Rammstein - Zeit

 

What a weird coincidence this is. It's not all that often that I listen to Rammstein. They're definitely a band a dig, however, unless it's the two songs on the Lost Highway soundtrack, there's a pretty specific time and place for sure. Late last week I cracked out Rosenrot, and now look - new album Zeit out April 29th! Pre-order the album HERE.

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Watch:

This past Saturday, before the return of my annual St. Paddy's celebration, I caught a mid-day showing of  Ti West's new film X at the local AMC. I've posted the trailer here before, back when it first dropped, but here it is again:

X is fantastic. Don't read or listen to anything about it, other than me telling you right here to go see this one on the big screen. You won't regret it. In keeping with West's glorious style, this is a very loud quiet film. It's bloody and human and strangely sweet at times. 

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Dollar Bin:

Back for another Tuesday afternoon digging in the ol' dollar bin:

Despite my allegiance to Vertigo at the time of its release, I had never even looked through an issue of House of Secrets until two weeks ago when I found the first story arc from the 1995 reimagining of DC's House of Secrets. And yet, in spite of that, several of the covers in this arc loom in my comic book knowledge as extremely iconic images. Especially issue #2.

There's definitely an element to this series that makes me see Vertigo's mid-90s style storytelling as very brand specific, however, since nothing I know of looks or reads this way anymore, any problems I had with this first arc - this reinvention's arbitrary relocation of the titular House to Seattle, Washington in an obvious attempt to capitalize on the *ahem* grunge movement, the fact that every character in the book is in a band or fucking someone in a band, the then-current newsworthy societal plot points. Unfortunately, STDs and molestation have always been problems in our society, however, the ignorance and fear that limited allowed them to grow to epidemic proportions became a campaign slogan themselves, and a talking point for societal criticism. Not a bad thing, but also, the approach to a lot of the tv and literature that took a swing at incorporating such a hot button issue often feels trite and misguided. There's a bit of that here, or, I'm just out-of-phase with my residual 90s self.

Regardless of little gripes, this first arc was a good read and I was overjoyed to put all six issues into my short boxes for a mere $6.00.

Also, Teddy Kristiansen's art is most definitely iconic and hits the sweet spot created in my soul by similar artists such as Marc Hempel and Peter Gross. There's something so Grimm's Fairytales about this style, and as I intimated above, it's one we don't really see anywhere anymore (if you know of a place to find it, let me know!)

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Playlist:

Chelsea Wolfe - Birth of Violence

The Pogues - If I Should Fall from Grace with God

The Pogues - Rum Sodomy & the Lash

U2 - The Joshua Tree

John Carpenter with Alan Howarth - Big Trouble in Little China OST

Every Day (is Halloween) Newsletter Playlist: You, the Knight and the Music

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Judas Priest - You Got Another Thing Comin' (single)

Til Tuesday - Voices Carry (single)

Ghost - Impera

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Card:

Past = XXI: The Universe

Present = I: The Magus

Future =  7 of Wands: Valour

Holding fast to a protocol - the word I'm using here in place of the more loaded 'belief' - I have established in a previous moment will put me in the position to successfully recreate something that has changed with time, never been completed, but remained a part of me. 

Pop Scars

 

Svarte Greiner's new record Devolving Trust was recorded in the "Once bombed-out Schneider Brewery, Berlin," and the acoustics are as much an instrument here as anything else. This is some serious atmosphere. Absolutely gorgeous in the darkest possible way, this brings me back to a headspace I lived in daily back around 2006. I found this one when comics scribe Warren Ellis mentioned it a few days ago on his Morning Computer, and within a few moments of checking it out, I was enraptured. However, this is not Wednesday-morning-at-work music, so I had to put a good solid listen on the back burner until later. 

And later it was. Loooong day Wednesday. It wasn't until about 5:00 PM that I had the chance to really dig in, and as I said, it did not disappoint. Once I was in Greiner's sonic conjuring, I couldn't listen to anything else for the next several hours. Actually, for the rest of the night.

You can pick up Devolving Trust HERE from Miasmah Recordings. 

