And thanks to my good friend Seth for the link to this one. What a beautiful way to end Mark Lanegan week.
Watch:
I know it's waaaay early, but I'm going on record: So far, Hellbender - or stylized as H6llb6nd6r - is the movie to beat for my favorite movie of the year:
This is another film by the Adams family - Tobey Poser, her husband John Adams and their two daughters Lulu and Zelda - who released The Deeper You Dig in 2019 and have been gaining an increasing amount of notoriety as a family of ridiculously talented individuals. Even the music they did for the movie is fantastic and begs for a proper release.
Playlist:
The Afghan Whigs - In Spades
The Cure - Faith
The Cure - Carnage Visors
QOTSA - Lullabies to Paralyze
Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral
Walking Papers - The Light Below
Black Road - Witch of the Future
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Silent - Modern Hate
Ritual Howls - Into the Water
Card:
Again? I need some time to process this. Or maybe that's the point. While I keep trying to figure certain things out, the Wheel keeps spinning, and the situation changes.
Regardless of the fact that Lanegan himself was pretty vocal about a certain degree of embarrassment at some of the music he made as a part of Screaming Trees, I'll always love certain songs by the band. It's the project with Lanegan I care the least about, but they definitely have their moments. "Nearly Lost You" is a perfect rock single, and my original plan was to post that. However, the day he died I was at work, and at some point, a couple hours after hearing the news I walked out of the office and heard "Dollar Bill" on the 88.9 KXLU. I haven't heard this song since 2009, and it really just smacked me upside the head.
Watch:
Sunday was a full-on relaxing, restorative day. I needed it. I slept in, dozed often, read quite a bit, and managed to watch several movies.
First up, 1944's House of Frankenstein:
I'm pretty sure I had never heard of this one before, and boy did it deliver on the Universal Monster goodness. Such an awesome set-up. From the Wikipedia entry for the movie:
"After escaping from prison, the evil Dr. Niemann (Boris Karloff) and his hunchbacked assistant, Daniel (J. Carrol Naish), plot their revenge against those who imprisoned them. For this, they recruit the powerful Wolf Man (Lon Chaney), Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange) and even Dracula himself (John Carradine). Niemann pursues those who wrong him, sending each monster out to do his dirty work. But his control on the monsters is weak at best and may prove to be his downfall."
In particular, the scene where Karloff's Dr. Niemann revives Dracula is fantastic, as is the way their relationship progresses and finally ends. Saying anything more would be giving away a nice little surprise, of which, this movie has several. Also, really cool to see Karloff in a movie with the Frankenstein monster where he doesn't play the titular being.
Next, 1939's Son of Frankenstein.
Pretty standard, but cool to see Basil Rathbone in a flick with these Horror Icons.
Both of these were leaving Shudder, and after starting House of Frankenstein out of curiosity a few days ago, but ultimately falling asleep for most of it, my early childhood love of Frank came back with a vengeance. I enjoyed both of these quite a bit, but preferred House because of its truly unique set-up.
Read:
So I decided I'm going to re-read all of H.P. Lovecraft's work. I started reading Lovecraft in High School - maybe Junior year. I've been reading him ever since but with my exposure to his work being subdivided between various Dell Paperbacks, I never had a "Complete Works" set until fairly recently. Because of that, I'm not entirely certain which of his works I missed (see my post about Charles Dexter Ward from last week).
So far, here's what I've read:
• The Festival
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
• The Statement of Randolph Carter
• The Strange House High in the Mist
• The Terrible Old Man
• Azathoth
• Beyond the Wall of Sleep
• Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn & His Family
Of particularly great pleasure was reading The Strange House High in the Mist. It'd been a loooong time, and this is one of those stories I realize now that defines what I love about HPL.
