided to give the 2008 Deluxe Edition a whirl. The track listing is more than double the number of tracks on the original album, and although that sometimes annoys me, yesterday I fell into a beautiful abyss of some of the weirdest shit I have ever heard on what will always, in my opinion, be a pop record. Tracks like 'Electric Music and the Summer People', 'American Wastland', and the ominous Aphex Twin remix 'Richard's Haircut' left me slack-jawed. That said, no track made me marvel more than Inferno. It's just... junkyard broken computer funk perfection. I might be listening to this one for a while...

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I've really been into Horror Short film lately. I started a new column on The Horror Vision where I'm posting some of what I'm finding, and metnioned a few here. Last night I found this one, and I thought it was extremely effective:  

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Playlist:

Low Cut Connie - Private Lives

David Bowie - Blackstar

Beck - Delay (Deluxe Edition)

Zeal and Ardor - Wake of a Nation

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Molasses - Mourning Haze/Drops of Sunlight (single)

Selim Lemouchi and His Enemies - Earth Air Spirit Water Fire

Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor

Opeth - My Arms, Your Hearse 

 

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There's hidden assets here somewhere, but I'm not entirely sure how to find them. Lots of disks lately, and money has been on my mind. Really feeling the need to leave LA, to buy a home, to try and remove myself from the shit show. It's in my best interests to begin paying attention to things I normally ignore - might lead to a Cha-Ching. 

Pallbearer - Forgotten Days

 

Pallbearer is a band I've dabbled in a bit, but who have never clicked with me. Until this past Saturday morning. Up early despite my best intentions to stay in bed, I made a big 'ol pot of joe and sat down to do some writing, fired up my headphones and somehow wound up listening to the new album, Forgotten Days, two times in a row and thus, cementing an immediate bond.

Order Forgotten Days from Pallbearer's Bandcamp HERE or from Nuclear Blast records HERE.

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Holy smokes. Magnolia is releasing a Zappa documentary:   

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Playlist:

Pallbearer - Forgotten Days

Opeth - My Arms, Your Hearse

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Confessions of a Knife

Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST

Paul Zaza - My Bloody Valentine OST

Orville Peck - Pony

Massive Attack - Blue Lines

Sir Neville Marriner and Academy of St. Martin in the Fields - Amadeus (OST)

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A new beginning you say? Not entirely, but I like the optimism. 

Sunday Bandcamp: The Dead Milkmen's Quarantine Album!

Thanks to Mr. Brown, one of the purchases I made on this most recent Bandcamp Friday was the newly released "Depends on the Horse..." album, recorded in quarantine. The records is probably the most ersatz of the Milkmen's, and feels a bit more like a B-side compilation. NOT A BAD THING. Dig the description from their site (use this link HERE. There's another Milkmen bandcamp page that keeps popping up when I enter their name): 

"Actually... this volume of songs is the soundtrack to the first 36 episodes of the weekly program "Big Questions with The Dead Milkmen" which can be seen on The Dead Milkmen's YouTube channel. The songs were inspired by and created in response to challenges the Dead Milkmen made to each other on the program. Songs 1 - 4 are from "The 4-Track Challenge" episode (September 26, 2020). Songs 5 - 9 are from the Cover Challenge episode (July 11, 2020). Songs 10 - 13 are from the Owner's Manual Challenge episode ("Read the Manual", August 15, 2020). Songs 14 - 17 are from the Genre Challenge episode (June 6, 2020). And song 18 is the theme song from the show, composed and recorded by Dean Sabatino."

What Are You Buying for Bandcamp Friday?

 

Here's one of my purchases. It's been a while since I posted anything by these folks, but they're Covers Vol. 5 is for sale on their bandcamp HERE today only and it included this little gem, which is one of my favorites from their ever-growing repertoire. You can also support Two Minutes to Late Night HERE.

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Yesterday I woke up with a splitting headache that lasted pretty much all afternoon, so I left work a wee early, had half an Inidca Pro Tab and dozed on the couch. While I flit in and out of sleep, the new, "WWII Haunted Nazi Boat" Shudder exclusive Blood Vessel played. I saw most of it, or at least to recognize its fun attempt at doing for Strigoi what Dog Soldiers is for Werewolves. I wouldn't say that I loved the flick, in fact, I'm not sure I liked all that much about it, but it's well made, if not exactly well written, and I'd definitely be interested to see what the creators do next.

After I'd woke and ridden out the last third or so of Blood Vessel, I hoped around and found a pair of Anthology shows I'd never heard of before and that were pretty good. Here's trailers, and I'll be posting a small piece on them over on TheHorrorVision.com later today.

 

 

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Playlist:

Fen - The Dead Light

The Cure - The Head on the Door

Rollins Band - The End of Silence

Maggot Heart - Mercy Machine

Hall and Oats Greatest Hits

Opeth - Deliverance

Sinioa Caves - Beyond the Black Rainbow OST

For anyone who grew up on the Southside of Chicago in the 80/90s, you undoubtedly remember the more serious of the two Classic Rock stations at that time were 97.9 The LOOP and 105.9 WCKG, 'CKG as everyone called it. I found a lot of lifetime bands that way - Zeppelin, The Stones, etc., but there were also always Classic Rock artists - often ones who had gone solo after aging out of famous bands - that had a few songs amongst their singles that really resonated without turning you into a fan of the artist. My CKG Spotify playlist is kind of an odds 'n sods of such tracks.

A couple of these songs rank among my favorite songs ever, plus, they're fun. Double nostalgia - mine and that I inherited from older folks when I was younger, whose fervor rubbed off on me.

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The Princess of Cups has the ability to make dreams come true. This is a concept I think most of us in this world have forgotten about, so it's nice to see it here now, when everything seems held hostage by one big question, and so many of my own personal 'plates' from this year are still spinning.