New Music from Bauhaus

 

Today is my 46th birthday, and it looks like the four original members of one of my favorite bands saw fit to get me a little gift. That's right, a new track from Bauhaus, and one utilizing the ol' Exquisite Corpse technique we last saw them employ on my favorite Bauhaus album, The Sky is Falling. Hopefully, this means we have a new album coming. I personally LOVED the band's most previous album Go Away White - the first post-break-up. 

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Play:

I surprised the hell out of myself yesterday by ordering a Nintendo Switch. Why?

 

I think I first got wind of Puppet Combo's low-fi indie games after reading a Bloody Disgusting article a couple years ago. Other than a love for DDR, I haven't played video games since the original Nintendo, so as much as I loved Glass Staircase when I bought it for my computer, I really didn't have the time or gumption to play it. But Puppet Combo's overall 70s/80s horror-inspired games are so damn cool to look at. Well, an article on BD yesterday announced his game Nun Massacre was hitting Nintendo Switch today, and I took it as a sign. Couple with that an interest King Butcher, my co-host on The Horror Vision, has stoked in me with the reviews of the newest Metroid game and Valfaris on previous episodes of our podcast, and I figured it was a win-win. 

Plus, how the hell do I pass up a game called Nun Massacre?

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed (pre-release single)

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Drug Church - Hygiene EP

Spotlights - The Age of Decay (single)

Deftones - Rosemary (single)

Peturbator - I Am the Night

Bauhaus - Drink the New Wine (single)

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Card:

I felt like my Thoth mini deck (thank you, Missi!) hadn't been seeing any real action of late, so I decided to do my birthday pull using it. Here we go:

All good signs for prosperity. Which is a relief. Our plans to exit LaLaLand keep getting pushed around. First my medical shit, then the Nashville market - another reason to dislike Angelenos - now work stuff. The move is imminent, however, I also have a CRAZY idea for a short film project that the Universe seems to be telling me to reach for, so maybe I'll be here just long enough to try.

New Music From Blut Aus Nord!!!

 

Many thanks to Heaven is an Incubator for posting about the new Blut Aus Nord album Disharmonium - Undreamable Abysses, out on May 20th 2022 from the always awesome Debemur Morti Productions. This sounds like a return to the 777 era of the band, so one track is really just a big freakin' tease. 

Pre-order the album HERE.

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NCBD:

A light week this week for NCBD. Good. I spent quite a bit last week.

Saga! So happy to have this book back in my life, and awesome to see Lying Cat on the cover this month.

The fourth issue of X Deaths of Wolverine was the best one so far and has had me anxious to read this finale. 

A new stand-alone Horror anthology? Like, in the vein of The Silver Coin perhaps? Whatever the flavor, how the hell do I pass up a cover like that?

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Plastic:

I can't believe they made this:

And I can't believe I got one without paying through the nose. So damn cool.

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Playlist:

Drug Church - Hygiene EP

Entropy - Liminal

Author & Punisher - Krüller

SOM - The Shape of Everything

Johnny Marr - Call the Comet 

Metallica - Ride the Lightning 

Revocation - The Outer Ones

Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed (pre-release single)

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

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Card:

I'm taking this as a considerably more literal interpretation than I normally would, throw up some horns and jam some Slayer today.

Rammstein - Zeit

 

What a weird coincidence this is. It's not all that often that I listen to Rammstein. They're definitely a band a dig, however, unless it's the two songs on the Lost Highway soundtrack, there's a pretty specific time and place for sure. Late last week I cracked out Rosenrot, and now look - new album Zeit out April 29th! Pre-order the album HERE.

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Watch:

This past Saturday, before the return of my annual St. Paddy's celebration, I caught a mid-day showing of  Ti West's new film X at the local AMC. I've posted the trailer here before, back when it first dropped, but here it is again:

X is fantastic. Don't read or listen to anything about it, other than me telling you right here to go see this one on the big screen. You won't regret it. In keeping with West's glorious style, this is a very loud quiet film. It's bloody and human and strangely sweet at times. 

