Relax - Creepshow's Back!!!

Rewatched Brian De Palma's Body Double last week in preparation for the deep-dive discussion we just did over on The Horror Vision Presents: Elements of Horror. Man, I love this film. Body Double has to be my favorite De Palma film, and one of the things I love about it is the use of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax, a song I've dug since I first heard it as a child. Went looking for the video today, wondering if it might match up with the scene that features it in the film, but somehow it's actually a lot weirder than that! I must have seen this at some point in the 80s, but I definitely didn't remember what an odd spectacle Director Bernard Rose (yes, THAT Bernard Rose!!!) creates for the song. 

You can listen to that Body Double discussion on Apple Podcasts HERE, Spotify HERE, or pretty much anywhere else you stream podcasts.

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Watch:

Shudder is bringing Creepshow back for a fourth season! Here's the new trailer:

I'll admit, I'm excited despite the fact that each of the seasons so far feel like exercises in diminishing returns. Season One is the strongest overall season, in my opinion, but three had the best episode (Public Television of the Dead and its wonderful, Bob Ross-meets-Evil-Dead feel). Regardless of perceived shortcomings, I very much root for Creepshow, and am glad to see it coming back after a nearly two-year hiatus.

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Read:

Killing time Saturday afternoon in Chicago's south suburbs, I stopped in a Barnes and Noble for the first time in a long time. This particular store has been in Orland Park, Il, for years, and although my preferred big box bookstore environment was always the Borders that used to sit across the street, I've been in this B&N a handful of times. If you're familiar with the chain, you know that when you first walk inside most B&N stores, they have displays of their own publishing imprint, Fall River Press. These are normally public domain bargain books, but some of them are very nice. Case in point, this Hardcover H.P. Lovecraft edition that I picked up for $10:

This is by no means a 'complete' collection. What I've found with printed complete Lovecraft books is, they are so voluminous, the bindings are usually shite. This is a pretty smart-looking HC that collects six of HPL's more famous stories:

1) The Call of Cthulhu

2) The Colour Out of Space

3) The Haunter of the Dark

4) The Whisperer in Darkness

5) The Dunwich Horror

6) The Thing on the Doorstep. 

While I still consider the .99 "Everything" volume I have on Kindle (no bad bindings there, and it's really easy for cross-referencing between stories), it's nice to have six of the big ones on a slim, attractive bookshelf volume as well. 

 

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Playlist:

The Replacements - Tim

Hollywood Babble-On Ep. 406

Real Ones w/ Jon Bernthal - Living A Double Life: Lou Valoze

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

bunsenburner - Rituals

Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain

The Ronettes - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes

Led Zeppelin - Presence

Ruby the Hatchet - Fear is a Cruel Master

Metallica - 72 Seasons

Baroness - Stone (pre-release singles)

Ministry - Goddamn White Trash (single)

GnR - Perhaps (single)

Steely Dan - Aja

Sigur Rós - Ágœtis Byrjun

The Blues Brothers - OST

Les Discarts - Prédateurs

Alice in Chains - Sap EP

Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

Crime Weekly: D.B. Cooper A Man with a Grudge (part 1)

The Hives - Tyrannosaurus Hives

Crime Weekly: D.B. Cooper Mystery Money (part 2)

H6LLB6ND6R - Side A

            

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Card:

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

• 0: The Fool

• Three of Pentacles

• Ten of Pentacles

Lots of "Earthly" concerns, and that tracks; spent the weekend in Chicago for a wedding, however, a lot of the time was also spent thinking about moving my folks out of the house I grew up in and down by us. There's The Fool's new journey, Three's Growth and Ten's Endings/Closure all rolled into one!!!

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Baroness - Shine

 

Baroness dropped another new track from their upcoming Stone, out September 15th. I'm really digging everything I've heard so far, and I adore this album art for this one; every album features Frontman John Dyer Baizley's paintings and all of them are fantastic. This one does something specific for me, apparently. Pre-order Stone HERE.

 

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Watch:

Based on the description Bloody Disgusting gives in a recent article, I'm a little afraid of Karim Ouelhaj's new film Megalomaniac. That said, I made it about 7 seconds into the trailer and knew I wanted to see it:

 

That imagery, whatever it is, took my breath. I won't be watching any more of the trailer, but you can. You can also read the BD article HERE, or Meagan Navarro's review of the film HERE. I'm literally doing none of that. Megalomaniac is receiving US theatrical distribution on September 8th via Dark Star Pictures, although I'm fairly certain it will be limited and I won't get it here in Clarksville, so I'll be keeping an eye open on VOD streaming platforms.

