Total Skull - August 2016

Things that brought me delight in August, 2016:

Music

Marissa Nadler, Strangers
(It's trite to call Marissa Nadler's unique style of drear-pop haunting, and yet, what else could it be?)

Myrkur, Mausoleum
(acoustic versions with a choir turn Myrkur's black metal into beautiful elegies)

Opeth, The Candlelight Years
(I avoided Opeth for a long time because the albums I had heard were very prog-rock and very noodling, but it turns out that their early stuff is well within my range of sonic interests.)

* * *

Books

Octavia Butler, Dawn
(I'm really not much of a science fiction reader, but this was pretty amazing. But the amazing part was the science fiction elements; the literary display of human nature is the real draw in Dawn.)

Film

Ginger Snaps
(Although horrific monstrosity as a metaphor for puberty is a pretty well-worn idea, I still think Ginger Snaps is one of the best examples of how the convention can be done well.)

* * *

Gaming

Tome of Beasts
(A great selection of monsters to fill in the gaps of 5e's Monster Manual. All the new fey and undead were especially welcome.)

Total Skull - May 2016

Things that brought me delight in May 2016.

Books

The King of Elfland's Daughter, Lord Dunsany
(fairy tale-flavored fantasy; if you prefer The Hobbit to Lord of the Rings, you should give The King of Elfland's Daughter a chance)

X's for Eyes, Laird Barron
(imagine Dean and Hank from the Venture Bros. drinking whiskey, banging hookers, and facing off against cosmic horrors)

A Different City, Tanith Lee
(three independent stories set in a fictionalized Marseilles: the first has a distinct Balzac & Zola feel, the second is a horrifying slice of familial Gothic fantastique, and the third is an interesting take on Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray)

Movies

The People Under the Stairs
(what a strange, but effective film! uncanny murder house-meets-Home Alone slapstick as horror becomes class/race commentary)

The Duke of Burgundy
(lush, quietly Gothic...you really can't talk about this one without spoiling the experience for anyone who hasn't seen it)

An American Werewolf in London
(I watched this as a teenager, and thus missed how psychosexual this movie is; "the beast within us all," yes, but also the anxieties of the sexually-inexperienced man vs. his more experienced counterpart and also the lustmord of the Nazi dream sequence)

Television

Murder Maps
(look, historical murder stuff is my jam. it is known.)

Hellevator
(cheese, but my kind of cheese.)

Music

Nemesis Divina, Satyricon
(classic black metal; absolutely necessary if you're interested in the genre)

Desire's Magic Theatre, Purson
(psychedelic and decadent)

Endless, Mount Salem
(if Black Sabbath had been fronted by a woman)

Art

Jana Heidersdorf

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