New Music from Jerry Cantrell!!!

 

The second single from Jerry Cantrell's upcoming album, I Want Blood, out on October 18th. Pre-order HERE.

Loving this new record so far. Jerry Cantrell is one of those humans who I root for 

---

---

---

Watch:

I am unfamiliar with Patricio Valladares's previous films; however, when I first read about her upcoming Invoking Yell, she instantly caught my attention. A found footage film that follows an all-female Black Metal band in Chile, set in the 90s? Events go awry through their penchant for recording paranormal phenomena for their records? What a fantastic idea. 

 

Invoking Yell hits VOD on September 20th.

---

---

---

Read:

I woke up early this morning and blew through pretty much the entirety of Sandman Volume 2: The Doll's House. I honestly don't know if there is a work of graphic fiction I love more than this one, especially issue #14:

This was instrumental in so much of who I have become. The dialogue, plotting, characters, and the way Gaiman weaves his own brand of dream logic throughout the series, as well as the way a large part of that crescendoes in this volume. We get the resolution for the missing Nightmares Brute and Glob, and how their machinations have affected the world - and the DCU - while Morpheus was indisposed. We are introduced to Lyta and Hector Hall, tying directly into previous Golden Age (?) iterations of 'The Sandman." We get the Corinthian and the Cereal convention, more of those amazing 'confessional' moments that echo back to Volume #1's 24 Hours. Gaiman knows spooky fantasy, but he also knows human nature at its lightest and darkest. Oh yeah, and we meet Hob Gadling, so Gaiman knows his classic English Literature and folklore as well. 

---

---

---

Playlist:

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue with the Stars

Blut Aus Nord - 777 Sect(s)

Blut Aus Nord - 777 The Desanctification

Blut Aus Nord - 777 Cosmosophy

METZ - Up On Gravity Hill (Thanks, Jacob!!!)

---

---

---

Card:

Today's card for study is IV - The Emperor:

Rules that govern Life. THIS is an important aspect of the card that I tend to gloss over. When this comes up, it's a reminder to adhere to the boundaries of life, i.e., what keeps you alive. There's also the martial aspect, a further reminder of rigor. That said, there's also a flipside that reminds us not to let rationality and, by extension, civilization become a prison. So balance. That's the name of the game, and it's borne out by the image on the card. 

Decisiveness and linear thinking. 

Brigitte Calls Me Baby - Too Easy

 

From their forthcoming debut full-length album Too Easy, out now. Order HERE. Really digging this band. 

 

---

---

---

Watch:

Wes Craven passed away on August 30th, 2015, so for the last few nights, I've been watching some of his lesser-known works for a tribute episode we're going to do on The Horror Vision. Last night, I chose Shocker.

 

I saw this back when it first hit VHS, but not since. Let me tell you, this was way more enjoyable than I remembered! Shocker is a totally misguided attempt to make another Freddy-level character/mythology, and while the film fails to do that, it ends up being super fun just from how hard it swings for that ball. Mitch Pileggi deserves a goddamn award for how 'all-in' he goes with the role of Horace Pinker, and while a whole lotta the movie makes no sense whatsoever - why park a van with your name on it in front of the house where you're killing people? Why does Jonathan's girlfriend come back as a powerful spirit for good? How could all the police in this town be that fucking stupid? - none of the inconsistencies, absurdities and downright missteps do anything but add to the fun. 

---

---

---

Playlist:

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III: Saturnian Poetry

Prince - Little Red Corvette (single)

Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium

The Ocean - Heliocentric

Protomartyr - The Agent Intellect

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Peter Gabriel - So

Oranssi Pazuzu - Valotus (pre-release single)

---

---

---

Card:

Today's card for study is the Six of Wands: Victory.

View troubles and disruptions as lessons - they have been necessary to grow. Life is Victory simply by living. Not everyone makes it out of the Strife and Chaos of the Fives. 

Godflesh - For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)

 

I had no idea this existed. Reposted from BlackSunHorizon's YouTube channel, which is full of sludgy goodness. Check it out HERE.

