New Melvins!!!

 

From the upcoming Tarantula Heart, available April 19th from Ipecac Records. Pre-order HERE.

LOVE this track! I'm a Melvins fan, but the group has always proved too prolific (I know, no such thing) for me to keep up with everything they do. This one caught me on exactly the right day at the right time, and I instantly fell for lead "single" "Working the Ditch." Didn't hurt that I was able to snag the limited edition, Puke Green vinyl.

The line-up for this album is a throwback to Melvins' two-drummer paradigm; current Ministry drummer Ray Mayorga plays alongside mainstay Dale Crover and just from this track, I feel like we're hearing some really interesting rhythmic ideas. Aside from Houdini, the two drummer years are my favorite of the band, and this already reminds me of (A) Senile Animal, probably my second favorite of the group's albums.

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I've held off on learning too much about upcoming Horror/Thriller Long Legs because this one is generating a lot of hype, and as well we know, that is a surefire way to kill a film before it is even released (looking at the marketing team for Evil Dead Rise). That said, I'm leaving this teaser here unwatched, with my fingers crossed:

I've seen two of Oz Perkins' previous films, and didn't care for either. The Blackcoat's Daughter straight-up cheats with its casting as a way to deliver its twist, and Gretel & Hansel, while pretty, bored me to tears. Regardless, I'm very much hoping Long Legs will rule and, thus, maybe inspire me to rewatch one or both of those (although I've rewatched The Blackcoat's Daughter three times and each viewing just leaves me scratching my head at why the film is held in such high regard. It is entirely possible that I'm missing something, but I don't think so).

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Playlist:

Turnstile - Glow On

Witchfinder - Hazy Rites

Genghis Tron - Board Up the House

Zombi - Shape Shift

Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen

FACS - Still Life in Decay

Daemien Frost - Spirito di daemo

Daemien Frost - Corpus Daemo

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Stephen Sanches - High

 

Here's one K found recently and I am completely enamored with. If you're like me and feel compelled to make "Best of the Year" lists, then you probably know that the rule of thumb is traditionally, the moment you post your "Ten Favorite Albums of the Year," you'll come across a new one that should have been on it. That is most definitely the case with Stephen Sanchez's Angel Face. K's a huge Twin Temple fan, and it was on some social media page or feed dedicated to them that she ran across Mr. Sanchez's music. The moment I heard this, I was in love!

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Read:

My month in L.A. essentially served as a complete pause on Acceptance, the third and final volume in Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach Trilogy. 

Despite my gusto for Vandermeer's writing, I found myself having a difficult time concentrating while I was there. Off nights where I stayed in the hotel - of which there were purposely quite a few - I advanced a handful of chapter but never made any significant progress. So, now home and properly rested, I took to finishing Acceptance over the weekend and am happy to report that, while the second book, Authority, remains my favorite of the three, the entire cycle is an outstanding example of Literary Science Fiction meeting Literary Horror. Really deep concepts of self, authority, defiance and human nature at play, with some genuinely horrific ideas executed in a generally psychologically disturbing manner. Although, there are some real visceral moments, as well. The kind of "shell game" Vandermeer plays with his characters is endlessly fascinating, as you see people's situations and motivations from multiple angles, back and forth through time. This lends the books an even more surreal quality than they already have, just being based on the concept of a subtle alien presence slowly imitating and replacing all life inside a specified area. 

Next, I'm picking back up with Mary Roach's Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.  

This is a loaner from Mr. Brown that I began to read several months back, but got sidetracked. So far, Roach's writing is very approachable for a layman like myself, and I enjoy her personality quite a bit. We start off in India, researching/interviewing possible cases of reincarnation. 

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Playlist:

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST

Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon

Richard Einhorn - Shockwaves OST

Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Ages

Turnstile - Glow On

The Bronx - (II)

Ministry - Filth Pig

Firebreather - Under A Blood Moon

Nobuhiko Morino - Versus OST

Stephen Sanchez - Angel Face

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Witchfinder - Hazy Rites

Run the Jewels - RTJ4

The Plimsouls - Everywhere At Once

The Police - Synchronicity

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Card:

Back to the classic Thoth for today's Pull:

• 10 of Swords - Ruin

• V: The Hierophant

• Princess of Swords

The hasty revelation of a 'secret' results in a negative experience. 

