7 Days of Angelo Badalamenti Starts Now!

 

Well, it goes without saying that I'm doing a "Seven Days of Angelo Badalamenti" in honor of his passing. Let's start here, a video my good friend Jacob sent me yesterday to mark the man's exit through the big, red curtains. 

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NCBD:

What an irregularly slow NCBD. If I hadn't picked up some new titles, I'd be spending almost no $$$ this week. Can't have that, apparently...

I was hesitant going into Dark Web, but this Zeb Wells Event is so dripping with original Inferno vibes that I can't help but love it. 

Yeah, like I said above. I love it so much, double-dosing this week.

And, speaking of Events (fuck!), all this pre-emptive conjecture for the upcoming Sins of Sinister has me so fascinated with the idea that there are numerous Sinister clones running around the Marvel Universe that I'm now fascinated by this Mother Righteous characters and reading Legion of X. Damn again!

Ah! I can't love this horror show more. 

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Watch:

Speaking of Twin Peaks, Butcher from the Horror Vision has mentioned Steven C. Miller's The Aggression Scale several times, but this past weekend, as we recorded The Horror Vision episode on Joe Begos' Christmas Bloody Christmas, I finally cued the film up and when I saw the cast not only included three Twin Peaks Alumni - Ray Wise, Dana Ashbrook, and Derek Mears, but Jacob "Solomon" Reynolds from Harmony Korine's Gummo, well, there was no way I wasn't watching it right away. 

I was not disappointed.

This movie is brutal in the most enjoyable way because it's the bad guys that get f*cked up the most, and it's fun watching it. 

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Playlist:

Zeal & Ardor - Eponymous

Knorkator - Widerstand ist zwecklos

Ifernach - Capitulation of All Life

Lustmord - Dark Matter

Deth Crux - Bloody Christmas

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

The Notorious B.I.G. - Ten Crack Commandments (single)

††† - PERMANENT.RADIANT EP

SQÜRL and Jozef Van Wissem - Only Lovers Left Alive OST

Pop Will Eat Itself - Cure for Sanity

Neurosis - Given to the Rising

Isis - Panopticon

Made Out of Babies - The Ruiner

Rein - Reincarnated

Battle Tapes - Sweatshop Boys EP

Battle Tapes - In Too Deep EP

Battle Tapes - Polygon

Final Light - Eponymous

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Card:

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

Collaboration has been coming up a lot, so I need to re-focus on something I've been struggling to maintain. A big writing project that I make headway in and then have to set aside to tool around with short stories I am submitting to various publication markets. The trick here is to make more time and use it wisely, something I'm not always good at doing.

RIP Angelo Badalamenti

 

††† - Sensation

 

Really digging this new ††† PERMANENT.RADIANT EP, especially of late, opening track Sensation. The chorus has an epic slamming that kind of marries a slow, sensual plod ala When the Levee Breaks (not quite, but ballpark) to what sounds like the fanfare of some futuristic stadium rock. Add onto that all the swirling keys, guitars, and some cool vox FX on Chino, and you get a fantastic album-opener and lead-in to that brilliant first single, Vivien. 

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Watch:

Since it was only in the theatres for about a week, we missed David O. Russell's Amsterdam on the big screen but finally caught it on HBO Max last night.

 

This is the film that failed so hard at the box office - undeservedly so, in my opinion - that I've heard titterings about it being the death knell for anything that could be called an "adult drama" rolling out big and wide at theatres. If that's true, it sucks. I'll be sure to be more diligent about getting out to see those films on their first weekend because that might be all we get while Marvel and their clones - some of which I also am a fan of - further strengthen their stranglehold on every big screen in the major movie houses.

I think back to Autumn/Winter 2007. I'd been in L.A. a little over a year, and the Regal Cinema at the Rolling Hills Terrace on Deep Valley Drive was my perpetual weekend spot, primarily because they had a killer Soundsystem and were not afraid to turn it LOUD. That year, I saw so many great films - none of which were, if I remember correctly - genre. No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Charlie Wilson's War, spring immediately to mind. I can't help wondering if we'll ever see a roll-out of non-franchise films like that again. 2019 was a brief return to form; however, the pandemic may have been the real death knell for non-event films, the kind where two adults go to see a film unattached to properties or characters they are familiar with. And there's nothing wrong with big-budget, superhero blockbusters - I just hope that's not all there is to choose from on the big screen. Because I love seeing quiet, contemplative films like The Banshees of Inisherin at the theatre as much as I do whatever the next Avengers or whatever.

