I mentioned this one yesterday and then had to hear it. The whole record is just tough-as-nails bass playing by one of the masters. Hit play and prepare to bang your head.
NCBD:
First - the pre-orders for Behemoth Comics's Turbo Kid Prequel series is up! Go HERE if you are interested. Look at these tasty f*&king covers!
Next, here's this week's haul:
You see why I jones when a week goes by without an issue of Amazing Spider-man at this point, right? 67 just hit last week and here we are again!
Loving this series, especially as we continue to climb the tiers of antagonists who Geiger will no doubt eventually have to square off against.
One more issue to round out a very dark but somehow also extremely pleasant surrealist take on death.
Watching Peter Parker slowly become Venom is creepy and fun as hell.
I just can't say enough good things about this book.
Playlist:
QOTSA - Rated R
Firewater - The Ponzi Scheme
Ghost - Infestissumam
Sampa the Great - The Return
Dance With the Dead - B-Sides: Vol. 1
The Foundations - Baby, Now That I've Found You (single)
The Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup (single)
Blur - Parklife
Iggy Pop - Lust for Life
Entropy - Liminal
Card:
Two days in a row, eh? Okay, I'm assuming someone is trying to tell me something I am not listening to. Time to take off the blinders and pay attention.
Heaps of praise to Mr. Brown for introducing me to Lindsey Buckingham's 2008 solo album Gift of Screws, an album I am fairly certain would never have wound up on my radar without the guidance from my friend. This is one for the ages - as Brown stated in a text recently, the whole thing really highlights his guitar playing, an aspect that often gets pushed to the background in Fleetwood Mac. Opener Great Day has some truly fantastic finger-picking, and most of the tracks - especially "Did You Miss Me" above - would have made stand out singles for the radio, if there was an outlet in the major markets for guys like Buckingham, who are more often than not relegated to the 'was in a classic rock band' category. Reminds me a bit of the first time I heard John Paul Jones' record Zooma.
Watch:
I haven't watched Richard Kelley's The Box since it was in theatres in 2009. After that viewing, I left scratching my head even harder than I did after my first viewing of his Southland Tales. Do I like either of those movies as much as I do Donnie Darko? Not at all - in fact, I don't even know if I can say I actually like either. Well, Southland grew on me, and despite the fact that it's a fractured mess, I like enough of it to say, "Yes." The Box though... after this second viewing I'm less convinced I like it than if I had just left things at the one viewing eleven years ago. That said, it's a conversation piece for sure, and pretty damned engaging, so this isn't a dis, just a renewal of the hesitancy I reserve for everything Kelley did after DD.
The actual viewing of this film leaves me a bit baffled and I think it's because in some way I do not possess the technical vocabulary to describe, Kelley filmed this to look like a tv show from the 50s and seeing it packaged with the expectations of a big-budget (well, not that big) Hollywood movie creates a kind of cognitive dissonance that makes it hard for me to reconcile. Also, there's an element of the film that involves people becoming transmitters for alien intelligence, and I think Kelley brilliantly worked this into the fabric of the film itself, into performances, camera angles, and dialogue, so that many scenes are just jarring enough to create a disconnect with the viewer.
I don't know. I'm not getting rid of my DVD copy of The Box or anything, but it may be another eleven years before I watch it again.
Playlist:
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
El P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead
QOTSA - Rated R
Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws
Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction
Lustmord - Heresy
Slayer - Show No Mercy
Small Black - Cheap Dreams
Card:
New ideas can free you from yourself. This is something I'm always glad to be reminded of because another side of the Devil is obsession or narrowing of vision, which is essentially anathema of a writer.
LOVING the new album from James Kent, AKA Perturbator. Apparently, there are those out there who find his new direction uncool, but I say you can't make the same album over and over forever. Here's a current favorite selection.
Watch:
Well, after hating part two, I went into The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It with probably as low of expectations as possible. Turns out, I dug it. Not as good as the first, and Hollywood Horror is almost always going to take a backseat to the indie stuff, but this one was good. The lighting and camera work especially stand out, and I really dig Vera Farmiga in everything, even if these movies are starting to treat her a bit like Jean Grey with her psychic ability.