The song itself is taken from the Covered in Black album, an Industrial tribute to AC/DC. If I knew about this back when it came out in 2000 on Cleopatra Records, I had long since forgotten it until stumbling across this track on Apple Music this morning.
 

---

---

---

NCBD:

Here's what I'm bringing home from the comic shop tonight:

Again, I have to say that this series is really just a corridor for me on the way to the rest of the Energon Universe. I don't hate it, but the fervor I had for the Duke and Cobra Commander mini-series is gone.

Very excited for a new book from Jeff Lemire. Especially one he is 

Penultimate issue! Shit is about to get real and hopefully coalesce into a satisfying conclusion. Tony Fleecs has laid all the pieces out in a very pleasing story of past/present/future - something that isn't easy to do in 2024, where time travel is even more overdone than meta. Every once in a while, though, someone takes the concept and really makes it work. Maybe here it's because Army of Darkness did it long before a lot of other cinematic franchises, or maybe it's just great to have multiple versions of Ash running around. Either way, buckle up.

Get Fury has been another sleeper hit of my 2024. Ennis and Burrows really bring their ultra-violent storytelling to the Marvel Universe with two of the best possible choices for telling this story - Frank Castle and Nicolas Fury! Love it.

---

---

---

Watch:

I'm posting this here, but I'm not going to watch it, as I'm assuming I'll have to get pretty creative not to see this a million times before it hits theatres on October 18th.

After initially dismissing it, I loved the first Smile and ended up seeing it three times in theaters, so I have high hopes for this one.

---

---

---

Playlist:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

Perterbator - Bloodlust (single)

Braindamage - The Downfall

Tim Hecker - Infinity Pool OST

The Ocean - Heliocentric

Pepper Adams - Encounter!

Godflesh - Pure

Godflesh - In All Languages

Behemoth - Cursed Angel of Doom Live (pre-release single)

JK Flesh - Posthuman

Godflesh - Hymns

Grimes - Art Angels

Grimes - Miss Anthropocene

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF

Cristobal Tapia De Veer - Smile OST

The Fixx - Reach the Beach

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

---

---

---

Card:

Today's card is The Knight of Cups:

The Firey aspect of Water or the Will as applied to the Emotions. Don't be overwhelmed by emotion. The deluge is not without its rewards. 

Act fast!

Better Lovers!

 

From the forthcoming album Highly Irresponsible, out on October 25th on SharpTone Records. Pre-order HERE.

 

---

---

---

Watch:

Never been a Demi Moore fan, but maybe anybody can redeem themselves with the right Body Horror movie.

This trailer definitely evokes the work of Brandon Cronenberg and also, Ana Lily Amirpour's episode of GDT's Cabinet of Curiosities, titled The Outside. Hell, maybe even a bit of Larry Cohen's The Stuff.  Writer/Director Coralie Fargeat's previous film Revenge crossed way too many lines for me, but I loved the look of what little I saw of it. Very much looking forward to seeing The Substance on the big screen when it opens on September 18th.

---

---

---

Read:

I finished Professor John Trafton's BRILLIANT Movie-Made Los Angeles last week, and after such an academic deep-dive into film and regional history - that I really can't recommend enough - I started Ramon Glazov's newly published English translation of Giorgio De Maria's 1975 novel The Twenty Days of Turin.  

I posted about this early last week, how I hadn't been able to stop thinking about what little I knew about the premise via a post author Warren Ellis made on his LTD:

"A decade previously, Turin suffered twenty days of mass insomnia marked by nightly massacres committed by persons unseen or indescribable. The many hundreds of witnesses cannot explain what happened."

 Something about this rattled around in my brain for several days until I finished John's book and promptly ordered a copy of De Maria's novel. Something about that setup reminded me of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind, and my expectations only grew. 

