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  1. cmrosens @[email protected] ·

    January 2026 Media Round-Up

    Here’s my January round up of all the media I’ve read/watched/listened to this month! I’m going to try and keep this to the highlights, but I usually DNF things I’m not enjoying and they don’t get counted. Positivity only in this space! …Although the content itself may be not so positive.

    As a bonus, I’m going to let you know my favourite song of the month too. I’ve just switched from Spotify to Qobuz, a music streaming service based in France, as Qobuz pays artists more per track while still costing the same, and also has a much better sound quality. Most of my playlist content has transferred over fine, but the one artist I was devastated is not fully on there yet is Felix Hagan.

    There is one song of his on there currently though: Happy Songs (2025), from the brand new album of the same name which smashed its goal on Kickstarter. I’m really hopeful that the whole album will drop on Qobuz as well.

    Happy Songs by Felix Hagan is definitely my favourite song from the start of the month. LISTEN ON QOBUZ

    As I go on my Qobuz journey, I’ll be looking for new music to replace the tracks I loved to listen to on Spotify but that aren’t on Qobuz yet, and finding (I hope) new obsessions. I’ll be adding this into my media round-up just for fun!

    On to the main event: books, shows, and films. This month I’m experimenting with highlighting my favourites, and listing everything else. I was off sick this month, so there’s a lot of them.

    Books, Audiobooks, Story Podcasts

    These are the highlights of what I’ve read/listened to this month. I’ve been really spoiled for ARCs! That’s one really lovely bonus of offering the author spotlights – the small presses that get in touch with me for their authors sometimes offer a reader copy for me to frame the interview questions around.

    (I never ask for this and I do not expect it, and frankly, I couldn’t ever read one per author! But for the small presses, I know they’re going to be in genres I already like and would want to read, so I often accept these if offered.)

    Best Friends Bury Bodies by C.M. Rosens.

    You know what, I’m counting this. I read this cover-to-cover for the revisions and edits, and it’s a 78K novel, so this is on my round-up.

    When their search for a missing music star leads to murder, how far will his old friends go?

    Midsomer Murders meets The Forty Year Kiss. A contemporary mystery with middle-aged polyamorous bisexual second chance romance.

    Sarah believes she’s happy with her life despite never really dealing with her partner’s sudden death six years ago; her job is fine, her friends are supportive, her girlfriend Sammie is amazing. But when her estranged soulmate, Bas, reaches out after a 12 year absence, Sarah’s carefully cultivated rut is thrown into chaos.

    Her best friends are all for tracking down the prodigal member of their close-knit group, who drifted away from them when he got famous, spiralled into addiction, then disappeared. But finding a long-lost 1990s rock star is the least of their worries, when it catapaults them into the middle of a murder investigation in the sleepy Surrey village where he’s been recovering.

    With skeletons falling out of every closet, and lives upended everywhere they turn, what will they do when another body shows up, and both Sarah and Bas are implicated?

    I got an ARC of Dianna Gunn‘s Gothic Fantasy novel, Woman of Sorrow and Blood. This is a sensuous, bisexual, sapphic vampire tale, set in richly built world of pleasure, pain, and power. I really enjoyed it, and read it fairly quickly; poor Alma is not very quick on the uptake, bless her, but there’s a decent climax and I was very satisfied with the ending. This one squeaked in right at the end of the month; I just finished it in time for this post! Read my full review.

    When 18-year-old Alma is invited to live with Nightfather and pursue the Pleasures of Power, she’s determined to win his affection and ultimate gift: eternal life.

    Yet life in the House of Night is not what she expected. Nightfather spends all of his time alone with Nightmother, leaving his second wife to rule with an iron fist. The servants brought from Alma’s home are hollowed out versions of their former selves. Others—including Alma’s own mentor—have disappeared entirely.

    Alma buries her suspicions and throws herself into attending to the Daughter of Night, an extraordinary woman who requires special care.

    When Nightfather calls upon Alma at last, she begins to see that his eternity is not a reward but a trap—and that it is not him, but the woman he calls his daughter, that her heart longs for. But tragedy lurks in every corner, and sometimes the only escape is death.

    Once Upon A Song by Nadine Bells – an ARC Read from Quill & Crow Publishing. I got into this book a lot more from the midpoint, and as it took off into the resolution and climax, I really enjoyed it. This Snow Queen retelling was fairly well done, although there were elements I personally didn’t vibe with. If you’re looking for a quick, lightweight and entertaining Gothic read, this is one to look out for and pre-order from your local store or library. Read my full review.

    Welcome to the Hôtel de Neige. Let yourself be swept away by its grandeur and glamor, but beware…the cold may swallow you whole.

    When lonely waitress Ana lands a job as a singer at the prestigious Hôtel de Neige, she believes it to be the beginning of her fairytale. Yet she soon finds that in those eerie halls, the line between Cinderella story and Gothic nightmare blurs. Sinister dreams cause her to sleepwalk, a ballerina makes ominous threats, and a phantom in white haunts the hotel—and Ana.

    As Ana discovers that the hotel’s last singer lost his life under mysterious circumstances, she needs to decide if happily-ever-after is worth it. She knows she cannot trust her secretive colleagues or the charming but elusive hotel manager, Dimitri. All Ana ever wanted was to belong, but at the Hôtel de Neige, that may mean never leaving again…

    The Dreaming of Man by Nikoline Kaiser. I got a copy from Neon Hemlock Press.

    I love “Innsmouth” stories, and this is one of the better ones for sure. It has a trans man protagonist and plays with Shakespeare as well.

    “An eerie, anxious read, crawling with tentacles of loss, regret, and uncanny coincidence. Nikoline Kaiser’s voice recalls the timbre of a rotting, bygone place and time while remaining fresh and crisp. A true joy for lovers of the weird!” —A.Z. Louise, author of Off-Time Jive

    After receiving a letter telling him terrible news, Doctor Lawrence Cooper visits the small harbor-town Osmund in search of answers. Though something is clearly wrong there, Lawrence keeps finding reasons to stay: the sake of a young girl he meets, and to get to the bottom of his one-time lover’s suspicious death.

    And the longer he stays, the more Lawrence is drawn into Osmund’s peculiar mysteries.

    Cover Illustration by JJ Epping.

    Death Valley Blooms by S.M. Mack is an interesting novella out with Neon Hemlock Press, a queer ecohorror about the inevitability of the landscape and the desert claiming its dues. It’s a tragic meditation on bodily autonomy and the survival of a landscape that uses humanity to thrive, but will outlast them.

    “Death Valley Blooms is a breathtaking, atmospheric novella that explores hard-hitting topics such as gendered inheritance, mourning, and sacrifice with an impressively light touch. S.M. Mack’s writing is full of humor and sobriety, which held my attention from start to finish. If you enjoy stories that bridge meditative, slice-of-life scenes with fast-paced action, this book will not disappoint.” — Liza Wemakor, author of Loving Safoa

    Every decade or so, vast quantities and varieties of wildflowers bloom all at once in Death Valley. But unbeknownst to the wider world, these super blooms are powered by a woman’s life. Mar Ramse lost her mother to Death Valley as a teenager and would give anything to break her family’s curse, but now the desert whispers its call to her. However, she still has a single ace up her sleeve: neither she nor her brother will ever have children. Is it enough for the desert to release its grip on her family? 

    Cover illustration by Rose Meyer. Cover design by dave ring.

    Some classics in here, and new content by narrator Ian Gordon. This is a compilation of a number of stories, and Vol 1 is available on YouTube.

    I have not finished this one yet.

    The HorrorBabble podcast is one I’m listening to a lot, just to get a short story fix as that’s all I can really concentrate on currently. I don’t enjoy every classic story they read out, but I really like the range of tales I’m listening to and the classic authors I’m able to access via their podcast. I usually listen before bed for an hour or two, or while I’m doing housework or something.

    Click for the list of HorrorBabble episodes I’ve listened to: short stories by classic horror and weird fiction authors, with their runtime (min:sec). I have highlighted my favourites.

