It's been a while since I've fallen headlong into The Veils. With Twin Perfect putting all this glorious Twin Peaks stuff into my head, this feels like the perfect time.
NCBD:
The slimmest NCBD in quite some time. I'll try not to complain, and instead allow my wallet to catch its breath.
There's nothing amazing about this book prequel to the new MOTU series on Netflix - which I enjoyed quite a bit - but it's fun. Also, with a four-issue runtime, I don't feel like it's a very big commitment. Also, that's a Bill Sienkiewicz variant cover right there. Pure Magick.
So glad The Silver Coin got picked up for more than the initially solicited four issues. This is easily in my top five comics of the year.
Listen:
Super excited to finally post this new episode of The Horror Vision, as we had Seattle University Professor of Film Studies John Trafton on to deep-dive Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck's criminally underseen 1973 Messiah of Evil. I learned a lot on this one, and from this film in general, and John is a veritable wellspring of film knowledge. Can't wait to have him back! Listen to the episode, and check out his website, which is chock full of fantastic information!
Discovering Black Mare last week has sent me into a spiral with Sera Timms music. Following my own advice and clicking on that Bandcamp link for 2020's Death Magick Mother, I sat completely transfixed by the record yesterday in the wee hours of the morning. This record has an extremely ethereal quality. I can hear Pornography-era Cure, Cocteau Twins, and contemporaries, L.A.-based Chasm, but the space created within the walls of this aural shrine are all Timms's own. Turning this one on feels like stepping into an hour-long fog bank. Through the obfuscation, you see outlines of landmarks you think you recognize, except they're all wrong, and give you an immediate impulse to be at the ready.
Watch:
A few weeks back, my cousin, Charles told me about the Youtube channel Twin Perfect's video, "Twin Peaks Actually Explained (No, Really)." I'd seen this floating around in my feed and ignored it. Despite the fact that I often create or take part in videos similar to this - well, NO video is similar to this one - I rarely watch them, and I certainly go out of my way to avoid any video that claims to explain any movies or shows I dig, most especially Peaks. However, Charles told me enough to get me interested, and if you'll recall, there was one other Twin Peaks Explanation video I took to heart a year or so ago - Wow Lynch Wow's "Was Mr. C Victorious?" This new video, then, wasn't exactly unprecedented. What was unprecedented was the fact that, after watching about the first twenty minutes of this 4 hour+ video, I truly believed in my heart of hearts that holy F'ing shite - this guy COMPLETELY EXPLAINS TWIN PEAKS. It's not what you think it's going to be, it's far better. I cannot recommend this one enough unless you do not want to have the show explained.
Seriously, without spoiling anything, when you get to the part about what the light shining on Laura Palmer's face at the end of FWWM means, you'll know if you're on board or not.
Playlist:
Black Mare - Death Magick Mother
Metallica - Seek and Destroy (single)
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Faith No More - The Real Thing
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Windhand - Eternal Return
Conan - Monnos
Guns N' Roses - ABSURD (wow, this is awful)
Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual
The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs - Original Series Soundtrack
Card:
Okay, so what am I battling here? I feel like most everything is in line.
A recent discovery about which I know very little other than the fact that I really dig this album. Black Mare's Bandcamp is HERE, and there still appear to be vinyl copies of her 2020 record Death Magick Mother.
Watch:
I saw two huge movies this weekend and the results are not what I expected at all. First up, David Lowery's The Green Knight
From my Letterbxd review:"Gorgeous. A must on a big screen. Andrew Droz Palermo deserves so many awards. There are some technical issues I had with the way it’s written and directed, as well as a few scenes that felt like missteps - to quote Peter Griffin, “the movie insists upon itself” - but overall this is a beautiful attempt at Pure Cinema, which can NEVER be a bad thing."
Next, James Gunn's The Suicide Squad, which I would have been perfectly content to - just like the first one - never watch until a confluence of events made me curious enough to try.
The result? Possibly my favorite comic book movie ever. Wow. Just wow.
