Total Skull: April, 2026

Things that brought me delight in April, 2026:

Predator: Badlands

Predator: Badlands was way more fun than I was anticipating. This definitely isn't Predator in the horror sense; this is very much an action-oriented sci-fi romp. In fact, I'd hazard to say that Predator: Badlands is more successful at being what modern Star Wars wants to be, but can't because of the burden of franchise it has to carry. The formula does work though: a runty predator teams up with a damaged android and a cute lil guy to push back against the corporate malfeasance of Weyland-Yutani. See why this feels like a better Star Wars? There's a cute lil guy! Anyway, the final line of this movie was laugh out loud funny. 

Ava Reid, Innamorata

I can see why the booktokkers and romantasy girls were absolutely tilted by Ava Reid's Innamorata. I've read Reid before--her dark academia A Study in Drowning, her folk-fantasy Juniper & Thorn, and her fantasy-inflected Lady Macbeth, but Innamorata is a different beast altogether. This is a dark fantasy story that starts with the ritual dismemberment of the main character's grandmother and only gets more extreme from there; Innamorata treads the path between the poetic dark sensuality of Tanith Lee and the grimdark violence of Anna Smith Spark. There are scenes of brutality in this novel that are going to stay with me for a long, long time. I loved this; it kept me guessing all the way through, and I can't wait for the sequel.

Archspire, Too Fast to Die

Tech death masters Archspire are back with another album and, in fact, it does appear that they are faster than ever--which doesn't seem humanly possible. But aside from the technical prowess, the thing that impresses me about Too Fast to Die is that the album doesn't sacrifice heaviness on the altar of the virtuosic; there are riffs on this album that easily rank among the most crushing stuff Archspire has ever written.

Sunn O))), self-titled

New Sunn O))) album, what the vibe? The first track pits squalls of feedback against grinding chords until an air raid siren emerges. And that's the vibe--a question, "What will emerge?" Will it be a violin-like tone in near-Danse Macabre intensity? Is it an out-of-control rockslide? Is it the howls of the damned? Is it Tony Iommi's secret chord? Is it--just kind of nothing? Except maybe more of the same? You know the drill; this is the kind of album you throw on when you want to fall into something and be tossed along the current. 

Mother Mary

I went into Mother Mary without having seen so much as a trailer for it; all I knew was that it was about a Lady Gaga-esque pop star. More specifically, Mother Mary--said pop star--shows up unannounced at the studio of the fashion designer who put her on the map with a request for a new dress. Immediately, we're privy to the fact that the once-strong relationship between these two inventive women has been sour for a long time--and yet they're linked by a shared sense of trauma. One thing that really impressed me about Mother Mary is that it's almost entirely focused on the intimate interactions between pop star and designer. Also impressive is just how beautifully shot the film is. The ending may be a little weak, but overall this was a great, unexpected experience.

Danza Macabre, Volume Three: The Spanish Gothic Collection

This collection of four Spanish Gothic films holds value simply for documenting what was coming out of Spain to compete with Italian products, Jean Rollin, and Hammer Horror's latter days, but aside from that The Night of the Walking Dead is worth the price of admission. Of the movies in this collection, I'd say it has the most original plot, with the vampire count choosing death for himself and refusing to turn his dying love into the undead to escape his tragic fate--which at least feels novel. It also features some interesting musical themes, as well as a carnivalesque gathering of the damned. Can't go wrong with that.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy

Maybe I'm tripping, but Lee Cronin's The Mummy (which is a truly annoying title, let's be honest) actually seemed pretty good to me. Like, yeah, it's absolutely not a mummy movie in any appreciable way. It is definitely a possession movie. As such, it is not a dry movie like a mummy flick should be. It is a very wet, squelchy movie. The climax does get a little Blumhouse-y, but it's actually a surprisingly mean and gross film. Don't watch this if you don't like kids getting messed up. I think that critics really got this one wrong.

