Blut Aus Nord - Queen of the Dead Dimension

 

Another new track from the upcoming album Disharmonium - Nahab, out August 25th on Debemur Morti; pre-order HERE.

This track reminds me A LOT of the material released on Blut Aus Nord's iconic The Work Which Transforms God. It's not the easiest to listen to at first, because it follows very little of our pre-conceived notions of what a song or music can be. That's exactly why I love this band. Bring on the full album - I want to melt my mind with its non-Euclidean sonic geometry!!! 

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Read:

Issue twenty of the new Fangoria arrived in the mail yesterday; always a good day when a Fango shows up!

Most of the main articles are about films that haven't come out yet; the cover story is on Michael and Danny Philippou's Talk to Me; I bought tickets to see this next Thursday, 7/27/23 and I'm fairly stoked. The fine folks at Beyondfest recently did some screenings with the Directors and they can't stop raving about it, so I'm fairly certain this one will be wonderful. Also featured is Cobweb, which I'm driving into Nashville to see on Saturday. Written by Chris Thomas Devlin and Directed by Samuel Bodin, I have high hopes for this one as well. So those are among the articles I'm saving. My favorite parts of Fangoria, however, are the columns, and in just the three I've read so far, I'm instantly reminded why I love this iteration of the Horror Mainstay Magazine so much.

Long-time contributor Michael Gingold discusses writing a new novelization for the 1980 Video Nasty Nightmare for Severin Films, who also just released a restoration of the film. The resurgence of movie tie-in novelizations is fascinating to me, and although I don't read a lot of them - I burned through Brad Carter's Night of the Demon last year, also from Severin - Nightmare is one I'm curious about. The film is hit or miss with me, despite its aurora of grindhouse sleaze that drips from every nook and cranny, but as with Night of the Demon, I have a feeling I will really enjoy reading the story more than watching the film. Whatever your preferred medium for Nightmares, you can order the restored film HERE or Mr. Gingold's novelization HERE. 

Next up was Barbara Crampton's editorial on theatrical screenings vs. streaming. She makes some points I'd not considered until now, mainly that we are seeing the streamers' film production slowing as people return to the theatre. I don't think we'll ever tip the scales back in the direction they were twenty years ago, however, while bombastic (and to my mind at this point, mildly annoying) Marvel/Super Hero flicks carry the main audience on the big screen, Horror is the quiet RBI batter, in my opinion. 

Finally, Stephen Graham Jones has a fantastic new entry in his Slasher Nation column that traces the origins of the Final Girl all the way up from the Damsel in Distress of the silent era. Easily my favorite piece in the magazine I've read this morning.

 

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Playlist:

Forhist - Eponymous

Mammon XV - Woe's and Winter's Breath EP

Ruby the Hatchet - Fear Is a Cruel Master

Brainiac - Predator Nominate

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

Gism - Detestation

Blut Aus Nord - Queen of the Dead Dimension (pre-release single)

Genghis Tron - Dead Mountain Mouth

Sepultura - Schizophrenia

Metallica - 72 Seasons

Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Pachouli Blue

Pale Dian - Feral Birth

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Card:

• V: The Hierophant 

• XI: The Hermit

• Five of Cups - Disappointment

Exciting news will turn out to be erroneous, or at the very least not what it seems at first glance.

 

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Baroness - Beneath the Rose

More new Baroness. New album Stone is out September 15th, pre-order from the band's website HERE. Really cool video for this track, too. Not something I'm prone to complimenting bands on. 

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Watch:

Tubi's Cabin Girl - written by Leslie Beaumont and Rory James Wood and directed by Jon D. Wagner - is FANTASTIC. I posted the trailer a few days ago, so I won't post it here again now, but needless to say, this is a definite contender for my top ten Horror of the year so far. 

Also, despite being on Tubi, there are zero ads. I have a short, spoiler-free review over on Letterbxd HERE. 

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Playlist:

Jogger - This Great Pressure

Baroness - Stone (pre-release singles)

Baroness - Gold and Grey

Tremors - Dark Glasses (single)

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

The Soft Moon - Deeper

Zombi - Shape Shift

Brainiac - Predator Nominate

The Doors - L.A. Woman

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• XL The Wheel

• III: The Empress

• Nine of Swords

Struggling against the tides dictated by Gaia will only lead to self-deception and bad dreams. Whoah, Pretty much a direct answer to a direct question about major upheavals in my life at the moment. Moving my parents from the suburbs of Chicago to Clarksville is the way to go despite reservations I've begun to have, because moving them at this point is just working with, not against, the tides of life. The older we get, the more we need the support of loved ones. My folks are in amazing shape for being in their 80s - I know people in their 60s who look and behave older than them, but despite their continued independence, we all know the best course of action is to get them down here, so we have to stop over thinking things.

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Ruby the Hatchet/Medusa Deluxe

 

Currently unable to extract this song from my head. Not that I'd want to. From Ruby The Hatchet's 2022 album Fear Is a Cruel Master, which you can order directly from the band HERE.

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Watch:

A24 has a pretty interesting new flick coming out in August. From the trailer that dropped two days ago, Thomas Hardiman's feature debut Medusa Deluxe reminds me a lot of Peter Strickland's In Fabric.

 

If you know Strickland's film(s), you no doubt see what I mean. I don't bring this up as a critique; Hardiman's film looks stunning and weird in its own right, and I can't wait to see this when it hits VOD on August 11th. 

