The Empty Spoils of Power

 

This one's been in my head since I broke out Ice-T's sophomore record Power a few days ago. Interesting how something that, technologically speaking, sounds so archaic, could be so catchy. Is there hope for those old-school 80s sounds yet? You know, the ones that came preloaded on consumer-grade Casio keyboards by the time we hit the mid-90s? The Night Court bass, Pan Pipes and the like? Maybe. I believe that's what a contingent of artists that hovered around the moniker Hypnogogic Pop attempted in the 00s, but in many cases, that attempt failed. IMO. Hearing this track now though, perhaps the time is ripe for someone new to come along and reclaim some of these weird 80s textures.

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Having read the two comic series as they came out, the first in 2014, the second a year or two ago, I enjoyed Cullen Bunn's The Empty Man, so when I saw there was a movie, I became both excited and hesitant. Then I saw Lustmord did the OST, and I knew I had to watch it.

I dug this one. The ending fell a bit flat for me, but overall, Director David Prior really conveys a heavy sense of forbidding that was a blast to experience. There's a great sense of dread - made palpable at times by Lustmord's brand of creepy cosmic textures. The funny thing is, in watching this, I don't believe it felt so much like an adaptation of the material from the comic, as much as it did the comic if it had been a novel by Laird Barron. 

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Playlist:

 

Christopher Young and Lustmord - The Empty Man

High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings

John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - Halloween III: Season of the Witch OST

ILSA - Preyer

Roy Ayers - Ubiquity

 

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Card:

 I'll be paying special attention to Big Ideas today. 

Vreid to Meet You

I stumbled across the record by the band Vreid two days ago and quickly went from being impressed by their ability to conjure and own a lot of old school metal tropes to completely blowing my mind by moving through a network of decidedly non-metal elements to flesh their sound out into a pretty unique beast. Listen to the track above, then go on and hit play on this.

I kept thinking the Apple Music algorithm had moved me onto another band. The album does that, slowly incorporating other, decidedly non-metal ideas into its progression in a way that makes it a journey, which is very cool, and apparently exactly what I needed.

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NCBD:

Okay, so I actually went and bought every back issue The Comic Bug had on the shelf for this newest Amazing Spider-man series, which means I have now read issues 49-64. I say this, because despite the storyline feeling a bit weighed down by plot threads - I mean, there are a f*&king LOT of them - I've kind of fallen for this book. There's a very Uncanny-Xmen-Chris-Claremont feeling at how writer Nick Spencer sets up future plots/reveals via one and two-page asides. This creates some serious Gottasees that build over the course of, in some cases, a lot of issues. Case in point, who was the extra corpse that Carli Cooper found among the bodies Kindred exhumed? They drop this with a two-page scene in issue 57, and we still don't know, going on 8 issues later! It's stuff like this, and a mounting idea that Spencer seems like he might be setting up to undo the "Brand New Day" stuff from back in 2008 that pushed all the old-school, Peter-and-Mary-Jane stuff aside in favor of streamlining Spidey for younger readers. Either way, I'm super intrigued at where this is all going. 

One issue left after this. Love this series, and love its covers, especially this one. 

The first two issues were so much fun, how can I not come back for more? I'm still not jumping on the Carnage train, however, the stories in the second issue of the titular symbiote's Black, White & Blood book felt like horror films, which is super cool to see a major "Fan Favorite" like this treated that way.

Another penultimate issue for a mini-series that I'm currently following. Short and sweet, and even if we don't hear from Pendermills, this and 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank have cemented Tyler Boss as someone whose work I will follow.

If you didn't know Larry Hama is writing an Iron Fist comic, don't feel bad, neither did I. I'm new to the character, however, I jumped at the chance to pick up a new, finite Hama project and so far, so good.

This book definitely skews a little more "classic Image" than I normally like. That said, I'm digging it and will follow it for the time being.

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Playlist:

Deftones - Ohms

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Vreid - Wild North West

Boy Harsher - Careful

Black Sabbath - Sabotage

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Card:

Death is just the beginning, right? It's funny, yesterday my interpretation of the Queen of Disks was so on the nose that I'd used the words "Responsibility" and "Culpability" in discussion probably five times by 9:00 AM. I'm curious if my standard reading for Death as Change or Metamophasis will be as on the nose.

