New Music From The Chameleons!

I think I'd heard titterings about this at some point, but when it popped up in my feed this evening, I was kind of blown the f*ck away. From the 3-Song EP out on Metropolis Records now! Order HERE. Apparently a full album is due this fall, and hearing this now, I'm on board. This 100% retains that Chameleons emotional blow, without sounding forced or tired. Love it. 

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NCBD:

Here's this week's Pull, and I'm pretty excited for these:

The untold tale of that time the U.S. Army sent Frank Castle behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War to kill the captured Nick Fury. Written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Jacen Burrows. Can't think of something I want to read more at this moment.

It took a little longer than probably any of us reading it expected, but The Last Ronin II issue 2 finally arrives today. Glad to still have a dose of TMNT for a while, especially in this Miller-esque Dystopian Future-verse.

If Scartlett's mini-series is even half as good as either Duke or Cobra Commander, we're in for a treat. Curious to see how the Energon Universe handles the Arashikage. 

Carter F**king Burke! Who would have thought I'd enjoy seeing him breathe after his part in James Cameron's Aliens? Really digging this series.

Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out. No, seriously, I will approach this final issue with a modicum of reverence because, despite months now of griping here at the end, I'll miss reading the X books these last couple of years. Luckily, I never went back and filled in the gap between House and Powers and Inferno, so there's still a year or two of actual Hickman-penned issues for me to jump into.

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Watch:

While I found Goodnight Mommy to be pointlessly mean-spirited and just plain awful, I'm a huge fan of Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz's The Lodge. Likewise, after watching this trailer for their new film The Devil's Bath, I'm quite looking forward to it.

While this trailer feels arduously long, I honestly applaud the fact that they don't really tell you all that much. Or at least that's how it feels. Also, there are a handful of images in here near the end that will stay with me for some time.

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Playlist:

Oranssi Pazuzu - Live at Roadburn 2017

Your Black Star - Sound from the Ground

Tennis System - Technicolour Blind

Ghost Bath - Moonlover

Black Pyramid - The Paths of Time are Vast

Frank Black and the Catholics - Snake Oil

Megadeth - Rust in Peace

Revocation - Teratogenesis (deluxe)

Revocation - Eponymous

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Eight of Pentacles - More transformation of Earthly assets

• XIX: The Sun - From the Grimoire, "Taking the Pill will open your eyes."

• Page of Swords - The Earthly aspect of Air. "apply your intellect to something useful!"

A Drink Before the War

From 1987's The Lion and the Cobra. Outstanding song from an outstanding album. Makes 1987 feel so close I can almost touch it.

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Watch:

It's been a while since I'd enjoyed John Carpenter's In the Mouth Of Madness. I'm guesting on John Trafton and Mile Fortune's This Movie Saved My Life podcast next week for the second part of their 1994 retrospective (part 1 is HERE), and Madness was one of the four films we're covering. 

Maybe it's because I just rewatched Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, too, but I'd never realized the influence that both the NOES and Hellraiser series had on this flick until now. I'm not sure if that influence comes more from writer Michael De Luca (who also wrote Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare) or JC himself, but it's definitely there. Also, and I know everyone who loves this movie knows this, but the brilliance of combining Stephen King's popularity with H.P. Lovecraft's ethos in Sutter Cane is one of the great triumphs of homage to either author, in a world where 75% of Horror is homage to one or the other (or both). I'd add that making Jürgen Porchnow look like Neil Gaiman - who would have been rounding the corner on finishing the original Sandman series for DC's Vertigo at the time, adds just the right amount of prescience about Gaiman's inevitable place in the pantheon King and Lovecraft reside over.

 

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

The Reverend Horton Heat - Whole New Life

The Raveonettes - Sing

Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra

Joy Division - Substance 1977-1980

Black Pyramid - The Paths of Time are Vast

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Six of Cups - Emotional fulfillment.

• IX: The Hermit - I need a period to regroup. Badly.

• Three of Pentacles - Growth in Earthly terms. Not sure if this is responsibility maturation or windfall. Windfall would be nice.

Watain - Reaping Death Live in Stolkholm, 2022

It only recently came to my attention over the weekend that Watain released a killer Live album last year, Die in Fire: Live in Hell Stockholm 2022. Here's Reaping Death, one of the stand-out tracks on a really great live album. Reminds me a bit of Slayer's Decade of Aggression.