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Playlist:

Public Memory - Elegiac Beat (pre-release singles)

Public Memory - Veil of Counsel EP

Sandrider - Godhead

††† - PERMANENT.RADIANT EP

Flying Lotus - Yasuke

Flying Lotus - Los Angeles

QOTSA - Villains

QOTSA - ... Like Clockwork

QOTSA - In Times New Roman

Jogger - Nephicide (single)

Colter Wall - Imaginary Appalachia

The Doors - L.A. Woman

            

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Card:

• X: Fortune - Ka

• Queen of Cups - The Watery aspect of Water

• Two of Wands: Dominion

Moving from the well-spring, the idea source into reality can be a challenging process, especially when potentially bogged down by self-doubt; sacrifice that doubt, as it is a comfort. A familiar that only gets in the way of actualization.

It's difficult to pin this to anything specific, however, reading over it again and applying a strengthening force of contemplation - I'm scattered and fighting for clarity this morning - it seems a pretty good idea to juts blanket apply this to everything today.

 

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Duration:

I forgot to post my report this past Tuesday, which judging by the previous week, is the day I chose to check in with this. In an effort to keep myself honest, this report is for the seven days from July 6 to July 12. I actually lost three hours this week.

I feel like I worked more than this, but when next week hits this will look like a marathon; my folks came in yesterday, so between spending time with them and work, I'm losing days here. Luckily I'm off today, and will hopefully be able to carve out some time over the next three days. I'm typing this early because I woke up well before anyone should on a day off, and figured as long as I'm up, I should do some work on the book.

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Gunship - Monster in Paradise

 

I'm not really big on Gunship, but A) this video is cool A.F. and B) It features a ripping guitar solo that ushers in none other than Tim Cappello on saxophone! Wow, it's almost like Gunship's ScyFy aesthetic is a reality and they were able to go back in time and bring the big, bad sax player straight from The Lost Boys! Hopefully, while they were there, they didn't snag any of Grandpa's Double-Thick Oreos or Root Beers.

Gunship's upcoming album Unicorn drops on September 29th. You can pre-order a copy HERE.

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Watch:

So, I'd heard about Tubi making original material now, but pretty much turned my nose up. Until now:

K watches a lot of youtube folk who buy old houses and convert them into their dream homes, so I've absorbed a lot of that over the last few years. That means this trailer immediately caught our collective attention. This really looks like it could be something great, so I'm checking it out sooner rather than later.

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Playlist:

Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror

Godflesh - Streetcleaner

Pale Dian - Feral Birth

Zombie - 2020

Willie Nelson and the Family Live

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• XV: The Devil

• Knight of Pentacles

• Three of Cups

Taking ideas/information from unlikely or uncomfortable places is best accomplished with a thorough application of Will to subjects mired and misaligned by conventional opinion. 

New Drab Majesty!!!

Wow. Took me a minute, but this new Drab Majesty track from August 25th's An Object in Motion E.P. rocks. Still bummed it's only an E.P., but I'll take what I can get. Pre-order from the always wonderful Dais Records HERE.

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NCBD:

Here's what I'm bringing home for NCBD today:

LOVE this cover. I'm very curious to see where things are headed with this book now that my fears that Kieron Gillen is confirmed for what looks like more than a year's worth of issues (article linked through THIS X-Post)

I thought I'd given up on this Night of the Living Dead series from relatively new (I think) publisher American Mythology, but when I saw it was only going four issues, I figured what the hell. First two issues were by no means bad, just kind of always looking for someone to take a crack at continuing Romero's original Night/Dawn/Day timeline instead of just adapting it, but there's been enough little flourishes here to make it a fun read.

Love this cover! Also, I really enjoy the fact that every time Kang/Leatherhead show up, this book evokes Slasher film techniques!

Holy cow! Michael "Silver Coin" Walsh writing and doing cover duties for this year's TMNT annual? Count me in!

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Watch:

Screambox has really been on fire putting out new content. Unfortunately, despite subscribing for the year back in December, I haven't really watched much on the channel because it is still incompatible with Firestick, my primary interface (for better or worse). I can watch on my computer, however, that doesn't really do any film justice, so I'm biding my time, making a list of all the original content hitting the service that I want to watch. Here's the newest entry on that list:

We Might Hurt Each Other, originally titled Rupintojelis (Pensive), looks like a pretty solid Foreign Slasher that writer Jonas Trukanas and writer/director Titas Laucius apparently based on local Lithuanian legends. I've been in a Slasher kinda mood of late, so this one's calling to me.

We Might Hurt Each Other dropped yesterday on Screambox. Stream (scream) HERE.

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse

Witchskull - The Serpent Tide

Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

Cocksure - K.K.E.P. EP

Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years

Misfits - Static Age

Misfits - Collection II

Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror

        

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Card:

• Three of Disks: Works

• Six of Swords: Science

• Five of Disks: Worry

I could tell the moment I saw the doubled Disks that this is 100% a warning/reminder that the upcoming process of moving my parents to Clarksville is going to be trying. Not that my parents themselves will be, but the process of moving is never easy. Especially not when you're moving people from a house they have been in since 1985.

 

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New Music from FEN!