Sampa the Great

Sampa the Great is new to me (see below), but I am digging on this entire record.

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A couple weeks ago my Drinking with Comics cohost Mike Wellman sent me this interview with Mike Patton. Fantastic discussion, but of special interest here is his mention of Sampa the Great, who I'd never heard of before and whose 2019, award-winning record The Return is currently blowing my mind. Here's my favorite track (so far) on an album where there are a lot of tracks and all of them are good.

What I love best here is the fact that, if you go to the All-Music entry on The Return and check the credits, almost all of the instrumentation is real, very little in the way of samples. Plus, all of it hits that 70s Soul/ R&B sweet spot I love so much. You know, back before people considered crap like beyonce R&B.

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Playlist:

Death Valley Girls - Under the Spell of Joy

Perturbator - Excess (Single)

Perturbator/Author & Punisher - Excess n (Single Remix)

Vreid - Wild North West

Sampa the Great - The Return

Deftones - Ohms

Ice-T - Power

 

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Card:

 

The Queen of Disks always feels like a bit of an indictment to me. Kind of the spiritual or theoretical equivalent of Dante's change experiment in Clerks (yeah, I know that's an odd reference to tie into Tarot). While your better self (or Star self as I always imagine Crowley called it and didn't) is looking the other way, are you participating in something you shouldn't? The goat up front staring at us, essentially breaking the fourth wall, is a reminder you should always be aware, because others are whether you realize it or not.

There's a reminder of culpability here that I like, and whenever I see it, I try and run a mental checklist to see if all my ducks are indeed in a row. Interestingly, I feel like there's an element of that in The Return, as the record is peppered with dialogue snippets - mostly third party phone messages by Sampa's friends - that seem bent on making her understand something the world around her expects of her, but that she herself has left behind. And that's part of culpability, too, making sure that just because the world expects something of you, if it doesn't align with who you actually are inside, you're not falling in line. Keep your ducks in a row, not theirs.

Death Valley Girls and the White of the Eye

After discovering Death Valley Girls late last year via (I think) the Henry Rollins radio show on LA NPR WKRC and having a brief moment with their then-new album Under the Spell of Joy, I kinda forgot about them again. However, the album popped back up on my radar last week during my black-out period here (BUSY!), and I've been listening to it ever since. Excellent album, which you can pick up from Suicide Squeeze Records HERE.

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Watch:

I watched quite a few movies over the last five days or so since the last time I posted, however, Donald Cammell's White of the Eye may have left the biggest impression on me from those films I didn't already know. My co-host Tori talked about this one on the most recent episode of The Horror Vision, and our fellow cohost Anthony hit it square on the head when he described the film as a "Southwestern American Giallo."

You're going to have to be in the mood for 80s tropes, i.e. gratuitous guitar over sweaty sex scenes, and mullets like you may have never seen before, but if you can put you're head there and imagine you're watching this one late at night on a local affiliate at around 1:00 AM on a Saturday, you'll do just fine. Stand out performance by David Keith, who kind of transcends his "poor-mans Kurt Russell" thing and really does something cool with his role.

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Playlist:

I'm not even going to try and log everything I've listened to, because I on a good day I usually mess that up. Here's what I remember:

Death Valley Girls - Under the Spell of Joy

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine - White People and the Damage Done

Black Sabbath - Vol. 4

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Prince - Sign O' The Times

Gram Rabbit - Music to Start a Cult To

Voyag3r - Doom Fortress

Tomahawk - Tonic Immobility

CCR - Bayou Country

Deftones - Ohms

Lustmord - Hobart

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Card:

My second shot of the Pfizer Vaccine is coming up this Thursday, so let's see if it knocks me out as hard as the first one did. 

 

Gwar you there, god? It's me, Margaret

 

Oh man, how did I miss this last July? Would have come in handy.

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NCBD:

Here's what I'll be picking up today for New Comic Book Day:

I'm pretty excited about this new Daniel Warren Johnson Beta Ray Bill series.

Deadly Class returns! What's more, issue 45 bumps the timeline up to 1991 - notice Marcus' shirt - and I can't wait to see how Rick Remender handles the era of my own teenage years. 

