Monday, March 31, 2014

WEEN - Beacon Light Live



There are days when I miss WEEN so much it hurts. This is one of those days. Listening to Pure Guava, thinking about how awesome this band is.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Carpenter's Classic "The Thing" Recreated w/ GIJOE's?



Yep. And it's awesome. Mr. Brown just sent me a link to an article on buzzfeed where Jack Shepard (assuming it's not the oxy-popping, dying on the island Jack Shepard) posted a link to this almost five years ago. The video itself, done by Simon Gesrel and Xavier Ehretsmann for the band Zombie Zombie, was originally uploaded to youtube in '08, so the question is how have I never seen this before and why does something this amazing only have 77K hits?

Spread the word. This is awesome on every possible level.

Black Lips - Nightmare Field



Look at the Black Lips, with the crazy switchblade choreography! Awesome!

I had started getting into The Black Lips a couple years ago and then kinda forgot about them. Within the last few months however, as internet chatter led up to the March 14th release date of their newest record Underneath the Rainbow, the have once again become ever more interesting to me. Now this video for Nightmare Field, which is the first video since Qui's marvelous Mucho Sex in America to really make me stand up and say, "YES!" Great song, great video.

Via the mighty Mxdwn!

The Conclusion to Garth Ennis and Craig Cermak's Red Team...

image courtesy of comixology.com

...was fantastic. I talk more about it in this week's Thee Comic Column on Joup.

New Trailer for Irvine Welsh's The Filth



I cannot wait for this film. I'm on the fence about re-reading the book - which is, like everything Welsh has ever written, phenomenal - before seeing this. Maybe after? The tone is of the adaptation looks perfect, kind of a cross between Trainspotting and Bronson. And McAvoy is fast becoming a "he's in it? Then I'll see it" kind of actor for me.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

And I'll See You... Under the Sycamore Trees



From the "And I'll see you..." the vocals become almost too powerful to bear. Goodnight 25 years later (I say this realizing Cooper is still walking around inside the Waiting Room, lost, and that he will be until morning. No, until... 25 years later.

"Would you like a plate special?"

"Yeah."

Joup Team-Up! Chester Whelks & I Talk Twin Peaks

image courtesy of cogito-ergo-doleo.tumblr.com

The inimitable Chester Whelks recently asked me about doing a two-man article pertaining to the final episode of Twin Peaks for our beloved Joup. This, of course, in honor of the aforementioned 25 Years since Special Agent Dale Cooper entered the Black Lodge. The link below will act as a mason jar of scorched engine oil; click it and you will draw back a crimson curtain. We will be known to you then and ready to talk about our own individual experiences with the series and that massive, massive final episode.

Happy Twenty-Five Years (Not for Dale Cooper)



Dale Cooper entered the Black Lodge (in story time) on March 26th, 1989. He's still there, with the good Laura. What's Bob been up to running around in Cooper's skin? Well, most likely he's killed Major Garland Briggs and Pete Martel, but other than that... Mr. Lynch or Mr. Frost, would you care to weigh in on this with say... A NEW SEASON? Netflix in particular has expressed interest. Or what about a season of True Detective that intersects with the TP timeline, much as the fabled X-Files episode where Dana and Mulder enter the Lodge in order to... no, let's not get diminutive. The simple fact though is, of course, us fans will take whatever we can get, even if it's just a Georgia Coffee commercial.

Thanks to the great Chester Whelks for forwarding the above video to me.

image courtesy of twin peaks.wikia.com

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Liars "MESS" Out Today



New Liars record MESS was released today. The band is streaming it live on youtube for any who want to hear it before buying, however if you're familiar with Liars you know its grand before it even hits your ear. I cannot wait for the video from this record!

††† - The Epilogue


This new video by ††† came to my inbox last week, however it was quickly forgotten as email continues to become something that, except with a few exceptions (My marvelous correspondences with Joup's Chester Whelks to name one of those I cherish), just annoys the hell out of me. Fast forward to now where I sit writing in the starfuckers up the street from my crib, and as Intronaut's Habitual Levitations (Instilling Words with Tones) ends yet another iteration and I dig through my ipod looking for something to take the weight off this one album I've listened to about thirty times in the last twenty-four hours (don't want to wear it out) I realize it's been a while since I've injected myself with the beauty of The Deftones' Koi No Yokan. This in turn reminds me about ††† and thus, here... we... are.

Now, back to the novel!

