Linger Fickin' Good, Baby!

 

Getting psyched to see "The Revolting Corpse" at the end of the month, courtesy of Mr. Brown. I'm not entirely sure who will be on stage, but either way, it's sure to be amazing.

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Watch:

K and I wrapped up Evil season 3 on Paramount Plus the other day. As always, this show leaves an ENORMOUS void when it's off. I have a feeling the next season may be the final; either way, with the low-grade anxiety Netflix is resonating with its coy attitude toward Sandman's renewal, it's good to know that the next season of Evil has already been announced. 

Next up, Feud!

 

We'd been meaning to watch this since it aired back in 2017, and our timing proves fortuitous, as a quick look-up on IMDB surprised us with the listing for an upcoming season two slated for next year.

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Read:

I finished Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares. Jesus. This was easily his darkest book, and that's bloody well saying something. Still, I loved most of it; it always feels like slipping into a favorite Marathon Shirt when I tackle one of Welsh's novels, and despite several absolutely soul-searing scenes, this was no exception. Next up, Welsh's long-time friend Sandy McNair's tell-all book Carspotting: The Real-Life Adventures of Irvine Welsh.

Like Marabou, I've had this one for over a decade. After this, I'm thinking I may re-read Welsh's 2006 novel Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chiefs, which I haven't read since it came out.

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Playlist:

King Woman - Celestial Blues

Charles Bradley - Changes

Cocksure - Corporate_Sting

The High Confessions - Turning Lead Into Gold with the High Confessions

Corrosion of Conformity - Deliverance

Willie Nelson & Leon Russell - One For the Road

The Black Angels - Eponymous EP

The Black Angels - Death Song

The Afghan Whigs - How Do You Burn? (pre-release singles)

The Afghan Whigs - In Spades

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

The Bangles - Different Light

Joseph Bishara - Malignant OST

Melvins & Lustmord

 

It was not until just last week that I realized Melvins had collaborated with Lustmord on an album. THIS is mind-blowing stuff.

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NCBD:

We start this week's NCBD with the final issue of Moon Knight: Black, White & Blood. 

I Love this series. When they first announced they were doing one of these BW&B for Moon Knight, I was surprised. I'm hoping they do some other left-of-center characters, and that it wasn't just the Moon Knight Disney+ series that spurred this particular title. I'd love to see a Taskmaster or even, hell, a Wilson Fisk, Kingpin BW&B. Come on Marvel, let's see what you got!

One of my most anticipated series since the previous issue. This one is such a great heir to the Neil Gaiman/Vertigo legacy. 

Being that issue 3 just came out last week, I'm not entirely sure this will land today. We'll see. Either way, this series is worth the wait.

I feel like it's been quite some time since the previous installment of West of Sundown. That's not really true, I think I've just, you know, moved across country and completely restarted my life since issue 4. Can't wait to read this next chapter.

Probably my favorite cover with Scott Summers on it EVER. 

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Read:

There was a time when I bought every novel Irvine Welsh released the day they came out. That stopped after his 2012 Skag Boys. Not because I don't love Welsh's work. On the contrary, his prose is a HUGE influence on my own, and being that I had shifted to working on a genre series, I was afraid that influence would hinder my completion of the first Shadow Play novel. Shadow Play ultimately took another seven years to finish, starting and re-starting it. In between, I cranked out a lot more genre work, always keeping Welsh at bay.

Last Sunday, the damn burst.

I'm a saver - if I discover an author who already has a few novels on the shelf, I'll always save one. So was the case with Welsh's 1995 novel Marabou Stork Nightmares. Well, after learning Welsh had just released a follow-up Ray Lennox novel to Crime with The Long Knives. I realized I've now missed five Welsjh novels including this one. To quote Lebowski, "this will not stand!"

So I cracked open Marabou and cannot put it down.

It's crazy to think this was Welsh's second published novel. The narrative is written in the same kind of experimental fashion that Filth is - I don't want to try and explain it here, but needless to say, Welsh finds a pretty insane way to move between main character Roy Strang's coma-narrative and his real life and what he hears while he's inside the coma, bubbling up just below the surface of waking. Which Roy does not want to do. I love Welsh's work so very much, I can't believe I've been away from it this long.

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Playlist:

Pink Mountaintops - Peacock Pools

A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head 

Megadeth - Rush in Peace

Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire

Anthrax - Attack of the Killer Bs

Patty Smythe - The Warrior (single)

The Ocean - Phanerozoic I: Paleozoic

Scott H. Biram - Nothing But Blood

Amigo The Devil - Born Against

The Mysterines - Reeling

Young Widows - Settle Down City

Breather Resist - Charmer

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

The way that I will choose to accomplish something will usher in notable change, part of which will be condemnation by someone I respect. 

I've got a BIG new project in the works, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people - not necessarily people I know - will give it a big eye roll just for what it is. Unfortunate. "The work that transforms the medium." 

I hope.

My Best Friend's Exorcism!

 

Some old Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds for this Saturday morning. Live from 1986, no less! 

