Bizarre Ghost Late Night TV Ad From Back in May

Holy cow! Following the link to the Loud Wire that I referenced in my previous "From the Pinnacle to the Pit" post but had not read completely until just now, I realize how much I've missed on the developments in this completely awesome and bizarre band. This aired on VH1 in late May, during a late-night broadcast of Caddy Shack.

What?

This is the kind of marketing that I absolutely love and will endear me to Ghost even more. If that's possible.

Read the Loud Wire article linked above for more deets.

Brand New Ghost Track: From The Pinnacle To The Pit

AWESOME! And, more so than on Circe, the other track to surface so far from forthcoming record Meliora (pre-order here), on From The Pinnacle to the Pit you can very much tell that we once again have a new Papa Emeritus (number III for those counting along).

The fact that Ghost have switched singers for each of their three records is just stunning to me. I'll admit it's going to be hard to beat Papa II, however if this track shows a bit of bite to the vocals and Circe shows his 'sweet', melodic side, I'm really going to love this record as much as the other two. After seeing the video for Circe it has really grown to be one of my favorite Ghost tracks.

Ghost - Circe Video

This video is awesome - it's amazing to me that Ghost can continue to display the sense of humor that they do and still maintain the insidious 70s satanic horror vibe they pull off so well. And if the song itself, which available for free download on their site, is any indication, the new record Meliora will be an even more epic step in this brilliant band's evolution.

New Protomartyr Track Why Does It Shake?

Pitchfork reports that The Agent Intellect, Protomartyr's follow-up to last year's brilliant Under Color Of Official Right will be released on October 9th via Hardly Art. Easily my most-anticipated album of the year before hearing this new track, which is so good I really just want to keep playing it over and over again but, you know, must preserve the purity of the album experience.

Maybe.

Star Wars - The Force Awakens

Wow. This has stunned me with the effect it has had on me. It's inspired a rather lengthy article which I'll link to on Joup in a day or two.

UPDATE: Here's the link to the article.

Windhand - Two Urns

Bad ass!

Mastodon Video - Asleep in the Deep

Via Bloody Disgusting. Mastodon's Once More 'Round the Sun made my top 10 records last year and continues to be an almost daily listen for me (often multiple iterations in a sitting). I was obviously very happy to see this pop up earlier today. Hit the bloody disgusting link above for some information about what you see.

Lower Dens - Escape From Evil

I've spent most of the day listening to this band for the first time. Their newest record, Escape From Evil, is a fantastic dark-pop trip into a neon urban underworld that at times really reminds me of the early Cocteau Twins stuff.  Check it out.

Brian Buccellato's Sons of the Devil...

..., cults and The Great Satanic Panic are the topic of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over yonder on Joup!

Drinking w/ Comics #23

In which Mike Wellman and I talk about Chip Zdarky's new book Kaptara, the fact that Archie Comics has pretty much said, "Fuck it" and done another insane crossover book called... wait for it... Archie vs. Predator (AvP for the ironic class), Becky Cloonan, Andy Belanger and Leigh Loughridge's BRILLIANTLY creepy Southern Cross, Optic Nerve #14 and the Dark Horse, 1989 Predator mini series that definitley should have been used as the template for the 1990 Predator 2 which, let's face it, was terrible except for the Alien skull Danny "I can't act" Glover finds in the Predator's ship at the end.

All that and we drink Uinta Brewery's gorgeous Sum'r Ale, Ol' Burro's Favorable Stout and a few Fat Tires for good measure!

New High on Fire Streaming on NPR

Via Brooklyn Vegan. Good. I have some anger to release and this is just the band to help me do it.

Nekrogoblikon

How has this existed for three years and I have never heard of it? Well, thanks to Bloody Disgusting, who have the new Nekrogoblikon video up here I found this wonderful video. I didn't love it at first... and then I did.

Ash vs. Evil Dead teaser #2

I can NOT wait for this. After, what? Thirty freakin' years we're getting another chapter in Ash's life. That said, I'm a fan of BOTH Evil Dead timelines and I still really want another Fede Alvarez-directed movie with Mia.

Chicago by Night

From my friend Chuck. Man, this makes me homesick times twenty.

Screaming Females

Wow Bob Wow.

How I Fell in Love w/ Screaming Females

I am not a fan of the original artist who does this song, however I have a feeling with Screaming Females performing it, they could make me like just about anything.

I always forget about AV undercover until something like this pops back onto my radar, this time via Brooklyn Vegan.

