New Music from High on Fire!!!

Now that's what I'm talking about! The title track from Cometh the Storm, High on Fire's ninth studio album, out next Friday, April 19th on MNRK Heavy. Pre-order HERE.

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Watch:

I've been busy as hell with regular work stuff and with watching movies and reading comics. Sounds like a great first-world problem, eh? Let's talk about what I've watched.

First, the Soska Sisters' new film Festival of the Dead is a Tubi exclusive and is now up on the streamer, ready to watch. A sequel to George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, this was a blast. 

The first ten minutes or so feel a bit like an NBC family morality flick, but Festival of the Dead very quickly asserts itself in the Romero tradition and does not look back. Loved some characters, loved watching others die in horrible ways, this one is fun and gory and just a good time in general. Don't let those first ten minutes fool you. 

Next, K and I caught Kiah Roache-Turner's Sting last night at the local cinema. Wow! This one is fantastic, too!

I've mentioned before that I have a bit of a spider phobia, and this one definitely plays on that. The FX are great, and the overall pace and tone here make for a great theatrical viewing. One thing I definitely noticed is there appears to be a huge chunk missing from this film (concerning the Bug Brothers, for those who've seen it), and I can only imagine the studio made the filmmaker trim a section to hit a specific run-time, and that's what came out. The film doesn't suffer for it, but it's pretty obvious. If anything, will make for a great extra feature on the eventual Blu-Ray.

There's a great interview with Sting's Creative Director about the practical FX in the film up on Bloody Disgusting HERE.

Finally, Shudder recently dropped the directorial debut by Alberto Corredor, a film titled Baghead.

Ostensibly a Talk to Me clone, this is still a pretty great first film. It's shot well, the lighting is great, and the location is an old Irish Pub that really steals the show, so it was pretty easy to enjoy this one despite any shortcomings. 

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Read:

As I type this, I'm finishing up my re-read of Chris Claremont and John Byrne's "Dark Phoenix Saga." I'm reading this in Classic X-Men, the way I bought it at a comic show at a Knight's of Colombus Hall somewhere in southern Illinois way back in... I don't really know when. Late 80s? Early 90s?

One thing I've noticed with these Classic X-Men issues is I actually prefer the cover art for a lot of these reprints to the original issues. Here are two great examples:

Above is John Byrne's original cover for Uncanny X-Men 134, while below is his cover for the reprint.

The original is good, but this second version is haunting in my opinion. There's something so chillingly cold and cosmic about Master Mind's eyes, hollowed out by an injection of Chaos by Phoenix. The fact that his slack-jawed, empty visage is so far up in the foreground and that Phoenix is more or less just an outline filled with the same cosmic imagery really ties this together, as does the cool greenish-blue color palette, which helps add a clinically void feeling to this entire tableau. This could be a poster, as far as I am concerned.

Next, the climactic chapter of the saga, Uncanny X-Men 137:

This has been a classic, iconic comics image since I began collecting in 1986, and while it is great - the massive yellow ad copy taking up the upper fifth of the page doesn't really help matters - it pails in comparison to the one on the reprint, Classic X-Men 43:

This one is a lot less dramatic of a moment than the first, so I can't quite figure out why I like it better. Again, the color palette is definitely more to my overall liking, but also, despite the fact that the original image is much more of an 'action' image, this one feels like a moment stolen from the finale of the issue. I think this is a case of the technology being better and the image simply being overall more crisp. 

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Playlist:

Turnstile - Glow On

Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers and Queers

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun

Yawning Balch - Volume One

Trombone Shorty - Too True

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom

Man Man - On Oni Pond

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Ten of Cups

• Eight of Swords

• Seven of Cups

Lots of emotion in this Pull. The pinion here, I think, is the Eight of Swords, as reading center-left-right, that is the middle card. This makes sense in that I've been prone to mood swings based on a certain person in my life; Ten of Cups is emotional maturity, Seven is Victory over emotion, but Eight of Swords can be read as Interference, that there's always some of that keeping me from being victorious over my emotions nad balancing them maturely in the face of trying situations. 

