Ministry - New Religion

LOVING this new Ministry record. Somehow, Uncle Al almost never disappoints. This particular track, while I'm not in love with the video, is one of those Ministry songs where you can really hear the Killing Joke influence. This started back around 2003 with Animositisomina, which is interesting when you consider that Paul Raven didn't join the band until 2006's Rio Grande Blood. Not that there wasn't always a little Killing Joke DNA in Ministry, but occasionally, it really shines through.

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NCBD:

Light pull this week, but there are some goodies, so let's get into it:

A new Last Ronin series? Whoah! This slipped by my radar completely until about a week ago. Apparently, if I understand this right, this series is set a number of years after the original series and follows more grown-up versions of the four new turtles that Casey (Jr) was training. I love the Miller-esque dystopia of the first Last Ronin series, so definitely sign me up for this next round. I love to see the evolution of future worlds like this. 

Here's another one that slipped past me - David and Maria Lapham have a new series called Underheist and I missed the first issue! I'll be grabbing that as well as this week's number two. Everything the Laphams do is fantastic, so I can't wait to see what this new one has to offer.

Void Rivals returns! I honestly had only realized it must have been on hiatus - probably because I've been so preoccupied with the other Energon Universe series. I feel like this family of books is moving in to take over the fervor I've held but watched wane for the X-Books since Hickman. I don't know if my brain finds something to fill the, ahem, void, or if 

Speaking of the X-Book, I still haven't found any issues with Gerry Duggan and his X-Men. Solid, every issue. And what's this? Lockheed returns? Can't wait to see this. Where the core Fall of X books have been a mixed bag, Mr. Duggan continues to drive his RBI percentage up by turning in solid episodes of the core 'team' book in the family. Also, love seeing Kitty and Ilyana side by side with swords!

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Watch:

Recently, I was psyched to see that Shudder added the first three Coffin Joe movies to their ever-expanding roster. I am not super familiar with these, but back in 2004, my friend JFK (where are you?) mentioned these to me and I started a hunt that didn't end until I walked into either Generation Records or Village Revival Records in Greenwich Village, NY and found a copy of At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul. I picked that up and gifted it to JFK for Christmas that year, and after we watched it one night, I haven't seen a Coffin Joe flick since. Until now.

"The Brazilian Freddy Krueger" is how Coffin Joe is often described, and while there is a simple comparison there, that's a bit of a misnomer, and probably the reason I walked away from that first viewing twenty years ago less than impressed. So despite the fact that I myself have used that comparison recently, I offer here the caveat that Coffin Joe is not a supernatural being (at least not in the early flicks) and he doesn't invade his victims' dreams or materialize in gross and grandiose ways. He's a terribly evil human being, an undertaker with no empathy and a greedy soul, and he terrorizes the town in rural Brazil where he resides as a rich and powerful citizen. 

On the surface, these flicks feel a little quaint. At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul is from 1964 Brazil for god's sake, so that's to be expected. But, if you really pay attention and move past that surface layer, these are some pretty f**ked up films. What's more, let's think about that year of origin again: 1964 Brazil! These are also SO ahead of their time, even in the States, and slot in nicely with some of the other creators releasing Horror films at the time; if you google "Horror Films Released in 1964," you get a list that includes Roger Corman, William Castle, and Hershal Gordon Lewis.

Ultimately, Coffin Joe - the character created and portrayed by Brazilian cinematic jack-of-all-trades  José Mojica Marins - won't be for everybody, however, in rewatching the first film last night, I found a decidedly more cerebral and, honestly, disturbing experience than I remembered. Strip away some of the limitations of the day, some of the slightly archaic approaches to the accouterments of the Horror genre - maniacal laughter, spiders (no laughing matter for me), and female hysteria, and you have an amoral villain who commits grievous acts in the name of a rather messed up approach to child-rearing. Joe is an icon in Brazil - hence the real reason for the comparison to Mr. Kreuger - so Shudder adding these films is another way in which the service continues to promote a more well-rounded fan base for the genre. Something we're all the better for. 

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Playlist:

The Body & Dis Fig - Orchards of a Futile Heaven

Uniform & The Body - Mental Wounds Not Healing

Witchfinder - Hazy Rites

Black Sabbath - Volume IV

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

Dio - The Last in Line

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Card:

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

• XI: Justice

• Four of Wands

• VIII: Strength

Approaching a situation or decision without bias leads to empowerment. Again, another character nod to the book I'm writing. I turned in a solid hour and a half last night - actually made it out to my old coffee shop and was really able to lose myself for the duration of the session. These characters are growing in depth and complexity, and the cards are assuring me I'm on the right path.

New Music from Ministry!!!