Gwendolyn Kiste, The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own

The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own is an absolutely exquisite collection of horror tales from a modern master of the form. There is so much to love here that I don't really even know where to start; just banger after banger, rich with grime, heart, and some very nicely executed metatextual elements. Are you ready for a story about a woman with a dark secret hiding from her family in a video rental shop? A story where Mary Shelley meets Marie Antoinette? A story where Rasputin is a creepy sex ghost in downtrodden Detroit? You aren't, but you should read this collection anyway.

Frank Belknap Long, So Dark a Heritage

Better know for introducing the Hound of Tindalos into the Cthulhu mythos, Frank Belknap Long also wrote a few Gothic romances. So Dark a Heritage starts off with a bang: a newly married woman hanging curtains in her husband's ancestral home falls off a stepladder and is impaled on the curtain rod. A mere accident? Not on your life! This one has a bit of everything in the mix: mysterious tribal drums and a voodoo doll, a circle of druidic stones on the property of a Louisiana mansion, a horse violently branded with the devil's mark, hypnotism, and a precocious bug-collecting child. Strangely, a lot of ruminations on time here.

Mary Roberts Rinehart, Alibi for Isabel

Although this looks like a Gothic romance due to the cover art, Alibi for Isabel actually a fairly non-Gothic collection of short fiction from Mary Roberts Rinehart. That could be a disappointment, except for the fact that the stories in this collection provide a really interesting window into America during World War II. It's got the drama of night watchmen on the lookout for German saboteurs, the intrigue of a war-related revenge murder, and low-key anxieties about who will enlist and who will survive. So while this wasn't the kind of book that the cover hints at, it was actually pretty fascinating in total and each story was a unique slice of the era on an individual level.

A Burial in Braelin

A new Krevborna campaign has begun! In this one, the characters are all mercenaries who have suffered a catastrophic loss. In fact, here's the "Story so Far" I wrote up for them:

The Charnel Hounds were a famed mercenary company that you were proud to count yourselves members of. All that has changed, of course. Fortunes turn, don’t they?

The life of a mercenary is a series of victories and losses, triumphs and defeats. In the Duchy of Trevania in the Ustalecht Paladinate, the Charnel Hounds suffered a catastrophic rout at the hands of a rival mercenary band called the Fist of Arjal. As the battle descended into chaos, it was every man and woman for themselves as your lines broke and you were scattered before the swords of the enemy. You suspect dark treachery behind the decimation, but everyone seeks to lay the blame elsewhere when things go wrong, don’t they?

You are among the few Charnel Hounds who survived the Trevanian Massacre. As he lay dying, the leader of your regiment, Captain Osvald Kaul, begged you to take his body for burial in his hometown–a place called Braelin in the Vespermark. A captain’s dying command is still a command, isn’t it?

As the ragged remnant of the Charnel Hounds, the future is yours to seize. Will you rebuild the company of the Charnel Hounds to reclaim your tarnished glory? Will you seek whoever betrayed the Charnel Hounds to get vengeance? Will you find another way to redeem your good names? History is yours to make, isn’t it?

You find yourselves trudging to the Vespermark in the cold spring rain, squelching through muddy fields, with a single horse pulling a cart laden with Captain Kaul’s coffin. As you enter Braelin, your first order of business is to arrange a burial for your fallen leader.

* * *

Characters

Dario Diego Durant, swashbuckling swordsman

Doctor Anastasia Nadya Strahov, a gun-priest who says strange thing about blood

Johanna Albrecht, a lycan bard with a particularly keen nose

Ulu, the party's urska mom

Varro, a young snow elf bearing a magical sword

***

Events

The first thing the characters did upon entering Braelin was stop in at Nokovik's Goods and Feed to learn the lay of the land and buy a couple shovels. The couple working at the store, Mae-Lin and Yungfang "Nokovik," looked to be of Far Eastern extraction; their surname is almost certainly not Nokovik. Yungfang explained that there was no functional church in Braelin, as the priest disappeared mysteriously a few years ago and the building had lay dormant ever since. However, there was a revelator of the heretical saint Vionka who maintained a shrine at the end of the cemetery who might be able to help them. 

