Dreadstar

 

Sweden's Watain has a new album on the horizon and the new single features Farida Lemouchi from The Devil's Blood and Molasses on guest vocals for part of the song. "We Remain" strikes me as the kind of track you need to hear in the context of the entire album that surrounds it in order to fully appreciate it, but it's a spooky track, with elements of The Devil's Blood and even a hint of Type O in the keys near the end.

Always great to hear Farida's vocals. Also, really cool video, directed by Johan Bååth. You can pre-order the new album The Agony and Ecstasy of Watain from Nuclear Blast records HERE.   

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Dollar Bin:

After a rough couple days at work last week, I spent about a good half hour flipping through the dollar bins at my home away from home, Manhattan Beach's The Comic Bug. Here's one of the gems I walked away with:

Jim Starlin's Dreadstar, published by Marvel's Epic Comics - sort of their version of Vertigo before there was a Vertigo - was a book I saw on comic shop shelves back in the 80s when I first started going to Heroland Comics in Worth, Illinois (the location attached to the Post Office on the Southwest corner of 11th and Harlem), and All American comics in Orland Park, on the second floor of a long-gone strip mall somewhere around 151st and LaGrange. These were the first two shops I ever frequented, and I'd make my poor Mother wait in the car while I went in and looked around for probably over an hour somedays, soaking in all the books that intrigued me but I couldn't afford to spend my money on. Dreadstar registered as something I might be into but wasn't quite sure; I've always dug SciFi, but when I was younger I was quite discerning when it came to anything I thought might be second-tier compared to my (then) first love, Star Wars*. In the last few years, I've really begun to look at the various waves of SciFi that hit post-Lucas, seeing a lot of it as forming a sort of genre in and of itself. The smelting pool of comics, TSR role-playing games, arcade games and knock-off SciFi movies (Creature, I'm looking at you, albeit with something approximating love) have formed a kind of gestalt in my mind, a nostalgic feeling that there was something very special brewing with the more street-level, hobby/comic shop SciFi than I'd previously given credit. This gestalt has become something of an unachievable haunting; I try to think about it in defining, cohesive terms. I try to channel its atmosphere, tone and texture. I fail to do any of this with any degree of accuracy that allows me to completely possess it. So when I see a book like Dreadstar that I associate with being possibly instrumental to this nearly ineffable sub-genre I loosely refer to as simply Hobby Shop SciFi in my head, I grab it. 

Thus, I picked up issues three and four of Dreadstar and sat just flipping through the pages, enraptured by what I'd found for a mere dollar. These books feel like a piece of history. SciFi history. 80s history. My history. And maybe that's what all this comes down to, a nostalgic tickle I can't scratch; a deeply entrenched tapestry of memories and memory triggers that move further away the more I try to reach them. Because, you know, you can't reach the past, you can only catch occasional glimpses from our limited, human perspective. And isn't that what an awful lot of SciFi tries to undermine and eclipse? 

*Don't even get me started on how much condescension I reserve for pretty much every iteration of Star Trek.

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Destroy:

 

I. 

Can't. 

Fucking. 

Wait.

 

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Playlist:

M83 - Saturdays=Youth

Quicksand - Slip

sElf - Breakfast with Girls

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Drug Church - Hygiene EP

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Love's Refrain (single)

M83 - Hurry Up, We're Dreaming

sElf - Gizmodgery

Prince - Sign O' The Times

David Bowie - Let's Dance

Dance with the Dead - Driven to Madness

Crowded House - Don't Dream it's Over (single)

Suicidal Tendencies - Lights... Camera... Revolution

Ghost - Impera

Revocation - The Outer Ones

Les Discrets - Prédateurs

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Card:

Balance is definitely something I struggle with these days. It's not just the ever-present, background hum of anxiety and existential horror the world of 2022 elicits, it's my reliance on caffeine and heavy metal to get me through the day, which works, but is also difficult to come down from even 15 hours after I wake up. Sleep is a luxury that I do not get enough of, and my ongoing deficit has been wreaking havoc with my cognitive skills and motor functions. I spend so much time during the day re-revving my engine that it's hard to 'chill' later on. I would resort to smoking ludicrous amounts of dope, except I'm trying not to smoke based on my lung condition, and the tincture I have has unpredictable onset times and effects. 

Immortal Funhouse

 

Goddamn if I don't still love every track on Deftones' 2012 (ten years!!!) Koi No Yokan.