Ministry released a new track last week, and as usual, I love it. From the forthcoming album HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES, out March 1, 2024, I feel like this is a bit early, but still, I can't really complain about new Ministry. No pre-order link that I could find yet, but that's sure to come. In the meantime, enjoy Goddamn White Trash.

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Watch:

K and I took her Mom to see the Barbie movie over the weekend. This was about as interesting to me as the battleship movie until Mr. Brown posited that he'd read the entire thing was going to be one big piss-take. 

That got me interested. 

I waited for the hype (and crowds) to die down before even entertaining the idea of getting a ticket. We were at the theatre multiple times since this thing opened, and the crowds of pink-adorned moviegoers gave me pause. The malaise for big-budget IPs I always experience when actually faced with seeing them kicked in, and I figured I could go on just fine without ever actually seeing this thing, thank you very much. 

Then K's Mom expressed interest, so we decided to take her. Verdict? Greta Gerwig did exactly what I hoped she would with this one: It's irreverent toward everything that deserves irreverence - including itself and the Barbie brand - yet still manages to be fun and touching as all hell. And as far as the cries of man-hating, anyone offended by this is a douche, and exactly what the film is commenting on. 

Ms. Gerwig had come a long way from being the friend in Ti West’s House of the Devil, and I applaud Mattel for allowing this to be what it is. Also, fucking Rhea Pearlman, am I right? 

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Read:

I finished Grady Hendrix's We Sold Our Souls over the weekend. OUTSTANDING novel! I read the last 60 or so pages in a mad gallop, unable to put the damn thing down. This means I'm going to reassess some of his newer books, all of which I'll probably read at some point.

Moving on, I finally started Nathan Ballingrud's novel The Strange. 

Holy smokes! Only 80-odd pages in, and I can pretty much guarantee right now, this will be the best novel I read this year. No disrespect to the others - Laird Barron's The Wind Began to Howl, and Stephen Graham Jones's Don't Fear the Reaper are both going to come in close, but Mr. Ballingrud's prose is just mouthwatering.

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Undreamably Abysses

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Nahab

Sinéad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got

Agnes Obel - Aventine

Ghost - Impera

The Rods - Wild Dogs

The Rods - Live

Van Halen - 1984

Def Leppard - Pyromania

Mercyful Fate - Don't Break the Oath

Etta James - Second Time Around

Standish/Carlyon - Deleted Scenes

Metallica - 72 Seasons

Ubre Blanca - Polygon Mountain EP

Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman

Mercyful Fate - Melissa

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Oracle:

Just want to do a simple, one-card Pull today, and Missi's Raven Deck is the one I use for that:

Beware bad information and/or don't overlook information from dubious sources. 

The Last Temptation of Read

From Lard's 1990 album The Last Temptation of Reid. Pretty sure the titular Reid - the co-owner of Chicago Trax who recorded the band's first EP - came into the pizza place where Mr. Brown and I worked in High School. Weird anecdote, but one I can't help but think of whenever I throw this record on.

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NCBD:

Speaking of Temptations to Read, this is my biggest NCBD Pull in some time. Let's get into what I'm bringing home:

I'm going to be dropping off Ghost Rider fairly soon. I don't know, this one just isn't doing for me what it did about half the time at the onset. I can really feel Marvel building up their Midnight Sons line, introducing a lot of new characters, bringing back older iterations, and building out the world of monsters that lurks in its underbelly. You'd think that as a Horror fan, that would work for me, but I just feel like it's a sanitized Horror, and that's disappointing. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'll read to the end of this current storyline and realize they're building something great, but all the books over the last year that have contributed to that - Moon Knight, that Crypt of Shadows one shot, the crap they did with Man-Thing a few years ago, none of it feels substantive.

I'm definitely digging this deeper dive into the Last Ronin world. 

So, after reading the first 'season' of Red Room, not reading the second, and then picking up the first issue of the third, I'm still digging this book. My pass on that second installment had more to do with trimming the Pull List and diverging from the fairly disturbing subject matter - which, as I've pointed out here previously, is very much offset by Piskor's Ed Crumb-like art style - and not due to any perceived failure on the book's part. Quite the contrary - each issue continues to seduce me with the social mystery that surrounds this strange, underground world of dark web murder rooms, cryptocurrency, and psychopaths. Of particular note this week, this homage cover to Charles Burns's Black Hole comic just blows me away.

I feel like it's been months since I read the first two issues of The Seasons Have Teeth, even though it's only been a few weeks. Can't wait to see where this is going. The anthropomorphizing of the actual seasons into monsters is just too damn cool to miss, especially when those monsters are rendered as visually strange and beautiful as series artist Sebastián Cabrol has made them.

The third and final one shot to welcome in the Fall of X era, the first two books - Sons of X and First Strike both constituted a huge letdown. We're talking Trial of Magneto level bad. Being that those books were not written by current X-scribes and this one is, I'm holding out hope this one justifies reading.