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Watch:

Recently, I subscribed to a streaming channel on Prime called ScreenPix. This is a $2.99, bottom-of-the-barrel kind of streamer, however, there were a handful of flix that drew me in, and at $2.99, well, no real damage. Here's what I've watched on there so far:

 

This was the flick that brought me in. Missi and I recently interviewed Horror Author Extraordinaire Ivy Tholen on The Horror Vision, and as part of that episode, we asked her to pick one movie to talk about. Ivy picked Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers.

Next, I can remember I, Madman on the video shelf going way back (I often confuse it with Dr. Giggles - another flick I still need to see - for some reason. What I didn't know about I, Madman is it was directed by Tibor Takács, Director of The Gate. 

 

Finally, last night, I fired up Klaus Kinski as a peepin' Tom Nazi holdover in David Schmoeller's 1986 what-the-fuck-a-thon, Crawlspace.

Not nearly as 'great' as I wanted it to be, Crawlspace is still very much worth a watch just for Kinski.

 

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Read:

I am absolutely blazing through Stephen Graham Jones' The Angel of Indian Lake. ~250 pages in, this book is a clusterfuck Horror movie in prose; there's SO much going on, an enormous body count, and we still don't really know who or what is behind it all.

I've seen some blurbs with people calling this ' a consuming mess,' but I don't think it's that at all. There's a difference between someone who can juggle a lot of different objects at once and make it look easy and someone who can just barely keep them all in the air. This feels effortless in its complexity. I'm taking notes, believe you me.

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Playlist:

Shellac - To All Trains

The Raveonettes - Sing

The Raveonettes - Raven in the Grave

Sleep - Dopesmoker

Rodney Crowell - Tarpaper Sky

Frank Sinatra - Songs for Young Lovers

Blut Aus Nord - 777: Cosmosophy

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age

Blut Aus Nord - The Mythical Beast of Rebellion

The Used - Eponymous

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

Watain - Die in Fire: Live in Hell (Stockholm 2022)

Burzum - Aske

Burzum - Filosofem

Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Eight of Swords 

• Ten of Wands

• XI - Justice

Transformation, Endings and Just deserts. I'm thinking this is a nod toward Black Gloves & Broken Hearts, which I've just come back around on to finish. 

New Music from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds!

A second single from the forthcoming album Wild God, out August 30th. Pre-order HERE. 

This track is fantastic, but there's still something about every Bad Seeds record since Push the Sky Away that bothers me. I love the aforementioned Sky Away, which definitely ushered in an entirely new era for the band, but I kind of feel like they've been stuck in that mode ever since, with diminishing returns. Diminishing returns not because the music isn't great but because I guess I'm used to the boys changing their sound up every few records. I feel like, if one new record could just be something new, then these last few would really fall into place for me. Either way, one of the greatest artists and bands of all time, in my opinion. 

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Watch:

K and I did a double feature of Until the Light Takes Us and Lords of Chaos over the last two nights; I've seen both films several times, but they never fail to pack a punch.

It was especially interesting watching Jonas Åkerlund's Lords of Chaos again now, as we very recently watched his Netflix series Clark with Bill Skarsgård; some definite similarities.

Not sure if that really comes through in the trailer; however, Åkerlund always gets a recommendation from me, so if you have Netflix, Clark is definitely worth checking out. Also based on a real-life, larger-than-life personality and the "truth and lies" approach.

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Read:

With all the running around I've been doing, it took me a way longer time to finish re-reading Stephen Graham Jones' Don't Fear the Reaper, but I did yesterday morning. Glorious. Next up - and I am excited - book three of the Indian Lake Trilogy:

Fifty pages in and this one has already made me tear up more than once. Jade Daniels is such an amazing, engrossing character, made so real by the mania for the genre a lot of us share. Can't recommend these books enough. 

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Playlist:

The Raveonettes - Sing

Tim Hecker - Infinity Pool OST

Fantômas - Delirium Cordia

The Raveonettes - Chain Gang of Love

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild God (pre-release singles)

Rodney Crowell - Triage

Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Five of Pentacles (Disks)

• Eight of Swords

• Four of Wands

Conflict, followed by transformation (possibly through just desserts), and finally stability. Shit man, that's life in a nutshell. 

How do I apply this to anything in my life right now? Like, today? Weeeelllll... I have a meeting later today with a transportation vendor that has been eating a lot of mental and emotional real estate. Feels like it might be conflict-heavy. I miss the old days, when you could just punch someone in the face. Maybe out of this, we'll achieve the stability we need to make my job a metric shit-ton easier.

Waiting for the End of Time

Nothing will ever replace Barry Adamson's 1998's As Above, So Below as my favorite Barry Adamson album, but this? This might be my favorite song he's ever recorded. 

