Quite possibly, my favorite Black Sabbath song. Although that is probably as difficult to stick by as a mother picking a favorite child.
Sabotage is without a doubt my favorite of the band's albums. The music is phenomenal - really a step beyond anything they'd done before. They kind of split the difference between their blues roots and the shaping of Heavy Metal they began on Paranoid. However, it's the lyrics that really seal the deal on this one for me. There's such an air of prophecy and revelation.
NCBD:
Jesus, my wallet just jumped out of my pocket and took off down the street. Look at this list!
So I was wrong about issue #4 being the finale. Here we go.
This series is so imaginative, so original, and so f*&king gorgeous I just can't believe it. Every issue gets weirder, but never at the cost of the story's inner logic.
I have to have this Skottie Young cover. I'm not generally one of those folks who feel the need to have everything he does - his work is always cool, but it's only when he draws certain classic, larger-than-life Marvel characters that I feel the need to add them to my collection.
Been a minute. Since Lazarus moved to this format, I enjoy the individual issues so much more. That said, with the gap between, I lose A LOT. It's about time for a re-read (which I've been saying for like three years now).
Love this Peach Momoko cover. I dug the first issue of Moon Knight's new ongoing, so I'm interested in where the story is going.
I am really digging this book, and it's great to be back on something with Tony Daniel's art. Waaay back in the day, he was the highlight of Todd McFarlane's Spawn series when I still read it in the mid-90s. I traded in all those Spawns back when I moved to LaLaLand, however, I'd be lying if I didn't say I've actually thought about rebuying a few, just to revisit Tony's art. Now, thankfully, I don't have to. Instead, I can read a well-written book that he illustrates. Win-win.
Coming down to the final days of Nick Spencer's run. I just learned that after he leaves with Amazing Spider-Man #74, the new series will feature Ben Reilly instead of Peter Parker.
Yeah, I totally did a double-take on that one, too.
I'm tempted to jump off again, however, the idea of bringing the clone back (or was Peter the clone?) is too interesting to pass up. At least for a while.
Sweet Declan Shalvey cover on this one. This series is fun as hell, and I love seeing the various bounty hunters whose figures I coveted trying to fuck Fett over. Makes for a helluva story.
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Last week my copies of Never Hike in the Snow and Never Hike Alone arrived. I missed out on backing Alone, but was able to make it in on Snow. Monday night, I finally had some time to sit down and watch both films.
I'll take this over almost any other F13 feature film any day of the week. F13 is one of those franchises that I want to like so bad, but I almost never do.
Vincent DeSanti does such a fantastic job, not only in stripping these down to what makes the concept of the series great but as Jason himself. Yes, that's the director lumbering in for every kill! And bring back Thom Matthews reprising his role as Tommy Jarvis!
Playlist:
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper
MadLove - White with Foam
Danzig - Thrall - Demonsweatlive
Danzig - Danzig 4
Deftones - Ohms
The Neverly Brothers - Dark Side of Everything
Razor - Armed and Dangerous
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Harnessing the raw power of an idea and honing it into something tangible.
Another single from the forthcoming album Into the Blue, which is out Friday, August 24, but which you can still pre-order on the band's website HERE.
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I don't know anything about this new Mike Flanagan Netflix show Midnight Mass except that it's Mike Flanagan.
What else do I need to know?
Also, it looks like this might fit into the Seaside Horror subgenre I've grown rather fond of recently, so that's pretty cool. And really, Netflix has a damn good track record with Horror these days, so I'll definitely be watching this one when it drops.
Listen:
The new episode of The Horror Vision is up. This time, we do a deep-dive into James Gunn's Horror DNA. From writing the screenplay for the Dawn of the Dead remake to Slither, Belko and even a bit on his Troma roots. Check it out!
Playlist:
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
The Black Queen - Infinite Games
The Joy Formidable - Into the Blue (pre-release singles)
Deftones - Koi No Yokan
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A larger perspective. Ritual and union. Hmm... not entirely sure how to read this. It may point toward an idea I've had kicking around in my head now for about a week, but I'm unclear if it would be an allusion to it being a valid engagement, or a waste of time.
A little MadLove to start the week. My Favorite track from an album that's pretty much all favorite tracks.
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This show blew me away. I haven't taken to anything like this in a while.
First: Brand New Cherry Flavor is, I think, pretty much Season 5 of Channel Zero, Nick Antosca's former anthology series on SyFy. If you haven't seen that, all four seasons are currently on Shudder and are 100% worth your time. They are fantastic. Basically, SyFy canceled it, and Netflix gave him to do something similar. Channel Zero's seasons are all stand-alone and all adapted from Creepy Pastas. BNCF is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Todd Grimson. The book is way out of print, but don't worry - someone is bound to remedy that with a new edition any minute now.