 

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Playlist:

Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God

Rein - Reincarnated

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid

The Jesus Lizard - Liar

Cocksure - Be Rich

Lustmord - Dark Matter

Godflesh - Post Self

God is LSD - Spirit of Suicide

Anthrax - Persistence of Time

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Damn the Torpedoes

        

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Card:

• 9 of Disks: Gain - Yesod again, so imagination and reflection, and enjoying the satisfaction that comes with that. Worded in the grimoire as "Self Satisfaction," which automatically puts me in mind of hubris, the obvious point of the Pull when you take the following two cards in.

• 3 of Swords: Sorrow - Directly from the Grimoire, "Paired with Disks can point to problems w/ work;" "Let thing develop before making another one;" "Intense passion to create but doing so is problematic."

• 7 of Disks: Failure - A difficult period in Earthy life

Well, what a cheery Pull for today! Seriously, this obviously warns against a sneaky inclination I've experienced to try to deviate one or two days a week to work on another languishing project. I'm so close to a final first draft on the current one, best not to deviate. Head on to the finish line!

 

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Duration:

Better.

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X's For Eyes... And That's All

 

I have always carried a torch for a handful of songs from the Phil Collins/80s Genesis catalogue. I know, I know... I don't care. These songs are in my DNA from early life exposure. Also, weirdly enough, a lot of comic book memories are attached to some of them, this one in particular. Not necessarily specific issues, but eras.

The year Tonight, Tonight, Tonight came out - 1986 - was the year I first started reading comics on a regular basis with Larry Hama's G.I.Joe issue #49. The same year, this song appeared in a Michelob television commercial. Something about that commercial primed me to be both a Ministry fan and a Bret Easton Ellis fan, though it's difficult to explain the latter half of that statement. (Ministry's Everyday is Halloween would score a - get this - Old Style Dry commercial, just two years later. My memory so clearly stated it was a Bud Dry commercial that I would have put money on it. Also, who remembered that Old Style had a "Dry" beer? Not me, and probably not Dennis Farina, either. I mean, if he was still alive...)

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Play:

The New Puppet Combo game Stay Out of the House drops June 16th! I've already pre-ordered my copy for Switch. Why? Check out this gnarly trailer:

Oh man, I need to double-down on No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, which I played the hell out of for the first week and a half and then haven't really had time for since.             

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Read:

Blew through Laird Barron's third Isaiah Coleridge novel, Worse Angels and, exactly as instinct suggested, it went from a 4-star to a 5-star rating simply because I did not reread Black Mountain (Bk 2) first. Love this series, and it's put me in mind of tracing some of the recurring characters, so the instant I finished it, I picked up Barron's 2015 novella X's for Eyes.         

I've only read this particular Barron book once before when it first came out, and it's not a Coleridge novel, however, Tom Mandibole makes an appearance, and since he is a major force in Worse Angels, I really wanted to work backward on his character. The first memory I have of him is "More Dark," the closing story in Barron's 2013 The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All collection, where - in my mind at least - it's heavily implied he is a riff on author Thomas Ligotti. I read Barron's work as it's released, and in the past, I haven't kept notes, so I'm hazy on where and how often Mandibole has appeared. Hence the 'working backward.' At any rate, Mandibole shows up in the first two pages of X's For Eyes, as does Sword Industries, the Labrador family and who knows what else. So I'm in the right place until The Wind Began to Howl (Coleridge Bk 3.5) arrives.

 

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Playlist:

Lustmord - Berlin

Low - Double Negative

Ganser - Odd Talk

Les Discrets - Prédateurs

Godflesh - Post Self

Danzig - Danzig III: How the Gods Kill

Alice in Chains - Sap EP

Soundgarden - Superunknown

Huey Lewis and the News - Sports

Phil Collins/Genesis - Collins. Phil Collins. Playlist

Pastor T.L. Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir - Like a Ship (Without a Sail)

Ministry - Moral Hygiene

Yeruselem - The Sublime

Pigface - Pigface Live 2019 vinyl

            

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Card:

Heading to Chicago today, so here's a card from Missi's Raven Deck to see me on my way and plot the course of the trip:

Things change; long-standing certainties switch polarity. Life is change, so embrace change. Kill. Your. Darlings.

 

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No Devotion For Mr. Gibson

 

A little old-school Chicago Industrial to kick things off today.

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Watch:

This is my favorite thing I think I've ever encountered on the internet. No BS. A HUGE thank You to Seth:

I literally just want to watch this over and over and have Bobby Fingers tell me everything is going to be okay. Seeing this, and sending it over to my former bandmate Joe.Baxter, I can't help but feel like when we finally try and finish recording all that unfinished Christian Fisting material, we should dust off the old "Mel Gibson's a Cunt" song we had, written in the wake of that 2006 arrest that is being modeled here. 