Algiers - Black Enuch

Mr. Brown just sent me this video from Algiers's self-titled record that just came out today! They're on the mighty Matador and you can order the record on their website here. Or you can always go out and support the nearest brick-n-mortar record store in your area, if you have one. If you're anywhere near Long Beach like I am might I suggest the wonderful Fingerprints.

Quiet.

Last night at the taping/streaming of the new issue of Drinking w/ Comics I met Joey, the drummer for a band named Quiet. who hail from the Southbay. Great guy. In the midst of a languid morning of headache and music I managed to remember Quiet. has a bandcamp. I'm glad I did - these guys are great. Support some independent music and give yourself a powerful slap in the speakers at the same time. Given one word to describe Quiet.'s music I would say sonic, which should be enough to get some of you to pull the trigger and give them a spin.

New GHOST in August

And you can download the first track for free on their website right now! Head over to Heaven is an Incubator to listen to that track - named Cirice - now!

Wolf Moon

Type O Negative. One of my favorite bands of all time. Lead singer/bassist Peter Steele's death is one of only two rock n roll deaths from my era that actually affected me - the other being Layne Stayley's. I don't listen to Type O all the time - favorite or not their music affects me so strongly that I have to be in a very particular state of mind to fully revel in it. And that state of mind really only comes around two or three times a year - Spring and Autumn definitely and maybe once at some other point. And when it hits me, I go into that headspace and their music super hard.

I've been in that headspace recently, and ironically my friend Tommy has too because he posted about it in his awesome Joup column Endless Loop.

I've posted this track before - I have TONS of baggage associated with it. I'm posting it again but wanted to do a different version, namely something live that does it justice, like this version from the band's Symphony for the Devil video does.

Kitty LaRoar

LOVE this! One of those amazing serendipitous finds via networking on twitter. THIS is what social media is for. And there's a lot more great music on Ms. LaRoar's Soundcloud page.

Sadist Art Designs

Another rabbit hole Perturbator has sent me spiraling down. You know that awesome "Satan is a Computer"poster design that I posted along with the new album teaser? It was done by Sadist Art Designs. Intrigued I set out googling said Sadist and found that their website is filled with awesome stuff: poster designs for some very retro, 80s looking independent horror flicks, a Halloween nod and holy full circle - Sadist Art did a poster for Don't Move, the amazing horror short from Bloody Cuts Films that I posted last year.

Slick Moranis - Another Sleepless Night Perturbator Remix

I just can't seem to get enough Perturbator lately. This has sent me down several rabbit holes. Slick Moranis is one of those. Here's the original.

UPDATE:

Yeah, just linking to the original won't do. It's too damn awesome:

Twin Peaks Intro... Done with Paper!

Saw this on Bloodydisgusting earlier in the week. Very cool. The opening notes of this theme song always have a calming influence on me, and if I make it all the way through I usually get a little choked up from nostalgia.

New Perturbator Record Teaser

Man how I wish I'd gotten this sold-out poster from his bandcamp!

I caught sight of this a few weeks ago and promptly forgot about it - with constant access anywhere, anytime the internet has become something of a roiling sea to me, and I've essentially become the nautical disaster survivor, swimming from one piece of detritus to another, never looking back, always treading water. So much content I find slips through the cracks and disappears. While I write this I stumble to try and remember various tidbits or big announcements that I've encountered in the last few days and nothing comes up.

That's alright - news of a new Perturbator record on the way is more than enough to carry me through the day. Here's a taste.

Other Lives

I just discovered the group Other Lives via Mxdwn's Raymond Float and his twitter. I clicked a link, saw the word "phantasmagorical" and immediately fell in love with what I heard. This track reminds me of Calexico if they had a little more Bela Lugosi and a little less Robert Rodriguez (not a dis - I love Calexico). That's an analogy that only goes so far though; as I move through other material by the band I'm finding they are actually quite unlike anything else that I have heard before. Rituals, the band's new album, just came out on May 4th via Play It Again Sam, so I'm going to have to acquire a copy of that ASAP.

Cocteau Twins - Grail Overfloweth

From one of the darkest albums this side of The Cure's Pornography. Totally sounds like 80s Vertigo comics to me, probably because all those British Invasion creators were steeped in their Cocteau Twins.