Second: Mr. Antosca is unapologetically a huge David Lynch fan, and there's a ton of that 'flavor' that he brings to his work. It's especially here. It's in exactly the most respectful, awesome way, too. Not imitation, but influence. I expand on this idea a bit in the new episode of The Horror Vision that drops tomorrow. At the time, I'd only seen the first episode of BNCF. K and I watched that Friday night. Yesterday, we did the remaining seven episodes because we just couldn't stop.
Playlist:
MadLove - White With Foam
David Bowie - Young Americans
Barry Adamson - Oedipus Schmoedipus
The Veils - Total Depravity
Grinderman - Eponymous
The Replacements - Tim
Bjork - Post
The Hillbilly Moon Explosion - My Love for Evermore
These words fit with the image of Greg Duli at the time, and it fits with where I was mentally. Not that I was angry and ready to hurt somebody, but I was ready to blow up my old life and start a new one. And that's exactly what I did.
I used to listen to The Twilight Singers' Powder Burns every day, compulsively. I probably had a low-grade addiction to cocaine by the time I left Chicago in 2006. It wasn't an everyday thing, but it was around me every day I worked at the bar where I tended, so things were moving in that direction. When I moved to the West Coast, I effectively shut that down. (Who moves to LaLaLand to stop doing blow?). A lot of the artists who affected me the most after this all had public personas that included similar pastime pursuits. Duli was one, plus, there was this additional melancholy attached to falling in love with his music, as my friend Brian had always heralded Duli's first band, The Afghan Whigs, as a major influence, and I just hadn't been there at the time to share that with him. I never bothered to take Brian's suggestion seriously because I had not yet encountered anything in my life that prepared me to fall in love with Greg Duli's music yet. Shortly after Brian died, I moved. By the time I did, I was hooked on the Whigs' Gentleman, and soon after 1965, and then, in 2006, Powder Burns.
This album is epic. I honestly believe that about every facet of it, from the songwriting, arranging and playing, to what Duli was going through in his life at the time, to the fact that the band recorded the album in a studio in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. If you read interviews with him from the time, you'll hear him discuss how the feeling of being in the wreckage of a major culture center crept into the feel of the record. It's there, oh yeah. Everything feels like it's lying in a pool of rubble, the ceiling's split open and falling, the wind is howling just outside, and you're trapped with your demons by the light of a single, solitary candle.
When I fell back into Powder Burns recently, I realized it's been a long time since I really listened to it. I still dabble with old pastimes when I return to the city I fled, although it's been a few years. I don't know if this re-engagement with the album is my inner demon fixing to make a phone call for the five days I'll be in town at the end of September, or if I'm just reclaiming the entire dejected persona for something I'm writing. That's the thing with this craft, you never really know who you are when you're working on something that puts you in the driver's seat by utilizing your life experiences. I guess only time will tell...
Not sure if this collaboration is stand-alone or will be part of an album, but either way, it's cool as all hell to hear these two icons make music together.
Watch:
I finally had a chance to watch Andrew Thomas Hunt's Spare Parts last night. Really solid, old-school exploitation flick with a big ol' heart of Girl Power gold.
Gory, Guttural and glib, this one made a perfect second feature after my first viewing of George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road, which I'd not seen since its theatrical run.
There is no love lost between me and the original Mad Max franchise. I'm actually planning to give it another try, or at least skip forward to The Road Warrior and try to judge that separate from the first film, which I watched for the first time since childhood ten years ago and found to be a complete disappointment and waste of time. Fury Road takes the admiral path of foregoing trotting out that racist cunt who played the titular hero in the original films and instead subs in the always fantastic Tom Hary, then basically makes him take a backseat to Charlize Theron's Furiosa. Overall, I can't say this fourth entry in the series has anything but the most basic plot, but it really doesn't matter. This one is so frenetic from start to finish there are times when I think I'm watching it at 2x the speed.
Playlist:
The Veils - Total Depravity
Orange Goblin - Frequencies from Planet Ten
Grinderman - Eponymous
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir
Nothing - The Great Dismal
The Neverly Brothers - The Dark Side of Everything
Realize - Machine Violence
MadLove - White with Foam
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I'm hoping this is an indication that the work I'm doing on this short story will pay off. Right now, finishing it - no, not just finishing it, but nailing it - seems a continent away. I've worked on it every day but one this past week, so I'm putting the effort in and I can definitely see it shaping up. That said, there are still some wonky elements. It's not smooth yet.
It's been a while since I've fallen headlong into The Veils. With Twin Perfect putting all this glorious Twin Peaks stuff into my head, this feels like the perfect time.
NCBD:
The slimmest NCBD in quite some time. I'll try not to complain, and instead allow my wallet to catch its breath.
There's nothing amazing about this book prequel to the new MOTU series on Netflix - which I enjoyed quite a bit - but it's fun. Also, with a four-issue runtime, I don't feel like it's a very big commitment. Also, that's a Bill Sienkiewicz variant cover right there. Pure Magick.
So glad The Silver Coin got picked up for more than the initially solicited four issues. This is easily in my top five comics of the year.