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Watch:

A trailer for Brendan Muldowney's new film Cellar dropped a few days ago and it looks fantastic:

 

I've said it here before, but we need more Ancestral Horror, and this looks like a good start!

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Read:

I was completely blown away to walk into the Comic Bug this past Wednesday and meet Pat O'Malley, author of the new comic Pop Scars. I picked up the first two issues, and they're freakin' fantastic! A highly polished, super-bright grindhouse exploitation Hollywood Revenge flick delivered in the comic format, I love this book and can't wait for issue 3. 

This book is nuts: violent, funny, pop, and bloody. Very much the kind of book I look for when I'm scouring the shelves of a shop for something new and independent. The plan is to have Pat on an upcoming episode of A Most Horrible Library, so I'll definitely update here when that happens. In the meantime, here's a LINK to his Frightening Tales on youtube.

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Playlist:

Svarte Greiner - Devolving Trust

The Pogues - Red Roses for Me

The Pogues - If I Should Fall From Grace With God

The Pogues - Rum Sodomy and the Lash

The Tossers - The Valley of the Shadow of Death

Flogging Molly - Float

Exhalants - Atonement

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

Zeal & Ardor - Eponymous

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Perturbator - I Am the Night

U2 - The Joshua Tree

U2 - War

Faith No More - Angel Dust

Ghost - Impera

Revocation - The Outer Ones

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

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Card:

Roll with the punches - I had an incredibly unproductive writing session today. So what? I'm not going to let it keep me from trying again tomorrow.

Happy St. Paddy's Day

 

I'm not going to be able to really celebrate until Saturday, but in the meantime, there's Pogues and Guinness.

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Watch:

You can really tell I've drank all the Marvel kool-aid now, eh?

 

A friend at work showed me this trailer for the upcoming Event Book Judgment Day, and I will say, I'm curious. I'm not very hip to the Eternals, however, the idea that in their fervor to rid the Earth of "Deviants" they've determined that mutants are one and the same, well, it's a good idea for a story.

Judgment Day lands in July - I think - and although I'm not certain I'll be reading it, I will probably be at the very least staying peripherally abreast of the beats and outcome.

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Playlist:

Tones on Tail - Everything!

Plague Bringer - As the Ghosts Collect, the Corpses Rest

Spizm - B4uDIE

Bryce Miller - City Depths

Def Leppard - Pyromania

Rammstein - Rosenrot

Mark Lanegan - Blues Funeral

New Radicals - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too

The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy and the Lash

The Pogues - Red Roses for Me

Svarte Greiner - Devolving Trust

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Card:

Dogmatic regimes - outdated thought that threatens to lock your mind in a box of its own making - the worst kind. Hmmm... No context for this at the moment, unless A) the pull is the cards being playful, as I just had a conversation yesterday about The Hierophant with the person who colored and gave me these cards, or B) it's commentary on how far up Marvel's arse I am at the moment that I'm posting a trailer for an event book. Either way, always good to have a playful reading.

Too True, The Watcher of Slumber

It's been a minute since I listened to Dum Dum Girls' 2014 Too True. Such a fantastic record, which also served as the band's last before dissolving. I can vividly remember staring out the window on a Greyhound bus early on in my relationship with this record. None of the band's other releases ever hit me quite as hard as this one, possibly because of such a sustained period of isolation and reflection with it on that bus, headed from Chicago to Dayton, nearing the end of a particularly long era of my life. When I listen now, my head doesn't automatically go to the whys and wherefores of that bus ride, just the deliciously peaceful Midwest scenery

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Watch:

There's something inherently creepy about the word "watcher." 

I don't know much about director Chloe Okuna, except that her segment of last year's V/H/S '94 - apparently entitled Storm Drain - was the only segment in the film that I enjoyed. And I really enjoyed it, so I'm very curious to see her new full-length film Watcher.

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NCBD:

A thankfully abbreviated NCBD this week, as I actually went back in last week and ended up grabbing the new trade paperback of the Jeff Lemire/Greg Smallwood 2016 run on Moon Knight that Marvel recently released. 

Now, onto this week's pull, which starts with another issue of our 90s rock tactical military ghost war comic, Home Sick Pilots!

