2019: July 20th Shudder's New Creepshow Series Get A Trailer!!!

I've been pretty excited for the new Shudder Creepshow series, and if this first trailer is any indication, it's going to be better than my expectations even. Not easy to do, when reviving something so iconic, but based on everything I've seen from the streaming service so far, they are 100% up to the task.

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New episode of The Horror Vision went up yesterday. This is a special 'Double-sized' edition, where Ray, Anthony, Tori, and myself tell our listeners a little bit about ourselves. After that, topics of discussion ended up revolving around Luca Guadagnino's 2018 Suspiria remake and the merit/non-merit of remakes in general. Finally, our movie of the episode reaction bit is on Matthew Holness' film Possum.

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Continuing on into the heart of Robert S. Wilson's Ashes and Entropy anthology, I read John Langan's short, Breakwater earlier today. Fantastic short fiction; kind of a mash-up of the Crime and Horror genres, I blew through Breakwater at a pretty quick clip, and caught my breath when it ended. After a complicated relationship with Langan's novel The Fisherman, I'd been wanting to read something else by the man, and this story definitely pointed me in the direction of his newest collection, Sefira and Other Betrayals:

Look at that cover art - unnerving is an understatement for artist Santiago Caruso's image, more of which you can find on his website HERE. Mr. Langan's website is HERE and you can order a beautiful limited cloth edition of Sefira directly from Hippocampus Press HERE.

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Playlist from the last two days:

Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Iggy Pop - The Idiot
High On Fire - Snakes of the Divine
Godflesh - Post Self
Crystal Castles - II
The Soft Moon - Criminal
The Soft Moon - Deeper
The Raveonettes - 2016 Atomized
Dean Hurley - Anthology Resource Vol. II Philosophy of Beyond
Blur - 13
The Blues Brothers - Briefcase Full of Blues
Bavaria Buam - Live

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Card of the day:

Balance. I need this right now. Trying to balance my interests has put things out of whack, creatively.

2019: July 18th IT Chapter Two Final Trailer

I've been avoiding a lot of trailers of late, as I find they usually give too much of the movie away. I find the best viewing experiences are the most uninformed ones. That said, I'm glad I watched this IT Chapter Two final trailer, simply because after the disappointment of Pet Sematary, I needed something to remind me how good this IT adaptation has been. This looks fantastic, plus I don't really feel like the trailer gives too much away. September 6th is not that far away...

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As soon as I finished my re-read of Grant Morrison and Richard Case's Doom Patrol run, I jumped back into the Robert S. Wilson edited anthology Ashes and Entropy and read Autumn Christian's The Shadowmachine. Awesome story. Probably my favorite in the collection so far. There's an almost Neil Gaiman-esque approach to reality here, without the more baroque or 'flowery' aspects of Gaiman's writing (not a shot - I love Gaiman. I'm merely making distinctions). The story itself doesn't tread Gaiman territory, though; Christian spins a pretty terrifying tale of technological seduction and it's eerie as all hell. Based on this I've added her newest novel, Girl Like A Bomb, to my must-read list; it's available HERE.

Ashes and Entropy is turning out to be my favorite anthology in ages, and I can't recommend it enough. Available directly from Nightscape Press HERE.

Also, Nightscape Press has started an emergency GoFundMe anthology titled Horror For the Raices, where a $10 donation or more will get you an advance, uncorrected book copy of the anthology as soon as it's ready. The book is edited by Robert S. Wilson and Jennifer Wilson. Donate HERE.
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Playlist from 7/17:

Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
Jenny Hval - Blood Bitch
Adam Kesher - Local Girl (Hatchmatik Remix)
Beak> - L.A. Playback
M83 Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Track Back The Radiance

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No card today.

2019: July 17th 3 From Hell Trailer

Although I've been waiting for this, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Rob Zombie returning to the Firefly Clan characters. Why? Well, A) they pretty clearly died at the end of The Devil's Rejects, and B) it's weird when filmmakers put you in a position of rooting for such ultimately disgusting characters. Also, this looks like Zombie has added Natural Born Killers into his blender, so that may run the risk of feeling overly borrowed from. We'll see. Normally, Zombie can more or less mix in the stuff he 'samples' from his influences in a way that feels like homage instead of theft. Hopefully, that will be true here as well.