Listen:
Super excited to finally post this new episode of The Horror Vision, as we had Seattle University Professor of Film Studies John Trafton on to deep-dive Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck's criminally underseen 1973 Messiah of Evil. I learned a lot on this one, and from this film in general, and John is a veritable wellspring of film knowledge. Can't wait to have him back! Listen to the episode, and check out his website, which is chock full of fantastic information!
Discovering Black Mare last week has sent me into a spiral with Sera Timms music. Following my own advice and clicking on that Bandcamp link for 2020's Death Magick Mother, I sat completely transfixed by the record yesterday in the wee hours of the morning. This record has an extremely ethereal quality. I can hear Pornography-era Cure, Cocteau Twins, and contemporaries, L.A.-based Chasm, but the space created within the walls of this aural shrine are all Timms's own. Turning this one on feels like stepping into an hour-long fog bank. Through the obfuscation, you see outlines of landmarks you think you recognize, except they're all wrong, and give you an immediate impulse to be at the ready.
Watch:
A few weeks back, my cousin, Charles told me about the Youtube channel Twin Perfect's video, "Twin Peaks Actually Explained (No, Really)." I'd seen this floating around in my feed and ignored it. Despite the fact that I often create or take part in videos similar to this - well, NO video is similar to this one - I rarely watch them, and I certainly go out of my way to avoid any video that claims to explain any movies or shows I dig, most especially Peaks. However, Charles told me enough to get me interested, and if you'll recall, there was one other Twin Peaks Explanation video I took to heart a year or so ago - Wow Lynch Wow's "Was Mr. C Victorious?" This new video, then, wasn't exactly unprecedented. What was unprecedented was the fact that, after watching about the first twenty minutes of this 4 hour+ video, I truly believed in my heart of hearts that holy F'ing shite - this guy COMPLETELY EXPLAINS TWIN PEAKS. It's not what you think it's going to be, it's far better. I cannot recommend this one enough unless you do not want to have the show explained.
Seriously, without spoiling anything, when you get to the part about what the light shining on Laura Palmer's face at the end of FWWM means, you'll know if you're on board or not.
Playlist:
Black Mare - Death Magick Mother
Metallica - Seek and Destroy (single)
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Faith No More - The Real Thing
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Windhand - Eternal Return
Conan - Monnos
Guns N' Roses - ABSURD (wow, this is awful)
Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual
The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs - Original Series Soundtrack
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Okay, so what am I battling here? I feel like most everything is in line.
A recent discovery about which I know very little other than the fact that I really dig this album. Black Mare's Bandcamp is HERE, and there still appear to be vinyl copies of her 2020 record Death Magick Mother.
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I saw two huge movies this weekend and the results are not what I expected at all. First up, David Lowery's The Green Knight
From my Letterbxd review:"Gorgeous. A must on a big screen. Andrew Droz Palermo deserves so many awards. There are some technical issues I had with the way it’s written and directed, as well as a few scenes that felt like missteps - to quote Peter Griffin, “the movie insists upon itself” - but overall this is a beautiful attempt at Pure Cinema, which can NEVER be a bad thing."
Next, James Gunn's The Suicide Squad, which I would have been perfectly content to - just like the first one - never watch until a confluence of events made me curious enough to try.
The result? Possibly my favorite comic book movie ever. Wow. Just wow.
Playlist:
Pilot Priest and Electric Youth - Come True OST
The Plimsouls - Everywhere At Once
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Bloodslide - How Glad I Am (single)
Yob- Clearing the Path to Ascend
Sacred Reich - Independent
College - Teenage Color EP
Polica - Give You the Ghost
David Lee Roth - Apple Music Essentials
Windhand - Soma
Droids Attack - Sci-Fi or Die
Black Mare - Field of the Host
Dead Milkmen - Welcome to the End of the World
The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
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The Alchemical marriage - recognizing disparate and/or complementary elements and bringing them together to marry their strengths in a way that supports the great work. That's kind of a hoighty toighty, old school Aleister Crowley interpretation - High Magick and all that rigamarole, but it applies. I'm seeking to write an extremely short story for submission to an anthology. Brevity is definitely not where my overall strength in writing lies. However, I'm excellent at slicing and dicing in the edit. So... edit in the head, before the fingers hit the keys.
I'm not a fan of the Black album. In fact, everything that came after that album makes me not want to be a fan of this band at all. However, I could never turn my back on those first four records by Metallica, especially Master of Puppets.
However...
The almighty algorithm saw fit to send 'Sad But True' my way Monday when an Alice in Chains record I was listening to on Apple Music ended and I didn't choose another one quick enough. I heard those opening chords and lingered. Then, before I knew it, I was into my second go-round with the song, actually physically restarting it after its conclusion.
Dare I say it, but this is a good song.
Nothing about 'Sad But True' is what I like about the music from this band that I like, but divorcing the song from its creators for a moment, I found there is almost a Doom vibe to this one. Also, there are some haunting elements in the choruses - not sure if those are keyboards or a guitar effect. Either way, I doubt I'll be jamming the whole record any time soon, but I've already added it to a playlist.