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NCBD:

Wednesday is the best day of the five-day week because it's New Comic Book Day. Although my pull lists are growing shorter, I still love this day to the core of my being. Here's what I'm picking up today:

The final issue of the third mini-series entry in David Dastmalchian's Count Crowley series. I still haven't read any of these, but I'm familiar enough with the concept to think I'll probably tear into this one from the first issue now that it's finished. Gotta pick up those other two trades...

One more after this, and both are Kieron Gillen, so this should be a proper slog. Let's see what ridiculous bullsh*t they come up with to end the Nathanial Essex Dominion storyline.

It occurs to me - if Marvel is taking the X-Books back to the pre-Krakoa paradigm of individual superhero teams, maybe they can course-correct one change that Hickman ushered in and Gillen really played up that I hate: Mr. Sinister as a dandy fop. I much prefer the version in the 80s, an evil, brooding masochist, to the one of the Krakoa era. In fact, I'd have to say changing Sinister's disposition is the only thing about Hickman's run I don't like, and it's really reached a crescendo of annoyance with all the Sinister Clones running around, complete with different card suites on their foreheads. I mean, I guess it really doesn't matter if they change him back, as I'll be gone. 

I really can't say enough good things about The Six Fingers and its sister book, The One Hand. I think both series conclude next month, so I'd definitely recommend picking up the trades if you're into the idea of a good, quasi-cyber punk, Blade Runner-ish Neo-Noir story. 

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Watch:

Now, please.

Is it just me, or has the release date for the final season of Netflix's Stranger Things been pushed back like, four or five times now? I need a fixed point on the calendar so I know when to start rewatching the series from the beginning. 

Few mainstream things in 2024 are worthy of the hype. Stranger Things is, in my opinion. 

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Playlist:

LCD Soundsystem - New Body Rhumba (single)

LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening

The Flaming Lips - Do You Realize (single)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps (single)

Mr. Bungle - Violenza Domestica ("single")

LCD Soundsystem - Eponymous

Big Black - Songs About Fucking

Naked Raygun - Over the Overlords

Mad Love - White With Foam

Mr. Bungle - Eponymous

Mr. Bungle - California

The Raveonettes - Sing

Phil Collins - Face Value

Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound

High on Fire - Surrounded By Thieves

The Flesh Easters - I Used to Be Pretty

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Card:

Back to my trusty, original Thoth deck for today's Pull. 

• Ace of Disks

• 10 of Swords: Ruin

• 9 of Disks: Gain

A possible monetary breakthrough, but apparently one of a tempestuous nature, as the line between loss and gain appears to be paper thin. Curious if this has to do with some stock positions I've been watching act erratically over the last three weeks.

New Music from Oranssi Pazuzu

From a still unannounced forthcoming album due October 11, 2024, on Nuclear Blast Records, I don't think I can dig a band more. After discovering these guys within the last year, I'm falling head over heels for Oranssi Pazuzu and this new single only further cements that.

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Bungle:

This... is an unexpected miracle:

Quote Unquote 1991-1999 is a 6 LP vinyl boxset that includes remastered editions of Mr. Bungle's original three Warner Bros. albums: 1991's Eponymous, 1995's Disco Volante, and 1999's California. All three of those records rank among my favorite, most influential pieces of music. Disco Volante—despite the fact that I haven't listened to it in some time—remains one of my favorite pieces of music ever recorded (right behind Fantômas's Delirium Cordia). Here's the solicitation for the boxset:

"6LP boxset of Mr. Bungle's three legendary albums on Warner Records: Mr. Bungle, Disco Volante & California. Each album comes as a 2LP Gatefold, all packaged together in a metallic foil box. Mastered by Scott Hull exclusively for vinyl from the original mixes (some for the first time ever). Features two alternate takes of inter-program material from the Bungle archives"

I'll say this was a little confusing to order because everything I found linked to this release navigates back to Rhino Records' page for their 1000-copy yellow vinyl variant that sold out instantly. I scooped up my standard vinyl copy from Acoustic Sounds, HERE.

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Read:

Traveling again, so I'm stalled out on Stephen Graham Jones' Don't Fear the Reaper because I didn't want to carry a Hardcover book with me this time, so I'm picking at Clark Ashton's Smith's story "The Black Abbot of Puthuum."

Smith's prose is hit-or-miss with me; his "The Door to Saturn" is one of my all-time favorite Fantasy stories. The Black Abbot is one I've attempted to read before and not made it through, so we'll see how it fairs this time.

