Death Folk Country

 

From Windhand singer Dorthia Cottrell's second solo record, Death Folk Country, released last week on the always fantastic Relapse Records. You can order a copy HERE. 

I'll admit that I don't know Dorthia's first solo record, 2015's self-titled, as much as I should considering I'm such a huge Windhand fan. In fact, I don't think I've listened to that one since it came out. I jammed Death Folk Country last week and it really hit the spot, and now, spending time with both records this morning, I can definitely draw a parallel: Cottrell's solo acoustic records are sort of to Windhand what Alice in Chains' every-other-album, acoustic EPs were to their proper albums. There's a strong vein of Cottrell's aesthetic that informs Windhand's sound and imagery, and those elements are on full display in these stripped-down arrangements of acoustic, peddle steel and the other various atmospherics touches Dorthia peppers these records with. As an artist, there is a bleak beauty to Dorthia's music - both in those aforementioned arrangements and in her vocals/melodies, and all of it ties together nicely into that over-arching aesthetic. 

Also, can I say that I love the album title Death Folk Country because I actually think that's a perfect descriptor for the music she makes in her solo career, and on this new album in particular? I guess I just did.
 

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NCBD:

Being that I was off work the last two days while K and I hung out in Dayton, OH, Wednesday feels a bit like Monday, and I'm starting my week with a pretty awesome NCBD. Here are my picks:

The final issue of the ill-fated Donny Cates, Ryan Ottley Hulk series. Most folks seem to hate this one, but I loved it and am sorry to see it go. Cates and Ottley took some HUGE swings here, and although Cates jumped off a few issues back, I feel like Ottley's done a great job maintaining the tone. Really hoping to snag this Skottie Young cover.

The end of Sins of Sinister. Despite what I perceived as a rough start, the Hobby Store SciFi of the last few issues has endeared SoS to me quite a bit. Up next for the X-Books, "Before the Fall." Not entirely sure what this will consist of, and I doubt I'll read all the titles, but there are a few that look as though they will interest me.

Being that I have not been reading the tie-in "Event" book, The Armageddon Game, I kind of feel like I've lost my compass for the ongoing TMNT series. Hoping that gets alleviated soon. 

LOVE this cover so much - total throwback to the earliest days of TMNT and, in a broader sense, early 80s indie comics in general. 

Halloween in the world of WTFPFH? Sign me up! This one's world is really starting to open up, and I'm curious to see more people and places through the eyes of characters outside the now-defunct Academy.

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Watch:

A few days ago, Bloody Disgusting posted the trailer for a new Slasher flick called The Curse of Wolf Mountain.

 

Some cool imagery here, and I'm definitely curious as to the story. That said, I'm not going to lie: when I see an indie flick - especially if it's a Slasher - that has people like Felicia Rose, Robert Englund, Bill Mosley, or in this case Tobin Bell and Danny Trejo, I become a bit weary. These good folks are genre icons who earn a considerable chunk of their living doing cameos in any movie that can afford them. Their names then bolster the perceived appeal of those flicks. Nothing wrong with any of that, except sometimes it seems like those flicks don't have a hell of a lot going for them besides the cameos. Wolf Moutain's trailer is ambiguous enough that I cannot properly "read" much about it quality-wise, so we'll have to wait for the film's release on May 9th to find out. That said, as I stated at the top, with some of what we're seeing in this trailer, Wolf Mountain has a very real chance of being a solid modern Slasher along the lines of Random Acts of Violence or The Ranger.

 

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Playlist:

Television - Marquee Moon

The Sword - Age of Winters

Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle

Funkdoobiest - Brothers Doobie

Guordan Banks - Keep You in Mind (single)

NIN - The Slip

Ruby the Hatchet - Planetary Space Child

Gang Starr - Hard to Earn

Telekinetic Yeti - Primordial

Windhand - Eponymous (reissue)

 

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Card:

When I travel, I always have my mini Thoth deck that Missi gifted me years back in my bag. However, when I went to do a Pull this past Monday from Dayton, OH, I couldn't find the deck. Now, I knew it was in the bag - this is a multi-compartment backpack, and I've become fairly convinced there's a portal to some small space dimension in the damn thing, so that items disappear, then reappear later. This was the case with the mini Thoth, as I found it yesterday while packing for our return trip. Anyway, this morning I felt like those cards had something to tell me, and when I pulled them from the small cloth pouch they live in, one card was turned over atop all the others.