But I totally side-stepped my own set-up with my maudlin reverie. How was Amsterdam? Pretty damn good. I'll specifically say that Christian Bale is fantastic, as are all the performances. The script is a bit overly ambitious and the plot suffers from that, so there were moments where I was a little annoyed at what began to feel unmanageably dense, but those performances really anchored the film for me. 

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Playlist:

Metallica - Kill 'Em All

Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct

Zeal and Ardor - Firewake (single)

Zeal and Ardor - Eponymous

Lustmord - Dark Matter

SQÜRL and Jozef Van Wissem - Only Lovers Left Alive OST

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Card:

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

It will require an effort of Will to make the breakthrough that will move me into the next phase of a project. 

New Zeal & Ardor!!!

 

Excited to see that, apparently, Zeal and Ardor are now on Sub Pop Records. With this kind of state-side distribution, it should no longer cost an arm and leg in shipping to order their records! Perhaps it was to celebrate that contract, the band just released a two-song single!

What a great day to wake up to! Last few days, no lie, my stress level has had me hovering at the "punch a hole in the window" stage. But I woke up a little while ago feeling fairly refreshed, and now I'm putting the finishing touches on this post, drinking coffee and listening to the new ††† EP, PERMANENT.RADIANT that dropped, counting the hours until I can hit play on Joe Begos' new flick, Christmas Bloody Christmas, now probably my most anticipated film of the year. I'd wanted to drive to Chicago to see it, but after spending $500 at the dentist over the last week, there's just no feasible way to swing that. My hope, though, is that, like Terrifier 2, it makes enough $$$ at the box office this week to see a bigger roll-out next week. If that happens, it's bound to end up here. 

If you need help figuring if Christmas Bloody Christmas is playing by you, here's the link Begos put on his IG - it literally lists every theatre the film is playing. So crazy that, with all the smaller cities its rolling out to, it didn't come to Clarksville. Our Regal, which is pretty good and had Terrifier 2 for almost a month, had the new Martin McDonough and the George A. Romero Dawn of the Dead 3D, but instead of lining CBC up, they still have Prey for the Devil? WTF?

Life is good. If you're having a tough time at any point today, stop and think about the people and the stuff you love. It will HELP!

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Watch:

New Brandon Cronenberg film? Sign me up.

 

I cannot overstate how unbelievably happy I am that we only had to wait about three years for the third film from Brandon Cronenberg. Possessor is still one of my all-time favorites, and with this cast and premise - what little of it may or may not be clear from this trailer - Infinity Pool looks likely to rank pretty high with me as well. Out January 27.

Neon is just a fabulous company, isn't it?

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Playlist:

Fvnerals - Let the Earth be Silent (pre-release singles)

Fvnerals - The Light

Final Light - Eponymous

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

Federale - No Justice

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

The Mysterines - Reeling

H6LLB6ND6R - Side A

Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct

Metallica - Kill 'em All

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Card:

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

Ask and ye shall receive your answer: I usually don't specify when I pull, but today I focused on my recent re-engagement with Shadow Play Book 2. The writing comes and goes, mostly rewarding while I'm doing it, then frustrating after. But I keep wondering if this is actually going to work. Well, apparently, if I am strong enough to persevere, I will get my outcome.

Fvunerals - Ashen Era

 

A special thanks to Heaven Is An Incubator for turning me on to Fvnerals. Their music has been an integral part of my afternoons as the sun sets earlier and earlier, I click over and let the slow wash of their dreary but beautiful, doom-laced music.

"Ashen Era" is the second track released from the band's forthcoming album Let the Earth be Silent, out February 3rd on Prophecy Productions, which also serves as home to one of my long-time favorite black-gaze bands, Fen. You can pre-order the album on Fvnerals' Bandcamp HERE.

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NCBD:

Here are my picks for this week's NCBD:

Another crossover? Yeah, I'm going to give Dark Web a shot. I really dug the lead-on issue of Amazing Spider-Man two weeks ago. Hallows Eve is a great character name and design, a sort of female Hobgoblin, which I'm sure some folks will roll their eyes at, but based on my lackluster reception of recent iterations of old Hobby, I see this character as a welcome addition to Spider-Man's rogues gallery, which has contained more than a few Halloween-themed characters.