Always Watching

I am fairly uninitiated in the Slender Man mythos, however I will admit to harboring a very remote interest in it for the last few years. Something about the idea that we have our first urban legend born on the internet really intrigues me, as does some of the imagery that tends to surround it. Any time I've attempted to research it however most of what I find online is very 'in-on-the-joke', biased and not informative at all, often being suffering from extremely poor, Junior High School level grammar/spelling/etc. The most un-biased and informative, no bullshit article I've found about the Slender Man to date. There's also a wiki devoted entirely to the legend, however it quickly becomes a rabbit hole, as there are leagues of internet jargon used therein that I have no frame of reference for and thus, end up spending an exorbitant amount of time on tangents.

As morbid as it is I will say my interest in the Slender Man jumped a bit more when about a year ago two twelve-year-old girls stabbed a third in order to appease Slender Man, who they believed had threatened them into doing the deed. The crime is atrocious, but what interests me here is the way fiction has bled over into reality and affected it. That is always worth taking note of because incidents like that wear down the walls between the worlds of fact and fiction and leave our world a little bit more susceptible to becoming... something else.



Last night my interest peaked a little. A bunch of us had gone to see David Lynch's Mulholland Drive at Cinespia (amazing!) and when we came out a flyer with the above image was under my friend Ray's windshield wiper. Intrigued I spent about an hour at the end of the night watching the first thirteen or so entries in the Marble Hornets series. I can't attest to quality of story yet because I'm not nearly far enough along, however I'm definitely still intrigued, more so that the creators apparently parlayed it into a feature length. Always Watching is playing for a week - starting this past Friday May 15th - and although I'll probably not have the chance to drive up to the one cinema that has it in LA, I'll definitely be watching for it to hit Netflix, the place where indie horror flix like this really seem to live the strongest these days.

New High on Fire!

Jesus Christ - what is this, Christmas? First a new Brand New, now new High on Fire? And while we can only chomp our nails and wait with bated breath for the announcement of the new album to follow Brand New's first track in six years you can pre-order the new High On Fire - titled Luminiferous - now! Or, you can wait and go to a local record shop and grab it June 23rd.

Also, I've seen HOF several times and I can't stress this enough: if you get the chance see them live. These are three men that, on stage, create a sound so enormous it's like an army of Orcs storming a castle.

Here's Matt Pike's explanation of the lyrics to this track:

"It's about aliens abducting people and manipulating our past, present and future. It's about the top of the pyramid, so to speak," Pike says. "And it's also about alien hybrids, and how we've been immersed amongst this culture of E.T.s for thousands of years, and how no one has woken up to it until recently."

FINALLY - New Song From Brand New

YESYESYES! Six years since Daisy and hopefully this will be followed by a new album very soon! Brand New - I miss you!

Scott Snyder and Jock's Wytches...

... is the topic in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over on Joup!

David Lynch Back on Twin Peaks!

Dear Twitter Friends, the rumors are not what they seem ..... It is !!! Happening again. #TwinPeaks returns on @SHO_Network

— David Lynch (@DAVID_LYNCH) May 16, 2015

... and all is right with the world.

True Detective Season 2- First Full Trailer?

Well, I thought the first full trailer was what dropped last month. At any rate, I'm breaking my 'don't watch more than one trailer rule' with this one. Just because.

#wegettheworldwedeserve

Rick and Morty Kill The Simpsons

LOVE this. Thanks be to Mr. Brown for making me a Rick and Morty fan, that first season is nuts. Second season begins in July.

Faith No More on the Tonight Show

Okay, I was trying very hard not to listen to any songs off of next Tuesdays' FNM record Sol Invictus but I'll admit I've slipped. Now, as of a few days ago the album is streaming in its entirety on NPR - I've managed to resist that because I've really been looking forward to making this a "Day it's released" record store trip to Fingerprints in Long Beach. Day of acquisitions aren't the easiest events to plan and pull off these days, what with the internet being our dread overlord and master, however I've always been one to cherish the experience of first hearing a new album by a band I love as a whole entity and not fragmented songs, so I sometimes have to fight pretty hard against the net and myself in this age of media frenzy. Spoilers, early releases and bootlegs wait around every corner of our increasingly virtual world. And because of this that fight for a perfect first listen has increasingly required me to do things that are sometimes baffling to others, i.e. driving around with QOTSA's ... Like Clockwork for almost a day without ever listening to it in the spring of 2013, or running from a room at work when the lead single off of NIN's Hesitation Marks dropped that same year. That said, when the first song off Faith's first album in 18 years dropped last November I couldn't help myself - I jumped on it right away. I mean, 18 years.

