Killing Machine Brings a Reckoning

I follow a man who goes by the handle Jomparantala on IG who has totally made me reassess a lot of the music I grew up with in the 80s but later dismissed. I won't say I ever totally gave up on Judas Priest - Living After Midnight remains a song I never stopped turning up to eleven whenever it comes on, although it's been so long since I listened to any radio station that would play it, so while it lingers on an old playlist, it's been a minute. Seeing Jom post about Priest yesterday, I definitely see myself firing up some today.

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Watch:

Somehow I totally missed the fact that Neil Marshall's The Reckoning hit VOD two months ago! What the hell?!? I feel like I waited for this forever, then I let it fall off my radar. Well, that will (hopefully) be remedied this weekend. Here's the trailer. Love those plague masks, right?

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Playlist:

The Replacements - Tim

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Shake the Sheets

ACDC - Highway to Hell

Alabama Shakes - Sound and Color

sElf - What a Fool Believes (single)

Santigold - Eponymous

The Clash - Train in Vain (single)

Talking Heads - Sand in the Vaseline

Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right

Protomartyr - The Agent Intellect

Moonlover - Ghost Bath

Deafheaven - Sunbather (single)

Judas Priest - Killing Machine (single)

Zombi - 2020

Goblin - Dawn of the Dead OST 

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Card:

 

Everything lately has pointed to self-control, something I've been in short supply of lately (he types as he opens another beer at 11:04 PM moments after setting alarms that being at 4:05 AM)

Swinging Party

While I've picked at a few albums by The Replacements over the last five years or so, I've never really fallen for any. Until now. Holy cow! I'm reminded of when, in 2009, I fell hard into The Smiths decades after many people my age did.  A friend pointed out that both The Replacements and The Smiths are bands that classmates with older siblings tended to get into when we were younger, and with both of us being the oldest in our houses, that avenue to some of the more sophisticated music of the slightly older classes was cut off from us. That sounds about right, however, I definitely believe you find things when you need them. That was definitely true of The Smiths, and it feels equally accurate for The Replacements, or so far, their 1985 album Tim.

I love falling in love with older bands because I tend to go through these intense exploratory periods. One album at a time becomes an obsession, and within that microcosm different songs tend to cycle through as favorite obsessions. Currently, I'm stuck on "Swinging Party," its subtle lyrics and shimmering guitar, but I've already moved past "Kiss Me On the Bus", and seem imminently bound for "Little Mascara" to commandeer my obsession.

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Watch:

With only a handful of episodes left of Penny Dreadful, K and I made the joyous mistake of watching the first episode of Servant on Apple TV.  Five episodes later we are HOOKED and not going to be able to go back to Penny until we blow through both seasons of this show. The tone, the ambiance, the characters!  I'm a big fan of Lauren Ambrose's character Claire on HBO's Six Feet Under, so it's nice to see her again. 

 

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Playlist:

The Replacements - Tim 

Garbage - No Gods No Masters (single)

The Joy Formidable - Into the Blue (single)

The Joy Formidable - AARTH

Zombi - Cosmos

Zombi - Shape Shift

Zombi - 2020

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Card:

 

No capacity for interpreting this at the moment, because I'm worn out from being up too late watching Servant! 

The Joy Formidable

I really dig this new single by The Joy Formidable, a band I don't know all that much about. Not sure if this is the precursor to a new album from the band, but I'll be investigating their back catalog now, so either way, it's all new to me.

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Watch:

It's been a few days since I posted here. Busy as hell. I did find time to watch a few things this weekend, however, the thing that I must discuss is last week's season two opener of Shudder's Creepshow. I can't express how much this episode lit up all the goodwill in my brain. It had everything, including a full-on entry into the Evil Dead mythology, which I don't think any of us were expecting.

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Next up, Mike Wellman and I have returned with Drinking with Comics! It's been difficult to bring this show back, as it's primarily a live show with an audience that, well, for obvious reasons we can't do at the moment, however, for the moment, we're going to do a weekly NCBD round-up on Thursday nights. It will stream live on our FB page, then appear Friday morning on youtube. Here's last week's episode, where we talk Man-Thing, Stray Dogs, Shadecraft, and even find some time to dig into Tomahawk's new record because, you know, you gotta listen to something while you're reading all those comics:

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Playlist:

The Replacements - Tim

Alice in Chains - Dirt

Small Black - Duplex (single)

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Suburban Living - Always Eyes (single)

Godflesh - Pure

Satanic Planet - Baphomet (single)

Tomahawk - Tonic Immobility

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress

Human Impact - EP01

Megadeth - So Far, So Good... So What!

Pixies - Doolittle

Flogging Molly - Float

Zombi - Cosmos

S.O.D. - Speak English or Die

Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wraith of the Easter Bunny

Howard Shore - Crash OST

AC/DC - Highway to Hell

Ghost - Meliora

The Bangles - All Over the Place 

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Card:

Here's a fella I see quite a bit on these daily pulls. Time to take control of the more willy-nilly, emotionally compromised elements of my Work and steer things back in an orderly direction. 

