Things that brought me delight in June, 2021:
I had the pleasure of a vacation in Rhode Island with my girlfriend at the start of the month. Things I saw: the Dark Shadows house (pictured to the right), The Breakers, Marble House, a topiary garden, another fancy house and gardens (the name of which escapes me), the grave of Mercy Brown (Rhode Island's famed "vampire"). Things I ate: a sundae from Newport Creamery and Dell's lemonade. Too many great things to list here; trust me, it was a wonderful time. Although! We did hear the ominous sounds of someone walking around the upstairs of our AirBnB, which caused us to do a room by room perimeter sweep in search of intruders the first night, heh.
We Shall Sing a Song Into the Deep has a very cool premise: a nuclear submarine is inhabited by monkish ascetic sailors bearing one final warhead that they plan to launch to render the final judgment on the post-apocalyptic world above the waves. Thankfully, the book lives up to that premise. A raid against the topside dwellers brings a mysterious scientist into the enclosed and fanatical world of the submarine, triggering a crisis of faith that promises to forever change life aboard the submarine. This is quite a short novel, but despite its brevity it creates a claustrophobic atmosphere that explodes like a powder keg. One of the best things I've read all year.
The Cause of Shipwreck is Blackbriar's debut full-length album, and it follows in the footsteps of their prior EPs with a sound that is part symphonic metal and part Gothic pomp. The album certainly does not let down the momentum they had gained over the course of their smaller releases; the record is clearly their most polished and cohesive effort yet. This one is going to be easy to spin all summer long. I also picked up the Snow White and Rose Red single. Although it only features three versions of the same song, it's a good song. No complaints!
Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, Vampirella: Masters Series Volume One
Grant Morrison and Mark Millar go uncharacteristically hard in the first three-issue arc in this collection. It reads more like a Garth Ennis joint; to wit, it's got: vampire AIDS (developed by Saddam Hussein and tested on the Kurds, no less), lesbian incest, a daughter who is repeatedly forced to call her gangland father a "dirty wop" at gunpoint, and this charming phrasing: "She'll go down easier than a transexual hooker on the Nutty Professor himself." Also, between the warrior nuns dolled up in "chastity latex" in the second arc and Seven Soldiers, I feel confident that Morrison is a fetishist of a very particular stripe. Overall, this volume is a good example of the dueling intentions behind the comic: it tries to be both an excuse for pin-up shots and tell a rip-roaring action story, which could theoretically be paired to work in tandem, but isn't entirely successful here because it can't fully commit to either. Additionally, for a character we're supposed to take as a bad-girl babe, there sure are a lot of panels where Vampirella has a busted face.
Carach Angren specialize in the style of theatrical black metal pioneered by Cradle of Filth. Like Cradle, Carach Angren also has a penchant for concept albums; Frankensteina Strataemontanus is, as the name suggests, their retelling of Frankenstein. I can't get enough of these unhinged monster tales wrapped in the trappings of black metal bombast. Essential listening for anyone preparing a campaign set in Lamordia, if you ask me.
Warren Ellis, Vampirella: Masters Series Volume Two
My journey through the trashy 90s Vampirella comics of the Harris era continues! This one is written by Warren Ellis, but has the same art team (Conner and Palmiotti) as the first volume. I wonder if they liked this material better than the stuff Grant Morrison and Mark Millar were doing or if they were given a more relaxed pace to work at...because the art is definitely less sloppy here. It's interesting to me that someone felt the need to retcon Vampirella's origins; I guess "space vampire" didn't cut it at the time, though to me that still feels more fresh than "child of the biblical Lilith." The real treat is the fully painted mini-story that rounds out the volume. But then, I'm a mark for painted comics.
It's always interesting to see how well former members of Nightwish adapt to life outside that band. In The Dark Element, Anette Olzon doesn't veer too far from well-trod paths. The Dark Element has the same kind of symphonic metal bombast as her tenure with Nightwish, though overall The Dark Element's albums are less focused on overarching themes. There's also an element of electronic flourish here that feels different from her previous work. I think "My Sweet Mystery" is a bop and I don't care who knows it.
Brian Keene's Urban Gothic is basically a splatter-slasher horror movie in novel form. Six suburban kids end up in the ghetto when their car breaks down and they seek shelter in an abandoned house that happens to be occupied by inbred mutant killers. And then some black teens, a middle-aged man who is too old for this shit, and a guy out to steal the plumbing get involved. Don't expect much character development, backstory, or deep social commentary; rather, brace yourself for gross-out moments. The mix here is The Hills Have Eyes, C.H.U.D., and those grade Z gorefests that you can never remember the name of after the final reel.