Monday, March 24, 2014

Intronaut - The Welding



Mr. Brown sent me this album yesterday and I've not stopped listening to it since. Remarkable juxtaposition of heavy and melodic.

New X-Men: Days of Future Past Trailer



No, it won't be as good as the comic. But yes, I think it will be good in its own right. And just what do I base this on? Well, I didn't hate X3 as much as most (over-stuffed yes but they killed my two least favorite characters, Scott and Charles, so I was happy). And then First Class surprised the hell out of me. And honestly, I'm digging the translation of these characters to the big screen. Marvel has lit the fire under everyone who has perpetuity rights over their franchises to actually try and make movies that are smart, inventive and continuity-based and really, DOFP along with the near rapid-fire announcements concerning 2016's Xmen: Apocalypse would appear to be great steps along the road that Fox really wants to be a X-Men movie universe that rivals Marvel's movie universe. They'll never get it as good, but it's sure fun to see them trying!

New Swans Track - A Little God in My Hands



I'll admit, until 2012's The Seer I never had as strong an affection for a Swans record. Granted, there weren't a lot of their albums I knew, primarily because, and this may sound a little goofy, but at some point ten years ago or so I purchased the reissue of Cop/Young God/Greed/Holy Money and honestly, it scares me to this day. There is a malevolence that hangs over that record that really gets under my skin. I liken it to watching Silence of the Lambs - Lambs is an amazing piece of cinema that I love just for its craft, but the actual tone of the film - while perfect for the story - puts me in touch with one of the darker, more perverse nooks of the human psyche and I simply cannot go there very often. The same is true of SE7EN, which I love even more for its craft but which tends to absolutely demolish me, each one of my meager three viewings of that particular film sending me on a spiral of paranoid, hate and frustration that takes a few days to recover from. Now, the fact that filmmakers could do that to me with images and sound on celluloid either means I take movies waaaay too seriously or that they are extremely powerful examples of the art; I tend to interpret this as the latter but also know in my heart that it is actually more of a combination of both. The same is true of that early Swans stuff. I sought it out because I had read what an influence they were on Justin K. Broadrick and upon initial listening attempts to Cop/Young God/Greed/Holy Money I saw the influence, but I also caught a glimpse of a hell that seared my psyche and thus have only sporadically gone back to make new attempts at desensitizing myself enough to fully embrace those records.

And then there's the question if I should try to desensitize myself, but I'll leave that to a later day.

All that said Michael Gira and contributors have definitely refined the band with age. Despite my emotional handicap to the old music I've kept up on Swans as a cultural cornerstone and have ear marked the many iterations the group has gone through over the years. The Seer was a record that didn't make my best of list in 2012 because I didn't hear it until the very first days of 2013 and upon hearing it immediately thought that it would probably have ranked in at #2 on that just-published list at the time. The Seer is... all encompassing; a micro-verse in a record's form and something of a journey that I like taking on a somewhat regular basis. These are no longer the bowels of hell Swans take me to, merely some of the more... colorful suburbs of those fantastic realms.

According to the mighty Brooklyn Vegan Swans newest record, To Be Kind, is out on May 13th via Young God. I'll definitely not be waiting until January, 2015 to purchase it.

Gwar Cover Billy Ocean's Get Out of My Dreams



Not quite as epic as their version of Kansas' Carry on but pretty gnarly nonetheless. RIP Oderus!

RIP Gwar's Oderus Urungus



I took today off from work to celebrate my day of birthing with a few extra hours of that ever-disappearing natural resource we all take for granted - Sleep. When I woke up around 8:30 AM (yeah, that's sleeping in four whole hours for me) a text came through from Mr. Brown that informed me Oderus Urungus, the lead-singer of Gwar, had died yesterday.

Talk about the reverse of a birthday present.


Monday, March 17, 2014

And Speaking of Horror... More New Music from The Horrors



Via Brooklyn Vegan. So good to hear this new music from a band I had actually kind of lost track of for a while. There's a lot of new textures I getting from this new album thus far. Some Cold Wave elements fused to the bones of psyche-out, run through their Rough Trade/Factory influence, yet all tempered with some exemplary pop flourishes.

The Misfits w/ Michael Graves - Saturday Night



Oh, and how could I not tack this one on at the end? I don't love the second Graves-era Misfits record - Famous Monsters - as much as I do the first - American Psycho, from which the first three posts in this series were from and named after one of my favorite novels - but this is one of the highlights.

The thing with this era of The Misfits is in order to appreciate it you have to consider it a totally different band than the original line-up. You just have to. Or Glenn might show up and beat your ass.