18 YEARS. Shessh.

Since Motherfucker though, I've tried to avoid all the subsequent tracks as they've surfaced, officially (Superhero) or unofficially (any of the live performances captured by concertgoers that have been appearing in varying degrees of quality for about the last year). Then a few weeks ago my co-host on Drinking with Comics Mike Wellman and I saw Faith at LA's Wiltern Theatre and afterward, pumped from the show and hammered from an endless quaff of ale, Mike played me a leak of the entire album. I protested and he ignored - as I said we'd been drinking so I was crashing at his pad and thus, I really didn't have a choice. I mean, I guess I could have left the room but we still had a few bottles of Sierra Nevada we'd picked up as a night cap and the fridge was in listening distance of his stereo so you know, what could I do?

In the end I remember next to nothing of this first, premature experience with Sol Invictus except that I liked what I heard and likened it to the next logical step after 1997's Album of the Year; like Bauhaus in 2006 or The Pixies in 2014 FNM seems to have perfectly picked back up where they left off. And although I've had moments of weakness, due to a pretty memorable night - or not memorable I guess - I've kind of been granted a second chance for that uninterrupted, environment-controlled first listen I'll get to have next Tuesday when the first album in 18 years from one of my all-time favorite bands - a band I really didn't think we'd ever get another album from - drops.

Life is good. And to prove it, here's Faith on the Tonight Show a couple days ago. The Tonight Show? Did they ever score that gig back in the day?

Age of Ultron and Joss Whedon's Influences

... are the topics of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column over yonder on Joup!

Secret Chiefs 3 - Agenda 21

From their imaginary Giallo film soundtrack. Love this record.

I was very hot on SC3 back when I first heard them, circa 1998 when they and then fellow Web Of Mimicry band Estradasphere turned Chicago's Double Door into a fire-swinging, book-reading, chair-surfing sideshow of insanity. Since then I've only followed either band periodically, primarily in the case of SC3 because before this record - which is a masterpiece of a different sort - the more SC3 records I bought the more I missed the Patton part of an equation in what seemed like the natural continuation of Mr. Bungle. I don't think that's entirely fair, but it was my interpretation of events at the time.

Daredevil Nightcourt Intro

Being that I am both a huge fan of the new Marvel/Netflix series Daredevil AND the classic 80s sitcom Night Court (it holds up unlike any other sitcom from the era, except maybe Cheers) this made my day.

So Tonight that I Might See

Tommy from Heaven is an Incubator does a marvelous column over on Joup called Endless Loop. It's great - the idea being one that I can most certainly relate to: songs that you can listen to over and over and over again without getting tired of. This week's entry is Fade Into You by Mazzy Star. I love this song and the entire album it's on. Back in the day... well, I won't even bothering trying to describe what it means to me because if you follow this link right here and read Tommy's words I think you'll find that once again he nails it. I'm off work sick today and the first thing I saw when I woke up was this post. It inspired me to put on the song and then the album. I am now in the middle of my fourth go-through with the entire thing. It's perfect for how I feel today, so I have to thank Tommy for blindly hitting the right chord for me. Like I said, I love the entire record, however the title track is my own perfect Endless Loop from this one. There's something about its quasi-Doors desert psychedelia of it that just grabs me and never lets go, like it's always been playing in the static just below my conscious mind since the first time I ever heard it, waaaay back in that magical land called the 90s.

The Lovecraft Alphabet

There's a plethora of Lovecraft-inspired Facebook pages I follow and somewhere on one of them last night in the throes of fever I found this. Woke up and saw it in a saved blogger draft, laughed my snot-ridden arse off.

HELP identify this song - It's not Pallbearer

This is driving me crazy. So I have been meaning to check out the band Pallbearer for some time but they consistently fall off my radar. Earlier today a good friend told me I needed to check them out, that he had fallen in love with them when he saw them live recently. I go to youtube, find this link and fall in love with it immediately, then realize that A) there's only about 2:18 of the hour long track that has sound on it and B) that it's not Pallbearer. I've tried figuring this out with Sound Hound and Shazam - no luck. The style sounds so familiar but I can't place the band or song definitely enough to dig that last stretch to an answer so any one out there that can give me any info on this it would be very greatly appreciated!

Zombi - The Zombi Anthology

This was released via Relapse Records today. If you remember, this is the band that had an amazing recreation of John Carpenter's The Thing done stop motion with old school 3 3/4 GIJOE figures as a music video last year. That was my intro to their music and I've been waiting on this new record for what seems quite a long time. Well, it's here!

Drinking with Comics #22 - now with DJ KIRKBRIDE!!!