I received the book yesterday, and at ~65% of the way through, I can confirm The Twenty Days of Turin is a fantastically creepy read. What's more, not only does it remind me of Zafón's work, but reading this is stirring up a desire to re-read Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show for the first time since I was a Freshman in High School, circa 1991. Both novels deal with secrets gleaned from the throwaway detritus of life - notes, scraps of paper, mail. I've always found the idea fascinating, and realize now there's a throughline between where it was introduced to me with Barker's opus, picked up later (in a manner of speaking) by Zafón's Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, and now reintroduced to me with De Maria's novel. I'm curious if there are more ideas like this out there, and if so, how I might find them.

---

---

---

Playlist:

Feel the Knife - So Raw... So Nasty... So Hideous.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Grey Rubble - Green Shoots (pre-release single)

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Frank Black - Teenager of the Year

Nature Sounds - Pure Nature (Track 7: Bird Calls)

Revocation - Fathomless Catacombs (single)

Braindamage - The Downfall

Perturbator - Bloodlust (single)

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley (Expansion)

L'Enfant De La Forêt - ABRAXAS

Gang of Four - Return the Gift Part 1

---

---

---

Card:

Going to change the way I do this for a while. I'm feeling a bit rusty and disconnected from the cards, so I'm going to take 72 days and go through every card, in whatever order I draw them in, and explore them here. First up - XV: The Devil:

Bringing knowledge. "Bringing light into darkness" - the Lightbringer, as one of Lucifer's many names suggests. This card, like IX, warns against following dogmatic answers laid out by other people's spiritual systems. Worship thine self!!!

Feel the Knife

I've never heard Feel the Knife until just now, but after trying to make it through The Last Drive-In's six-film Nightmareathon last night (and failing miserably), this just felt right, and I'm really digging it. But then, when I find the following description on a band's Bandcamp as a sort of mission statement, I know I'm in familiar territory. Sounds like a warm blanket to me...

"Thrash Metal band created in 2018 with lyrics about 80's horror, 

science fiction, vengeance and dark rituals."

You can head over and listen to and support these guys on their Bandcamp HERE.

---

---

---

Watch:

I'm not much on Anime (LOVE Cowboy Bebop, but that is the work that transcends the genre), and I'm also not much on anything named Terminator after the first movie (the second movie still needs to be reassessed, as I haven't seen it since it was in the theatre), but THIS article on Bloody Disgusting made me think I might give this a chance:

It's long occurred to me that the feel of James Cameron's original film separates itself from all that comes after by essentially being a big-budget exploitation film of the Slasher variety, so the idea that someone might take it back to those roots makes me think this show and I will get along. Also, part of the issue with any of the Terminator sequels is the star power that always seems to come first. None of that shit here, boy. One way that, even as someone who does not count themselves an Anime fan can admit the genre/style's superiority in a case such as this. 

---

---

---

Playlist:

The Veils - Total Depravity

Miranda Sex Garden - Carnival of Souls

The Damned - Night of A Thousand Vampires

Low Flying Hawks - Out For Blood (pre-release single)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Grey Rubble - Green Shoots (pre-release single)

The Damned - Phantasmagoria

Saigon Blue Rain - Oko

Melvins - (A) Senile Animal

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium

Death - Human

The Cops - Free Electricity

---

---

---

Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Six of Cups

• VIII: Strength

• Five of Pentacles

Emotional balance creates a strength that may lead to biting off more than can be chewed. The first two cards suggest positive reinforcement of current ideologies, but the last card reminds me to be weary of overexertion. Also, this little nugget from the Grimoire seems worth remembering:

"Needed: Break the Cycle. Pattern Interrupt a definite counter to this card's presence. Physically write down the object/cause of anxiety." 

No anxiety yet. Well, that's not exactly true...

Jet of the Moon Spider

 

I heard this while drinking with friends this past Saturday night in Nashville. It was a guys' trip for my good friend Grez's 50th birthday, and we spent Friday night/all day Saturday hanging out on Music Row and in East Nashville (fuck the strip). Our last stop Saturday night was Duke's, which Grez and I felt was a proper substitution for Chicago's Estelle's, the late-night Rock n' Roll bar we grew up hanging out at until the wee hours. Duke's was awesome, and the DJ there fired one great tune after another, quite a few of which I had never heard before. When Jet came on, it was loud AF and sounded oh so sweet. I'm not much of a Beatles fan - they are obviously important and have their place in history, as well as their moments I enjoy - but they're the most overrated band ever, in my opinion. I've made the statement "I prefer Wings" for years as a kind of inciting statement when questioned about my stance on John, Paul, Ringo and George, and hearing this Saturday, I can confirm it is, in fact, the truth.