Just saying.

Three Songs Why I LOVE The Misfits w/ Michael Graves Prt. 3



And thus, finishing the holy trinity of Graves-era Misfits.

Three Songs Why I LOVE The Misfits w/ Michael Graves Prt. 2



As if that wasn't enough...

Three Songs Why I LOVE The Misfits w/ Michael Graves Prt. 1



This usually surprises people, hell it surprised me back in the day, but as big a fan I am of Danzig and Danzig-era Misfits, it does not interfere with my absolute LOVE of Michael Graves-era Misfits. Oh, I know, I know. Calm down. I know it's sacrilege, but seriously? Aren't Danzig and the Misfits all about Sacrilege and obliterating all that you hold holy? Then why oh why elevate them to that same position? Reminds me of the Golden Dawn talking shite about Christianity when they themselves adhered to a suspiciously Christian-like hierarchy. Further proof that any good idea put into practice by this mostly dumb animal called humanity ultimately corrupts itself and becomes what it sets out to fight.

None of that baggage muddies up the Misfits though. Graves-era is obviously waaaay more polished and a bit of a caricature but it is awesome nonetheless and if you doubt me then the this post as well as the two to follow are my not-so-subtle attempts at convincing you.

Happy Fookin' Irish Day Ye Basterds!



Want a good St. Patty's Day? Drink some Guinness, some Bushmills and listen to this album. It'll make you feel like a little, drunken, Irish GOD!

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Drinking with Comics Issue #3




...is up! Inside Mike and I display our ignorance on the topic of historical figures before tastefully segueing into talk about Larime Taylor's A Voice in the Dark, the return of David Lapham's Stray Bullets, IDW's reissuing of Sam Keith's The Maxx (as well as reissues we'd like to see down the line) and Sam Adams' Winter Lager and a host of other things. Oh, and Joe.Baxter continues to scheme behind the scenes...

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Stray Bullets!!!

image courtesy of comicsalliance.com

The return of David Lapham's Stray Bullets is what's on tap in this week's issue of Thee Comic Column over on Joup.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

David Lynch - Twin Peaks 25 Years Later...



So I'm not entirely sure how I missed this. Obviously, if you drop by here at least once in a while you'll see my output is waaay down. So busy. It's work, and it's reaching 412 usable pages in my novel and still going strong (probably about double that when you add exploratory/what's getting tossed or re-worked). Then there's Drinking with Comics. Then there's comics. Today was the return - after 8 years - of David Lapham's Stray Bullets. I woke up at 4:30 AM, got to work by 5:41 AM, left work at about 2:45 PM, drove to The Comic Bug, picked up my pull list, which included the looooooong awaited Stray Bullets #41, which finally gave closure to an 8 year cliffhanger and wrapped up the Hi-Jinks and Derring-Doo phase of the book and saw, also today, the launch of Stray Bullets: Killers #1. Lapham promises it gets better from here. I believe him. I'm really sorry to say good bye to Virginia Applejack though, even if only for an issue. Anyway, more about SB in Thee Comic Column this week on Saturday. For now I brought it up to say I gave myself a day off, came home from the shop, smoked and read my comics. It was nice, oh so nice.

In the interim my friend Chester from Joup sent me this link and I was just blown away. I'm very close to a re-watching of Twin Peaks and this might just be the thing that puts me over the edge.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For - Trailer (FINALLY)



I know everyone has already seen this but I like to post this stuff here anyway, as a sort of collection of things I dig. And even though it seems as though FM has basically become a complete right-wing lunatic, I am still very much looking forward to this. The first Sin City was quite possibly the first comic book adaptation I ever liked up until that point. This looks as though it should follow suit.

Blue Meanies - Smash the Magnavox



I don't know about you but I could sure use some high octane music to help my coffee out this morning. The Blue Meanies always do nicely. Musical Meth.

Infliction Trailer



I'm not going to lie - despite being a fairly rabid horror fan, over the last year and a half I've developed a sensitivity to violent content. It's not the actual violence but the way in which it is framed.

Kind of weird for a "rabid horror fan", right?