In 2011, my good friend and Horror-Vision co-host Tori gifted me Fen's album Epoch. This, maybe more than any other album, propelled me headlong into Black Metal. I'll never forget the first time I hit play on Epoch; it was pouring rain - uncharacteristic for Southern California - as I drove home to San Pedro from Borders Books in Torrance where both Tori and I worked at the time. 

The rain was perfect; I've maintained ever since that this record sounds like it was recorded in the rain (whatever that means, exactly, I can't really explain). At the time I was also falling in love with John Crowley's Little Big, and that book, the weather and Epoch combined to invoke a nearly hallucinatory couple of days off. I kept up with Fen through the follow-up, 2012's Dustwalker, then kind of dropped off for no reason that had anything to do with the band. Seeing the release of Monuments of Absence last week, I was blown away by the opening track, which is considerably more severe than anything I've heard Fen do, though as I say, I'm behind a few albums. Looking forward to catching up, though.

Monuments to Absence dropped this past Friday, 7/07/23, so you can head over to the Prophecy Productions website and order a copy HERE.

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Watch:

Bloody Disgusting did an exclusive premiere of the trailer for the new company Neon Noir's first film, That's A Wrap:

Beautiful colors abound, so they definitely nailed that element of the classic Giallo aesthetic. I watched enough of this trailer to know I will be checking it out when it releases August 25. You can read Bloody Disgusting's full article about That's A Wrap HERE.

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Playlist:

Ghost - Stay (single)

Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

QOTSA - In Times New Roman

Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh

Godflesh - Pure

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse

Fen - Monuments to Absence

Fen - Epoch

Drab Majesty - Careless

Drab Majesty - The Demonstration

Final Light - Eponymous

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Forhist - Eponymous

Type O Negative - October Rust

Type O Negative - World Coming Down

Cocksure - Be Rich

INXS - Kick

Tennis System - Technicolor Blind

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

It's been a minute since I handled the Bound deck, so I tapped into it for this morning's Pull:

• Knight of Pentacles - The Will as applied to Matter; Fire/Earth

• Knight of Wands - The Will as applied to Will; Fire/Fire 

• Page or Princess of Wands - Matter applied to Will; Earth/Fire

That's a lot of wink-wink about my Will, eh? I read this as a reminder to be present and apply patience, lest my Will, pulled taut, snap and leave me rudderless for a while. Long story short, I need a reset in order to carry on.

 

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Blackbraid II is Out!

 

From Blackbraid II, out today. You can order your copy from Blackbraid's Bandcamp HERE. I woke up this morning and I'm already on my second run-through on the album. Absolutely fantastic. 

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Watch:

I'm not really a huge Blumhouse Horror guy. I mean, some of their stuff lands pretty well, but even those that do often feel at least partially flat. So, I've never watched The Nun, despite some interest generated when I heard the Colors of the Dark podcast say, "There's kind of a little Fulci movie buried in The Nun." Whether the overall film fails, hearing something like that makes it seem like watching the film would have to be worthwhile. Yet, it's been almost five years since its release, and I continue to abstain. Now there's a sequel, and I wonder if maybe that will finally prompt me to check that first one out.

 

I'm not trying to sound too cool for school here; there's nothing 'wrong' with Bllumhouse Horror. In fact, hell, they're pretty much singlehandedly responsible for keeping the genre afloat in big-box theatres in the early 10s. The first Insidious was a HUGE buoy for the post-torture porn theatrical Horror release, and through subsequent flicks like The Conjuring, Sinister, et al, Blumhouse has proven Horror to be a viable genre for theatres to continue to invest in, which is a good thing no matter how you cut it. Sometimes I feel like we're thIS close to Marvel being the only game in town - now that scares me. Anyway, as usual, I'm really overthinking whether or not I should watch The Nun, which is currently streaming on Max.

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Sky:

It's been difficult for me to keep up with a lot of stuff I want to watch, and I've barely logged more than a couple hours on Puppet Combo's Stay Out of the House, because all I really want to do right now is sit in my backyard at night, drink beer and stare at the sky. So, I thought I'd try and share some of that here. 

This shot comes courtesy of K, who is even more enraptured by the phenomenon of having personalized access to such grandeur. As a native and life-long Angeleno until last August, it's easy to see how this would blow her away; in LaLaLand, there is no 'big sky;' your view is polluted by nothing but buildings, lights, billboards, etc. I don't want to take that away from L.A. - it is a city, and you go there for city things. Given the choice of staring at the Egyptian Theatre or the sky it occupies, I'll take the theatre. L.A.'s problem, like all problems, is that the ratio is out of whack.

But staring at the sky here at night, it's amazing to see the wonder that shines in K's eyes while we lay on our recently acquired gravity chairs (best investment!), sip our nightly poisons and just drink it all in with our eyes. This has given me a completely new perspective on a lot of things, and it's definitely helped mellow me a bit more of late. Hard to be high-strung when you're staring at the night sky.

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Playlist:

Forhist - Eponymous

Testament - The New Order

Reel Vile Podcast - Queer Horror Week 3: Knight + Heart

Chamber of Screams, Clement Panchout & Mxxn - Murder House (Original Puppet Combo Soundtrack)

Drug Church - Hygiene

Mammon XV - Bleeding in Excess (single)

Pharmakon - Bestial Burden

Code Orange - Underneath

The Raveonettes - Raven in the Grave

Cash Money - Who Killed the Blues (single)

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Card:

• Ten of Swords: Ruin

• XIII: Death

• XX: The Aeon

Lots of big ideas today, and they're breaking down the rational in the face of actually implementing them. 