    “Two Black Bottles” by H.P. Lovecraft & Wilfrid Branch Talman (29:51)

    “The Dance of Death” by Algernon Blackwood (25:04)

    “The House of Cards: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (33:42)

    “The Red Room” by H.G. Wells (26:06)

    “The Spectre Priestess of Wrightstone” by Herman F. Wright (13:26)

    “A Ghost/The Tale of a Haunted Chateau” by Guy de Maupassant (16:47)

    “Mr. Hyde-and-Seek: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (24:14)

    “Stranger at Dusk” by Malcolm Murchie (42:16)

    “The Mandrakes” by Clark Ashton Smith (17:13)

    “The Lurking Fear” by H.P. Lovecraft (54:44)

    “The Gateway of the Monster: A Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder Story” by William Hope Hodgson (51:20)

    “The Horror from the Mound” by Robert E. Howard (45:19)

    “The Thing from the Barrens” by Jim Kjelgaard (37:00)

    “Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce (17:31)

    “The Crawling Chaos” by H.P. Lovecraft (20:09)

    “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”, by M.R. James (45:57) – listened to x2 because it’s so funny.

    “A Suspicious Gift” by Algernon Blackwood (26:38)

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (38:28)

    “Catnip” by Robert Bloch (27:06)

    “To Build a Fire” by Jack London (38:32)

    “The Hound” by H.P. Lovecraft (21:55)

    “An Unnatural Feud” by Norman Douglas (35:20)

    “Caterpillars” by E.F. Benson (19:23)

    “The Shining Pyramid” by Arthur Machen (52:30)

    TV Shows & Mini Series

    I’ve highlighted the shows I’ve really enjoyed this month, and listed the other shows I watched below the highlights. The highlighted ones are my favourite watches. Expand the details of my other watches below these, so you can see the other shows & random Marple/Poirot episodes I watched.

    Started the month catching up on Fallout (2024-), created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet
    and Graham Wagner, which I loved.

    Absolutely amazing. One of my oldest friends has been a massive fan of the games for years, and when we were housemates he had a display cabinet of the figures in our living room – those were my introduction to the games and the world! I’m not fully caught up yet.

    In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.

    Year of the Rabbit (2019) an 8-part mini-series directed by Ben Taylor and written by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley that got cancelled over funding issues. It is a rewatch and a comfort watch, as it makes me laugh out loud every episode.

    Mabel (Susan Wokoma) demanding to be made a policewoman/Lady Fuzz: “When you adopted me you said you wanted the best for me!!”

    Chief Inspector (Alun Armstrong): “I was mostly thinking about hats!”

    Detective Inspector Rabbit, a dedicated, tough, thick, and oft-inebriated Victorian copper, sleuths his way across London with his two young partners: a doofy rookie and a brilliant Black policewoman no one ever believes.

    Haunted Hotel (2025-) is a rewatch, another comfort show! I hope there’ll be another season soon. Just a really fun cartoon, with lots of family scares.


    A single mom with two kids operates a haunted hotel, aided by her late brother’s ghost who believes they can have ingenious ideas despite his ethereal state.

    West Country Tales (1982-1983). I loved the 9 available episodes I saw on YouTube, I think these are the only ones left out of the 14 that were aired.

    This post, Remembering West Country Tales, has a full episode breakdown, including the missing episodes, courtesy of Steve Calvert.

    I’ve listed the 9 episodes below, with each title linked to the YouTube video! Click to expand.

    The Poacher – I liked how slow this was, just like you were listening to an older man in the pub tell you a story from his younger days. It did keep me interested all the way to the end, and I really liked the idea of meeting Pan/the Devil in the woods.

    The Breakdown – I switched my brain off for this one and didn’t try to guess where it was going, but just sort of let it carry me onwards. The twist is an obvious one, and it’s based on a fairly common/well-known urban legend (or rural legend?) but it’s one I liked. Not scary at all, just good company and a bit unsettling.

    White Bird of Laughter Tor – this is a sad one, based on another fairly well-told folktale (I think, or ballad – but anyway I’ve heard a few variants of this one before) of a poor girl and her ill-fated romance. You have the sense of sad dread as you know where it’s going.

    The Visitor – not a pleasant one, concerning two women and their competition for the life and love of a little toddler. A mother’s fear of usurpation, but also of the dangers posed by the people closest to you, regarding your child.

    The Beast – I watched this one first, and really enjoyed it. It was a great episode. It’s much more folk horror in essence, and has the elements of the Beast of Bodmin Moor about it, much more of a Creature Feature than the others.

    Miss Constantine – my personal favourite. This starts off with a dreamy vibe, where you meet an old lady who seems to be confused, perhaps has Alzheimers or dementia, and believes that she is being harrassed by ‘the young people from the Social’, who have moved into her home and refuse to leave. There is, of course, nobody there; at least, nobody the local vicar can see… or is there?

    With Love, Belinda – a very sad one about the loss of a child, and its impact on the parents and surviving sister, Belinda. The ghostly return of the little boy heralds a series of strange happenings and a change in Belinda’s behaviour, causing the mother especially great distress. The ending, however, is not tragic, and rather sweet.

    To Wit To Woo – a medieval tale of an unloved wife, who is tricked by a witch into various methods of making her husband love her. This one was sad and also funny, but I just felt really sorry for the poor woman.

    Ring a Ring a Rosy – a feral autistic-coded girl who likes to kill things occasionally, out of curiosity, gets herself a boyfriend, and her mother starts worrying about the lad’s safety after they appear to have an argument and he disappears. But is she worried about the right thing? I didn’t know how to feel about this one, but it’s another sad one.

    Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials (2026), created/written for the screen by Chris Chibnall and directed by Chris Sweeney, is a 3-part drama that just got released on UK Netflix, and I really loved it. In fact, it’s given me some thoughts about parent/child dynamics I’d like to write, or at least think about. It’s very silly fun, which I’m fully on board with.

    In 1925, a country house party prank turns deadly. Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent investigates the chilling murder plot. Lady Caterham and Superintendent Battle assist in solving the country house mystery that changes Bundle’s life.

    Miss Scarlet and The Duke (2020-) created by Rachael New, is a fun Victorian-era detective show I like to both rewatch and catch up on. I really love the period lady detective genre, like Miss Fisher, and Miss Scarlet has a few seasons under its belt to go through. S06 came out in December; I’ve watched up to S05.

    When Eliza Scarlet’s father dies, he leaves her penniless, but she resolves to continue his detective agency. To operate in a male-dominated world, though, she needs a partner – step forward a detective known as the Duke.

    Other Episodes & Mini-Series watched (click the + sign to expand)

    These aren’t all in the order I watched them; I’ve grouped the Marple and Poirot episodes together, bookending the list. It’s all a bit random but it made some weird sense to me when I was typing this up.

    • Miss Marple: The Body in the Library (1984) dir. Silvio Narizzano, screenplay by T.R. Bowen. I do love the old Miss Marple series with Joan Hickson, and this is one I’ve seen so many times. This was originally a 3-part mini-series, but it’s available now in one single feature. It’s not my favourite book either, but it’s one I’ve re-read a lot.
    • Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Body in the Library (2004) dir. Andy Wilson, dramatised by Kevin Elyot. They very bravely* changed the ending of this one, and departed from the original reveal to bring it up-to-date, but this just succeeds in falling into the ‘evil lesbians’ trope, preying on younger girls. Still, sapphics on screen in 2004… I don’t enjoy the Bantrys’ dynamics as much in this one, either. We can still be feminists looking for women to be their own people, and love our husbands very much. Overall, I think I prefer T.R. Bowen’s adaptation.