I'm a Monkey Man

I've been 'off' for a few days while some friends were in town, so I'm behind on some stuff from last week. First, this Orville Peck/Willie Nelson track that dropped last Friday and makes me super happy. To hear these two together is just... wonderful. I love how Willie does these tracks with the younger generation of real country stars to welcome them in - he did a similar one with Kacey Musgraves a few years back.

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Watch:

I saw two flicks in the theatre late last week. First up, Arkasha Stevenson's The First Omen. 

 

This was not for me, but then, I pretty much hate the original Omen as well. If you dig that one, you'll dig this (I think). Stevenson and her team - which includes cinematographer Aaron Morton (Evil Dead 2013; No One Will Save You) and Composer Mark Korven (The Witch; The Lighthouse) go out of their way to evoke the 70s tone of the original film, so this definitely feels as though it takes place in that world. Also, Nell Tiger Free does a great job as the lead. My problems really revolve around the script, but like I said, if you dig the original, I think you'll dig this. If you're on the fence and have it in mind to see only one Catholic/Nun Horror flick this summer, I'd go with Immaculate. It's just a better movie, in my opinion.

Next up was Dev Patel's Directorial debut: Monkey Man!

 

Dev Patel wrote/directed/and starred in this one, and it is quite the debut. A visceral fable of Haves and Have-Nots set amidst India's hard-line class division in a fictionalized version of Mumbai named Yatana, Patel plays "The Kid," a man orphaned by corrupt politicians as a child who has now grown up with only one guiding star in his sky: revenge. 

See it in a theatre if you can. The choreography and score by Jed Kurzel will light you up for days.

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Read:

I started a re-read of Chris Claremont's Uncanny X-Men this weekend. I've done this before and fallen off rather quickly, so this time I'm really going to try and stick to it. A few years ago (more than a few), I found a huge stack of single issues at a thrift store in Harbor City, CA, all in the mid 100s, and I've never read most of them. My readership began as a kid in the 80s, right around issue 211, and although I still have a bunch of holes in the run, I'm going to go through what I have. Starting with a bunch of issues of Classic X-Men; the monthly reprint series that ran in the 80s as the title became more popular, bringing hard-to-find storylines like The Dark Phoenix Saga back for newer fans to read. So that's exactly where I started.

Reprinting Uncanny X-Men #130

Reprinting Uncanny X-Men 131

While I do own a beat-up copy of The Phoenix's first appearance in Uncanny 101, I'm not even 100% certain I've ever actually read the entirety of the Phoenix Saga, so this is a great place to begin; I picked these Classic X-Men up years ago at a comic convention and really need this re-read to figure out what I've missed. As well as I know a lot of the lore and history, some of that was no doubt absorbed via years of fandom. It'll be very cool to actually experience Claremont's run.

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Playlist:

Revolting Cocks - Beers Steers and Queers

Miranda Sex Garden - Carnival of Souls

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Suspended in Dusk Vinyl)

Chelsea Wolfe  - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley

Anthrax - Persistence of Time

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse

Turnstile - Glow On

Beck - Odelay

Rollins Band - The End of Silence

Brigette Calls Me Baby - This House is Made of Corners EP

Amigo the Devil - Yours Until the End of the War

The Tiger Lillies - Bad Blood  + Blasphemy

Tom Waits - Rain Dogs

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven

Mannequin Pussy - Drunk II (single)

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Odonis Odonis - Shadow Play

 

It's been a minute since I've kept up with Odonis Odonis. Back in 2016, their album Post Plague was a constant in my ears and on my turntable, however, the band's subsequent releases, while good, didn't quite live up to the same high regard I'd assigned them after what I still feel not only sums up a small era of my life but is one of my favorite records of that decade. So I guess that disconnect explains why I totally missed the fact that they dropped a new record back in October, and what's more, it's FANTASTIC. Special thanks - as always - to Heaven Is An Incubator for posting a track from this and alerting me to it. If you dig, you can order one of the thirteen remaining copies (fourteen until I ordered mine) of Spectrums over on their Bandcamp or from the always marvelous Felte Records.

It goes without saying I'd developed an affinity for this particular song, as it shares a title with the series of novels I've been working on for several years now. 