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Playlist:

Cristobal Tapia De Veer - Smile OST

Perturbator - Dangerous Days

Windhand - Eponymous

Count Gorgann - Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Live for the Dead

Various - Lords of Salem OST

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire

        

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Card:

About to head out for the six-plus hour drive up to Chicago for the weekend, so just a quick (but important) Pull. I still try and use Missi's Raven Deck for occasions such as these, where Arcana is all I really need:

 

Don't struggle against change. Prescient for sure, for reasons I won't go into here.
 

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Brian Jonestown Massacre Cover The Raveonettes!

How freakin' awesome is this? I mean, I'd rather have had a new Raveonettes record drop, but I'll take an all-star covers version of their debut, no problem. The list of participants here is fantastic, so it was hard to choose a track. Rip It Off is available everywhere now - rejoice!

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NCBD:

I'm pretty pumped for this week's NCBD. Here's why:

Once again I'd like to acknowledge how full of shit I am when it comes to my constant refrain of, "I'm jumping off this Ghost Rider book." Issue 16 had another total Clive Barker undercurrent to it, and the Ghost Rider/Wolverine: Weapons of Vengeance continued that (in a way), even though it did not do what I keep hearing about, the Weapon Plus (formerly erroneously referred to as the Weapon X) program reinstating with technology culled from Hell itself by Infernal Labs. I mean, that concept could be so freakin' Metal! Will it? Maybe. Either way, I guess I'll be around to see.

Nothing but good things to say about this one. Every issue of SIKTC comes and goes so quickly, I'm constantly wanting more. And that cover! This is one of the variants, but I'm hoping to snag one; very reminiscent of those House of Slaughter "Body Bag" covers last year.

Love the new, post-Armaggedon Game direction TMNT is taking. Between recent issues of this, the recently completed Last Ronin: Lost Years going out on such a high note, and all the various plotlines at play, I feel like we've weathered the crossover/event storm and finally gotten back around to some solid month-to-month storytelling!

I was not going to read this new iteration of Uncanny Avengers, then I found out Gerry Duggan is writing it. For me, that makes it worth giving the book a chance. The playing field is certainly aligned to make this a great book: how does Captain America stand beside mutants before a world Orchis has pretty much engineered to fear and hate them? This isn't like the old school, 'feared and hated' throughline that has haunted the X-books since the beginning; mutants are now globally blamed for terrible crimes against all of humanity, so I'm thinking the term "race traitor" is going to get thrown in Cap's face quite a bit. Of course, one of the things that makes Cap an evergreen character is his resolute adherence to his principles in the face of any and all odds and injustices. None of that means the book will be to my liking, however, Duggan's X-Men is such an outstanding read, how can I not give this a chance?

X-Men: Red continues to be one of the three most fascinating Marvel books I've read in a loooong time. The sheer grandiosity of Al Ewing's approach here, where so much is unrecognizable as X-continuity and so much is new, cosmic ground, is often breathtaking. This month's A cover says it all: I was never a Nova fan, but his inclusion in this book, along with all these intensely fascinating Arraki characters (never mind that I can't remember any of their names besides Jon Ironfire) make a far more interesting dynamic than just a bunch of the same old mutants. Add to that Apocalypse's apparent return, and I'm quite certain this will be another outstanding issue. 

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Watch:

When the most recent issue of Fangoria showed up on my doorstep a few weeks ago, one of the first articles I read was Jacqueline Castel's "A Very Modern Prometheus," a conversation with Birth/Rebirth director Laura Moss about her new take on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Of course this put the film on my radar, so I was pleased to see an article on Bloody Disgusting this morning reporting the film hits Shudder this Friday, August 18th.

 

I love modern takes on the classic Frankenstein story. As per my new distrust of trailers, I turned this off at 1:11; I don't need to see any more to know I'll be watching this.
 

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Playlist:

bunsenburner - Rituals

Telekinetic Yeti - Primordial

Mudhoney - 

Various - The Raveonettes Present: Rip It Off

Wesley Willis - Feel the Power

Mudhoney - Live at Third Man Records

High On Fire - The Art of Self Defense (remix/remaster)

Deftones - Gore

Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

Testament - Low

Testament - Demonic

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Card:

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

• Six of Wands

• XXI: The World

• XIX: The Sun

Six of Wands is a harmonization of Will, an achieved balancing point from which magnificent things can happen. Juxtapose that with The World (The Universe in Thoth-speak), and we see a massive overhaul of something coming up, especially when taken with The Sun, a card of revelations.