Watch:
I finally got around to watching Ivan Kavanagh's Son on Monday night. Jesus, this one is a rough watch. A very good film, freaky as all hell, but also there's some pretty disturbing stuff just below the surface.
This won't be for everyone. There's an undercurrent of abuse - it's not front and center or showcased, but it's discussed as the motive for certain events in the film, and that lingers. That said, I'm pretty squeamish with anything like that, and although this stayed with me, I can't say it did so in an overtly, or in any kind of discomforting way. What the film did do right was be well made and quickly paced, as well as take those unpleasant ideas and weave them into a pretty compelling and effective Horror film.
NCBD:
I feel like this cover says it all: This series is BIG.
Maybe it was binging the recent MOTU sequel series that primed for this, but I LOVE this cover. Total Skeletor.
This is the 1:15 variant for Ed Piskor's Red Room #3. I'll most likely not be able to get my hands on this particular variant, but it's awesome as all hell.
The end to an amazing series. Can't wait to reread the entire run, start to finish in a nice, tight burst. Talk about great characters!
Casey Jones! These "Best of" TMNT books have been among my favorite comics in years, and I kind of expect this one to go right up alongside the Raphael one from a few months back as the best of the bunch.
I'm not actually certain I will buy this one, but I just love the fact that these two bizarre ass characters have their own book. Five-year-old me would be ecstatic!
The throwaway panel of the High Evolutionary and the promise his presence brings is what has me coming back for issue 2, although I will say, rereading Grant Morrison's New X-Men has me feeling some major love for the corner of the Marvel Universe I wrote off due to 'strip mining' the characters a few years ago. Let's see where this book goes.
Playlist:
Jerry Cantrell - Atone (pre-release single)
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
Not a lot of full album rotation today as I leaned into a new playlist for the upcoming second episode of the new Metal Podcast I'm doing with Anthony and Tori from The Horror Vision. We're recording the new episode this coming Saturday morning, so it should be up this coming Tuesday. The topic? Well, if the playlist doesn't make it obvious, it's Thrash Metal.
Card:
Reminding me to leave the old paradigms (and projects) behind in the face of reconciliation with previous collaborators.
One of my favorite tracks from what is - in my not-so-humble opinion - one of the finest records of the 1990s. I've had the Rev on my mind lately, and have been digging back through the records I played endlessly during my 20s. Primarily, that would be 1996's It's Martini Time, 93's Full-Custom Gospel Sounds, 94's Liquor in the Front, and 1998's Space Heater. Nothing against any of the records that followed those, but that's just kinda where I check out with the Rev.
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I love all the super weird body horror this new decade seems to be bringing us. Mosquito State looks like another mind-bending high concept film inspired by the long line of Body Horror that David Cronenberg's work inspired, and his son Brandon redefined for the modern age (Not that DC isn't modern. He's ultra-modern, and all signs point to his next film reminding us about that the same way his novel Consumed did a few years back). Either way, kudos once again for Shudder bringing us all this awesome body horror.
Playlist:
Cloud Cruiser - I: Capacity
Peter Gabriel - So
Jethro Tull - Benefit
Cindy Lauper - She's So Unusual
ZZ Top - Rhythmeen
Reverend Horton Heat - Liquor in the Front
Reverend Horton Heat - It's Martini Time
Droids Attack - Sci-Fi or Die
AC/DC - The Razors Edge
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
Beautiful Brutality Playlist for the week of August 2nd, 2021
Black Sabbath - 13
Space Burial - Mudtrout
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Compromise and the uniting of disparate elements. Not sure what this is pointing to, exactly, but it's pretty good, general day-to-day life advice.
The youtube algorithm surprised me Saturday night by throwing the new Jerry Cantrell single my way. I had no idea this album was on the horizon, and despite my hot/cold relationship with Mr. Cantrell's other solo albums - all of which I like, but none that have really stuck with me like, say, the previous AIC album did - I really liked this song. What's more, and this is extremely rare, the video really helped drive home how I felt about the song. I feel like Cantrell is aging both as a human and a songwriter in a very elegant manner, and that brings great joy to my heart. Alice in Chains was, after all, birthed in a pretty severe amount of trauma.
The album, Brighten, drops on December 17. You can pre-order it HERE, though all the vinyl appears to be sold out at this point.
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Rewatched a couple of movies this past week that I'd been wanting to for quite some time.
First, I finally picked up a copy of Dan O'Bannon's 1984 classic Return of the Living Dead on Blu-Ray. Despite my posting the Scream Factory trailer here, the version I purchased was the MGM release, simply because I didn't want to shell out $35 for it.
This film is a rarity to me: despite the comedic elements, RoTLD remains one of the most disturbing and frightening flicks I know. There's something to the starkness of the sets that creates an isolated feeling that permeates and really adds to the siege elements. Also, the entire idea that the dead are compelled to feast on the brains of the living because, as the torso-zombie lady says, "The pain of being dead," really disturbs me. Especially after Freddie dies and begins to repeatedly scream, "It hurts! It hurts!"