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Dollar Bin:

Back for another Tuesday afternoon digging in the ol' dollar bin:

Despite my allegiance to Vertigo at the time of its release, I had never even looked through an issue of House of Secrets until two weeks ago when I found the first story arc from the 1995 reimagining of DC's House of Secrets. And yet, in spite of that, several of the covers in this arc loom in my comic book knowledge as extremely iconic images. Especially issue #2.

There's definitely an element to this series that makes me see Vertigo's mid-90s style storytelling as very brand specific, however, since nothing I know of looks or reads this way anymore, any problems I had with this first arc - this reinvention's arbitrary relocation of the titular House to Seattle, Washington in an obvious attempt to capitalize on the *ahem* grunge movement, the fact that every character in the book is in a band or fucking someone in a band, the then-current newsworthy societal plot points. Unfortunately, STDs and molestation have always been problems in our society, however, the ignorance and fear that limited allowed them to grow to epidemic proportions became a campaign slogan themselves, and a talking point for societal criticism. Not a bad thing, but also, the approach to a lot of the tv and literature that took a swing at incorporating such a hot button issue often feels trite and misguided. There's a bit of that here, or, I'm just out-of-phase with my residual 90s self.

Regardless of little gripes, this first arc was a good read and I was overjoyed to put all six issues into my short boxes for a mere $6.00.

Also, Teddy Kristiansen's art is most definitely iconic and hits the sweet spot created in my soul by similar artists such as Marc Hempel and Peter Gross. There's something so Grimm's Fairytales about this style, and as I intimated above, it's one we don't really see anywhere anymore (if you know of a place to find it, let me know!)

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Playlist:

Chelsea Wolfe - Birth of Violence

The Pogues - If I Should Fall from Grace with God

The Pogues - Rum Sodomy & the Lash

U2 - The Joshua Tree

John Carpenter with Alan Howarth - Big Trouble in Little China OST

Every Day (is Halloween) Newsletter Playlist: You, the Knight and the Music

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Judas Priest - You Got Another Thing Comin' (single)

Til Tuesday - Voices Carry (single)

Ghost - Impera

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Card:

Past = XXI: The Universe

Present = I: The Magus

Future =  7 of Wands: Valour

Holding fast to a protocol - the word I'm using here in place of the more loaded 'belief' - I have established in a previous moment will put me in the position to successfully recreate something that has changed with time, never been completed, but remained a part of me. 

Pop Scars

 

Svarte Greiner's new record Devolving Trust was recorded in the "Once bombed-out Schneider Brewery, Berlin," and the acoustics are as much an instrument here as anything else. This is some serious atmosphere. Absolutely gorgeous in the darkest possible way, this brings me back to a headspace I lived in daily back around 2006. I found this one when comics scribe Warren Ellis mentioned it a few days ago on his Morning Computer, and within a few moments of checking it out, I was enraptured. However, this is not Wednesday-morning-at-work music, so I had to put a good solid listen on the back burner until later. 

And later it was. Loooong day Wednesday. It wasn't until about 5:00 PM that I had the chance to really dig in, and as I said, it did not disappoint. Once I was in Greiner's sonic conjuring, I couldn't listen to anything else for the next several hours. Actually, for the rest of the night.

You can pick up Devolving Trust HERE from Miasmah Recordings. 

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Watch:

A trailer for Brendan Muldowney's new film Cellar dropped a few days ago and it looks fantastic:

 

I've said it here before, but we need more Ancestral Horror, and this looks like a good start!

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Read:

I was completely blown away to walk into the Comic Bug this past Wednesday and meet Pat O'Malley, author of the new comic Pop Scars. I picked up the first two issues, and they're freakin' fantastic! A highly polished, super-bright grindhouse exploitation Hollywood Revenge flick delivered in the comic format, I love this book and can't wait for issue 3. 

This book is nuts: violent, funny, pop, and bloody. Very much the kind of book I look for when I'm scouring the shelves of a shop for something new and independent. The plan is to have Pat on an upcoming episode of A Most Horrible Library, so I'll definitely update here when that happens. In the meantime, here's a LINK to his Frightening Tales on youtube.