On the way to the shrine, they spotted a walking dead man carrying an iron-shod bludgeon. They were stopped by a portly man smoking a pipe under an overhand in front of the town jail. He introduced himself as Ulysses F. Tavistock, Braelin's sheriff. In the course of their conversation--during which Ulysses was attempting to ascertain whether these well-armed newcomers were going to cause problems in town--they learned that he was a necromancer who animated the corpses of condemned criminals to serve as "deputies" that patrolled the town. Satisfied, he let them go on their way.

At the shrine, they met Sister Eliza, a young woman with unnaturally white hair. She offered to watch over Captain Kaul's coffin while they went to visit the Kaul House--Osvald Kaul's ancestral home--in search of any living relatives.

The Kaul House had seen better days, but it was still inhabited--by a butler named Beaumont D'Orleac (who seemed to slide out of the shadows) and a maid with bouncy blonde hair named Irenya Day. Beaumont was saddened to learn of "young" Osvald's death; he immediately sent Irenya to fetch the Rue sisters, as he thought they should be informed of the matter. He intimated that one of the Rue sisters had been romantically involved with Osvald in his youth, which was strange because when Morrigan and Pandora Rue arrived they looked far too young for that to be true. In face, they were pale twins who dressed in the manner of Siberskan aristocrats--Morrigan favored a riding outfit and tricorne hat, while Pandora wore a frilly dress. 

The Rue sisters explained that, as a condition of Osvald Kaul's will, the surviving members of the Charnel Hounds were to inherit Kaul House, as well as a small sum that paid for the butler's services and maintained the household. When the characters expressed a desire to make some money while in Braelin, the Rue sisters offered them a job: a young girl named Salva had gone missing, and they wanted the Charnel Hounds to find her and, if possible, bring her back to her family. As it turned out, Salva was the third child to go missing--one a month, in fact. Salva was last seen by Aivra Williams, the town's school teacher, as the girl headed toward the supposedly haunted Felken Woods. 

After a brief service by Sister Eliza, the Charnel Hounds buried their commander. The group then paid a visit to Aivra, who was a prim young woman with her burgundy hair pulled back into a tight bun. She told them what she saw through the schoolhouse window and gave them a description of what Salva had been wearing just before she vanished--noting particularly her bright red clogs.

The Rue sisters had given the group a scarf that belonged to Salva; using her lycan powers of tracking, Johanna was able to pick up the scent in the Felken Woods. The trail led them to the mouth of a cave nestled into the sodden earth. At the mouth of the cave was a single red clog. Before the entered, Varro realized that they were being watched for the trees. The Charnel Hounds executed a gambit to draw their would-be ambushers into an ambush of their own. Their new foes were human-like, but misshapen in body--and they smelled of entrails and rotting fungal matter. They were, however, quickly dealt with. A bit of early character development: Dario and Varro seem to have a bit of a rivalry in the group!

As they explored the cave system, they found some intriguing things that hinted at the kind of person or creature who had been stealing children from Braelin. They found a small library with books on herbs and alchemy (all written in Aelvani, the language of the fey); a scrying pool that showed them the image of a paddle steamer anchored in a river; an alchemy lab (the experiments in progress all looked like they were aimed at creating potions that could restore someone to their true form). They found a nest of more misshapen men, who were dispatched with great violence. They also found what appeared to be remnants of an old, discarded life at odds with this dank cave: a wardrobe full of rich elvish dresses, a cabinet of finely crafted porcelain dolls. 

Worse yet, the located a rubbish pit that contained a child's gnawed-upon ribcage. Whoever had eaten the child had very large, very sharp teeth.

Eventually, they also found trouble. In a sitting room, they were charged by two more of the misshapen servitors while the child-abductor scurried across the ceiling of the cavern. Anastasia tried to shoot her down, but the hag-like woman with long arms and sharp teeth proved difficult to wound. She also proved to be a very dangerous sorceress. She dropped from the ceiling, incanting a spell in Aelvani; the spell caused Ulu and Varro to leap to her defense. When Anastasia tried to shoot past them, Varro--against his own will--dealt her a savage blow from his magic sword that almost killed her on the spot.