This book continues to be insane, and I realize now that I should take the opportunity to pass on the fact that if you're so inclined, you can go HERE to read the first issue of the series for free online. The only reason you should absolutely not do this is if you don't want to get sucked in and immediately shell out the dough for the first two trades ($10 and $17 respectively). 

The changes that adapting author David M. Booher has been making to Joe Hill's Rain have made this limited series a nice companion for someone like me, who just finished reading the original novella a fw weeks before this series hit the stands. Rain is a different kind of apocalypse story - thankfully - and in spite of the changes, the massive heart that comprises its DNA are brought our wonderfully by Zoe Thorogood's art.

More Silver Coin, and this month, we get a sequel to a previous issue's story. Hot damn!

A new number one from Image that sounds like it has serious potential. From the solicitation copy on Image's site:

"Stetson is a nightmare hunter. A dream detective. She runs a shoddy back-alley business where she helps clients sleep at night by entering their dreams and killing their nightmares. But Stetson’s past comes back to haunt her when she tracks down a literal living nightmare—a serial killer that murders people in their sleep.SLUMBER is an ongoing series from the twisted minds of writer TYLER BURTON SMITH (Kung Fury, Child’s Play) and rising-star artist VANESSA CARDINALI."

I don't know about you, but that description buys it at least one issue with me. 

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Playlist:

Drug Church - Hygiene

Metallica - Kill 'Em All demos

Metallica - Ride The Lightning 

The Cure - Three Imaginary Boys

Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous

Dum Dum Girls - Too True

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works

Revocation - The Outer Ones

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Card:

Discretion when dealing with the Physical World is a commonly held interpretation. It's generally NOT mine. To me, the Fifteenth Trump Card of the Tarot is usually a nudge to pay attention to wisdom that comes from a possibly dodgy source.  

UPDATE on yesterday's three-card spread: Exactly as I thought, I stopped what I was doing pretty much on the spot, broke out a short story I've been trying to finish since 2018, and finished it!

Never Hike Alone 2!

 

New music from Drug Church. Mr. Brown recommended these guys to me a few weeks back but they quickly fell off my radar before I ever got the chance to listen to them. When I sat down earlier today to start this post, something just clicked. There's a distinct 90s indie rock underpinning here - I hear a lot of Bob Mould, especially Sugar-era, only with a huge drum sound that really changes the dynamic of that comparison. Turns out, exactly as Mr. Brown had promised, the entire record is Fantastic; you can order it from Pure Noise Records HERE.

 

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Watch:

The new episode of The Horror Vision Horror Podcast went up yesterday. We gathered this past Saturday to watch Mickey Keating's new movie Offseason, and in my book, it did not disappoint. You can hear our spoiler-free review if you click the little widget at the top right hand of this page, or on your favorite podcast streaming service.

Also, the IndieGoGo campaign for Friday the 13th Fan Film Never Hike Alone 2 is now live! While I'm not a very big fan of the actual Friday flicks, I quite like Vincent DiSanti's films and will definitely be throwing down on this one that brings the Thom Matthews back as Tommy Jarvis for an ultimate showdown with Mr. Voorhees.

Can't wait to get this one in my hands and then watch all three of DiSanti's F13 films in one sitting! Back the campaign HERE. 

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Dollar Bin:

Last Tuesday, I introduced a new weekly feature called Dollar Bin. This is a place where I can talk about all the cool, nostalgic, or just plain awesome items I find while flipping through the dollar bins in the comic shops I frequent. That said, while this week's featured score was indeed found in a dollar bin,  it is most definitely not a comic. 

I'd never heard of Nyctalops magazine until I brought this one home last week. Nyctalops was a literary Horror magazine dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries published independently in the 70s and 80s. It featured reviews and editorial pieces of contemporary and historic Horror and Weird Fiction and often included short stories by contributors that included Ramsey Campbell, Robert Bloch, and Thomas Ligotti, and many, many more. 

This issue is #18, published in 1983, and it features two essays on themes found in the works of Robert Aickman, as well as an essay by famed Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi, to name but a few of its treasures. Also, I found it particularly thrilling to note that in the forward to this issue, Editor Howard O. Morris excitedly mentions that the Magazine's printer, Silver Scarab Press, has plans to publish, "... tentatively, a collection of horror stories by Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer."

