Jumping the Turnstile for January Giallo!

 

It's been a couple years since I checked in on Turnstile. About two and a half years, according to a quick metadata search on my posts here. At the time, a friend was photographing their L.A. shows regularly, and I hadn't really ventured past their 2016 album Nonstop Feeling, and I guess I kind of unfairly judged them on that record. Then, a few weeks ago while hanging out with my good friend Jacob, he mentioned their most recent album - from 2021, so just about when I was listening - GLOW ON was a recent favorite of his listening rotation. I made a note and only got around to actually listening a few days ago. All I can say is, I'm floored. Turnstile is so much more than I thought they were. Honestly, I'm not sure why I would have made such a dismissive assumption, but Jacob, thank you for setting me straight. This is one that is sure to be a mainstay while I'm walking the streets of L.A. for the next three weeks. 

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NCBD:

My Pull at Rick's Comic City was somewhat light this week. This is good, as I'll be in L.A. for the next three NCBDs. 

The new X books kick off this week with Fall of the House of X. I have the utmost faith in Gerry Duggan as a writer, but I was still not sure how I felt about the X-Books. This was a pretty solid first issue into whatever this "End of the Krakoan Era" will be. 

Issue one of Christopher Yost and Val Rodrigues' Unnatural Order was a book Chris introduced me to on last month's episode of A Most Horrible Library. Totally blew me away, and the second issue only strengthened that response. I am totally on board for wherever this one goes. 

 

Brubaker & Phillips' new graphic novel Where the Body Was hit last week and I picked up my copy yesterday.  As usual, I knew absolutely nothing about this one going in, and it proved to be fantastic.

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Cinematic Void is doing January Giallo all across the U.S. this year, with screenings in L.A., NY, Chicago, Nashville and Salem, MA! Knowing I would be back in L.A for January, I snagged tickets for some friends and me to see a fantastic Michele Soavi double feature: 1978's Stage Fright and a film I've still not seen, 1994's Cemetery Man.

 

And the Chicago announcement, screenings at the historic Music Box:

 

SO happy that January Giallo is now a "thing" in multiple states. Long live The Void!!!

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Playlist:

Fugazi - Red Medicine

Drive Like Jehu - Yank Crime

Fugazi - End Hits

Spore - Eponymous

Turnstile - GLOW ON

Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun

Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil

Boy Harsher - Careful

Boy Harsher - Country Girl Uncut

U2 - War

The Cure - The Head on the Door

Various - The Crow OST

The Juan Maclean - Happy House Matthew Dear Vs Audion Remix

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747

I was totally blown away yesterday to come home from a pretty damn good writing session and find that my good friend Jacob had sent me a record. Jacob has sent me several awesome records before, but this... this was something of a dream come true - a brand new copy of his band Bluekarma's 2000 record, The Communication, newly remastered by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service, pressed on vinyl for the first time. 

This is HUGE - Bluekarma is the band that first brought my old band, The Yellow House, to Dayton, Ohio, for our first show outside of Illinois. I got to be friends with these guys, but none more so than Jacob, who, at one point, we realized I had somehow unknowingly and before I met him, acquired a guitar he had previously owned and modified. It was a total WTF moment where I think we both realized there was something bigger than us at work. Since then, we've remained in touch even at a distance, and when I played as part of a band he was in back circa 2014, it was kind of another dream come true.

Here's a link to the vinyl announcement, and HERE is a link to order one of these babies for yourself.

747 was the song that Jacob used to do this insane guitar solo to. When they played Dayton's Nite Owl as they did the first time we played with them, the bar would give Jacob a bottle of Jagermeister, and he would walk out along the top of the bar and literally pour that beautiful black liquid into people's mouths. It wasn't so different from what we used to do with Hickory Hills Whiskey when Brown and I were in Schlitz Family Robinson. except, of course, Jager is delicious, and HHW is rotgut. Anyway, think of that scene while you jam this tune. It's one of a kind, as are the memories.

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High on Fire studio update:

 

I cannot WAIT for this album!!!

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Playlist:

Mercyful Fate - Don't Break the Oath

Mercyful Fate - Melissa

Thursday Afternoon Monday Morning Podcast 8-24-23 w. JOSH HOMME | Bill Burr

The Dillinger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Nahab

Deftones - Ohms

Baroness - Stone (pre-release singles)

Bluekarma - The Communication

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Oracle:

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

• I: The Magician

• Ten of Cups

• Queen of Wands

 

Initial, revelatory creative spark squashed by the inability to adequately interpret necessary emotional context.

