Any day we get a new Chelsea Wolfe track is a good day. This one is in conjunction with DC Comics and the Dark Knights: Death Metal series they're doing that I know absolutely nothing about except that I couldn't care less about it. Except, now I love this song. So that's one thing Dark Knights: Death Metal has going for it.
DC is releasing a full soundtrack for the series, which, if you're of a mind, you can pre-order in whatever format you like HERE. Tracklisting below:
Mastodon - Forged by Neron
Chelsea Wolfe - Diana
HEALTH, Tyler Bates - ANTI-LIFE (feat. Chino Moreno) Maria Brink, Tyler Bates - Meet Me In Fire (feat. Andy Biersack)
Grey Daze - Anything, Anything
Rise Against - Broken Dreams, Inc.
Manchester Orchestra - Never Ending
Denzel Curry, PlayThatBoiZay - Bad Luck
Carach
Angren - Skull With a Forked Tongue
Starcrawler - Good Time Girl
GUNSHIP, Tyler Bates - Berserker (feat. Dave Lombardo)
Greg Puciato, Tyler Bates, Gil Sharone - Now You've Really Done It
Show Me
The Body - Stone Cold
Earth
IDLES - Sodium
Soccer Mommy - Kissing in the Rain
That's a pretty interesting lineup, and despite my lack of interest in the comic, the artwork is cool and features heavily in the vinyl release.
Watch:
Planning on watching this over the weekend:
Also, after fighting through 30 or so minutes of Zack "Slo Mo" Snyder's Army of the Dead last week, I may try again. May.
Playlist:
Various - Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series)
Windhand - Split EP
Les Discrets
Lustmord - Heresy
Swans - The Seer
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Card:
Ah, I love a direct pull:
Dealing with an ongoing staffing issue on my team at the biorepository. Always tempted to say things I should not, so this is a great reminder to play it cool.
Violet Cold's album Empire of Love is a bit uneven to me, but that's because it swings BIG, and that's not a bad thing. This track was the first I'd ever heard of them - really a one-man project - when it came up in Apple Music's algorithm. I wasn't sure how I felt about it at first, but it quickly gained favor. Then, yesterday morning, I realized I had this song irrevocably in my head, and as soon as I fired it up on my headphones, it felt like an ice-cold mouthful of water on a hot day.
This is a day late, but my Wednesday proved to be a beast.
This week's NCBD was considerably quieter than I've had in a while, for sure. Which is nice on the wallet, and the stack of books I still haven't read from last week.
This cover art is SICK. I'm thinking this is the issue where all hell breaks loose and I can't wait to see that!
Possibly my favorite comic at the moment, I'm really loving Daniel Warren Johnson's take on this character. This book reminds me of old TSR gaming, 80s style, where it felt like ideas, monsters and weapons from every corner of pop culture were being drawn together into one great, big beautifully pulpy soup. It's Daniel Warren Johnson's aesthetic, and it's enhanced by his art, which is just scratchy enough in the right places to feel like a throwback to the way comics used to look.
Feels like I've been waiting for this one for longer than however long it's been since The Last Ronin #2 came out.
A very solid historical Horror story.
Playlist:
Goatsnake - Breakfast with the King
Silent - Modern Hate
Vreid - Wild North West
Harakiri for the Sky - III: Trauma
Violet Cold - Empire of Love
Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Live for the Dead
The Jesus Lizard - Liar
CCR - Eponymous
The Replacements - Tim
The Veils - Time Stays, We Go
The Birthday Party - Mutiny/The Bad Seed
Various - Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series)
Whenever my good friend Jacob sends me a band to listen to, I know it's going to rule. Silent, however, even tops the best of his previous recommendations. I cannot express how much I LOVE this album; it embodies everything I love about a modern post-punk aesthetic and reminds me A LOT of how much I loved that first Savages album back in what feels like one hundred years ago.
Watch:
I don't really know much about Trese yet, except my DwC cohost Mike Wellman sent me the trailer last week and it's being made by/with people who our friend Karen Kunawicz knows. Mike has a copy of the book it's based on hold for me, so I should be picking that up and reading it soon, so I will leave you with the trailer for now and report back on the book later this week.
