If you need a reason to love Thou beyond the music, this is it. Order the new album UmbilicalHERE. I think Byran Funck's vocals are the closest I've ever heard to recreating that infamous "Stroke Me" effect Mike Patton used in old-school Mr. Bungle. And regardless of how much sludge this band piles on, I still hear the Staley-era Alice in Chains. Fucking love it.
Watch:
Joe Bob and Darcy did my favorite movie of all time last night. Here are those Drive-in totals:
Loved this episode.
Playlist:
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry
Dean Hurley - Tales From the Library of the Occult: Flower
Faith No More - Angel Dust
Warning - Why Can Bodies Fly (single)
Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands
INXS - Kick
Thou - Umbilical
Card:
One card from Missi's Raven Deck to send me on my way to Chicago to see The Ravenonettes on Monday:
Wednesday was an incredible day for new album announcements. I'd been expecting David Lynch to drop something because of a video he posted last week, but The Jesus Lizard's Rack from Ipecac was 100% surprise. This is the band's first album since 1998's Blue, and while there is a lot I do like about their two Capitol Records, I can already tell by this first single "Hide & Seek," that I like Paul Allen's production on this one way better (RIP Steve Albini, who produced their iconic albums for Touch & Go back in the 90s).
Also, Mac is back! That's right, original drummer Mac McNeilly is once again behind the skins. The stars have aligned!
Last night, K and I went to see Ishana Shyamalan's The Watchers.
Despite seeing this or a slightly different trailer before pretty much every movie I've attended in the theatre for the last month or two, I went in with a fairly open mind. All I'll say is, if you're an M. Knight fan, you'll probably dig this. It was very well made and had excellent performances, but I did not care for the script, characters or the film overall. I kind of felt a weird parallel to when I saw The Village, back on opening night in 2004. With it in a half-arsed kind of way until the last act, when I kind of just want to get up and walk out.
* My good friend Missi laughs at my growing frustration at pre-show "entertainment." She cooly arrives at just the right time every time she goes to the theatre (about as often as us), but somehow, I just can't time that right.
Playlist:
The Jesus Lizard - Show
Shellac - To All Trains
Big Black - Lungs
Various - The Lounge Ax Defense and Relocation Compact Disc
Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity
Black Pyramid - The Paths of Time are Vast
The Raveonettes - Chain Gang of Love
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Knight of Swords
• Five of Wands
• Queen of Wands
Perhaps cryptically, I have "Motivation as Will" written in the Grimoire for Knight of Swords. This is the Firey aspect of Air, or the Will as applied to Intellect. Five of Wands is Conflict in Earthly matters, and Queen of Wands, or the Emotional aspect of Will.
All any of this tells me at the moment - when it's 12:47 AM and I'm tired as hell - are we're all a big o' mess O' trouble. Contradictions and good intentions, but if you recognize that and we start there, we can move on and perhaps conquer and shape some of what makes us indecisive and try and turn conflict into stability.
We're getting a new album from David Lynch and Chrysta Bell! They dropped the first song yesterday, as Lynch cryptically promised on his social media last week. You can pre-order Cellophane Memories from the always wonderful Sacred Bones if you go to their site HERE or David Lynch's Bandcamp HERE.
Watch:
Here's one I'm dying to watch but have thus far successfully fought the urge to do so, simply because I'm certain I'll see it play ahead of movies in the theatre.
I can't wait to see this movie, and I have nothing but the utmost faith in Fede Alvarez. I'm just more than a little concerned that what happened to Evil Dead Rise after seeing the trailer so many times could happen to this. Chances are, that's not going to happen, because this will be a better movie, and I've already been told by several people that this trailer doesn't actually give away much. But I think of that "Mommy's with the maggots now" scene and wonder if it just might have been a truly terrifying scene if I hadn't already been inoculated of it through repetition. I consider it a fucking miracle that we have Alvarez on a franchise I love and want the best for - one that needs more than a little help, let's face it. So... I'll continue to wait. But it's here now, just in case I change my mind (like I eventually will).
Playlist:
David Lynch and Chrystabell - Sublime Eternal Love (pre-release single)
The Jesus Lizard - Hide & Seek (pre-release single)
I think I'd heard titterings about this at some point, but when it popped up in my feed this evening, I was kind of blown the f*ck away. From the 3-Song EP out on Metropolis Records now! Order HERE. Apparently a full album is due this fall, and hearing this now, I'm on board. This 100% retains that Chameleons emotional blow, without sounding forced or tired. Love it.
