John Carpenter for Christmas!

 

John Carpenter posted this on his YouTube channel yesterday. Very cool. 

Merry Christmas From Me & Calexico!

 From Calexico's EXCELLENT Seasonal Shift record, which Mr. Brown gifted me several years ago, and which has become a seasonal favorite. Have a wonderful holiday, secular or not, and remember! It's about Peace, Love and Happiness. As in, EVERYBODY'S happiness.

Favorite Comics of 2024

Last week, Mike Shinabargar and I released a video outlining our five favorite comics of 2024. I wanted to break that down and round the list out as a comprehensive Top Ten because that's how deep the Letterman runs in my DNA. 

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10) Andrew Krahnke's Bloodrik

A modern comics success story, I loved Andrew Krahnke's Bloodrik and am dying for more. A "Barbarian Survives in the Prehistoric Wilderness" story a la old-school Krull or Conan, Bloodrik is Krahnke's labor of love, taking it from a self-released project to a three-issue mini from Image. 

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9) Energon Universe: Transformers

Daniel Warren Johnson, Jorge Corona and their crew have, in just over two years, given us a brand new all-time Transformers continuity. Let me make my preferences plain: We have the original Transformers cartoon and movie (I really only care about the post-movie seasons), we have the original Marvel comic continuity developed by Bob Budiansky and later taken to glorifying new heights by Simon Furman, and for a looong time that was it. I didn't go looking for more, either. IDW fired off countless iterations that I had no interest in. 

Robert Kirkman's Energon Universe, however, is more than Nostalgia Fuel - it's proof you can revitalize nostalgic properties for a new age, taking the benefits of creative hindsight and applying them to make something new and exciting. This Transformers book does that, and I've loved every minute of it so far. Aso, SO much purple!

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8) Epitaphs From the Abyss

Earlier this year, seminal indie stalwart Oni Press acquired the rights to and relaunched EC Comics. Instead of just banking on the nostalgia and notoriety of the label, they actually approached this in a very smart and refreshing way. There are A LOT of Horror Anthologies on comic book stands these last few years, and none of them do the kind of justice to the format Epitaphs does. 

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7) Michael Walsh's Frankenstein

I've missed Michael Walsh's Horror Anthology The Silver Coin immensely this year, but having his take on my favorite Universal Monster acted as a nice reprieve from the Walsh-Withdrawal. I love Frank, both the original Novel version by Mary Shelley and the James Whale Hollywood version from the 30s, so seeing Walsh play in this world was wonderful. The four-issue mini-series retells the Whale version, adding new layers of depth by showing us the stories of several of the body parts that went into making the monster and how the acquisition of those pieces affected characters we had not been introduced to until now. 

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6) Phantom Road

The "Gottasee" of this book is staggering, and it's on bloody hiatus as Lemire starts up Minor Arcana and confesses he's burnt out on Horror. 

AHHHHHHHH!!!!

Seriously, we know so very little of what is happening in Phantom Road, but everything we've seen is bonkers, so I really hope Mr. Lemire and artist Gabriel H. Walta return soon.

Finally, here are my top five, which I'll list here but leave the video to explain (it's all pretty self-explanatory by this point, anyway). 

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5) Cobra Commander

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4) The Deviant

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3) Houses of the Unholy

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2) Principles of Necromancy

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1) Jeff Lemire's FISHFLIES

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Finally, a special shout out to Chip Zdarksy's Z Comic News, one of the most delightful surprises in years!

All in all, a really great year!

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Knower - Do Hot Girls Like Chords?

After posting about  Genevieve Artadi last week, my friend Garrett introduced me to the band Knower. While yes, that is a terrible name, this is a fantastic band, and Ms. Artadi provides vocals. I really don't know anything beyond the two tracks Garrett shared with me so far, but I'll be digging today.

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Watch:

I wasn't interested in this one until I saw John Carpenter is doing the score. 

Not a bad looking flick by any means, and odds are I would have gone to see it in the theatre just to go. The movie pass really makes that a no-brainer. But A24 has achieved that same connotation with me that Touchstone Pictures did in the 80s and Fox Searchlight did in the 00s - they have such a specific tone MOST of the time that they begin to feel as though there is an A24 checklist behind the production of each one. Again - there are definite exceptions to this. Most of their BIG releases still feel unique and important. But a lot of the 'fodder' that fills the calendar between those releases feels... rote. Will that be the case here? Well, I don't know, but I'm down for a non-Carpenter film scored by Carpenter, so I'm in.

