Poison Ruïn's Harvest

I am completely new to Philidelphia punks Poison Ruïn, but when this video for Härvest, their upcoming album on Relapse Records showed up in my feed, it kinda blew my mind. We've seen "blackened" versions of nearly everything else (although I'd love to find a band that calls itself "blackened adult contemporary"), why not Punk? And with Poison Ruïn's anti-establishment ethos, we are talking about actual Punk here, insofar as politically minded, not just three-chord monte. Anyway, I dig this quite a bit. Härvest drops April 14th, and you can pre-order it HERE.

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Watch:

Yellowjackets is back, and K and I are finishing up a rewatch of the first season today and hitting episode one of season two later today. Can't freakin' wait!

If you didn't hear it before and are interested, here's the speculation episode we did on The Horror Vision days before the season one finale. Many of our theories/projections were proven erroneous or obsolete by that finale, but not all of them.

 

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Plastic:

Oh, come on! Stop taking my money!

            

The Universal monsters were, like many from my generation, my introduction to "Horror." My girlfriend also has a passion for the Universals, and we kind of bring it out in one another, to the point that one year for our anniversary, I bought us Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein shirts from Fright Rags. 

As Bobby Fingers says in that most recent video, when you find the one, never let them go!

Anyway, my die-hard passion starts and stops with Frank and this fella right here, who is actually probably my favorite of the Universals. Tack on the Lovecraftian twist in the lore that writers like Alan Moore and Stephen Murphy have reintroduced to popular culture over the last few decades, and The Creature continues to captivate me. So you can imagine my joy/chagrin when Jonathan Grimm messaged me with the details about this lovely figure Neca announced. I'm preordering mine from Entertainment Earth, but I'll need to do something really nice for my wallet one day soon.

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Playlist:

Talking Heads - Fear of Music

The Police - Outlandos d'Amour

The Obsessed - Lunar Womb

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

           

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New Swans!!!

New music from Swans! From the forthcoming album The Beggar, out June 23rd on Young God Records. Pre-order HERE.

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Watch:

One of the things that saved my sanity over the last few days of my recent two-week stint in LaLaLand was getting stoned at my hotel one night and discovering Bobby Fingers had released his new Diorama video. The subject of Mr. Fingers' machinations this time?

 

There is a level-up in this video that absolutely blew me away, and that's all I'll say. Well, besides confirming that Bobby Fingers is now my favorite anything on the internet. Watching these literally helped quell the total disgust for humanity that arose in me while stationed in LaLaLand this time.

 

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Plastic:

I have to confess that I've become one of the many disillusioned Hasbro Pulse fans. The company's entire manner of doing business is just disgusting. Due to this, and because I've cut my nerd-spending in half, there have been quite a few recent releases from their GI JOE Classified and Transformers lines that I want but have ultimately passed on. That said, here are a few I did allow myself to splurge on:

Copperhead is one of my all-time favorite characters, and this redesign is spot-on perfect in my opinion.

I don't know anything about Range Vipers, and this is obviously a rather "Sci-Fi" figure - an approach I do not normally appreciate in the series, but as a straight-up horrific-looking action figure, this thing is rad AF. Look at that brain!!!

This last one I actually have not yet ordered but am on the fence. One of the issues I (and a lot of other collectors) have with Pulse is their insane price markup. I've had Scrap Iron in my cart on their site for a few weeks now and, although this guy was one of my favorites of the original series' earliest figure designs AND a figure I never had as a child, this figure's pull is strong. I loved the character in Larry Hama's comics - that scene where he blows up the station wagon with the Soft Master, Billy and Mr. Coffee-in-my-Brandy has always stayed with me. That said, when you're at checkout and see a final cost of $57 for one figure, well, that's just INSANE, regardless of whether or not it comes with a 'vehicle' like old Iron's anti-tank drone. Magic eightball says I'll probably end up ordering this, but it irks me nonetheless. 

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Playlist:

The Veils - Total Depravity

King Woman - Celestial Blues

King Woman - King Woman on Audiotree Live EP

Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Godflesh - Pure Live

The Police - Regatta de Blanc

Silent - Modern Hate

Savages - Silence Yourself

Neverly Boys - Dark Side of Everything

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Card:

From Missi's Raven Tarot:

I turn 47 today, and in light of this event, I wanted to pull a card from Missi's Raven Tarot as a sort of "Card for the year." Makes sense I would see The High Priestess, as I feel like she has been lurking in quite a few of my dailies of late. 