      *I am British, this is not a compliment
    • Miss Marple: A Murder is Announced (1985) dir. David Giles, dramatised by Alan Plater. I prefer the way the book character Mitzi is treated in this dramatisation, name changed here to Hannah which makes her not only Eastern European but Jewish-coded, although she is not explicitly Jewish in the text or in the episode. Even so, there’s a lot of anti-Eastern European prejudice in evidence. It’s a good adaptation though, and has one of my favourite lesbian-coded couples as ‘companions’. Also, so many autistic-coded women in this one. A village full of them.
    • Miss Marple: Pocket full of Rye (1985) dir. Guy Slater, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. The nursery rhyme one! Originally a 2-parter, and then shown as a single feature-length episode. It has one of my favourite character actors, Selina Cadell, as Mary Dove. Sadly, this one is really forgettable, except for the nursery rhyme killings.
    • Miss Marple: Nemesis (1987) dir. David Tucker, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. This is a good story, and one I haven’t seen a lot. I really enjoyed it, and it has a good few twists and turns. I love the three sisters, the random bus tour of historic homes and gardens, the locations used, and also Miss Marple having a nap on a bench. She’s elderly, let her sleep in a garden and stop bothering her with ice cream cornets.
    • Mrs Amworth (1975) dir. Alvin Rakoff. Based on the E.F. Benson short story, adapted by Hugh Whitemore. A good ’70s short, 29mins runtime. I really enjoyed this one! I do like the gnat plague heralding the vampire, which is a bit different to the usual vampire fare. I’m not sure what this was part of, I think it was part of a series or anthology originally, but it’s on YouTube as a standalone, courtesy of What the Folk‘s channel.
    • The Lost Will of Dr Rant (1951) dir. Laurence Schwab Jr., based on M.R. James’s story, The Tractate Middoth, and dramatised by Doris Halman. 30mins runtime. This is a US production, and possibly the first time that an M.R. James story was adapted for the screen! It was for the “Lights Out” series, and it’s pretty good. I really liked it, and it still stands up against the 2013 Mark Gatiss adaptation.
    • The Incredible Dr Baldick: Never Come Night (1972) dir. Cyril Coke. Another one courtesy of the What the Folk YouTube channel, this was the pilot of a series that never got aired/made, and is now a standalone feature. It seems that Terry Nation, its creator, wanted to replace Dr Who‘s Doctor with a folk horror version who went around the country in his steam train The Tzar, a mobile home and laboratory, solving paranormal mysteries. It stars Robert Hardy in the titular role, and I’m really sad this was never a series as planned. The pilot is really worth a watch.
    • Stones (1976) dir. Graham Evans. An episode of The Mind Beyond (BBC2 Playhouse), focused on the weird properties and then-shadowy history of Stonehenge. Available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. This one is a full hour. Lots of stuff around ancient languages and the connection between written langauge and druidic power. It’s a bit dry for me, centering on a Tory minister’s scheme to move Stonehenge to London’s Hyde Park, and the subsequent discovery of an ancient language hidden on the spines of a 3-volume 17thC set of books about the stone circle. It has some positive Welsh rep in it, which is a nice change, and picks up towards the end with the involvement of the children.
    • A Place to Die (1973) dir. Peter Jefferies. This is a Thriller episode, Season 1 Episode 7, available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. Creepy rural English village alert! This is a pre-Wicker Man folk horror, in which the lovely doctor’s wife, Tessa Nelson (Alexandra Hay), becomes the focus of the villagers’ obsession, and uncovers a sinister cult at work.
    • Poirot: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook (1989) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I had no idea these were 1980s, I had them in my head as all being 2000s! But no – this is one of the much earlier episodes, and Suchet ran as Poirot for a hugely long time, 1989-2013. I enjoy the early series, for sure. I liked Exton’s original ghost story for Ghost Stories for Christmas, Stigma (1977), and this adaptation manages to be domestic and fun, and held our attention. This was a birthday watch since we were too ill to go and celebrate as planned. We stayed in and watched Seven Dials on Netflix, and then some Poirot. NOTE: Some very dated casual racism (towards Chinese immigrants).
    • Poirot: Triangle At Rhodes (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Stephen Wakelam. This plot reminds me of Evil Under the Sun, and I get it confused with that one all the time. That’s because, I guess, Evil Under the Sun is the full-length version, while this is a short story. There are the star-crossed couples and the domestic drama between husbands and wives in each, and so they are fairly easy to confuse!
    • Poirot: Problem at Sea (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Clive Exton. Some thoroughly unpleasant people having a terrible time on a cruise, with Hastings and Poirot along for the ride. This is another of the short stories adapted for the first season, which has that glossy bigger budget feel. I did really enjoy the two girls, they were fun.
    • Poirot: The Cornish Mystery (1990) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I liked this one, it’s another short story adaptation, and it works well as a feature. Again, I really enjoy Exton’s scripts and the dynamics he writes, and how Christie’s characters come alive on screen. Poor Mrs Pengelley.

    Films

    My films of January 2026: the highlighted ones with posters are all my top rated watches. I’ve watched a total of 40 films this month, from 1933-2025, and a range of short films and feature-length ones. Letterboxd has counted the 5 Miss Marples I logged as films, but I’ve counted those in my TV show watches, so they don’t appear here.

    Expand the details below this highlighted list to see the full list of films I’ve seen this month! I’ve enjoyed all of them in some way. They aren’t in any particular order.

    Foxes (2011) dir. Lorcan Finnegan. 17mins runtime.

    I loved this little short, on YouTube via the Screen Ireland channel. It’s really atmospheric and unsettling, and I did like the ending. Also: some cracking fox shots, and lovely, eerie shots of the housing estate and its uniformity.

    A young couple trapped in a remote estate of empty houses and shrieking foxes are beckoned from their isolation into a twilight world – a world of the paranormal or perhaps insanity.

    The Sacrifice Game (2023) dir. Jenn Wexler.

    This is one of my favourite Christmas movies, which I didn’t actually watch over Christmas this year (boo to me), but was the first film I watched in 2026. I really love how it ends. If you want to know what I’m like as a person, this film contains most elements I enjoy to watch. Draw your own conclusions.

    This Christmas, raise a little hell.

    Christmas break, 1971. Samantha and Clara, two students who are staying behind for the holidays at their boarding school, must survive the night after the arrival of uninvited visitors.

    Strange Harvest (2024) dir. Stuart Ortiz.

    Mockumentary with interviews and found footage that I really enjoyed. Cosmic horror that is actually well done. New to me.

    He isn’t hiding, he’s waiting.

    Detectives are thrust into a chilling hunt for “Mr. Shiny”—a sadistic serial killer from the past whose return marks the beginning of a new wave of grotesque, otherworldly crimes tied to a dark cosmic force.

    Bring Her Back (2025) dirs. Michael Philippou, Danny Philippou

    I really liked Talk To Me by the same directors, and this one was a real mind fuck as well. Deeply upsetting in places. I had to fast forward scenes, literally can’t watch some of that. Next level diabolical. New to me.

    Family requires sacrifices.

    Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are sent to live with a foster mother, only to learn that she is hiding a terrifying secret.

    Clown in a Cornfield (2025) dir. Eli Craig.

    Based on the Adam Cesare novel. US-set Hot Fuzz with clowns and teen protagonists. Gay rep (yay). Only Black teen in the friend group is the first one to die (boo). Modern teens dying because they don’t know how to use a rotary phone or drive a manual (“stick”) vehicle is so funny to me. Teach your kids these basic life skills.

    Are you a friend of Frendo?

    Quinn and her father have just moved to the quiet town of Kettle Springs hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she discovers a fractured community that has fallen on hard times after the treasured Baypen Corn Syrup Factory burned down. As the locals bicker amongst themselves and tensions boil over, a sinister, grinning figure emerges from the cornfields to cleanse the town of its burdens, one bloody victim at a time.

    Morgiana (1972) dir. Juraj Herz.

    A rewatch for me – Morgiana is the name of the cat, whose fate is a major plot point. I really enjoy this one. We get a lot of cat-eye-view shots as well, moving around the house and seeing things from the cat’s POV.

    Jealous of her vapidly “good” sister’s popularity, poisonous Viktoria doses pretty Klara’s tea with a slow-acting fatal substance. As the latter grows hysterically weak, the former finds success increasingly compromised by guilt, blackmail, and the pesky need to kill others lest she be exposed.

    Dark Waters (1993) dir. Mariano Baino.

    If you enjoyed Soavi’s The Church (1989), this is definitely one for the watchlist. It goes harder in a few places. One of the most disturbing family reunions I’ve seen. New to me, but I’ve rewatched it 3x this month, once with the director’s commentary.

    A New Wave of Horror

    After the death of her father, a young woman travels to a remote convent on an island in the Black Sea to find out why her father funded it for years.

    O’r Ddaear Hen/From the Old Earth (1981) dir. Wil Aaron.

    LEAVE THINGS ALONE school of horror, which deserves its place here for its place in Welsh cinema history, as much as for its addition to the 1980s weird films, like the Tales of the West Country series. New to me.

    As William Jones digs in the garden of his council house he finds a strange looking stone head. During the night his wife has horrible dreams, forcing William to move the head out of the house. In turn, he takes the head to an archaeologist at Bangor University who is an expert on Celtic artefacts and trying to dig up the remains of the Celts elsewhere. In order to try and understand the head, he goes home with her but things start to go wrong at night there as well, bringing the horrors of a half-human half-animal creature to the housewives. One by one the archaeologist’s family is horrified leading to death and another sacrifice to the ancient gods of the Celts.

    The Endless (2017) dirs. Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson.

    I like this duo – I enjoyed Spring (2014), and I think this film is even better. It might be one of my favourite timey-wimey cosmic horror Sci-Fi films now. New to me.

    Time is a prison.

