I still haven't checked out anything beyond their 2011 debut, but Torches has never failed me. Every song is fantastic. I put this on the headphones yesterday when I rang out to grab some groceries, and it completely lightened my mood (spent the entire day finishing the edit on the previous DwC, only to have the Media Encoder fail to render it properly. That's about two hours down the drain and the knowledge that I have to fuck around with it more today).
Playlist from yesterday:
Helmet - Betty
Foster the People - Torches
Urge Overkill - Saturation
The Veils - Time Stays, We Go
Card of the day:
From the Grimoire: "Roll up your sleeves. Take care of what you have been procrastinating. Clear out what has stood in your way." Message received.Writing will be painful but exhilarating today.
Another new song surfaces. I started listening and then decided to wait until the album drops, wanted to post it here though for anyone else interested.
Interesting juxtaposition, if you look at this card, one of the major visual components beside the Princess herself, is the churning, stormy sky, this can indicate anger, restlessness and negative trauma. I don't directly feel any of that, however I spent a few hours earlier today engrossed in reading Lords of Chaos; while doing so I listened to the audio from a thunderstorm on loop. The book and the storm burrowed their way into my brain; I fell asleep and woke up from a nightmare somewhat shaken. The dream involved a doctor who had an evil man locked up in some kind of photo-prison cell in her home. At some point she realized he had picked the lock and was free. The dream ended with the evil one on the hood of the doctor's car, with her driving into a fence on a kind of pier that ran to the ends of her property, the fence collapsed and the aggressor was thrown into whatever large body of water lay below, but there was the definite panicked intimation that he was not dead and she should hurry out of there.
I've a lot to say about Lords of Chaos, and more specifically Varg from Burzum. He talks in interviews of using Burzum's music to influence others, especially younger fans, to get them to take up his cause, which is a militaristic brand of nationalist medieval satanism. This is insanely removed from what we think of as satanism in the modern day - the goals this entire motley cast of characters continually extol are spreading 'fear and evil,' and they really mean it. It's deceptive; on one hand you can see skinny, somewhat awkward young people carving out an identity for themselves - one that they perceive will make others fear them. This is a counter balance to being 'misfits' and many of us do it, especially those who come up in metal. But here you can see extreme examples of the possible divergent paths, where most of the inner circle of the original Black Metal scene backdown from actually committing the follow-through on the atrocities they preach, and others go through it all the way, refusing to back down, transgressing into murder, arson and mayhem (pun intended). The book is an interesting journey into a pathos we children of the Heavy Metal 80s often dismiss, the idea that people can be influenced to do evil via music.
Chester Whelks absolutely kills it with a brief call-to-arms for reassessing one of the greatest albums by a hip hop artist in the last twenty years (in my opinion). READ IT HERE.
K surprised me a bit by asking to go see Deadpool 2 for her birthday yesterday. We saw the original on video about eight months ago and both liked it, K more than I. I may still be suffering fatigue from blockbusters and thus, eschewing all of them, I'd never begrudge my girl anything. Plus, there's something about the strange, Meta-soup that Reynolds has spearheaded here; my interest and enjoyment of Deadpool 2 - which I liked infinitely more than Deadpool 1 - lies in its comedy. Ask most of my friends and they will half-jokingly tell you, "Shawn hates comedies." This isn't completely untrue; the comedies I love - The Burbs, Airplane, Real Men, Ghostbusters, The Convent, The Big Lebowski (not a comedy but still shows up on this list! How's that?), are so well-made they make me hate most modern comedies. While I quite liked both Neighbors movies, Pineapple Express (maybe more for the shock of Gary Kohl as a villain than anything else, but still) and the Twenty-One Jumpstreets revivals, I find no reason for laughing at most of what comes out in the genre. Deadpool 2 was f*&kin' hysterical, and largely because it is so aware of itself. The tragic backstory that catalyzes most of the events in the movie are even delivered so hard-nosed I couldn't help but crack a smile. And sorry, Josh Brolin was born to play Cable. Just saying.