You can hear more of my thoughts on The Conjuring 3, as well as that of my cohosts, on the newest episode of The Horror Vision.
Interesting side note, I wandered into the Comic Bug this afternoon and found out this had come out:
Two stories, both cool. The second a stand-alone and penned by Scott Snyder, the first the opening installment in a larger tale. The Warrens are not on hand, but I'm assuming they will be eventually.
Playlist:
Perturbator
Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws EP
Harakiri for the Sky - Maere
Blur - Parklife
QOTSA - ... Like Clockwork
QOTSA - Villains
Goatsnake - Black Age Blues
Various - Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series
Calexico - The Black Light
Card:
Yes, this is exactly the right card at the moment. Solitary introspection that nearly drives me mad.
FUCK YES! I'm a little late with this one, as I've been so preoccupied with the new Perturbator that I forgot Z&A dropped a new track and announced an album coming out sometime in early 2022. I think; I swear I saw a February date when I first went to this song, but I can't find that any longer, so maybe I'm wrong and we'll get the album sooner. That would be fantastic!
INTERVIEW:
Super psyched that my cohost on A Most Horrible Library, Chris Saunders and I got to interview comics legend Glenn Fabry this past week. Check out the episode on Spotify, Apple Music, any other pod-platform, or just right here on youtube:
If you're unfamiliar with Glenn, he's best known as the man who did every single cover for Garth Ennis and Steve Dillion's Preacher, still my all-time favorite comic. To say this was an honor would be an understatement indeed.
While talking to Glenn, we found out he has a Big Cartel shop, and I had to throw up a link. Glenn doesn't make royalties on almost anything he did cover-wise, so he's not exactly sitting on top of the world like Mr. Ennis is (deservedly so, but still). I picked up a couple awesome prints from Glenn's shop, and wanted to spread the word.
Glenn's Big Cartel is HERE, and his Creature From the Black Lagoon is NO JOKE.
NCBD:
Seriously, I think there was like a week this month without a Spider-man book and I felt the void! What has become of me?
And I guess because we had a week off, two spidey books this week!
Wrapping up what has been a fantastic series that truly is unlike anything else I've ever read. The solicitation logline, "Breaking Bad meets The Sandman" isn't exactly right, but it gets you in the ballpark, and I'd never take issue with such an over-the-top comparison because it did its job - it convinced me to take a chance that I do not regret.
Somehow I missed issue three of Dead Dog's Bite, so I'll be holding off reading this until I can pick that up, too.
YES! Issue 45 was my favorite comic of the year so far, so I can't wait to see what else the 90s has in store for Marcus and crew.
Cool series, but another one that I hiccuped and missed a few issues of. I'll remedy that by next week though. So glad to be reading some Larry Hama again.
This book continues to impress me, despite its over-the-top, almost classic Image feel.
Playlist:
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
David Bowie - Hunky Dory
Harakiri for the Sky - III: Trauma
Silent - Modern Hate
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Tinderbox
Zeal and Ardor - Run (Single)
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Card:
Super appropriate - Opportunites revolving past me in several areas, leaving me dizzy, uncertain and confused. Fighting to stand atop my decision and look at it all with a meticulous and discerning eye.
Any day we get a new Chelsea Wolfe track is a good day. This one is in conjunction with DC Comics and the Dark Knights: Death Metal series they're doing that I know absolutely nothing about except that I couldn't care less about it. Except, now I love this song. So that's one thing Dark Knights: Death Metal has going for it.
DC is releasing a full soundtrack for the series, which, if you're of a mind, you can pre-order in whatever format you like HERE. Tracklisting below:
Mastodon - Forged by Neron
Chelsea Wolfe - Diana
HEALTH, Tyler Bates - ANTI-LIFE (feat. Chino Moreno) Maria Brink, Tyler Bates - Meet Me In Fire (feat. Andy Biersack)
Grey Daze - Anything, Anything
Rise Against - Broken Dreams, Inc.