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Playlist:

Black Sky Giant - The Red Chariot

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF (pre-release singles)

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Shake the Sheets

This Movie Saved My Life Podcast - 1994: A Year in Cinema, Part 1

The Bronx - II

LCD Soundsystem - Eponymous

Wham! - Make It Big

Huey Lewis and the News - Sports

Talking Heads - Remain in Light

Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band - Night Moves

Boston - Eponymous

The Doobie Brothers - What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits

Underworld - Beaucoup Fish

Scissor Sisters - Eponymous

David Bowie - Hunky Dory

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Card:

While traveling, I have my trusty mini-Thoth deck that Missi gifted me once upon a time. Love this deck. Here's today's Pull, followed by a caveat:

• Queen of Cups

• Ace of Swords

• Seven of Wands: Valor

Emotional or "Watery" Aspect of Emotion, Intellectual Breakthrough and Victory (Netzach). This seems to tell of an internal accomplishment; a breakthrough with one of the (many) things bothering me. This has been affecting my sleep for some time, which is one thing to deal with when you're home and work from home, quite another when you're on the road. 

Caveat: Before I retrieved my travel deck, I found an online "Daily Tarot Reading" site. Here's that spread:

• XV: The Devil

• I: The Magician

• XVI: The Tower

Talk about a different reading! This suggests my day will be filled with Tension, and that I'll be looking to tear down the old and start anew. I post this here just to record the data, as I really put no faith in an online reading service. 

New Music from Zeal & Ardor!

From the forthcoming album GREIF, out Agust 23rd. Pre-order HERE.

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Watch:

Last night, I had the privilege of watching an advance copy of Director Chris Cronin's new film The Moor. Here's a trailer:

I cannot give a film a higher recommendation than I give for this one. The Moor is suspense with a pure Horror center. Ostensibly a slow-burn about child abduction and the aftermath, this one really dances a fine line with the inherently 'thin' moors that turn England's North into a place not easily tread by humans. I won't say whether it ever crosses that line, however, Cinematographer Sam Cronin really delivers the vast and sweeping eeriness of the Yorkshire Moors. Add to that the haunting score by Nir Perlman and this one has a strong otherworldly feel that will suck you right in and hold you until the end.

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Playlist:

Zombi - Direct Inject

Revolting Cocks - Beers Steers and Queers

The Besnard Lakes - ... Are the Roaring Night

Shellac - To All Trains

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• XIII: Death

• Nine of Swords

• Two of Pentacles

Change, climax and partnership. A direct reference to something that has been driving me near-to-mad the last few days. I'll leave it at that for now.

 

Is this new single the harbinger of a new Besnard Lakes record? I certainly hope so. LOVE this; it's the Lakes at their Dreamiest, and they can get pretty damn dreamy. Then it kicks in and you feel like you're soaring through the clouds. Guess they picked the perfect title.

You can buy the single over on the group's Bandcamp, HERE.

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NCBD:

First morning back after our mini vacation in Mississippi and I had a fantastic Comic Pull to look forward to. Let's get into what I brought home from Rick's Comic City yesterday! NOTE: I wrote all this before I picked up my comics yesterday, I just didn't have a chance to post this one until today.

I CANNOT wait to read Cobra Commander #5! Everything has been leading to this, and with the Destro and Scarlet mini-series starting in June, this should set us up for some interesting developments in Robert Kirkman's Energon Universe!

Still really digging this return to Vertigo with John Constantine: Dead in America. The book has been a road trip across the States for JC, and I'm not sure if that was done since Brian Azzarello's run back in the early 00s. There are so many ghosts for a wayward Con-Man/Magician to tap into in the depths of this country, and so far, we've seen some doozies in classic Vertigo commentary-but-not-commentary style.

The final issue of Fall of the House of X. That just leaves Rise #5 next week and X-Men 35 the week after. Then I. Am. Out. Whewwww. I will say that I've decided to sell off a lot of last year's six months' worth of X-Tiles, but I'm not going to part with Fall. I haven't loved this series, but it's worth keeping for no other reason than the cover of Issue 2. Plus, I'd say Gerry Duggan has done a great job dealing with the steaming plate of >>>> Gillen and the Editorial Department handed him. 

What can I say other than I miss this book so much when it's away, that I'm always super happy to see it when it comes back.

The cover says it all: Springer!