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Watch:

I have been waiting for this one for quite some time:

 

When I first read Grady Hendrix's My Best Friend's Exorcism, back in 2018 or so, I immediately bought it for like ten of my friends. I love that book - at the time I finished it, I ranked it as my third favorite novel, behind Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Bret Easton Ellis' Lunar Park. I don't know if that ranking would hold up, but maybe. It's a fabulous flick, and with Freaky's Christopher Landon Producing, I have a very good feeling about this adaptation.

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Playlist:

S4lem - King Night

S4lem - Yes I Smoke Crack EP

Revolting Cocks - Linger Fickin' Good

Lustmord & The Ocean - Primal (State of Being) EP

The Ocean - Heliocentric

The Ocean - Anthropocentric

The Ocean - Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Lustmord - Hobart

Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

Metallica - Garage Days Re-Revisited

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Ghosteen

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Distant Sky (Live in Copenhagen)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - From Her to Eternity

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Kicking Against the Pricks

The Ocean - Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic

Pink Mountaintops - Peacock Pools

Deftones - No Koi Yokan

Ghost - Mary on A Cross (slowed + reverb) single

The Atlas Moth - Coma Noir

Brenton Wood - Brenton Wood's 18 Best

Seasurfer - Zombies

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Disassociation

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Card:

Late night Thoth Spread:

Pulled this while up late, finally attempting to get a small NFT venture off the ground. Immediate recognition, but I don't know anything about this world. I need to lean on my good friend Billy Big Beak in order to navigate what's happening. So the reading is pretty clear - what can look like success can actually be a load of BS. 

BE CAREFUL.

New Dead Cross!!!

 

More new Dead Cross! I'm digging what I'm hearing from this second album more than I did the first, can't wait to hear the entire thing, which is out October 14th on Ipecac Recordings. Pre-order a copy HERE. 

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Watch:

This dropped yesterday:

 

As far as Teaser Trailers go, I think this is perfect. Of course, there's the part of me that wants to see more, but really, I'd rather wait and get it all at once in my first viewing. Hey, it's gotta be better than most of the Dimension sequels, right? Let's hope this 20th Century Fox/HULU pairing the Mouse has going will turn out another unexpectedly fantastic sequel, like Prey.

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Quote:

"Having made the world lousy, imagine ye are of significance to Heaven?"

                                                         - Austin Osman Spare, Anathema of Zos: The Sermon of the Hypocrite

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Playlist:

Soundgarden - Super Unknown

Various - Every Day (Is Halloween) Playlist: Small Cat, Big Yard

Suburban Living - Always Eyes EP

Suburban Living - Cooper's Dream EP

True Widow - As High As the Highest...

Nirvana - With the Lights Out

Nirvana - Lithium single

Suburban Lawns - Eponymous

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

Ministry - Everyday (Is Halloween) The Lost Mixes

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

Small Black - Cheap Dreams

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Card:

I returned to the Raven Deck this morning, and The Hermit sprung out at me:

Second time this week, so I pulled a clarifying card from my Thoth:

So I have some work to do, and isolation will definitely be a part of it. 

No Devotion For Mr. Gibson

 

A little old-school Chicago Industrial to kick things off today.

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Watch:

This is my favorite thing I think I've ever encountered on the internet. No BS. A HUGE thank You to Seth:

I literally just want to watch this over and over and have Bobby Fingers tell me everything is going to be okay. Seeing this, and sending it over to my former bandmate Joe.Baxter, I can't help but feel like when we finally try and finish recording all that unfinished Christian Fisting material, we should dust off the old "Mel Gibson's a Cunt" song we had, written in the wake of that 2006 arrest that is being modeled here. 

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NCBD:

It's Wednesday, and that means new comics are on the shelves! Here's what I'm picking up at Rick's Comic City!

Street-level Spidey on a Goblin hovercraft? interesting. Love this cover. 

The penultimate issue of Deadly Class!

I definitely liked the twist Marvel's Judgment Day took at the end of the second issue. Hoping this continues to expand that, instead of focusing on what we already know has happened. I get that in the onset of this series beginning, we only really got a 'thin slice' of the siege on Krakoa and holocaust on Arrako, but showing us all the nooks and crannies of those battles is getting a touch old. Issue 2 moved things forward, but then Death to the Mutants moved it back again. 

This book is fantastic but truly independent, so there have been a lot of scheduling delays. I'm hoping it actually lands today.

LOVING this new Shaolin Cowboy series. Geof Darrow is an amazing artist, and he's really cooked up an "Anything Goes" world with this one. I pulled out my copies of the previous series and realized the titular character died at the end of it. This means Darrow has been - as he should be - doing whatever the hell he wants time-wise with this odd, post-apocalyptic mash-up series. I need to pick up the collected first series of this and read them all straight through. Not that you have to, because, like I said, I love that Darrow appears t be jumping around.

I'm not 100% sold on this big, TMNT 'Event,' but I'll hang for a while. 

