Ghost - Jesus He Knows Me

 

Ghost gave us an Easter surprise by announcing a new five-song, all-covers EP due out May 18th on Loma Vista Records. You can pre-order HERE.

These between album EPs the band releases are generally hit or miss with me; I love 2013's All You Need is Ghost - not so much with 2016's Popestar, which had one of my favorite tracks from the band (Square Hammer) and a bunch of fascinating covers, most of which I just don't ever feel the need to go back to that often (although their "Missionary Man" is admittedly pretty cool). One thing Popestar confirmed for me is that Tobias Forge's ambitions are boundless, and I'm fairly certain at some point in his future, he will craft a Musical that will catapult him into the even further reaches of success.

Juxtaposed against Popestar, Phantomine feels like it may split the difference; while I'm not familiar with "Hanging Around" by The Stranglers, I'm excited as hell to hear them do Television's "See No Evil,"  Iron Maiden's "Phantom of the Opera," not to mention Tina Turner's 80s Thunderdome anthem "We Don't Need Another Hero." I just don't know what to expect that one to sound like.

There's also a video for this track up on youtube, however, it's age-restricted and only viewable HERE.
 

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NCBD:

My haul for NCBD today:

I am SO excited about the return of James Tynion's Nightmare Country. The first arc made it into my Favorite Comics of 2022 list, and I have no doubt this new arc will continue the glory. The closest thing I've seen to having Sandman back again.

My growing fondness for Jeff Lemire's work prompted me to pick up the first issue of this new Phantom Road series and I thought it a great set-up for a Horror story.

Hot on the heels of my Sins of Sinister reread, the final issue of Storm and the Brotherhood will hopefully prove another total mindfuck.

X-Men Vs The Brood. 'Nuff said!

 

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Playlist:

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Church of the Cosmic Skull - Is Satan Real?

Ghost - Jesus He Knows Me (single)

Kyuss - ...And the Circus Leaves Town

Holy Serpent - Endless

Ruby the Hatchet - Fear is a Cruel Master

            

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

I'm having a lot of trouble interpreting this pull. More than I have perhaps ever had on any other. So I'm going to have to dig a bit. First glance, it feels like an acknowledgment that sacrifice can bring you to the threshold of change, but you have to be careful about the changes you make. 

 

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Cold Sweats in the Basement, Baby!

 

Jonathan Grimm drove down a few days ago and we had a fantastic extended weekend drinking beer, watching movies and bullshitting. Grimm is definitely a stabilizing force in my life, not to mention a huge influence, and his visit really supercharged my creativity again. We capped the evening yesterday driving to Nashville and seeing Lord Buffalo, Valley of the Sun and Church of the Cosmic Skull at the awesome Basement East. It feels fortuitous indeed that the first show I see in my new state was at this venue, because I loved it. Basement East reminds me a lot of my favorite venue back in LaLaLand, Echo Park's Echoplex. I'll be keeping their calendar firmly in mind from here out, as it's the kind of venue I'll take pretty much any excuse to return to, again and again.

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Watch:

Curious to see this entire film. I love the idea of teenagers playing with a makeshift "Hand of Glory," though I didn't watch enough of the trailer to see if it actually came off a "hanged murderer." Makes me want to dig back into some of my Arcana and see what Eliphas Levi or, perhaps more appropriately, Alan Moore might have to say about how stringent the cocktail that produces that particular Magickal accoutrement is.

 

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Playlist:

Etta James - (Third Album)

The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night

Locrian - Return to Annihilation

Locrian - New Catastrophism

Godflesh - Nero EP

Behemoth - The Satanist

Etta James - The Second Time Around

Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1

Eldovar - A Story of Darkness and Light

Various Artists - Jonathan Grimm's Stoner/Doom Spotify Playlist

Black Sabbath - Vol. 4

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Goatsnake - Black Age Blues

Holy Serpent - Endless

Bettye LaVatte - Scene of the Crime

Pigs x 7 - Viscreals

            

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Where this might normally make me think some form of unpleasant emotional change is jump up the road, I instantly read it as a lifting of my already generally unpleasant emotional state that dug in during my extended stay in LaLaLand and has left me off-kilter and unusually anxious since.

 

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RIP Vivian Trimble

 

Easily my favorite Luscious Jackson track from an album that is almost all 'favorite tracks.' 

I haven't even thought of this group in years; hearing about Vivian Trimble's death at age 59 immediately made me want to hear this song.

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Watch:

Jim Rugg and Ed Piskor's Cartoon Kayfabe has quickly become one of my favorite shows on youtube. I've spent a lot of time in the past two weeks hanging out listening to them interview a wide spectrum of creators, and when I woke up this morning and saw Richard Corben is their latest, I got pretty damn excited.