Regarding Ten of Swords, I wanted to throw in something from Crowley's Book of Thoth: "The number Ten, Malkuth, as always, represents the culmination of the unmitigated energy of the idea. It shows reason run mad, ramshackle riot of soulless mechanism; it represents the logic of lunatics and (for the most part) of philosophers. It is reason divorced from reality."

I see bad information and dreams of grandeur that tempt away from the one path forward. This is all writing stuff, and I'm really picking up what the Cards are putting down today, as I draw in closer to writing the finale to the new novel. 

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Floating into the Night Reissued!

 

I'm sure I've posted this here at some point in the past, but it felt like the right thing to do this morning. From The Ravenonettes PERFECT 2011 album Raven in the Grave, this has long been one of my favorite songs by the band. That guitar just breaks my heart in the best way possible!!!

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Watch:

Sacred Bones just announced a new edition of Julee Cruise's 1989 album Floating Into the Night, her collaboration album with Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. If you know the record, you know it's HUGE for Twin Peaks fans, as several of the tracks here went on to populate the soundtrack to the original two seasons of Twin Peaks. To promote the re-release, Sacred Bones produced this charming little video:

 

You can order a copy HERE; I was able to snag the Pink and Black Galaxy Vinyl, although I am uncertain if I qualified for the poster. Either way, I'm happy as hell to finally have this on wax without having to pay for an original pressing on eBay.

 

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NCBD Addendum:

On a lark, I picked up the first issue of Bliss on Tap Publishing's new series Killing Hope. I was not disappointed.

Written by Josh Barbee and Maloney, with art by Alex Cormack, who I was familiar with from 2020's Aquatic Horror mini-series Sea of Sorrow, Killing Hope starts out as a thriller then veers into what I'm guessing is going to be full-on Horror territory. It's a woman on the run from seemingly unstoppable forces, and I can't wait to read more!

Bliss on Tap is new to me, but a quick gander at their website shows they've got quite a few titles under their belt, with seemingly something for everybody.

 

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - 777: Cosmosophy

Principles of Geometry - Lazare

Roxy Music - Eponymous

Colors of the Dark Podcast - Episode 61: The Boogeyman

Chamber of Screams, Clement Panchout & Mxxn - Murder House (Original Puppet Combo Soundtrack)

The Sword - Warp Riders

Faetooth - Remnants of the Vessel

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

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Card:

• Ace of Disks 

• Two of Swords: Peace

• Prince of Swords - The airy aspect of Air, or conflict with intellect

Resolving issues with spending money leads to further resolution of internal conflict. I think this is a tit-for-tat response to my current state of continual distraction. The internet is both a powerful tool and a siren that calls me away from my work on a regular basis. Fighting this over the last couple days has led to a huge breakthrough in my work. I was stuck on a final act, but I believe I now have it well underway and it's better than I first imagined!

 

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The Cramps Live Performance!!!

MAJOR thanks to Simon G for posting this on his youtube channel, which you can check out and subscribe to HERE. If you dig the Cramps, it's a win-win. And with a set list and attire that, while pretty spot-on for The Cramps, seems especially strategic to alarm a television broadcast company, this is one for the ages. 

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NCBD:

Really looking forward to today's NCBD. Here's why:

I'm loving Jeff Lemire and  Gabriel Hernandez Walta's Phantom Road so far. Stories that include a slip into any kind of 'between place' always hit a certain harmonic with me, and this one's taking that idea and really doing something different with it. 

Pat O'Malley's Popscars is in Comic Stores and you're missing out if you're not reading it. Why? Check out my interview with Pat HERE to find out. 

Another "Before the Fall" one shot, however, like last week's Heralds of Apocalypse, this one is written by one of the main X-architects, so I'm in. 

 

This book just continues to delight me. 

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Watch:

I rewatched Moorhead and Benson's 2014 film Spring this past Monday evening. Wow. I hadn't seen this one since before I knew who Moorhead and Benson were, and looking back on it after watching and rewatching their other movies, I couldn't remember very much about Spring other than the basic set-up, the location, and that both K and I really liked it when we watched it back in, probably 2016.

 

All the performances are fantastic, and just seeing Vinny Curran and Jeremy Gardner in the opening ten minutes or so was a treat, as was hearing talk about "Shitty Carl." I need to track this one down on Blu-Ray, as I'm hoping there will be a making of or commentary track, as I find myself really wanting to know how they made this. I'm kind of assuming they did a lot of the filming guerilla style, but who knows? Moorhead and Benson continue to prove they are two of the best filmmakers working today, regardless of whether they have a budget or not.

 

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Playlist:

Flying Lotus - Yasuke

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium - Undreamble Abysses

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse

Blackbraid - Blackbraid I

Spotlights - Seance EP

Greg Puicato - Child Soldier: Creator of God

Secret Chiefs 3 - Le mani destre recise degli ultimi uomini

Secret Chiefs 3 - Book of Horizons

Sepultura - Chaos A.D.