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Playlist:

Various - Every Day (Is Halloween) Playlist: Small Cat, Big Yard

Various - Every Day (Is Halloween) Playlist: You, The Knight, and the Music

Leaving Time - Eponymous EP

Revolting Cocks - Big Sexy Land

Pailhead - Trait

Melvins - Stoner Witch

Various - Snatch OST Playlist

Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind

David Bowie - Station to Station

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Card:

Pulling out the Raven Deck for today's reading:

Some isolation will do me good today. Hopefully finishing something I've been working on. 

Something In the Dirt

 

From the forthcoming album The End, So Far available on September 30th. You can pre-order the album HERE. I like the video a lot more than I like the song, but I've always been hot/cold with these guys. Still, they've evolved over the years, and that definitely means something. 

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Watch:

The teaser trailer for Benson and Moorhead's new film Something In the Dirt dropped yesterday. Here'sn our first look:

 

I really can't wait for this one. These guys are Aces in my book.

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Playlist:

Various - Every Day (Is Halloween) Playlist: Small Cat, Big Yard

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind

Tangerine Dream - Ricochet (Live)

Corrosion of Conformity - No Cross No Crown

Forhist - Eponymous

Somnium Nox - Apocrypha

Fen - Epoch

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Card:

Lots of big ideas, but I have to narrow my focus for a bit to accomplish what I want. 

As usual, the cards are pretty spot on. I'm writing again - been going to local coffee shops after work. I have quite a few short stories on deck, and part of the "following the inner voice" here is figuring out which ones I want to allocate for the free Kindle book I'm aiming to publish shortly before Halloween, and which ones I want to submit. 

Even Paper Girls Need to Rock N Roll

 

I'll never forget the first time I heard Metal Church. My second concert ever was at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park, Il. 1991, Operation: Rock n' Roll. Metal Church (The Human Factor Tour), Dangerous Toys (Hellacious Acres), Motorhead (1916 Tour), Judas Priest (Painkiller Tour), and Alice Cooper (Trash). As we exited the amphitheater, we were handed cassette compilations that featured a song from all the bands that played, plus Cycle Sluts From Hell, Alice in Chains, and I don't remember who else.

Unfortunately, I don't think I still have this tape, despite having a box filled with tapes that I've lugged with me across the country twice now. Regardless, the Metal Church song on this was "Date With Poverty," and thus, my constant revolutions of this tape burrowed it deep into my brain. 

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Watch:

We finished the regular season of Netflix's The Sandman, then were super happy to see the bonus episode drop with two stories culled from the third TPB collection Dream Country. Both Dream of a Thousand Cats and Calliope were every bit as faithful adaptations of the source material as the overall show was. I really hope they renew this one.

Incidentally, a new episode of The Horror Vision went out today. We do a spoiler-free reaction to The Sandman, and talk about a whole bunch of other things as well, from my first viewing of Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem, to seminal 80s flick Popcorn, to the unique and disturbing films of Andrey Iskanov. Check it out in that little widget just above and to the right, and if you dig, follow us on your favorite Podcast Platform. 

Next up, the first episode of Paper Girls. I am a HUGE fan of the comic, but this first episode felt like the show was cramming A LOT into one episode. Still, I'm in for the haul, so hoping it smooths out a bit. 

This is another one I really hope hits its stride; Brian K Vaughn fans already had one heartbreak in the last twelve months with Y The Last Man being tossed out after only one season, so hopefully, Paper Girls will hit its mark and find an audience:

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Read:

I finished T.E.D. Klein's The Ceremonies yesterday. Wow. What a book. It's always fantastic to find a literary Horror novel, and this is definitely that. The Ceremonies breathes for a large part of its 600-page length, and the story is all the better for it. This is the kind of prose I love most, where the author isn't concerned with hitting beats or creating a page-turning momentum. The story unfolds slowly, primarily with character development, and when things climax in the final 50 or so pages of the book, it feels well-earned.

Loved this. Can't wait to grab Dark Gods, also recently republished by PS Publishing. Also, a note in reference back to my original post about this edition of The Ceremonies when I first received it: despite my fears, the spine on this one actually held up beautifully. Way to go, PS! You guys rock, thank you for bringing Klein's work back into print, I was getting dangerously close to paying upwards of $50 on eBay for a beat-up old MM paperback copy of Dark Gods before you swept in and saved the day.

Unfortunately, I realize now I missed out on a gorgeous Hardcover with Slipcase edition, but that's okay. 

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Playlist:

Various - Every Day (Is Halloween) Small Cat, Big Yard Playlist

Various - Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards Playlist

Underworld - 1992-2002

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

Metal Church - The Human Factor

Big Business - Here Come the Waterworks

Various - Return of the Living Dead Soundtrack

King Woman - Doubt EP

Sharon Jones and the Dap Tones - Give the People What They Want

The Devil's Blood - The Thousand Fold Epicentre

Anthrax - Worship Music

Forhist - Eponymous

David Lynch and Mark Zebrowski - Polish Night Music

Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

Revelation can Strengthen Will, however, Emotional persistence can hamper Will. I'm not entirely sure what this is speaking to at the moment, but I'll do some reading later today and see if I can't get a better read on this.