Now that's what I'm talking about! The title track from Cometh the Storm, High on Fire's ninth studio album, out next Friday, April 19th on MNRK Heavy. Pre-order HERE.
Watch:
I've been busy as hell with regular work stuff and with watching movies and reading comics. Sounds like a great first-world problem, eh? Let's talk about what I've watched.
First, the Soska Sisters' new film Festival of the Dead is a Tubi exclusive and is now up on the streamer, ready to watch. A sequel to George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, this was a blast.
The first ten minutes or so feel a bit like an NBC family morality flick, but Festival of the Dead very quickly asserts itself in the Romero tradition and does not look back. Loved some characters, loved watching others die in horrible ways, this one is fun and gory and just a good time in general. Don't let those first ten minutes fool you.
Next, K and I caught Kiah Roache-Turner's Sting last night at the local cinema. Wow! This one is fantastic, too!
I've mentioned before that I have a bit of a spider phobia, and this one definitely plays on that. The FX are great, and the overall pace and tone here make for a great theatrical viewing. One thing I definitely noticed is there appears to be a huge chunk missing from this film (concerning the Bug Brothers, for those who've seen it), and I can only imagine the studio made the filmmaker trim a section to hit a specific run-time, and that's what came out. The film doesn't suffer for it, but it's pretty obvious. If anything, will make for a great extra feature on the eventual Blu-Ray.
There's a great interview with Sting's Creative Director about the practical FX in the film up on Bloody Disgusting HERE.
Finally, Shudder recently dropped the directorial debut by Alberto Corredor, a film titled Baghead.
Ostensibly a Talk to Me clone, this is still a pretty great first film. It's shot well, the lighting is great, and the location is an old Irish Pub that really steals the show, so it was pretty easy to enjoy this one despite any shortcomings.
Read:
As I type this, I'm finishing up my re-read of Chris Claremont and John Byrne's "Dark Phoenix Saga." I'm reading this in Classic X-Men, the way I bought it at a comic show at a Knight's of Colombus Hall somewhere in southern Illinois way back in... I don't really know when. Late 80s? Early 90s?
One thing I've noticed with these Classic X-Men issues is I actually prefer the cover art for a lot of these reprints to the original issues. Here are two great examples:
Next, the climactic chapter of the saga, Uncanny X-Men 137:
This has been a classic, iconic comics image since I began collecting in 1986, and while it is great - the massive yellow ad copy taking up the upper fifth of the page doesn't really help matters - it pails in comparison to the one on the reprint, Classic X-Men 43:
This one is a lot less dramatic of a moment than the first, so I can't quite figure out why I like it better. Again, the color palette is definitely more to my overall liking, but also, despite the fact that the original image is much more of an 'action' image, this one feels like a moment stolen from the finale of the issue. I think this is a case of the technology being better and the image simply being overall more crisp.
Playlist:
Turnstile - Glow On
Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers and Queers
Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
Zen Guerilla - Positronic Raygun
Yawning Balch - Volume One
Trombone Shorty - Too True
Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom
Man Man - On Oni Pond
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Ten of Cups
• Eight of Swords
• Seven of Cups
Lots of emotion in this Pull. The pinion here, I think, is the Eight of Swords, as reading center-left-right, that is the middle card. This makes sense in that I've been prone to mood swings based on a certain person in my life; Ten of Cups is emotional maturity, Seven is Victory over emotion, but Eight of Swords can be read as Interference, that there's always some of that keeping me from being victorious over my emotions nad balancing them maturely in the face of trying situations.
