Poor Things - Your Arse is on Fire

 

Looks like Mr. Bungle encored with "My Ass is on Fire" two nights ago in Pomona, CA. I don't have tickets for any of these shows (obviously; my best chance of seeing Bungle now is if they add a Chicago date), but I'm psyched to hear they pulled this one out of the toy box. I got to see them play it on the Disco Volante tour at the Chicago Metro back in, gasp, 1995! By the time they came around for the two California tours, they had a new, 'remixed' version I didn't particularly care for. Still, good to see them pulling out something from the first album, and hopefully the new lineup might be working up to a few more surprises down the road.

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Watch:

I have, to date, only seen one film by Yorgos Lanthimos, and that's Killing of a Sacred Deer. That film blew me away, and I really need to get on seeing the others. In the meantime, while I've been sitting on my hands as a potential fan, Mr. Lanthimos has constructed a new film:

 

Frankenstein? Well, obviously to some degree, but I'd wager there's a lot more going on here. Interesting to see the fantastic imagery here; almost reminds me of an LSD-laced version of Wes Anderson. 

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Read:

After seeing a friend post about it on social media, I went ahead and grabbed the first issue of Dan Watters and Sebastián Cabrol's The Seasons Have Teeth. Here's the photo my friend posted that convinced me:

Yeah, that's all I needed, too. The logline here is what if the Seasons manifested as beasts. This right here is Spring, and it's where we start our story, through the lens of a news photographer whose grief has him ready to risk his life to get the pictures that will show the world the Seasons' faces.

Dan Watters has really floored me over the last few years. Between Homesick Pilots and The Picture of Everything Else - which finally finishes with the release of issues 4 and 5 nxt month - I've now seen his name on an upcoming Marvel title or two. Let's celebrate his success by hoping he has enough time to continue to make these wonderful Creator-owned books, too.

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Playlist:

QOTSA - Emotion Sickness (pre-release single)

QOTSA - Villains

QOTSA - Era Vulgaris

The Hives - Tyrannosaurus Hives

White Lung - Paradise

White Lung - Premonition

White Lung - It's the Evil

White Lung - Full Performance KEXP

Slayer - Decade of Aggression

Trombone Shorty - Too True

Blanck Mass - In Ferneaux

           

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Card:

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

I feel like I see the Seven of Swords a lot lately. Taken here with the Ten of Cups and The Moon, I'd say there's something hidden or obscured that's preventing me from achieving victory in regard to a monetary issue. 

 

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NEW MUSIC FROM QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE!!!

 From the forthcoming album Times New Roman, out June 16th. You can pre-order HERE. 

SUPER cool song - I hear T. Rex a lot in here, always a good thing. I'm also noticing the guitar sound on the verses has that super distorted "junkyard" feeling that I loved so much from Era Vulgaris, pushed back to the front. I've never been sure if that's a soft application of a ring modulator or a pitch shifter or both. Either way, loving it here.

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Watch:

From an article on Bloody Disgusting this morning (HERE), I give you the trailer for God is a Bullet:

 

Satanic Cult? I'm in! Also, Maika Monroe has been in some killer genre flicks over the last few years, and she's been great in all of them. 

  

Is it a bit weird that this film is directed by Nick Cassavetes, director of The Notebook? Not to judge the man - lots of people break in with what they can and then follow their passion (consider the case of Ryan Gosling, star of The Notebook), but there's also a track record of non-Horror folk 'hanging out in Horror' for a paycheck. Hopefully, that's not the case.

This one's getting a wide theatrical release - not sure if it will play by me; at first glance, I thought having the title God is a Bullet would stigmatize it right out of the local theatres here, then I realized having "bullet" in the title might actually push it in any way. After all, if there's one thing people seem to like more than god here, it's bullets.

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Playlist:

The Raveonettes - Raven in the Grave

The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control

The Hives - Tyrannosaurus Hives

Ghost Cop - End Credits

Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick

Screaming Females - Desire Pathway

Danko Jones - We Sweat Blood

Iress - Prey

Type O Negative - Origin of the Feces

Mars Red Sky - Eponymous

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Live Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs!

 

KEXP dropped a live session with British Sludge Punks Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs a few days ago, and I'm here to tell you it kicks some serious arse! Check it out and if you dig, head on over to their Bandcamp HERE and grab the new record Land of Sleeper! 

Mr. Brown was the one who turned me onto these lads when the album dropped, and I've been spinning both the new one and 2020's Viscerals - both fantastic albums of grimy, heavy slabs of Slunk (see what I did there?) 