Manchester Orchestra - Never Ending
Denzel Curry, PlayThatBoiZay - Bad Luck
Carach
Angren - Skull With a Forked Tongue
Starcrawler - Good Time Girl
GUNSHIP, Tyler Bates - Berserker (feat. Dave Lombardo)
Greg Puciato, Tyler Bates, Gil Sharone - Now You've Really Done It
Show Me
The Body - Stone Cold
Earth
IDLES - Sodium
Soccer Mommy - Kissing in the Rain
That's a pretty interesting lineup, and despite my lack of interest in the comic, the artwork is cool and features heavily in the vinyl release.
Watch:
Planning on watching this over the weekend:
Also, after fighting through 30 or so minutes of Zack "Slo Mo" Snyder's Army of the Dead last week, I may try again. May.
Playlist:
Various - Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series)
Windhand - Split EP
Les Discrets
Lustmord - Heresy
Swans - The Seer
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Card:
Ah, I love a direct pull:
Dealing with an ongoing staffing issue on my team at the biorepository. Always tempted to say things I should not, so this is a great reminder to play it cool.
Violet Cold's album Empire of Love is a bit uneven to me, but that's because it swings BIG, and that's not a bad thing. This track was the first I'd ever heard of them - really a one-man project - when it came up in Apple Music's algorithm. I wasn't sure how I felt about it at first, but it quickly gained favor. Then, yesterday morning, I realized I had this song irrevocably in my head, and as soon as I fired it up on my headphones, it felt like an ice-cold mouthful of water on a hot day.
This is a day late, but my Wednesday proved to be a beast.
This week's NCBD was considerably quieter than I've had in a while, for sure. Which is nice on the wallet, and the stack of books I still haven't read from last week.
This cover art is SICK. I'm thinking this is the issue where all hell breaks loose and I can't wait to see that!
Possibly my favorite comic at the moment, I'm really loving Daniel Warren Johnson's take on this character. This book reminds me of old TSR gaming, 80s style, where it felt like ideas, monsters and weapons from every corner of pop culture were being drawn together into one great, big beautifully pulpy soup. It's Daniel Warren Johnson's aesthetic, and it's enhanced by his art, which is just scratchy enough in the right places to feel like a throwback to the way comics used to look.
Feels like I've been waiting for this one for longer than however long it's been since The Last Ronin #2 came out.
A very solid historical Horror story.
Playlist:
Goatsnake - Breakfast with the King
Silent - Modern Hate
Vreid - Wild North West
Harakiri for the Sky - III: Trauma
Violet Cold - Empire of Love
Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Live for the Dead
The Jesus Lizard - Liar
CCR - Eponymous
The Replacements - Tim
The Veils - Time Stays, We Go
The Birthday Party - Mutiny/The Bad Seed
Various - Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series)
Whenever my good friend Jacob sends me a band to listen to, I know it's going to rule. Silent, however, even tops the best of his previous recommendations. I cannot express how much I LOVE this album; it embodies everything I love about a modern post-punk aesthetic and reminds me A LOT of how much I loved that first Savages album back in what feels like one hundred years ago.
Watch:
I don't really know much about Trese yet, except my DwC cohost Mike Wellman sent me the trailer last week and it's being made by/with people who our friend Karen Kunawicz knows. Mike has a copy of the book it's based on hold for me, so I should be picking that up and reading it soon, so I will leave you with the trailer for now and report back on the book later this week.
Really cool stuff, from the looks of it.
Playlist:
Led Zeppelin - Coda
Silent - Modern Hate
Mudvayne - Choices (single)
Exhalants - Atonement
Windhand - Split
Deftones - Ohms
Violet Cold - Empire of Love
ZZ Top - Rhythmeen
White Zombie - Astro-Creep 2000
QOTSA - Villains
Goatsnake - Black Age Blues
Lustmord - Heresy
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Leviathan the Fleeing Serpent - Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Love for the Dead
Various - Lords of Salem OST
Card:
I can't really go into it here - or more like I don't want to at the moment - but I take this as a direct commentary on a BIG question that has been on both K and my own mind these last few days.