This situation put the party in a tremendous bind: their two most dangerous comrades were now under the power of their foe. The hag grinned and asked them if they'd like to make a deal. That's where we left off until next week.

The Saints

Carrying on from the previous post about the Church in Krevborna, this post will detail a handful of the Church's saints. 

* * *

Although the Church of Holy Blood reverences thousands of saints, the following are the most popular patron saints in Krevborna:

Jesa Khristosa, The Redeemer

Jesa Khristosa is the savior whose redemption was promised in the Holy Blood Bible. It is believed that the Khristosa’s Second Coming will occur during the End Times.

    • She is depicted as an emaciated woman soldier who has been scoured, crowned with thorns, and crucified.

    • It is a matter of theological debate whether the Khristosa is the mortal daughter of the Word and the Light, its earthly avatar, or a being of pure spirit; this debate is responsible for the schism of the Eastern and Western Churches.

Azia, Patron Saint of Scholars

Saint Azia was born a second son—yet she felt that her nature was essentially feminine and chose to live her life as a woman. 

    • She is depicted as an androgynous figure crowned with a wreath of golden thorns.

    • Saint Azia’s devotees gather and safeguard rare religious texts in their fastidiously cataloged archives. 

Filiona, Patron Saint of Lovers

According to scripture, Saint Filiona was a prostitute who gave up her profession to follow the Khristosa and preach at her side.

    • She is depicted as a woman of sorrowful beauty.

    • Besotted lovers sometimes pray to her to grant them the devotion of their desired partner, though this practice is regarded as heretical and pagan.

Mariana, Patron Saint of Mothers

Saint Mariana is the patron saint of mothers, healers, and maidens.

    • Saint Mariana is the virgin mother who gave birth to the Khristosa. 

    • Despite her association with chastity and saintly motherhood, Saint Mariana is depicted as a buxom, wild-eyed matron possessing a distracting beauty.

Nazaren, Patron Saint of Craftsmen

Said to be a humble blacksmith in life, Saint Nazaren labored nearly without rest so that he might give great tithes to the Church. 

    • The dwarves of Krevborna insist that Saint Nazaren was appropriated from their pantheon of honored ancestors.

    • Saint Nazaren is often depicted as a bearded dolvik whose body has been broken by his strenuous labors. 

Othric, Patron Saint of Soldiers

Saint Othric is the patron saint of warriors and the nobility. He was the patron saint of the Tsar’s family, in particular.

    • Saint Othric was a crusader who was martyred upon a pyre, but he was reborn from the ashes of his destruction. 

    • Saint Othric is usually depicted as a knight clad in fire-blackened armor. 

Vionka, The Saint of Death

Vionka is a heretical, non-canonical folk saint associated with death and protection from calamities.

    • Saint Vionka is depicted as a pale maiden clad in a black dress and wearing a matching lace veil; she is often shown accompanied by crows, ravens, and jackdaws.

    • Saint Vionka is prayed to by the desperate at small, secret shrines tended by her priesthood, who are known as revelators.

      

Yarushka, Patron Saint of Inquisitors

Yarushka is an exacting saint, and those who adopt her as their patron are among the most fanatical members of the Church.

    • Saint Yarushka is depicted as a wounded flagellant. 

    • Her followers are devoted to hunting witches, punishing heretics, and stamping out corruption within the flock.

The Church of Holy Blood

This post is the first in a series about religion in Krevborna.

The Church of Holy Blood

The Church of Holy Blood is the predominant religion in Krevborna. The Church wields tremendous power throughout the land, weaving itself into the daily lives of the populace and ruling many areas of Krevborna, such as Chancel, as a theocracy. 

The Church preaches the virtues of spiritual devotion and self-denial; its many prohibitions, commandments, and strictures are considered necessary restraints that keep society from plunging into a state of anarchy and unrepentant sin. 

Although Krevborna’s Church is united in the broad outlines of the faith, it is internally riven by disagreements regarding doctrinal and liturgical matters that threaten an eventual schism. In his role as the High Dogmatist, the head of Krevborna’s Church is currently Father Anjelus Navarre, though his spiritual leadership offers little in the way of stability; he is contested by rivals within both the mainline of the Church and among its dissenting branches. 