Yesterday's playlist:
Apex Twin - I Care Because You Do
Lantlos - .neon
Geto Boys - Eponymous
Merciful Fate - Don't Break the Oath
Eagulls - Ullages
The Ocean - Heliocentric
Neon Kross - Darkness Falls
Card of the day:
Emotion tempered with Intellect. Rain falls on the calm waters - emotions rousing the mind, stirring decisions beyond those made by sheer intellect. The reins in the Prince's hand, wresting control from the tumultuous forces threatening the calm - this should not necessarily be looked at as 'bad' - the creative process is a marriage of Emotion and Intellect; a tumultuous explosion that we must shape and control in order to actually record or define.
In my head upon waking; pretty sure I've posted this before, but it's good enough to post again:
The new Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying went up yesterday. You can read it HERE.
Back when Riverdale first came out I loved their posters - the tone of the piece, kind of a Neon Noir look, really caught me, and the fact that I read/heard someone somewhere refer to it as "Dawson's Peaks" intrigued me; I couldn't care less about the Dawson part, but the Peaks part, well, that should be obvious. When season one hit Netflix I gave it a shot, liked it okay, but it just didn't make the cut; I have to be pretty severe in what I choose to watch these days, as my time for tv is minimal to say the least. Now though, I see this and I know I have to go back and catch up, because my mind is blown that season two of an updated Archie story (I should really stop thinking of it in those terms) has a Giallo element. I mean, who saw that coming?
Playlist from 5/17:
Eagulls - Ullages
The Geto Boys - Geto Boys
Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth
Kitty Lester - Love Letters
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# ∞
Lantlos - .neon
Two cards today:
It annoys me that I couldn't find the actual card, instead of this weird, dark-bordered version. Either way, I'm looking at this as I'm going to encounter my dark side today - or perhaps someone else's - and I will need to bring balance to the situation. This sounds about right, know the day I had yesterday and what's on deck at the office today.
Yesterday I dug out Eagulls' second album, Ullages, for the first time in quite a while. I really liked the album when it came out, but it was somewhat the wrong time for me to fully invest in it - I was still riding too high on the frenetic burst of their debut, and the dour vibe, while glorious, was perhaps too much of a downer at the time. Enjoying sadness can be tricky, and definitely requires a particular mindset; without that mindset there is no enjoyment, only Zoul. I mean, there isn't a proper enjoyment, more of a sulking. For me at least.
I stuck to it though, and it helped me process the tracks in a different context when I saw the band live about a month after Ullages came out; the band absolutely killed it, and all the new songs sounded fantastic, intermixed with tracks from the first record to inject a bit of pep and throb amidst the otherwise seriously downtempo tone. Going back to the record now, after some time away and inherent expectations have faded, I'm falling into the sullen British craft of the record and it feels exquisite.
Playlist from yesterday:
Jamiroquai - Return of the Space Cowboy
Eagulls - Eponymous
The Mars Volta - Deloused in the Comatorium
Eagulls - Ullages
Nachtmystium - Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. 2
Nachtmystium - Silencing Machine
Card of the day:
From the Grimoire, "Overcoming opposites - attraction. Recognizing what belongs together - union."
Check. A confirmation that K and I need to carve out a little more time together, as of late it's been difficult, with her Mom fully moved in and my writing constantly. Her birthday is tomorrow, and I intend to make this a very special weekend.
First, because I've been All-Black Metal, All-the Time, let's do something as a pattern interrupt:
After I finished David Peak's Corpsepaint two nights ago I immediately ordered this:
Back when I worked at Borders, this always caught my eye. I'm so taken with exploring this fascinating subculture right now that I just can't look away, and I wanted some non-fiction to bolster and sustain the high that I still have from Peak's book.
Playlist from yesterday:
The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicenter
The Ocean - Aeolian
Venue - Desireena
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Deafheaven - Roads to Judah
Card of the day today was:
An eight. Of course. The number of building. Because I've worked on T12 everyday for two weeks, and Keller and I are really building something, not the story per se, but also a system by which we intend to tell many stories, the next two after this one already slated.