Probably the second Led Zeppelin song I ever heard, and possibly the first one I heard while seeking out the band's music (oh so long ago now), I still have a huge crush on "Ozone Baby". I feel a huge Zep binge coming on and I welcome it with open arms.
Watch:
While I won't be watching Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead tonight - it's Joe Bob night, of course - I will be checking this out at some point this weekend. I'm hoping for big, dumb fun but not really expecting to get even that. I really hope I'm wrong.
Speaking of Netflix, here's a teaser the streaming giant just dropped for an upcoming flick that has me very intrigued. I hardly go to Netflix anymore for anything, however, that sometimes works against me. I have to try and remind myself that despite the ginormous size of the company and somewhat banal output, they did bring us flicks like Cam, Hold the Dark and even Stranger Things. So they are capable of really hitting the nail on the head.
David Zinman, Dawn Upshaw & London Sinfonietta - Gorecki: Symphony No. 3
Dead Man's Bones - Eponymous
Led Zeppelin - Coda
Card:
And now for something completely different...
I hung out with my good friend Keller yesterday (we're both vaxxed), and at the crux of our evening, he pulled a spread for me with his Marseille Deck. My question pertained to K and I looking for a house, and his answer was extremely helpful, even if it wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear.
This track popped up in Rose Glass's Saint Maud - which we review and discuss on the newest episode of The Horror Vision Horror Podcast, and it made me immediately pull out Down and pop it into rotation. Of the classic Lizard triptych of essential records - Goat, Down and Liar - Down usually comes in third for me. That said, it's still among the greatest albums of the 90s in my opinion, and it's always a good feeling to reconnect with their music, especially after encountering it in a modern movie.
NCBD:
I'm LOVING that Marvel is taking so much of my money every month for Amazing Spider-Man. Nick Spencer's run has me hooked, and as of this issue, it looks like Bagley is back on the art!
The Autumnal is one of those rare, truly unnerving stories that feels like it could very easily be picked up and turned into an A24-ish movie. Let's hope that happens eventually, but in the meantime, issue 6 left us in a place that suggests this week's #7 will be crazy!
This series is riding at about a 65% approval rating with me at the moment, but I've apparently locked back into Marvel fan-boy gear for the first time since the MCU's Civil War broke it, so I'm enjoying the hell out of that 65%. Also, Dane's anthropomorphic black goat-headed butler is named Phillip. I can't love that enough.
This series. Whoah. Timely; a much-needed window into what other people go through to get into this country.
I HAVE to have this cover. Love Stray Dogs, and issue #3's cliffhanger has had me on edge at the mere mention of the series since last month.
Another book I also wanted to mention is Osaka Mime. I was lucky enough to have Behemoth Comics reach out to my podcast A Most Horrible Library a while back and send us an advance of Andy Leavy and Hugo Araujo's Osaka Mime graphic novel. I really dug this book and seeing its release slated for this week, suggest people pick it up.
A black and white Urban Horror story set in Japan, here's the solicitation:
"When a couple are found brutally murdered in the Dotonbori District in Osaka, Japan, two detectives from the Supernatural Unit of the Osaka PD must hunt down and apprehend a dangerous and murderous Mime, a shadowy shape-shifter which can take the form of the last person it ate. How do you catch something so dangerous, that can hide in plain sight?"
Watch:
This one snuck in under my radar, but looks fabulous! Featuring Raised by Wolves' Niamh Algar, the idea of setting a Horror story in the video nasty area already has me hooked, however, toss in the missing sister seen-in-a-movie bit that Ed Brubaker just played with in Friend of the Devil, and I'm super psyched for this one to drop on VOD June 18th!
