A Darkness At the Heart of My Love

Over a year later and I still just can't play this record enough. So much about this one might have hit me wrong if it hadn't come out exactly when it did. Because of that timing, every listen transports me to someplace very special. I'm not sure if it's because Impera dropped right around the time K and I started venturing out in the aftermath of the pandemic or if it's just down to how incredible this record is. Probably a little from column A and a little from column B. 

I remember those first tentative nights when we discovered that Frejole's of El Segundo - our favorite Mexican Restaurant in proximity to our place in Redondo Beach - had put in a small bar, so that when we went in to pick up our Friday night carry-out, we would stop and have a pint of Santa Monica Brewing's 310, or Lagunitas IPA, then drive home with this or Orville Peck's Bronco blaring, a newfound freedom energizing our long-cocooned weekends. 

---

---

---

NCBD:

My picks for this week's NCBD:

Two issues left of Nightmare Country: The Glass House and I'm not sure how to feel about this second chapter. Of course, I'm hoping there will be more; I've said before that reading this book monthly reminds me SO MUCH of reading Sandman monthly, without being redundant at all. Of all the "Sandman Presents" titles that have come and gone in the last however many years since Gaiman and DC announced his curation of the line, Nightmare Country is the only one that has kept up a consistent feeling of actually being a worthy continuation (that's not to knock the original The Dreaming, which I loved). Anyway, the previous chapter of this story came in the form of that Thessaly one-shot, and now that she's involved, things feel even more on edge. Perfect.

Yeah, this is how they get ya, right? I don't really have any interest in reading a Wolvie book - although the shit I hear that's going on with Beast basically becoming Dark Beast sounds fantastic - but the mini-event "Weapons of Vengeance" is switching to Wolverine this month and I'm reading it. Great series so far, and we finally got the revelation of Weapon Plus: Hellfire Program, so I'm psyched to see where this goes.

---

---

---

Watch:

So when I posted the Black Mold trailer last week, that was kind of a last minute override of another trailer that dropped around the same time. Ladies and Gentlemen, Beaten to Death:  

That title made me think there was no way I was going to step in front of this bus, but the film actually looks excellent, and while you know it's going to be violent AF, watching this leads me to believe it won't be the kind of violence the title first suggested to me.

---

---

---

Playlist:

King Diamond - Them

Godflesh - A World Lit Only By Fire

Converge & Chelsea Wolfe - Bloodmoon: I

Mercyful Fate - Don't Break the Oath

Dream Division - Beyond the Mirror's Image

Secret Chiefs 3 - Le mani destre recise degli ultimi uomini

Ghost Bath - Moonlover

Carpenter Brut - Leather Terror

Ghost - Impera

Anthrax - State of Euphoria

---

---

---

Isolation: Day 195 - New Zeal and Ardor!

Musick:

Fuck yes! I'm loving these new songs. These plus "Baphomet", whick K and I heard the band premiere live at the Roxy two years ago now, are going to make for a great new set of tunes.

---

---

---

Watch:

I'll be driving out to Montclair this evening for the Premier of Brandon Cronenberg's new film Possessor, and in celebration of that, last night I rewatched his first film AntiViral.

There is no other film out there like this film. It's a fucking masterpiece, and so much closer to reality than I can believe. However, I remember thinking the same thing when I watched it eight years ago, and since we haven't progressed into this future anymore in that time, I'd have to say Antiviral feels almost like an alternate timeline Earth, albeit one that really brushes up against ours.