Ash continues his trek through the future to find his way back to the past. Not gonna lie - turning one of the three Necronomicons into a demon baby reeks of Grogu, and while I consider myself a fan of both the Mandolorian and Grogu, I've begun to roll my eyes at the proliferation of the 'child' character in genre as a result of Grogu's popularity. 

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Watch:

Upon returning home last night, I found a couple packages waiting for me. One was a recent Vinegar Syndrome order wherein I purchased BluRay copies of Ted Geoghegan's Brooklyn 45 and Lorcan Finnegan's 2016 feature film debut Without Name. I can't wait to tear into both of these, but it'd been a couple years since my first and only other viewing of Without Name, and I'd spent a large part of my reading time during the trip to MS reading about Folk Horror, so that proved to be my priority. 

The film is brilliant; a quiet contemplation of the haunted nature of the Irish Countryside, but what I really want to talk about here is the transfer, because this one is fantastic! I wish I could find a still or two from this one - a lot of times, BluRay.com will have side-by-side screenshot comparisons from different releases, but Vinegar Syndrome's release is still young, so that's not yet the case. Please believe me when I tell you that VS did an absolutely stellar job with this film. 

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Playlist:

Tangerine Dream - Strange Behavior OST

Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditation

Rodney Crowell - Tarpaper Sky

The Jesus Lizard - Down

Big Black - Songs About Fucking

Frank Black and the Catholics - Eponymous

Barry Adamson - Cut to Black

Cocksure - K.K.E.P.

Robot God - Portal Within

Melvins - Tarantula Heart

Saigon Blue Rain - Oko

The Cure - Disintegration

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Suspended in Dusk)

Pastor T.L. Barret and the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship Without a Sail

The Bangles - Different Light

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The House That Agnes Built

 

One of the shorter tracks on Amigo the Devil's latest record Yours Until the War is Over, however, I wanted to post "Agnes" because, in listening to it a few times in a row last night, I realized I'd kind of glossed over this track on previous listens. The arranging here is subtle but fantastic. You can head over to the official Amigo the Devil website HERE to order the album.

 

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Watch:

We released a new episode of Drinking with Comics a few days ago. In this episode, Shinabargar and I discuss one of our favorite Batman stories of all time: Grant Morrison and Klaus Janson's Gothic.

 

Also, on the new episode of The Horror Vision that dropped today, we deep-dive into Lars Von Triers' The House That Jack Built. As has become our standard, the YouTube version of the show has a full array of visual accompaniments if you want to "hear" it there.

Here's a spoiler: I hated this film. Despite that, I found some really cool ideas in it to discuss. 

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Playlist:

Mountain Realm - Frostfall

Duga-1 - Abyss

The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control

Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue

Trombone Shorty - Too True

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu

Dr. John - Locked Down 

Amigo the Devil - Yours Until the War is Over

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Man Man - Alibi

 

From Carrot on Strings, out on June 7th. Pre-order from Man Man's Bandcamp HERE. 

LOVE having these guys back.

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Play:

When I first heard of Puppet Combo back somewhere around 2017 (I think), it was in reference to a game called The Glass Staircase that seemed to have major Suspiria vibes. I did not own a game console of any kind, and I hadn't played a video game since the original Nintendo system (other than some DDR at arcades and a DDR enthusiast friend's house). I dug Puppet Combo's aesthetic so much I bought the game from their website for the computer, and struggled through attempting to play it with the direction arrows on my Mac.

Needless to say, I didn't get far.

Thus, a few years ago when I saw PC's name pop up with the announcement that their games were going to begin porting over to consoles, I bought a Switch solely to play them. First up - Nun Massacre, a game that I've mentioned here before scares the living shit out of me when I play.

Since then, there have been a handful of releases, and I've loved them all. Now, finally, The Glass Staircase is coming to Switch. I know what I'll be doing on May 24th (actually, I'll be driving to Chicago, but I'll probably stay up late the night before to download the game). 

Also available for other consoles as well; read the full article that put me in such a good mood this morning over on Bloody Disgusting HERE.

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Read:

Over on The Horror Vision, we recently resurrected Sticks n' Stones, our Folk Horror show that Ray and I started in 2022 with two episodes and then kind of let slip away. A lot happened in 2022, and I'd wanted to bring the show back for a while. Finally, our cohost Anthony (AKA Butcher) brought this up recently, and we recorded a new episode. In prepping for that, I began not only rewatching many of the films in Severin Film's BRILLIANT box set, All the Haunts Be Ours. I also began reading the anthology book that came with the set, All The Haunts Be Ours - edited by documentary filmmaker Kier-La Janisse. 