No idea on this one. As has become my custom, I'm tempted to read this as a Pull for the main character of the book, but even in that context, I'm a bit lost.

Aside from Creative energies, The Magician can point to the presence of Magick. Ten of Cups is a full-on emotional deluge, and can indicate an unwillingness to step from beneath our emotional attachments. Queen of Wands is the Emotional aspect of Emotion, Water of Water, and the reason my initial interpretation of the Ten is a deluge. 

Preoccupations - Ricochet

 

Really digging this new track from Preoccupations that not only did Heaven is an Incubator post about recently, but both my good friends Jacob and Mr. Brown sent me last week (or the week before, we are now officially in a blur, ladies and gentlemen). It's been some time since we had new music from these guys, and I'd forgotten just how much I love their Eponymous and New Material Records (not to mention the Viet Cong stuff). 

The new album Arrangements is out September 9th, and you can pre-order it now HERE. I'm currently on a ban from anything pending our move, but that shouldn't hold you back.

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I feel like someone sent me something about this one a few months back, as the title rings familiar. After watching this trailer, however, I don't know. The first feature from Writer/Director Zach Cregger, this is new to me:

 

Holy smokes. SOLD. What a fantastic trailer - it gives us so much of the aesthetic but gives NOTHING away (I'm assuming). Bill Skarsgård is beginning to be enough to make me stop and consider anything he's in, so there's that, and the 'tunnels under suburbia' angle is right in my sweet spot, so my arse will be in a seat come 8/31.

 

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Playlist:

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

The Mars Volta - Blacklight Shine (pre-release single)

The Soft Moon - Him (pre-release single)

Preoccupations - Ricochet (pre-release single)

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - 1957-1972 (Live)

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Card:

Fortify your position. Definitely apt. I'm having massive "is this the right thing?" thoughts as we look at houses. 

Bexley - Sick

 

Last night marked my first live show since hitting 2 of the 3 Mr. Bungle shows in LaLaLand back in February 2020, mere days before COVID struck. I've reacquired my comfort level with seeing movies in the theatre, largely because you can very much curate how many people you'll be exposed to. Not in every case, but with Matinees and seating charts online, it's pretty easy to limit exposure. A live show is a more, "All bets are off" situation, though, so it's taken me a while to prepare. That changed recently, though.

When my good friend Jacob introduced me to The Mysterines' music, without even thinking I googled them to see if they were on tour - a practice I've maintained for years when I find a new band I love. When I saw they were playing on May 4th at the Peppermint Club, I didn't think twice about buying tickets. 

I'm glad I did.

Not only were The Mysterines awesome, but in preparation for the show, I looked up opener Bexley and was pretty blown away by her 2021 self-titled album. Above, I've posted my favorite song from said album, and since Bexley is local, I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for more shows, as she and her band were also great.

You can check out Bexley's Bandcamp HERE or her official site HERE.

 

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Watch:

Oh my. I probably wasn't supposed to laugh out loud, but I did. And then I winced enough to almost fall out of my seat.

 

The Sadness is written and directed by Rob Jabbaz, and as far as I can tell, this is his first full-length film. IT LOOKS F&*KING AWESOME, so I'll be watching this the day it drops on Shudder, next Thursday, 5/12/22.

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Playlist:

Sepultura - Chaos A.D.

David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today

David Lynch - Crazy Clown Time

Soundgarden - Superunknown

Bexley - Eponymous

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Card:

Water of Water, pure emotions. This can trip me up, so I'll be attempting to keep a cool on any over-the-top moments I might have; there's a lot of ridiculousness at work of late, and I've grown a bit cantankerous when certain people are involved. Play it cool.

Carpenter Brut - Color Me Blood

 

I completely forgot the new Carpenter Brut dropped earlier this month! Thankfully, a message from my good friend Jacob reminded me, and, after several days of indulging in Leather Terror, can say this is easily my favorite of Mr. Brut's work. Every song is great; here's my current fav, a kind of classic darkwave synth nightmare with a killer beat.

I really want the double red vinyl for this one, but being that there's an almost thirty dollar shipping fee on it from the UK, I'm sticking to the digital release for now. Also, vinyl lust aside, Leather Terror is another example of an album that I do not believe warrants the double vinyl format. Three songs on a side? I feel like constantly flipping a record like this detracts from the experience of listening to it. Regardless, if you want to, you can order it HERE. 