Really cool stuff, from the looks of it.
Playlist:
Led Zeppelin - Coda
Silent - Modern Hate
Mudvayne - Choices (single)
Exhalants - Atonement
Windhand - Split
Deftones - Ohms
Violet Cold - Empire of Love
ZZ Top - Rhythmeen
White Zombie - Astro-Creep 2000
QOTSA - Villains
Goatsnake - Black Age Blues
Lustmord - Heresy
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Leviathan the Fleeing Serpent - Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Love for the Dead
Various - Lords of Salem OST
Card:
I can't really go into it here - or more like I don't want to at the moment - but I take this as a direct commentary on a BIG question that has been on both K and my own mind these last few days.
Probably the second Led Zeppelin song I ever heard, and possibly the first one I heard while seeking out the band's music (oh so long ago now), I still have a huge crush on "Ozone Baby". I feel a huge Zep binge coming on and I welcome it with open arms.
Watch:
While I won't be watching Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead tonight - it's Joe Bob night, of course - I will be checking this out at some point this weekend. I'm hoping for big, dumb fun but not really expecting to get even that. I really hope I'm wrong.
Speaking of Netflix, here's a teaser the streaming giant just dropped for an upcoming flick that has me very intrigued. I hardly go to Netflix anymore for anything, however, that sometimes works against me. I have to try and remind myself that despite the ginormous size of the company and somewhat banal output, they did bring us flicks like Cam, Hold the Dark and even Stranger Things. So they are capable of really hitting the nail on the head.
Love that red!
Playlist:
Les Discrets - Prédateurs
Alice in Chains - Dirt
Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark
The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out!
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
White Lung - Eponymous
The Jesus Lizard - Liar
Jackie Wilson - Higher
Blanck Mass - Animated Violence Mild
Faith No More - The Real Thing
David Zinman, Dawn Upshaw & London Sinfonietta - Gorecki: Symphony No. 3
Dead Man's Bones - Eponymous
Led Zeppelin - Coda
Card:
And now for something completely different...
I hung out with my good friend Keller yesterday (we're both vaxxed), and at the crux of our evening, he pulled a spread for me with his Marseille Deck. My question pertained to K and I looking for a house, and his answer was extremely helpful, even if it wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear.
This track popped up in Rose Glass's Saint Maud - which we review and discuss on the newest episode of The Horror Vision Horror Podcast, and it made me immediately pull out Down and pop it into rotation. Of the classic Lizard triptych of essential records - Goat, Down and Liar - Down usually comes in third for me. That said, it's still among the greatest albums of the 90s in my opinion, and it's always a good feeling to reconnect with their music, especially after encountering it in a modern movie.
NCBD:
I'm LOVING that Marvel is taking so much of my money every month for Amazing Spider-Man. Nick Spencer's run has me hooked, and as of this issue, it looks like Bagley is back on the art!
The Autumnal is one of those rare, truly unnerving stories that feels like it could very easily be picked up and turned into an A24-ish movie. Let's hope that happens eventually, but in the meantime, issue 6 left us in a place that suggests this week's #7 will be crazy!
This series is riding at about a 65% approval rating with me at the moment, but I've apparently locked back into Marvel fan-boy gear for the first time since the MCU's Civil War broke it, so I'm enjoying the hell out of that 65%. Also, Dane's anthropomorphic black goat-headed butler is named Phillip. I can't love that enough.
This series. Whoah. Timely; a much-needed window into what other people go through to get into this country.
I HAVE to have this cover. Love Stray Dogs, and issue #3's cliffhanger has had me on edge at the mere mention of the series since last month.
Another book I also wanted to mention is Osaka Mime. I was lucky enough to have Behemoth Comics reach out to my podcast A Most Horrible Library a while back and send us an advance of Andy Leavy and Hugo Araujo's Osaka Mime graphic novel. I really dug this book and seeing its release slated for this week, suggest people pick it up.