The final issue of Daniel Warren Johnson's Do A Powerbomb. I won't lie, the end of the last issue went big in a way that I didn't exactly love, but I can't wait to see how this plays out regardless. Love this guy and his work.

What a cover! I don't love this Diesel character, however, I think a lot of that has to do with its name. I'm hoping once he and Flame Head tangle, things will get brutal because this book has definitely had some brutal moments thus far. 

I cannot wait to read this issue. After the previous issue of Immortal X-Men, I began reading about upcoming comics and saw that there is another, a smaller event coming up called The Sins of Sinister. Despite my usual trepidation with events, this one I will be reading with gusto.

Another final issue. Night of the Ghoul has been a fun Horror mini-series, which is a format Scott Snyder has always seemed to excel at.

The intensity dial continues to be slowly raised in this first iteration of Marvel's Predator series, and I'm digging that a lot. While I do think this will ultimately read better as a trade, if you're a Predator fan new or old, check this out. 

I love that every year since its inception, Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips do a Christmas Special for their weird fiction/southern gothic detective book That Texas Blood. Last year's was a great way to outro from the intensity of the arc preceding it, and no doubt this will function much the same. 

I'm a bit behind on TMNT, so I need to catch up soon. Some of that is due to avoiding the Event books for Armegeddon Game, as I'm not sure if I should be reading it to make sense of the last few issues. 

Abigail Brand's duplicitous (triplicitous?) agenda has been revealed, so all sorts of shit is no doubt about to go off. I don't think I've looked forward to Cable's presence or reaction in a story this much since the original X-Force 7 when Sauron "killed" Sam Guthrie. 

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Watch:

I've been teetering back and forth as to whether I wanted to subscribe to the new Horror-centric Streaming app Screambox. If you look up what's available, there's a lot of exclusive stuff, but not necessarily anything I want to see. The rest of their catalogue reminds me a lot of scoping out Shudder back at its relative inception, circa 2013. That said, as the company continues to produce and buy new films, my interest is growing. Case in point: 

Writer/Director Cristin Ponce is getting a lot of acclaim for this one, 

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Playlist:

Bobby Fingers Episode 2

Fvnerals - Wound

SQÜRL & Jozef Van Wissem - Only Lovers Left Alive OST

Dreamkid - Eponymous

Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct

Electric Wizard - Dopethrone

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

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Card:

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

Ideas + Collaboration can lead to strife. Differing opinions. I drew a clarifier to see if a compromise is likely, Knight of Pentacles, which suggests to me that it may require an act of Will (i.e. be difficult or put me out of my comfort zone), but yes, compromise is likely.

Spooky Action At A Distance

 

In preparation for the recording of the first episode of our new spin-off podcast, The Horror Vision Presents: Elements of Horror, I rewatched Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive last night. I have to say, not only do I think this is one of the coolest films ever made, but I think about it almost every day. There is not a lot that moves the needle as far as inspiring me to make music again, but watching or thinking about this film does in a BIG way.

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Watch:

THIS will be in theatres? I won't hold my breath for it to come to Clarksville, however, I'm not averse to planning a trip to Chicago for this (if it even plays there).

 

This might tie Barbarian for the best trailer I've seen all year. Whether the movie lives up to the absolute lo-fi DREAD displayed here will remain to be seen. Below I've posted Skinamarink's summary, courtesy of the mighty Bloody Disgusting, whose article on the film is HERE: 

“Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. To cope with the strange situation, the two bring pillows and blankets to the living room and settle into a quiet slumber party situation. They play well-worn videotapes of cartoons to fill the silence of the house and distract from the frightening and inexplicable situation. All the while in the hopes that eventually some grown-ups will come to rescue them. However, after a while, it becomes clear that something is watching over them.”

If, like Christmas Bloody Christmas, which I had also planned to travel for, I can't make the trip north for Skinamarink, then the good news that, also like Joe Begos' new film, this will be released on Shudder is a welcome balm. I would drive back and forth twice a month if I could, but the logistics of life do have a habit of getting in the way of plans like that.

Really looking forward to seeing this, the first feature from Kyle Edward Bell.

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Read:

Last year at Severin Films' Black Friday sale, I picked up the Night of the Demon restored Blu-Ray and, perhaps more excitedly, Brad Carter's novelization that Severin commissioned in their possibly over-zealous roll-out for this widely unknown regional Horror film from 1980. 