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READ:

Warren Ellis recently posted a Pay-What-You-Want, 10K short story on his Orbital Operations site. The story is called Watchtower, and you can read it HERE. I have no idea what it's about; doesn't matter. It's Warren Ellis, and it's far too infrequent we get a piece of prose from the man (not a complaint; he's a busy dude who writes for a living). 

I've mentioned it here before, but his Orbital Operations newsletter is one of my favorite things in life. His musings on the writing process are among my favorite things to read, and I've discovered quite a bit of good music and literature through the recommendations he includes. If I had to pick a favorite of his work... well, I can't. It's all just too good. But you can sign up for the newsletter HERE and you can start with either his first prose novel Crooked Little Vein HERE, his semi-recent revamp of DC's Wildstorm line - which is free on Kindle Unlimited and Comixology at the moment and TOTALLY worth your time; unlike anything you'd expect a DC comic to be - HERE, or just click over to Netflix and fire up his Castlevania series, which I really do need to finally finish.

I'm way overdue for a re-read on this one, and it's been kinda calling my name from the shelf. 

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A group of my friends were able to hit the movies on Saturday afternoon for the last scheduled showtime of Goran Stolevski's new film You Won't Be Alone. 

Talk about not what I expected at all. 

I really enjoyed this one, though, in a way where I can tell you, a lot of people may not feel the same. Especially with the somewhat misleading trailer. You Won't Be Alone requires a certain level of commitment from its audience, and its journey is one that really takes you on a personal journey with the main character, alternately played by several different people, but mostly helmed by Sara Klimoska. The story of a young girl who is kidnapped by a witch and turned into one of the hag's own shapeshifting kind, this is not a Horror movie, but a journey to find a life denied, and it's quite beautiful. I'll admit, I (and pretty much everyone I was with) had a hard time for the first 30 minutes, but after that, I adjusted to the rhythms and mission of the film and really kind of fell in love. 

That's not to say there aren't Horrific elements. However, that is most definitely not the point here. The Horror is a life denied, not the blood and guts. That said, the film's take on witches is one of pretty extreme Body Horror at times, and it can be quite visceral. 

I believe I've posted the trailer here before, however, I'd rather just go with the poster, as it's not misleading in the least. I get that they have to turn the trailer into something that will put people in seats at the theatre, but I really think there might be some backlash on this one.

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Playlist:

Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror

Amigo the Devil - Everything is Fine

The Veils - Total Depravity

Grinderman - Eponymous

Scratch Acid - Berserker EP

Huey Lewis & the News - Sports

The National - High Violet

Nurse with Wound - Soliloquy for Lilith

Revocation - The Outer Ones

Orville Peck - Bronco

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Card:

Yesterday, for the first time in weeks I slept over nine hours. I feel like that recharged some batteries, and the coming week doesn't look quite so bleak as the last one did going into it. This card sometimes denotes inner power, and I'm guessing that recharge will help balance me for the week's ordeals.

Slope

 

This is a 'Thank the Universe for my friends" post, because both of the two things I'm posting here, I NEVER would have found and/or given the time of day to without my friends. First up, Jacob, who sent me Slope's new album on Apple Music yesterday and totally picked up the later part of my day. This album rules! It starts almost like NIN's Broken, with a slowly building noise, then leaps into something that initially sounded a lot like nu-metal to me. I was just about to click off when the first change in the song hit, and I was roped back in - and from there, I could no stop. This record is fantastic - reminds me SO MUCH of Infectious Grooves' debut album, which I desperately wish I still had, 'cuz it's streaming on nothing. In the interim, Slope will help (or push me to buy the CD on ebay for $20 - I had the cassette).

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Watch:

MODOK - First: Patton Oswalt can do no wrong.

MODOK has long been a joke between myself and my good friend Joe.Baxter, the other half of on-again-off-again musical project Christian Fisting. In fact, if you could go to the Christian Fisting website (which is down) , you would see that MODOK even figured into our fake 'origin story' that we wrote for ourselves back in, oh, 2011 or so. Anyway, apparently Joe and I weren't the only people who found MODOK comical, and I glad of that after seeing this INSANE Marvel/HULU collaboration. Part Robot Chicken, part... I don't even know, I'm laughing my ass off as I watch this. And that's not very easy to do. 