Today, Horror literature fans know ..Dead Dreamer to be one of Ligotti's most influential works, and I found it super cool to stumble across a reference to it before the polarizing author made his mark.

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Playlist:

Ghost - Impera

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum

Tones on Tail - Everything!

Ghost - Opus Eponymous

Danzig - Thrall- Demonsweat Live

The Twilight Singers - Powder Burns

Orville Peck - Bronco (Chapter 1)

David Bowie - A Reality Tour

Motörhead - Ace of Spades

Pike Vs. The Automaton - Eponymous

Mad Season - Above

Mutterlein - Orphans of the Black Sun

Jim Williams - Possessor OST

Young Widows - Settle Down City

Revocation - The Outer Ones

Code Orange - Underneath

Deafheaven - Sunbather

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Card:

Past = 7 of Cups: Debauch - taken here to mean I'm poisoning 

Present = 5 of Wands: Strife

Future = 0: The Fool

I'm not entirely certain how to read this one. I'm tempted to interpret the 7 of Cups as an inverted victory; a good thing that goes too long and turns sour, but I'm not entirely sure how that... wait. Maybe. I'll have to report back on this one. Sometimes it's best to follow flashes of inspiration without thinking about them too much.

Haute Tension

New video from Dance with the Dead, and it's really cool! I love the floating first-person perspective used to zoom along deserted, dilapidated forest roads and into old mine shafts. Very cool. Also, those shots are so alluring, I'd imagine it could be difficult to come up with something more narrative-like to compliment it, but a four-minute video of just that perspective stuff would definitely get old. Luckily, the creators knew exactly where to take this one. The "skeleton rave" is a bit goofy, but ultimately totally works for the song, and it gives us a destination for all those traveling shots.

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Watch:

Since seeing it pop up on Shudder at the beginning of the month, I've really been wanting to rewatch Alexander Aja's 2003 High Tension. The problem with that particular film, however, is as much as I like everything about the first two acts, the twist or reveal at the onset of the third never worked for me.

 

Maybe I've just been looking for a reason to try the film again - I seem to watch it about every ten years, always hoping I feel different. That's never the case. However - I recently began listening to the Horror podcast The House That Screams, and I'll be damned if their most recent episode didn't change my view of the film's personality-warping twist. 

The important thing is, I think, the idea one of the hosts expresses that the killer is not so much a secondary personality, as it is a personification of Marie's romantic (?) feelings for her friend Alex. Something about this just helped my acceptance of the film's outcome, I think probably because at the time of its release, there had already been so many films that imitated Fight Club's masterful maneuvering of character that any hint of it immediately killed a film for me. The only exception to that was Brad Anderson's The Machinist, and my acceptance of that one only came after a conversation with a friend where they explained their understanding of Ivan as a physical personification of Trevor's guilt. The House That Screams hosts (I'm new to the show and haven't heard enough to know exactly who is talking when) make a comparison to Leland Palmer/Bob. Now, while they don't suggest it's exactly the same scenario as Bob's "inhabiting spirit," I'd never thought of this angle before. That kind of surprises me, being what a huge Twin Peaks fan I am. But hearing it and making the earlier, perhaps more 1:1 comparison with The Machinist, I feel like I'm ready to watch the film again and see how it sits.

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Read:

Re-reading Warren Ellis & Declan Shalvey's painfully short run on Moon Knight. Goddamn, I wish they'd stayed with it for at least twelve issues.

The good news, of course, was the relationship between Ellis and Shalvey that started here went on to give us three GLORIOUS volumes of Injection, and further went on to launch Shalvey as not only a top-tier artist but a pretty damn great writer as well. I'm still thinking about Bog Bodies after re-reading it middle of last year.

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Playlist:

Ghost - Impera

Orville Peck - Bronco

The Cure - Faith

Greg Puciato - Lowered (single)

Tennis System - Technicolor Blind

Isobell Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday at Devil Dirt.