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Playlist:

Final Light - Eponymous

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Willie Nelson - Pretty Paper

James Last - Christmas Dancing

Various - I'll Be Home for Christmas

Calexico - Seasonal Shift

Rodney Crowell - Christmas Everywhere

Bing Crosby - Merry Christmas

The Bangles - All Over the Place

Dreamkid - Daggers

The Smashing Pumpkins - Luna (single)

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Extra Acme

Nat "King" Cole - Christmas with Nat King Cole

NIN - Pretty Hate Machine

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Card:

Today's card for study is VII: The Chariot.

Here's what I have written in the Grimoire for this one:

"The Chalice/Grail - origin of ideas (mushroom???) origin of Imagination and with it, Creativity."

This card represents a new idea or path as the outcome of an ordeal. Whereas The Fool is fresh, this is a beginning rooted in what came before, hence the chariot imagery. A vehicle, which can also be a door or method of transport.  Seeing this means you should get excited, but you should also recognize that change is coming.  

Crowley offers this, which I quite like:

"The canopy of the Chariot is the night-sky blue of Binah <THe Great Mother>. The pillars are the four pillars of the Universe, the regiment of Tetragrammaton. The scarlet wheels represent the original energy of Geburah which causes the revolving motion."

It's good to encounter passages like this in The Book of Thoth, as so much of it is nonsensical, Crowley talking a lot to convince everyone how much he knows that we don't. He also equates this card to Cancer, and while I don't traffic in Astrology, he continues, "Cancer is the cardinal sign of the element of Water, and represents the first keen onrush of that element." This fits my own interpretation, so I wanted to double-down and mention it here. 

Desecration of Souls!

 

Working on a short story on Nosleep that has a very "Satanic Panic" vibe, so allow me to perpetuate that mood with some classic Mercyful Fate!

The first chapter of I Found Evidence My Parents Were Members of a Satanic Cult is up HERE. Check it out and throw up the horns when King belts out those infamous lines:

Copulation in the night 

Two shadows upon a grave 

Screams of pleasure, 

Screams of pain 

Young lovers you must be insane 

It's desecration of souls 

In their holy lair 

So I say again stay away 

It's desecration of souls

No on-the-grave fuckin' in my story (yet), but this definitely helps offset the otherwise all-encompassing Christmas vibe as we celebrate the holiday early this Saturday.

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Watch:

I had not heard of Grafted or Co-writer/Director Sasha Rainbow before Bloody Disgusting posted about it yesterday, but without even watching this trailer, I am in!

It's no secret that Body Horror was already on the rise as a subgenre when Coralie Fargeat's The Substance blew everyone's doors off earlier this year; will it go the route of the Zombie and Possession themes and proliferate to an unsustainable level? Hopefully not, but if that happens, it's still a ways down the road. Until then, let's sit back and watch through our fingers as filmmakers bring us 

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Playlist:

Pixies - Doolittle

Pixies - Surfer Rosa

Grandy Ducy - Petite Fours

Nothing - Guilty of Everything

Circle Jerks - Group Sex

Suicidal Tendencies - Eponymous

Genevieve Artadi - Forever Forever

Zeal & Ardor - GREIF

Deafheaven - New Bermuda

Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Suspended in Dusk Version)

Deftones - Koi No Yokan

Deftones - Ohms

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Adorable Vendetta

 

I Watched Nowhere again last night, this time with K, and it turns out it was Director Greg Araki's birthday! Wow, I guess it's kind of kismet that I fall in love with this movie now. Such an amazing soundtrack - the CD for which hauls a cool $99 on eBay - and of the countless incredible songs and artists represented - minus hole and filter - "Vendetta" by Adorable really stands out. A bit of research shows that this band kind of got swallowed by time and the digitization of the music industry because aside from people posting this on YouTube, it is, ahem, Nowhere to be found.

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Watch:

I followed Nowhere with Alex Cox's Repo Man. A classic, yes, but one I've only ever watched one other time, and that was in 2018! 

I don't know how I missed out on Repo Man in the 80s, 90s, 00s, and most of the 10s - hell, I saw Cox's Straight to Hell more than a decade before I saw this - but Repo Man made a pretty deep impression on me upon first viewing and more than lived up to that watching it again. Perfect double feature with Nowhere.

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NCBD:

This week's pull:

Every issue I've read of Epitaphs From the Abyss has been fantastic, so really looking forward to continuing the anthology vibes this month!