 

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bunsenburner - Rituals

Sometimes the algorithm works in our favor (even if it will ultimately undo humanity completely). Case in point - bunsenburder's Rituals popped into my youtube feed last Friday. The front cover artwork reminded me of Genghis Tron's Dead Mountain Mouth, so I clicked play.

Forty-Seven minutes later I was left pretty much in awe. 

You just won't believe where this one goes based on how it begins. I LOVE this band! Hailing from Freiburg Im Breisgau, Germany, here's the bio taken directly from their Bandcamp:

"bunsenburner evolved into an ever-rotating and expanding hive mind initially conceived and realised by the bassist and producer Ben Krahl in 2012."

Kinda sounds like a description of The Ocean early on in their career, right?

There's stuff on Rituals that reminds me of early Jucifer albums, of The Sword, of Angelo Badalamenti, The Calexico... the list goes on, and while it's not my intention to drown bunsenburner's music in comparisons - because honestly, that's not really possible with so unique an outfit as this, especially after you begin digging through their previous albums - I wanted to give folks enough to make them seek these guys out. 

You can pick up a limited edition cassette copy of Rituals on the Bandcamp HERE, or also support the band digitally. 

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Watch:

Cinematic Void dropped a trailer for Up All Night - every Saturday this October, the Cinemadness movie will run on the Cinematic Void youtube channel HERE. 

I can't say enough good things about Cinematic Void. Founder James Branscome does some of the best programming in the states in my opinion, and now that he's expanded from being L.A.-centric to including The Music Box in Chicago and other cities like Boston, I really wanted to help spread the word a bit farther afield. Check the Void out online and if you follow them over on FB, Twitter or Instagram and see a show close to you pop up, check it out. Also, as I've mentioned here plenty of times previously, the Cinematic Void Podcast is one of the best cult/Horror/exploitation podcasts out there. You can find them on Apple Podcasts HERE or Spotify HERE and, of course, the show is available pretty much anywhere else you might get your podcasts.

Also, and I just discovered this myself, The Void has a pretty awesome Big Cartel shop HERE.

  

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Playlist:

The Hives - The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons

High on Fire - The Art of Self Defense (remix/remaster)

King Woman - Celestial Blues

bunsenburner - Rituals

Final Light - Eponymous

Trauma is Trauma: A Mental Health Talk with Kevin Smith

Metallica - 72 Seasons

The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Prayers For the Death of Fame EP

Pastor T.L. Barret and the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship Without a Sail

Blackbraid - Blackbraid II

Julee Cruise - Floating Into the Night

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Card:

• Three of Disks:Work

• I: The Magus

• Queen of Disks

The Three of Disks indicates successful growth, although I'm always quick to add that growth will come as the result of some kind of labor. Not necessarily hard, physical labor. In this case here, the card's referencing my own mental labor, as I try and twist the disparate elements I've set up in the new novel and have them coalesce into the climax I can feel, but can't quite 'see' yet.

The Magus indicates, of course, that Magick will come in handy. I know this; my Magick IS the work and my commitment to it, because as so many Chaos Magicians have told us, from Hine to Moore to Spare, it's all about The Will.

The Queen of Disks reminds me to be emotionally grounded during this period. This is a direct reference to a kind of mini disassociative state that can sometimes swallow me when I'm so zeroed in that I drive myself crazy because, as Life would have it, I just can't always work on what I want to based on, you know, the day job, family, friends, etc. A good reminder.

 

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Underworld - Skym

Here's a song I love in such a quiet way that I never really stop to think about it. This and "Winjer" are sandwiched between heavy hitters "Shudder/King of Snakes" and "Bruce Lee" on Beaucoup Fish, and because of that, they both get kind of passed over. While "Winjer" definitely still feels like a 'corridor' track, "Skym" has this wonderful complexity bubbling below its quiet surface and at some point, it kind of stealthily sunk into my deepest feelings for this record that I love so much.

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Watch:

Last night I hit the first showing of André Øvredal's latest film The Last Voyage of the Demeter. I was not a fan of the trailer, which I've sat through multiple times at the Cinema, and although the film rubbed me a bit wrong right at the start with its inherent "Big Studio Feel," Demeter ends up being pretty solid.

For a Dreamworks film, Øvredal makes some decidedly stunning choices. Even more stunning is that those choices got through the Big Studio filter. Makes me curious what they might have forced him to cut. I don't want to give the impression this flick is some gnarly Horror film - you can tell from those trailers that it's not - but at times, it's a lot more savage than I would have expected. Three stars out of Five and a Heart on Letterbxd. 