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Watch:

 

Tobe Hooper's 1981 carnival-themed slasher flick Funhouse just came back to Shudder, and I had forgotten how insane this flick is. The third act climax alone is enough to leave me going, "Jesus, this is totally f*%king coo-coo. If you haven't seen this one - or if like me it'd been a while - it's definitely a good time to revisit.

 

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Read:

I spent the latter half of this week completely enraptured by and re-reading the first issue of Kieron Gillen's Immortal X-Men. 

One of the things I liked least about this new, Krakoan era of the X-books is the change in the portrayal of Mr. Sinister. I have always been a HUGE fan of the old-school Sinister introduced in the Claremont-era of Uncanny, with his limited appearances enhancing his, well, sinister aspect. He reeked of dark schemes and unparalleled violence. Now, however, Sinister almost feels like comedic relief at times, and I experienced a considerable degree of cognitive dissonance at this new persona during HoX/PoX. However, Gillen has changed that with this issue, which is entirely from Sinister's perspective and drops the Godfather of all reveals in the book's final page. I literally exclaimed out loud when I reached the end, and have been picking at the ramifications ever since.

 

I've been so into this, I did something I never do - I took to youtube to try and find people talking about this. (I'll be honest, I'm so tempted to try and restart Drinking with Comics, call it the Immortal Drinking with Comics, and only talk about this, however, there's a host of reasons I can think of not to do that, so I'm staying on the sidelines and listening to others talk. So far, this is the best video I've found.

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Playlist:

The Mysterines - Reeling

The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers

King Woman - Doubt EP

Cypress Hill - Back in Black

Perturbator - I Am the Night

U2 - The Joshua Tree

U2 - War

Mark Lanegan Band - Blues Funeral

Entropy - Liminal

Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

Jim Williams - Titane OST

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

David Bowie - Scary Monsters

Ghost - Impera

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Ghost - Infestissumam

The Besnard Lakes - ... Are the Roaring Night

Boy Harsher - Careful

Jackie Wilson - Higher and Higher

Tears for Fears - The Tipping Point

Quicksand - Slip

Deftones - Koi No Yokan

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Card:

Past: Making ideas actionable

Present: Continue to work at what I've put in motion

Future: The work isn't enough. This will require an inner guidance, known to most as intuition. 

Pretty spot-on with what I'm working on, which I believe is soon to reach its conclusion.

Year of No Light - Objuration

 

I discovered this purely by chance and it's AWESOME.

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NCBD:

March goes out with a BANG (and other such onomatopoeia). Gonna be a big haul today. Let's dig in:

All of the Rick Remender books I've been following since he left the Big Two behind and launched Giant Generator are either over or ending, and for a moment I was a little worried about where I'd get my fix. I've heard good things about The Scumbag, but honestly, when that book began, I'd had quite enough of scumbags in real life and wasn't really jazzed about reading a book with one as its main character. Maybe I'll go back and check it out at some point, but in the meantime, A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance has earned a place in my heart. This is like the best action/revenge/espionage/crime flick not on the big screen, with a bafflingly endearing main character we know next to nothing about and a bunch of walk-ons that pretty much get aced a few pages after their introductions. This is a fast-paced, widescreen example of the kind of synergy that happens when a writer finds the right artist, as RR did by enlisting André Lima Araüjo.

I love this book! It's a pretty out-there approach to Bruce Banner and Hulk, and it really shouldn't work at all, yet somehow 100% does, right down to this first story arc's title; Smashtronaut! How goddamn METAL is that?

Cautiously optimistic for Kieron Gillen's run to take Hickman's set-up and really do something special. Oh, and look at that, speaking of Jonathan Hickman, he's writing another X-book!

I've never been a huge fan of the vagueries of the "unlimited" books, but with Hickman at the helm AND Declan Shalvey on the pencils, well, I'm all in.

Let's go street level for a minute:

Another great indie crime book from the extended Brubaker/Phillips family. I'm really digging this one and feel pretty certain it's going to end up a streaming show sooner rather than later. 

This is apparently a big deal, another female turtle named Venus? I'm unaware of the character but will follow this book wherever it goes.

Double the killer Eastman covers this month with the yearly annual, a tradition I largely eschew, except for with this book.

And I'm hanging around with this new Ghost Rider for at least this second issue. I feel like the tone of the art isn't quite dark enough for the character, however, that first issue may have presented itself that way based on the fact that Johnny Blaze was essentially being gaslit into thinking he was living the perfect suburban life, so let's see if things darken now that the cat's out of the bag and ol' flame head is back in control. 