Si Spurrier's Hellblazer epic comes to a close, and yes, while we knew Morpheus would be appearing, I didn't expect to see the pre-Daniel version. Can't wait to see what this is about and how this tale concludes.

Not super jazzed about this book, but I'm still going to give it the benefit of the doubt. Seriously though - put Baroness back in the tight black leather already, will ya?

This cover instantly sells this issue. I think Jason Aaron's TMNT has now moved to monthly, but I knew that was coming. So far, I'm not going anywhere.

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Playlist:

John Harrison - Day of the Dead OST

Pixies - Doolittle

Pixies - Come On Pilgrim

Pixies - Bossonova

Chat Pile - Cool World

The Los Angeles League of Musicians - LA LOM

Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears

Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves

The Soft Moon - Criminal

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Today's card for study is the Prince of Cups:

"Emotional depths honed by intellect."

The airy aspect of water, or the intellectual side of emotion. What's that you say? "Intellectual side of emotion sounds like an oxymoron?"

Yes.

That said, this card should be taken as a reminder to strive to not let our emotions get the better of us, or a clue that our reason is clouded by emotion. 

My Ten Favorite Albums of 2024

This list isn't to say I don't have more than ten favorite albums in 2024 because this year has been chocked full of great music. Maybe I'm just more in tune or something; I don't know. A couple years ago, I remember doing this list and saying up front that I felt like I spent way more time listening to older music. Not this year; I could barely keep up, and every time I thought I had this list finished, something else came my way and made me rethink everything. Here then, is perhaps the most tentative top-ten list I've done since 2013, when I kind of bitched out and did eleven. 

Note: I did away with the numbering because the order is interchangeable and impossible to commit to. That said, Numbers one and two are definitely my favorite albums of the year.

• Zeal and Ardor - GREIF

The first Zeal and Ardor record written by the band, not just founder Manuel Gagneux, and it's fantastic. Very different from previous albums, but that's the thing that impresses me the most about this band - the evolution. From a mission statement that would have worn out its welcome in the hands of most others, Manuel has shepherded this project to new heights, and there's never a moment I'm not 100% enthralled. 

Buy HERE.

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• Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

Another left-hand turn from Ms. Wolfe! There are moments on this record that remind me of mid-90s trip-hop, a la Poe's first record. There are also moments where I feel the dark echo chamber of Chelsea Wolfe's mind, and it continues to draw me into her strange, Stoner-brand Desert Psyche Rock. There's something so expressive about every aspect of the music Ms. Wolfe creates - I'm literally transported into what feels like a very clearly defined psychic space, each album its own specific time and place. Her world only briefly syncs up with the 'real,' which makes listening feel like I am literally catching onto pieces of her consciousness. It feels intimate and a little scary at times, like a lot of the best music does. 

Buy HERE.

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• Shellac - To All Trains

Yeah, like the final Shellac album wasn't going to be on this list. I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of the band's previous record, and this one... shit, I've had a lot of internal trouble accepting this record simply because it's release dovetailed with the death of one of the most important persons in modern music. A Chicago native, like myself, and what's more, one of the last bastions of integrity turned up to eleven, Steve Albini. But Shellac's character is something etched into me across the divide since 2000's Thousand Hurts, the first Shellac record I bought and fell deeply in love with. The cynicism, the in-jokes that long-time listeners fall in on simply by having gotten to know these strange men who play jagged, angular analog indie rock with fists... it's all just such a pleasure, and I will miss it for the rest of my days.

Buy HERE.

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• Moon Wizard - Sirens

I love this record! I had never heard of Moon Wizard before Sirens was released somewhere in the first few months of the year, but this one has been a constant companion ever since. This four-piece writes and plays this blissfully melodic sludge that feels extremely well-defined for such a relatively young band. The melodic strains of lead singer Sami Wolf's voice are perfectly matched by  Aaron Brancheau's guitar, whose riffs and arranging go from soaring emotional heights to "bash your fucking head in" even while wielding the spry, haunting melodies strewn across the runtime of this record. Magnolia is a forever song for me, burned into my brain upon contact and perhaps matched only by Luminaire's ghostly ability to snare the very breath from my lungs. 

Buy HERE.