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Time Machine GO!!! 1991:

In this past Wednesday's NCBD section, I casually mentioned an idea that kind of occurred to me on the spot but didn't really sink in as to what a profound self-insight I'd inadvertently made, the idea that my reversion to a fairly rabid Marvel Zombie/comic collector had more to do with a return to the things that had made the tumultuous task of navigating adolescent as an unconscious way to deal with the equally rocky navigation of Middle Age. This started with an out-of-the-blue interest in following the last year of Nick Spencer's run on Amazing Spider-Man but has pushed me not only back into following some of the modern X-titles (really, just one and a few mini-series), but a nearly inexplicable longing to rebuy and reread a bunch of the post-Claremont X-men stories, first with 1994's The Phalanx Covenant and now, of all things, the original Onslaught opus.

I want to point out here that these are books that I do not in any way shape or form consider 'good.' Conceptually, perhaps, but writing-wise, not at all. And while Fabien Nicieza had some pretty good chops, when we get into Scott Lobdell territory, well, I just consider that era of X-Men pretty mediocre-to-downright-awful stuff. And yet, here I am, combing the back issue bins at the Comic Bug and reading some of this stuff. And that off-the-cuff comment about reaching back into my past to reconnect with touchstones of my adolescence as a coping mechanism for the Horrors of aging in an era of little compassion and perhaps less tolerance really strikes me now as another instance of how our minds will do what they need to do to cope and survive, even if our personalities are completely unaware of those tragedies. So with that in mind, let me resurrect a moniker from my old Chud days to you about what I'm reading from the past, what I think of it now, and how it holds up.

Okay, granted this 1991's Muir Island Saga is still protected as awesome in my book because it's penned by Chris Claremont, however, it's Claremont's final entry and thus, the gateway to the end of his continuity, or rather the way he approached continuity, so I've always kind of held a grudge against both this series and it's villain, the Shadow King, who for whatever reason, I just could not care less about. That's my 'historical' perspective of this small, four-issue 'saga' that really doesn't feel like a saga at all. A bit short and to the point to be a saga. That said, in this instance, the brevity is good, and unlike the full-blown crossovers and X-Events that began to clog the continuity after the near-perfect triumph of Inferno, Uncanny X-Men 279-280 and X-Factor 69-70 feel like a pretty good story that lines 'em up and knocks 'em down, reworking all the allegiances Claremont had, up to this point, used to divvy up the characters and keep things interesting, paving the way for the 'Blue' and 'Gold' teams that would surface in Jim Lee's X-Men #1 and Uncanny 281, which realigned all the original X-characters like Scott and Jean with the Xavier camp and made X-Factor the new equivalent of Freedom Force, under Valerie Cooper - a character I had completely forgotten about.

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Playlist:

The Neverly Boys - The Dark Side of Everything

Lower Dens - Escape From Evil

TVOTR - Return to Cookie Mountain

The Bronx - The Bronx (IV)

Motörhead - Ace of Spades

Motörhead - Overkill

Converge and Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I (pre-release singles)

High on Fire - Electric Messiah

High On Fire - Luminiferous

Odonis Odonis - Spectrums

Drab Majesty - Modern Mirror 

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

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Card:

A reminder to strike while the iron is hot.

The Besnard Lakes - Feuds with Guns Official Music Video

 

More new Besnard that I'm trying really hard not to listen to in anticipation of sitting down with a joint and the entire new album - The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings, out January 19th (digital) and 29th (physical) - and just melting into the fucking music. Pre-order the record HERE.

 

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Read:

I have read a lot lately. First, at the recommendation of my good friend and Christian Fisting co-founder Joe.Baxter, I fell into Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder novels pretty hard, devouring Books one and two in about a day each. This started as research for a character I'm writing in Shadow Play Book Two, but quickly became the kind of obsessive read that forces me to relegate all Block to weekend reading only, lest I stay up all night on a work night rabidly flipping pages.

Next, I finally picked up Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians. After reading Jones's Night of the Mannequin a few months ago, I've been eager to get to this one. Halfway through in two days, it is not disappointing at all, so there will be more SGJ in my future.

Also, thanks to Jonathan Grimm, who tipped me off that Kindle was having a Marvel Masterworks sale on the entire original Chris Claremont run of Uncanny X-Men. I picked up the first five volumes, which fills in most of the gaps of what pre-dated the issues I have in physical form, including the classic Giant Size X-Men, which introduced Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Banshee, Sunspot (fuck him, he stayed for one mission and left), and Thunderbird to the team.