From the Grimoire:

"Can denote change and/or fluctuation. Matter or situation shaped by gracious or pure influences. The Priestess taps into the power of Life and the Universe."

All of which is to say - or at least in my interpretation - I will have a year where I continue to shape my future. Sounds boring, but as anyone who has changed their life for the better multiple times and is generally unafraid to do so at the drop of a hat, it's not easy. Nor is continually affecting my own creative force, honing these lumbering documents of a novel that is hard A.F. to write, but ultimately rewarding A.F. when it begins to come together.

Here's to the voyage to 48!!!

Dead Guy's Work Ethic

I received a spectacular early birthday present in the mail from Mr. Brown yesterday - Dead Guy's Work Ethic E.P. I first discovered Dead Guy back in 1995 when Victory Records released their Fixation On A Coworker LP. I was writing for Subculture magazine back then, and somehow became their default Victory Records guy, so I received all the promo CDs the labels sent in. I did not care for most of the bands, but Dead Guy... they kind of blew me away right off the bat. 

Funny thing about this live EP record, this track labeled as "Druid" is actually "Extremist" or "The Extremist", one of my favorites from that Fixation LP.  Song still shreds some serious face, and it reminds me I still need to track down that Dead Guy documentary Vinegar Syndrome's Partner label has for sale on their site/app. 

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Watch:

The verdict is out on Shudder's upcoming From Black. The trailer - I watched about half, and it sold me - looks like it can go either way, good or bad.

 

April 28th, we'll see. I love some of the imagery here, but certain elements of how this trailer is cut make me wonder if this will just be a rehash of what we've seen in some better movies of late.

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Playlist:

Spotlights - Seanace EP

Spotlights - Love & Decay

Cristobal Tapia de Veer - Smile OST

Dead Guy - Work Ethic EP

Dr. John - Ske Dat De Dat

The Veils - ... And Out of the Void Came Love

Sunn O))) - Domkirk

The Police - Synchronicity

King Woman - Celestial Blues

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Card:

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

One of the rare moments where I'm going to read a card at face value - I'm making some snap judgments about people in my life and it's leading to an uncomfortable mental space.

Spotlight on Stephen King's Fairy Tale

 

Really digging this new EP from Spotlights. Order from Ipecac Records HERE.

 

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NCBD:

As of Monday, I'm finally back from my two weeks in LaLaLand. Trapped up in West L.A./Santa Monica at the Sonder hotel at Found, I didn't get a chance to hit up my beloved Comic Bug until my final day in town, but I saw some old friends and got to pick up a few books that weren't on my list. Also, will be returning to Rick's Comic City today to grab my Pull-List books from the last two weeks, so here's everything I will have acquired starting back on NCBD 3/08/23:

This Week's Pull 3/22/23:

Last week's Pull, 3/15/23:

This, the penultimate issue of Hulk, is one I actually missed out on; I never added to my Pull, and The Bug was sold out, so I'll have to find it online somewhere.

The only one I've read at the point of reading this, I started out feeling pretty non-plussed, but ending up really liking where this second issue of Immoral X-Men went. I don't love Sins of Sinister, however, I'm reading through it simply to see the pretty big-swing ideas the X-writing stable are taking with it.

LOVE LOVE LOVE this cover!

Two Weeks Ago, 3/08/23:

Based on the Master of Reality and now Back in Black homage covers, I am SO hoping they do one for Mercyful Fate, Don't Break the Oath on a future issue of this series!

I'm glad this regular X-Men book isn't adhering or pausing for Sins of Sinister. With issue 19's start of a Brood-based story, I thought I was going to roll my eyes, however, the entire set-up was fantastic (the Nowhere thread is amazing!). I'm really looking forward to this one!

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Read:

While in LaLaLand, I had a couple of occasions to catch up and hang out with my good friend Chris Saunders, formerly of The Thirsty Crows, and my co-host on the hiatus-ending-soon podcast A Most Horrible Library. Chris gifted me a beautiful Hardcover copy of Stephen King's newest novel Fairy Tale, and at ~120 pages into its ~600 pages, I'm hooked!

I haven't read a new King novel since 2010's Doctor Sleep (thanks to Mr. Brown!) and reading Fairy Tale makes me remember how much I adore the man's prose. I'm realizing now that one of the everlasting endearments of King's mind and how it translates to the page is he writes about a world that, while modern and incorporating modern elements (the internet, online shopping, current cultural establishments), King's world still feels very much like the world I grew up in, the one-two weeks in LaLaLand convinced me did not exist at all anymore. That's a very welcome refresher at the moment, as it gives me hope humanity isn't as far gone as it often feels when in a high-population center or tooling around online.