    Two brothers return to the cult they fled from years ago to discover that the group’s beliefs may be more sane than they once thought.

    King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) dir. Guy Ritchie.

    This is a comfort rewatch of my favourite Arthurian film. It has everything I enjoy about Ritchie films, plus it’s an action-fantasy. Arthur’s basically a gangster, which is all kings really are. This is actually my (almost) perfect fantasy film. Himself reckons Guy Ritchie should do a version of Preiddeu Annwn/The Spoils of Annwn, which is literally a heist story. That would be amazing.

    From nothing comes a King

    When the child Arthur’s father is murdered, Vortigern, Arthur’s uncle, seizes the crown. Robbed of his birthright and with no idea who he truly is, Arthur comes up the hard way in the back alleys of the city. But once he pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone, his life is turned upside down and he is forced to acknowledge his true legacy… whether he likes it or not.

    Underwater (2020) dir. William Eubank.

    Another comfort rewatch, which I really enjoy. This one did the deep sea walk across the seabed being attacked by monsters before Meg 2. This is a Cthulhu/Deep Ones mythos film, one of THE best entries into that subgenre made so far.

    7 miles below the ocean surface something has awakened

    After an earthquake destroys their underwater station, six researchers must navigate two miles along the dangerous, unknown depths of the ocean floor to make it to safety in a race against time.

    Crow Hollow (1952) dir. Michael McCarthy.

    A new-to-me British Gothic thriller, with a blushing bride (she’s known him a week), and three batty old aunts to contend with. My favourite genre of British Gothic is three old women up to no good. Available on YouTube.

    A new bride tries to survive multiple attempts on her life in a dark mansion, while her husband refuses to believe that she in danger.

    Panna a Netvor/Beauty and the Beast (1978) dir. Juraj Herz.

    A favourite comfort watch, and one I finally own on disc. I love it so much.

    I have so much to say about this, but I won’t do that here, I’ll save that for a full post or something.

    Julie, the youngest daughter of a bankrupt merchant, sacrifices her life in order to save her father. She goes to an enchanted castle in the woods and meets Netvor, a bird-like monster. As Netvor begins to fall in love with Julie, he must suppress his beastly urge to kill her.

    The Bench (2024) dir. Sean Wilkie.

    This is an indie Scottish film that took 17 years to make, and finally got snapped up by Amazon. I have to say, I really enjoyed it. It’s a good old-fashioned slasher, made by people who clearly like slashers, and there are lots of nice moments and meta nods in it.

    The twist is fairly predictable, but I don’t need it to be clever, I just want a fun 75mins of people having relationship drama then running around and screaming. Both our killer (Gareth Hunter) and my hero Tommy (Chris Somerville) were very Ricky-coded to me. Any film where I say “That’s my son!” twice gets an extra star.

    Over 300,000 people go missing in the UK every year. Most are never found.

    A breakdown. A kind invitation. A cabin with a bloody past. Alex and her newfound friends face a nightmarish reality as they are picked off one by one, drawn to the sinister bench below. Inspired by low-budget horror films of the 1970s.

    An Cailleach Bhéarra (2007) dir. Naomi Wilson. 8mins runtime. Available on YouTube via Screen Ireland’s channel.

    A lovely 8min folklore short, with a large scale puppet and some great animation.

    “The Cailleach was dependent on this one thing… every hundred years she must get back to the water and immerse herself so that she might become young again.”

    This film is an interpretation of fragments of the ancient myth of the “cailleach”, old hag, otherworld female, mother earth, sovereignty queen, or witch. Told using a large scale puppet and actors moving through real landscape.

    Other Films Watched

    Films and standalone shorts watched in January (click to expand)
    • Until Dawn (2025) dir. David F. Sandberg. It’s based on a video game I haven’t played but can see the appeal of. I really liked the aesthetics of the house, the monster design, and the concept. I also enjoyed the dynamics between the characters, but I lost interest in the middle.
    • It Feeds (2025) dir. Chad Archibald. This is like a darker, feature-length film version of the US show, Medium. It has a very strong mother/daughter relationship and a good ending, fine for an afternoon viewing, but I don’t think I’d watch this again.
    • The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras (2023) dir. Craig Williams. 17min runtime, a really good short film. We don’t see the wyrm herself, but hopefully we all know what a wyrm/really big fucking snake-dragon looks like. I would watch this short film again.
    • The Innsmouth School for Girls (2023) dir. Joshua Kennedy. This is a rewatch, not a favourite or anything, but sometimes I get an urge to watch it again. It’s one of the better Deep Ones/Innsmouth entries, and I think it’s definitely worth a look.
    • Dark Light (2019) dir. Padraig Reynolds. This is a rewatch – again, not a highlighted favourite, but one I occasionally feel in the mood for. It’s a pretty competent Sci-Fi-Horror, with monstrous humanoids rather than aliens, and I do enjoy the central mother-daughter drama.
    • The Barbarians (1987) dir. Ruggero Deodato. A rewatch – accidental, I was doing stuff with the TV on in the background, this came on, and I didn’t turn it off and ended up watching the whole thing. As entertaining as the last time, not one I would ever dedicate my concentration to, but it’s ’80s Sword and Sorcery for comforting background company on a rainy day.
    • The Spiritualist/The Amazing Mr. X (1948) dir. Bernard Vorhaus. I liked this one; I watched it for Turhan Bey and Lynn Bari. It’s a good psychological, Supernatural Explained noir, although for goodness sake her husband has only been dead for two years and everyone is pressuring her to move on and remarry, leave her alone. Westerners not knowing how to process grief is not a 21stC phenomenon. Available on YouTube.
    • The Return (1973) dir. Sture Rydman. 30mins runtime, a made-for-TV British short; this is a pretty good Gothic ghost story, very atmospheric and melodramatic. It is based on stories by A.M. Burrage and Ambrose Bierce. A 2-person cast, which really works for the atmosphere and sense of claustrophobia in the house setting. Available on YouTube.
    • The Ghoul (1933) dir. T. Hayes Hunter. This one made me laugh, I did enjoy it for 80mins of excitable young people shouting at each other. Is it culturally sensitive to anyone? No, not in the least. I really liked the enemies-to-partnership thing the cousins had going on, though; Betty was great. This is what 1930s feminism looked like.
    • Moss Rose (1947) dir. Gregory Ratoff. An absolutely wild melodrama murder mystery/thriller, with Vincent Price as a policeman, and the worst faux-Cockney accents I have ever heard. Some fascinating class discussion though.
    • Darklands (1996) dir. Julian Richards. I watched this again for a review I’m writing for Divination Hollow, and to see how the Director’s Cut (6min shorter) fares against the original version I watched in 2023, the year the Cut was released. This is… something. I have a whole post on it already, where I missed the antisemitism of the Lilith imagery of a character called Rebecca, on top of everything else it’s doing. Anyway, the new essay on this will be potentially cross-posted, but Divination Hollow will get it first.
    • Deváté srdce/The Ninth Heart (1979) dir. Juraj Herz. The third Herz film I’ve seen this month, this is one I also own on disc (thanks to the Severin Films Folk Horror Compendium). I didn’t like this as much as Panna a Netvor, but the hair was amazing. I don’t think it was a highlighted watch for me, but I do think I’ll be watching it again, and maybe this will grow on me.
    • The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) dir. Roger Corman. I’m not a massive Poe fan but I do like his work, and I do like a few of the adaptations of it. This is much more of a comfort rewatch for me just because of Vincent Price. I know there are loads of versions of it and I haven’t seen them all, but this is not a bad film. It was written by Richard Matheson, and I tend to enjoy his scripts.
    • A Child’s Voice (1978) dir. Kieran Hickey. An Irish made-for-TV short, 29mins runtime. Very much in the vein of Ghost Stories for Christmas, and strongly reminiscent of Mark Gatiss’s original story, The Dead Room (2018) which has a very similar premise and main character. It was a one-off, not part of a series or anthology, and only shown on UK TV once in the 1980s.
    • The Circle (2017) dir. Peter Callow. I’ve seen this one before and I vaguely remembered it was low budget and not awful, and I fancied the folk horror feels. It’s a Scottish set one, and I want to watch more Scottish horror where possible, like The Isle, Get Duked!, Dog Soldiers, Outcast, and Little Bone Lodge. The Irish horror scene is really flourishing, but Wales and Scotland are behind. A lot of that is budget and investment, so I’m on the lookout for more films by Scottish filmmakers. I don’t know if Callow is Scottish, but it does make some good use of the landscape and isolation of the islands!
    • Tattiebogle (2017) dir. Douglas Kyle. Made for £101.99, this was the start of a rabbithole I fell into while looking for more Scottish Horror. Douglas Kyle seems to have a production company, ChaosBox Productions, which has a YouTube Channel. He has a 62-episode no-budget Sci-Fi series, The Pandora Men, and several features and shorts. This is one of the features, made over 8 days in the cast & crew’s spare time. I really appreciate no-budget / microbudget films made by people having a lot of fun, and this is absolutely that. It’s an ecohorror/folk horror slasher, made in Aberdeenshire.
    • The Ghillie Dhu (2024) dir. Douglas Kyle. His latest short feature, roughly 37mins runtime. This attempts to be about anxiety disorder and, I guess, the horror of being consumed by your traumas and disorders, married with the Scottish folktale of the Ghillie Dhu.
    • The Yird Swine (2020) dir. Douglas Kyle. This isn’t on Letterboxd yet, I need to add it. The link is to IMDB instead. This has the same core cast, with another cast member from The Pandora Men series, Myla Corvidae (he/they), originally from Cardiff! This was a fun one too. The pacing wasn’t as good as Tattiebogle, but I really liked it. Everyone was obviously really enjoying themselves making it. I think if you’re into this side of amateur indie filmmaking, you should check out these films.