---

---

---

Playlist:

The Veils - Total Depravity

The Thirsty Crows - Hangman's Noose 

Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - The Valley (pre-release single) 

Zeal and Ardor - Tuskegee (pre-release single)

Ozzy Osbourne - The Blizzard of Ozz

Also, I don't want to sound like I'm kneeling before the algorithm, but this week's Apple Music "Favorites Mix" based on my listening turned out pretty sweet. I spent a good deal of time the last two days with Audible's Sandman adaptation - yes, I'm going through it very slowly to make it last, however, once I hit The Doll's House - my favorite Sandman story and one of my favorite stories ever regardless - I've been unable to get it out of my head. here's that mix:

 

---

---

---

Card:

A nice inclination for my first night out in the world since this entire 2020 fiasco began. I can't pretend I haven't become a little agoraphobic again, and driving 54 miles out to spend an evening in a drive-in theature, while inherently awesome sounded, fills me with a small modicum of dread. Here's to holding this card's image in my head all day and using it to sooth any 'rough patches.'

Isolation: Day 124 - The Sandman on Audible

Previously, I've had no interest in audible, as I'm not one for audio books. This changes everything. A star-studded audio presentation of Neil Gaiman's Sandman? Count me in.


**

I'd been under the impression the final episode of Borrasca was to drop this past Monday, so imagine my surprise when the episode - at a paltry 33 minutes - cut off in an unceremonious manner. Creator Rebecca Kingel had previously said the podcast would wrap with ep 8, so I figured the finale might have been too long for their standard format, making them split the finale into two. I was all set to wait until next Monday when I received word the second part dropped yesterday.

It is amazing.

Easily the scariest fiction I've encountered in any medium for the past several years, the wrap up is filled with revelations and tragedy, and contained a sequence that held me so strongly under its narrative influence that the world around me kind of disappeared for a while. I'm sold on Cole Sprouse as an actor, and very much hope there will be more of this, or at least, another teaming of Klingel and Sprouse.

I really can't recommend this one enough. Earlier, I realized that, along with all the podcast platforms (Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, etc), all the episodes of Borassca are on youtube as well, so I'm posting the first one here as a way to spread the word. I's that good.



**

Playlist:

Walter Rizzati - House By the Cemetery OST
Palesketcher - Jesu: Pale Sketches
Mannequin Pussy - Patience
Exhalants - Band (single)
Le Matos - Summer of '84
Barry Adamson - Stranger on the Sofa
Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley
DAF - Die Kleinen Und Die Bösen

**

No Card Today.

My Suggestions for the Top 5 Graphic Novels Everyone Should Read

This week's Thee Comic Column over on Joup is the 100th edition! To celebrate I've compiled this list - it's not necessarily a list of my favorite five - though it's probably close - but the suggestions I would give to anyone - my mom, your sister, Sister Ray, Billy Joel - whoever on how to break in to comics. Because honestly, I feel these books transcend whatever anyone could expect of them and could all shatter whatever misconceptions keep people from giving the comics/GN's a fair shake.

Sandman Overture

image courtesy of vertigocomics.com

This is so much better than I thought it could be - and I had pretty damn high hopes to begin with! Read my take in this week's Thee Comic Column on Joup!

Vindsval's The Eye

Let's trace the origin of a post like this, not just because someone out there might find it interesting, but because I'll find it interesting, as I've been a pretty rabid Blut Aus Nord fan for about two years now but have never heard of Vindsval's The Eye before.

Okay, so first, as I do at least once a day, I went to the wonderful heavenisanincubator blogspot and read up one a bunch of music I'd never heard before. Good times on The Incubator - always. Anyway, I found a post about Kylesa's Vulture's Landing and was specifically interested by The Incubator's description of Kylesa's sound as containing a "shoegaze" element. I followed the embedded link to Kylesa's label Season of Mist (if I'd be really paying attention it would have dawned on me that I was onto something, as I just re-read Neil Gaiman's Sandman vol. 4 Seasons of Mist and once again it has remained a slowly disintegrating echo in my head since). I looked around Season of Mist's sight for a few minutes, noting various bands on the label and then with the shoegaze + metal thing did what it always does and triggered me to go google search Blut Aus Nord - specifically looking for their label, Debemur Morti Productions' site. No matter where I go to read about Blut Aus Nord and their principal founder/creator Vindsval I always find something new, especially on DMP's site. And low and behold there it was - news that a sequel to the above-embedded album - written and performed entirely by Vindsval from what I've been able to find - 1997's Supremacy by The Eye.