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Playlist:

Le Butcherettes - A Raw Youth

Screaming Females - Desire Pathways

Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Sunset Mission

Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy

SQÜRL - Silver Haze

The Police - Regatta de Blanc

Burial - Untrue

Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right To Children

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi

Wayne Shorter - The All Seeing Eye

Spotlights - Seance EP

Spotlights - Love & Decay

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Card:

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

Emotional security leads to an Emotional breakthrough that ultimately could turn into a profitable partnership. 

The Rain Song

My good friend NY John at work is always a bastion of interesting Rock'n Roll info and anecdotes. I miss talking to him on a daily basis, when he'd drop by my department at work to vent about corporate moronity and we'd eventually segue into talking about the Stones, Talking Heads, Television, etc. While in the office the other day, he told me to cue up Led Zeppelin's The Rain Song, and upon the intonation of that first, iconic note, he related that he'd read an interview with Jimmy Page where he said he took the chord from The Beatles (I'll let you determine which song). Anyway, hearing just that one chord made me want to hear the entire song, and hearing the entire song, I had to spin House of the Holy and Physical Graffiti in their entirety. I feel a Zeppelin jag coming on. Been a while, and I'm pretty eager to sink into it. Being that I bonded with the band's music at a pretty young, formative age, I feel as though those times when I'm under their spell, my brain works differently. It'll be nice to feel that old familiar "Led Zeppelin" brain again. Also, this is probably my favorite song by the band (although on any given day I might give you an entirely different answer. Fitting, this track, as it's been raining in LaLaLand more consistently than I'd seen in some years when I lived here. 

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Watch:

Monday and Tuesday of last week I was able to sneak in a couple of really cool LA theatre jaunts. When in Rome, right? First, courtesy of the always amazing Cinematic Void, my Horror Vision cohost Ray and I saw a pretty damn nice 35 mm print of Popcorn at the Los Feliz 3 Theatre:

This was fantastic, especially since A) Ray gifted me a Popcorn t-shirt and, B) I got to see Cinematic Void guru Jim Branscome interview Popcorn's star Jill Schoelen after the film.

Then last night, Ray and I got to attend Pi Day, 25th anniversary of Darren Aronofsky's landmark debut film Pi. Even better, before the film, Aronofsky, Star Sean Gullette, Producer Eric Watson, Cinematographer Matthew Libatique, Composer Clint Mansell and actor Stanley Herman (subway singer) spoke about the film at length. Talk about inspiring. 

I haven't watched this one in a while despite the fact that I carry a very tangible love for it with me on an almost day-to-day basis. It's been at least 15 years since I last watched Pi, and I found I remembered it pretty much verbatim. Also, hearing Mansell's score now, I realize it was that which pushed me into really exploring electronic music back in the day. Everything about this one is iconic. 

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Playlist:

Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti

Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy

Damone - From the Attic

Danko Jones - We Sweat Blood

Motörhead - Ace of Spades

The Police - Outlandos d'Amour

The Police - Regatta de Blanc

Thus Love - Memorial

Soul Coughing - El Oso

The Pogues - Rum Sodomy and the Lash

House of Pain - Same As It Ever Was

Pestilence - Consuming Impulse

Le Butcherettes - A Raw Youth

Deftones - Koi No Yokan

Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

Spotlights - Seance EP

Damone is a Super Cyborg!!!

 

Part One: Last night, my friend and Horror Vision cohost Ray reminded me about one of the institutions in LaLaLand that I adore: Henry Rollins. One thing LA has going for it is that, if you are music-minded, Rollins was, for a time, ever-present. The old LA Weekly free magazine sported a column by him (now long gone since the paper was purchased and 'streamlined' somewhere around 2017. Even better, Rollins has a two-hour radio show every weekend on local public radio KCRW, 89.9. I was a loyal listener for years, then, at some point, they moved his shows from Saturday night to Sunday and I just fell off. Ray's reminder came in the form of a two-part aha moment. First, KCRW has an app where you can stream their programming regardless of when/where you live, and two Rollins is back on Saturdays at 10:00 PM! Now, sure I could have been listening all along via the app, but the Rollins Saturday night was an event, similar to Joe Bob's Last Drive-In, and I really kinda want to listen to it when it airs. So that's what we did last night. Part Two: Damone is not a band Rollins played last night. I found this band and their debut album with is twenty years old this year in the resulting rabbit hole I fell through after Rollins' show. This is straight teenager powerpop, a genre I do not usually go for. But this... my mileage isn't super sound on this - the album wears a bit as it goes on, but only a bit. And this opening track kicks some serious ass. 