Next, a few months back when Severin announced they would be remastering and releasing Gabriel Bartalos's Skinned Deep, I pre-ordered it. This is one my friend Dennis gave me back in the day, part of the original Fangoria's "Gore Zone" three-pack that also included the Irish zombie film Dead Meat, and The Last Horror Movie. I sold most of these back when my life was imploding in 2014 and had pretty much assumed Skinned Deep was something I had to consign to the aethers of the post-physical media world.
Enter Severin.
This is an extremely bizarre take on the backwoods slasher film that transports the crazy family of killers to the plains of the Southwest (I think). Watching it Saturday night, there's a really unique, really heightened 'You're where you don't belong" feeling to the flick, to the point that, combined with the over-the-top characters, I felt an almost dream logic over the entire story. I ended up conking out near the end, so I have to go back this week and watch it again.
Playlist:
Metal Church - Blessing in Disguise
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
The Replacements - Tim
Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun
Peter Gabriel - So
The Maness Brothers - Tammie Jean (single)
Cloud Cruiser - I: Capacity
Card:
This card always tells me to stay stream-lined, keep my head down in the fray, and refuse to relinquish what I've set my sights on.
Jesus Christ, who didn't die last week? We lost three big names, and I wanted to pay some tribute here.
R.I.P. Dusty Hill:
Dusty Hill, founding member of ZZ Top. I never realized Dusty sang lead on Tush. What a band. I think my third ever CD when I was in early high school was the ZZ Top greatest hits album.
R.I.P Joey Jordinson:
Say what you want about Slipknot, but this is the song that broke my hate for the guys that I still insist totally ripped off Mr. Bungle. The drums on this song are amazing.
R.I.P. Mike Howe:
I haven't listened to Metal Church in a very long time, but there was a time when they were pretty important to me. My girlfriend in High School had their first couple of records, and I can remember laying stoned out of my mind listening to this song and feeling that intense thrill that the really epic 80s thrash stuff inspired in me at that age. I still feel that now, and it has a lot to do with Mike Howe's vocals. This song crushes.
Playlist:
ZZ Top - Rhythmeen
Metal Church - Blessing in Disguise
Metal Church - Eponymous
The Replacements - Tim
The Replacements - Let It Be
The Replacements - Sorry Ma, I Forgot to Take Out the Trash
Somehow, I completely missed that Philadelphia's Mannequin Pussy has a new EP out. You can pick up Perfect over on the group's Bandcamp. As I have come to expect, the five songs are perfect individually or taken as a whole. There's more of that 90s flavor they wear on their sleeve, but as with the band's other releases, this is not tribute or referential music. Mannequin Pussy is the real deal.
And I'm happy to have been able to write that last sentence.
NCBD:
One of the things I've realized as I delve back into the Spider-Man issues I grew up with is that the draw for me to Spidey was always weighed heavily on his rogue's gallery, most of which use visages straight out of Halloween or Horror Movies. I know for a fact that the first Spidey comic I ever bought, Amazing #289, was based on the Hobgoblin. Since then, Venom, Jack O' Lantern, Green Goblin and so many others that escape me at the moment all piqued my interest because of their macabre personas. And now we have Kindred, who is kind of a cross between the Hobgoblin and Doctor Octopus, except with giant millipedes instead of metal arms. Creepy A.F.
The final issue of what may be my favorite series of the year. Marvel, please give Daniel Warren Johnson his own monthly book with either Bill or one of your other, lesser-used cosmic characters.
Another fifth and final issue. I'm interested in seeing if this one is going where I think it's going.
Peter David's Symbiote Spider-Man returns, and this time, we're going into the Crossroads storyline that the criminally underrated Bill Mantlo penned for the Incredible Hulk title during his early 80s run on the title. I just completed my collection of and re-read that Hulk story a month or two ago, so I'm psyched at this book popping up and playing in that sandbox!
Last weekend, I re-read the first That Texas Blood storyline and found it's about a hundred times better than I remembered, and I remembered really liking it! One subsequent issue into the new arc left me wanting more, so here it comes.
These TMNT annuals are always pricey but also always worth the extra dough. Plus, I'm excited to see the Rat King again!
Playlist:
Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest
Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk
Mannequin Pussy - Perfect EP
Iress - Prey
Dead Milkman - Welcome to the End of the World
John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Card:
Probably a good idea, as a newfound love of Session IPAs has precipitated an increased nightly beer count on my part. When I told my GP how many beers a night I drink (2-4, maybe as many as 8 on the weekend if we have company) during a recent physical, she did a bit of a double take. Annual routine bloodwork bears out my health, but this card reminds me it's never a good thing to tempt fate. Which is a figure of speech, as I don't believe in fate.
Fell back into Chicago's super underrated industrial grindcore masters Plague Bringer yesterday. This band should be so much more well-known in the metal/industrial community than they are. There's literally nothing I can think of that batters me like this album does. From the drawing of breath that opens the first track, I smile and prepare to be undone.
