New Album From Lustmord

 

The first teaser for the upcoming Much Unseen Is Also Here, the new album from Lustmord, available on March 15. Pre-order from Pelagic Records HERE.

---

---

---

Watch:

The other night, I fell asleep in my hotel room watching B.D. Clark's 1981 SciFi WTF Galaxy of Terror. Here's a trailer:

I'm not really sure how I feel about this one. First, great cast. Where else can you see Eddie Albert, Sid Haig, Grace Zabriskie and Erin Moran (Joanie from Joanie Loves Chachi) in a third-rate Alien knockoff. No disrespect - I'm sure everyone involved in this production knew what they were making when they filmed this. Still, this was a good time, even if the ending featured some pretty bad writing in the style of "Make it a bunch of indecipherable and abstract gobbledegook and people will think it's just too smart for them to understand."

---

---

---

Read:

While at The Comic Bug two weeks ago, I flipped briefly through their back issue bins and found this:

I know NOTHING about Machine Man, even though this was put out in that magical comic book year 1984. This would have been when I was first dipping my toes into comics, and I know the cover layout for this era of Marvel Comics so well that it creates an instant nostalgia bomb in my heart. In this particular case, I just could not pass up this beautiful Barry Windsor-Smith cover. This is the perfect example of what I keep referring to as "Hobby Store SciFi," even without knowing the contents.

Reading this last night, I was shocked by a few elements of the book. First, one of the heavies is Arno Stark - the Iron Man of, ahem, 2020! That's right, this 1984 look into the future shows a lot of technological ideas that we can, now four years beyond the storytellers' mark, confirm never came to pass.

• Flying cars? Nope

• Cyborgs and tech-gangs? Not unless you count those Grinders who get magnets implanted in their skin

• Mega corporations that control the world... oh, well, I guess that one is pretty accurate.

A second shocker was Jocasta, the robot lady person I would know briefly from an Avengers annual published a few years after this book. This made me curious to look up just how much Machine Man has to do with the Marvel we've come to know in the years since this series. From what I found, the continuity here is designated as Earth-8410, and is not to be confused with Earth-616 Jocasta, who Ultron built as his, er, bride?

---

---

---

Playlist:

Marilyn Manson - We Are Chaos

Finom - Fantasize Your Ghost

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Miss Machine

The Trapezoid - Reverb Nation Playlist

Black Rainbows - Superskull

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom

Algiers - Shook

Turnstile - GLOW ON

---

---

---

Card:

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

• Nine of Wands

• XVIII: The Moon

• IX: The Hermit

Nine of Wands relates to The Moon in Thoth, as the Sun and Moon factor into the Croweley/Harris visualization for the card as motivating elements of the "Strength" of the card. One Wand (arrows in Thoth) supported by eight; driving force. The Hermit here suggests I need to take a solitary day and put all my effort into something that's been occluded to me thus far. I happen to know exactly what that is.

Melvins & Lustmord

 

It was not until just last week that I realized Melvins had collaborated with Lustmord on an album. THIS is mind-blowing stuff.

---

---

---

NCBD:

We start this week's NCBD with the final issue of Moon Knight: Black, White & Blood. 

I Love this series. When they first announced they were doing one of these BW&B for Moon Knight, I was surprised. I'm hoping they do some other left-of-center characters, and that it wasn't just the Moon Knight Disney+ series that spurred this particular title. I'd love to see a Taskmaster or even, hell, a Wilson Fisk, Kingpin BW&B. Come on Marvel, let's see what you got!

One of my most anticipated series since the previous issue. This one is such a great heir to the Neil Gaiman/Vertigo legacy. 

Being that issue 3 just came out last week, I'm not entirely sure this will land today. We'll see. Either way, this series is worth the wait.

I feel like it's been quite some time since the previous installment of West of Sundown. That's not really true, I think I've just, you know, moved across country and completely restarted my life since issue 4. Can't wait to read this next chapter.

Probably my favorite cover with Scott Summers on it EVER. 

---

---

---

Read:

There was a time when I bought every novel Irvine Welsh released the day they came out. That stopped after his 2012 Skag Boys. Not because I don't love Welsh's work. On the contrary, his prose is a HUGE influence on my own, and being that I had shifted to working on a genre series, I was afraid that influence would hinder my completion of the first Shadow Play novel. Shadow Play ultimately took another seven years to finish, starting and re-starting it. In between, I cranked out a lot more genre work, always keeping Welsh at bay.

Last Sunday, the damn burst.

I'm a saver - if I discover an author who already has a few novels on the shelf, I'll always save one. So was the case with Welsh's 1995 novel Marabou Stork Nightmares. Well, after learning Welsh had just released a follow-up Ray Lennox novel to Crime with The Long Knives. I realized I've now missed five Welsjh novels including this one. To quote Lebowski, "this will not stand!"

So I cracked open Marabou and cannot put it down.

It's crazy to think this was Welsh's second published novel. The narrative is written in the same kind of experimental fashion that Filth is - I don't want to try and explain it here, but needless to say, Welsh finds a pretty insane way to move between main character Roy Strang's coma-narrative and his real life and what he hears while he's inside the coma, bubbling up just below the surface of waking. Which Roy does not want to do. I love Welsh's work so very much, I can't believe I've been away from it this long.

---

---

---

Playlist:

Pink Mountaintops - Peacock Pools

A Place to Bury Strangers - Exploding Head 

Megadeth - Rush in Peace

Melvins & Lustmord - Pigs of the Roman Empire

Anthrax - Attack of the Killer Bs

Patty Smythe - The Warrior (single)

The Ocean - Phanerozoic I: Paleozoic

Scott H. Biram - Nothing But Blood

Amigo The Devil - Born Against

The Mysterines - Reeling

Young Widows - Settle Down City

Breather Resist - Charmer

---

---

---

Card:

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

The way that I will choose to accomplish something will usher in notable change, part of which will be condemnation by someone I respect. 

I've got a BIG new project in the works, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people - not necessarily people I know - will give it a big eye roll just for what it is. Unfortunate. "The work that transforms the medium." 

I hope.

Miranda Sex Garden - In Heaven (Everything is Fine)

A great rendition of a classic David Lynch-penned tune. The organ that serves as a bridge is among my favorite sounds ever.

How did I get to this? Weeeeellllll.....

I am a HUGE Miranda Sex Garden fan, but I haven't been on a 'binge' with them in a while. Then I a little while ago I was over on the always awesome Heaven is an Incubator and listened to this incredible Lustmord track that he posted (go to that track directly on the 'Incubator here). Somewhere in there (I was drifting and not totally conscious of time - the track will do that to you) there was an organ sound very similar to the one I mention above.