Playlist:
The Jesus Lizard - Down
Soundgarden - Down On The Upside
Neverly Brothers - Dark Side of Everything
Ghost - Meliora
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
The Doors - LA Woman
Card:
A good omen considering we have officially begun to settle back into a genuine sense of normalcy. K's birthday Dinner at Lazy Dog Cafe on the patio last night was the first time we'd eaten a meal in a restaurant in over a year. It felt nice to celebrate my Empress with such a marked occasion that signifies a return to life as we knew it B.C.
This came on in the car last night as K and I were driving back from our time at the track, and despite hearing the song in its entirety, I immediately came home and threw Zeppelin IV on the old record player just to hear the song the way it was meant to be heard.
Glorious!
Is When the Levy Breaks the greatest rock song of all time? Well, a claim like that is an impossibility anyway. There is no 'greatest rock song.' Also, it would be hard to back up that claim when you think about all the other great songs just from the era of this album, alone, let alone before or after. That said, it's also a claim I would not contest if made in my presence. Because if Levy isn't the greatest, it's certainly one of them.
Watch:
The fact that Parmount dropped a GI JOE trailer this week is serendipitous because last week I actually bought a digital copy of GIJOE: Retaliation. I had not seen it since the theatre, and to quote a tweet I dropped during my re-watch:
#gijoeretaliation is a hot mess that has just enough fan service to make me not hate it, but enough contrivance to make me want to.
This was K's first GIJOE anything, and she liked it about as much as I do. Anyway, the fact that Retaliation came closer to making me happy than Cobra Rises did felt like a good sign at the time the film came out, and I held out hope that a part three might continue that trend. However, cinematic tie-in properties and shared universes have come a long way since then, and here we are with a reboot.
I suppose I should explain that GI JOE is hallowed ground to me. Or at least Larry Hama's 80s comic continuity is. Despite the usual dalliance with comics in my very earliest days - from which all I remember is Thor and Uncle Scrooge - Hama's GI JOE was the book that made me a comics kid. I still remember issue 49, published July 1986.
I wrote about this somewhere before, but I bought a tattered copy of this issue on the schoolyard from a total dick who actually charged me $0.25 over the cover price (!) while taking a summer school algebra class between 4th and 5th grade. I still have that copy. I must have read that comic 100 times, and when #50 came out, I began having my parents take me to the local comic shop every month so I could buy keep up. Then I began raiding back issue bins. My collection of what I'd consider Hama's essential run of Joe (issues 1-126, although by then the title was waning under the stress of Hasbro's demands that Hama help them save a sinking property) has never been complete, and I don't revisit them often. That said, because of all this, yeah, I want someone to adapt the book into a movie as good as Marvel has done with theirs.
Hopeless? Maybe, but despite my love of Hama's work, the version of Joe I think would adapt the best to the big screen is the understated reboot that Mike Costa and Christopher N. Gage did in the 00s for IDW, specifically the Cobra book. There has been talk of that series getting the TV show treatment, but in the meantime, we're left with what you see above. Which looks like it might be a better big-budget take on Joe than what we got with the previous two films. I mean, I'm not sure how you kick off a franchise with a single-character origin film, but regardless, this will put my ass in a seat.
Yo Joe!
Playlist:
The Jesus Lizard - Down
Balthazar - Fever
David Bowie - The Next Day
Dance with the Dead - B-Sides: Vol. 1
Christopher Young and Lustmord - The Empty Man OST
There's a reason Sunn O))) named a song after Earth founder Dylan Carlson.
I'm largely unfamiliar with Earth except for this album, which I picked up shortly after its release in 2014, and which became ingrained in my psyche in 2015 as I listened to it over the course of a year where my life imploded and then put itself back together (better). This song, in particular, and Rabia Shaheen Qazi's lyrics and delivery really resonated with me at that time.
Watch:
Well look what finally found its way to a platform where most people can actually see it:
I've had a lot of misgivings about this flick and the interminably long build-up to its release. First, A24 makes great stuff, however, I've developed a growing awareness of the films they release that seems to have the express intent of being 'the next Hereditary.' Seeing the Saint Maud trailer for the first time a little over a year ago marked the beginning of this suspicion and the feeling has only escalated since.