Sepultura - Schizophrenia

Sepultura - Arise

Godflesh - Purge

QOTSA - In Times New Roman

Ike & Tina Turner - Live! The World of Ike & Tina

Pastor T.L. Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship (Without a Sail)

Christopher Cross - Ride Like the Wind (single)

Bria - Cuntry Covers Vol. 2

Orville Peck - Pony

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Card:

• IV The Emperor 

• Ace of Wands

• Two of Disks: Change

Draw on strong, established resources (practices?) to enact a breakthrough with Will, but don't expect it to last just because it happens once. Will, as with everything else in the Universe, is fluid, coming and going depending on millions of variables. Those variables are actually what rule us, The Emperors of all life, but especially those humans who try and find a window into their own internal operating systems.

 

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New Noise

 

Besides just being an awesome track, if you're watching FX's The Bear, you're probably picking up what I'm putting down.

From 1998's The Shape of Punk to Come, a veritable classic of that era.
 

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Watch:

Easily my favorite show at the moment, FX's The Bear returned recently and K and I just caught up by rewatching season one. 

This is the most "Chicago" anything I've ever seen. I know these people - Richie Jerimovich is one of my best friends, Cicero (Oliver fucking Platt!) is every other middle-aged man I met through friends and family in the 80s - I mean, it's freaking uncanny. It's also one of the most honest narratives about loss, drive and passion I've ever seen. 

           

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Read:

I'm about 100 pages into my re-read of Stephen Graham Jones's My Heart is a Chainsaw. If you're a Horror fan and you haven't read this, you're missing out on your new favorite novel:

Chainsaw's protagonist, Jade Daniels, is one of the most relatable and magnetic final girls of all time. Also, what a wonderful experience, reading a book that puts you so deep inside the mind of a High School kid who is obsessed with Horror, specifically Slashers, so much so that she interprets the arrival of a new girl at her high school in Proofrock, ID as the arrival of a Final Girl and the beginning of her town's own Slasher Cycle. There are reasons historic to the town that prompt this theory, but as SGJ is so damn good at, we're so awash in Jade's inner thoughts that we're never quite sure if she's just a bored and obsessed teenager or if there's actually something to what she's saying to anyone who will listen. 

Can't wait to finish this and go directly into the sequel, this year's Don't Fear the Reaper!

 

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Playlist:

Ruby the Hatchet - Fear Is a Cruel Master

Various - Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series)

Ruby the Hatchet - Planetary Space Child

Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

God is LSD - Spirit of Suicide

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Radiohead - OK Computer

The Body - No One Deserves Happiness

A001 - Necro (single)

Flying Lotus - Los Angeles

Flying Lotus - Yasuke

Ariel - Molten Young Lovers

Witchfinder - Hazy Rites

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Forhist - Eponymous

The Body - I Shall Die Here/Earth Triumphant

Secret Chiefs 3 & Traditionalists - Le mani destre recise degli ultimi uomini

Fear Factory - Demanufacture

Rein - Reincarnated

Grimes - Art Angels

Gram Rabbit - Music to Start a Cult To

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse

Sylvaine - Nova

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Card:

• Ace of Disks - Breakthrough in Earthly concerns

• Seven of Disks - Failure - A difficult period in modern life

• Princess of Disks - Fortification; Frugal

All Disks? Well, this really splits the difference between warning and encouragement, but I get the overall gist, just hope it's not too late - STOP SPENDING MONEY!!!

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Duration:

I've come up with a better way to post my 'time card' here. Check this out:

Didn't take me much time either, which is good, because when I instituted this a few weeks back, it quickly became apparent I was spending time on reporting that I could have been spending on actually writing. I've known people who do things like this instead of write - it can have a pretty negative impact on the process overall.

As for the time, it's still not where I want it. I took yesterday off completely so I could edit the new episode of The Horror Vision - up in the widget to the right at the top of the page - and hang with K. Another important thing to remember in all this, is to maintain a life/work balance. Considering I worked 40 hours last week at the day job and recorded and edited a podcast, 15 hours isn't bad.

But I need more. 

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The Last Temptation of Read

From Lard's 1990 album The Last Temptation of Reid. Pretty sure the titular Reid - the co-owner of Chicago Trax who recorded the band's first EP - came into the pizza place where Mr. Brown and I worked in High School. Weird anecdote, but one I can't help but think of whenever I throw this record on.

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NCBD:

Speaking of Temptations to Read, this is my biggest NCBD Pull in some time. Let's get into what I'm bringing home:

I'm going to be dropping off Ghost Rider fairly soon. I don't know, this one just isn't doing for me what it did about half the time at the onset. I can really feel Marvel building up their Midnight Sons line, introducing a lot of new characters, bringing back older iterations, and building out the world of monsters that lurks in its underbelly. You'd think that as a Horror fan, that would work for me, but I just feel like it's a sanitized Horror, and that's disappointing. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'll read to the end of this current storyline and realize they're building something great, but all the books over the last year that have contributed to that - Moon Knight, that Crypt of Shadows one shot, the crap they did with Man-Thing a few years ago, none of it feels substantive.

I'm definitely digging this deeper dive into the Last Ronin world. 

So, after reading the first 'season' of Red Room, not reading the second, and then picking up the first issue of the third, I'm still digging this book. My pass on that second installment had more to do with trimming the Pull List and diverging from the fairly disturbing subject matter - which, as I've pointed out here previously, is very much offset by Piskor's Ed Crumb-like art style - and not due to any perceived failure on the book's part. Quite the contrary - each issue continues to seduce me with the social mystery that surrounds this strange, underground world of dark web murder rooms, cryptocurrency, and psychopaths. Of particular note this week, this homage cover to Charles Burns's Black Hole comic just blows me away.