Join us as we drink Modern Times Brewery's spectacular beer and talk to comic writer DJ Kirkbride about Amelia Cole, Never Ending, The Bigger Bang, co-writing, the evolution of writing comics and that pesky Batgirl/Joker cover controversy that was such a big deal a couple of weeks ago!

The Walk Slow

I've been meaning to post this for a couple weeks now. MAN! When you're a musician there's nothing like the love and joy that can come from being in a band. You sling it out with three or four other guys, saddle all your hopes and dreams together and try to shoot an arrow into the side of the world that actually sticks. It's hard; it takes a level of commitment and determination that is not easy and can drive some folks apart. But other folks, well, it makes you bond as strong or stronger than family. That's always been the case with the guys I slung it out with my former bands in Chicago. I've known Sonny Vee since forever. He was in Wink Lombardi and the Constellations with me ("which one'a youse guys is Wink?") on through the short-lived Second Attention, he slung it out for a while in Infinite Vision and that's where we met and added Joe Grez to the cabal of maniacs - which included Mr. Brown and Monsieur Viderstrom - who ended up forming Schlitz Family Robinson. Anyway, that was a long time ago. More recently, and I use that word loosely here for sure, Joe and Sonny and I were in The Yellow House. We came pretty close to... something. But the industry was kicking and screaming as the internet, MP3s and Napster all took over and in just a little over a year and a half (fact check Joe - I'm bad at quantifying the passage of time) that slipped away too. But not before we recorded and self-released one full length and two e.p., all of which I am still enormously proud of. Anyway, Joe and Sonny are back in a new band, The Walk Slow and hearing them, seeing this video, it makes me so incredibly happy that I just can barely even think straight. These guys are the real deal - back in '01 Grez used to say, "next to no one in music knows how to be cool anymore" and sometimes I feel like that too. But when I hear something like this, well, I know that's just the scarred side of the otherwise brilliant coin.

ANT MAN!!!

Much more invested now. Michael Douglas, I first fell in love with you as an actor when I saw Romancing the Stone as a child (it was that, Ghostbusters and Predator on a regular rotation for years. Just ask my Dad). I am very happy you are still here and doing what you do best sir!

Let's Talk Valiant Comics

Valiant comes in general and the unbelievably awesome Rai: Welcome to New Japan specifically are the topics of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column over on Joup.

Oliver Nelson

My wife writing about one of the greatest jazz records ever in this week's edition of The Joup Friday Album. Awesome!

True Detective Season 2 Trailer

Mr. Brown just sent this to me. I had chills watching it. Can't wait for June 21st!

Peter V. Brett's The Skull Throne

Whoah! I've been so immersed in writing my own book for so long that I have seriously fallen out of any semblance of contact with what my favorite authors are doing. First, a week or two ago I realized that Irvine Welsh has another novel coming out in in the U.K. next week* and now I see via a message on Goodreads that the forth book in Peter V. Brett's Demon Cycle hit the stands on March 31st!

WHAT???

Crap - after wolfing down book three, The Daylight War back... oh my, was that two years ago already? - I swore before the next one fell into my hands I would re-read the entire series to refresh myself.  Well, that did not happen and I have been once again caught unprepared and unaware. That however, will soon be remedied.

I talk about how I met Mr. Brett here - he actually gave me a copy of the first book in this series, The Warded Man and I am forever grateful to him for it.

.............

*I still haven't read his last one! I have never been this behind on Mr. Welsh's novels

The Unseen Twin Peaks...

I caught wind of this a few hours ago and took to FB and twitter right away. Wanted to post here as well, as this is pretty much the running record of the parts of my brain that consume and have a relationship with media. 

David Lynch has officially left the Twin Peaks revival because Showtime will not provide the budget he feels the show will require to do properly. I'm normally weary of hashtags but I'm taking to social media with a few to voice my displeasure (read: abject sorrow) and try to goad showtime into righting their wrong. I would greatly appreciate anyone who could reiterate these tags on FB, twitter, Instagram... wherever.
‪#‎fuckshowtime‬ ‪#‎givelynchthemoney‬ ‪#‎savetwinpeaks‬

OR... a couple years ago the head of Netflix voiced interest in bringing this - among a lot of other shows - back. They did with Arrested Development and incurred quite a bit of good will doing so, showing they're superior attitude to major terrestrial television networks (things of the past). So how about Netflix swoops in and takes Twin Peaks and Lynch away from showtime? That'd give them another huge boost in good will and show their superiority to cable networks as well.