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Playlist:

Lindsey Buckingham - Gift of Screws

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality

Jackie Wilson - Higher and Higher

Tom Waits - Rain Dogs 

Alabama Shakes - Sound and Color

Blur - Parklife

Windhand - Eternal Return

Slope - Street Heat

K's 70s Playlist 

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Card:

 

Clearly, I'm on repeat, going around and around, because I keep getting The Devil card from this deck. Until today. Unless this is just another way the deck is telling me what I'm apparently not hearing.

Silent Trese

Whenever my good friend Jacob sends me a band to listen to, I know it's going to rule. Silent, however, even tops the best of his previous recommendations. I cannot express how much I LOVE this album; it embodies everything I love about a modern post-punk aesthetic and reminds me A LOT of how much I loved that first Savages album back in what feels like one hundred years ago.

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I don't really know much about Trese yet, except my DwC cohost Mike Wellman sent me the trailer last week and it's being made by/with people who our friend Karen Kunawicz knows. Mike has a copy of the book it's based on hold for me, so I should be picking that up and reading it soon, so I will leave you with the trailer for now and report back on the book later this week.

Really cool stuff, from the looks of it. 

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Playlist:

Led Zeppelin - Coda

Silent - Modern Hate

Mudvayne - Choices (single)

Exhalants - Atonement

Windhand - Split

Deftones - Ohms

Violet Cold - Empire of Love

ZZ Top - Rhythmeen

White Zombie - Astro-Creep 2000

QOTSA - Villains

Goatsnake - Black Age Blues

Lustmord - Heresy

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Leviathan the Fleeing Serpent - Corpse Eater: Satanic Misery Love for the Dead

Various - Lords of Salem OST

 

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Card:

 

I can't really go into it here - or more like I don't want to at the moment - but I take this as a direct commentary on a BIG question that has been on both K and my own mind these last few days. 

Jehnny Beth - I'm The Man

 

I have a very push/pull with this video. Two days ago my good friend Jacob sent me a link to Jehnny Beth's debut record, To Love is to Live. You may remember her from Savages, whose 2013 debut Silence Yourself still resounds as one of my favorite records of the previous decade. Savages' follow-up Adore Life came out in 2016 and just kind of left me flat. I go back to it every now and again, but the 'a-ha' moment has never come. Still, I hold out hope that one day it might. 

So too, my first couple of attempts at listening to To Love is to Live were completely unsuccessful. I put the record away, went about my business, and came back to it later for a fresh perspective. This time, I perused the track listing before jumping in from the beginning, as I am most often wont to do, and decided to start with the fifth track on the record, "A Place Above", simply because the listing said featuring Cillian Murphy, and I was curious what that would sound like. You can actually hear that track in the video above for track six, "I'm The Man", as it serves as something of a prologue to the song. I'm happy to report, from this track on, the album opened to me in a way that very much made me appreciate Ms. Beth in a way I don't think I have before. The video above, directed by Anthony Byrne, is gorgeously shot and lit, even if the theatrics themselves that comprise the narrative of the video's run time leave me a little harumphed. 

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If you've listened to any of the recent episodes of The Horror Vision - we've been weekly for a month or two now - you'll have heard me talk about Eibon Press's four-issue comics expansion/adaptation of Lucio Fulci's The Beyond. I loved the book, and immediately ordered the trade paperback collection The Gates of Hell, which does for Fulci's City of the Living Dead what the aforementioned comic did for The Beyond. There's a big picture here, and it excites the F*CK out of me. One of the things that converted me to such a huge fan of Fulci's Gates of Hell Trilogy is the mythos, the larger picture that can be glimpsed beneath the films. It reminds me of HP Lovecraft's mythos, and I think Eibon Press is breaking serious ground by going in and fleshing it out. 

After talking about this on our show, Eibon Press founder Sean Lewis hit me up online. There will be an interview coming up down the road, but before that, some more reviews, as he sent review copies of a lot of other Eibon books with my Gates of Hell trade. 

First up was House By the Cemetery, three issues that further my favorite Fulci film in ways that directly connect it to the other two movies in the series. Next, that Gates of Hell trade is calling my name, so first, K and I re-watched City of the Living Dead last night.