Playlist:
Walking Papers - The Light Below
Federale - No Justice
QOTSA - Lullabies to Paralyze
The Cure - Carnage Visors
Christopher Young and Lustmord - the Empty Man OST
Myrkur - Folkesange
Card:
I don't collect Tarot decks. I've had my full-size Thoth since around 2003. My only other decks are the "pocket" Thoth Missi gave me a few years back, and her own Raven Tarot (Major Arcana only) which she made for me two years ago. However, as I performed my pull this evening I was thinking about the fact that my friend Jonathan Grimm is beginning to take pre-orders for his "Bound Tarot" deck and there's no way I'm not buying this. Pulling The Hierophant only serves to reinforce my thinking that this will now be a third deck I actually use for daily readings.
There's not an actual link to pre-order the Bound deck yet, but I'll definitely be posting that here when it's up. In the meantime, you can peruse the designs over on Grimm's Etsy HERE.
A wonder live rendition of the opening track from the Twilight Singers' 2006 EP A Stitch in Time, which as a bonus, flawlessly morphs into a cover of Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night."
I got chills at the end when Dulli yells, "Mark Lanegan ladies and gentlemen!"
It's been quite some time since I doubled down on any Twilight Singers. This EP and the corresponding album Powder Burns also released in 2006, along with Lanegan's 2004 Bubblegum were intricate daily rituals for much of my life during the mid-to-late 00s. They're also slightly synonymous with drugs - no surprise there. To me, these records so perfectly capture the fabric of my mental life at that time, it brings back a huge rush of thoughts, feelings and ideas that are otherwise haphazardly placed in a closet at the back of my psyche. It's good to take that stuff out and brush it off every once in a while.
Read:
I'd been trying to read the works of T.E.D. Klein for the better part of a decade, but until very recently, everything was out of print. I eventually found the story "The Events at Poroth Farm" in a Kindle-only "Megapack" of the Cthulhu Mythos. The story has fuck all to do with Lovecraft, but hell, forty stories for $0.99, I'll take it.
This is the kind of thing that flits in and out of my radar, so months go by where I get busy obsessing over other things, then something puts the enigmatic Klein back in my thoughts and I look around on Kindle and eBay again. The holy grail of his work would appear to be the 1985 novel Dark Gods, which goes for upwards of $40 for a Mass Market Paperback on eBay. It's only a matter of time until someone puts Klein's stuff back in print...
And now that is exactly what is happening. Two recent purchases I've made:
This first volume is a novel. A reprint of Klein's 1984 novel The Ceremonies, also long out of print. I snatched up a paperback copy of this the second I saw it hit Amazon, however, I will say, the binding looks like it will split and fall apart before I'm finished reading this one. Maybe I'm wrong, but when you have a 400+ pages book and its binding is barely an eight of an inch thick, well, that's usually a pretty crappy edition.
And here's one from Pickman's Press I just saw this morning on Kindle. I grabbed the digital right away for this collection of short stories, poems and an interview. "Poroth Farm" is included here, which is nice, as are what looks like an essay on Arthur Machen's "The House of Souls", a story I recently short-listed when I picked up a Complete Works volume of Machen's work. So far, I'm three stories in, and can already tell you, "Well-Connected" is already worth the $5.99 I paid for this one. Fantastic story.
Playlist:
Mark Lanegan Band - Bubblegum
Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral
Post Stardom Depression - Prime Time Looks A Lot Like Amateur Night
QOTSA - Lullabies to Paralyze
Card:
Looking for answers, but something remains obscured.
I originally posted a track from this Lanegan/Isobel Campbell collaboration album back when it was released in 2010. That's over a decade ago. Trite "Time Flies" sentiments aside, I'm beginning to feel like we're lucky any of us are still here with the way the world has changed since then. Anyway, I love "The Raven" because it's just so damn cinematic. Also, there's a definite air of homage to Nick Cave here. That track from 2010 - "Who Built the Road" has more than a passing similarity to Cave's duet witih Kylie Minogue, "Where the While Roses Grow." Gentle bell chimes, hushed, breathy vocals, and an overall somber and reflective atmosphere to the album as a whole make this a late-night, dim-light album, and the juxtaposition of Isobel Campbell's voice with Lanegan's is just beautiful, especially when the strings swell beneath them.