I feel like it's been months since I read the first two issues of The Seasons Have Teeth, even though it's only been a few weeks. Can't wait to see where this is going. The anthropomorphizing of the actual seasons into monsters is just too damn cool to miss, especially when those monsters are rendered as visually strange and beautiful as series artist Sebastián Cabrol has made them.

The third and final one shot to welcome in the Fall of X era, the first two books - Sons of X and First Strike both constituted a huge letdown. We're talking Trial of Magneto level bad. Being that those books were not written by current X-scribes and this one is, I'm holding out hope this one justifies reading.

 

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God

Rein - Reincarnated

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid

The Jesus Lizard - Liar

Cocksure - Be Rich

Lustmord - Dark Matter

Godflesh - Post Self

God is LSD - Spirit of Suicide

Anthrax - Persistence of Time

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes

        

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Card:

• 9 of Disks: Gain - Yesod again, so imagination and reflection, and enjoying the satisfaction that comes with that. Worded in the grimoire as "Self Satisfaction," which automatically puts me in mind of hubris, the obvious point of the Pull when you take the following two cards in.

• 3 of Swords: Sorrow - Directly from the Grimoire, "Paired with Disks can point to problems w/ work;" "Let thing develop before making another one;" "Intense passion to create but doing so is problematic."

• 7 of Disks: Failure - A difficult period in Earthy life

Well, what a cheery Pull for today! Seriously, this obviously warns against a sneaky inclination I've experienced to try to deviate one or two days a week to work on another languishing project. I'm so close to a final first draft on the current one, best not to deviate. Head on to the finish line!

 

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Duration:

Better.

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God is a Maggot Brain

 

I went to the movies last night to see God Is A Bullet. My viewing experience was uneven - I'll be trying to unpack that below - but one scene about halfway through won me over, and a large part of the reason why was its use of Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain." 

The first time I heard this, I was on LSD in high school. Hanging out at a friend's. When this came on, everything just kind of stopped. The entire album is fantastic, but it's one where there is such a hard line between the eponymous opener and everything that comes after it; one is dark and meditative, the other is uproarious and celebratory and sometimes just completely insane in that crazy, George Clinton way. But it works. Boy does it work.

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Watch:

As I mentioned above, last night I went to a 9:35 PM showing of Nick Cassavettes new film God Is A Bullet. I posted this a while back, but for the sake of the current conversation, here's the trailer and below I've basically pasted my Letterbxd review verbatim:

 

What I wrote last night directly after seeing the film:

I'm still unpacking how I feel about this one. First, some of the ugliest subject matter and subjects I've seen in a long time. Almost to the point of contrivance. This is a well-made film, and the performances are intense. However, I'm just not sure about the script. This is an adaptation of a novel by Boston Teran. There are quite a few things in the film I am fairly certain work better in the novel, but also, I (maybe mistakenly) get a "Bob Sagat" vibe from the film. What I mean by that is, if you've ever had the unfortunate experience of seeing Sagat's stand-up, he goes so over the top vulgar in an obvious effort to distance himself from being 'The full house guy,' it ruins any chance of him being anything but that person he tries so hard to unmake. In that same way, I feel like maybe the director's motive was to make the starkest, most horribly disgusting film he could just to blot out being known as 'the guy who directed 'the notebook.'

After sleeping on the film:

I'm not sure how much of my opinion has changed, but the way I'm processing this definitely has. Which is the mark of a good film. But it's not quite that simple...

In combing through this in my subconscious, I think I've discovered something about myself. That sheer ugliness on display in God is a Bullet, both content and characters, actually scares the living sh*t out of me. The subject matter is disgusting - the scariest, most disgusting idea at play in the world of humans. And the costuming and make-up likewise scare me. There's something about people with heavily tattooed faces that produces fear from an almost atavistic place in my brain. I remember having a conversation about this once as a bartender, and the person speaking with me about it summed it up as such:

"You see someone with ink on their face, I mean, like a lot of ink, like spiderwebs and shit, that person gives absolutely zero fucks, and probably has nothing in this life to lose. To tattoo your face like that, it sends a very clear message."

Obviously, I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but not by much. Also, I don't mean to say that anyone who has facial tattoos is a sicko, but the practice definitely sends that message, so at some point they were thinking they wanted the world to fear them on sight...

That element of contrivance I mentioned when thinking about it last night? Now I'm wondering if Cassavettes - in what I would call a pretty deft maneuver - wasn't trying to make a more 'Earthly' version of the Cenobites, because suddenly, there's something very Clive Barker about a lot of this film to me. It's long, though, and that gets lost in the experience. There's a grittiness here that, although Barker's stuff is grotesque and Horrific, has a fantasy underlining that softens the blow. God is a Bullet is real all the way through, so there's nothing fantastical to soften its blow.