I hear so many different influences in these guys: The Wipers, Sabbath, Melvins, and Idles all spring immediately to mind. That said, this is a 100% original sound, which is difficult to do in the sludge world. 

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NCBD:

Once again, here are my picks for #NCBD!

As of issue 13 I realized that my theory that Danny Ketch was now a product of the Weapon Plus Program was off; instead we have some weird corporation developing weapons with aspects of Hell in their DNA? Super weird, and I'm curious to see where this goes.

I confess - I was not blown away by Nightmare Country's return last month with Glass House #1. Also, so the full title now is The Sandman Universe: Nightmare Country: The Glass House? That's a lot of sub-titles. Regardless of naming aesthetics, James Tynion IV has my complete trust. Also, what a cover!!!

I love the simplicity of this story so far. I also love the mechanics of the two worlds in juxtaposition to one another.

Saga!

First X-Men: Red since coming back from Sins of Sinister, and we're looking at a cover of Storm amidst a pile of dead Xaviers. The mind reels at what insane cosmic blasphemies Al Ewing and Jacopo Camagni have in store for us now that Arakko is back

 

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Watch:

A new trailer for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer dropped earlier in the week.

At some point, despite loving every one of Nolan's films up to and including (especially!) The Dark Knight Rises. For my money, Nolan's Batman is the only cinematic Batman. That said, I always loved his non-IP films better, with The Prestige ranking as one of my favorites of that decade. Yet, I missed Interstellar in the theatres then sat on my hands when it lived on Prime for the better part of 2016, skipped Dunkirk entirely, and even mismanaged my fervor for Tenant due to not being able to see it in a theatre during its COVID-era release. After seeing this trailer for Oppenheimer, I'm not letting this one get away.

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Playlist:

Chamber of Screams, Clement Panchout & Mxxn - Murder House Original Puppet Combo Soundtrack

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Soundgarden - Super Unknown

Tamaryn - The Waves

DIR EN GREY - The Marrow of a Bone

            

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Card:

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

Doubling up on Swords suggestions Conflict, however, cut with the Page (Princess in Thoth) of Cups, I'd say this refers to news of the quiet dissolution of multiple social and business problems this morning.

 

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Network

Mr. Brown and I have been doing vinyl swaps now that I live within a day's drive. This most recent one goes back to, I think, February. We pick out six albums we want to expose the other to, then hand them over until the next time we see one another. The albums in my most recent bag from Brown included Steve Earle's 2021 J.T. and it is exceptional.

Other than a few failed attempts at getting into Copperhead Road back around 2008, the only thing I really know about Steve Earle is he did a stint on HBO's brilliant Treme, where unlike most of the other Louisana musicians who appeared on the show as themselves, Earle played fictional local musician Harley Watt. 

The linear notes for J. T. tell the story of Justin Townes Earle, the first son and, by his own right, accomplished musician/songwriter who recorded and toured for nine studio albums before he passed away at the age of 38 in 2020. J.T. then, is Steve Earle and his band The Dukes recording a selection of his son's songs (one original closes out the album). Pretty powerful stuff. I'm not familiar with Justin Townes Earle's stuff outside of spinning this record half a dozen times now, but I can see why the term "genre agnosticism" keeps coming up when I read about him. The track I selected today has a very early 90s jangle pop sound hidden amidst its straight country leanings.

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Watch:

Sunday night K and I sat down to watch Sidney Lumet's 1975 film Network.

I'd seen half this movie back in the USPS Netflix days, when whatever DVD release they stocked needlessly split the 2-hour and 1-minute film onto two discs, apparently unknown to the service, who only sent me one disc. After that, well, Network faded to the back of my mind until I noticed it on HOBOMAX recently.

 

 

The prescience of this film - released in 1975 - is staggering today. This predicts EVERYTHING about our media-defined reality in 2023: The "Howard Beale Show" almost seems a template for every influencer, toktik "star" and social media celeb. The lengths the network will go, the manner in which everyone who doesn't agree falls quickly in line when they see the reactions of the masses (republican party 2015 anyone?) and the general disconnect Diana Christensen has from the world and the people around her - for anything other than the television - is so spot on with our world it's frightening. I really want to try and hit Cronenberg's Videodrome in the next day or two now, as I think these would be a perfect double feature.
 

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Playlist:

Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies

Fen - Epoch

A Perfect Circle - Mer De Noms

Sleep - The Sciences

The Sword - Warp Riders

Slayer - Decade of Aggression

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Card:

I felt compelled to stay with the Thoth Deck for this morning's Pull, so here we go:

• 4 of Cups Luxury - 4's traditionally denote stability, and when Crowley named his version of the 4 of Cups "Luxury" he did so as an intimation that, removed from the Earthen themes of Disks (pentacles), the luxury here is a stable, healthy emotional mind frame. This is the opposite of manic, which incidentally, is how I've felt the last two days.