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NCBD:

It's Wednesday, and that means new comics are on the shelves! Here's what I'm picking up at Rick's Comic City!

Street-level Spidey on a Goblin hovercraft? interesting. Love this cover. 

The penultimate issue of Deadly Class!

I definitely liked the twist Marvel's Judgment Day took at the end of the second issue. Hoping this continues to expand that, instead of focusing on what we already know has happened. I get that in the onset of this series beginning, we only really got a 'thin slice' of the siege on Krakoa and holocaust on Arrako, but showing us all the nooks and crannies of those battles is getting a touch old. Issue 2 moved things forward, but then Death to the Mutants moved it back again. 

This book is fantastic but truly independent, so there have been a lot of scheduling delays. I'm hoping it actually lands today.

LOVING this new Shaolin Cowboy series. Geof Darrow is an amazing artist, and he's really cooked up an "Anything Goes" world with this one. I pulled out my copies of the previous series and realized the titular character died at the end of it. This means Darrow has been - as he should be - doing whatever the hell he wants time-wise with this odd, post-apocalyptic mash-up series. I need to pick up the collected first series of this and read them all straight through. Not that you have to, because, like I said, I love that Darrow appears t be jumping around.

I'm not 100% sold on this big, TMNT 'Event,' but I'll hang for a while. 

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Playlist:

Various - Every Day (Is Halloween) Playlist: Small Cat, Big Yard

Various - Every Day (Is Halloween) Playlist: You, The Knight, and the Music

Leaving Time - Eponymous EP

Revolting Cocks - Big Sexy Land

Pailhead - Trait

Melvins - Stoner Witch

Various - Snatch OST Playlist

Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind

David Bowie - Station to Station

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Card:

Pulling out the Raven Deck for today's reading:

Some isolation will do me good today. Hopefully finishing something I've been working on. 

My Top Albums of 2021

2021 was a weird year for music. I spent A LOT of time on albums that came out in previous years. So much so, I wasn't entirely certain I could pick ten records that had a huge impact on me. Some of these have ended up here despite my having not fully ingested them yet. That's okay, I always know the special ones the moment I hear them (for the most part).

Here then, are my ten favorite records released this year:

Jerry Cantrell - Brighten: This is the album I've been waiting for Jerry Cantrell to make for years, and its arrival serves as the beginning of a new role for him in relation to popular music. Cantrell has always been a sage, but previously he's been reluctant about it. Brighten shows him aging into this new position in a way so as to best take advantage of the role as a songwriter and musician. Brighten is big and filled with living reflections, a man looking behind him to better inform his path into the future. The songs hit hard, because, despite a decade between us, I can completely relate. Aging is rough, but you have to take what you can from it, use your mistakes and triumphs to make the future better. 

Also, bringing Greg Puciato into the fold earns JC enormous goodwill in my book. 

 

Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs: Spare Ribs hit at exactly the right time, in my opinion, to make it both extremely poignant socially and serve as the most idealized presentation of Sleaford Mods' sound to date (I say that at the risk of having Williamson dismiss my assessment as 'cuntish'). These guys have a social perspective that previously made their minimalist approach to songwriting feel a lot bigger than it might have seemed at first glance. With Spare Ribs, the music has caught up. 

Ministry: Moral Hygiene: I'm not entirely sure when the last time a Ministry album made it onto one of my year-end lists. Maybe 2007's The Last Sucker, because, while I've liked most of the band's releases, I haven't loved any since Sucker. Moral Hygiene, however, is a return to form for Uncle Al and his cohorts. This makes perfect sense, as who else could you expect to chronicle the shitstorm of the last two years into pulse-pounding, cynical Industrial Metal that perfectly represents where we are in relation to our planet and technology? 

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments: How so many fans turned their backs on James Kent for this album blows my mind because to me, Lustful Sacraments is an evolution for him as an artist that makes 100% perfect sense. It's deep, layered with nuance and knows when to take huge swings - all of which land. Incorporating more traditional "band" elements is no doubt a turn-off to some old-school fans who want another Dangerous Days. For myself, I'm happy to go wherever Kent's artistic wanderlust takes him.

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim: Double albums almost never work, yet they remain a rite of passage for bands. Hushed and Grim is probably the most solid of the like to come out in three decades. There's no excess here, nothing is superfluous. Each of the songs helps to expand Mastodon's sound, while as an overall cycle, all fifteen tracks form a solid, coherent whole. Not a feat easily mastered, but then, Mastodon has become one of the best bands around. 