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Playlist:

Opeth - Width of a Circle (single)

Nothing - Downward Years to Come

MadLove - White With Foam

Nothing - Guilty of Everything

Year of No Light - Consolamentum

Nurse with Wound - Soliloquy for Lilith

Newsletter Playlist (under construction)

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Card:

Okay, this is beginning to feel like someone's set my house on fire and I'm too busy looking for the handle on the faucet to call 911. What the hell are you trying to tell me???

Opeth - The Width of a Circle

I'll admit - I was pretty disappointed to see this pop up in my youtube feed, click on it and find that it's NOT a cover of the David Bowie classic by the same name. That said, I don't take to very much of the music Opeth makes these days, but I dig this. 

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Dollar Bin:

Welcome back to the Dollar Bin, one of my favorite corners of any local comic shop to spend some time digging through. This week's find: 1985's Moonshadow!

Talk about a book that's been on my radar for decades - maybe as long as I've been seriously reading comics - yet one I haven't actually picked up until now. Originally published through Marvel's Epic comics - kind of their Vertigo a full eight years before Vertigo existed - Moonshadow's J.M. DeMatteis and Jon J. Muth's coming of age, modern fantasy. I remember leafing through this one when it was still on the stands, probably near the end of its 12-issue run, so circa 1986. I would have been ten. This and Stray Toasters were books that initially confused the hell out of me as a die-hard disciple of Larry Hama's G.I.Joe, however, those books also planted the seeds for me to eventually see the potential that lay in the comic format beyond superhero books. I recently scored issues 1-4 in the dollar bins at the Comic Bug, and am looking forward to reading them.

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Watch:

I remember seeing the thumbnail for the first Wyrmwood movie on Netflix for years but never being motivated to watch it. I've had plenty of people whose opinions I trust recommend I do just that, but for whatever reason, I just haven't. Now there's a sequel on the way, and I'm still not certain how I feel about these flicks:

It's not that this looks bad, it just looks kind of repetitive. If anyone out there has seen these and vouch for them - because apparently like five of my good friends aren't enough - let me know. 

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Playlist:

Sugar - File Under: Easy Listening

Quicksand - Distant Populations

The Mysterines - Reeling

Ministry - Filth Pig

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

Svarte Greiner - Devolving Trust

Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror 

Lower Dens - Escape From Evil

Opeth - Deliverence

Code Orange - Underneath

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Card:

Again with the damn Hierophant. What the hell am I missing? What am I so blindly adhering to that it's impairing me in some way?

The Mysterines - The Bad Thing

 

Holy F$*k! My good friend Jacob sent me a link to the new album by The Mysterines yesterday and when I dug into it, I very quickly realized it's freaking fantastic! I hear a bit of Savages, some Polly Jean Harvey, and overall a band I immediately fell in love with. So much so, I just bought tickets to see the band on May 4th at the Peppermint Club, a LaLaLand venue I've yet to attend. This will be my first concert since, well, you know, and I guess it stands as a testament to how much I dig this group that I effortlessly decided to go. 

I remind myself constantly that I won't have access to this kind of show soon, so I need to enjoy the things about L.A. that I love now, while I'm still here.

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Read:

After burning through all those Lovecraft stories a few weeks back, I became seriously shanghaied by his The Unknown City. This is one I'd definitely read before - and enjoyed quite a bit, might I add. For whatever reason though, this time, it's just not doing it for me.

So, prompted by a conversation with a friend who had just read it for the first time, I decided to re-read The Colour Out of Space.  For this, I'm switching back and forth between the Kindle version and the one I have in this old anthology I acquired somewhere long ago at what I'm assuming was a second-hand bookshop somewhere:

This nifty little volume was published by nyrb classics (that's New York Review of Books, not the name of a new Lovecraftian species) and contains stories by Bram Stoker, Ambrose Bierce and Arthur Machen, as well as several other iconic cosmic/folk/weird fictions writers. I've read most of what's in here - this is a shelf volume I pull here and there and read from, and it's a great example of the kind of anthology a publisher can pull together with a coherent theme and a little bit of backing when the contents are mostly - if not completely - in the realm of public domain. 

