Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Under a Godless Veil, The Monkey's Wedding, My Swordhand is Singing, and More

Things that brought me delight in November, 2020:


Draconian, Under a Godless Veil

With Under a Godless Veil, Draconian have truly come into their own. Their previous albums are filled with great Gothic doom tracks, each one showcasing its own variety of despairing delights, but this is the album where it has all come together into the most cohesive offering the band has yet presented. Two things conspire to make this album the revelatory highlight of Draconian's discography. The use of dual vocalists, even though it could be said to be another riff on the Beauty and the Beast style, excels here. As does the overall power and grandeur of the tracks themselves. This is a big, sublime statement from a band that holds up over the course of its mountainous expanse of songs.


Joan Aiken, The Monkey's Wedding and Other Stories

Why did no one tell me how great Joan Aiken is? The Monkey's Wedding and Other Stories was not at all what I expected; I know Aiken by her reputation as an author of Gothic romances, so I was expecting something sinister and emotionally overheated, but this collection of short stories is quirky, witty, very British, and surprisingly sweet, which I didn't know would hit me just right. I suspect the circumstances outside my door primed me for the slightly unhinged fun of these stories. However, that's not to say that they are merely bright-eyed. Aiken's prose is extremely well crafted; each story feels like a confection--real art goes into making a simple pleasure. There are some darker moments here as well; the story "Hair" was really disturbing to me, despite not being overly heavy-handed with horror or the uncanny.


Marcus Sedgwick, My Swordhand is Singing

I tend to really enjoy these young adult Gothic adventure novels that make use of folklore in place of modern depictions of monstrosity. Marcus Sedwick's My Swordhand is Singing is a vampire tale, but Peter, the son of a woodcutter with a mysterious past fighting the Turks, and Sophia, a gypsy girl from a family of vampire hunters, do not encounter the suave vampires that have dominated the field since the publication of John Polidori's The Vampyre. Rather, the undead they face are pulled from Eastern European folk tales; they are bloated and animalistic, creature of basic malice rather than sophistication. My Swordhand is Singing is surprisingly light on sword-swinging action, especially given the title; the fight scenes tend to get glossed over to get on with the narrative, which instead focuses on Peter learning that the world works in ways that run contrary to what he's been taught to believe, love isn't what he thinks it is, and his relationship with his father is stronger than he imagined.


Cattle Decapitation, Death Atlas

Sometimes you just need some brutality. When you do, you turn to a band with a name like Cattle Decapitation. Death Atlas is clearly the work of a death metal band, but Cattle Decapitation don't approach the genre in the same way as, say, Cannibal Corpse. Cattle Decapitation is a highly technical band; rather the hammer on a single way of pursuing sonic carnage, Death Atlas features a dizzying array of riffs, vocal styles, and songwriting structures. Death Atlas is surprisingly moody for a death metal album, but you can lay that firmly at the feet of Cattle Decapitation's unusual ecologically concerned perspective--a worldview that takes death metal to an effectively apocalyptic place. Trust me, listening to "Bring Back the Plague" in 2020 is definitely a mood.


Mami Itou, Maleficarum

Maleficarum collects Mama Itou's short manga based on Capcom's Red Earth and Darkstalkers fighting games. The stories that reiterate the plot line of Red Earth have really great, gritty art, but to be honest they didn't really work for me. They felt rushed and cramped with no real payoff. Also, despite being based on a fighting game, the fight scenes were confusingly brief with only the vaguest implication about what happened. (Interestingly, Mami Itou takes a page to explain that she isn't happy with her Red Earth stories either. Apparently she was working from vague notes about the game and wasn't given much time to actually play it when it was in development.) The Darkstalkers stories work much better for me. The art is more elegant and the stories come together better, but that latter element may be boosted along by how familiar I am with the Darkstalkers games. Morrigan, the game's infamous succubus, motorboats another character to death in the final one-page comic in the collection. You don't see that every day.


Shin Yamamoto, Sekiro Side Story: Hanbei the Undying

Hanbei the Undying is a manga tie-in for FromSoftware's Sekiro. As the title implies, it tells a "side story" of one of the game's tertiary characters, Hanbei the Undying--a character who exists to be your training partner so you can optimize your combat skills. His story is undeniably tied to the same back story you discover as you play Sekiro, but it also presents a very different perspective on the game's themes and feels self-contained enough that it is very easy to follow even if you haven't played the game. There are obvious parallels to Blade of the Immortal and Seven Samurai in this manga, but it really does ultimately feel like it does it own thing. Things do not end with redemption. PREPARE TO CRY, indeed.


Lacrimas Profundere, The Grandiose Nowhere, Bleeding the Stars, and Songs for the Last View

Lacrimas Profundere is the Gothic metal band I'd recommend to fans of Sisters of Mercy. Although they don't ape the Sisters' sound the way a lot of goth rock bands do, there is a similarity of spirit here, if not of direct sonic influence. Lacrimas Profundere aren't nearly as bombastic or theatrical, but they play it cool and aloof, which is a fairly rare combination for a Gothic metal band. Unlike the Gothic metal bands that opt to evoke the mystique of dark medieval times, there is something undeniably modern about the atmosphere of these albums. These records are perfect for driving through the urban sprawl late at night.