 

The Word and the Light

Central to the Church’s beliefs is a scriptural account of the cosmic war between the Word and the Light, the god who created the Mortal World, and a coterie of angels who rebelled against the deity’s divine rule.

According to the testament found in the Holy Blood Bible, the forces comprised of the Word and the Light and His loyal angels were ultimately victorious, though the Word and the Light was hideously wounded by the upstarts during the conflict. 

In lieu of direct intercession, the Word and the Light sent His only daughter, the sacred Jesa Khristosa, to redeem the world from sin. When Jesa Khristosa was slain by unbelievers who refused the salvation she offered, the Word and the Light withdrew His influence from the world while He healed from the War in Heaven.

The Wounded God and Saintly Icons

After the Word and the Light withdrew its influence, dominion over the spiritual life of the Mortal World was transferred to the Church’s saints, who number in the thousands. The faithful pray to the saints as intercessors. They do not pray directly to the Word and the Light; as the Wounded God, the Word and the Light exists beyond the Mortal World and cannot offer succor. Instead, they view the saints as the inheritor of their God’s mantle and believe that they must follow the example set by their saints—they must oppose sin in the world and attempt to emulate saintly virtues. The faithful often feel an especial connection to a particular patron saint.

The saints are meant to guide and shepherd mankind until the Word and the Light recovers and is able to initiate the Second Coming of the Khristosa. 

The Rites of the Church

The Church of Holy Blood’s sacraments focus on imbibing sanctified blood and bathing in holy blood poured from baptismal fonts. The blood used in these rites is the literal blood of the martyred saints, created through miracles of transordination. The Church’s rites are usually performed in High Evangian, the sacred language used by the Word and the Light to usher in all creation. 

The Origins of Supernatural Evil

Two distinct categories of supernatural evil were created as the inadvertent fallout of battles between the angelic hosts loyal to the Word and the Light and the rebel angels who initiated the War in Heaven. When Lucerius, chief of the usurping angels, was metaphysically cleaved in twain by the Archangel Mikaelos, Lucerius’s spirit became the first demon to fall into Hell and his material body became the first vampire to walk the Mortal World. 

In the years that followed, these two entities adopted new names—this event birthed both the devil Damophet and the vampire king Zorin Malistrad. Damophet and Malistrad rule over the others of their damned kind, but as forcibly separated halves of the same being they crave wholeness. However, they are doomed to oppose each other. Such is their enduring curse.

Dragons, Drakoi, and Sin

In the Holy Blood Bible, dragons are referred to as the Beasts of Man’s Sin. Theological texts theorize that the first transgressions committed by mankind against the Word and the Light’s commandments coalesced into the form of a dragon meant to punish human frailty. Great sins, whether personal or communal, continue to birth dragons in the world. 

The existence of the drakoi, rare dragon-like men and women, adds further conjecture to the supposed role that sin plays in the creation of dragons. Those who have transformed into drakoi are usually shunned, but some attempt redemption in hopes of regaining their original, “pure” forms.

***

Religious Horrors

The Church of Holy Blood in Krevborna is based on the representations of Catholicism found in early Gothic fiction and the notion of viewing the Eastern Orthodox faith through a Gothic lens. As many of the most influential Gothic novels were written by British Protestants in an age where religious and national schisms were still potent forces in European politics, depictions of the Catholic Church in works such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, and especially Matthew Lewis’s The Monk tend to emphasize its seductive aesthetics, semi-macabre rituals, and moral hypocrisies. Krevborna follows in that tradition by presenting the Church of Holy Blood as a corrupt institution that wields temporal power even though it claims to only be concerned with spiritual salvation.

Of course, there are other inspirations for the Church of Holy Blood whose outlines can be discerned in the detail in this chapter. There are elements of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s critique of Puritanism in the description of the Church, as well as a bit of the monstrous Calvinism that takes center stage in James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Similarly, depictions of Eastern Orthodoxy, such as Nikolai Gogol's Viy and other Slavic horror tales, have made their influence felt here.