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Playlist:

Ghost - Impera

Hyperia - Silhouettes of Horror

Electric Youth & Pilotpriest - Come True OST

Steve Moore - VFW OST

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

King Woman - Celestial Blues

Metallica - Kill 'Em All

The Mysterines - Reeling

Les Discrets - Prédateurs

Deftones - Gore

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Card:

Standstill that requires a dose of either cash or luck or both to achieve a truly remarkable result. I'll keep this in mind throughout the week, as it seems to me there are several possible applications at the moment for this spread. 

S.E.S. Soundtrack Excerpt Saturday: Electric Youth & Pilotpriest - Modern Fears

I'm doing a bit of mental restructuring and wanted this site to match. This is kind of my forward-facing mental pocket - a place I can tip out the contents of my head and sort it into something shareable with others, so it makes sense that it would grow and change the same as I do.

For S.E.S., I wanted to have one day a week where I could just put up a piece of music that, at that moment or in the moments leading up to it,  has contributed to my current mental state. I also wanted to find a way to be more consistent posting without having to throw down the sometimes cumbersome regular format I employ. There was a time when not every post on these pages was as long as the current structure I've been working with for the last few years, and mixing and matching the two should keep my posting more consistent.

Pilotpriest and Electric Youth from the soundtrack of Anthony Scott Burns' (aka Pilotpriest himself) film Come True, which was on my top ten last year and which I am in desperate need of a rewatch. 

The vinyl soundtrack is courtesy of Waxwork Records and can be purchased HERE. It's divided between both artists, with several tracks being collaborations or remixes. Here's my favorite credited to Pilotpriest:

A Blasphemous Nun Massacre at the Hexie Mountains!

 

A new video from Orville Peck's recently released Bronco, Chapter 1. I can't wait for the entire album to land and my vinyl to arrive. If you haven't already, you can scoot on over HERE to pick one up for yourself.

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Watch:

Despite working slightly more than a full day yesterday, I had a pretty damn good 46th birthday. Nothing fancy. Homemade burgers and Demons 2 kicked things off, as I picked up that stunning Synapse Films double feature of Lamberto Bava's two Demons films back when it came out a year or two ago, and still hadn't set eyes on their transfer of the sequel.

 

Ironic that I could only find Arrow Video's trailer for their restoration of the film, but whatever. The Synapse transfer is gorgeous, and I'm quite happy with everything about it.

Later, to end my night, I threw on one of my recent favorites - Joe Begos' VFW. It'd been a minute since I'd seen this one, but I feel like all the beats are seared into my head thanks to that one magnificent Beyondfest double feature back in 2019. 

I love this flick so damn much. Both this and Begos' Bliss are films I feel like I could watch every day. In lieu of that, I tend to just toss them on when I can, to re-experience not just the film, but that glorious final Beyondfest at the Egyptian, my favorite place in LaLaLand, now owned by Netflix.

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Play:

Not only did my Nintendo Switch arrive yesterday, but I was able to pick up Puppet Combo's Nun Massacre from the online game store!

 

The game, like Glass Staircase before it - which I'd bought on my Mac a few years ago and quickly gave up on without a controller - is a bit difficult to get used to for someone who hasn't ever really played 360, immersive games, but very well worth the pangs of the learning curve. The atmosphere is stellar, and when the titular Nun takes to stabbing you to death, things get pretty intense. Definitely recommended for anyone who digs Horror and Games. Reminds me a bit of my all-time favorite Video Game, Shadow Gate, which still influences my personality endlessly, despite not having played it in decades at this point.

Despite all this love I'm heaping on Nun Massacre, however, it was another game I picked up at the same time that I spent the most time with. Thanks to a recommendation by my Horror Vision cohost King Butcher, I grabbed Game Kitchen's Blasphemous:

The image of that giant baby with its eyes stabbed out, held by a monster as it tears a person limb from limb sealed the deal. This is some insane shit, and I'm absolutely in love with this game, which was obviously designed by a bunch of Metal Head Stoners (my people) who were very much influenced by the Castlevania series, which, back when I played video games on the original NES system, was a favorite (especially part 2: Simon's Quest).

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Playlist:

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Blut Aus Nord - That Cannot Be Dreamed

Drug Church - Hygiene

Quicksand - Slip 

White Lung - Paradise

Every Day (is Halloween) Playlist (Reveal in upcoming April 4th Edition of the newsletter)

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Card:

Back to my Thoth mini. My intention was a three-card spread, however, this card literally jumped out of the deck at me:

A solid foundation to build from takes good, strong effort and clear thinking. Pertinent, as we just had another phone conversation with our Tennessee realtor. Things are moving forward, and I'll post more about it here when our machinations fully lock into place.