Mad Season - Above

Revocation - The Outer Ones

Mark Lanegan - Bubblegum

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Card:

Okay, I love this spread:

To see such a clear narrative offset by instructions that don't just make sense in the course of my current life, but in the course of the nature of the cards, is almost breathtaking. 

Past = Princess of Swords: Confusion and chaos. This is my exact mindset of late. I'm fighting myself, my intuition, everything. 

Present = Queen of Wands: Not a fan of this card, however, you look at that calming hand on top of the Lion and you get the picture. Reel it in, son. Tame your inner fires and FOCUS.

Future = Prince of Wands: Here's where the beauty emerges. These two cards are in sequence in the deck. One tells you to tame the Lion, the other shows it under your control, pulling you forward. 

Ghost - Impera

 

Ghost had a big ol' Release Ritual for their new album Impera, out today. You can still order the album HERE. As I write this, it's 11:00 PM PST, so the full album dropped two hours ago when the East Coast hit Midnight. 

I'm definitely losing some of the "to hell and back" vibe I had with Ghost, but I still feel like their music is fantastic, even if not always what I want it to be. Oh, how I long for Infestissumam, and to a lesser extent, Meliora ("Circe" is probably my favorite song by the band, or at least a close second to "Year Zero"). Even more than their actual music, I have long been interested in the course Tobias Forge has plotted out for his music. Since Popestar in 2016, it has been my prediction that Forge will eventually do a big budget broadway musical - I really see so much of that theatrical DNA in their records and their live show. Only time will tell. In the meantime, I'm off Friday - when you're reading this - so I'm up late with my first go-through of Impera running through my headphones and it sounds great. Again, not always what I want, exactly, but still great.

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Watch:

A new featurette for Marvel's Moon Knight dropped earlier in the week. I'm trying to avoid seeing too much, but I broke down and watched this, can vouch that there are no real spoilers included here. The show begins March 30th, and I find myself counting the days. I want to like this one so much - with MK a favorite character and Benson and Moorehead as showrunners, well, this seems like there is no way it could possibly disappoint me.

However... 

I'm still not sold on the way the costume looks on screen. I'm really hoping I get over that, or the images we're seeing are early on in the costume's evolution. I refer back to Netflix's Daredevil here, where at the end of the first season when Matt Murdock transitioned from the Fran Miller-inspired black mask to the actual DD costume, I was totally taken aback, but by the second season the rough edges had been rounded down. Regardless, Moon Knight is really hanging on as a favorite at the moment, and it has A LOT to do with Jed Mackay's current run on the monthly book - issue #9 in particular - which just blew me away. Making the House of Shadows the new Midnight Mission was a stroke of genius...

And then there's this:

I'm a fan of Marvel's Black, White & Blood books, even though I've not actually picked up all that many of them. This, however. Holy shit. I never would have anticipated them doing a Moon Knight installment. I've always tried to be consistent with the character; I missed out on the 80s series completely, cherry-picked at the 90s one, and missed the Charlies Huston series altogether, but loved the entirety of the Brian Michael Bendis run that followed shortly after. Then the Warren Ellis/Declan Shalvey - well, let's just say that's holy in my eyes, and one of the things I've loved about the interpretation since - and what I expect to love about the Disney+ series - is the Mr. Knight persona. That's the kind of genius you expect from a collaboration between Ellis and Shalvey, and I've been continuously happy to see it garnering so much of the character's continued evolution.

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Playlist:

The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer

Ministry - Filth Pig

Ghost - Live From the Ministry (Impera Release Ritual)

Mötley Crüe - Shout at the Devil

The Twilight Singers - A Stitch in Time EP

Ghost - Impera

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Card:

Taking a break from the Thoth deck and moving back to my beloved Raven Tarot:

A reminder to take knowledge from even the most obscure or upsetting places. This feels like it figures in to my current state of mind, which is about 30% paranoia. I'm looking for answers as to how to continue with my life, how to streamline the next series of large steps I have to take in order to get the hell out of my current paradigm and into what's next. Lot's of setbacks, lots of arrows. But there are always distractions and detractors. The point is to move beyond what we know and just make it happen. Lucifer certainly did.