Anyway, I've debunked a similar prejudice before with other Horror movies I slighted or ignored. Specifically, Catholic Devil Possession flicks. Reflecting on my snobbery toward a recent flick like Prey For the Devil was what catalyzed the epiphany. Prey looked 'dumb' to me in the way I remember thinking 2012's The Devil Inside looked dumb. But did they really look stupid, or is that a defense mechanism? I'm not religious, wasn't raised Catholic, and the textures of that stuff are as far away from my daily life/belief system as possible. Yet, William Friedkin's The Exorcist is the scariest film I know. I always say, after I watch that film, I believe in the devil for three days. So maybe that Catholic Possession stuff really gets under my skin, so I turn up my nose and walk by with an air of superiority - without watching what I'm criticizing - previously oblivious to the fact that what I'm really doing is cowering at the prospect of another flick that might terrify me the way Friedkin's does. Same too, then, for God is a Bullet, because elements of this film frighten me to my core, even if I still do have some issues with the film's overall execution. And for clarity, it's not the Satanic Cult that frightens me, but the trafficking side of their operations.

Overall? Three stars and a heart, even if the heart may flicker on and off like a bad fluorescent bulb in a dingy motel on the border.

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Playlist:

Forhist - Eponymous

Fear Factory - Demanufacture

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Holy Serpent - Endless

Ruby the Hatchet - Fear is a Cruel Master

Silent - Modern Hate

Uniform & The Body - Mental Wounds Not Healing

The Body - I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer

Ghost - Infestissumam

Drug Chuch - Hygiene

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

 

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Card:

• Six of Swords: Science

• II: The High Priestess

• Queen of Cups

Harmonious thinking/interpretation comes from a co-mingling of influences opposite to my own today. In other words - and as usual, I take the insight here to be a direct commentary on my current writing project - I'm trying to write female characters and probably need to ask for a female's perspective on some things. That's something I would have done down the road anyway, however, I'm a little bit stuck and could probably do with an outside perspective. 

 

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Fear Factory - God Eater

 

From the new album Re-Industrialized. My good friend and cohost on The Horror Vision Butcher mentioned the new Fear Factory was getting pretty favorable reviews. 

Honestly, I've never had a huge attachment to this band, however, two things about them stand out to me: back in 1993, Mr. Brown and I went to Chicago's Riviera Theatre to see Sepultura on the Chaos A.D. tour. Openers were Fudge Tunnel - who we were familiar with through their debut Hate Songs in E Minor - and two bands we'd never heard of, Clutch and Fear Factory. Fear Factory would have been touring for their first major label album, Soul of a New Machine. I remember seeing their name and laughing. We joked a lot that night in the lead-up to the show: "Ooh, Fear Factory. Is that where they make the fear?" 

After Fear Factory took the stage, we stopped making fun. 

These guys blew the fucking doors off the Riv. Demanufacture came out two years later, and at first listen, you could tell it was a seminal album. It sounded so unique, the industrial beats, the chanting vocals laid atop BCB's vitriolic snarl. The overly compressed and gated guitar sound (fresh at the time, but would quickly overstay its welcome once it became a standard across the genre and birthed the metal hybrid that distinguished itself with an umlaut. 

Butcher's fervor for the new record intrigued me. What would this sound like to someone with no real connection outside of one album, tenuous at best over time?

Listening again the other night at two-something in the morning, I remembered Demanufacture for what it is - a game changer in metal production, one that inspired some great new bands and a lot of shitty ones. The same can be said for Faith No More, Helmet, and probably a few other bands I love. I wouldn't say I love FF, but I dig them enough to give the new album a chance. \

First impression was good, but weird hearing a different voice - Milo Silvestro apparently replaced Burton C. Bell after 2021's Aggression Continuum. This is a milieu and the associated drama that never found my ears. But segueing into Re-Industrialized, some tracks definitely caught my fancy. Two days later, the same tracks persist, but more of the album has opened up to me as well. The one above, but also of note is a really kick-ass track that shares a name with William Gibson's Difference Engine novel and the atmospheric dithering of "Human Augmentation," my favorite track so far simply because it's less a song and more the sonic habitation of a melting Cyber Punk city somewhere in the distant future, or forgotten past.

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Watch:

Since we had a stamped concrete patio put in as an extension of our back porch, it's become difficult for me to want to do anything with my nights other than sit outside with K and the cats and just enjoy the summer. Last night we were treated to a lightning storm that was out of this world. Saturday, we just sat outside, listened to music and soaked up the night. That went late, and when we finally came in, I was pretty tired. I fired up Shudder on habit, always curious as to what's playing on Shudder TV, and when I saw Cold Hell was only two minutes and some change in, I cracked another Sierra Nevada Summer Fest and settled in for what has become my second favorite Neo Giallo after Knife + Heart. I know I've talked about Cold Hell here before, like I know I've posted the trailer, but here we go again:

 

Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, with fantastic performances by everyone involved, Cold Hell is a relentless game of Cat-and-Mouse that always keeps my pulse jacked and my brain totally engaged, even though I've seen it enough in the last five years to know it by heart. Violetta Schurawlow's Özge is the most badass female protagonist I know, easily sailing over Sharni Vinson's Erin from You're Next - who is by no means not awesome, she just doesn't have the kickboxing prowess and surging fury that Schurawlow brings to the table while she fights for her life against a killer she accidentally witnessed murder her neighbor. The "Car Scene" in this flick is a straight redline of adrenaline, and it fires me up every time.