As for the 'how did they survive?' question, I noticed a quick flash at 0:20 in the trailer of a newspaper headline that reads, "Satanic Recovery," and I'm wondering (Read: Hoping) the recovery is pulled off via some weird call-back to Dr. Satan and all the strange, quasi-supernatural stuff that happened in the final segment of House of 1000 Corpses, all of which was completely ignored for The Devil's Rejects. That absence was disappointing at the time Rejects was released, however, over the years I have grown to understand and applaud the decision as a matter of tone - Dr. Satan and all related characters would never have fit into Rejects; the one deleted scene with the Doctor was definitely best left out. Now, however, this might be a great way to bring him back.

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Frank Black Appreciation Week concludes today with another of my favorite songs from The Catholics-era Black. Released on the album Dog in the Sand, this was, I believe, the first time Black had recorded with Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago since the break-up of the band. The resulting material - especially this particular track - is a doozy. I remember hearing around the time of this album's release that the lyrics were about how, after Black's father passed away, when it came to the task of going through his home, dozens of guns were found, all loaded with only a single bullet.

Creeeeeepy, but awesome.



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Playlist from 7/16:

Frank Black - The Cult of Ray
Preoccupations - Eponymous
Jim Jarmusch and Jozef Va Wissen - The Mystery of Heaven
The Jesus Lizard - Liar
White Lung - Eponymous
Uniform and The Body - Penance (Pre-release single)
Uniform and The Body - Mental Wounds Not Healing*
Sunn O))) - Life Metal


*I totally just figured out that this album is named after a lyric in Ozzy's Crazy Train. It made me love both these bands even more than I already do.

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Card of the day:

Feeling like this is a good sign that I cross a finish line today.

2019: July 16th New Chelsea Wolfe!

New Chelsea Wolfe Video, from the forthcoming album Birth of Violence, out September 13th on Sargent House. Pre-order HERE.

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Frank Black Appreciation Week continues today with a live rendition of my favorite track off the third Frank Black solo record, The Cult of Ray. Filmed in 1996, this footage isn't great, but the performance sure is. Great to see Lyle Workman in his prime here.



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Playlist from 7/15:

Aerosmith - Pump
Motörhead - 1916
Frank Black and the Catholics - Eponymous
Pixies - Bossonova
Pixies - Come On Pilgrim
Pixies - Head Carrier
Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror
Shellac - The End of Radio
The Misfits - Static Age
Minsk - The Crash and the Draw
Spotlights - Love and Decay
The Bangles - In Your Room
David Bowie - Hunky Dory

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No card today.

July 15th - Frank Black/Teenage Fanclub

Day 6 of Frank Black Appreciation Week, and I'm trying to dig deep. Like I said previously, I could easily just post 7 days of The Catholics, or Pixies, but this man's catalogue winds deep, and I really wanted to try and represent that, so here's a track off Frank's 1994 John Peel Session, where Glasgow band Teenage Fanclub acted as his band.

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I finished my re-read of Grant Morrison and Richard Case's six-volume Doom Patrol series from late 80s/early 90s DC Vertigo. SO good, and reading the source material just confirms my belief that the DCU television adaptation of Doom Patrol is the best comic adaptation I have ever seen.

The final volume, Planet Love, has such a harrowing example of an Apocalypse scenario, I dare say I read it in a quick, edge-of-my-seat burst. The Candlemaker is an example of a comic book foe who gestates quickly and thrives on being somewhat two-dimensional.

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I was so very wrong about Drab Majesty's Modern Mirror the other day when I said it would drop July 26th. I came home later the same day to find the vinyl I'd ordered months ago on my doorstep, and I spent Friday night and several hours over the subsequent weekend listening to it. Really good, if a bit short. The vinyl is a little bit annoying, in that it's a double LP, so there are literally two songs on each side. That's a lot of superfluous flipping, and a very start/stop listening experience, if you ask me.