The Ten of Disks can be a murky card on its own; are we talking about monetary wealth or amassment? Define wealth?  Most likely, as this is the Disks or "Earth" suit, however, there's more to Malkuth than just coins. Bearing this in my, next, I shuffled and pulled two accompanying cards to clarify the reading:

Swift action or, perhaps more appropriately read Conflict,  can be the deciding factor that helps achieve completion. 

Loud and clear - I've had a couple days off from writing, as there was zero time on our trip (that's not usually the case; I normally make time wherever we go), but I need to finish this short story I've had poised for completion today and get it submitted to the short story market it's intended for.

 

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A Slip of the Nun's Blade

 

This old NIN song from 2008's The Slip popped up in my feed this morning and it kinda hit the spot. I'm in Dayton, Ohio - a city I adore but don't make it out to all that much anymore. I spent a lot of time here in the late 00s, though, so seeing this track surface felt a but like the Universe giving me a thumbs up.

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Watch:

I watch Amoeba Music's What's In My Bag periodically, but special thanks to Mr. Brown for pointing me toward this episode with Seal. I'm starting the video at a particular point near the end; watch that and then start it over if you want to hear this beautiful man gush about Bowie, Alice in Chains and a host of other music:

 

I don't know very much about Seal's music. I avoided it a lot when I was younger and more limited, however, at some point, I realized you just can't argue with the greatness of "Kiss From A Rose." That led me to wonder about listening to some of Seal's full albums, which I haven't really done yet, and I'm not really in the headspace to do at the moment. I'll get to it eventually, though.

 

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Play:

I have become obsessed with Puppet Combo's Nun Massacre! This game scares the crap out of me. Here's Survival Horror Network's no-commentary walk-through; I won't be watching it, as I want to experience all this for myself, but I guarantee if you're a Horror Movie fan and you sit down, maybe ingest some mind-altering party favors and watch this in the dark with headphones or the sound up, this will affect you the way you want Horror Movies to.

 

Nun Massacre induces a paranoia that I really appreciate, and as I alluded to above, this game has the effect I long for back from the days when I discovered a lot of the Horror Movies I love now, but as an adult, very few new ones provide.

 

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Playlist:

Black Sabbath - Technical Ecstasy

Dorthia Cottrell - Death Folk Country

Danzig - Eponymous

Church of the Cosmic Skull - Is Satan Real?

The Sword - Warp Riders

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Judas Priest - Painkiller

Bill Withers - Apple Music Essentials

High on Fire - The Art of Self Defense

Chamber of Screams - Murder House (Original Puppet Combo Soundtrack)

Karl Casey - (White Bat) XX EP

QOTSA - Rated R

 

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RIP Prince - 7 Years Gone

 Eight years? And what's up with April? Jesus.

13 Evil Fairy Tales Dead Under 30

 

Greg Puciato has become one of the most interesting artists working in music today. Setting aside Dillinger Escape Plan as the legends since their retirement, Puciato has done dark electronic music with Telefon Tel Aviv's Josh Eustis in The Black Queen, Hardcore/Thrash with Killer Be Killed, toured as part of Jerry Cantrell's band, and all that and everything in between with his two solo records, both of which I adore. Now, he teams with more like-minded souls (from Every Time I Die and Fit For An Autopsy) in Better Lovers. What's it sound like?

It sounds awesome.

The first single dropped the other day and big props to Mr. Brown who sent it my way, as I totally missed it. No word on an album proper, but after seeing tour announcements yesterday, the smart money's on something coming down the pipes in the next few months, so there's one more thing to look forward to.

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Watch:

Last night at 7:00 PM K and I caught Clarksville's first screening of Lee Cronin's Evil Dead Rise. I had exceedingly high hopes - never a good thing going into a movie, let alone a new installment in a series I have loved for a very long time. But Fede Alvarez's entry in 2013 blew me away (still blows me away, in fact), and all I wanted from this was that same feeling of Deep Horror Intoxication 2013 gave me. Did Evil Dead Rise succeed?

Yes and no. First, I really enjoyed the film, and I think Lee Cronin did a helluva job. However, those pesky expectations tapped on my shoulder for the entire runtime. 

MY problem, not the film's. 