While looking around on their Bandcamp for any sign of recent activity (none), I discovered that in 2017 they released this "Lara Flynn Bringer' shirt and now I am extremely sad that it's sold out, there are none I could find on ebay or etsy, and I'm shit out of luck acquiring one.
Maybe Plague Bringer will resurface and do another run of it. Maybe. In the meantime, if you dig this kind of sonic madness, PB's Bandcamp is HERE.
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After hearing about Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz's 1973 underrated Horror film Messiah of Evil for the first time back on the old Shockwaves podcast a couple years ago, I started to look around for where to watch the film. The title alone had me, along with the fact that I couldn't remember ever hearing of it before. Back when I was cutting my teeth and really getting into the genre twenty years ago, the two friends who indoctrinated my interest and made it an obsession both had extensive film collections, so the fact that, between the two of them, I don't think either ever mentioned it surprised me. Turns out that's because the film wasn't released on DVD until 2009. That brief mention on Shockwaves sent me into a tizzy trying to track down a streaming service that featured the film. No dice, until two years ago I found it on Prime.
Score, I thought. Only no, no score at all. I started the film and turned it off after only a few minutes because, whatever source the streaming giant culled the film from, the picture quality was unwatchable. Maybe my relatively recent conversion to the Cult of Blu Ray at the time - something I swore for years I would never do - had spoiled me. I've become a bit of a stickler for clean picture transfers, and this one wasn't even what I'd call weak. It was awful. This prejudice is not a bad thing at all, I realize now, except that, for Messiah of Evil, it meant I would have to wait.
Fast forward to last week when I fired up Shudder and found that not only had they added Messiah of Evil, but the picture quality is gorgeous! So after a few false starts over the last five days or so, I finally watched the film last night. I was not disappointed.
First, I don't know if it's just the similarities between Phillan Bishops's electronic score for the film and Carl Zittrer's for another under-seen film from the 70s I adore, Bob Clark's inimitable Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, but Messiah of Evil's score made me warm to the film immediately. Add to that the fantastic settings - most especially our heroine Arletty's missing father's home on the beach, the design behind which was created by artists Jack Fisk and Joan Mocine, the former of which would go on to work with David Lynch on Mulholland Drive and Paul Thomas Anderson on There Will Be Blood and The Master, and I could not take my eyes off the screen. If you read this blog, you'll know how important both Lynch and PTA are to me, so you can imagine what a harmonic charge I felt realizing there was precedent here that fit with my own personal film aesthetic.
There is not a lot of information about Messiah of Evil out there on the internet. However, in regard to the design and look of the film, I found what I feel is the holy grail over on Dr. John Trafton's website. His article Messiah of Evil: Film and the Influence of L.A. Pop Art absolutely blew me away. Mr. Trafton's wealth of knowledge on not only Los Angeles' history, but Film, Pop Art and the overall social fabric of the City of Angeles post-1940 makes for fantastic reading. I can't recommend this enough, whether you want a deep-dive into Messiah of Evil, or just an interesting read that focuses on Art can influence Cinema; you can find the article HERE.
Messiah of Evil has a real work-with-what we have vibe; Katz and Huyck smartly use a lot of California's most attractive and, when shot right, surreal asset: the beach. The sound of the waves is nearly omnipresent here, and if you've ever stayed in a town where that is indeed the major sonic background, you'll know it makes for a heightened, slightly surreal experience. The constant sound of the ocean seems to work in contrast to the everyday world we humans have made for ourselves, especially here in LaLaLand where commerce is god. This makes sense when you think about it; the ocean has always been a transcendent experience for me because to sit on the beach and quietly listen to the waves, you're literally sitting on the edge of humanity's world, listening to the planet breathe. In other words, this is one of the few experiences available to us where humanity is dwarfed by the larger organism that birthed us: the Earth.
It's worth mentioning that this oceanic setting firmly establishes Messiah of Evil in a sub-genre I have recently become quite enamored with, the aptly named Seaside Horror. I guess I've always been mildly aware of the feel of this genre-within-a-genre, however, it wasn't until Joe Bob Briggs showed both Dead and Buried and Humanoids from the Deep on his Last Drive-In double feature this past season that I fell in love with both and gained an understanding of the Seaside Horror aesthetic as a style for which many filmmakers have contributed entries. The idea of a double or triple feature with Messiah and either or both of these films, or John Carpenter's The Fog or even Dan Gildark's Cthulhu makes me nearly giddy with excitement. Hell, perhaps I should look into organizing a Seaside Horror Marathon?
Finally, another aspect of this film I found fit its tone perfectly was the Night of the Living Dead references in regard to its ghouls. Messiah seems to split the difference between zombies and vampires, which is cool because I don't know how much of either creature I need to see again at the moment. Mr. Trafton talks at length about this in the piece I linked to above, so I'll just implore you to go read what he has to say, while I wrap up this rather lengthy post and get on with working on the sequel to Shadow Play.
Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest
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In some respects, I have been listening to my own personal dogma and not to my intuition. This is a nice reminder to be aware of that. We all need help thinking outside the paradigms we draw up for ourselves.
How long do we have to wait until this new Zeal and Ardor album drops? The correct answer is too f*&king long!
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This has been a strange year, because over halfway through, and I've read very few actual novels. Instead, all my reading time is spent reading comics. Not a bad thing, and this certainly isn't the first time this has happened, but between starting the A Most Horrible Library podcast, and the brief resurrection of Drinking with Comics, I've fallen back in love with the medium in a way I haven't felt in years, specifically Marvel Comics, which I thought I'd left behind me after the 2015 Secret Wars event tapped us old-timer Marvel Zombies on the shoulders and whispered, "The old continuity you cling to is gone. Rest easy, this is for a younger generation now."
I've been digging in back issue bins for the first time in at least 15 years. I've also been seeking stuff out on eBay, both in attempts to fill in long-forgotten gaps in series I'd thought I'd given up on. It's made me realize I've come to regret giving away or selling back so many comics over the years. And I've been re-reading a bunch of old-school series as I acquire these missing pieces.
I remember seeing a full-page ad for this book back when I was a kid and thinking it looked troubling. A mutant kid killing one of his friends/teammates? Wow. I only read New Mutants here and there as a kid, so a lot of the character development was lost on me when I did pick up the book, and I never quite understood how Fallen Angels fit into the overall continuity of the ongoing Mutant Books, most penned by my beloved Chris Claremont still at that time. Now I know.
Fallen Angels was a New Mutants spin-off mini-series that ran back in 1987. A couple years ago I found issues 5-8 somewhere and picked them up, but it wasn't until two weeks ago I tracked down 1-4, and now completed, I've finally been reading this weird little adventure that features Roberta DaCosta AKA Sunspot and Warlock - always a character that made me go "WTF?" when I was a kid. Like a lot of comics from this era, this is a bit over-written, however, once you adjust to the difference in style, it's pretty fun.
This is a more recent title. A five-issue series by Jason Latour, Robbie Rodriguez and colorist Rico Renzi. Robbie and Rico are the visual team responsible for the short-lived but fantastic Vertigo series FBP, aka Collider. I fell in love with their style on that book, and when they came up with the initial design for Spider-Gwen - a character I shouldn't have really cared about at all at the time based on my reading habits - I gushed.
I love this character's design.
At the time of the series, and when it came out, I bought issues 1 and 2 and then stopped. Recently, I found 3-5 in the bins at The Comic Bug and started reading through it. Pretty cool alternate universe set-up, where Peter Parker is dead, Gwen was bitten by the radioactive spider, and Frank Castle is a cop! Also, MJ and Gwen play in a band called, what else? The Mary Janes, and have a hit song called "Face it, Tiger."
I don't know that I'll go back and read anything after this small series, but these five issues are bringing me great joy at the moment, so who knows?
With my recently reestablished love of Spider-Man, I've been going back in and just snatching rando issues from the three 80s series I would read off and on, and which I'm realizing I am missing so many issues I once had. In particular, I've been finding quite a few issues of Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man, most issues in the 130s and 140s. Here's a recent acquisition that ties together several other disparate issues I had, so I can now read a short little stint. Remember: back in the 80s and before, trade collections were next to non-existent, so the editorial edict for these books wasn't for the creators to do 5-issue arcs. What we'd get is one-offs, larger threads that played out amidst the monthly stand-alones, and, in Spidey's case, arcs that ran across all three of his titles at the time (Web, Spectacular, and of course, Amazing).
The good news is, almost all of these books run between $2.99 and $3.99, so it's not like I'm breaking the bank. And sifting through the back issue bins has been a strangely calming routine. I can get all stressed out at work, stop by the bug and spend 30 minutes flipping through issues, and all that bad shit is gone when I walk out the door.
Also, motivated by the "Book Club" section on the latest episode of the Marvel's Pull List podcast, I decided it was finally time to re-read Grant Morrison's New X-Men run, so I dusted off the first of my three hardcovers and blew through the first arc E is for Extinction, as well as the 2001 annual that introduced Xorn. Oh, reading this is making me remember just how much I love Morrison's take on the X-Men.
Playlist:
Anthrax - Among the Living
Dio - Holy Diver
Chicago - 25 or 6 to 4 (single)
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
King Woman - Celestial Blues (pre-release singles)
Jethro Tull - Benefit
Ministry - Animositisomina
Godflesh - New Flesh in Dub Vol 1
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Mastodon - Crack the Skye
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I'm back on the journey into Shadow Play, Book Two, and for the first time since last year about this time, I am IN! The book is occupying a lot of my thoughts and time, and what's more, I finally found the voice for a new element I'm adding. Also, there is way more written than I thought, and it's way better than I remembered. So while I'm still letting a new nosleep series idea percolate, my main focus has finally shifted back to where I need it to be!