My journey into the poppy symphonic metal of The Murder of My Sweet began last month, but I soldiered on by listening to Bye Bye Lullaby and Echoes of the Aftermath this month. Bye Bye Lullaby struck me as having less of an electronic influence that I supposed usual for the band; some of the tracks even had a faint noir vibe to them. Echoes of the Aftermath, in contrast, does acrobatic flips trying to reconcile the pop with the symphonic heft. I like the whiplash, frankly.
Full confession: I've never seen the original Black Narcissus, though now that I've seen this newer version made for FX I dearly want to. A group of nuns are sent on a mission to establish a school in an old, remote palace in the Himalayas. The palace was once a pleasure palace for a raj, and is still filled with erotic art, which prefigures the drama of repressed desire that springs forth as the nuns attempt to repurpose the space, and their young Indian charges, as something more befitting their Catholic hegemony. Of course, things get a bit Gothic when either madness or the ghosts of the past (or conceivably both) intrude on their spiritual purpose, threatening to unleash all that has been repressed. I thought this was quite good, but I bet the original movie and the novel are even better. Things to look forward to, track it back to the source, etc.
Although many will disagree with this sentiment, I feel a distinct sinking feeling every time I see the A24 logo appear on the screen right before a movie starts. This time, however, I was pleasantly surprised as Maud joins The Witch in the vanishingly small niche genre known as "A24 movies I actually enjoyed." While it certainly isn't perfect, and in fact features one aesthetic misstep that made me audibly groan, this film about a hospice nurse who has recently become a fanatical convert to Roman Catholicism and her "mission" to save the soul of a hedonistic dancer dying of cancer worked for me.
It's a slow film despite its relatively short run time, but it manages to be simultaneously difficult to look at and difficult to look away from. The merger of body horror and psychological horror in Saint Maud is particularly noteworthy; we've been told that these varieties of horror are distinct and oppositional, but their confluence here underlines their potent interconnection.
Warhammer easily has the best tie-in game fiction. There's a ton of it out there, so I assume most of it is garbage, but at the top end it's actually decent stuff. Of course, the stuff you can compare it with is generally terrible, so maybe that isn't much of an accolade. But anyway, Dan Abnett's Xenos is a surprisingly fun read.
The opening chapters have a pretty badass premise too: the main character has chased a criminal psychic to a planet where the population is kept in cryogenic storage for most of the year due to the climate having an insanely harsh winter. The psychic has caused these people to awaken from cryogenesis early, and there are no medical staff to guide them back to life, so there's just people thawing out and dying everywhere.
One of the things I appreciate the book is its willingness to branch out from the main aesthetic to keep things fresh. Most of the book is a film noir-ish investigation story, perhaps a bit like a sci-fi James Bond in places, but there's also a nice sword & sorcery moment when the main character and his crew have been captured by baddies, and interrogated, and then thrown into a fighting pit where they have to fight off some saber-toothed tigers. There's also plenty of action sequences and even a dogfight in space!
Fears is slick Gothic metal in the vein of HIM, The 69 Eyes, and Lacrimas Profundere. Originally a solo project, Lord of the Lost grew into a full band when it became evident that a filled-out roster was needed to pull off Chris Harms's creative vision. The end result, Lord of the Lost's debut album Fears, is a driving effort with plenty of melodrama and melancholy. I'm really looking forward to their new album dropping next month.
Things begin to move into the endgame of Claymore's narrative trajectory. (I think? We may be in for another hefty time jump.) Phantom Miria inspires a revolt among the Claymores against the Organization and gets some cool new scars; Clare is swallowed by and assimilated into a monstrous creature. The Organization unleashes yet another type of killer lady/demon hybrid on the world (and, of course, the Claymores who have rebelled against them).
I've been playing a lot more guitar lately, and serendipitously was gifted with this Fender Kurt Cobain Jaguar by a friend who found it abandoned in a street a few years ago. He valiantly tried to reunite it with its owner in case it was lost, but his attempts came to naught and now it is mine! The timing is perfect, as I was considering buying something with humbucker pick-ups to play in addition to my single-coil Strat. Also, I can say without hyperbole that even despite the battle damage on this guitar, it is easily the nicest instrument I've even had the pleasure of owning. It's surprisingly heavy, but ridiculously easy to play. Now, all I have to do is figure out what all these switches and knobs do.
My girlfriend gave me this friendly little giff, who now sits on my desk when I'm running my online D&D game. What a sidekick!