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Friday's episode of The Horror Vision, wherein we discuss Possum, as well as Luca Guadagnino's 2018 Suspiria, which we've talked about before, but here go into at length and a host of other films, will be up in a few days. In the interim, my co-host Anthony Guerra caught the Aja/Raimi flick Crawl the other night and did a quick reaction piece. Check it out:

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Playlist from the last couple of days:

Frank Black and the Catholics - Pistolero
Boy Harsher - Careful
Black Polygons - Lobélia
Motörhead - Ace of Spades
Motörhead - 1916
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - Up Your Alley
The Monkees - Eponymous
Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror
Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor

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Card of the day:

Gonna need it. Two potentially stressful weeks coming up at work, and I'm still slogging through this final read of Shadow Play - which, by the way, is turning out very good. It's just difficult to re-read this for a third time in a row now. It's affecting all my other reading as well.

2019: July 14th - Frank Black Appreciation Week Day

Day 5. LOVE this track, despite the mispronunciation of Bowie's name.

2019: July 13th - The Pixies: Tame

I may have made you wait longer than other folks would have to get to a track by The Pixies, here during my Frank Black Appreciation Week, but you knew I'd get there, right?

I won't lie, I thought about not posting any. I could fill a couple months posting beloved Black Francis songs and completely eschew his first major band, but then, well, I'd be lying to myself. It's weird; for some reason I have a bit of a grudge against the Pixies. I'm not sure when that happened, or why exactly. I think it's a combination of a few factors. Bear with me while I dig around in my mind and see if I can explain this, really more to myself than to you, but thanks for being here for me to bounce this stuff off, sometimes that just works better, talking out loud to someone else.

I'll never forget when Mr. Brown turned me onto The Pixies back in the mid-90s - he lent me Bossonova and it completely bowled me over. The first few tracks are epic, packed with that wonderful madness that Joey Santiago and Frank Black bring out in one another when things really get going. Then you get to Digging for Fire and Down to the Well, and they're so sweet and sugary, I was in love instantly.

I should specify that my introduction came well after the Pixies were over, and so at the same time Brown lent me Bossonova, he also lent me Frank Black's third solo album, The Cult of Ray. I loved that too, but it paled in comparison to how Bossonova made me feel. As I began to consume the other Pixies records, they became my band. Not just my band, but one of our bands - the music I shared with Brown and Sonny, my two best friends. Mr. Black and company were part of what seemed to us, a secret handshake. I didn't know anyone else who was into The Pixies, or Soul Coughing, to name two, and those bands became ours. This was while we were building our first band, Wink Lombardi and the Constellations, and it was an amazing time in my life. I'd just gotten out of a three-year, high school relationship, and I had amazing friends I saw every day. We'd play music, go to obscure diners for coffee and pie, stay up to all hours getting stoned and recording bizarre acoustic tracks, or noise sessions on my Tascam 4 Track. It was amazing. And The Pixies were one of the major soundtracks to that, so I'm protective of it, now, many years later.

I suppose that's another thing about The Pixies that I'm protective of - it can be hard for me to go back and really immerse myself in listening to these albums that I absolutely love because they trigger massive nostalgia pulses in me. And I guess I want that kept in its place. Couple with that the fact that directly after Cult of Ray, Frank Black formed The Catholics and began releasing albums that I actually got to see him play live, and that helped shape the next chapter of my life. Those Catholics records are HUGE to me.

So, I guess it's actually kind of obvious why I prefer Frank Black to the Pixies, and why, as much as I LOVE Indy Cindy, the first Pixies reunion album, I would rather Black keep moving forward than trying to go home again.

Anyway, every song on every Pixies album rules, but this is one today rules a little bit more than most.

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Had The Horror Vision folks over last night and recorded a new episode that will hopefully be up later today or tomorrow. Our movie reaction for the episode? Possum. Here's the trailer:



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Playlist from 7/12:

M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts
Motörhead - Ace of Spades
Motörhead - March or Die
Motörhead - Eponymous
Black Polygons - Lobélia
Boy Harsher - Careful
Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror
Frank Black and the Catholics - Pistolero

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No card today.