 

---

---

---

Watch:

Shudder released a teaser for V/H/S/Beyond, which drops on October 11th, and while this series doesn't have the best track record with me, based on the Directors lined up, I'm cautiously optimistic:

This one features Kate Siegel's directorial debut on a short written by her frequent collaborator Mike Flanagan, so that should be cool. And Justin Long is directing one? Interesting. 

---

---

---

Read:

It completely slipped my mind that Nathan Ballingrud's Crypt of the Moon Spider came out this past week:

This is part one of Ballingrud's Lunar Gothic Trilogy, and seeing the words "Lunar" and "Gothic" together to describe a novel makes me more excited than I can possibly relate.

---

---

---

Playlist:

High on Fire - Cometh the Storm

The Damned - Evil Spirits

Mike Campbell & The Dirty Knobs - Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits

Garland Jeffreys - Ghost Writer

Bohren and der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission

Calexico - Black Light

The Veils - Total Depravity

Ian Lynch - All You Need is Death OST

X - Under the Big Black Sun

X - Los Angeles

Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun

Japandroids - Celebration Rock

James - Wah Wah

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full

Amigo the Devil - Born Against

The Fabulous Thunderbirds - Tuff Enuff (single)

---

---

---

Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Eight of Pentacles

• XVIII: The Moon

• Five of Cups

Concentration on what previously seemed mastered reveals unknown damage. This is 100% an editing reminder, as I'm at the point where Black Gloves & Broken Hearts is finished; it just has to be edited again. 

Jay Reatard - The Night of Broken Glass

 

Been thinking about this man of late. Damn, 14 years this past January.

 

---

---

---

NCBD:

Pretty cool Pull this week:

I feel like it's been forever since the previous issue of SIKTC! Can't wait to dig back in. 

After re-reading The Nice House By the Lake and going directly into The Nice House By The Sea issue #1, I am psyched for this book! The first series proved to be even more psychologically profound than I'd remembered, and things are certainly ramping up to a new level in this second phase. Can't wait to see where this goes. 

I have many of the original Marvel Transformers issues, starting at, I think, issue # 4. I do not have nor have I ever read number 1, so this facsimile edition is kind of a nostalgic must. 

Quintessons! Quintessons! Quintessons!!!

I have been waiting for this one for a while now. A Frankenstein series that tells the story of each major body part and where it came from is just too good to pass up, even if this one didn't have the added luster of Michael Walsh being the creator. 

Whenever I see Saga show up on my pull, it always feels like an afterthought these days. Then I read the issue and I remember why the book is so great. Not gonna lie - I really think that four-year hiatus hurt this book's momentum. I've loved it from the beginning, and I'm certainly not going anywhere, but it just doesn't feel the same. Maybe a re-read would help? Yeah, well, take a number...

I've been seeing a lot of Etrigan of late, what with re-reading Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, continuing on from that into Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and contemplating a Hit Man re-read somewhere in the not-so-distant future. And then, here he is again. 

---

---

---

Watch:

See and read nothing:

Solid thriller, and knowing absolutely nothing made this a fantastic viewing experience. Props to Zoe Kravitz.

---

---

---

Playlist:

The Damned - Night of A Thousand Vampires

The Veils - Total Depravity

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Ian Lynch - All You Need is Death OST

Herweer - Paracelsus Fiebertraum 

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF

Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit

Joe Jackson - Night and Day

David Bowie - Heroes

Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra

---

---

---

Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Ace of Wands

• I: The Magician

• Knight of Wands

A breakthrough of Will leads to a successful business transaction and a renewed energy of creative force.

Pretty sure I know exactly what this is referring to.