Leila Taylor, Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul

It's rare to read a book and immediately be struck by how necessary it is. In academic circles this is sometimes referred to as a "necessary intervention," but I don't think that phrase adequately covers what Darkly does. Intervention is too paternal, too rooted in a beneficent attitude of descending to a horrible situation purely out of a sense of duty. Darkly reads like an act of survival. Part history of the Black experience in America, part consideration of what Gothic really means, and part personal memoir, Darkly connects the dots to give a picture of the places where Blackness and Darkness have been forced to uneasily coexist. 


Kaori Yuki, Demon From Afar volumes 1-6

Demon from Afar pulls an interesting swerve at the end of the first volume: the series starts out in the early twentieth century, but then there's a time travel event that sends the characters into the early twenty-first century. Although it seems like the plot will revolve around standard black magic and occult gimmicks such as childhood pacts, demonic summonings, and secret cults, the time jump turns it into an exploration of how demonic forces adapt themselves to modernity. The real horror in Demon From Afar is the malignant use of things like anonymous internet message boards, fighting for online clout, the popularity of livestream performers, and media manipulation of public opinion. It's impressive how well those elements get folded into an otherwise standard Gothic melodrama. Don't worry, all of the generic conventions you expect from Kaori Yuki are still there: there's plenty of betrayal, plotting, and sexual perversion to be had, but this time they have a very modern gloss.


Atrocity feat. Yasmin, After the Storm

According to the sticker on the front of the album, After the Storm is billed as "ETHNO MEETS METAL," a truly terrible genre designation. In practice, what this means is that Atrocity and Yasmin have crafted a record's worth of tracks that occasionally enliven slightly pagan-sounding world music with some heavy guitar riffs. This might be my "easy listening" music. I would definitely recommend After the Storm to any Dead Can Dance fans looking to get into heavier music; despite the fearsome name, Atrocity won't scare you off with this one.


Devil Master, Satan Spits on Children of Light

On Satan Spits on Children of Light, Devil Master splits the difference between death rock and black metal. The only way I can describe the experience of listening to this album is to ask you to imagine being on a haunted house ride at a grimy carnival that goes horrifically out of control; you're careening at high speeds though a darkness that is only ever interrupted by the sudden appearance of ghosts and ghouls, gouts of flame, and the screams of the damned. 


The Black Dahlia Murder, Verminous

I'm not sure that I'm capable of being blown away by a new Black Dahlia Murder album anymore, but I don't mean that as an insult. They're just so dependable, so reliable. You know what you're going to get: a rock-solid collection of melodic death metal. Verminous still manages moments of excitement; the solo on "Dawn of Rats" is amazing, and I love everything about "Removal of the Oaken Stake," but of course Black Dahlia Murder will do amazing things. It's expected. This is comfort food that wants to kill you.


Emma

I don't think I can stress this enough: Emma is a ridiculously beautiful film. It's an adaptation of Jane Austen's novel about a young woman who fancies herself a great matchmaker, and who has to learn the painful lesson that she is neither as perceptive nor discerning as she likes to assume, but this movie should appeal to people who aren't hardcore Janeites. My own confession: I think I may have enjoyed this movie much more than I enjoyed reading the book. Not only is it pretty to look at, everyone involved turns in a compelling performance, the film is crisply funny, and it moves along at just the right pace without getting bogged down as so many period pieces do. And honestly, I could watch Anya Taylor-Joy darn socks for an hour and a half and be perfectly content.


Marilyn Manson, We Are Chaos

Add this to the mounting evidence that we live in the beginning of the end times: it's 2020 and Marilyn Manson has put out a pretty fun album. Marilyn Manson could easily slide into by-the-numbers, cartoonish pseudo-villainy--or worse yet, an album of Elvis covers--but somehow he avoided that on We Are Chaos. Marilyn Manson has always only ever been as good as the set of influences he's currently mining for inspiration, and We Are Chaos displays a nice variety of them; there are obvious glam-rock nods, moments of dark psychedelia, and potential arena rock anthems for the faithful who will converge on the big spectacle once the plague has passed.


Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is the latest rules expansion book for 5e Dungeons & Dragons. These expansions are only ever as worthwhile as the options they contain are exciting and make you want to play a long-running game that runs the risk of feeling stale or too known; based on that rubric, I think Tasha's is a success. The book contains new subclasses, alternate and additional abilities to add to the existing classes, rules for customizing your character's race, new spells, new magic items, expanded rules for sidekicks, group patrons, rules for dangerous and unusual adventuring environments, and examples of puzzles to use in play. Of course, with a grab-bag book like this, not all of the new options will meet with universal approval (the new Favored Foe for the ranger is something I've already felt the need to modify at my own table), but there's more than enough to pick and choose from this buffet to make it worth a visit. 


Maison Close, Season One

Maison Close is a a French production about the trials, tribulations, and drama of a nineteenth-century Parisian brothel. The historical fantasy of prostitution is miles away from the generally squalid modernity of the world's oldest profession, of course; even when things are at their most dire, the women involved look unfailingly glamorous in a way that doesn't ring true when compared against the historical record. One of the funniest things in the show, though, is the use of modern music as part of the soundtrack. You'll get a scene where they're digging a grave or having an abortion and the backing music is all "La la la ice cream and coffee..." indie pop.