 

A living legend, Corben is. Super cool to hear him talk with these guys about the industry and what makes him "him."

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Playlist:

Bettye LaVette - Let Me Down Easy: Bettye LaVette in Memphis

Godflesh

Godflesh - Post Self

Crystal Castles - II

Luscious Jackson - Fever In Fever Out

         

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Immoral & All Seeing

 

I still find myself thinking about Wayne Shorter's recent passing. I'm by no means a huge fan; I say this not to distance myself from his work, but to respect those out there who are much more committed. Truth is, I started dabbling in Jazz when I was still a teenager thanks to Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch, but I was way more into it in my twenties. Since moving, I've gotten back into many artists I've been away from for a while, but I still don't spin enough Jazz to be considered anything more than a passing fan. Yet, this music echoes inside me in a way nothing else does. I don't feel like a have a lot of room in my life for it, which is unfortunate, but Jazz is music that requires attention to appreciate, and as I've aged and the world has fallen apart and injected me with its anxiety, I have less and less attention; it's something I fight for on a daily basis. 

As I said upon Mr. Shorter's passing, there is something in his work - whether solo or his collaborations with Miles Davis - that sounds like a conjuring to me. It puts me in a very particular headspace, and in reflecting on his passing, I'm wondering if there is anyone making music today that might have the same effect. Or if the "Jazz Ritual" sound that Shorter and Davis - especially on Bitches Brew, Sorcerer and The All Seeing Eye - summoned into this world is all but gone now. I feel that's likely, as our world is very different from the one where this music was composed. If there were "Jazz Spirits" or "Demons" that came to this plane as a result, where are they now?

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Watch:

Wow. Now, this is an interesting idea:

 

I subscribed to the channel immediately, and plan on giving this a full go. I was pretty stoked just watching along for a moment, as the music, different voices and sound FX told the story.

          

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Read:

Re-reading Sins of Sinister from the beginning now, because my memory sucks. Also reading again because this week's Immoral X-Men really stayed with me.

            

The thing with the core of the X-Books now, and especially this Event and this issue in particular, is these are no longer superhero books. These are hardcore SciFi. I've talked about my love/hate with genre here before - I don't really go for big, tropey works like Space Opera or High Fantasy, primarily because I just feel like much of those corners of genre just repeat (and expand in some cases; credit where it's due) the most influential work that precedes them. I know there are a million people out there who would tell me I'm wrong, and that's fine. But I avoid those traditional genre lanes and look for stories that do their own thing. By the time we get to the events in Immoral X-Men #3, we're essentially in a deep-space salvage SciFi realm.

Deep-Space Salvage, or DSS for short, is the name I've finally arrived at in my head for those stories that pull me back into the kind of home-brewed, SciFi prevalent in 1980's Hobby Shops and indie comic books. Think TSR and old-school Guardians of the Galaxy. Think comics written by Bill Mantlo. A deep-space enclave where everything is old, rusted, down-and-out. It's the future but nothing is new, progress has flatlined or reversed, and everything is falling apart. That's where Kieron Gillen has taken us in Sins of Sinister.

There are no superheroes here - that's reserved for the regular Monthly X-Book, which anchors the line to its original intent. Instead, here and in X-Men; Red, S.W.O.R.D. before it, and partially at work in Immortal X-Men, we have very meticulous, long-game genre stories that branch off into many different styles and territory, and S.o.S. is definitely DSS.

By the time we arrive at this last panel, page three of Immoral #3, you can see the filth and decay. You can also see a monstrously sized Exodus, now something much more than the mutant zealot we all know and love so well. This issue reminded me A LOT of Daniel Warren Johnson's Beta Ray Bill mini-series from a few years back, and like that series, Sins of Sinister is surprising me with how much I'm enjoying it overall, especially when I didn't read the entire thing (I have not been buying that third title, Nightcrawlers, although I'm thinking about going back and picking it up) or like everything I've read. 

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Playlist:

Gang Starr - Hard to Earn

Godflesh - Slavestate EP

Godflesh - Pure

Godflesh - Cold World EP

Godflesh - Love and Hate

QOTSA - ... Like Clockwork

High On Fire - Surrounded By Thieves

Lustmord - Dark Matter

Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye

Miles Davis - Live at the Filmore West

            

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Circumstances drift and Change rears its head. It will be tempting to interpret this change as negative, but the reminder in the cards today, me thinks, is that interpretation dictates the positive/negative aspect of change. Change is always good in some respects, it can just be mighty difficult to remember and 'see' that. 

 

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New Godflesh Single!

 

The first single from Godflesh's forthcoming album Purge. LOOOOOVE that sample from Gang Star's "Brainstorm"! I pre-ordered this about a month ago when I first saw the announcement, you can follow suit if you go HERE.