• Prince of Swords - the Intellect when applied to the interconnectivity of relationships, whether they be personal or Earthly (ie legal and the like) - this is the road out of manic ville - thinking with purpose.

• 8 of Swords Interference - Pretty self-explanatory; it pains me to say that, when my mental gears are not processing something I've just read, watched or listened to, my thinking tends to be rather passive. I get carried away on flights of fancy very easily, resurface and often have nothing to show for it. THIS is what eats my productivity as a writer, but it also leaves my mind lazy. This then, is what I have to watch out for, as it produces a lethargy that then manifests (eventually) as a manic state. 

I definitely could see how Network ties into this; television in general. 

Cruising Near Dark

From the 1987 OST for Kathryn Bigelow's inimitable debut film, Near Dark, one of about three vampire movies I can't live without. 

Tangerine Dream was such a solid choice for scoring this film, and I'd say it just accentuates William Friedkin's obvious influence on Bigelow film. The early scene in the film this song scores is one of the most era-defining moments of 80s Horror for me. I didn't see Near Dark until well after its release, but the sights and sounds of this sequence somehow sum up a large part of the texture I remember from the mid-to-late 80s. 

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Watch:

Saturday night, K and I finally sat down and watched William Friedkin's 1980 thriller Cruising.

 

I remember some time back when Netflix was still by mail, I watched Friedkin's French Connection and To Live and Die in L.A. and realized, "Oh shit, this is the same guy who did The Exorcist. Wow."

I've never been one to get into an artist and just consume everything they've done immediately. There's still one Bret Baston Ellis book I haven't read; there are several Irvine Welsh novels I'm keeping on the back burner, and I've not heard more PJ Harvey than I've heard. This isn't to say there's any reason I'm avoiding these entries in the respective artist's canon except that I want to make sure there's something on deck. With Friedkin, I'm sure I looked up his filmography and made some long-forgotten notes, but I didn't exactly jump on anything else right away.

Sometime around 2013, titterings began for the restoration, release and revival house screenings of two "lost masterpieces" - 1977 Sorceror and Cruising. I remember mid-week screenings popping up at the New Beverly Cinema or the Silent Movie Theatre. I remember not having the money to go, or to buy the newly released DVD because my live was getting ready to explode. Ten years later, I finally sat down and watched Cruising and it absolutely blew me away, although not in the manner I expected. 

Friedkin is the best kind of sneaky when it comes to what he shows his audience. He manipulates his story via the medium of film by how he edits, what he puts in and what he leaves out of his script and its dialogue. Also, there's a level of casting manipulation here that I didn't understand at first, but after I read THIS ARTICLE. There is such mastery of film as a medium here, but not in the usual ways. Yes, the craft - the cinematography, writing, acting, all of it is superb, but the mastery I'm referencing here is the way Friedkin compresses his narrative into the actual physical act of showing it to us on screen. This isn't anything 'new,' however, I don't know anyone who has done it quite like this before. 

 

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Playlist:

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Black Sabbath - Technical Ecstasy

Bongripper - Satan Worshipping Doom

Atrium Carceri - Kapnobatai

High on Fire - Death is this Communion

High on Fire - Surrounded By Thieves

Sleep - The Sciences

SQÜRL - Silver Haze

Gaupa - Myriad

Mars Red Sky - Eponymous

Steve Earle - J.T.

Trombone Shorty - Too True

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicenter

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

        

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Card:

A single Thoth card for my Pull today:

When one path closes, the trick is sidestep the disappointment and watch for the next opening sure to arise in the wake. 

 

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Lighthouse Horror as a Subgenre

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First, some appropriate music to set the tone:

 

As I originally mentioned in an earlier post today, seeing the trailer for Torture Star/Marevo Collective's upcoming (May 18th!) new game No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, I felt compelled to talk a bit more about Lighthouse Horror as a burgeoning Subgenre. Yeah, I know it's pretty easy to get carried away with subgenres, but I feel like this is becoming as legitimate a 'thing' and there's a wealth of great entries that people interested should know about. 

First: What a spectacular setting, right?  I mean, an abandoned lighthouse island with rocky crags and descending spiral staircases lends itself so well to Horror that I just feel this is made to be. No or limited electricity, an ever-present "man vs. nature" throughline, pervading darkness and let's not forget the isolation - Oh! the isolation! Such tasty morsels for a Horror story to lean into. 