Next, to have bypassed the usual VOD platforms where the everyman fan can pay to rent the film, A24 instead made a deal with West Coast cable channel Epix, where the film has remained exclusive for the last several months.
Really? Being that no one I know that doesn't live in California has ever even heard of epix, I don't know where - if anywhere - this film was available elsewhere in the country, but I consider this a frustrating manuever on A24's part. I mean, all is forgiven if this helped put the film and its writer/director Rose Glass in a good place in a world where movie releases have become increasingly uncertain and unprofitable.
Anyway, regardless of these misgivings, I watched Saint Maud yesterday. My reaction?
Wow.
When religious lunacy replaces addiction, bad things happen. That's all I'll say, other than I really dug Saint Maud, and although I don't really feel as though the way A24 handled its release was warranted, the film is definitely worth watching if you're a fan of the more psychological take A24 tends to curate for their release.
Playlist:
Earth - Primitive and Deadly
High on Fire - Blessed Black Wings
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Windhand - Eternal Return
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Algiers - The Underside of Power
Arctic Monkeys - AM
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Federale - No Justice
Madeleine Peyroux - Careless Love (single)
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)
The Dandy Warhols - Playlist
Cutting Crew - (I Just) Died in Your Arms
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
Corniglia - Eponymous
Card:
Yes. Perfect pull, as the paradigm of the past year died yesterday when, for the first time since early March, 2020, I walked to my coffee shop writing spot and put in a solid writing session. It felt awesome, and I'm going back today!
More Type O from their final album, and if this isn't a case of the best goddamn final song for a band's career, I don't know what is. I still get chills every time I listen to it, and I've been listening to it a lot.
Watch:
I feel like I may be the only person I know that didn't give very much of a toss about the teaser for David Lowery's The Green Knight that A24 released last year. Earlier this week the full trailer dropped and I have to say, I still don't know that the glimpses of the story that peek through are catching me, however, visually it looks as though we may finally have a companion to the ergot-infused witchery of Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army:
There's something so sublime about the imagery here and the narrative it suggests. I'm reminded of Ben Wheatley and John Boorman simultaneously. This may be a reason to head back into a theatre.
Maybe.
Playlist:
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Sampa the Great - The Return
Viet Cong - Eponymous
The Police - Outlandos d'Amour
Primus - Sailing the Seas of Cheese
The Smiths - Meat is Murder
Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers + Queers
Card:
When you have all the bloody pieces but just can't get things to work out quite right, that is when Ruin threatens. Which feels more than a little accurate in terms of money and potential residences to be purchased.
Anything Declan Shalvey has a hand in I will read. I'm stoked that the artist of one of my favorite series (Injection) is also a kick-ass writer!
Thus far, this alternate "What If?" book has my attention. I adore the OG spidey black costume, even before it became Venom, so this is cool to see.
YES! Summer camp slasher - 'nuff said!
I almost forgot about this series; I feel like its release has been a touch sporadic. No matter, three issues left after this one. Aquatic Horror never felt so good.
This series is gorgeous. Really digging it, and if I can get my hands on this variant cover, all the better.
Loved issue #1, let's see how #2 is.
Marvel is really monetizing Spider-man these days, but I've become a sucker for Nick Spencer's take on the book, even if it is jam-packed with more plot than you can shoot a web at.
I missed posting for the anniversary of Peter Steele's death back last month, but the Drab Four have been on my mind.
It's funny, over the last few years I've fallen into the habit of almost exclusively listening to Type O in the Autumn. Which is weird, because if I was forced to name a 'favorite band' it would probably be them (or Ozzy-era Sabbath). The reason for this weird confinement of their music is something I have been aware of, but not really analyzed.
Until yesterday.