Wednesday means it's New Comic Book Day, so let's see what I'll be picking up, shall we?
Although I have enjoyed this first arc of Marvel's Alien, as well as last week's Alien: Aftermath, I think after this one, I'll be stepping off. I need to trim some of my comic intake.
The last two issues of Deadly Class have blown me away. Let's see if #47 follows suit.
The finale. This book is crazy touching; a really unique way to tell the kind of story it's telling.
Not gonna lie, I'm stoked for this new Moon Knight book. Let's see how it goes.
Also not gonna lie, I couldn't care less about this book. That said, issue five is the final of the arc, so I'm picking that up just for completion's sake.
Playlist:
Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
David Bowie - Hunky Dory
ZZ Top - Rhythmeen
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Uniform & The Body - Mental Wounds Not Healing
Nothing - Downward Years to Come
Black Sabbath Paranoid
Odonis Odonis - Shadowplay (single)
Dio - Holy Diver
Dio - Dream Evil
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Sometimes, you just know when you're done with something. That's how I feel at the moment about LaLaLand and my career at the Biorepository. I'm developing an exit strategy on the former, but actually feel like I may need to have one for the latter sooner. Which will be tricky. Gonna have to play this one cool, because not doing so could definitely lead to Ruin.
Had this one in my head all day yesterday, finally had a chance to put it on the turntable later in the evening, as K and I sat outside and enjoyed the cooling night air. Dead of Night seemed appropriate, as by that time, I was up way past my usual Sunday night bedtime.
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I absolutely loved the first, two-part storyline in the new AHS spin-off anthology, American Horror Stories. It was great to return to Murder House, great to see some familiar frights, and the casting for this one was fantastic. As Lizard in Joe Begos's VFW, Sierra McCormick impressed the hell out of me, and that was definitely held up by her performance in Andrew Patterson's Vast of Night, which I watched about a year ago (maybe; time has lost all meaning). As Scarlett in AHS, McCormick turns in another great performance, and I'm betting in a year or two, she's going to be a pretty formidable star.
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The albums I've been listening to the most are Cyndi Lauper's seminal She's So Unusual, Let it Bleed, and Paranoid. I've been hitting these super hard, and they're really shaping my recent days. It's pretty cool; I've become quite fond of rolling directly from Yeah Yeah, the final song on She's So Unusual, directly in to War Pigs. I don't know what it is about the juxtaposition of sonic textures there, but it really puts a smile on my face.
David Bowie - Hunky Dory
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual
An Autumn for Crippled Children - The Long Goodbye
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
King Woman - Celestial Blues (pre-release singles)
King Woman - Doubt EP
Charles Mingus - Blues & Roots
John Carpenter - Lost Themes
Megadeth - Rust in Peace
Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
Chuck Berry - Berry on Top
Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power
Orville Peck - Pony
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This was definitely the watchword earlier today, however, I've moved past it and emerged into a state of mind that robbed my anxieties of their ammunition. As a result, I'm feeling pretty good.
Not gonna lie, at first listen to this latest track off Deafheaven's forthcoming album Infinite Granite, I was left pretty underwhelmed. It's nothing to do with the clean vocals - I loved Great Mass of Color from the first time I heard it, but this one felt a bit boring. That was in the car last night on the way to a backyard (second) viewing of Cody Calahan's new flick Vicious Fun - which incidentally is even better the second time through. Today, however, I strapped in the headphones and fired The Gnashing up for a second time, and I have to say, I dig the hell out of this track. I think it will play even better in the context of the entire album, but for now, I'm in.
I LOVE that George has embraced clean vocals. I mean, I'm hoping there will still be fierce, growling moments on the album, but in the meantime, it takes some serious stones for these guys to put themselves out there with these two singles, and I applaud their fearlessness, creativity, and choice of producers in Justin Meldal-Johnsen.
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To borrow a term from Dr. Rebekah McKendry, Here's a Bold Horror Statement: I think Fear Street: 1978 is in my all-time favorite Summer Camp Slashers, right behind Robert Hiltzik's original Sleepaway Camp and Tony Maylam's inimitable The Burning! Goddamn, are these flicks BRUTAL!
1978 starts slow, but man, it takes the body count to places that I don't know if any 80s slasher did. No one is safe, the ax hacks and knife stabbings are prolonged and fully visible on-camera (somehow without feeling icky mean), and the thing in the cave... I mean, that's totally new territory for a slasher, as far as I know.
Next week will bring the final chapter, and I can't wait. After that, I'm very curious to see what else Director Leigh Janiak has in store for us.
Playlist:
Etta James - The Second Time Around
Paul Zaza - My Bloody Valentine OST
Frank Black and the Catholics - Dog in the Sand
Deafheaven - The Gnashing
Reverend Horton Heat - Liquor in the Front
Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws
White Zombie - La Sexorcisto
Sunken - Livslede
Numenorean - Adore
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Definitely in need of the illumination this suggests is around the corner.