And on the Horizon...

  

Having never heard of the Elevator Game before an episode of Paramount Plus's Evil - highly recommended, btw - I was pretty stoked when, on the Colors of the Dark podcast sometime last year, Rebekah McKendry mentioned her next film would be based on this weird A.F. urban legend. Now, here's the trailer:

I love actual Urban Legends, but the movies based on them almost always fall short for me. Holding out hope this won't fall into that same problem for me. 

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Playlist:

High On Fire - The Art of Self Defense (remixed/remastered)

Underworld - Beaucoup Fish

Ganser - Odd Talk

King Woman - Celestial Blues

Comic Book Herald - Talking Krakoa X-Men Hellfire Gala 2023 Post-Game Show

Team Sleep - Eponymous

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Card:

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

• Ace of Wands

• Queen of Pentacles

• Six of Pentacles

A breakthrough of Will leads to understanding and acceptance of defining terms. That's a bit opaque, however, being that the Queen of Pentacles is the Emotional approach to Earthly matters and the Six of Pentacles is a balanced, 'perfected' state, I choose to read this as another reminder to follow the path before me, even is at kicks and bucks. I made huge progress in the last twenty-four hours based on the fact that yesterday's reading was spot on, so I'll continue the trend today.

 

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High On Fire's First Album Again

Man, I was pretty skeptical when I heard High On Fire were having their first album, The Art of Self Defense remastered for a re-release. On the one hand, it's still probably my favorite of their albums (Blessed Black Wings comes a pretty close second, though). Yet, while I still have the original, Man's Ruin CD version of Self Defense I bought at Crow's Nest Records in Down Town Chicago shortly after it came out in 2000, I'd love to have the record on vinyl, so it was with great trepidation I hit play on Apple Music this morning...

It's awesome. My greatest fear was they would raise Pike's voice and over-compress; not that there's a precedent for the latter with the band's subsequent releases, and I love Pike's voice as it's come to more prominence with each release after this one, but there's something so amazing about the way Self Defense sounded the day I brought it home, sparked up and put it in the stereo all those years ago. I was perplexed by the singer's voice being so low (this was my introduction to the new wave of "Stoner Rock" as everyone was calling it at the time, having previously enjoyed St. Vitus and Count Raven more 'flush with the mix" vocals on WXAV, 88.3 FM, St. Xavier's College Radio), but marveled at the way the guitars sparkled like they do for only one other human being I know - Tony Iommi! The rhythm section was so tight, so pummelling; it was all just such a fresh experience compared to whatever else was out there at the time Metal-wise. So The Art of Self Defense looms large in my life, and as with anything we deem to be of that importance, I felt nervous as hell about anyone changing it.

Again, no reason to be nervous. This shit rules!

"Blood From Zion" feels the most changed from the first side of the album ("Master of Fists" sounds like a different guitar take altogether was used for this release). Interestingly, for most of the tracks, Matt Pike's voice remains at just about the exact same level it was at in the original release; it's just clearer. Nice trick! The descending riff that bridges the first and second verses has to be heard on headphones to be believed. IT'S SO FUCKING HEAVY. I mean, it was always so fucking heavy, but it's like they added subsonic bulldozers to the mix or something. SO GOOD. 

You can find this pretty much everywhere online, however, High On Fire's Bandcamp has an exclusive, and while I love that original cover, I do still have that CD (remember Grace note database or whatever that function iTunes had where, if you transferred a CD to digital it could find the album information for you? When I digitized my old Self Defense to put on an iPod back in the late 00s, it came back with The Art of Self Defense, by Sleep!). 

Yeah, I think I can make room in my soul for this cover, too. You can also order directly from MNRK Heavy HERE, where the non-exclusive still has the same cover and will cost you a few bucks less on shipping.

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Watch:

Two nights ago, K and I watched Kurtis David Harder's newest film, Influencer on Shudder. I dug Harder's previous film Spiral quite a bit, but based on the title of this one, I was expecting a story about a completely unlikeable Influencer who gets her comeuppance.

Nope!

I'm not going to post the trailer, because you shouldn't watch it. Yes, in the opening sequence of the film, you meet a really annoying social media influencer. Stick with it! That's not what the film is; this one reminded me A LOT of the experience I had watching Brad Anderson's Transsiberian back in 2008 or 2009, whenever it first hit video. Both films take continuous ninety-degree turns, so without having seen a trailer or read anything about either, I was left wondering from scene to scene, "Oh, is this what the film is about? Is this the landscape the characters are going to have to live in?" And, so beautifully, those assumptions were always squashed as something new gets introduced to change the film's narrative yet again. Really fun watch; not Horror, but a thriller for sure. Save it for a night when you want twists and turns more than blood and guts.