You can still grab the complete record on digital over its Bandcamp page HERE. The entire thing is fantastic, with styles ranging from this quasi Italian Western cinema to sultry Motown-esque soul, to quiet, contemplative ballads that meander through your mind and emotions like a slow-moving snake. SO good.
Also, file this in "Made my Day" - how about this cover by Two Minutes To Late Night's Gwarsenio Hall?
Super cool.
Watch:
This one looks like it's going to be one helluva fun ride:
I love the Cheap Thrills-meets-You're Next vibes here.
Playlist:
Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God
Greg Puciato - Lowered (pre-release)
Allegaeon - DAMNUM
Curtis Harding - If Words Were Flowers
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan - Sunday at Devil Dirt
The Twilight Singers - A Stitch in Time EP
Warren G - Regulators (single)
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Silent - Modern Hate
Card:
I've been jumping back and forth between my two decks - The Raven and Thoth - in an effort to see if any of my recent pulls line up. So far, not really, but they definitely tell an over-arching story:
Change - don't struggle against it. I can't help but wonder if this is intentionally a dovetail with what I see as the beginning of a very tumultuous five years for the world as we know it.
Alice in Chains' "Nutshell" has always been a devasting song to me anyway, but hearing Lanegan sing it a few days after learning of his passing, well... damn. That's about all I can say.
Thanks to Mr. Brown for sending this one my way.
Listen:
New Greg Puciato record in June, and the lead single is f*&king fantastic!
I've become quite a fan of Reba Meyers over the last two years, and even though I didn't dig that new Code Orange single that dropped a few months back, I dearly want her making music in my life. Her presence her only makes this an even better song than it already is.
Mirrorcell is out June 22nd on Puciato's own Federal Prisoner label, and you can pre-order it HERE.
Watch:
Serial killer stories are not my bag, however, THIS is fascinating:
K and I mainlined Netflix's The Sons of Sam over the last two nights and I have to say, I nearly fell down a rabbit hole. Here's a case that sits at the very heart of the "Satanic Panic" era of our country's history. Watching this put me on a precipice of re-reading Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Fatale, which definitely dovetails with that dark, post-60s vibe I find so fascinating.
Playlist:
Zombi - Digitalis
The Jesus Lizard - Liar
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Miss Machine
sElf - What a Fool Believes (single)
Firewater - The Ponzi Scheme
The Twilight Singers - A Stitch in Time EP
Greg Puciato - Lowered (pre-release single)
Card:
How perfect is this, what with all the Satanic Panic stuff I've ingested over the previous few days:
Take your influences where you find them, it's not wrong to follow your intuition.
The Gutter Twins - Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli - performing "Idle Hands" on David Letterman. Easily my favorite song by the Twins, not because their other material is lacking, but because Lanegan channels a fucking demon with the low end on his voice in this one. The album version is sonically preferable, but how good is it to see these two icons playing side by side?
Listen:
Thanks to Mr. Brown for messaging me about this one dropping - I'd missed it completely.
I am SO hoping this means there's a new Whigs full-length on the way. Also, wondering if Dulli released this earlier than expected as a statement on Lanegan's passing. Super awesome track, can't wait for more.
Watch:
Tomorrow on Shudder:
The trailer Hellbender one played a few weeks ago during the halfway point of the Joe Bob Brigg's Valentine's Day Special. I've been looking forward to it since, and it finally hits tomorrow on Shudder.
Playlist:
Boy Harsher - The Runner OST
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
The Gutter Twins - Adorata
Metallica - Kill 'Em All
Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous
The Jim Carroll Band - Catholic Boy
The Afghan Whigs - I'll Make You See God (single)
Mark Lanegan Band - Here Comes That Weird Chill
QOTSA - Songs for the Deaf
Chrome Canyon - Director
Cult Leader - A Patient Man
Card:
The watery aspect of water. From the grimoire: "Deep, Emotional Realms of Personality." I'm plumbing ideas of Deep Personality in a new writing project I'm using to bridge the huge gap I've suffered in working on the second Shadow Play book. This is a short, probably a serialized piece for No Sleep, since the other was so well received, and it's keeping me writing while so many interruptions have made it impossible to hit any kind of a continuous stride while working on the novel.