Two hyphenated superheroes? Man-Thing and Spider-Man, seeing as how I've really been digging Spidey again and Man-Thing is an all-time favorite, this should equal a win-win for me.

Two Moons is dark, proto-American West Horror tied into Native American folklore. What more do I have to say, other than so far, I love it.

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Playlist:

Belbury Poly - The Gone Away

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Gost - Behemoth

Zombi - Cosmos

Judas Priest - Painkiller 

Minnie Riperton - Ten Best

GWAR - Scumdogs of the Universe

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

Huey Lewis and the News - Weather

 

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 My old friend, The Fool. He's never too far away, is he? The voice of inexperience and novelty, a reminder that everything old is new again, and sometimes you have to look beyond your routines to make any progress.

Unchained Residue

I woke up one day last week and literally, before I could even climb from bed, thought, "Unchained Melody is one of the greatest songs ever recorded." 

Now, I've know this song my entire life, and I've long enjoyed it, however, this was something different. I don't know where this contemplation and pronouncement came from, because I don't know that I've heard Unchained anytime recently. But there it was, and when I got to work and put in my headphones I had to concur that, yes, this song is epic.

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Here's one of my favorite new scenarios: I come home from work tired at least two days a week. I settle onto the couch with my pillow and my cat and throw on a movie. Usually, my go-to's for this situation are either Shudder TV or Prime. I almost always end up falling asleep within the first ten minutes or so, then wake up in the last three-quarters of the flick. In the best-case scenarios, whatever I see when I open my eyes prompts me to rewind all the way back and pick up where I dozed off. This happened yesterday with Rusty Nixon's 2017 Residue. 

I LOVED this flick. I don't know that I've ever seen anything with this tone before, a kind of deft balance between humor, Horror, and Neo-Noir. Everyone nails their parts, the FX crew is cognizant of their limitations and do an outstanding job working within it (LOVE the Puppetry), and the mythology is just vague enough to leave me desperately wanting to talk about the flick and just specific enough to indicate the filmmaker knew what he was doing and stuck to it. All in all, this is one of my favorite finds in a while, as far as flicks that passed me by from recent years. 

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Playlist: 

Zombi - Shape Shift 

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance

The Marvelettes - The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Windhand - Levitation Sessions

High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings

Tomahawk - Immobility

Suburban Living - Always Eyes

P.M. Dawn - Set Adrift on Memory Bliss

Various Artists - Valerie and Friends

Canadian Rifle - Peaceful Death

SURVIVE - Mnqo26

Gram Rabbit - Music to Start a Cult To

Just Once in My Life - The Righteous Brothers

16 - Dream Squasher

Etta James - Second Time Around

Steve Moore - VFW OST

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Card:

 

Center your strength, eh? Okay, that seems like good advice right now. 

Ceremony

 

New video for Deftones' "Ceremony", the second track on last year's Ohms record. Great track.

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NCBD:

Yesterday was NCBD, so here's what I picked up. Mike Wellman and I will be talking about these books and more tonight on the Drinking w/ Comics NCBD Round-up, streaming live on our FB page at 7:00 PM PST:

I'm still not sure I'm in for the long-haul on Marvel's Alien series, but I dug the first issue and am curious where it goes. For now.

I keep saying I'm logging off the newer Spidey titles, but I'm just feeling the character so much right now that I find I cannot. 

I love that this character finally has a new series, and when I recently realized Dane's goat-headed butler is named Phillip, and really just wanted to buy Si Spurrier a beer. 

I'm not a fan of the extended Symbiote family, however, I had such a damn good time with the first issue of this series that I have to come back for the next. Plus, visually, all these Black White & Blood books Marvel has been doing are outstanding.

And of course, last but certainly not least:

TMNT ongoing has been my flagship book for some time now, and I don't see that going away any time soon. Look at that cover!!!

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Playlist:

Kensonlovers - Keep Rolling 

Gram Rabbit - Music to Start a Cult To

SURVIVE - Mnq026

The Joy Formidable - AAARTH 

Sampa the Great - The Return

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Tiamat - Clouds

The Righteous Brothers - Just Once in My Life

The Righteous Brothers - You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Jackie Wilson - Higher and Higher

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons - Definitive Pop Collection

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Always Be Full

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

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Card:

 Another "invest in structure" pull that slots in timely after Tuesday's pull.