Generally, the role of invented religions in fantasy role-playing games is often veiled in manufactured polytheism so as not to trouble the sensitivities of the players or to challenge any of their deeply held beliefs. Krevborna provides no such luxuries. It is entirely possible for someone of religious faith to find great offense in the description of the Church of Holy Blood, as is their right. Feel free to replace it, if it sours you on the setting as a whole. Any number of generic pantheons could be inserted into the setting—though I do tend to think that they weaken the overall themes of the setting as a site where all manner of abuses of power are shown in their most monstrous forms.

Operation Incisor

The gang helped me playtest the latest version of my AG3NTS OF CRVCIBLE rpg--it's about secret agents sent into the subconscious mind on surreal missions. The game is shaping up niceky; just a couple more tweaks and maybe I'll put this together as something other people can play.

Events

As they came into consciousness, the agents heard the following resounding in their heads: "The Hypnos Protocol is now complete. Agents, proceed with Operation Incisor. Investigate within the hospital and cut out the infection." Unfortunately, they each faded into the mission in different places, with different burdens thrust upon them.

Agent Nowhere awoke inside cold, confining darkness. She figured out that she was inside a hospital morgue and managed to free herself. However, as she dressed in spare scrubs, she discovered that the corpses housed in the morgue were not resting quietly; they began to bang on the doors to their "cells." When one was released, it bit Agent Nowhere's leg, but she managed to fend it off with a Liston knife and make a run for the elevator.

Agent Frownie found herself holding a coffee mug that read Fiefdom Biomedical Industries in a hospital break room, wearing scrubs. As she tried to leave, she was grabbed by a nurse and told that she was needed in surgery right away. In an operating theater (overlooked by three men in sharp suits who took notes on clipboards), Agent Frownie was asked to remove an ambulatory thing that was squirming beneath the patient's skin. Using a surgical implement of alien design, she was able to cut out a calcified ball of wriggling hair--a living bezoar. When she looked at the patient's face, she saw that it had been replaced with a two-dimensional black rectangle. 

Agent Merlot found himself pushing a janitorial cart. A nurse stopped him in the hallway and told him he needed to go clean up a mess in the maternity ward. When he found the offending spill, he saw that is was a mass of blood, meat, bone shards, and adult teeth. As he began to clean, a strange man leaned in the doorway and offered to help "clean up." When Agent Merlot didn't bite, the man offered to trade him a pack of cigarettes for the opportunity. Agent Merlot quickly discovered that the man's "help" consisting of him dropping to the floor to eat the bodily destruction; he crunched on teeth as if they were popcorn. Once done, Agent Merlot proceeded down the hall.

Agent Peach-Glad was in a car, being driven by her granddaughter to the Quantum Hospital for an operation on her hand. Strangely, as she examined her own hand, she didn't see any reason why she would need an operation on it. She felt no pain or discomfort. At the hospital, she was placed in a wheelchair and taken away by an orderly as her granddaughter stayed behind to fill out some paperwork. Agent Peach-Glad attempted to get some information out of the orderly, but when he tried to clamp a chloroform-laced cloth over her mouth she sprang from the wheelchair and knocked the man unconscious. 

The agents were able to reconvene; they hid the orderly in Agent Merlot's cleaning cart and took him to an empty room. After rousing the orderly, he admitted to being Agent Hartwick, someone working for a rival agency. Their interrogation was interrupted by the revival of the Redaction Man--a hulking "man" in the uniform of a Soviet commandant, his face a featureless black rectangle. Fighting the Redaction Man proved fruitless--he wounded a couple of the agents--so they ran for it.

As they ran, they noticed that the walls of the hospital were now marred by patches of "infection."

Back in the operating theater, they encountered the three men who had watched Agent Frownie remove the bezoar from the faceless patient. They learned quite a bit from these men--most importantly that the walking dead in the morgue were "dangerous ideas" that they felt needed to be purged from the American subconscious. While they were talking, Agent Frownie slipped the bezoar into the carafe of water; when the three men drank from their glasses, they promptly melted into viscous goo.