This turns out to be perfect reading for our first morning in Laurel, MS, as the Air BnB K and I are staying in is referred to as "The Hobbit House." While I haven't really been a fan of Tolkien's work since I was a child, the vibe fits with my reading and this current "Folk" state of mind. Also, I went back and pulled out an old issue of the Weird Walk Zine I've spoken about here previously.

This is a favorite for getting me into the "Folkloric" state of mind; the essay on John Constable's paintings by Justin Hopper, complete with Bauhaus song name chapter stops, really helps. 

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Playlist:

The Raveonettes - Return of the Grievous Angel (pre-release single)

The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust

The Raveonettes - Pretty In Black

Amy Winehouse - Frank

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Searching For The Sons of Sam Podcast

The Damned - Night of the Living Damned

Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue

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Card:

Another single card today, this time from my travel Thoth deck that Missi gifted me years ago:

This feels about right, not only because our accommodations are so wonderful (Link to the Hobbit House HERE), but because Laurel has so many trees! The oxygen here is off the charts; what more could beings who live off the stuff ask for? Not much, because we feel wonderful because of it. Let the luxurious reinvigoration begin!

New Music from The Raveonettes!!!

The morning my vacation begins, I wake up to find not only new music from The Raveonettes—a Gram Parsons cover, no less—but a full album of covers up for pre-order over on Cleopatra Records and a tour announcement! Regarding that pre-order, there's GLOW IN THE DARK VINYL! Man, this just gets better and better. Pre-order The Raveonettes... Sing on vinyl HERE (while it lasts).

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Watch:

K and I went to see the new Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black last night, and while there are probably some issues I could cite with the film, none of them matter. We loved it! 

I thought Marisa Abela did a great job, especially with the singing, and overall, I just really loved seeing this story brought to life on the big screen. Add to that an original score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and getting to hear not only Amy's songs on a theatrical sound system, but a new Cave/Ellis track composed for the film, and I was in heaven. According to the film's director:

"I watched him sit at the piano and just sort of conjure up this incredible song, which is now at the end of the film."

If you love Amy Winehouse's music as much as we do, see this on a big screen. Your heart will swell and burst, and it will feel wonderful through the tears.

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Playlist:

Various - The Void OST

CCR - Cosmo's Factory

Chris Isaak - Heart Shaped World

Lustmord - Much Unseen Is Also Here

Amigo the Devil - Everything is Fine

Uncle Acid and The Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu

Jim Williams - Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched OST

Sunn O))) - Monoliths and Dimensions

The Damage Manual - Limited Edition

White Zombie - Astro Creep 2000

Shellac - 1000 Hurts

Pink Milk - Ultra Violet

Pink Milk - Night on Earth

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black

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Card:

A quick one-card draw for travels today:

XVIII: The Moon - I typically relate this card to "the unseen"; however, it can also mean relinquishing fear. Not sure if that's a nod toward anxieties I hold at work or maybe about our drive to MS today, as our destination is currently part of the "Gulf Coast Storm" area with heavy flooding. I'll take this to mean proceed, but keep up on the alerts (Which would be 'unseen' if we ignored them, which I am wont to do).

Watch Song

 

Seven just wasn't enough. We miss you already, Steve!

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Sefven Days of Steve: Day 7

We bring Seven Days Celebrating Steve Albini's career with a track from what is, in my opinion, one of the greatest production statements in Independent Rock history. Really, The Jesus Lizard's Goat, Liar and Down are all neck and neck for that honor, all produced by Albini. 

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NCBD:

Pretty robust week, considering how I've downsized. Here we go:

I could have sworn this book ended with issue five, but here we are at #6, and the end isn't for another month yet. 

Love this cover. Feels like this book was on a little hiatus, glad to have it back. 

This Untold Destiny of the Foot Clan book is proving to be considerably better than I originally anticipated. LOVING the art by Mateus Santolouco, so I'm here for that, at the very least. But I'm really interested in seeing where this Casey-Jones-with-the-bad-guys subplot goes, and overall, I dig seeing a continuation of The Foot's story without Shredder. 

I'll just eat my words and say this now: so far, I love this book. I'm still not hip to ANYTHING Marvel has done with Aliens in comic form, but this? This is a really cool "What If" continuation of Cameron's Aliens.

So checked out on these. Last issue of this series, which means it should just be two issues to go before I can get out of the X-books altogether. 

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Watch:

The first teaser trailer for Francis Ford Coppola's upcoming Megalopolis dropped earlier in the week. 