Evil Dead Rise is not as intense as 2013; don't get me wrong - this film is f**king intense, but Rise spreads its assault thin and only really explodes in the last act. Common for a Horror film, of course, and not something to traditionally detract points for. That said, I did feel the set-up of the characters - all of whom I loved - affected the film's pacing, so that Rise felt stretched a bit thin when compared to 2013, which sets its tone and story up so quickly and efficiently and jumps into the carnage so eloquently that it's just not fair to compare. 

Everyone in the cast did an excellent job and the FX are fantastic - like REALLY fantastic. The violence and gore felt a skosh subdued compared to Fede's, but I realize all these comparisons between these two films are unfair. I've always retained a staunch "Don't compare 2013 to the original films" stance, so surrendering to this prejudice here is hypocritical. Also, Tapert produced Rise and Campell and Raimi executive produced, so their fingerprints are all over this new entry. Bearing all this in mind, I think once I'm over the initial viewing, I'll see it again (next week), and have a deeper experience.

All in all, SEE IT IN A THEATRE!!!

            

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Read:

Yesterday, I finished Stephen King's latest novel, Fairy Tale. My good friend and A Most Horrible Library Cohost Chris gifted me a copy while we were hanging out in LaLaLand last month, and I tore into it on the plane home. This is the first new King I've read since 2010's Doctor Sleep; I say this not as a point of dismissal or obstinance, but to illustrate that, although I've loved every book by Stephen King I've ever read, I just haven't read enough of his work. I've always thought that eventually would like to read everything, but I rarely actually work on that. There are so many other authors I love as well, most considerably more "independent" than King, and I tend to fall sway to their work one right after the other. "First world problems" disclaimer aside, what a wonderful problem to have: how do I read everything I want to before I die?

Anyway,  all this talk is really just to set up the fact that I had no idea what I was in for with Fairy Tale. I should have guessed, because it's quite fantastic. 

The story remains rooted in its very human, very relatable characters and their lives dealing with grief and aging for nearly the first two hundred pages, and if that sounds like it might be too much set up, it's not. I could have read about Charlie, his father, Radar and Mr. Bowditch for the entire 600 pages. That story sets up the bigger picture, and once it gets going, there are quite a few white-knuckle moments in this one, and that's the kind of reading I really enjoy. The book is Epic, and as I've come to expect with Mr. King, his epics are among the most readable I've ever encountered. 

Add into the mix the fact that the chapters are illustrated by Nicolas Delort and Locke and Key's Gabriel Rodriguez. King mentions in the afterward - which was just as enjoyable to read as the damn book, if considerably shorter - that the illustrations were key in giving the book the feeling of, well, old Fairytale collections, and I tip my hat to him at the wonderful attention to detail here; it just makes the book that much more enjoyable.

In 2010 I read Doctor Sleep and loved it, and now, thirteen years have passed without my even realizing and Fairy Tale blows me away. I've got a pretty intense list of reading planned for the next few months, but when the decks clear, I'm penciling in more King. I always forget just how much I love his writing.

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Playlist:

Cartoonist Kayfabe - TMNT 7 with Eastman and Laird        

Ruby the Hatchet - Fear is a Cruel Master

Better Lovers - 13 Under 30

AAWKS - The Electric Traveller (single)

AAWKS - (Heavy on the Cosmic)

Clutch - Blast Tyrant

Ruby the Hatchet - Planetary Space Chile

Led Zeppelin - Presence

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Card:

Switching it up back to my original Thoth deck for today's Pull:

Creative breakthroughs can arrive at a destructive cost and often must be tempered by keeping one foot in the 'Real World.'

This feels like a nice little indictment of the creative process, or I guess more accurately, an acknowledgment that my work ethic is sound. I learned a long time ago not to mix heightened emotional or perceptive states with writing. Yes, both can be useful for ideas, but actual writing while intoxicated by either substances or emotions never produces sound work. Not sure why I'm being reminded of this now, other than maybe I just needed a nice Jungian pat on the back.

 

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New Music from The Ocean!!!

It's been a minute since The Ocean released something that really blew me away. I think that has more to do with me than them, but it remains a fact. 

These guys have been spearheading new corridors of Metal/Post Metal/Whatever since the early 2000s. I got hip to them kind of on accident, back somewhere around 2008 when I picked up Fluxion on a whim. The frenzied fandom that album birthed reached its zenith with the 2010's twin releases Heliocentric and Anthropocentric. I still consider those records to be the pinnacle of what Robin Straps and crew have achieved, however, that is not to say I didn't love 2011's Pelegial, because I did. 