Odonis Odonis - Spectrums: After 2016's Post Plague ranked as my number one album that year, I've not even really liked anything Odonis Odonis has done since. Spectrums is a return to form for the group, running the line between industrial and electro in a way that feels unique to this particular band, thrilling and a little crazy.

Adam Egypt Mortimer - The Obelisk: Filmmaker Adam Egypt Mortimer conjures another dimension with The Obelisk. This is unlike anything else I've ever heard, and for that reason alone, it garners my praise. But moving beyond the stunning adventure of the album's occult soundscapes, everything about the textures AEM uses to construct this fit into my favorite types of music. Sparse beats, analog synth, brooding overtones and flitting, ghostly flourishes of voices and who knows what the hell else. This is another one of those records that opens a door I feel as though I've been waiting my entire life to step through.

Eldovar: A Story of Darkness and Light: I stumbled across this record by the combined talents of Elder and Kadavar with no previous knowledge of either band's work. I think I may have listened to an Elder album at some point, but I remember nothing about that previous engagement with them. This then was a complete surprise. From the opening notes of the record, an immediate comparison to Led Zeppelin came to me. Not because of the sound of the music, per se, but because of the timeless aesthetic applied here. I believe this is what some folks took to calling "Proto Metal" back in the 2010s, and despite a certain lack of clarity in that as a descriptor, I get it. There's also a healthy dose of Acid Rock. But the emphasis on melody, specifically intertwining vocal melodies, gives this one an ephemeral quality that is not nearly as important to rock musicians today as it was in the afterglow of the 60s. Eldovar seems to have learned the lesson of that far-gone era and transported it to the present day with this album.

King Woman - Celestial Blues: King Woman has always been about balancing Doom aesthetics with a certain Post-Metal reserve, and on Celestial Blues, they perfect it. As brutal as it is reflective, this one drones, beats, cuts, and soars in a way that I defy anyone to put a definitive genre tag on. The haunting overtures that ebb and flow throughout the course of the album's nine tracks show songwriting on a level that bodes great things from this band in the future.

Nun Gun - Mondo Decay: A last-minute HOLY FUCK moment thanks to Heaven is an Incubator's 2021 list, it makes perfect sense this would hit me as hard as it did seeing as Algiers owned both my 2015 and 2017 with their first two albums. Mondo Decay is a strange, sick record that's filled with sonic homage while still playing as an extremely new, unique sound. When I listen to this, I feel like I'm honing in on it from between white noise transmissions, like Harlan and Maxx finding the pirate transmissions in Video Drome. This is clandestine and important, and a little scary in the best possible ways.

New Ministry!

I haven't been this excited for a new Ministry album in quite some time. I'm loving this song; the "fuck the police" samples seem a bit overdone, but the old-school flavor of the music grabbed me immediately (Thanks Mr. Brown!)

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READ:

Parts 1 & 2 of my first Reddit Nosleep serialized story is now up. You can read it HERE. It's kind of about a Haunted Garage. Kinda.

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NCBD:

Big Day for comics. Again.

"Get April!"

JUST reading the core title, but so far, for my first modern Star Wars series, I'm digging this one. I mean, the last issue we had 4-Lom and Zuckus. I've been waiting for an expansion on those cats since I was like four years old.

Can't wait to read this AND see the film, which I believe should be available to rent on Prime.

The Silver Coin recently got "renewed" for more issues beyond this initial four-part run, and I am totally stoked for more.

Been a minute, and this awesome BW&B series totally fell off my radar.

More Spidey, 'Nuff said!

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Playlist:

Windhand - Eternal Return

Ministry - Animositisomina

Ministry - Good Trouble (pre-release single)

The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia

King Woman - Celestial Blues (pre-release singles)

Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death

Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun

 

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Card:

Big picture. Now that the Nosleep is going, I'll take this as a nod in the right direction as yesterday I dove back into Shadow Play, Book Two.

War Pimp Renaissance

I finally picked The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen back up earlier this week, and this time, I find I can't put it down. More about that below. For right now, reading the Biafra interview in the book and hearing Al talk about the origin of the band Lard, I felt motivated to dig out 1997's Pure Chewing Satisfaction. This is one of those records I had on cassette back in the day, and because I still have the actual cassette, I always put off listening to it on Apple Music under the guise that I should dig out that tape. Well, that never happens, so I haven't heard Pure Chewing in a loooong time. Guess what? I gave up on the tape and started playing it the other day, only to find out I miss the hell out of this record!

The Last Temptation of Reid has always been the go-to masterpiece in the Lard catalog as far as I was concerned; however, now I find Pure Chewing Satisfaction is every bit as awesome, starting with this, the opening song, which I could listen to over and over again ad nauseam.

 

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Watch:

Watching the first two episodes of Marvel's Wandavision last night was quite the experience. I now very much understand what Elizabeth Olsen meant in the interviews she did during the run-up to this show when she repeatedly said, "I just can't believe they let us actually do this show." 