This is as far as I'll be going with trailers on this one. This film is slowly creeping into the role of one of my most anticipated films of the year. To read some of what FFC has said about this, I think this could be one of his greatest films (after Dracula and Apocalypse Now, of course).

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Playlist:

Various - The Void OST

Graveyard - Lights Out

Yerusalem - The Sublime

Lustmord - Much Unseen Is Also Here

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

Amigo the Devil - Everything is Fine

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Card:

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

• IV: The Emperor

• Knight of Pentacles

• Ace of Cups

Action; approach Earthly concerns with Intelligence, and an emotional breakthrough will follow. That's a bit fortune cookie vague for a reading, but I'm spent. 

Seven Days of Steve: Day 6

For these final two days of Steve Albini celebration, I wanted to highlight a few of the albums that his production made him sort of an extension of the band. So we start with Pigface's debut album, Gub, released thirty-three years ago next Tuesday. If I remember my history correctly, that's Albini tweaking knobs and creating those whirling synthesizer tones on the track. 

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Watch:

A short teaser for David Cronenberg's upcoming film The Shrouds recently dropped. It tells us nothing, and I'm fine with that. 

This ends up being superfluous, as there's nothing that can make me more excited to see David Cronenberg's new film more than the fact that it's David Cronenberg's new film. Still, I like to post stuff like this here for posterity's sake. Here's a synopsis:

"The Shrouds” centers on Karsh, 50, a prominent businessman. Inconsolable since the death of his wife, he invents GraveTech, a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their dear departed in their shrouds. One night, multiple graves, including that of Karsh’s wife, are desecrated. Karsh sets out to track down the perpetrators."

Cronenberg's previous film, Crimes of the Future, turned a lot of long-time fans off, but I found it thrilling. One of the only truly transgressive feeling Cinema viewings I've had in a long, long time. 

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Playlist:

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper

Bossk - .4

Pigface - Gub

Big Black - Songs About Fucking

Robot God - Portal Within

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Five of Swords

• Queen of Swords

• Seven of Swords

What's with the three-card suits the last two days? Weird. Not the best picture I've taken, but I find the white of this Bound deck makes it a bit tougher for me to photograph. Anyway...

Swords are all about Air, Intellect and, in a practical sense, relationships. Fives are Conflict, Queen Emotion and Seven's completion (Netzach - Victory!). In other words let passion guide the argument to a solution, or, perhaps more pragmatically, if they won't listen, scream at them. 

Seven Days of Steve: Day 5

Big Black's Songs About Fucking stands with early Ministry as one of the stalwarts of the Chicago Indie Sound of the 80s. While it's easy to draw comparisons to Industrial music because of the drum machine, Albini's vocals help it remain not so committed to any one genre. It's some important DNA, though, and a perfect record from start to finish.

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Watch:

It had easily been 25 years since my first and only viewing of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13. The film popped up on Prime recently,* and Saturday night, I fired it up and remained rivetted throughout the entire run time.

When I first watched this back in my 20s, I know I dug it, but this was one I never really sought out to add to the collection, and now I just can't understand why. Despite immediate tendencies to embellish and decry this as my new favorite Carpenter film, Assault on Precinct 13 definitely jumps up into that upper echelon on his work, along with Halloween, The Thing and Prince of Darkness. 

This one is raw! There's a scene that dropped my jaw (you know the one). Not that JC can't be brutal, but holy smoke muffins! And through the entire siege portion of the film, there is definitely that 'the calm before the storm' eeriness that percolates through Halloween, as well. The scene where the station receives the "Cholo" is just creepy A.F.

*I feel like amazon has been listening to me through the apps on my phone and actually sought to rectify my major gripe, namely that along with commercials in all their original programming now, most movies have migrated over to freevee. FUCK freevee.

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Read:

Took some time this weekend to re-read James Tynion IV and Joshua Hixson's The Deviant before diving into the newest issue that came out this past Wednesday.

Reading this again, I have to say that The Deviant strikes me as possibly one of the creepiest psychological nightmare mind-fuck series ever published in comics. Five out of Nine issues notched and if this is going where I think it's going (but not necessarily how it's going to get there), Michael and Randall's stories are becoming more and more entwined, not just with each other, but with the Horrors of loneliness and social isolation that seem to have created a world of sad, deadly men. 

Michael is telling us everything point blank; we're just not listening. It feels like this is exactly what it would be like to know a killer. I can say this because I knew one in my teens, and while looking back on his behavior with adult eyes after the fact, it becomes clear the signs were there all along; he wasn't steeped in killing the way a serial killer like the killer in The Deviant is. 