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    December 2025 Media Round-Up

    My monthly media round-up for December 2025 – all the books, podcasts, tv shows, and films I read/listened to/watched this month.

    by cmrosensDecember 30, 2025December 29, 2025

    November 2025 Media Round-Up

    I’m starting a new monthly series where I post a round-up of all the media I’ve watched/read/listened to for the previous month. Here is November’s media round-up!

    by cmrosensDecember 5, 2025January 26, 2026

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    January 2026 Media Round-Up

    Here’s my January round up of all the media I’ve read/watched/listened to this month! I’m going to try and keep this to the highlights, but I usually DNF things I’m not enjoying and they don’t get counted. Positivity only in this space! …Although the content itself may be not so positive.

    As a bonus, I’m going to let you know my favourite song of the month too. I’ve just switched from Spotify to Qobuz, a music streaming service based in France, as Qobuz pays artists more per track while still costing the same, and also has a much better sound quality. Most of my playlist content has transferred over fine, but the one artist I was devastated is not fully on there yet is Felix Hagan.

    There is one song of his on there currently though: Happy Songs (2025), from the brand new album of the same name which smashed its goal on Kickstarter. I’m really hopeful that the whole album will drop on Qobuz as well.

    Happy Songs by Felix Hagan is definitely my favourite song from the start of the month. LISTEN ON QOBUZ

    As I go on my Qobuz journey, I’ll be looking for new music to replace the tracks I loved to listen to on Spotify but that aren’t on Qobuz yet, and finding (I hope) new obsessions. I’ll be adding this into my media round-up just for fun!

    On to the main event: books, shows, and films. This month I’m experimenting with highlighting my favourites, and listing everything else. I was off sick this month, so there’s a lot of them.

    Books, Audiobooks, Story Podcasts

    These are the highlights of what I’ve read/listened to this month. I’ve been really spoiled for ARCs! That’s one really lovely bonus of offering the author spotlights – the small presses that get in touch with me for their authors sometimes offer a reader copy for me to frame the interview questions around.

    (I never ask for this and I do not expect it, and frankly, I couldn’t ever read one per author! But for the small presses, I know they’re going to be in genres I already like and would want to read, so I often accept these if offered.)

    Best Friends Bury Bodies by C.M. Rosens.

    You know what, I’m counting this. I read this cover-to-cover for the revisions and edits, and it’s a 78K novel, so this is on my round-up.

    When their search for a missing music star leads to murder, how far will his old friends go?

    Midsomer Murders meets The Forty Year Kiss. A contemporary mystery with middle-aged polyamorous bisexual second chance romance.

    Sarah believes she’s happy with her life despite never really dealing with her partner’s sudden death six years ago; her job is fine, her friends are supportive, her girlfriend Sammie is amazing. But when her estranged soulmate, Bas, reaches out after a 12 year absence, Sarah’s carefully cultivated rut is thrown into chaos.

    Her best friends are all for tracking down the prodigal member of their close-knit group, who drifted away from them when he got famous, spiralled into addiction, then disappeared. But finding a long-lost 1990s rock star is the least of their worries, when it catapaults them into the middle of a murder investigation in the sleepy Surrey village where he’s been recovering.

    With skeletons falling out of every closet, and lives upended everywhere they turn, what will they do when another body shows up, and both Sarah and Bas are implicated?

    I got an ARC of Dianna Gunn‘s Gothic Fantasy novel, Woman of Sorrow and Blood. This is a sensuous, bisexual, sapphic vampire tale, set in richly built world of pleasure, pain, and power. I really enjoyed it, and read it fairly quickly; poor Alma is not very quick on the uptake, bless her, but there’s a decent climax and I was very satisfied with the ending. This one squeaked in right at the end of the month; I just finished it in time for this post! Read my full review.

    When 18-year-old Alma is invited to live with Nightfather and pursue the Pleasures of Power, she’s determined to win his affection and ultimate gift: eternal life.

    Yet life in the House of Night is not what she expected. Nightfather spends all of his time alone with Nightmother, leaving his second wife to rule with an iron fist. The servants brought from Alma’s home are hollowed out versions of their former selves. Others—including Alma’s own mentor—have disappeared entirely.

    Alma buries her suspicions and throws herself into attending to the Daughter of Night, an extraordinary woman who requires special care.

    When Nightfather calls upon Alma at last, she begins to see that his eternity is not a reward but a trap—and that it is not him, but the woman he calls his daughter, that her heart longs for. But tragedy lurks in every corner, and sometimes the only escape is death.

    Once Upon A Song by Nadine Bells – an ARC Read from Quill & Crow Publishing. I got into this book a lot more from the midpoint, and as it took off into the resolution and climax, I really enjoyed it. This Snow Queen retelling was fairly well done, although there were elements I personally didn’t vibe with. If you’re looking for a quick, lightweight and entertaining Gothic read, this is one to look out for and pre-order from your local store or library. Read my full review.

    Welcome to the Hôtel de Neige. Let yourself be swept away by its grandeur and glamor, but beware…the cold may swallow you whole.

    When lonely waitress Ana lands a job as a singer at the prestigious Hôtel de Neige, she believes it to be the beginning of her fairytale. Yet she soon finds that in those eerie halls, the line between Cinderella story and Gothic nightmare blurs. Sinister dreams cause her to sleepwalk, a ballerina makes ominous threats, and a phantom in white haunts the hotel—and Ana.

    As Ana discovers that the hotel’s last singer lost his life under mysterious circumstances, she needs to decide if happily-ever-after is worth it. She knows she cannot trust her secretive colleagues or the charming but elusive hotel manager, Dimitri. All Ana ever wanted was to belong, but at the Hôtel de Neige, that may mean never leaving again…

    The Dreaming of Man by Nikoline Kaiser. I got a copy from Neon Hemlock Press.

    I love “Innsmouth” stories, and this is one of the better ones for sure. It has a trans man protagonist and plays with Shakespeare as well.

    “An eerie, anxious read, crawling with tentacles of loss, regret, and uncanny coincidence. Nikoline Kaiser’s voice recalls the timbre of a rotting, bygone place and time while remaining fresh and crisp. A true joy for lovers of the weird!” —A.Z. Louise, author of Off-Time Jive

    After receiving a letter telling him terrible news, Doctor Lawrence Cooper visits the small harbor-town Osmund in search of answers. Though something is clearly wrong there, Lawrence keeps finding reasons to stay: the sake of a young girl he meets, and to get to the bottom of his one-time lover’s suspicious death.

    And the longer he stays, the more Lawrence is drawn into Osmund’s peculiar mysteries.

    Cover Illustration by JJ Epping.

    Death Valley Blooms by S.M. Mack is an interesting novella out with Neon Hemlock Press, a queer ecohorror about the inevitability of the landscape and the desert claiming its dues. It’s a tragic meditation on bodily autonomy and the survival of a landscape that uses humanity to thrive, but will outlast them.