In listening to Type O's final album, 2007's Dead Again, I realized the reason I largely reserve their music for Autumn is that out here in California, we do not have any of the recognizable features of my favorite season. October feels a lot like August, feels a lot like April, etc. After living the first thirty years of you life in the Midwest, the seasons become ingrained in you, in your thought processes and emotions and all kinds of other inner-working, hard-wired stuff. When I moved to the west coast about a year before Dead Again was released, I had to get used to the lack of burning leaves, thunderstorms, and a general sense of what I'll rather dramatically call 'the dying time.' Thus, I established early on a sort of "Internal Autumn" ideal, almost a mantra for my favorite time of year. This usually kicks in during the start of September and lasts through the first week of November. It's how I convince myself that I'm living in Autumn when I'm really not, an homage to the way I lived the years of my life that shaped me. This works, however, I think the inner autumn thing has become more difficult to sustain the longer I'm out here, that much further away from the experience of a real Autumn. Thus, I came up with this idea that if I reserved Type O - still the most Autumn band for my money - exclusively for that time of year, it would help sell this whole charade.
And as is often the case in psychoanalyzing yourself, now that I've picked this apartment, it feels freeing, because I WANT TO LISTEN TO TYPE O NEGATIVE ALL DAMN YEAR LONG.
So let's start here with Profit of Doom, the third - and possibly weirdest - track from Dead Again.
Damn, Pete. We fucking miss you.
Watch:
One of the movies I've been waiting for this year is Maximiliano Contenti's Red Screening, AKA The Last Matinee. I don't know a lot about this one, but check out this bee-oootiful trailer:
I've become quite a sucker for Neo-Giallo, and Horror flicks that take place in movie theatres always work good for me, so I'm jazzed for this one, which will be in theatres on August 6th and VOD August 24th.
Playlist:
Voyag3r - Doom Fortress
Lantlôs - Lake Fantasy (pre-release single)
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Type O Negative - Dead Again
Anthrax - Among the Living
Card:
The 8 of Wands always feels like it's a premonition of good things to come, creatively. I need that right now; things have been slow and syrupy and I need to get myself moving again. The idea is in another week or so, since I am now fully vaxxed, I'll begin walking to my writing spot again. This should help me get back on track, so hopefully the card is a good omen.
A new show by the creators of Dark? I'd heard about this last year, but completely forgot about it.
READ:
You may know C. Robert Cargill's name best as the co-writer of 2012's brilliant Horror movie Sinister. He's also a novelist, and although I'm unfamiliar with most of his work, I began his new novel Sea of Rust recently and can tell you it is fantastic.
The novel takes place in a world devoid of humanity. It's our world after the AI war that wipes us out, after AI factions off into super mainframe intelligence - there are two and the denizens of the novel refer to them as OWIs, or One World Intelligences - and rogue robots who fight for the freedom not to succumb to the edict of trading their selfhood for the ease of becoming part of the hivemind. There are so many analogs to our world here that it's crazy; from the Corporatization of everything to individuality in the age of our own accelerated (social media), that the book has an uncanny ability to feel in harmony with our lives even during the, frankly, pretty damn well-written action sequences. I'm really digging this one, and am moving Mr. Cargill to my 'pay attention to everything he does' list.
Playlist:
Turquoise Moon - The Sunset City
Myrkur - Folkesange
DJ Muggs the Black Goat - Dies Occidendum
Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST
Judas Priest - Painkiller
Kate Bush - The Dreaming
Zeal and Ardor - Devil is Fine
Waxwork Records - House of Waxwork Issue #1 OST
Led Zeppelin - Eponymous
Card:
Ah, restraint. Thank you for the reminder. Here's the mantra for when I'm scouring ebay for things I do not need: I WANT A HOUSE.
Goddamnit, does it feel like forever since Stranger Things Season 3? It sure does to me. The good news is, when Season 4 gets closer, K and I have a full rewatch of the entire series planned.
Started the day yesterday with some Effigies. Been a minute, almost forgot how much I love these guys. Old school Chicago punk rock - still hits as hard as it does now as it did when I first heard it in the early 90s.