Sandman - Wanda's Woes

image courtesy of http://paipicks.blogspot.com/

"This is the kind of night that needs a roaring log fire, a leopard-skin rug, a bottle of fine brandy, and, mm. I dunno. Rutger Hauer, maybe. And the third Velvet Underground LP in the background. Instead I've got a severed face and sleeping beauty for company." - from Neil Gaiman's Sandman: A Game of You.

Bauhaus - Stigmata Martyr

This is still one of the most badass songs I've ever heard. In my quest to re-read/read Neil Gaiman's Sandman from the beginning through to the end Bauhaus just jumps off the music shelf. Along with Joy Division and The Cure, Tones on Tail and The Smiths (esp. Meat is Murder for Vol. 4 Seasons of Mist) Bauhaus is a perfect soundtrack for Neil Gaiman's lush dreamscape set on the outmost fringes of the old DCU.  I'm currently reading Vol. 5, A Game of You, one of the volumes I'd not read before (I started reading the book during it's initial run with The Kindly Ones, which I believe was either the second or third-to-last volume. Of course I went back and snagged Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House and Dream Country as they were published in trades and then left what was essentially the middle of the saga untouched on my "To buy and Read" list. However, I very much wait for the particular moods for music/film and comics/books to overtake me before I lock into them, i.e. I can't just pick up Sandman and start reading it anymore than I can just through on Bauhaus any old time. I have to be in that particular headspace. I've begun re-reading Sandman many times over the years, as those first three volumes are among my most read comics. However I can't always sustain the mood to go all the way through, not with all the bloody distractions of everyday life. I've also often hit the $$$ wall, starting it and making my way through the beginning volumes only to find I didn't quite have it in my budget to buy the three or four volumes I was missing. Recent bursday presents from my wife have solved that particular problem).

Whenever a comic or book strikes such a strong harmonic frequency with a particular band or album I always wonder if the author themselves - or in this case any of the awesome artists involved - listening to that same music at the time of creating. And if that is indeed the case, the fact that you can pick that up suggests to me that the author/artist's hands are literally transducing the energy in its audio wave form into energy in a visible form, like a microphone is a transducer that takes audio waves and changes them into the physical rearrangement of magnetic iron particles (on analog tape) or 1's and 0's in the digital domain?

Something to think about.

Tones on Tail

Really into Tones on Tail again. Re-reading Sandman from the beginning and it'll surely be ToT, The Smiths, Joy Division and The Cure as a soundtrack.

Contemplating Swamp Thing, Old and New

Posted an article here on Joup earlier about the end of Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette's run on Swamp Thing (issue #18 came out this past Wednesday and wrapped it up). This led to me beginning a re-reading of Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and John Totleben's Swamp Thing run from 1984, the run that basically introduced Moore to American comics (thanks to Karen Berger) and changed the industry on this side of the pond, almost single-handedly launching DC's Vertigo line and very clearly inspiring Neil Gaiman's Sandman. While re-reading I came upon this line, both in  the beginning of chapter #6 (originally issue #26). It is BEYOND mastery of language:

"I used to think I knew from fear... I didn't. All I knew were the suburbs of fear... and now here I am, in the big city."

Wow.

The Smiths - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

BIG pull back to The Smiths lately. Rounding out my (hopefully) last night of feverish delusion (oh who am I kidding? The fevers been gone since yesterday and I'll always be delusional) with a huge Smiths bender complimented perfectly by beginning to re-read Neil Gaiman's Sandman in anticipation of next fall's new Sandman series.

(and in the still for this video, doesn't Morrissey look kinda like David Patrick Kelly, best known as Jerry Horne in Twin Peaks? LOVE IT)