You don't need to have had that experience, though. Tynion and Hixon's tale unfolds in such a character-driven way that we're drawn into their world and their lives. You can imagine being in Michael's boyfriend's shoes, the signs that are literally all over the place, but how do you put that together? How do you learn to distrust and fear people you love enough to properly interpret these silently telegraphed confessions?

We'll see.

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Playlist:

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Nell' ora blu

Big Black - Songs About Fucking

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - The Night Creeper

The Jesus Lizard - Down

Steven Sanchez - Angel Face

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black

Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST

Tim Hecker - Infinity Pool OST

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Moon Wizard - Sirens

Alice in Chains - Sap

Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies

Gold Class - Drum

Etta James - 

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Give the People What They Want

Chuck Berry - Berry on Top

Various - Romantic Night in Playlist

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Card:

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

I had a hankering for Grimm's Bound Tarot, so I broke that out for today's Pull.

• Page  (Princess) of Pentacles

• Two of Pentacles

• Seven of Pentacles

Interesting. The first day back with this deck in months, and my entire Pull is Pentacles? Money has been on my mind - for both good and hesitant reasons. It's good right now, but I feel as though there is a shoe hanging above a drop of about 1000 feet. The Page/Princess indicates security, the Two partnership and the Seven Completion. That bodes pretty well, but I'm still feeling things out as I go along. 

Seven Days of Steve: Day 4

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Seven Days of Steve: Day 3

1000 Hurts was the first Shellac album I bought, and the one-two of "Prayer to God" and "Squirrel Song" really explains the band's style: light and dark, baby.

I keep feeling like I want to write more about Albini's passing, but I just don't have it in me to say anything that doesn't sound trite other than this sucks. 

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Seven Days of Steve: Day 2

Mr. Brown sent me a link to this live performance in 1986 the other night, shortly after we touched base about Albini's death. The performance speaks for itself.

 

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Watch:

As much as I dug on Moritz Mohr's Boy Kills World the other night, what really set my heart a flutter was seeing a trailer for Nikhil Nagesh Bhat's Kill beforehand. I'm posting it here for posterity's sake, but my advice is do not watch it; as excited as I am to spread the word about this awesome, awesome film, the trailer just gives too much.

 

I saw this on opening night of 2023's Beyondfest and was completely blown away. Ever since I've been hoping Bhat's unflinching action flick would get a national US rollout, and it looks like that is indeed the case. 

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Read:

I caught and inadvertent book recommendation from Stephen King and Joe Hill on Twitter the other day, and I'm stoked to finish up Stephen Graham Jones' Indian Lake Trilogy and move onto this one. 

While completely unfamiliar with Keith Rosson, the description for this one grabbed me right away. I LOVE anything that deals with a Hand of Glory. Here's part of the blurb from the Publisher:

When leg-breaker Hutch Holtz rolls up to a rundown apartment complex in Portland, Oregon, to collect overdue drug money, a severed hand is the last thing he expects to find stashed in the client’s refrigerator. Hutch quickly realizes that the hand induces uncontrollable madness: Anyone in its proximity is overcome with a boundless compulsion for violence. Within hours, catastrophic forces are set into motion: Dark-op government agents who have been desperately hunting for the hand are on Hutch’s tail, more of the city’s residents fall under its brutal influence, and suddenly all of Portland stands at the precipice of disaster. . . 

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Playlist:

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Final Light - Eponymous

Pigface - Gub

Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound

The Jesus Lizard - Down

The Jesus Lizard - Liar

Big Black - Live at CBGBs 7.13.86

Warning - Watching From A Distance

Witch Finder - Forgotten Mansion

Soviet Soviet - Endless

Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

Crispin Hellion Glover - The Big Problem

Big Black - The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape

John Carpenter - Lost Themes IV: Noir

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• XI: Justice (Lust in Thoth)

• XVII: The Star

• Knight of Cups

I thirst for something more. I see it in the online lives of people who I admire, and I want that for myself. The trick is not to fall too hard for the illusion of other people's lives. Everyone has successes and failures. The Star reminds me that, from the grimoire, "Create unto and within yourself a Universe, shaped of your strengths and built on your accomplishments as a foundation." The Knight of Cups, or the Will of Emotions/Firey aspect of Water, further clarifies that the aforementioned Lust can seem like it is deserved (Justice), but that's emotion talking. Nothing is deserved, it is earned. 

RIP Steve Albini

 

This one hurts. I'm starting Seven Days of Steve today, but don't have anything else to say. 

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