This is the evolution of Marvel's style. 

I'm speechless. Wandavision isn't the best thing I've ever seen or even my favorite of the Marvel stuff, but being that it breaks their fight-on-catwalk-stop-him-before-he-ends-the-world-and/or-destroys-the-entire-city mold and shows that they will begin to take chances, I'm excited. And as fans, that's all we can ask for. That's how the comics gave us things like Matt Faction's Hawkeye series, or Rick Remender's Uncanny Avengers, or any of the mold-breaking stuff Marvel occasionally does to draw in new readers who don't necessarily jive with fight-fight-fight and crossover-crossover-crossover paradigm they seem to still be stuck in.

I'm totally fine having (mostly) given up reading Marvel Comics if I can get stories like this from their MCU.

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Read:

Last year when Mr. Brown sent me his copy of Al Jourgensen's autobiography, I read about a fourth of it and had to walk away. This happens a lot with musician autobiographies. Soul Coughing's Mike Doughty's book really started to affect how I felt about one of my favorite bands of all time, so I stopped reading that, too. I thought that would be the case here, but when I picked Gospels up again recently to give it one more chance, I found I couldn't put the fucking thing down.

Al still comes off like a complete douche, which I guess really shouldn't be a surprise. However, the book is also laugh-out-loud hysterical at times. Really, once I got past the utter nonsense of him bragging about how many chicks he nailed as a teenager and moved into the origins of Ministry, well, the douchery didn't stop, but it became mixed with a lot of great information about a band I've loved for most of my life (thanks also to Brown, who lent me his copy of The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste when we were Juniors in High School).

Anyway, if you can get past those initial chapters, and deal with him being one of those "Been there, done that, did that first, fuck those guys I used to work with" tirades, and the endless drug stories that make him really look like an ass - the River Phoenix one is especially awful - then this is a pretty good read. 

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Playlist:

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid

The Veils - Total Depravity

The Replacements - Tim

Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone

Ministry - Dark Side of the Spoon

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Card:

This morning I thought I'd pull from the Raven Deck. Every time I bring these cards out, I marvel at the work and detail my good friend Missi put into them. The cards literally hum with the energy she put into them, and so they make reading an incredibly unique experience.

Change. From Peter J. Carroll's Liber Null: "The only clear view is from atop a mountain of your dead selves."

I have 100% agreed with this statement since I first began reading Carroll in the early 00s. And I find it funny that I pull this card now, as I try to understand how I've suddenly become able to reintegrate The Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream back into my life.

Tangent? No. Hear me out.

I loved this record upon its release the summer before my Senior Year in high school began, but I have been mostly unable to feel passionately about it since about two or three years later. Everything about this album and that band that I loved was, in my opinion, flipped on its head beginning with the release of the follow-up, and The Smashing Pumpkins became kind of an antithesis to me. However, for every reason I feel justified in distancing myself from their music and personas, I realize too, I was distancing myself from who I was when this album meant so much to me. Which is fine. That's the mountain of dead selves at work right there, and that's important. And there's a vulnerability to reconnecting with something that was so integral and intertwined with who you were when you were a teenager, and I began to make it a point to execute and deny most previous versions of myself somewhere about the time I graduated college and became a bartender (ha! what a sentence). 

Anyway, I guess the poignant part of all this is that while Siamese Dream was executed and thrown on the pile with that old version of Shawn, along with records by bands like Pantera, Sublime and the like, it's a new one for me that I can dig this one out of that mountain of corpses, dust it off, and reconnect with it in such a strong way.

Will it last? It feels like it will, however, I should probably avoid hearing anything billy corgan says in the media if I want that to last.

Happy Halloween!

Yes, happy, happy Halloween! In honor of the day, this time of year, and my emotional attachment to all things Autumn, I have had to create and sustain what I think of as, "A perpetual inner Autumn" for years now because, well, there's no bloody seasons in LaLa Land. The Quarantine Junkie moniker worked during those months of intense isolation and introspection, however, while I'm still mostly avoiding social contact, I really can't consider myself fully quarantined after three drive-in movies with Ray from The Horror Vision, a visit to Anthony - also from THV - to see his new son, and an increasing desire to reengage with people. While I won't be acting on 99% of those urges - no beer patios yet I'm afraid, even though I'm dying for a proper pint - I certainly don't feel Quarantine Junkie fits any longer. Instead, I decided to rename this site after my aforementioned favorite day of the year, which also happens to be a favorite song of mine by a favorite band. So there you have it - Happy Halloween!