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Playlist:

Svarte Greiner - Devolving Trust

The Pogues - Red Roses for Me

The Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace With God

The Pogues - Rum Sodomy and the Lash

The Tossers - The Valley of the Shadow of Death

Flogging Molly - Float

Exhalants - Atonement

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

Zeal & Ardor - Eponymous

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Perturbator - I Am the Night

U2 - The Joshua Tree

U2 - War

Faith No More - Angel Dust

Ghost - Impera

Revocation - The Outer Ones

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

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Card:

Roll with the punches - I had an incredibly unproductive writing session today. So what? I'm not going to let it keep me from trying again tomorrow.

Happy St. Paddy's Day

 

I'm not going to be able to really celebrate until Saturday, but in the meantime, there's Pogues and Guinness.

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Watch:

You can really tell I've drank all the Marvel kool-aid now, eh?

 

A friend at work showed me this trailer for the upcoming Event Book Judgment Day, and I will say, I'm curious. I'm not very hip to the Eternals, however, the idea that in their fervor to rid the Earth of "Deviants" they've determined that mutants are one and the same, well, it's a good idea for a story.

Judgment Day lands in July - I think - and although I'm not certain I'll be reading it, I will probably be at the very least staying peripherally abreast of the beats and outcome.

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Playlist:

Tones on Tail - Everything!

Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest

Spizm - B4uDIE

Bryce Miller - City Depths

Def Leppard - Pyromania

Rammstein - Rosenrot

Mark Lanegan - Blues Funeral

New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy and the Lash

The Pogues - Red Roses for Me

Svarte Greiner - Devolving Trust

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Card:

Dogmatic regimes - outdated thought that threatens to lock your mind in a box of its own making - the worst kind. Hmmm... No context for this at the moment, unless A) the pull is the cards being playful, as I just had a conversation yesterday about The Hierophant with the person who colored and gave me these cards, or B) it's commentary on how far up Marvel's arse I am at the moment that I'm posting a trailer for an event book. Either way, always good to have a playful reading.

Too True, The Watcher of Slumber

It's been a minute since I listened to Dum Dum Girls' 2014 Too True. Such a fantastic record, which also served as the band's last before dissolving. I can vividly remember staring out the window on a Greyhound bus early on in my relationship with this record. None of the band's other releases ever hit me quite as hard as this one, possibly because of such a sustained period of isolation and reflection with it on that bus, headed from Chicago to Dayton, nearing the end of a particularly long era of my life. When I listen now, my head doesn't automatically go to the whys and wherefores of that bus ride, just the deliciously peaceful Midwest scenery

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Watch:

There's something inherently creepy about the word "watcher." 

I don't know much about director Chloe Okuna, except that her segment of last year's V/H/S '94 - apparently entitled Storm Drain - was the only segment in the film that I enjoyed. And I really enjoyed it, so I'm very curious to see her new full-length film Watcher.

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NCBD:

A thankfully abbreviated NCBD this week, as I actually went back in last week and ended up grabbing the new trade paperback of the Jeff Lemire/Greg Smallwood 2016 run on Moon Knight that Marvel recently released. 

Now, onto this week's pull, which starts with another issue of our 90s rock tactical military ghost war comic, Home Sick Pilots!

This book continues to be insane, and I realize now that I should take the opportunity to pass on the fact that if you're so inclined, you can go HERE to read the first issue of the series for free online. The only reason you should absolutely not do this is if you don't want to get sucked in and immediately shell out the dough for the first two trades ($10 and $17 respectively). 

The changes that adapting author David M. Booher has been making to Joe Hill's Rain have made this limited series a nice companion for someone like me, who just finished reading the original novella a fw weeks before this series hit the stands. Rain is a different kind of apocalypse story - thankfully - and in spite of the changes, the massive heart that comprises its DNA are brought our wonderfully by Zoe Thorogood's art.

More Silver Coin, and this month, we get a sequel to a previous issue's story. Hot damn!

A new number one from Image that sounds like it has serious potential. From the solicitation copy on Image's site:

"Stetson is a nightmare hunter. A dream detective. She runs a shoddy back-alley business where she helps clients sleep at night by entering their dreams and killing their nightmares. But Stetson’s past comes back to haunt her when she tracks down a literal living nightmare—a serial killer that murders people in their sleep.SLUMBER is an ongoing series from the twisted minds of writer TYLER BURTON SMITH (Kung Fury, Child’s Play) and rising-star artist VANESSA CARDINALI."