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Playlist:

Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf

Bell Witch - Four Phantoms

Four Stroke Baron - Planet Silver Screen

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Eponymous

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bayou Country

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Card:

Not about me at all, I think, but a confirmation K will be getting her promotion.

Isolation: Day 16 - The Return of Joe Bob Briggs!

Man, this could not come at a better time! I cannot wait for weekly event viewing with Mr. Briggs.

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I've been on a reading tear. I finished my re-read of Inferno, the mini series that ran through all the X-books in 1989. I even through in the What If...? Issue that contemplated what would have happened had the X-Folks lost to S'ym and Madelyne Pryor. Mr. Sinister remains my favorite X-Villain, however, it's unfortunate that Mr. Claremont never had the opportunity to fully explore his backstory. I know subsequent X-writers did, however, I don't know that I'd ever be interested in reading beyond Claremont's X-Men again. Louise Simonson works well writing X-Factor inside Claremont's domain, and I don't want to belittle what she did, but really, she began as Claremont's editor on the books, so it makes sense that when he had to hand the reins of one book over to someone, it would be her. And Ms. Simonson's contributions are fantastic. I even like a bit of what Fabian Nicezia added closer to the end of Claremont's tenure, but most of what other creators did at that time grew organically out of the seeds Claremont had laid. Who knows? Maybe I'll find the one of those Sinister-related trades on sale for Kindle at some point and take a chance. I know they took him back to the Victorian era - an immediate 'Pro' for me, however, the subsequent convolution of all things X after Claremont and the editorial insistence on 'Status Quo' just makes me want to pretend the characters were part of a finite series. (Although Morrison's stands on its own as a three-volume masterpiece, and I suspect that may be just about up for re-read as well).

Possibly my favorite splash in the entire series

Next up was the complete Alien/Predator/Prometheus Fire and Stone saga, which was pretty awesome. 

One of my favorite elements of this was when the construct Elden - similar model to Bishop or David from the films - is injected with the Engineer's Life Accelerant "Black Goo" and begins an evolutionary journey that sees him become something almost as monstrous and distressing as the Xenomorphs themselves. Check this out:

More wonderful Nightmare fuel from the Alien Universe!

Next, the first installment of Warren Ellis' 2016 serial novel Normal, which I've had since its release and which I've just realized, is now only available as the collected novel. So, apparently in order to continue, I'll just have to pick that up, which is no problem, as it's readily available on Kindle:

Although I won't be doing the rest of Normal just yet, as reading the first part awakened in me a rabid desire to re-read Charles Stross' Atrocity Archives, which I believe I first read back in... 2007 or 2008, and which has perpetually been on my mind since setting up a Feedly account a few months ago and following Stross' blog (HERE).

If you're unfamiliar with Stross, his Laundry Files books follow an employee in the IT department of a company that deals with Necromantic Arts and Lovecraftian Elder Gods the way Silicon Valley companies deal with Technology. It's fascinating, and I'd been meaning to re-enter Stross world for sometime. I'm only a few pages into this re-read, but I may do more of the series afterward.

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Playlist:

The Birthday Party - Mutiny/The Bad Seed EP
Fenn - Epoch
Balthazar - Fever
Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Tinderbox
Tennis System - Lovesick
Spotlights - Love and Decay
Various Artists - The Void OST
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1
NIN - Ghosts V: Together
Rammstein - Eponymous

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No Card.

Kacey & Willie

This one's been out there for some time, so I'm late to the game. During a back-and-forth listening session with a good friend on Wednesday, I discovered the Kacey Musgraves/Willie Nelson duet "Are You Sure."

Wow.

I know next to nothing about Ms. Musgraves, but when I saw Willie Nelson with her, I became instantly curious; while far from my bread and butter, Willie definitely fit a certain state of mind with me. I saw him live back in 2015 and he blew me away. As for this song, it's incredible. As Mr. Brown pointed out recently, she has a definite Patsy Cline/Loretta Lynn quality.

The video too, is shot in a throwback way that made me half expect to see a muppet sitting next to her when the camera began to pan to the left. It looks like 80s "live" television. Totally appropriate for the inner of the bar and feel of the song, which also harken back to a different era.