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• The Cure - Songs For A Lost World

Talk about a late entry. As much as I am an eternal fan of The Cure's albums Pornography and Disintegration, I haven't really kept up with anything they've done since the late 90s. Even the other 80s/90s albums stay on the outskirts of my heart. I love Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Head on the Door, et al, but none of them are essential to my being the way the other two are. Then they release Songs For A Lost World, and Whammo! Another complete emotional sledgehammer! This is what I feel The Cure does best. 

Both aforementioned previous albums destroyed me at different stages of my life, shattered me, and eventually put me back together. That's exactly what Songs For A Lost World promises; I'm just too emotionally defensive at the moment to allow it full access. You get it from the album's title, yeah? This fucker's poignant, especially when you consider it was released back in late October, right before... well, you know. 

Upon first listen, every tune, every melody seemed instantly ingrained in me, so that upon each subsequent early listen, I felt I already knew every song by heart. These songs hurt, though. Maybe it's the times, maybe it's the fact that I came out of the first months of 2024 actively acknowledging that we now live in a dystopian future, but this album just feels like what the world needs to, well, go out on.

Buy HERE.

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• Amigo The Devil - Yours Until the War Is Over

The album whose title I misquoted the most this year, Amigo the Devil has been increasingly endeared to me for a few years now, and I have my very good friend Mr. Brown to thank for that. The post-modern Singer/Songwriter tradition I fell in love with through Nick Cave and Tom Waits is alive and well in this man, as he balances the delicate and diabolical sides of his own existence against an ever-evolving tableau of scenarios that the most debaucherous of us can only shake out heads and say, "Goddamn, I'd like to buy this man a beer."

Buy HERE.

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• Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves

Full disclosure, since this record was released in March, Justin has come to be a friend of mine. He's guested on The Horror Vision twice this year; however, before the release of his score for a non-existent Giallo, I only knew him as a person I followed on IG. One I wasn't entirely sure how I discovered in the first place. We were obviously like-minded mutants, but when I saw him begin to post about this album, I knew it was going to be a huge record for me. Coincidentally, I spent the year writing a Giallo novel, and this record immediately slipped into place as a constant soundtrack for those sessions. It colored many key scenes in the book and put me in that very specific Giallo tone, which isn't exactly easy to do for the first time invoking it with prose.

Buy HERE.

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• Oranssi Pazzuzu - Muuntautuja

Oranssi Pazuzu's Muuntautuja is the first record the band has released since I became a fan. I'm still not familiar with their entire body of work to date; it was late last year that the members of Baroness put this band on my radar by way of their "What's in My Bag?" on the Amoeba Music YouTube channel, but the moment I hit play on their Live At Roadburn album from 2017, I was hooked. I suppose their off-kilter approach to psychedelic Black Metal scratches the same itch for me that Blut Aus Nord does; the songs are all cohesive but unlike anything I've ever heard before. This was especially true the first time I hit PLAY on the track "Valotus". It was late; I was buzzed, had headphones on, and didn't quite understand what exactly I was listening to. It was music, yes, but there was such a "Cosmic Occult" element to the sounds and arranging that I wasn't sure how most of what I was hearing was being made or orchestrated. I knew at that exact moment this would be an album that would earn my devotion by confounding me, by pushing the boundaries of what I like and listen to and comprehend about music. 

Buy HERE.

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• Drug Church - Prude

I was only really familiar with Patrick Kindlon's name as one of the two writers on We Can Never Go Home, the comic/graphic novel released by Black Mask Comics back in 2014. After that, I followed him through a few more series, not realizing this band I started hearing about counted him as singer. When my good friend Jacob recommended 2022's Hygiene that year, it slowly became a go-to, and as it did, my research revealed Kindlon's involvement. Which, of course, only made me love Drug Church more. Now, with Prude, I can honestly say Kindlon's lyrics are among my favorites out there at the moment. Lyrics aren't something I adhere to easily; I like a lot of music where I couldn't sing along if I tried. But Prude is sharp and astute from the jump, and every track kicks ass musically, as well. 

Buy HERE.

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• Ministry - HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES

I don't know how Uncle Al keeps doing it, but Ministry continues to not just be relevant ideologically, but musically as well. Goddamn, if this isn't my favorite album of theirs since 2008's The Last Sucker. The samples are spot-on, the lyrics angry but (mostly) thought-provoking, and the songs blaze a path from track one through to the end, with penultimate track "Cult of Suffering" and its guest vocals by Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hütz weighing in as my favorite song of the year. 

Buy HERE.

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There you go. Seriously though, I could easily make a second top ten for the year. So many albums this year! Here's to what's coming in 2025!!!

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