Serial/spree killer topics have always gotten too deep under my skin - it's why I've staunchly avoided Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer, why I've only seen Silence of the Lambs - which I consider just an expertly made film - once, and why despite my sheer LOVE of the script, camera work, set design, acting and pretty much every thing else about David Fincher's Se7en I've only seen it twice. It's why I've never seen Michael Haneke's Funny Games and have actually had to stop reading reviews/critical responses to several of his other films. Within the last two years person-on-person violence has been amped up - hell, even the How to Destroy Angels video for How Long was too much for me. However I'm also the kind of person that does not confuse my prejudices/peccadilloes with judgement. Just because something is not for me or falls into this category of stories/images I do not think it wise for me myself to consume, that doesn't mean I think its bad. On the contrary, there is a lot of very well made, poignant stuff out there that I just - at the moment - choose to stay away from. Case in point - Infliction. The trailer and website launched yesterday, and despite the fact that I can already tell this is probably something I won't see (at least in the immediate future) the film looks well made, fiercely independent and I'm digging the campaign behind it. Watch the trailer and if you're down, check it out. Independent cinema is now as important as independent music, so we have to support what we like (even if we're "afraid" to watch it).


Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The Effigies - Below the Drop



Continuing the "Old School" theme. This is such a fucking classic that it instantly pulls me back in time to 1992. Back then this was just incidental music at the house where my degenerate friends and I hung out, a backdrop to suburban debauchery. However, it came to mean so much more to me as I grew and learned to place it in the proper historical context.

New Pixies Video - Greens and Blues



With both this song and the video, I kind of feel like it's 1992 and I'm watching 120 Minutes. The new Pixies stuff is getting some hate but I just don't see it - everything I've heard thus far sounds exactly like its picking up where the band left off - and I'm the guy that didn't want Frank Black to deviate from his constant succession of amazing solo records to go back to this band.

Youth Code



I posted something about this band early last year and never really followed up. My journey's tonight have led me back around again. There is an obvious comparison to old Skinny Puppy, but there's enough of a new perspective that it feels of this moment, not a re-hash. Which is cool, because I didn't really know if people still made music in this vein.

Skinny Puppy Live Footage 1986



Currently going through a Skinny Puppy thing, so yeah, it's been a bit dark of late. Bearing this in mind I sat down to hammer a newer chapter of the book into shape with Too Dark Park as the soundtrack and Last Rites close at hand. This particular part of the book is pretty dark, the darkest segment I've written for the project thus far. SP seemed like the right vehicle to help inspire the tone.

Chapter finished I rewarded myself by scouting around online for this home video I remember from high school. It was a live concert, late 80's/early 90's. Ogre was tearing apart a stuffed dog in front of the microphone. I spent some time looking for this video tonight but have absolutely NO idea what it was named, or if it was maybe even a bootleg. In the absence of that which I sought, this does quite nicely.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Trailer: Nick Cave's 20,000 Days on Earth



Recently my wife worked the Berlin film fest for the old Industry magazine she used to be employed by - no, she did not have the benefit of going to Berlin. A lot of the trades apparently stopped actually sending anyone but their critics to the actual fests about a year after she was lucky enough to go to Cannes. But she went in everyday at 5 AM to assemble the thing. Anyway, one of the still she sent me was from Nick Cave's forthcoming 20,000 Days on Earth. To say I am excited for this film is an understatement.

Nothing - Guilty of Everything



Can I get a Hell Yes! Brothers and Sisters, the new album by Nothing is out today on Relapse Records! Go to your local record store - if you're lucky to have one - or over to their bandcamp and buy Guilty of Everything.

This band really grabbed me with their 2013 E.P. Downward Years to Come and I've been waiting for this record since it was announced several months ago.

Chester Whelks and the Sunday Song Poem

image courtesy of bostonphoenix.com
Okay, for my money this is the strangest, most interesting and actually kind of downright frightening column I've been reading lately. Over on Joup Chester delves into the art and history of the Song Poem. If you - like I - don't know what that is then go here to the inaugural edition of the column and read Mr. Whelks' description, then go through the other four posts (thus far) and acquaint yourselves with... well, madness.

Column 2 Non Violent Taekwondo Troopers

Column 3 Octopus Woman Please Let Me Go

Column 4 The Crime Shows


Sunday, March 2, 2014

Magazine - The Light Pours Out of Me



From their 2009 reunion circuit, live on Jools Holland. Barry Adamson back on bass! Awesome. For good measure, here's the cover version Ministry did of this song, from 2003's Animositisomina:



For the record, I love both versions, and the Magazine record this song originally appeared on, 1978's Real Life, is just a fantastic example of Post Punk.

Garth Ennis & Phil Winslade's Goddess...

image courtesy of trav73.wordpress.com
...is the topic on tap in this week's Thee Comic Column over on Joup. Read it HERE.