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A new episode of The Horror Vision went up this past Monday. This is our spoiler-free review/reaction piece to The Lodge (loved it - hear why), as well as a discussion that includes AHS Hotel, Netflix's Castlevania and October Faction, Joe Begos' Bliss, and 2011's Fright Night remake, as well as a handful of other titles we've viewed recently. Oh yeah, and this episode's Classic Corner is none other than Tibor Takacs' 1987 The Gate! We love this movie so much, we even sneak in some thoughts on the sequel.



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After finishing Chuck Wendig's frightening and timely Wanderers last week, a conversation with Ray from The Horror Vision prompted me to dig out a large part of Chris Claremont's run on Uncanny X-Men and begin plowing though it. I started just before the Mutant Massacre - which was about when I started reading X-Men back in the day - and plan on going up through Inferno. I might go past that, not sure yet. But I am SO looking forward to Inferno. It's been too long.

Also, the Sequart Documentary Chris Claremont's X-Men is now on Prime for free, so if you're a fan and haven't seen it, totally worth a watch.

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Playlist:

The Vines - Total Depravity
Talking Heads - Fear of Music
16 Horsepower - Low Estate
Zombi - Shape Shift
Worm is Green - Automagic
Greg Puciato - Fire for Water (single)
Greg Dulli - Random Desire
Mazzy Star - So Tonite That I Might See
Grimes - Art Angels
Led Zeppelin - I
Led Zeppelin - IV
The Jesus Lizard - Lash
The Jesus Lizard - Head
The Jesus Lizard - Pure EP
Chris Connelly - Sleeping Partner
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth
Anthrax - Attack of the Killer B's
Anthrax - Spreading the Disease
Various - The History of Northwest Rock Vol. 2 (The Garage Years)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Ghosteen
Grimes - Visions

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 Card:

Hacking off pieces in order to gain the time/vantage to reflect. I pulled a 'mental health day' yesterday, not from my day job, but from writing. The current global situation has got me down, and I've realized despite all my declarations that I will not vote for either of the two parties in hogging the US political system, I am indeed going to be casting a vote for one asshole in November simply to keep the bigger (biggest?) asshole out of office. I also realize that this won't work and we most likely have four more years of... this. Unless of course, Captain Trips wins the day and purges the planet of a large enough amount of the human population as to inspire a total societal change in this country.

I won't hold my breath. Fuck jetpacks, where's our Common Sense?

2018: November 15th

My copy of Thought Gang's long-lost album arrived a day early, so I've already spent a fair amount of time with it (though not nearly enough). So far, this is my favorite track on the album. My mid-90s self would have been all about this one.

Another day home feeling like shite. Trying to use the time wisely, though I've yet to do any writing, which I have planned in a bit. Spent the morning reading old issue of Classic X-Men, as I've been wanting to re-read a large chunk of Chris Claremont's Uncanny X-Men for quite some time now but never manage to find the time. I started off with the Dark Phoenix Saga and will move on from there. There are a few holes in the collection, but for the most part I have it all from Dark Phoenix on. A few of my favorite issues that I am looking forward to re-reading:

Fede Alvarez just proved what I've been saying for going on six years now. Thank you, Mr. Alvarez. Now, how about that sequel???

My friend Daniel just published a beautiful, heartfelt goodbye to Stan Lee. Read it HERE.
Playlist from 11/14:

Ghost Cop - One Weird Trick
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - B-Sides & Rarities Vol. III
Thought Gang - Eponymous

Card of the day:

I continue to encounter larger, archetypal guidance. I'm reading this as a suggestion to keep up a new yogic routine, which I began with two days last week and subsequently slacked off on.

Rob Zombie Talks 31

One more I'm referencing from Bloody Disgusting today. Interesting news on the new Zombie movie 31, including a description that sounds awesome! Remember Chris Claremont's Uncanny X-Men, Arcade's Murder World? Well...

Go here to read about more about 31, watch and listen to a whole lot more information on the project and, if it suits your fancy, back it!

Sequart's Documentary about Chris Claremont's Epic Run on Uncanny X-Men

image courtesy of Marvel.com

...is out and ready to watch. I ordered my copy last night and wrote this week's Thee Comic Column about it. Available on Joup!