Playlist:
Pilot Priest and Electric Youth - Come True OST
The Plimsouls - Everywhere At Once
King Woman - Celestial Blues
Bloodslide - How Glad I Am (single)
Yob- Clearing the Path to Ascend
Sacred Reich - Independent
College - Teenage Color EP
Polica - Give You the Ghost
David Lee Roth - Apple Music Essentials
Windhand - Soma
Droids Attack - Sci-Fi or Die
Black Mare - Field of the Host
Dead Milkmen - Welcome to the End of the World
The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
Card:
The Alchemical marriage - recognizing disparate and/or complementary elements and bringing them together to marry their strengths in a way that supports the great work. That's kind of a hoighty toighty, old school Aleister Crowley interpretation - High Magick and all that rigamarole, but it applies. I'm seeking to write an extremely short story for submission to an anthology. Brevity is definitely not where my overall strength in writing lies. However, I'm excellent at slicing and dicing in the edit. So... edit in the head, before the fingers hit the keys.
I'm not a fan of the Black album. In fact, everything that came after that album makes me not want to be a fan of this band at all. However, I could never turn my back on those first four records by Metallica, especially Master of Puppets.
However...
The almighty algorithm saw fit to send 'Sad But True' my way Monday when an Alice in Chains record I was listening to on Apple Music ended and I didn't choose another one quick enough. I heard those opening chords and lingered. Then, before I knew it, I was into my second go-round with the song, actually physically restarting it after its conclusion.
Dare I say it, but this is a good song.
Nothing about 'Sad But True' is what I like about the music from this band that I like, but divorcing the song from its creators for a moment, I found there is almost a Doom vibe to this one. Also, there are some haunting elements in the choruses - not sure if those are keyboards or a guitar effect. Either way, I doubt I'll be jamming the whole record any time soon, but I've already added it to a playlist.
Watch:
I finally got around to watching Ivan Kavanagh's Son on Monday night. Jesus, this one is a rough watch. A very good film, freaky as all hell, but also there's some pretty disturbing stuff just below the surface.
This won't be for everyone. There's an undercurrent of abuse - it's not front and center or showcased, but it's discussed as the motive for certain events in the film, and that lingers. That said, I'm pretty squeamish with anything like that, and although this stayed with me, I can't say it did so in an overtly, or in any kind of discomforting way. What the film did do right was be well made and quickly paced, as well as take those unpleasant ideas and weave them into a pretty compelling and effective Horror film.
NCBD:
I feel like this cover says it all: This series is BIG.
Maybe it was binging the recent MOTU sequel series that primed for this, but I LOVE this cover. Total Skeletor.
This is the 1:15 variant for Ed Piskor's Red Room #3. I'll most likely not be able to get my hands on this particular variant, but it's awesome as all hell.
The end to an amazing series. Can't wait to reread the entire run, start to finish in a nice, tight burst. Talk about great characters!
Casey Jones! These "Best of" TMNT books have been among my favorite comics in years, and I kind of expect this one to go right up alongside the Raphael one from a few months back as the best of the bunch.
I'm not actually certain I will buy this one, but I just love the fact that these two bizarre ass characters have their own book. Five-year-old me would be ecstatic!
The throwaway panel of the High Evolutionary and the promise his presence brings is what has me coming back for issue 2, although I will say, rereading Grant Morrison's New X-Men has me feeling some major love for the corner of the Marvel Universe I wrote off due to 'strip mining' the characters a few years ago. Let's see where this book goes.
Playlist:
Jerry Cantrell - Atone (pre-release single)
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
Not a lot of full album rotation today as I leaned into a new playlist for the upcoming second episode of the new Metal Podcast I'm doing with Anthony and Tori from The Horror Vision. We're recording the new episode this coming Saturday morning, so it should be up this coming Tuesday. The topic? Well, if the playlist doesn't make it obvious, it's Thrash Metal.
Card:
Reminding me to leave the old paradigms (and projects) behind in the face of reconciliation with previous collaborators.
One of my favorite tracks from what is - in my not-so-humble opinion - one of the finest records of the 1990s. I've had the Rev on my mind lately, and have been digging back through the records I played endlessly during my 20s. Primarily, that would be 1996's It's Martini Time, 93's Full-Custom Gospel Sounds, 94's Liquor in the Front, and 1998's Space Heater. Nothing against any of the records that followed those, but that's just kinda where I check out with the Rev.
Watch:
I love all the super weird body horror this new decade seems to be bringing us. Mosquito State looks like another mind-bending high concept film inspired by the long line of Body Horror that David Cronenberg's work inspired, and his son Brandon redefined for the modern age (Not that DC isn't modern. He's ultra-modern, and all signs point to his next film reminding us about that the same way his novel Consumed did a few years back). Either way, kudos once again for Shudder bringing us all this awesome body horror.