    “Death Valley Blooms is a breathtaking, atmospheric novella that explores hard-hitting topics such as gendered inheritance, mourning, and sacrifice with an impressively light touch. S.M. Mack’s writing is full of humor and sobriety, which held my attention from start to finish. If you enjoy stories that bridge meditative, slice-of-life scenes with fast-paced action, this book will not disappoint.” — Liza Wemakor, author of Loving Safoa

    Every decade or so, vast quantities and varieties of wildflowers bloom all at once in Death Valley. But unbeknownst to the wider world, these super blooms are powered by a woman’s life. Mar Ramse lost her mother to Death Valley as a teenager and would give anything to break her family’s curse, but now the desert whispers its call to her. However, she still has a single ace up her sleeve: neither she nor her brother will ever have children. Is it enough for the desert to release its grip on her family? 

    Cover illustration by Rose Meyer. Cover design by dave ring.

    Some classics in here, and new content by narrator Ian Gordon. This is a compilation of a number of stories, and Vol 1 is available on YouTube.

    I have not finished this one yet.

    The HorrorBabble podcast is one I’m listening to a lot, just to get a short story fix as that’s all I can really concentrate on currently. I don’t enjoy every classic story they read out, but I really like the range of tales I’m listening to and the classic authors I’m able to access via their podcast. I usually listen before bed for an hour or two, or while I’m doing housework or something.

    Click for the list of HorrorBabble episodes I’ve listened to: short stories by classic horror and weird fiction authors, with their runtime (min:sec). I have highlighted my favourites.

    “Two Black Bottles” by H.P. Lovecraft & Wilfrid Branch Talman (29:51)

    “The Dance of Death” by Algernon Blackwood (25:04)

    “The House of Cards: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (33:42)

    “The Red Room” by H.G. Wells (26:06)

    “The Spectre Priestess of Wrightstone” by Herman F. Wright (13:26)

    “A Ghost/The Tale of a Haunted Chateau” by Guy de Maupassant (16:47)

    “Mr. Hyde-and-Seek: A Thomas Chadwick Story” by Malcolm Ferguson (24:14)

    “Stranger at Dusk” by Malcolm Murchie (42:16)

    “The Mandrakes” by Clark Ashton Smith (17:13)

    “The Lurking Fear” by H.P. Lovecraft (54:44)

    “The Gateway of the Monster: A Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder Story” by William Hope Hodgson (51:20)

    “The Horror from the Mound” by Robert E. Howard (45:19)

    “The Thing from the Barrens” by Jim Kjelgaard (37:00)

    “Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce (17:31)

    “The Crawling Chaos” by H.P. Lovecraft (20:09)

    “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”, by M.R. James (45:57) – listened to x2 because it’s so funny.

    “A Suspicious Gift” by Algernon Blackwood (26:38)

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (38:28)

    “Catnip” by Robert Bloch (27:06)

    “To Build a Fire” by Jack London (38:32)

    “The Hound” by H.P. Lovecraft (21:55)

    “An Unnatural Feud” by Norman Douglas (35:20)

    “Caterpillars” by E.F. Benson (19:23)

    “The Shining Pyramid” by Arthur Machen (52:30)

    TV Shows & Mini Series

    I’ve highlighted the shows I’ve really enjoyed this month, and listed the other shows I watched below the highlights. The highlighted ones are my favourite watches. Expand the details of my other watches below these, so you can see the other shows & random Marple/Poirot episodes I watched.

    Started the month catching up on Fallout (2024-), created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet
    and Graham Wagner, which I loved.

    Absolutely amazing. One of my oldest friends has been a massive fan of the games for years, and when we were housemates he had a display cabinet of the figures in our living room – those were my introduction to the games and the world! I’m not fully caught up yet.

    In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.

    Year of the Rabbit (2019) an 8-part mini-series directed by Ben Taylor and written by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley that got cancelled over funding issues. It is a rewatch and a comfort watch, as it makes me laugh out loud every episode.

    Mabel (Susan Wokoma) demanding to be made a policewoman/Lady Fuzz: “When you adopted me you said you wanted the best for me!!”

    Chief Inspector (Alun Armstrong): “I was mostly thinking about hats!”

    Detective Inspector Rabbit, a dedicated, tough, thick, and oft-inebriated Victorian copper, sleuths his way across London with his two young partners: a doofy rookie and a brilliant Black policewoman no one ever believes.

    Haunted Hotel (2025-) is a rewatch, another comfort show! I hope there’ll be another season soon. Just a really fun cartoon, with lots of family scares.


    A single mom with two kids operates a haunted hotel, aided by her late brother’s ghost who believes they can have ingenious ideas despite his ethereal state.

    West Country Tales (1982-1983). I loved the 9 available episodes I saw on YouTube, I think these are the only ones left out of the 14 that were aired.

    This post, Remembering West Country Tales, has a full episode breakdown, including the missing episodes, courtesy of Steve Calvert.

    I’ve listed the 9 episodes below, with each title linked to the YouTube video! Click to expand.

    The Poacher – I liked how slow this was, just like you were listening to an older man in the pub tell you a story from his younger days. It did keep me interested all the way to the end, and I really liked the idea of meeting Pan/the Devil in the woods.

    The Breakdown – I switched my brain off for this one and didn’t try to guess where it was going, but just sort of let it carry me onwards. The twist is an obvious one, and it’s based on a fairly common/well-known urban legend (or rural legend?) but it’s one I liked. Not scary at all, just good company and a bit unsettling.

    White Bird of Laughter Tor – this is a sad one, based on another fairly well-told folktale (I think, or ballad – but anyway I’ve heard a few variants of this one before) of a poor girl and her ill-fated romance. You have the sense of sad dread as you know where it’s going.

    The Visitor – not a pleasant one, concerning two women and their competition for the life and love of a little toddler. A mother’s fear of usurpation, but also of the dangers posed by the people closest to you, regarding your child.

    The Beast – I watched this one first, and really enjoyed it. It was a great episode. It’s much more folk horror in essence, and has the elements of the Beast of Bodmin Moor about it, much more of a Creature Feature than the others.

    Miss Constantine – my personal favourite. This starts off with a dreamy vibe, where you meet an old lady who seems to be confused, perhaps has Alzheimers or dementia, and believes that she is being harrassed by ‘the young people from the Social’, who have moved into her home and refuse to leave. There is, of course, nobody there; at least, nobody the local vicar can see… or is there?

    With Love, Belinda – a very sad one about the loss of a child, and its impact on the parents and surviving sister, Belinda. The ghostly return of the little boy heralds a series of strange happenings and a change in Belinda’s behaviour, causing the mother especially great distress. The ending, however, is not tragic, and rather sweet.

    To Wit To Woo – a medieval tale of an unloved wife, who is tricked by a witch into various methods of making her husband love her. This one was sad and also funny, but I just felt really sorry for the poor woman.

    Ring a Ring a Rosy – a feral autistic-coded girl who likes to kill things occasionally, out of curiosity, gets herself a boyfriend, and her mother starts worrying about the lad’s safety after they appear to have an argument and he disappears. But is she worried about the right thing? I didn’t know how to feel about this one, but it’s another sad one.

    Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials (2026), created/written for the screen by Chris Chibnall and directed by Chris Sweeney, is a 3-part drama that just got released on UK Netflix, and I really loved it. In fact, it’s given me some thoughts about parent/child dynamics I’d like to write, or at least think about. It’s very silly fun, which I’m fully on board with.

    In 1925, a country house party prank turns deadly. Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent investigates the chilling murder plot. Lady Caterham and Superintendent Battle assist in solving the country house mystery that changes Bundle’s life.

    Miss Scarlet and The Duke (2020-) created by Rachael New, is a fun Victorian-era detective show I like to both rewatch and catch up on. I really love the period lady detective genre, like Miss Fisher, and Miss Scarlet has a few seasons under its belt to go through. S06 came out in December; I’ve watched up to S05.

    When Eliza Scarlet’s father dies, he leaves her penniless, but she resolves to continue his detective agency. To operate in a male-dominated world, though, she needs a partner – step forward a detective known as the Duke.

    Other Episodes & Mini-Series watched (click the + sign to expand)

    These aren’t all in the order I watched them; I’ve grouped the Marple and Poirot episodes together, bookending the list. It’s all a bit random but it made some weird sense to me when I was typing this up.