 

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31 Days of Halloween:

I may not be able to get around to it today, but Jonathan Grimm just pointed out that Australian film The Boys in Trees is available on youtube in its entirety for free. Now, I would normally never advocate sidestepping paying for a movie, especially one as independent as this, however, this one disappeared off Netflix a few years ago and while there are NO other release that I'm aware of, you can rent it on youtube  HERE. 

This movie is so amazing, a seminal Halloween classic in my book, it deserves our full support.

1) Tales of Halloween: Sweet Tooth/The Wolf Man (1941)

2) From Beyond/Monsterland: "Port Fourchon, Louisiana"/Tales of Halloween: "The Night Billy Raised Hell" & "Trick"

3) Mulholland Drive/Creepshow (1982): "The Crate"

4) Waxwork

5) Synchronic/Bad Hair

6) Dolls

7) Lovecraft Country Ep. 8/Tales of Halloween: "The Weak and the Wicked" & "The Grim Grinning Ghost"

8) 976-Evil

9) Repo! The Genetic Opera

10) Firestarter/George A. Romero's Bruiser

11) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 1 & 2/Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

12) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 3, 4, and 5/House of 1000 Corpses

13) Masque of the Red Death/Creepshow (2019) Episode 7/Creepshow (1982)

14) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 6 and 7

15) The Haunting of Bly Manor episodes 8 and 9/Roseanne (88) season 2 and 3 Halloween Episodes

16) The Mortuary Collection/Roseanne (88) season 4 Halloween Episode

17) Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning

18) Lovecraft Country episode 9/The Haunting/Roseanne (88) season 5 Halloween Episode

19) Lovecraft Country episode 10/Tales From the Crypt season 1 ep. 5 "Lover Come Hack to Me"

20) George A. Romero's Season of the Witch

21) The Omen

22) Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait/Masters of Horror: "Sick Girl" (Lucky McKee)

23) Joe Bob's Halloween Hideaway: Haunt/Hack-O-Lantern

24) Eight Legged Freaks/What We Do in the Shadows season 1 episode 1/Night of the Demons

25) 10/31 - "The Old Hag"/Absentia

26) Prince of Darkness/Tales of Halloween (remainder)

27) Joe Bob's Haunted Drive-In - Nine short films

28) Halloween III: Season of the Witch

29) Lords of Salem/The Connors 2020 Halloween episode

30) Mike Mendez's The Convent/The Wizard of Gore (2007)

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Playlist:

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full 

Sir Neville Marriner & Academy of St Martin in the Fields- Amadeus: Requiem, K 626 Rex Tremendae Majestatis

Skinny Puppy - Rabies

Dance With The Dead - Loved to Death

Dance With The Dead - B-Sides: Vol. 1

Concrete Blond - Bloodletting

Concrete Blond - Eponymous

Fantômas - The Director's Cut

Fantômas - Delirium Cordia

Mr. Bungle - California

The Final Cut - Consumed

Goblin - 2013 Tour EP

Mr. Bungle - Raging Wraith of the Easter Bunny

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Card:

The fiery aspect of water, or Emotion tempered by Will. Time to shake off the slump and get back into it. October is always a difficult month for me to concentrate in, so after today, it's back to work.

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Epilogue

Finally, let me leave you with my standard, 'must play on Halloween track,' Type O Negative's Black No. 1, a perfect song and my favorite for the season:

Joe Begos Double Feature at Beyondfest!

Let's start the day with something from Chris Connelly's pre-Ministry project Finitribe, from his Edinburgh days. I dug out an old single I have on vinyl yesterday and enjoyed the hell out of it, and was super pleased to see some of their stuff up on Apple Music.

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Another wonderful evening at Beyondfest last night, where we saw a double feature of Joe Begos' two new films, Bliss and VFW. Both are FANTASTIC! Bliss is on VOD right now and I urge you to support it; VFW is slated to drop sometime around the end of the year; I'm sure I will post about it again then.



We were able to record a quick-take review of both of these, plus Joe Bob Briggs' How Rednecks Saved Hollywood and Stewart Raffill's Tammy and the T-Rex for The Horror Vision - check it out!

The Horror Vision on Apple

The Horror Vision on Spotify

The Horror Vision on Google Play

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31 Days of Horror:

10/01: House of 1000 Corpses/31
10/02: Lords of Chaos
10/03: Creepshow Ep 2/Tales from the Crypt Ssn 1, Ep 1
10/04: IT Chapter 2, AHS 1984 Ep. 3
10/05: Bliss/VFW

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Playlist from 10/05:

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (Digipak)
Testament - Souls of Black
Steve Moore - The Mind's Eye OST


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No card today - it's late, I've been up for closing in on twenty-four hours, and I have a Tom Atkins triple feature to be at in Hollywood at 11:00 AM tomorrow. And hey, Tom Atkins will be there in person! How's that for a thrill, eh?