Read:
Everyone in my house had their second shot yesterday, and just like the first one three weeks ago, it's rendered me nearly immobile. That's a bit of an overstatement, however, I took a nap afterward and woke up feeling like chewed-up dog biscuits, so I'm off work again today. The morning marine layer is pretty intense outside, so the air is cool and charged with the Ocean. Windows are open, I'm breathing fresh air, and from somewhere nearby Cindy Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is playing. If I felt up to going to get some eggs and corned beef hash this would be a perfect morning.
While sitting in bed this morning, I'm doing some reading, going back and reading the afterward sections on two graphic novels I've read in the last month and absolutely loved:
Eibon Press's Bottomfeeder is a heartfelt work of sleazy Grindhouse Horror and I could not have loved it more. There are moments I can only call, "Stark raving terror" that are unlike anything I've seen in a comic (or a film) before. That said, it's also a class act; this is exploitation for exploitation's sake, however, it's clear to me that Stephano Romano, Shawn Lewis, Patrick Carbajal and everyone involved weren't just out to fill the pages with hateful dissonance, but to tell a fucking awesome story, as well. There's a lot of love for late actor Joe Pilato, who was originally attached when this was a screenplay, and who gave his blessings for the use of his likeness as the main character, Detective Joe Angell. You read this gnarly romp through tits, blood, and guts and then turn to those final pages and read Lewis and Romano extolling their love of Pilato as a friend and mentor and you get a little teary-eyed. Because Bottomfeeder is something unlike anything else, and that uniqueness makes for a special experience when you consume it. The Horror is real, meaningful, and executed masterfully.
Pun intended.
You can hear Chris Saunders and I interview Jay Fotos about his fantastic Rising Rebels graphic novel over on the A Most Horrible Library podcast. I read the book three weeks ago, after my first dose of the vaccine, but I had yet to go back to finish reading the extensive afterward section. There are author's notes that trace everything from the original impetus for Rising Rebels to the monster designing process but there's also a collection of Danny Marianino's 80s Once Upon A Time column, which is among the finest retrospective romps through the era of my childhood I've read.
My opinion is any diehard Horror fan would love both of these books, so if that's you, you can pick up Bottomfeeder over on Eibon Press's website HERE, and Rising Rebels is probably most readily available from Jay Fotos's eBay Store HERE.
Playlist:
The Effigies - Remains Nonviewable
Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain
Neurosis - Given to the Rising
SURVIVE - Mnq026
Genesis - Invisible Touch
Ice-T - Power
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Exactly what I will need to get through the next two days and hit the ground running on Monday. My mantra: Keep your eyes on the prize: two weeks from yesterday I will be sitting on the patio at a local brewhouse drinking a pint of beer.
This one's been in my head since I broke out Ice-T's sophomore record Power a few days ago. Interesting how something that, technologically speaking, sounds so archaic, could be so catchy. Is there hope for those old-school 80s sounds yet? You know, the ones that came preloaded on consumer-grade Casio keyboards by the time we hit the mid-90s? The Night Court bass, Pan Pipes and the like? Maybe. I believe that's what a contingent of artists that hovered around the moniker Hypnogogic Pop attempted in the 00s, but in many cases, that attempt failed. IMO. Hearing this track now though, perhaps the time is ripe for someone new to come along and reclaim some of these weird 80s textures.
Watch:
Having read the two comic series as they came out, the first in 2014, the second a year or two ago, I enjoyed Cullen Bunn's The Empty Man, so when I saw there was a movie, I became both excited and hesitant. Then I saw Lustmord did the OST, and I knew I had to watch it.
I dug this one. The ending fell a bit flat for me, but overall, Director David Prior really conveys a heavy sense of forbidding that was a blast to experience. There's a great sense of dread - made palpable at times by Lustmord's brand of creepy cosmic textures. The funny thing is, in watching this, I don't believe it felt so much like an adaptation of the material from the comic, as much as it did the comic if it had been a novel by Laird Barron.
Playlist:
Christopher Young and Lustmord - The Empty Man
High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings
John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - Halloween III: Season of the Witch OST
ILSA - Preyer
Roy Ayers - Ubiquity
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I'll be paying special attention to Big Ideas today.