From Earth's 2014 masterpiece Primitive and Deadly, featuring the late Mark Lanegan on vocals.
NCBD:
A pretty smashing Wednesday at the shop, if I do say so myself:
Fucking LOVE this cover.
Deadly Class! Only a few more issues. I'm getting both excited and sad.
I would say I'm annoyed at how long this one has taken to come out, but when you look at the work involved, I think it's totally understandable. I mean, the detail on the cover - let alone on the pages inside - is almost mindboggling.
Prince Robot? Me thinks I smell a flashback.
This was accidental. I heard that Beta Ray Bill appears in Donny Cates' Thor #22 and picked it up late last week. When I did, I realized that issue is part four of a storyline called "The God of Hammers". I grabbed the first part - Thor #19, but quickly realized there were no copies of 20 or 21. Apparently, they sold fast, and reprints of 20 hit this week with 21 following next. All this has really just primed me with hype for a comic I normally don't care anything about.
I still love Two Moons, but resolved to wait to read this arc until it finishes, I was just missing too much going month-to-month.
As long as this continues to be primarily about Moira and Mystique, I'm in.
Read:
I was just about fed up with H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward when I arrived at the Fifth section of the book, V. A Nightmare and a Cataclysm. Here's an excerpt:
"The next few rooms he tried were all abandoned, or filled only with crumbling boxes and ominous-looking leaden coffins; but impressed him deeply with the magnitude of Joseph Curwen’s original operations. He thought of the slaves and seamen who had disappeared, of the graves which had been violated in every part of the world, and of what that final raiding party must have seen; and then he decided it was better not to think any more. Once a great stone staircase mounted at his right, and he deduced that this must have reached to one of the Curwen outbuildings—perhaps the famous stone edifice with the high slit-like windows—provided the steps he had descended had led from the steep-roofed farmhouse. Suddenly the walls seemed to fall away ahead, and the stench and the wailing grew stronger. Willett saw that he had come upon a vast open space, so great that his torchlight would not carry across it; and as he advanced he encountered occasional stout pillars supporting the arches of the roof.
After a time he reached a circle of pillars grouped like the monoliths of Stonehenge, with a large carved altar on a base of three steps in the centre; and so curious were the carvings on that altar that he approached to study them with his electric light. But when he saw what they were he shrank away shuddering, and did not stop to investigate the dark stains which discoloured the upper surface and had spread down the sides in occasional thin lines. Instead, he found the distant wall and traced it as it swept round in a gigantic circle perforated by occasional black doorways and indented by a myriad of shallow cells with iron gratings and wrist and ankle bonds on chains fastened to the stone of the concave rear masonry. These cells were empty, but still the horrible odour and the dismal moaning continued, more insistent now than ever, and seemingly varied at times by a sort of slippery thumping."
Subterranean exploration and Stygian catacombs are among my very favorite things- they tickle my imagination in a way I cannot express in words. This story went from being a massive chore laced with veins of Lovecraft's meandering prose and racist tendencies to being everything about his writing that made me fall in love with him in the first place, and I am very happy I stuck with it.
Playlist:
Chrome Canyon - Director
Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste
Metallica - Kill 'Em All
Curtis Harding - If Words Were Flowers
Mr. Bungle - The Night They Came Home
Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
Mark Lanegan - Straight Songs of Sorrow
Card:
This card is all about balance to me, and I pulled it right after texting with my friend Missi about finding balance. Her's is off today (this is Tuesday night), and so is mine. Between my lung issues and now an identity theft issue that came up last night, I definitely feel unmoored. But it's all about planting a solid foundation and using that to find a center of gravity. From there, things will unfold at a more controllable rate.