2018: October 18th

It's an old school Ministry kind of day.

31 Days of Horror continued last night with Ghoulies, and it was AWESOME! Here's the trailer:



I hadn't seen this one since I was a kid and it first came out on cable. I didn't have cable, but the kid down the street did, and this was one of the movies I got to see at his house that I never would have been able to see at home. This was K's pick and I offer her much kudos for it; the only thing I remembered from that long ago viewing was walking around seeing it saying, "Hey dude, don't Bogart that joint!" even though at the time, I had no idea what a joint was.

31 Days of Horror:

10/01) Summer of 84
10/02) Rope
10/03) Dreams in the Witch House
10/04) Crash
10/05) The Fly
10/06) Re-animator
10/07) Night of the Demons
10/08) Species
10/09) The Roost
10/10) The Convent
10/11) Killer Klowns from Outer Space
10/12) George A. Romero's Day of the Dead
10/13) George A. Romero's Land of the Dead
10/14) The Apostle
10/15) Phantom of the Paradise
10/16) Candyman
10/17) Ghoulies

Playlist from 10/17:

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Wasteland
Explode Into Colors - Quilts EP
Sunn O))) - Kanon
Steve Moore - Mayhem OST
The Veils - Total Depravity
Cocksure - Be Rich

No card today.

2018: July 29th

About a month ago I put Ministry's Dark Side of the Spoon in my car with the intention of finally getting to know it as an album. I've been a Ministry fan since just after Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs came out in 1992. The Mind is a Terrible Thing To Taste will probably always remain my favorite release, line-up, and era for the band, but I stuck with them fiercely through all the changes over the years. Where some folks I knew turned away from them after Psalm, I loved Filth Pig from day one, and although I fell off briefly with Spoon, when Animositisomina hit as the follow-up, I was right back in the fold and remained there until recently. I still dig what Uncle Al does musically, I've just become less interested in following it.

At some point in the last five or six years I found a used copy of Spoon at Amoeba and figured, what the hell? But still, that grand discovery never followed. Recently that changed, and Eureka Pile is, to my ears, one of the stand-out tracks. Above is a video I found while looking for the song on youtube; I'd never come across Chemical Traces' work before, but I'm intrigued. With its labored lope and lackadaisical drawl, this is a hard song to do a video to and keep it interesting, and CT pulls it off. Also, the work is deeply personal, and that makes it doubly effective. I'm interested to see more of their work. Looking at their artist's page on Youtube I see a lot of what I'm interested in here, so I'll probably be posting some more of Chemical Traces' work here in the future.

Into the last third of Norman Mailer's The Deer Park. If you're a fan of literary prose, specifically very Fitzgerald-esque literary prose, this novel should go on your list. It drifts a bit in the middle, but I'm enjoying this walk through 1950's McCarthyism Hollywood debauchery, set in a fictional oasis in the California desert.

Tennis System tonight at my beloved Echoplex. Haven't been there in a while, and I realized it's almost two-and-a-half years since I discovered this awesome Los Angeles band opening for Eagulls at the Teragram. Here's a Flock of Seagulls cover I had never heard them do before:




Playlist from yesterday:

The Veils - Total Depravity
True Widow - AVVOLGERE
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years
Ministry - Dark Side of the Spoon

Card of the day:

From the Grimoire: "When this card comes, go for your dreams - better than average chance something will pan out on a day ruled by this card."

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.

Ministry - Breathe (In Case You Didn't Feel...)

Awesome. If there is one concert I would pick to go back in time to see it's probably from this tour - most likely the Chicago stop.

Ministry: From Beer to Eternity

Read my review of the fantastic new Ministry record on Joup.

Groovie Mann + William Tucker = Darling Kandie

While working on my review of the new Ministry record From Beer to Eternity for Joup I've been drudging up a lot of old school Chicago connections I'd either not known about or totally forgotten.

Ministry - Twitch (full album)

You know, despite considering myself a pretty big Ministry fan since the early 90's I've never owned this album. I'm not even really all that familiar with it.

Ministry - Same Old Madness

It's always a trip to hear old Ministry. And I mean old as in the Arista years. Regardless, this is still pretty awesome and I'm kind of surprised a song like this wasn't eventually re-worked. It would have lent itself nicely to being 'industrialized' in the later incarnation of the group.

Revolting Cocks - You Often Forget (Live)

I'm not sure what year this is exactly, but it's OLD SCHOOL. It's been a Revolting Cocks kind of day. Beers, Steers and Queers and Linger Fickin' Good are regular staples of my everyday listening diet, but I cracked out the pre-Connelly Big Sexy Land yesterday and it's been stuck in my CD player off and on since.

New Ministry Record: From Beer to Eternity

From Beer to Eternity drops 9/6/13. Read more about it here on Joup.