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Playlist:

Forhist - Eponymous

Fear Factory - Demanufacture

Witchskull - The Serpent Tide

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey

Baroness - Last Word (pre-release single)

QOTSA - In Times New Roman

Fear Factory - Re-Industrialized

Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat

Led Zeppelin - In Through the Out Door

Ween - The Mollusk

Drug Church - Hygiene

The Watson Twins - Holler

Alice in Chains - Sap EP

Tom Waits - Raindogs

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me OST

Soul Coughing - Ruby Vroom

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Card:

• VI - The Lovers

• Prince of Wands - Here, I'm reading this very pointedly as applying Intellect to the Creative Process

• Princess of Wands - Likewise, applying Earthly Understanding to the Creative Process

Normally I might be tempted to read that Princess in a very different way, however, I spent a large chunk of my writing time yesterday working up a timeline and a family history for some of the major characters in the new novel - which I missed completing the first draft by last Tuesday, however, which I entered the final "act" on yesterday. Add in The Lovers, and we get this in the Grimoire:

"Finally - Man!!! As Amoeba he splits his opposite and humanity is born!"

I'm assuming I culled that from either Crowley or Moore, but I compiled the bulk of this tome a long time ago, so I'm not really sure. I know some came from contemplation of the cards, the above-mentioned sources - as well as others - and more than a few Mugwort or Mushroom experiences, so who knows?

The point, of course, is that while that sentence is not the only thing on the page for Trump VI, it is what spoke to me in this moment, because through all of the Intellect and Earthly application to Will, I feel as though I have further honed and developed the characters - who happen to be familial and are, in fact, quite purposely opposites of one another.

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New Music from Baroness!!!

 

The first single from Baroness's upcoming album Stone, out September 15th. Pre-order HERE. Love this track - listen to Gina SHRED - you can hear the Randy Rhoads influence for sure!

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Watch:

I interviewed writer/artist/filmmaker Pat O'Malley yesterday about his comic Popscars, his short films, future projects and our shared love of cinema. Going into it, I hadn't realized Pat made short films, so I checked out his youtube channel HERE. I dug everything on there, but Pool Shark was, by far, my favorite. Check it out:

I was kinda blown away by the camera work on this. The first few times we see the Shark, they filmed it in a way that, at first, I thought it must be stock footage of a real shark. Talk about movie magic. My discussion with Pat should go up this weekend; Popscars issue #4 comes out this coming Wednesday, and if you're lucky, there might be copies of 1-3 still lurking on your shop's shelves. Published by the new Sumerian Comics - a rebranding of the company formerly known as Behemoth - this one is wide and, only the first chapter in a bigger story.

 

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Read:

I was so blown away by Laird Barron's The Wind Began to Howl that I'm still unpacking/reveling in it. Because of that, I've found it difficult to start my planned reread of Stephen Graham Jones's My Heart is a Chainsaw. This will be a quick brush-up before diving into the recently published sequel Don't Fear the Reaper. Meanwhile, over on his Twitter, SGJ revealed the cover to the third and final installment in the trilogy, The Angel of Indian Lake. 

Jones also linked the website Crimereads.com, who broke the cover image and have an excerpt from the novel up. Obviously, I'm not reading that until I get current, but it's cool that this is out there in the world. Talk about inspiration! You can read the excerpt at the Crimereads link above. 

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Playlist:

Witchskull - The Serpent Tide

Blut Aus Nord - What Once Was... Liber III EP

Spelljammer - Abyssal Trip

Jeff Buckley - Grace

Rina Mushonga - In a Galaxy

Godflesh - Purge

Mars Red Sky - Eponymous

Baroness - Last Word (pre-release single)

Bria - Cuntry Covers Vol. 1

Jawbox - For Your Own Special Sweetheart

Forhist - Eponynous

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars

Chamber of Secrets, Clement Panchout & Mxxn - Murder House (Puppet Combo OST)

Pegboy - Strong Reaction

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse

            

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Card:

Two days of Pulls to put up here, as I was too busy with work yesterday to do a post:

• Nine of Swords again? My dreams have actually been fairly unremarkable or unrememberable the last few days.

• Ten of Disks - Wealth - The highest manifestation of the Earthly realms, which juxtaposed with Nine of Swords may explain why my dreams dried up all of a sudden. Earthly, material issues/items dampen the inner realms

• Prince of Wands - Airy aspect of Fire, or the intellectual thrust applied to conflict. In other words, Strategy.

Okay, so let's use today's Pull to try and make sense of that:

Today:

• Prince of Wands, sir, you have my attention. Something is amiss in my head, and I may find the answer if I can figure out (the aforementioned Strategy) how to 'unblock' my dream channel.

• Nine of Disks - Gain - Let's look past other interpretations of this card and go straight to its correlations to the Sephiroth. 

Yesod - Imagination and reflection, the first stop when one leaves the bottom, earthly manifestation of the tenth plane (Sephiroth) and into the higher planes. 

• VII: The Chariot - Control and Balance, but also the origin of ideas.

My overall read here is there's an idea locked inside me that I will need to access to finish something (my current project?), and I'm going to have to figure out how to get it. That probably doesn't mean I have to figure out how to get it out of my head, but how to recognize it when I 'see' it.

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Duration:

The irony is it's taking time away from writing to do these recent posts, so I'll probably reconfigure the duration portion to once a week. It'll show a better snapshot to. I'm definitely doing better, though, and the transparency posting here helps immensely. 

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