This reminds me of a kind of teenage Danko Jones in a way, and with a similar quasi-70s aesthetic, it reminds me how there was a moment in the very early 00s when it seemed like 70s Hard Rock started to resurface. 

I think about other bands I can name from the teenage power pop area of music and they all lean into calling themselves punk or pop punk - I think that's where they go wrong. They're all also fronted by men who go out of their way to sound like pubescent boys, so that doesn't work for me either. I don't know if it's the mainly female vocals, a girl rounding up to being a bit macho, instead of a boy rounding down to come off vulnerable, but Damone just works where most of those other groups fail miserably. Also, they're named after Damone! You know, Dream Police?

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Play:

The other rabbit hole I fell down yesterday:

 

Working on-site is exhausting for a myriad of reasons, so I haven't had a lot of time or energy in the short periods when I'm in my hotel. Haven't had the energy to watch much let alone read, so it's a good thing I brought my Switch, and even better that the algorithm saw fit to pop up a video on youtube titled, "Super Cyborg is basically Contra on Switch."

Yep. True. Well, the first level is almost exactly Contra, and a lot of the gameplay is the same, but it's going to some weird places with insect and sealife-based bad guys, with some pretty gross ideas they throw at you to shoot. And, of course, there's a 40 lives code, which really opens up the enjoyment.

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Playlist:

Windhand - Eponymous

Cough & Windhand - Reflection of the Negative EP

Henry Rollins - KCRW Broadcast 727

The C.I.A. - Surgery Channel

Damone - From the Attic

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Card:

A direct commentary on not forgetting how good I have it right now, and how much I miss K while I am away. Wealth, indeed.

Splatterhouse OST on Vinyl!!!

 

From the Nameco Arcade version of Splatterhouse, now up for pre-order at SpaceLab9 HERE.

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Float:

I've been using my time in LaLaLand to try and reprogram some of the bad behavior I've developed since moving to Tennessee. Well, okay, calling it bad behavior is a bit hyperbolic, but here's a list of my transgressions:

    • I used to average 14K steps a day. Now I average 4K. BIG difference, especially when you consider the next two points.

    • Found I could eat all kinds of bread again without it causing me inflammation problems in my gut, which is how it's been since 2014 or so, and as a result, for the last 5 months, I've eaten bread multiple times a day every day. 

    • I went years barely eating red meat. I reserved that for special occasions or Chicago. However, we once we found a good Mexican place in Clarksville - something we 100% did not think we'd find - I ordered a big ol' carne asada burrito every Friday for months. This culminated with me eating two of those burritos one night. And when I say carne asada burrito, the only ingredients besides the tortilla are steak, guac and pico de Gallo. So that's like half a cow for two of these bad boys.

Now, I'm not one of those super health-conscious types, but I also adamantly will not give up drinking beer and do not want to be an old man who's super thin with a gut like a boulder, so something has to give. Since I woke up and flew out here this past Monday, I've fasted 74 hours (mostly in 8, 13, or 16-hour increments) and walked a stunning 40 miles - just over 84K steps. I've also done something I'd wanted to do for about the last 8 years I lived in LA and didn't - I booked two sessions and am planning at least one more at Float Lab Westwood.

I can't quite explain how the first session made me feel, except that it was fantastic. I've talked in these pages recently about needing to meditate more, and in general learn to relax a bit. When I stepped from that first session back out into the world, I was in such an altered state I couldn't believe it. My second one was yesterday, and although a bit frustrating - for whatever reason I just could not let go of my thoughts - I still count it as successful. Also, between the two, I think I've figured out a bit of a regiment to get what I need out of the experience, so here's hoping number three will be even more beneficial.

Of course, it's not just relaxation I'm after. My interest in Sensory Deprivation tanks shares motivations with my interest in hallucinogens - the latter being something I've found myself not really digging so much the last two times I've micro-dosed Psilocybin. 

This is a forever place for me now, no doubt. I expect to be back in LaLaLand about every six months, and Westwood is only 2.5 miles from the hotel I favor while here, so there should never be a reason not to go.

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Playlist:

SQÜRL - Berlin '87 (single)

David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

Black Sabbath - Sabotage

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

The Birthday Party - Mutiny/The Bad Seed 

T. Rex - The Slider

Fantômas - Eponymous

Orville Peck - Pony

Odonis Odonis - Post Plague

Windhand - Split EP

Windhand - Eponymous

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Card:

Breakthrough in Earthly matters. Feels right.