NCBD:
Here's this week's Pull, and I'm pretty excited for these:
The untold tale of that time the U.S. Army sent Frank Castle behind enemy lines during the Vietnam War to kill the captured Nick Fury. Written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Jacen Burrows. Can't think of something I want to read more at this moment.
It took a little longer than probably any of us reading it expected, but TheLast Ronin II issue 2 finally arrives today. Glad to still have a dose of TMNT for a while, especially in this Miller-esque Dystopian Future-verse.
If Scartlett's mini-series is even half as good as either Duke or Cobra Commander, we're in for a treat. Curious to see how the Energon Universe handles the Arashikage.
Carter F**king Burke! Who would have thought I'd enjoy seeing him breathe after his part in James Cameron's Aliens? Really digging this series.
Don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out. No, seriously, I will approach this final issue with a modicum of reverence because, despite months now of griping here at the end, I'll miss reading the X books these last couple of years. Luckily, I never went back and filled in the gap between House and Powers and Inferno, so there's still a year or two of actual Hickman-penned issues for me to jump into.
Watch:
While I found Goodnight Mommy to be pointlessly mean-spirited and just plain awful, I'm a huge fan of Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz's The Lodge. Likewise, after watching this trailer for their new film The Devil's Bath, I'm quite looking forward to it.
While this trailer feels arduously long, I honestly applaud the fact that they don't really tell you all that much. Or at least that's how it feels. Also, there are a handful of images in here near the end that will stay with me for some time.
Playlist:
Oranssi Pazuzu - Live at Roadburn 2017
Your Black Star - Sound from the Ground
Tennis System - Technicolour Blind
Ghost Bath - Moonlover
Black Pyramid - The Paths of Time are Vast
Frank Black and the Catholics - Snake Oil
Megadeth - Rust in Peace
Revocation - Teratogenesis (deluxe)
Revocation - Eponymous
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Eight of Pentacles - More transformation of Earthly assets
• XIX: The Sun - From the Grimoire, "Taking the Pill will open your eyes."
• Page of Swords - The Earthly aspect of Air. "apply your intellect to something useful!"
From 1987's The Lion and the Cobra. Outstanding song from an outstanding album. Makes 1987 feel so close I can almost touch it.
Watch:
It's been a while since I'd enjoyed John Carpenter's In the Mouth Of Madness. I'm guesting on John Trafton and Mile Fortune's This Movie Saved My Life podcast next week for the second part of their 1994 retrospective (part 1 is HERE), and Madness was one of the four films we're covering.
Maybe it's because I just rewatched Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, too, but I'd never realized the influence that both the NOES and Hellraiser series had on this flick until now. I'm not sure if that influence comes more from writer Michael De Luca (who also wrote Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare) or JC himself, but it's definitely there. Also, and I know everyone who loves this movie knows this, but the brilliance of combining Stephen King's popularity with H.P. Lovecraft's ethos in Sutter Cane is one of the great triumphs of homage to either author, in a world where 75% of Horror is homage to one or the other (or both). I'd add that making Jürgen Porchnow look like Neil Gaiman - who would have been rounding the corner on finishing the original Sandman series for DC's Vertigo at the time, adds just the right amount of prescience about Gaiman's inevitable place in the pantheon King and Lovecraft reside over.
Playlist:
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
The Reverend Horton Heat - Whole New Life
The Raveonettes - Sing
Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra
Joy Division - Substance 1977-1980
Black Pyramid - The Paths of Time are Vast
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Six of Cups - Emotional fulfillment.
• IX: The Hermit - I need a period to regroup. Badly.
• Three of Pentacles - Growth in Earthly terms. Not sure if this is responsibility maturation or windfall. Windfall would be nice.
It only recently came to my attention over the weekend that Watain released a killer Live album last year, Die in Fire: Live in Hell Stockholm 2022. Here's Reaping Death, one of the stand-out tracks on a really great live album. Reminds me a bit of Slayer's Decade of Aggression.