 

Hot Fish, Baby

I've gotta say, 2020's Melvins album Working With God is easily my favorite of the group's since 2006's (A) Senile Animal. My go-to favorite track has pretty consistently been the album opener, a modified cover of the Beach Boys I Get Around appropriately renamed I Fuck Around. But Hot Fish is a very close second, and one I played more than once today in order to get through some monotonous paperwork.

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Read:

I've always dug the Marvel character Dane Whitman, AKA The Black Knight, so I picked up the one-shot King in Black: The Black Knight last week. Not a great story - it starts great and then quickly begins to feel editorially driven. Plus, I'm not going anywhere near a crossover of this size, so it was largely lost on me. Still, I dug enough about it that it inspired me to dig out another Marvel title that plays off the old school, pulp Weird Barbarian stuff, Jason Aaron and Mike Del Mundo's Weirdworld, from circa 2015. 

I love this book for so many reasons, however, chief among them would be the use of Crystar the Crystal Warrior and some of his supporting cast (now that's a fucking PULL), and the concept of an entire forest made of Man Things.

I only have the original, post-Secret Wars five-issue run, and I know there's a second volume that followed, so I'm going to need to track that down.

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Playlist:

Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA

Thievery Corporation - The Mirror Conspiracy

Kate Bush - The Dreaming

The Replacements - Tim

Deftones - Covers

Selim Lemouchi and His Enemies - Earth Air Spirit Water Fire

Zeal & Ardor - Wake of a Nation EP

Suburban Living - Always Eyes

Gun N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction

Skid Row - Slave to the Grind

Bjork - Post

Tomahawk - Toxic Immobility

Fantômas - Suspended Animation

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

Flogging Molly - Float

Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon

 

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Card:

 Change continues unabated: I type this entry on my brain new, M1 Macbook. The old one - which I've had since August of 2012 - isn't going anywhere, but it's slowing down and suffering from an erratic track pad, so this was a necessary change. 

Block Island Tomahawks

 

The new Tomahawk is out and it's super fun! Favorite track so far? Probably still Business Casual, but from the stuff I've only been living with for twenty-four hours, I'll point to the almost prog-rock guitar of Tattoo Zero. Meanwhile, Predators and Scavengers has an old school Jesus Lizard feel at times, and they released a video. 

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Watch:

Block Island Sound - which is currently streaming on Netflix - already feels like a frontrunner for movie of the year. Of course it's my way to make bold statements like that in March and April, so we'll see.

 

Too soon to tell or not, I fully expect the McManus Brothers' latest foray into Horror to be in my top ten at the very least. It's such an ominous film, dread dripping into all the little corners of one family's life.

 

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Playlist:

Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror

Flogging Molly - Float

Cocteau Twins - Garlands

Kate Bush - The Dreaming

Deftones - Covers

The Replacements - Tim

Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA

Thievery Corporation - The Mirror Conspiracy

Deftones - No Koi Yokan

Belong - October Language

The Black Queen - Infinite Games

Ulver - Teachings in Silence

Tomahawk - Tonic Immobility

Dance with the Dead - B-Sides: Vol. 1 

 

 

Mark Lanegan sings Joy Division's Disorder for Charity

Posted on Peter Hook's youtube channel. Here's the verbiage:

"As part of Sweet Relief Musicians Fund's recent 'For The Crew' fundraising event, Hooky's son Jack teamed up with Mark Lanegan (Mark Lanegan Band/Screaming Trees), Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Jeff Schroeder and drummer Shane Graham for a special live version of the Joy Division classic 'Disorder'. All funds raised by this event went towards supporting out of work touring crews who have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Please consider making a donation if you are able to: https://givebutter.com/FORTHECREW​

If you're in the US you can also text FORTHECREW to (202) 858-1233."

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Watch:

I had yesterday off, so Tuesday night K and I had a bit of a marathon. Being that it was my birthday, I wanted to reconnect with what I've come to think of my 'power movies.' There are quite a few, but here's what I went with:

 

Followed by:

 

Rounded out by my second viewing of Ryan Gosling's gorgeous directorial debut in the last two months (with a third already scheduled):

This was a great night for me; it'd been longer than I realized since my last viewing of my favorite Horror film of the 00s. Kill List I'd only seen once before but it left such a huge impression on me I'd been planning a follow-up for years. Luckily, thanks to Anthony (Butcher) from The Horror Vision, I located a B-Region BR for $5 a few months ago, so now I can watch my favorite Ben Wheatley film whenever I want. And Lost River has just become one of my all-times. I seriously think about re-watching it every day. 

Every. Day.

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Playlist:

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Cocksure - TVMALSV

Etta James - Eponymous

Tennis System - Technicolour Blind

The Dead Milkmen - Welcome to the End of the World

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Abbatoir Blues

The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings

Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon 

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Card:

I felt honored and ecstatic to do my first birthday pull from Missi's Raven Deck. I wasn't disappointed, either:

The presence of Boaz and Joachim are very positively charged images for me, one of the reasons this might be my favorite card from this deck. Plus, I've always considered a strong, mythical female presence as the closest thing to a supreme power in the cosmos of my life. Here, flanked by Soloman's pillars and a weird forest-derived rendition of the Tree of Life, I see nothing but the actualization of the processes I have put into place over the last several years. 

 

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