Easily the poorest of the three films in this cycle, the comic will only be able to improve the story, for which there is only the barest hint of in the film. Don't get me wrong, I still dig it, but even that clipped, nightmare logic that makes The Beyond work so well kind of fails here, as we move from scene to scene with a pretty transparent disregard for anything but the gore and atmosphere. 

Interestingly, while this is the weakest of the three Gates of Hell flicks as far as story is concerned, City contains the best FX in any of these: Bob's drill-through-the-head death scene doesn't suffer from the usual tail-end let down present in most of these movies, where you can see how the actor is replaced by a close-up of the model. Below, compare Bob's death with the infamous 'gut-spewing' scene from this same movie, where you can clearly see the actress replaced by a dummy (again, not badmouthing here, just saying).

I should add, these are some especially gross-out clips (okay, really just the second one), so press play at your own risk:

 

 

Anyway, as I said, Eibon press's Gates of Hell comic can only improve on this one, so I can't wait to dig in later today.

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Playlist:

Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA

Me and That Man - Songs of Love and Death

Queens of the Stone Age - ... Like Clockwork

Curtis Harding - Face Your Fear

Venue - One Without a Second

Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone

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Card:

Twos are often an indication of balance, I can't help feeling that is a spot-on assessment of the morning so far. 

Two's also indicate cycles, shorter cycles, and I feel a few loops closing in the near future. This is good, as I seem to constantly be opening more of them.

Isolation - Day 36 Jawbox: Breathe

One of the things I really dig about Apple Music is the fact that I can see what my friends who have it are listening to (as long as their setting allow it). My good friend Jacob, back in my second favorite State of Ohio, has amazing taste and has turned me onto quite a few unbelievable records. He also, sometimes, reminds me of music that has spun so far out of my orbit there was little to no way I was coming back to it any time soon. Jawbox is such a band. When I think of era-defining 90s music, Jawbox is one of the bands that comes immediately to mind. And yet, unlike other groups from that era, there is nothing about Jawbox that sounds dated in any way. Maybe that because they helped inspire pretty much every new generation of "Post Punk," or maybe it's just because they are transcendently fantastic. Whatever the case, it's been a very long time since I'd heard this record, and it feels oh so good to have it back in my ears.

Thanks, Jacob!

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My Blu Ray copy of Joe Begos' VFW arrived in the mail yesterday, and I'm hoping to get a chance to watch it this weekend. I caught this one at Beyondfest last year (talked about it on The Horror Vision HERE), and it's fantastic. If you haven't seen VFW and you dig old school Carpenter, Siege Horror, or bad ass old dude flicks, I would consider this one a must. Here's the trailer:



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Firmly entrenched in William Gibson's The Peripheral. I have only the very vaguest sense of what the hell is happening, but I'm hooked.

No one writes the future like Mr. Gibson, it's a proven fact.

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Playlist:

Nirvana - Bleach
Dee Lite - Sampladelic Relics and Dancefloor Oddities
Willie Nelson and Leon Russell - One For the Road
White Lung - Paradise
Code Orange - Underneath
Steve Moore - VFW OST
Carpenter Brut - Blood Machines OST
Jawbox - For Your Own Special Sweetheart
FMLYBND - Letting Go (Single)
Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
Old Man Gloom - Seminar IX: Darkness of Being
White Lung - Eponymous
White Lung - Sorry
Tub Ring - Zoo Hypothesis
Doves - Lost Soul
Brand New - God and the Devil are Raging Inside Me

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Card:

Emerging from cloudy skies about troubled waters. Clarity lies not too far in the distance.

Failure - Saturday Savior

I had never heard of Failure before - or more likely I did back in the day and never paid any attention. My good friend Jacob of Blue Karma just turned me on to them after hearing news of their upcoming reunion shows in LA. I dig them quite a bit, and thus far this is a stand out.

Oceansize - Saturday Morning Breakfast Show

My friend Jacob from Blue Karma gave me Effloresce by Oceansize as an introduction to the band. After picking at it off and on for a few months the full weight and majesty of this beautifully crafted record really hit home about a week or two ago. I've pretty much been listening to it everyday since. All the tracks are fantastic, but this one hit me with a double whammy when it dawned on me that at ~330 they go into part of Pearl Jam's Ocean. I found this to be a brilliant little homage - the kind of thing a lot of bands do live but that I don't remember ever seeing done on an album before. It's a nice little tip of the hat that really adds some extra emotional weight to an already outstanding track.