Watch:
Recently, I subscribed to a streaming channel on Prime called ScreenPix. This is a $2.99, bottom-of-the-barrel kind of streamer, however, there were a handful of flix that drew me in, and at $2.99, well, no real damage. Here's what I've watched on there so far:
This was the flick that brought me in. Missi and I recently interviewed Horror Author Extraordinaire Ivy Tholen on The Horror Vision, and as part of that episode, we asked her to pick one movie to talk about. Ivy picked Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers.
Next, I can remember I, Madman on the video shelf going way back (I often confuse it with Dr. Giggles - another flick I still need to see - for some reason. What I didn't know about I, Madman is it was directed by Tibor Takács, Director of The Gate.
Finally, last night, I fired up Klaus Kinski as a peepin' Tom Nazi holdover in David Schmoeller's 1986 what-the-fuck-a-thon, Crawlspace.
Not nearly as 'great' as I wanted it to be, Crawlspace is still very much worth a watch just for Kinski.
Read:
I am absolutely blazing through Stephen Graham Jones' The Angel of Indian Lake. ~250 pages in, this book is a clusterfuck Horror movie in prose; there's SO much going on, an enormous body count, and we still don't really know who or what is behind it all.
I've seen some blurbs with people calling this ' a consuming mess,' but I don't think it's that at all. There's a difference between someone who can juggle a lot of different objects at once and make it look easy and someone who can just barely keep them all in the air. This feels effortless in its complexity. I'm taking notes, believe you me.
Playlist:
Shellac - To All Trains
The Raveonettes - Sing
The Raveonettes - Raven in the Grave
Sleep - Dopesmoker
Rodney Crowell - Tarpaper Sky
Frank Sinatra - Songs for Young Lovers
Blut Aus Nord - 777: Cosmosophy
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age
Blut Aus Nord - The Mythical Beast of Rebellion
The Used - Eponymous
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry
Watain - Die in Fire: Live in Hell (Stockholm 2022)
Burzum - Aske
Burzum - Filosofem
Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Eight of Swords
• Ten of Wands
• XI - Justice
Transformation, Endings and Just deserts. I'm thinking this is a nod toward Black Gloves & Broken Hearts, which I've just come back around on to finish.
A second single from the forthcoming album Wild God, out August 30th. Pre-order HERE.
This track is fantastic, but there's still something about every Bad Seeds record since Push the Sky Away that bothers me. I love the aforementioned Sky Away, which definitely ushered in an entirely new era for the band, but I kind of feel like they've been stuck in that mode ever since, with diminishing returns. Diminishing returns not because the music isn't great but because I guess I'm used to the boys changing their sound up every few records. I feel like, if one new record could just be something new, then these last few would really fall into place for me. Either way, one of the greatest artists and bands of all time, in my opinion.
Watch:
K and I did a double feature of Until the Light Takes Us and Lords of Chaos over the last two nights; I've seen both films several times, but they never fail to pack a punch.
It was especially interesting watching Jonas Åkerlund's Lords of Chaos again now, as we very recently watched his Netflix series Clark with Bill Skarsgård; some definite similarities.
Not sure if that really comes through in the trailer; however, Åkerlund always gets a recommendation from me, so if you have Netflix, Clark is definitely worth checking out. Also based on a real-life, larger-than-life personality and the "truth and lies" approach.
Read:
With all the running around I've been doing, it took me a way longer time to finish re-reading Stephen Graham Jones' Don't Fear the Reaper, but I did yesterday morning. Glorious. Next up - and I am excited - book three of the Indian Lake Trilogy:
Fifty pages in and this one has already made me tear up more than once. Jade Daniels is such an amazing, engrossing character, made so real by the mania for the genre a lot of us share. Can't recommend these books enough.
Playlist:
The Raveonettes - Sing
Tim Hecker - Infinity Pool OST
Fantômas - Delirium Cordia
The Raveonettes - Chain Gang of Love
Ian Lynch - All You Need Is Death OST
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild God (pre-release singles)
Rodney Crowell - Triage
Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Five of Pentacles (Disks)
• Eight of Swords
• Four of Wands
Conflict, followed by transformation (possibly through just desserts), and finally stability. Shit man, that's life in a nutshell.
How do I apply this to anything in my life right now? Like, today? Weeeelllll... I have a meeting later today with a transportation vendor that has been eating a lot of mental and emotional real estate. Feels like it might be conflict-heavy. I miss the old days, when you could just punch someone in the face. Maybe out of this, we'll achieve the stability we need to make my job a metric shit-ton easier.