I don't know about you, but that description buys it at least one issue with me. 

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Playlist:

Drug Church - Hygiene

Metallica - Kill 'Em All demos

Metallica - Ride The Lightning 

The Cure - Three Imaginary Boys

Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous

Dum Dum Girls - Too True

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works

Revocation - The Outer Ones

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Card:

Discretion when dealing with the Physical World is a commonly held interpretation. It's generally NOT mine. To me, the Fifteenth Trump Card of the Tarot is usually a nudge to pay attention to wisdom that comes from a possibly dodgy source.  

UPDATE on yesterday's three-card spread: Exactly as I thought, I stopped what I was doing pretty much on the spot, broke out a short story I've been trying to finish since 2018, and finished it!

Never Hike Alone 2!

 

New music from Drug Church. Mr. Brown recommended these guys to me a few weeks back but they quickly fell off my radar before I ever got the chance to listen to them. When I sat down earlier today to start this post, something just clicked. There's a distinct 90s indie rock underpinning here - I hear a lot of Bob Mould, especially Sugar-era, only with a huge drum sound that really changes the dynamic of that comparison. Turns out, exactly as Mr. Brown had promised, the entire record is Fantastic; you can order it from Pure Noise Records HERE.

 

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Watch:

The new episode of The Horror Vision Horror Podcast went up yesterday. We gathered this past Saturday to watch Mickey Keating's new movie Offseason, and in my book, it did not disappoint. You can hear our spoiler-free review if you click the little widget at the top right hand of this page, or on your favorite podcast streaming service.

Also, the IndieGoGo campaign for Friday the 13th Fan Film Never Hike Alone 2 is now live! While I'm not a very big fan of the actual Friday flicks, I quite like Vincent DiSanti's films and will definitely be throwing down on this one that brings the Thom Matthews back as Tommy Jarvis for an ultimate showdown with Mr. Voorhees.

Can't wait to get this one in my hands and then watch all three of DiSanti's F13 films in one sitting! Back the campaign HERE. 

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Dollar Bin:

Last Tuesday, I introduced a new weekly feature called Dollar Bin. This is a place where I can talk about all the cool, nostalgic, or just plain awesome items I find while flipping through the dollar bins in the comic shops I frequent. That said, while this week's featured score was indeed found in a dollar bin,  it is most definitely not a comic. 

I'd never heard of Nyctalops magazine until I brought this one home last week. Nyctalops was a literary Horror magazine dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries published independently in the 70s and 80s. It featured reviews and editorial pieces of contemporary and historic Horror and Weird Fiction and often included short stories by contributors that included Ramsey Campbell, Robert Bloch, and Thomas Ligotti, and many, many more. 

This issue is #18, published in 1983, and it features two essays on themes found in the works of Robert Aickman, as well as an essay by famed Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, to name but a few of its treasures. Also, I found it particularly thrilling to note that in the forward to this issue, Editor Howard O. Morris excitedly mentions that the Magazine's printer, Silver Scarab Press, has plans to publish, "... tentatively, a collection of horror stories by Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer."

Today, Horror literature fans know ..Dead Dreamer to be one of Ligotti's most influential works, and I found it super cool to stumble across a reference to it before the polarizing author made his mark.

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Playlist:

Ghost - Impera

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum

Tones on Tail - Everything!

Ghost - Opus Eponymous

Danzig - Thrall- Demonsweat Live

The Twilight Singers - Powder Burns

Orville Peck - Bronco (Chapter 1)

David Bowie - A Reality Tour

Motörhead - Ace of Spades

Pike Vs. The Automaton - Eponymous

Mad Season - Above

Mutterlein - Orphans of the Black Sun

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Young Widows - Settle Down City

Revocation - The Outer Ones

Code Orange - Underneath

Deafheaven - Sunbather

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Card:

Past = 7 of Cups: Debauch - taken here to mean I'm poisoning 

Present = 5 of Wands: Strife

Future = 0: The Fool

I'm not entirely certain how to read this one. I'm tempted to interpret the 7 of Cups as an inverted victory; a good thing that goes too long and turns sour, but I'm not entirely sure how that... wait. Maybe. I'll have to report back on this one. Sometimes it's best to follow flashes of inspiration without thinking about them too much.