The bezoar was retrieved from the carafe and used to facilitate the end of their mission. After breaching a computer terminal in the executive level of the Quantum Hospital, the agents knew that the "subversive idea" zombies were being fed into the hospital's incinerator. They took the bezoar to the incinerator--which seemed to end in a fiery, living gullet--and dropped it inside. They ran from the impending explosion, and then--they awoke from sedation in a CRVCIBLE compound. Their commanding officer, a war-torn looking man in a uniform, welcomed them to the revolution. 

The Leading Ladies of Hammer Horror

If you're into Hammer horror--and if you aren't, why are you here?--the following clip of interviews with some of Hammer's leading ladies will be of interest to you:

Total Skull: March, 2026

Things that brought me delight in March, 2026:

Rob Zombie, The Great Satan

Rob Zombie's solo albums are, for the most part, pretty reliable; the only really question they pose is "What elements of the familiar formula will be pushed to the forefront on this outing?" On The Great Satan, it's the heaviness that comes to fore. All the spookshow influences are present and accounted for, but The Great Satan just plain hits harder than the average Rob Zombie record. Perhaps that comes at the expense of the catchy earworms of The Lunar Injection Kool Aid Eclipse Conspiracy, but it's nice to get an aggressive slab this late in the game. The big unexpected move here is the closing track, "Grave Discontent," which sounds exactly like a dope-ass giallo title theme.

Catriona Ward, Nowhere Burning

Nowhere Burning has a great set up: it's a bit like "Children of the Corn," with a group of semi-feral kids living in the ruins of a mountain compound once owned by a famous actor who was up to some pretty bad stuff; the kids are nearly legendary in their own right because they are suspected of  kidnapping people to steal their blood. (The weirdest bit: while kidnapped, they feed their captives baby formula.) If you've read any of Catriona Ward's other books, you know that she loves a twisty plot; the way she lays all the pieces out in front of you and then makes something surprising out of them is truly extraordinary. I won't say more--you need to experience how the strange kids, the film makers trying to make a documentary about them, and the actor and his lover all fit into the picture for yourself.

Earth Tongue, Dungeon Vision

I don't know about your friend group, but mine was chomping at the bit for the next Earth Tongue record and Dungeon Vision definitely does not disappoint. Earth Tongue deals in heavy psychedelic rock, but don't let the calming color tones on the cover lull you into a false sense of security; the music on Dungeon Vision is positively subterranean--this is a bad acid trip while playing D&D with freaks in the steam tunnels beneath a second-rate college in the 70s.

Mayfair Witches, Season One

Mayfair Witches would be a guilty pleasure watch if I was capable of feeling guilt over pleasure. Sure, maybe I wouldn't have enjoyed it so much if I felt more beholden to the purity of vision in the novels, which I read decades ago, but as a bit of sit-down turn-off-your-brain Gothic soap opera I had a great time with this. Rowan Mayfair, unlikely neurosurgeon, discovers that she's a witch and the heir to a supernatural legacy that takes the form of a slimily grinning spirit named Lasher. Look, this is really just a show about pretty women doing witchy stuff in New Orleans--that's a formula that works. In addition, I have to say that Mayfair Witches' horniness is often more compelling that the rancid dead bedroom energy leaching off the scenes with Louis and Armand in the comparable (and a little overhyped) Interview with the Vampire show.

Die Spitz, Something to Consume

Every time a new band arrives on the scene and is heralded as the one who will "save rock," it turns out they only have one song--a song that they play ten to twelves times over the course of an album we're destined to forget. This is not the case with Die Spitz, whose debut album Something to Consume shows a wide, varied sonic palette. Witness that thrashy riff and skull-squeezing gruff vocals of "Throw Yourself to the Sword," get lost in the depressive, dreamlike, nearly shoegaze-y tones of "Punk Pop Anthem," and the snide, grinding punkiness of "Down On It." Amazing first record--where do they do from here?