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Watch:

Good news! Holy Spider is coming to Netflix (of all places) tomorrow, April 7th! 

 

I've wanted to see this since last year's Beyondfest, and after missing it there, my friend and colleague-in-casting Professor John Trafton has spoken about it at length, so I'm pretty excited to finally catch this one. 

 

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Read:

Speaking of John Trafton, his new book is up for pre-order from Wayne State University Press:

If you've read any of the essays John has up on his website JohnTrafton.com, you'll understand why I'm pretty excited to read this. Although I left LaLaLand behind, the mystique of that early Twentieth Century City of the Stars remains. Movie-made Los Angeles will no doubt explore and expound on that era in ways I've yet to ascertain.           

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Playlist:

Massive Attack - Mezzanine

Shrinebuilder - Eponymous

Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity

Massive Attack - 100th Window

Spotlights - Seance EP

Godflesh - Hymns 

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

INXS - Kick        

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Transformation from collaboration leads to an increase Earthly assets.

 

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Bloody Knuckles in Green Hell

 

A little High on Fire to start your day. From 2012's De Vermis Mysteriis.

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NCBD:

Here's my NCBD haul. Man, since I slimmed down the number of titles I buy, I really don't miss anything I cut, however, some weeks I just miss comics.

First up, I've been waiting for this 13th issue of Ghost Rider for a few months now. Danny Ketch will always be my favorite Ghost Rider, and to have him back as, apparently, part of the Weapon Plus program just makes me salivate with the possibilities.

The final issue of Sins of Sinister's Immoral X-Men. Definitely curious to see what year 1000 looks like.

SO much love in my heart for Saga, and I did not expect the possibility brought up at the end of issue 62, so we'll see where this goes. 

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Read:

I finally read Jeff Lemire and Doub Mahnke's Swamp Thing: Green Hell. I dug this one about as much as I can dig a DC book (I don't know why my prejudice against DC continues to escalate, but it does). 

The thing I liked best about Green Hell was the way it sort of acted as a final chapter for the storylines Lemire and Scott Snyder established in the original, 2012-2013 New 52 Swamp Thing and Animal Man books. I read Snyder's run on Swamp Thing and actually quite liked it, and while I jumped off when Lemire came on and didn't read his Animal Man, I followed those books from afar and understood what they were doing.

I also quote liked what they did with John Constantine in this one, although this tendency to fall back repeatedly on having him barter his soul to the devil for favors got old after the first time, and repeated use with it really just undermines the gravity of Garth Ennis' Dangerous Habits, still one of the greatest stories ever told with the character.     

In all, I'll probably revisit this one at some point; the oversized Black Label books are a joy to read when they are worth reading. To me, that's not very often, so it's nice to have one I enjoyed.

       

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Playlist:

SQÜRL - Silver Haze (pre-release singles)

Bexley - Eponymous

Goatsnake - Black Age Blues

The Ronettes - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes

Ghost Bath - Moonlover

High on Fire - The Art of Self Defense

High on Fire - De Vermis Mysteriis

Jon Clearly - Dyna-Mite

Steve Earle - J.T.

            

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Settling into a work routine will lead to a transformation that brings breakthrough.

 

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Nick Fury Vs. SQÜRL

More new music from SQÜRL's upcoming album Silver Haze, out May 5th on Sacred Bones Records. Pre-order HERE.

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Watch:

I've been pretty meh about all things Marvel, but I really want to watch this one:

 

I never read the comic storyline Secret Invasion, however, I like the idea A LOT and remember how Bendis would drop scenes that pointed to it years before it happened (remember Rick Jones showing up yelling about Skrulls being everywhere?). What I did not expect from this, and what totally hooked me with this trailer is how the Secret Invasion series draws inspiration from the 1989 prestige format, six-issue series Nick Fury Vs S.H.I.E.L.D. - one of my favorite Marvel Comics stories EVER. Just by virtue of Fury facing most of this threat essentially alone (insofar as no major hero costars, or at least as we can ascertain from this trailer), it makes sense the creators would draw from that series, and knowing that makes me very excited.

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Playlist:

Hum - Downward is Heaven

David Bowie - Heroes

Clouds Taste Satanic - Tales of Demonic Possession

Shrinebuilder - Eponymous

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Viscerals

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs - Land of Sleeper

Eagulls - Eponymous

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

I intended to do a three-card Pull, however, this one jumped out of the deck at me, and I thought I'd concentrate on that because, in a nutshell, Motivation - a form of Will - has been lacking and this is a nice cue to get my ass back in gear. I have been writing almost daily, however, not in increments of time and attention that would gather me the momentum I need to get back on track. I'll fix that today.

 

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