Wow. Okay. The surprise I was going to reveal this week is going to wait until I put a little more time into it. Well-timed, Thoth. Well-timed.

Butthole Surfers Week Day 7

Thus bringeth to a close the week of Butthole Surfing. Go now, and spread the word of the Surfers, forever and ever, amen.

 

Despite recent claims otherwise, "Mexican Caravan" from 1985's Psychic.... Powerless.... Another Man's Sac is probably my favorite Butthole Surfers track, simply because of the guitar. It's always kind of made me imagine Jimmy Hendrix playing while on ten hits of blotter acid. But then, that's kind of what the Surfers do.

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One day last week while I was still sequestered at the hotel in West L.A., I watched Josh Forbes's new movie Destroy All Neighbors and had an absolute BLAST with it! Here's the trailer, which I can now endorse does not give anything away other than a taste of the Hallucinatory 90s Practical FX goodness you can expect from this one!

Produced by Alex Winter, with FX by Gabriel Bartalos (Skinned Deep!), Destroy All Neighbors reminds me more than a little of 1993's Freaked, which Winter co-directed with Tom Stern. This fits in nicely with Butthole Surfer week, as Stern Produced/Directed last year's The Butthole Surfer Movie, and the Surfers were involved with Freaked, starting with lending their frontman to the film's cast to play Cheese Wart. There's a certain tone Freaked employs - a kind of madcap 90s Practical FX and sets grandeur - that is at work in Destroy All Neighbors as well. The opening credits reminded me so much of the 90s, with its swirling, wormhole-like background, that I knew I was in for goodness. 

Neighbors obviously did not have the same budget; no studio is going to give anyone 11 Million to make a movie like this in 2024, but the movie does so much awesome stuff with what they have, that you won't notice unless you're checking while you watch. And you won't be doing that, because you'll be laughing out loud. This is a story we've definitely seen variations of before, but not like this, and not with a Prog Rock obsessive as the lead character (Jonah Ray is awesome!)  

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Re-Release:

Just a quick heads up to any Blut Aus Nord fans out there, Debemur Morti just re-pressed Memoria Vetusta II: A Dialogue with the Stars on vinyl, and it's available both on the label's site HERE (where I ordered it this morning), and from the band's Bandcamp HERE. 

I've been laying off ordering vinyl, but this was a no-brainer. By far my favorite album from a group that has quite a few albums I adore, I have been waiting to grab this one on vinyl for probably over ten years now. 

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Playlist:

Ready for the World - Oh Sheila (single)

Sheila E. - Glamorous Life (single)

Genghis Tron - Dream Weapon

Genghis Tron - Dead Mountain Mouth

Tangerine Dream - Sorcerer OST

Stephen Sanchez - Angel Face

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

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Butthole Surfers Week Day 5

As though in total contrary to yesterday's post, here's Locust Abortion Technician at its grimiest. Is this my favorite track by the band? Might just be. I mean, this song is not only a total throwback to the earlier albums, it's just fucking nuts. 

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Writer/Director/Producer/FX/Cinematographer/Everything else Doug Roos has released a teaser for his new film Bakemono along with a crowdfunding campaign to help add more practical FX to the film. 

 

The teaser is just enough to ramp up my anticipation. Anyone else get total The Void vibes from this? Also, check out this poster!

You can click HERE to travel over to the IndieGoGo page and back this/read more. The $100 level included a making of for the Practical FX, which might come in handy down the road. Roos explains the film is already shot, so this is all for icing on the proverbial Gore Cake, which I am all about. 
 

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I really was not prepared for the angle Robert Kirkman and Joshua Williamson are taking for the new GIJOE Energon Universe. Although we've seen a few teasers and one full issue of Duke prior to the release of last week's Cobra Commander #1, it wasn't until Williamson got into old Chrome Dome's backstory for this series that we see this is definitely more akin to the Cartoon than Larry Hama's comic. And you know what? I'm alright with that.

SPOILERS below. You've been warned.