    • Miss Marple: The Body in the Library (1984) dir. Silvio Narizzano, screenplay by T.R. Bowen. I do love the old Miss Marple series with Joan Hickson, and this is one I’ve seen so many times. This was originally a 3-part mini-series, but it’s available now in one single feature. It’s not my favourite book either, but it’s one I’ve re-read a lot.
    • Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Body in the Library (2004) dir. Andy Wilson, dramatised by Kevin Elyot. They very bravely* changed the ending of this one, and departed from the original reveal to bring it up-to-date, but this just succeeds in falling into the ‘evil lesbians’ trope, preying on younger girls. Still, sapphics on screen in 2004… I don’t enjoy the Bantrys’ dynamics as much in this one, either. We can still be feminists looking for women to be their own people, and love our husbands very much. Overall, I think I prefer T.R. Bowen’s adaptation.

      *I am British, this is not a compliment
    • Miss Marple: A Murder is Announced (1985) dir. David Giles, dramatised by Alan Plater. I prefer the way the book character Mitzi is treated in this dramatisation, name changed here to Hannah which makes her not only Eastern European but Jewish-coded, although she is not explicitly Jewish in the text or in the episode. Even so, there’s a lot of anti-Eastern European prejudice in evidence. It’s a good adaptation though, and has one of my favourite lesbian-coded couples as ‘companions’. Also, so many autistic-coded women in this one. A village full of them.
    • Miss Marple: Pocket full of Rye (1985) dir. Guy Slater, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. The nursery rhyme one! Originally a 2-parter, and then shown as a single feature-length episode. It has one of my favourite character actors, Selina Cadell, as Mary Dove. Sadly, this one is really forgettable, except for the nursery rhyme killings.
    • Miss Marple: Nemesis (1987) dir. David Tucker, dramatised by T.R. Bowen. This is a good story, and one I haven’t seen a lot. I really enjoyed it, and it has a good few twists and turns. I love the three sisters, the random bus tour of historic homes and gardens, the locations used, and also Miss Marple having a nap on a bench. She’s elderly, let her sleep in a garden and stop bothering her with ice cream cornets.
    • Mrs Amworth (1975) dir. Alvin Rakoff. Based on the E.F. Benson short story, adapted by Hugh Whitemore. A good ’70s short, 29mins runtime. I really enjoyed this one! I do like the gnat plague heralding the vampire, which is a bit different to the usual vampire fare. I’m not sure what this was part of, I think it was part of a series or anthology originally, but it’s on YouTube as a standalone, courtesy of What the Folk‘s channel.
    • The Lost Will of Dr Rant (1951) dir. Laurence Schwab Jr., based on M.R. James’s story, The Tractate Middoth, and dramatised by Doris Halman. 30mins runtime. This is a US production, and possibly the first time that an M.R. James story was adapted for the screen! It was for the “Lights Out” series, and it’s pretty good. I really liked it, and it still stands up against the 2013 Mark Gatiss adaptation.
    • The Incredible Dr Baldick: Never Come Night (1972) dir. Cyril Coke. Another one courtesy of the What the Folk YouTube channel, this was the pilot of a series that never got aired/made, and is now a standalone feature. It seems that Terry Nation, its creator, wanted to replace Dr Who‘s Doctor with a folk horror version who went around the country in his steam train The Tzar, a mobile home and laboratory, solving paranormal mysteries. It stars Robert Hardy in the titular role, and I’m really sad this was never a series as planned. The pilot is really worth a watch.
    • Stones (1976) dir. Graham Evans. An episode of The Mind Beyond (BBC2 Playhouse), focused on the weird properties and then-shadowy history of Stonehenge. Available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. This one is a full hour. Lots of stuff around ancient languages and the connection between written langauge and druidic power. It’s a bit dry for me, centering on a Tory minister’s scheme to move Stonehenge to London’s Hyde Park, and the subsequent discovery of an ancient language hidden on the spines of a 3-volume 17thC set of books about the stone circle. It has some positive Welsh rep in it, which is a nice change, and picks up towards the end with the involvement of the children.
    • A Place to Die (1973) dir. Peter Jefferies. This is a Thriller episode, Season 1 Episode 7, available on YouTube via What the Folk‘s channel. Creepy rural English village alert! This is a pre-Wicker Man folk horror, in which the lovely doctor’s wife, Tessa Nelson (Alexandra Hay), becomes the focus of the villagers’ obsession, and uncovers a sinister cult at work.
    • Poirot: The Adventure of the Clapham Cook (1989) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I had no idea these were 1980s, I had them in my head as all being 2000s! But no – this is one of the much earlier episodes, and Suchet ran as Poirot for a hugely long time, 1989-2013. I enjoy the early series, for sure. I liked Exton’s original ghost story for Ghost Stories for Christmas, Stigma (1977), and this adaptation manages to be domestic and fun, and held our attention. This was a birthday watch since we were too ill to go and celebrate as planned. We stayed in and watched Seven Dials on Netflix, and then some Poirot. NOTE: Some very dated casual racism (towards Chinese immigrants).
    • Poirot: Triangle At Rhodes (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Stephen Wakelam. This plot reminds me of Evil Under the Sun, and I get it confused with that one all the time. That’s because, I guess, Evil Under the Sun is the full-length version, while this is a short story. There are the star-crossed couples and the domestic drama between husbands and wives in each, and so they are fairly easy to confuse!
    • Poirot: Problem at Sea (1989) dir. Renny Rye, adapted by Clive Exton. Some thoroughly unpleasant people having a terrible time on a cruise, with Hastings and Poirot along for the ride. This is another of the short stories adapted for the first season, which has that glossy bigger budget feel. I did really enjoy the two girls, they were fun.
    • Poirot: The Cornish Mystery (1990) dir. Edward Bennett, adapted by Clive Exton. I liked this one, it’s another short story adaptation, and it works well as a feature. Again, I really enjoy Exton’s scripts and the dynamics he writes, and how Christie’s characters come alive on screen. Poor Mrs Pengelley.

    Films

    My films of January 2026: the highlighted ones with posters are all my top rated watches. I’ve watched a total of 40 films this month, from 1933-2025, and a range of short films and feature-length ones. Letterboxd has counted the 5 Miss Marples I logged as films, but I’ve counted those in my TV show watches, so they don’t appear here.

    Expand the details below this highlighted list to see the full list of films I’ve seen this month! I’ve enjoyed all of them in some way. They aren’t in any particular order.

    Foxes (2011) dir. Lorcan Finnegan. 17mins runtime.

    I loved this little short, on YouTube via the Screen Ireland channel. It’s really atmospheric and unsettling, and I did like the ending. Also: some cracking fox shots, and lovely, eerie shots of the housing estate and its uniformity.

    A young couple trapped in a remote estate of empty houses and shrieking foxes are beckoned from their isolation into a twilight world – a world of the paranormal or perhaps insanity.

    The Sacrifice Game (2023) dir. Jenn Wexler.

    This is one of my favourite Christmas movies, which I didn’t actually watch over Christmas this year (boo to me), but was the first film I watched in 2026. I really love how it ends. If you want to know what I’m like as a person, this film contains most elements I enjoy to watch. Draw your own conclusions.

    This Christmas, raise a little hell.

    Christmas break, 1971. Samantha and Clara, two students who are staying behind for the holidays at their boarding school, must survive the night after the arrival of uninvited visitors.

    Strange Harvest (2024) dir. Stuart Ortiz.

    Mockumentary with interviews and found footage that I really enjoyed. Cosmic horror that is actually well done. New to me.

    He isn’t hiding, he’s waiting.

    Detectives are thrust into a chilling hunt for “Mr. Shiny”—a sadistic serial killer from the past whose return marks the beginning of a new wave of grotesque, otherworldly crimes tied to a dark cosmic force.

    Bring Her Back (2025) dirs. Michael Philippou, Danny Philippou

    I really liked Talk To Me by the same directors, and this one was a real mind fuck as well. Deeply upsetting in places. I had to fast forward scenes, literally can’t watch some of that. Next level diabolical. New to me.

    Family requires sacrifices.

    Following the death of their father, a brother and sister are sent to live with a foster mother, only to learn that she is hiding a terrifying secret.

    Clown in a Cornfield (2025) dir. Eli Craig.

    Based on the Adam Cesare novel. US-set Hot Fuzz with clowns and teen protagonists. Gay rep (yay). Only Black teen in the friend group is the first one to die (boo). Modern teens dying because they don’t know how to use a rotary phone or drive a manual (“stick”) vehicle is so funny to me. Teach your kids these basic life skills.

    Are you a friend of Frendo?

    Quinn and her father have just moved to the quiet town of Kettle Springs hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she discovers a fractured community that has fallen on hard times after the treasured Baypen Corn Syrup Factory burned down. As the locals bicker amongst themselves and tensions boil over, a sinister, grinning figure emerges from the cornfields to cleanse the town of its burdens, one bloody victim at a time.