When the group returned from a five-year hiatus in 2018 with Phanerozoic I, I was in an entirely different headspace, so while I've listened to and liked that record as well as its 2020 companion Phanerozoic II, they haven't quite moved the needle with me the way some of the previous records did. Watching this video, however, I'm blown away by the production and feel like The Ocean has something great in store for us once again.

This video is a HUGE step forward, and I can only guess that, with as ambitious a band as The Ocean has become over its now 23-year history, Straps and Co. may have grown to harbor visual ambitions accompanying their sonic ones. 

What would that look like? 

Well, I'm not entirely certain, but it would probably start with what they have released for the new song "Subatlantic," harbinger of the new record Holocene dropping May 19th on the band's own Pelagic Records. Pre-order HERE.

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Read:

Allow me a small if egregious addendum to my NCBD post yesterday. 

After acquiring and reading Nightcrawlers issue three, I was floored to find not only was the burning skull of Galactus in the issue, but my knee-jerk interpretation of the image was 100% incorrect! What we have in this issue isn't Galactus being destroyed in a swathe of cosmic fire, it's GALACTUS AS A SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE, or in laymen's, Galactus as a Ghost Rider!!!

Wow. Just wow. Hats off to writer Si Spurrier - the same guy who named the Black Knight's goat-headed servant Philip - and artist Alessandro Vitti for bringing this to life. Here's what I think is a preview pick from next week's Sins of Sinister: Dominion one-shot that appears to feature this awesome new version of the planet-eater front and center.

 

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Playlist:

Jackson Browne - Somebody's Baby (single)

Ruby the Hatchet - Fear Is a Cruel Master

The Ocean - Subatlantic (single)

High on Fire - The Art of Self Defense

Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti

ZZ Top - Rhythmeen

Young Widows - Old Wounds

High on Fire - Snakes of the Divine

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Card:

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

 

Temperance is Art in the Thoth deck, and since the Bound Deck has become my staple and I've had to adjust back to the classic interpretation of the card, I've come to look at this one as a balance between Temperance and Art, Art being a more Bacchanalian pursuit. So looking at this spread, I'm seeing the balance between logic and heart as the achievement that will transform one of my projects (World often acting as nomenclature for the Worlds I'm creating, or Projects, to put a more definitive linguistic point on the matter).
 

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Set Galactus's Hiding Mask Aflame!!!

A little Wino and his friends in The Obsessed to start our day. This tracks slams; love it!

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NCBD:

My picks for this NCBD; another slow week, but that's fine with me. Quality of quantity, right?

Loving this series. The throwback to the excesses of 70s and 80s rock gods is always welcome these days. Especially when the story gives us rock gods that worship Satan!!! Also, although the story is slightly obvious in some regards, insofar as to where it's going, the overall big picture of what that will mean is delightfully vague. 

I didn't read the first two issues of the Sins of Sinister series Nightcrawlers, however, being that this is the final issue before the closing Sins of Sinister: Dominion one-shot brings the sub-series to a close, and being that I've grown to actually really dig this series, I thought I'd pick this up. Who knows? Maybe I'll grab those first two issues eventually, too. Either way, seeing Galactus's burning face behind Mother Righteous totally sold me on this "A" cover.

That's one of the really cool things about these Marvel "possible future" stories - the degree to which the creators can totally fuck with everyone and everything. I feel as though it used to be, at the very least, every possible future would have Logan in it. Not this time. And although I doubt very much we'll actually see a Galactus flambé in this issue, just the fact that they could suggest this on the cover makes me feel like a kid again.

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Watch:

 

After reading about Scott Walker's upcoming film The Tank on Bloody Disgusting a few days ago, I'm intrigued. Reviewer Meagan Navarro very specifically states, "So much about Walker’s narrative structure and stylistic choices evoke ’80s creature features," (Read Meagan's full review HERE). That very much makes me take the possibility of shortcomings aside and want to see this flick. I think back to James Wan's Malignant a few years back - it took a good thirty or so minutes of laughing at that film's shortcomings before I got what Wan was doing - he made a 70s Giallo, and went so far as to build in the associated shortcomings from that particular style/era of film. This 'authenticity or bust' aesthetic we've seen in recent years - I could argue Psycho Goreman has this to a degree as well - is fascinating to me; a real breath of fresh air. I love the idea of filmmakers saying, "It's not enough to just add synthetic VHS tracking lines to your film" - the equivalent of the "vinyl" audio effect that adds pops and crackles to an audio track - "you have to be true to the essence of what we think of when we think of those films!"