There is a lot to dislike about the original 80s GIJOE cartoon movie and the direction the show took after. There's also a lot of really cool ideas here, once you get past the insanely SciFi take on what Larry Hama made such a realistic property in the comics. Thanks to CC #1, we now see that, just like the Energon Universe's Transformers comic, this take on GIJOE is going to run closer to the cartoon. And I'll say, full-on Cobra-La excites me. The concepts are crazy and will fit in so nicely with how intertwined we already see Transformers and GIJOE are going to be (not to mention adding Void Rivals to the taepstry!) The revelation of both Cobra-La and that they have Megatron captive and are reverse engineering their technology from him sets an ENORMOUS stage for this series, and I'm exicted to see how the entire thing plays out without all the trappings and limitations that the movie/show had.

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Playlist:

R0BBER - La Cosa Nostra EP

Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician

Cherry Cheeks - Lp2

Turnstile - Glow On

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose

Black Pumas - Chronicles of a Diamond

Disappears - Pre Language

Marilyn Manson - We Are Chaos

Baroness - Stone

Double Life - Indifferent Stars

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven (pre-release singles)

Mannequin Pussy - Patience

Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours

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Card:

I decided to jump back in on a new month with a single card draw from Missi's Raven deck.

• III: The Empress - Let's start with a quote from A.E. Waite:

"She is the inferior Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, all that is symbolized by the visible house of man."

There's a lot here for me this morning. I have literally just returned to my own "House of Man," my Earthly Paradise. My home. It never really occurred to me while I spent the sixteen years that spanned the entirety of my thirties up through my early and mid-forties in LA that there was a way to carve out my own space in the world. By moving out of a major population center and leaving the rental lifestyle, K and I made our own paradise, and leaving it for weeks at a time is always a nice way to gain fresh perspective and appreciation. The Empress is oft associated with Love and Beauty, two attributes I couldn't associate with K more. The third Trump is also the path that bridges Chokmah (Knowlege - the Father) and Binah (Understanding - the Mother) on the Sephirothic Tree of Life. Interesting then that this is also the first time as an adult that my parents have become a regular social aspect of my life. Couple all this with the fact that today is the Eighth Anniversary of the day K and I met, and I believe The Empress has appeared to remind me to stop and take it all in. 

Butthole Surfers Week Day 4

From 1987's Locust Abortion Technician. This album has always struck me as kind of the halfway point between the total madness of the earliest Surfers' albums and what would come later. Not to say there's anything 'sane' about LAT; on the contrary, I just feel like the production was ticked up a notch on this one. Case in point: "Human Cannonball," where the kick drum actually shakes your walls (when you listen as loud as I do), the bass guitar could almost be from a Buzzcocks or Magazine record, and Gibby's voice isn't just clear, he's got a whole host of new FX to fuck with.

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NCBD:

Thankfully, this week, I only have 2 books in my Pull, one of which is Amazing Fantasy in Chicago. I say luckily, because I'll be picking up four weeks of comics from Rick's after work today. My wallet is already weeping. Here are today's titles:

I dug Duke issue one, despite the fact that I don't really care at all about Conrad S. Hauser. This is our window into the GIJOE aspect of Robert Kirkman's Energon Universe, though, and I'm excited to get this going. (I really can't wait to read last week's Cobra Commander #1- saw what I think is a spoiler image and it's NUTS!)

The Penultimate issue of Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows' The Ribbon Queen. I probably won't be picking up my books from AF until March (unless I ask Mike to ship them, a service they do offer). Can't wait to read this one start to finish.

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This looks goddamn terrifying:

 

I watched this trailer once and, within moments, knew I would now be praying this one hits my local Regal on February 23rd. There's not a lot of films that can actually scare an adult in 2024 - the real world is already scary enough - but this? This looks like it will do the trick. Something about dolls. Maybe it's a residual trauma from seeing the Poltergeist clown as a kid, or maybe it's the Uncanny Valley thing. Certainly all the Thomas Ligotti didn't help.

This is a debut feature from Writer/Director Robert Morgan (he shares the writing credit for Stopmotion with Robin King). Morgan previously directed "D is for Deloused," one of the films in ABCs of Death 2. You can read an old interview with him about that short HERE. 

I'm really looking forward to this one. 

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Playlist:

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom

Stephen Sanchez - Angel Face

The Bronx - (II)

R0BBER - La Cosa Nostra EP

Butthole Surfers - Locust Abortion Technician

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