Lighthouse Horror is interesting because there's a fairly small and finite number of permutations to get the ball rolling. Either someone is being shipped out to a lighthouse because the operator has gone missing/mad/died, or the characters are rotating in for their shift and something horrific transpires. The isolation is a large part of the Horror, and keeping this in mind, the setting is perhaps optimum for slow-burn formulas, especially where the characters' psychological state becomes increasingly unmoored, slowly sinking them into madness. 

Being that the entire purpose of the lighthouse as a structure is to keep away the darkness and act as a beacon to those traveling through it, the subgenre is also ready-made for metaphors, and Lovecraftian sea monsters slot into these tales nicely as well, whether you consider them metaphors or not.

The argument for adding Lighthouse Horror as a subgenre begins, as far as I can tell, in 2017. That's the year Cold Skin by Xavier Gens came out. This takes a Lovecraftian route with its use of a lighthouse location to tell a Horror tale, and it fits like a glove! 

From there, of course, Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse came out just two years later in 2019. This takes the more psychological route with the location, although there are folks that argue there are some Lovecraftian moments sprinkled throughout, just in a decidedly more subtle. The "Can I Play With Madness" themes of this film prove pretty aggressive by the end, and as I've said on this page before, I can't think of a better example of the admittedly overused logline, "A slow descent into Madness."

More recently, Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino kicked off their Bone Orchard Mythos with The Passage, a graphic novel that takes place entirely on a lighthouse island and contains some genuinely haunting images. There are overarching monstrous themes in the Boneyard Mythos - which is still developing in subsequent series - and while I'd say the aspirations are Lovecraft-level, this is 100% Lemire and Sorrentino's own thing, which is refreshing. There are some images in The Passage that rank as the most effective I've seen in a Horror Graphic Novel since Pornsak Pichetshote's Infidel and some very smart uses of a drone to deliver them.

What route will No One Lives Under the Lighthouse take? With first-person games a perfect vehicle to elicit very real paranoic responses from their players, this might be the closest some get to a real lighthouse Horror experience ourselves (let's hope so!) 

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Ghost of Vroom!

New music from Mike Doughty's Ghost of Vroom! If you're a Soul Coughing fan like I am, this is the closest thing to that sound Doughty's done since their breakup back in, well, a loooong time ago. The new album, Ghost of Vroom 3 is out later this year, although no hard date has been announced.

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Watch:

Rewatched Kevin Phillips' Super Dark Times on Shudder last night. Man, this one is heavy.

I'm not going to post a trailer because I think it's best to go in cold on this one. Yes, that's my recommendation for every movie, however, we can't always control that. This one is from 2017, so if you haven't seen it you may already have an idea what it's about. If not, just watch it. Damn.

What I will say is A) Kevin Phillips NAILS high school. I mean, he just crushed it - so many little non-sequitur moments that surround the characters and mean nothing other than to reinforce where our minds are at this age. Anger, Angst and Rebellion. "No I don't need your fucking help, lady!" one background character screams at one point, and it's just spot fucking on. B) This deals with a trauma that an event in my life in high school shares some DNA with. Phillips nails the state of mind that followed it. Again, he CRUSHED it.

 

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Play:

Ask and ye shall receive: new Puppet Combo-like game No One Lives Under the Lighthouse by Torture Star and Marevo Collective hits a bunch of platforms - Switch included - this month!

 

Spooky AF! There are some images in this trailer that seared into my brain the moment they appeared on screen (@1:22 - WTF???). What a spectacular setting; an abandoned lighthouse island with rocky crags and descending spiral staircases lends itself so well to this aesthetic. I can't wait to play this game!

NOTE: if you read this post earlier and remembered it being longer, fret not! You are correct - I've expanded my "Lighthouse Horror as a burgeoning subgenre thoughts in a separate post HERE.

No One Lives Under the Lighthouse is out May 18th!

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Playlist:

Sleep - The Sciences

Windhand - Eternal Return

Earth - Live at Third Man Records

Dorthia Cottrell - Death Folk Country

The Sword - Warp Riders

Bongripper - Satan (single)

Crowbar - Planets Collide (single)

Gaupa - Myriad

Witchfinder - Hazy Rites

Witchfinder - Forgotten Mansion

            

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Card:

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

• 20 Judgement is Aeon in Crowley and Harris's Thoth deck. Regardless of which you go with, this is a card of Redemption. It also suggests a pivotal sequence and the holography of cause/effect.

• Seven of Pentacles is a card that denotes Victory/Completion of Earthly matters

• Queen of Pentacles, in this particular case, is offering the advice that I actually stop thinking with my emotions on Earthly matters and begin applying a more staunch lens of discernment.

In other words - I'm spending too much money on vinyl. 

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