Featured in Jenn Wexler's The Sacrifice Game, now an annual Christmas watch for me. Check out L.A. Witch's Bandcamp HERE. I've just started exploring their stuff and I'm digging everything I hear. A little Mazy Star, a little Classic Rock a la The Door, maybe some Cults, but all distinctly L.A. Witch!
Watch:
A VERY solid film. I really dig Jenn Wexler's The Ranger as well, but this one has such a turn to it, just blows me away every time.
Read:
K gifted me Grady Hendrix's How to Sell a Haunted House for Christmas, and after starting it the other day, I'm already more than halfway through. Fantastic!
I don't want to say too much, just that if you've read and dug any of Grady Hendrix's other novels, you'll definitely dig this. If you're unfamiliar, I'd still say start with My Best Friend's Exorcism - which remains one of my all-time favorite novels - but this is also very good.
This particular track is old now - dropped way earlier in the year. That said, I think it's the most recent release from James Kent under his Perturbator moniker. Recently, I went through a big jab on Kent's music and got to thinking that, damn, it's been a minute. Lustful Sacraments dropped in 2021 and Final Light in 2022, so we're due. Then I saw this:
I immediately checked the Blood Music website and found it is down for updates, so that tells me the new record is coming SOON! Perturbator is by far their biggest name - not to take anything away from the other wonderful artists on Blood Music - and it makes sense they would reconfigure the site to accommodate a drop this big. So I'm checking daily and wanted to pass the tip along.
NCBD:
This week's pull is on Thursday, and it's the biggest one in a while:
New book. Not sure I'm picking this up until I hold it in my hands, but I dig the concept and the art. Here's the solicitation blurb from League of Comic Geeks:
"A tormented Oklahoma sheriff and a scrappy photojournalist hunt a serial killer at the height of the dust-choked Great Depression.
In the darkest days of the Great Depression, death stalks the Dust Bowl. As towering dust storms blast the parched Oklahoma panhandle, farmers try to flee the failing town of New Hope, but no one gets far. Battling his own demons, Sheriff Meadows teams up with Sarah, a traveling photojournalist, in a desperate fight to stop a serial killer on the loose — the Death that rides the Dusters."
I'm not going to lie; part of my interest in this one stems from its similarities to a project I previously worked on with Jonathan Grimm. Our never really caught hold of our creative energies, but I'm curious as hell to see someone else work with the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. Scott Snyder and Attila Futaki kind of took this road with Severed - which is excellent - but the setting in that one wasn't quite the character it sounds like here.
Being that DC books come out on Tuesday, I actually messaged Rick's to see if this came out and it did! Great excuse to re-read the first two and hopefully prep for the fourth and final book, which, as of now, has no solicitation date.
Things are heating up in the Battle for Springfield. We have mutated Cobra Vipers of all varieties, ninjas, robots - after avoiding the absurd for so long, Larry Hama has embraced the SciFi potential of this property with open arms without sacrificing his real-world military background, and it works!
Issue one was pretty cool, so I'm in on this Norwegian Black Metal Horror/Thriller. We've got a dad female fan/photographer, a nefarious band, and a whole lot of Vengeance coming down through the woods.
I think I said the same thing last month, but what the hell - HOT ROD! I felt a little guilty not putting Void Rivals in my Top Ten Comics of 2024 list, but Transformers and Cobra Commander won out on what is at least a partial nostalgic advantage. Still, this book is probably my favorite of the Energon Universe, and it just keeps getting better as those properties we love are enmeshed in Kirkman's new addition.
Watch:
Tonight! All my dodging and weaving to avoid Robert Egger's Nosferatu trailer pays off when I plop my arse in the theatre and watch it for the first time (pretty sure there will be a return engagement):
My excitement for this one is not super high, not because I think it will be anything short of extraordinary, I'm still just a little baffled Eggers chose to follow The Northman with a remake. That said, my guess is Eggers's version will be less a remake and more his own thing.
Playlist:
Steve Moore - Christmas Bloody Christmas OST
Windhand - Eternal Return
Windhand - Eponymous
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Mr. Bungle - Raging Wraith of the Easter Bunny
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
Dreamkid - Daggers
Perturbator - Bloodlust (single)
Health - DISCO4 :: Part 1
Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments
Cult of Luna - Vertikal I & II
Final Light - Eponymous
Rodney Crowell - Christmas Everywhere
Calexico - Seasonal Shift
Steve Moore - Mind's Eye OST
Steve Moore - VFW OST
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
Love the way this deck looks under different lighting.
This spread is basically a cautionary tale - watch out for dogmatic principles and false prophets who appeal to emotion.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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).
5) Cobra Commander
4) The Deviant
3) Houses of the Unholy
2) Principles of Necromancy
1) Jeff Lemire's FISHFLIES
Finally, a special shout out to Chip Zdarksy's Z Comic News, one of the most delightful surprises in years!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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)