Playlist:
Cloud Cruiser - I: Capacity
Peter Gabriel - So
Jethro Tull - Benefit
Cindy Lauper - She's So Unusual
ZZ Top - Rhythmeen
Reverend Horton Heat - Liquor in the Front
Reverend Horton Heat - It's Martini Time
Droids Attack - Sci-Fi or Die
AC/DC - The Razors Edge
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
Beautiful Brutality Playlist for the week of August 2nd, 2021
Black Sabbath - 13
Space Burial - Mudtrout
Card:
Compromise and the uniting of disparate elements. Not sure what this is pointing to, exactly, but it's pretty good, general day-to-day life advice.
The youtube algorithm surprised me Saturday night by throwing the new Jerry Cantrell single my way. I had no idea this album was on the horizon, and despite my hot/cold relationship with Mr. Cantrell's other solo albums - all of which I like, but none that have really stuck with me like, say, the previous AIC album did - I really liked this song. What's more, and this is extremely rare, the video really helped drive home how I felt about the song. I feel like Cantrell is aging both as a human and a songwriter in a very elegant manner, and that brings great joy to my heart. Alice in Chains was, after all, birthed in a pretty severe amount of trauma.
The album, Brighten, drops on December 17. You can pre-order it HERE, though all the vinyl appears to be sold out at this point.
Watch:
Rewatched a couple of movies this past week that I'd been wanting to for quite some time.
First, I finally picked up a copy of Dan O'Bannon's 1984 classic Return of the Living Dead on Blu-Ray. Despite my posting the Scream Factory trailer here, the version I purchased was the MGM release, simply because I didn't want to shell out $35 for it.
This film is a rarity to me: despite the comedic elements, RoTLD remains one of the most disturbing and frightening flicks I know. There's something to the starkness of the sets that creates an isolated feeling that permeates and really adds to the siege elements. Also, the entire idea that the dead are compelled to feast on the brains of the living because, as the torso-zombie lady says, "The pain of being dead," really disturbs me. Especially after Freddie dies and begins to repeatedly scream, "It hurts! It hurts!"
Next, a few months back when Severin announced they would be remastering and releasing Gabriel Bartalos's Skinned Deep, I pre-ordered it. This is one my friend Dennis gave me back in the day, part of the original Fangoria's "Gore Zone" three-pack that also included the Irish zombie film Dead Meat, and The Last Horror Movie. I sold most of these back when my life was imploding in 2014 and had pretty much assumed Skinned Deep was something I had to consign to the aethers of the post-physical media world.
Enter Severin.
This is an extremely bizarre take on the backwoods slasher film that transports the crazy family of killers to the plains of the Southwest (I think). Watching it Saturday night, there's a really unique, really heightened 'You're where you don't belong" feeling to the flick, to the point that, combined with the over-the-top characters, I felt an almost dream logic over the entire story. I ended up conking out near the end, so I have to go back this week and watch it again.
Playlist:
Metal Church - Blessing in Disguise
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
The Replacements - Tim
Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun
Peter Gabriel - So
The Maness Brothers - Tammie Jean (single)
Cloud Cruiser - I: Capacity
Card:
This card always tells me to stay stream-lined, keep my head down in the fray, and refuse to relinquish what I've set my sights on.
Jesus Christ, who didn't die last week? We lost three big names, and I wanted to pay some tribute here.
R.I.P. Dusty Hill:
Dusty Hill, founding member of ZZ Top. I never realized Dusty sang lead on Tush. What a band. I think my third ever CD when I was in early high school was the ZZ Top greatest hits album.
R.I.P Joey Jordinson:
Say what you want about Slipknot, but this is the song that broke my hate for the guys that I still insist totally ripped off Mr. Bungle. The drums on this song are amazing.
R.I.P. Mike Howe:
I haven't listened to Metal Church in a very long time, but there was a time when they were pretty important to me. My girlfriend in High School had their first couple of records, and I can remember laying stoned out of my mind listening to this song and feeling that intense thrill that the really epic 80s thrash stuff inspired in me at that age. I still feel that now, and it has a lot to do with Mike Howe's vocals. This song crushes.
Playlist:
ZZ Top - Rhythmeen
Metal Church - Blessing in Disguise
Metal Church - Eponymous
The Replacements - Tim
The Replacements - Let It Be
The Replacements - Sorry Ma, I Forgot to Take Out the Trash
