Last week, Metal Blade Records announced the new album from Germany's reigning Post-Metal champs The Ocean. Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic drops on September 25th. Pre-order HERE.
I've followed The Ocean since I stumbled across 2007's reissue of Fluxion in the metal section of a local record store. The group is hot and cold for me, in that I have and love all their albums in theory, but not all of those records are practical listens for me. 2005's Aeolian and 2007's Precambrian have their 'I have to hear that song right now' tracks, but overall are so academically 'post-metal' that, although I appreciate their sonic integrity, I find listening to them for any extended length of time often cumbersome. That said, Fluxion and 2010's pair of albums Heliocentric and Anthropocentric are year-round go-to's, and 2013's Pelegial also easily fits into regular rotation. I'm not quite sure where last year's Phanerozoic I fits into my listening routine yet, primarily because the record kind of got lost amidst a ton of other albums that held my attention for most of the year.
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A new episode of The Horror Vision Horror Podcast went up yesterday. I've added the handy little widget in the upper right-hand corner of this page where you can listen or follow over to our page on Spotify, since this is the service most of our listens seems to filter through. In this episode, Ray and I go Dynamic Duo and talk about Natalie Erika James' Relic, Jeffrey A. Brown's The Beach House, as well as a bunch of other cool stuff. Also available on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, and Google Play.
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NCBD - I messed up and posted this week's books here last week, so I'll be picking up those today.
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Currently reading:
Last week I finished Mark Frost's The List of 7 - very good Victorian mystery novel. Thoroughly enjoyed, and although I was tempted to start the sequel, 6 Messiahs, instead I started Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country in anticipation of the upcoming HBO adaptation. At a third of the way in, the novel is as fantastic as the trailer looks, so I'm doubly excited now:
The book is very much not what I expected, and that's good. Reading it is a cathartic, as being a long-time Lovecraft fan - we're talking since '92 - I had built up a pretty big head of fandom steam before I ever realized HPL was a completely racist xenophobe. Through the mid-to-late 90s, as his personal correspondences were published, I made it a point to avoid them, as that's when the depth of his ignorance really became apparent (it's in the writing, but not exactly overt, especially not when you're younger and not as skilled at reading into things). Still, as more has come out, it remains more difficult to balance being a fan of his fiction with abhorring his personal philosophies. The first book I read that really played with this was Seamus Cooper's The Mall of Cthulhu, where the protagonists are accosted by a skinhead group who have adopted worship of Lovecraft's entities (great book and only $2.99 on Kindle at the moment). That was a comedy though. Lovecraft Country is not. A taut exploration of this country's racists underpinnings (that just won't seem to go the fuck away), the story is less about Shoggoths and more about human monsters.
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Playlist:
The Birthday Party - Mutiny/The Bad Seed
Mannequin Pussy - Patience
United Future Organization: 3rd Perspective
Henry Mancini - Charade OST
Charles Mingus - Blues and Roots
Cypress Hill - IV
Raury - Indigo Child EP
The Chameleons - Script of the Bridge
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucingen
Palesketcher - Jesu: Pale Sketches
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Card:
"A temporary culmination of events or labors. A well-deserved breath." I'll take it.