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Playlist:

††† - Invisible Hand (pre-release single)

††† - PERMANENT.RADIANT EP

††† - Eponymous

The Bronx - The Bronx (III)

Various - Lost Highway OST

King Woman - Celestial Blues

Deftones - White Pony

Converge - Jane Doe

Blue Karma - The Friction, the Pain

      

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Card:

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

• XIV - Temperance or "Art" in Thoth speak

• Four of Swords 

• Three of Swords

Fight for your Art! Fours show stability and Threes the process of Growth or Change. The Novel's becoming something more than I'd planned, and while it's more work, I can temper myself against that and fight on toward the finish line.

Tarot aside, if you dig Jonathan Grimm's Bound deck, he has a Kickstarter launching on September 5th for his new deck, The Hand of Doom Tarot. This one's all Metal, Monsters, Magick in one beautiful deck. Here's the link; the campaign isn't active yet, but you can hit the Notify Me button and get in on the ground floor September 5th!

 

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The Besnard Lakes - She's an Icicle

 

Somehow, I totally missed that The Besnard Lakes released a three-song EP last year. The Besnard Lakes Are the Prayers For the Death of Fame EP is one of my favorite missives from the band in some time, and of its three perfect tracks, opener She's an Icicle is, to me, everything I love so much about the band: the swirling morass of guitars fx and keys, Bonham-esque beats and Jace's heavenly voice surrounded by layer upon layer of harmony, all combining to make a dirgey rock and roll ephemera. You can order this directly from the band HERE.

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NCBD:

Short and sweet this week. Here we go:

I love the fact that we still haven't seen all of the fallout from the events of this year's Hellfire Gala. Man! I'm still blown away by that issue. So much changed so fast. Based on this cover, I think we're going to start really feeling things with this issue.

I wasn't going to read this issue the same way I keep saying I'm dropping Ghost Rider's main monthly book, but they keep pulling me back in. The idea that there's a new Weapon X/Weapon Plus program coming, but one that utilizes the stolen powers of Hell just blows my mind. HIGHEST of concepts; let's hope they pull it off. 

 

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Brew:

I stumbled across this on Kickstarter recently (Thanks to an email from Unplugged, the beer tracking app), and I'm pretty tempted to get in on this one:

It's a lot of money, but seems like it would definitely pay for itself at some point. Or, it would just make me drink more. Hmm...

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Read:

I finished Stephen Graham Jones's Don't Fear the Reaper yesterday and am happy to report I was blown right the fuck away. Talk about one-upping the original. I'm not saying Reaper is better than Chainsaw, but to be as good, with even more stakes, well, damn. Just damn. Now we just have to wait until March 26, 2024, for the final installment, The Angel of Indian Lake. 

Now, of course, I need something new to read and I just don't know what can follow SGJ. I've had Grady Hendrix's We Sold Our Souls in my Kindle forever, but my friend Jesus sent me a physical copy a few months ago and it's on my nightstand, so I guess that's the winner by default. 

This one comes highly recommended by a lot of people; however, for whatever reason, I've been reluctant. I LOVED Hendrix's My Best Friend's Exorcism back when I read it circa 2017, so much so that I actually bought something like half a dozen copies and sent them to a bunch of friends for their birthdays at the time. That experience left me feeling like I would read anything Hendrix wrote, then a funny thing happened. I watched Satanic Panic, which Hendrix wrote the screenplay for, and hated it so much that it turned me off instantly. If questioned, I no longer even remember what it was I disliked about that flick, and a good friend recently said he saw it and loved it, so I'm thinking if We Sold Our Souls goes over well, I may give that another go, too.

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Playlist:

Jeff Buckley - Grace

Alice Donut - Dry Humping the Cash Cow Live at CBGB

Metallica - 72 Seasons

Faetooth - Remnants of the Vessel

The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are the Prayers For the Death of Fame EP

††† - Invisible Hand (pre-release single)

††† - PERMANENT.RADIANT EP

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Card:

• Ace of Disks

• III The Empress

• Queen of Cups

Ace of Disks always reads as a monetary or 'Earthly' breakthrough, and combined with The Empressthe implied Motherly qualities of The Empress and the Emotional fortitude of the Queen of Cups, I'd say this is directly referring to my folks coming down here this weekend to house hunt. 

 

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