The Housemaid

It sometimes feels like the mid-budget thriller is a "lost genre"; the 80s and 90s were filthy with classic examples of films that mixed plot-twisting drama, murder, and often a hefty dose of eroticism. The Housemaid shows that there's still some gas left in the tank and perhaps hints that the genre is due for a big comeback. 

The initial plot is simple: a down-and-out ex-con in need of a job gets the gig of a lifetime as the housemaid for a wealthy family, but of course the household harbors a horrible, dangerous secret and all is not what it seems. I enjoyed The Housemaid way more than I would have guessed; the twist is fun and the movie has some pretty gruesome violence that goes far beyond a lot of what you might in mainstream horror. Apparently, a sequel has already been greenlit? If so, I'll be there.

Ponte del Diavolo, De Venom Natura

Ponte del Diavolo's previous release, Fire Blades from the Tomb, was my favorite record of the year it was released, so I awaited the new De Venom Natura with sky-high expectations--and I was not let down. The band's thrilling combination of black metal, doom, and gothic rock remains in place, but they still have the power to surprise; who saw that horns on "Spirit, Blood, Poison, Ferment" coming? All that and a Bauhaus cover to round things out on the back end.

Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold

I read Joe Abercrombie The First Law trilogy last year and found that it definitely earned its reputation as a certifiable grimdark classic, so it was an exciting prospect to delve into that world again with the stand-alone novel Best Served Cold. Best Served Cold is the tale of Monza Murcatto, a mercenary captain out for revenge against the people who wronged her. Along the way, she enlists the services of a Northern barbarian, two poisoners, an ex-con, and a torturer. This novel is fantastic; its mix of grappling with the nature of vengeance, comedic elements, and stone-cold violence is a real treat. I think I might have liked Best Served Cold even better than the prior trilogy.

Perfect Blue

I got another does of thriller action, albeit in anime form, in March with Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue. In Perfect Blue, a singing idol attempts to make the transition to serious actress, seemingly triggering an obsessive fan to begin stalking her in deadly earnest. Coupled with the fact that her newfound role is systemically exploitative, her mind begins to crack under the strain. When a body count starts racking up with the people in her orbit--well, has our idol got blood on her hands or is something more sinister at play? Possessing an almost giallo-level of intensity at times, Perfect Blue deserves to be in the canon of great thrillers.

Mark Lawrence, Book of the Ancestor trilogy

I read, and quite enjoyed, Mark Lawrence's The Broken Empire trilogy last year, so this year I tackled his Book of the Ancestor trilogy. This series features some great worldbuilding: the planet only has a narrow band of habitable land at the equator; the ice's progress is only kept in check by the focused light of a "moon" (really a mirror in space) as the planet's sun dies. The plot is a long-running set of intrigues as power and control shifts and things grow dire at the end of the world. Thrown into the mix is a young nun trained in combat, the use of poison, and "magic"; imagine if Harry Potter was a sci fi/fantasy series about battle nuns and was actually interesting--that will put you on the right track.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come and They Will Kill You

It's kind of wild that in March there were two movies with the premise "estranged sisters team up to fight back against the rich Satanists trying to kill them" playing in theaters at the same time, but life is strange like that. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come and They Will Kill You really are quite similar, though I think they each excel in specific areas. Ready or Not 2 did a better job of giving the villains distinct identities; it was also, on balance, the funnier movie. They Will Kill You, on the other hand, had such fantastic set piece brawls and interesting cinematography that I'll be thinking about how it was composed for a long time to come. If you only have room in your life for one of these, I say go with They Will Kill You.

Ivy Grimes, The Cellar Below the Cellar

I'm not really sure that the "Folk Horror" designation on the cover is an accurate description of this novella, but admittedly The Cellar Below the Cellar is a tough book to shelve. It's certainly "folksy," in line with Ivy Grimes's usual style, but "horror" feels like a stretch, and anyway how do you really encompass the novella being a light apocalyptic fantasy that reworks Slavic folklore in a way that I genuinely think no one else could have? I guess we leave it like this: The Cellar Below the Cellar is idiosyncratically great.