Anyway, I'm none of the theatres in my area are playing The Tank - Clarksville's Regal is pretty great, but it's not that great - so I can't wait to watch this on April 25th (thereabouts) when it lands!

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Playlist:

Ruby the Hatchet - Planetary Space Child

CCR - Cosmo's Factory

The Obsessed - Lunar Womb

Alice in Chains - Eponymous

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

Kyss - ...  And the Circus Leaves Town

The Sword - Warp Riders

Bill Dogget and His Combo - All His Hits

            

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Card:

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

In order to bring a project to completion, first emotional matters must be transformed into something useful through an act of Will.

Direct commentary on the process of writing. Well, the adage fits with any artistic endeavor, I suppose, but I'm applying it directly to my own process, which has begun to mutate for the better thanks to two separate but concurrent events. The first was Jonathan Grimm's three-day jaunt out to our new home. The guy is a self-made success with his art, and it's inspiring beyond almost anything I've encountered in some time. Maybe ever. The second came in the form of some thoughts on writing in one of the more recent This Is Horror Newsletters (which you can sign up for HERE and which is totally worth your time for the interviews alone, if not the contemplations of craft that sometimes come burrowed inside the missives).

What's that have to do with today's Pull? Well now sheriff, I don't rightly know. Pulls are not always straightforward. In fact, they're never as on the nose as my quick interpretations might make them appear. There's a lot of gooey ambiguity in the way they interact with the subconscious, and sometimes, you just contemplate the cards and see what associations they lead you to. Piecing it together - if you do - might take considerably more time. Hopefully, in the meantime, you've arrived at something useful. Like I just did.

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The Boogeyman's Milk Leg

 

Man, this track takes me places. Some of those places are imaginary, and some are memory-laden ephemera from the early 2000s. Despite being released in 2013 - the year Mr. Brown sent me this record that's taken ten years to fully gestate an appreciation for - something here really reminds me of the particular era of my life circa 2000-2004. I think it's because my first real exposure to jazz-tinted metal came during that time when my friend Hammerstock turned me onto Cynic's brilliant 1993 album Focus. Whatever the case, I played Habitual Levitations a lot in the year or two surrounding my exposure to it, but haven't really visited since. Turns out, it fits like a warm glove.

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Watch:

I didn't watch the first trailer for Rob Savage's upcoming Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman, and I'm not watching this one, but as usual, I'm posting it here for posterity's sake:

 

Nothing but good feedback surrounding this one, so I'll definitely be catching it in the theatre. I'm still searching for a new film to really scare the hell out of me; I know Evil Dead Rise is going to be an ordeal, or at least I hope it's going to be, but if this can accompany follow that as a genuine bone-shaking scary movie, then 2023 will be looking pretty good at the halfway point when The Boogeyman arrives on June 2nd!

 

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Read:

Although I won't be watching the trailer for The Boogeyman, I'm digging out the first edition copy of Stephen King's Night Shift I found at a Las Vegas thrift store ten years ago or so and re-read the story it's based on - also called The Boogeyman - for the first time in quite a few years. 

This was a FIND for sure, and the first time I'd read really early King. Although I discovered him in High School with The Gunslinger, then read a handful of his other novels, I never dug into his early short stories until I found this. I'm less than 100 pages from the end of King's newest novel, Fairy Tale, but I should be able to slip this quick re-read in just to prime my excitement for Savage's new adaptation.

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Playlist:

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy

The Sword - Warp Riders

Kyuss - ... And the Circus Leaves Town

Huey Lewis and the News - Sports

Intronaut - Habitual Levitations (Instilling Words with Tones)

Godflesh - Nero EP

Mars Red Sky - Eponymous

            

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Card:

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

To arrive at the best decision, and truly be fair and uncompromised by emotion, you have to be honest about your emotions toward the situation. I have no idea what this is in reference to at the moment, so I will do what I always do in situations like these - leave the spread on my desk today, so it's always in front of me. Sometimes that's the best way to unlock something you're stumped on.

 

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