After finishing Barry Adamson's Up Above the City, Down Below the Stars I was tempted to jump into David Lynch's biography, Room to Dream. I figured I could use a palate cleanser though; Adamson's book was the best book I read all year - or at least my favorite - and I need to put something genre between it and the story of another creator I adore. So I cracked open Brad Carter's translation of this bizarre little Bigfoot tale...

Confession: I've yet to watch the Blu-Ray. I'd seen a good deal of scenes from Night of the Demon a while back on youtube; not a place I generally go to watch movies, but before Severin's remaster, this film was almost as much a legend as Bigfoot itself. Now forty or so pages into the book, I have to say, it is quite well-written. I know the basic story here and it feels quite a bit more substantial as prose than film. Some of that is obviously the hindsight employed, but also I think it speaks to Carter as a writer, and I quickly cued up a few of his novels for future reading, in particular the novel Saturday Night of the Living Dead. 

As for Night of the Demon, I'm particularly interested in how the novel handles the "cult" subplot of the story, which didn't really get the treatment it deserved in what I saw of the film, which admittedly was not the whole thing. Carter gives all the characters involved extra development, which in some cases may have been a thankless task. Being asked to novelize a forty-something-year-old regional Horror film must be comparable to being asked to take agent listings of a house in need of updating. However, where someone else might have been happy to just recreate the schlock seen on the screen, Carter's extra level of care and attention really make this feel like it's going to be a far superior vehicle for the story.

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Playlist:

Beach House - Depression Cherry

Pete Shelley - Homosapien

Uriah Heep - Abominog

Metallica - Lux Æturna (pre-release single)

Revocation - Netherhaven

Tyler Bates - The Punisher OST

Fvnerals - For Horror Eats the Light

Fvnerals - Wounds

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Card:

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

Previous issues with my finances (intermittent but seemingly unending fallout from identity theft) will come to a resolution. 

...Johnny One Note Here

As I mentioned here a few days ago, I recently finished Barry Adamson's autobiography, Up Above the City, Down Below the Stars. It's a fantastic read; a sometimes heartbreaking deep-dive into the origins of the Manchester Post-Punk movement. Thrilling not only because Adamson is such an engaging narrator, delivering the story of his life in a quasi-Noir tone that totally fits Manchester in this era (think of the Joy Division biopic Control), but also because he names and describes so much music - a lot of which I have never heard before. The track above is a perfect example; I knew nothing of the Tubby Hayes Quintet until Adamson describes hearing the Live at Spot's album (renamed Down in the Village if you seek it out on streaming) for the first time on his father's new record player. He describes the way the opening horn attack blew his mind, and sure enough, I had the same experience. That is some smoking horn to open a set with! 

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Watch:

Before I left L.A., I actually had a chance to see a test screening of Cocaine Bear. I ended up not being able to make it, and now, after seeing the trailer, I wish I would have canceled whatever else I did and gone to this instead:

This. Looks. INSANE. I mean, in every great way a film can be insane, this looks as though it will check those boxes. 

 

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Playlist:

Alan Haven - Image (single)

Kermit Ruffins - The Barbeque Swingers Live

Tubby Hayes Quintet - Down in the Village (Live at Ronny Scott's Club, London 1962)

Metallica - Lux Æturna

Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct

Metallica - ... And Justice For All

Blondie - Eponymous

Ruelle - Emerge

Drug Church - Tawny EP

Feuerbahn - The Fire Dance EP

Zola Jesus - Arkhon

Harry Nilsson - Without You (single)

T. Rex - The Slider

Roxy Music - Eponymous

Alice Cooper - Killer

Barry Adamson - Back to the Cat

Magazine - Real Life

Bret Easton Ellis Podcast S6E27

Low Cut Connie - Get Out the Lotion

Greg Puciato - Mirrorcell

The Knitters - Poor Little Creature on the Road

Magazine - Secondhand Daylight

Serge Gainsbourg - Historie de Melody Nelson

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

The Birthday Party - Hee-Haw

The Birthday Party - Pleasure Heads Must Burn (DVD)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call

Barry Adamson - Moss Side Story

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Card:

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

Obscured influences come from a place of benevolence and should be accepted in order to further emotional security. Pretty broad scope, so I can't really pinpoint what this is addressing yet. But I'll keep my eyes open for obscured influences, of which there are no doubt many afoot in all of our lives.