A black and white Urban Horror story set in Japan, here's the solicitation:
"When a couple are found brutally murdered in the Dotonbori District in Osaka, Japan, two detectives from the Supernatural Unit of the Osaka PD must hunt down and apprehend a dangerous and murderous Mime, a shadowy shape-shifter which can take the form of the last person it ate. How do you catch something so dangerous, that can hide in plain sight?"
Watch:
This one snuck in under my radar, but looks fabulous! Featuring Raised by Wolves' Niamh Algar, the idea of setting a Horror story in the video nasty area already has me hooked, however, toss in the missing sister seen-in-a-movie bit that Ed Brubaker just played with in Friend of the Devil, and I'm super psyched for this one to drop on VOD June 18th!
Playlist:
The Jesus Lizard - Down
Soundgarden - Down On The Upside
Neverly Brothers - Dark Side of Everything
Ghost - Meliora
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
The Doors - LA Woman
Card:
A good omen considering we have officially begun to settle back into a genuine sense of normalcy. K's birthday Dinner at Lazy Dog Cafe on the patio last night was the first time we'd eaten a meal in a restaurant in over a year. It felt nice to celebrate my Empress with such a marked occasion that signifies a return to life as we knew it B.C.
This came on in the car last night as K and I were driving back from our time at the track, and despite hearing the song in its entirety, I immediately came home and threw Zeppelin IV on the old record player just to hear the song the way it was meant to be heard.
Glorious!
Is When the Levy Breaks the greatest rock song of all time? Well, a claim like that is an impossibility anyway. There is no 'greatest rock song.' Also, it would be hard to back up that claim when you think about all the other great songs just from the era of this album, alone, let alone before or after. That said, it's also a claim I would not contest if made in my presence. Because if Levy isn't the greatest, it's certainly one of them.
Watch:
The fact that Parmount dropped a GI JOE trailer this week is serendipitous because last week I actually bought a digital copy of GIJOE: Retaliation. I had not seen it since the theatre, and to quote a tweet I dropped during my re-watch:
#gijoeretaliation is a hot mess that has just enough fan service to make me not hate it, but enough contrivance to make me want to.
This was K's first GIJOE anything, and she liked it about as much as I do. Anyway, the fact that Retaliation came closer to making me happy than Cobra Rises did felt like a good sign at the time the film came out, and I held out hope that a part three might continue that trend. However, cinematic tie-in properties and shared universes have come a long way since then, and here we are with a reboot.
I suppose I should explain that GI JOE is hallowed ground to me. Or at least Larry Hama's 80s comic continuity is. Despite the usual dalliance with comics in my very earliest days - from which all I remember is Thor and Uncle Scrooge - Hama's GI JOE was the book that made me a comics kid. I still remember issue 49, published July 1986.
I wrote about this somewhere before, but I bought a tattered copy of this issue on the schoolyard from a total dick who actually charged me $0.25 over the cover price (!) while taking a summer school algebra class between 4th and 5th grade. I still have that copy. I must have read that comic 100 times, and when #50 came out, I began having my parents take me to the local comic shop every month so I could buy keep up. Then I began raiding back issue bins. My collection of what I'd consider Hama's essential run of Joe (issues 1-126, although by then the title was waning under the stress of Hasbro's demands that Hama help them save a sinking property) has never been complete, and I don't revisit them often. That said, because of all this, yeah, I want someone to adapt the book into a movie as good as Marvel has done with theirs.
Hopeless? Maybe, but despite my love of Hama's work, the version of Joe I think would adapt the best to the big screen is the understated reboot that Mike Costa and Christopher N. Gage did in the 00s for IDW, specifically the Cobra book. There has been talk of that series getting the TV show treatment, but in the meantime, we're left with what you see above. Which looks like it might be a better big-budget take on Joe than what we got with the previous two films. I mean, I'm not sure how you kick off a franchise with a single-character origin film, but regardless, this will put my ass in a seat.
Yo Joe!
Playlist:
The Jesus Lizard - Down
Balthazar - Fever
David Bowie - The Next Day
Dance with the Dead - B-Sides: Vol. 1
Christopher Young and Lustmord - The Empty Man OST