    Morgiana (1972) dir. Juraj Herz.

    A rewatch for me – Morgiana is the name of the cat, whose fate is a major plot point. I really enjoy this one. We get a lot of cat-eye-view shots as well, moving around the house and seeing things from the cat’s POV.

    Jealous of her vapidly “good” sister’s popularity, poisonous Viktoria doses pretty Klara’s tea with a slow-acting fatal substance. As the latter grows hysterically weak, the former finds success increasingly compromised by guilt, blackmail, and the pesky need to kill others lest she be exposed.

    Dark Waters (1993) dir. Mariano Baino.

    If you enjoyed Soavi’s The Church (1989), this is definitely one for the watchlist. It goes harder in a few places. One of the most disturbing family reunions I’ve seen. New to me, but I’ve rewatched it 3x this month, once with the director’s commentary.

    A New Wave of Horror

    After the death of her father, a young woman travels to a remote convent on an island in the Black Sea to find out why her father funded it for years.

    O’r Ddaear Hen/From the Old Earth (1981) dir. Wil Aaron.

    LEAVE THINGS ALONE school of horror, which deserves its place here for its place in Welsh cinema history, as much as for its addition to the 1980s weird films, like the Tales of the West Country series. New to me.

    As William Jones digs in the garden of his council house he finds a strange looking stone head. During the night his wife has horrible dreams, forcing William to move the head out of the house. In turn, he takes the head to an archaeologist at Bangor University who is an expert on Celtic artefacts and trying to dig up the remains of the Celts elsewhere. In order to try and understand the head, he goes home with her but things start to go wrong at night there as well, bringing the horrors of a half-human half-animal creature to the housewives. One by one the archaeologist’s family is horrified leading to death and another sacrifice to the ancient gods of the Celts.

    The Endless (2017) dirs. Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson.

    I like this duo – I enjoyed Spring (2014), and I think this film is even better. It might be one of my favourite timey-wimey cosmic horror Sci-Fi films now. New to me.

    Time is a prison.

    Two brothers return to the cult they fled from years ago to discover that the group’s beliefs may be more sane than they once thought.

    King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) dir. Guy Ritchie.

    This is a comfort rewatch of my favourite Arthurian film. It has everything I enjoy about Ritchie films, plus it’s an action-fantasy. Arthur’s basically a gangster, which is all kings really are. This is actually my (almost) perfect fantasy film. Himself reckons Guy Ritchie should do a version of Preiddeu Annwn/The Spoils of Annwn, which is literally a heist story. That would be amazing.

    From nothing comes a King

    When the child Arthur’s father is murdered, Vortigern, Arthur’s uncle, seizes the crown. Robbed of his birthright and with no idea who he truly is, Arthur comes up the hard way in the back alleys of the city. But once he pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone, his life is turned upside down and he is forced to acknowledge his true legacy… whether he likes it or not.

    Underwater (2020) dir. William Eubank.

    Another comfort rewatch, which I really enjoy. This one did the deep sea walk across the seabed being attacked by monsters before Meg 2. This is a Cthulhu/Deep Ones mythos film, one of THE best entries into that subgenre made so far.

    7 miles below the ocean surface something has awakened

    After an earthquake destroys their underwater station, six researchers must navigate two miles along the dangerous, unknown depths of the ocean floor to make it to safety in a race against time.

    Crow Hollow (1952) dir. Michael McCarthy.

    A new-to-me British Gothic thriller, with a blushing bride (she’s known him a week), and three batty old aunts to contend with. My favourite genre of British Gothic is three old women up to no good. Available on YouTube.

    A new bride tries to survive multiple attempts on her life in a dark mansion, while her husband refuses to believe that she in danger.

    Panna a Netvor/Beauty and the Beast (1978) dir. Juraj Herz.

    A favourite comfort watch, and one I finally own on disc. I love it so much.

    I have so much to say about this, but I won’t do that here, I’ll save that for a full post or something.

    Julie, the youngest daughter of a bankrupt merchant, sacrifices her life in order to save her father. She goes to an enchanted castle in the woods and meets Netvor, a bird-like monster. As Netvor begins to fall in love with Julie, he must suppress his beastly urge to kill her.

    The Bench (2024) dir. Sean Wilkie.

    This is an indie Scottish film that took 17 years to make, and finally got snapped up by Amazon. I have to say, I really enjoyed it. It’s a good old-fashioned slasher, made by people who clearly like slashers, and there are lots of nice moments and meta nods in it.

    The twist is fairly predictable, but I don’t need it to be clever, I just want a fun 75mins of people having relationship drama then running around and screaming. Both our killer (Gareth Hunter) and my hero Tommy (Chris Somerville) were very Ricky-coded to me. Any film where I say “That’s my son!” twice gets an extra star.

    Over 300,000 people go missing in the UK every year. Most are never found.

    A breakdown. A kind invitation. A cabin with a bloody past. Alex and her newfound friends face a nightmarish reality as they are picked off one by one, drawn to the sinister bench below. Inspired by low-budget horror films of the 1970s.

    An Cailleach Bhéarra (2007) dir. Naomi Wilson. 8mins runtime. Available on YouTube via Screen Ireland’s channel.

    A lovely 8min folklore short, with a large scale puppet and some great animation.

    “The Cailleach was dependent on this one thing… every hundred years she must get back to the water and immerse herself so that she might become young again.”

    This film is an interpretation of fragments of the ancient myth of the “cailleach”, old hag, otherworld female, mother earth, sovereignty queen, or witch. Told using a large scale puppet and actors moving through real landscape.

    Other Films Watched

    Films and standalone shorts watched in January (click to expand)
    • Until Dawn (2025) dir. David F. Sandberg. It’s based on a video game I haven’t played but can see the appeal of. I really liked the aesthetics of the house, the monster design, and the concept. I also enjoyed the dynamics between the characters, but I lost interest in the middle.
    • It Feeds (2025) dir. Chad Archibald. This is like a darker, feature-length film version of the US show, Medium. It has a very strong mother/daughter relationship and a good ending, fine for an afternoon viewing, but I don’t think I’d watch this again.
    • The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras (2023) dir. Craig Williams. 17min runtime, a really good short film. We don’t see the wyrm herself, but hopefully we all know what a wyrm/really big fucking snake-dragon looks like. I would watch this short film again.
    • The Innsmouth School for Girls (2023) dir. Joshua Kennedy. This is a rewatch, not a favourite or anything, but sometimes I get an urge to watch it again. It’s one of the better Deep Ones/Innsmouth entries, and I think it’s definitely worth a look.
    • Dark Light (2019) dir. Padraig Reynolds. This is a rewatch – again, not a highlighted favourite, but one I occasionally feel in the mood for. It’s a pretty competent Sci-Fi-Horror, with monstrous humanoids rather than aliens, and I do enjoy the central mother-daughter drama.
    • The Barbarians (1987) dir. Ruggero Deodato. A rewatch – accidental, I was doing stuff with the TV on in the background, this came on, and I didn’t turn it off and ended up watching the whole thing. As entertaining as the last time, not one I would ever dedicate my concentration to, but it’s ’80s Sword and Sorcery for comforting background company on a rainy day.
    • The Spiritualist/The Amazing Mr. X (1948) dir. Bernard Vorhaus. I liked this one; I watched it for Turhan Bey and Lynn Bari. It’s a good psychological, Supernatural Explained noir, although for goodness sake her husband has only been dead for two years and everyone is pressuring her to move on and remarry, leave her alone. Westerners not knowing how to process grief is not a 21stC phenomenon. Available on YouTube.
    • The Return (1973) dir. Sture Rydman. 30mins runtime, a made-for-TV British short; this is a pretty good Gothic ghost story, very atmospheric and melodramatic. It is based on stories by A.M. Burrage and Ambrose Bierce. A 2-person cast, which really works for the atmosphere and sense of claustrophobia in the house setting. Available on YouTube.
    • The Ghoul (1933) dir. T. Hayes Hunter. This one made me laugh, I did enjoy it for 80mins of excitable young people shouting at each other. Is it culturally sensitive to anyone? No, not in the least. I really liked the enemies-to-partnership thing the cousins had going on, though; Betty was great. This is what 1930s feminism looked like.
    • Moss Rose (1947) dir. Gregory Ratoff. An absolutely wild melodrama murder mystery/thriller, with Vincent Price as a policeman, and the worst faux-Cockney accents I have ever heard. Some fascinating class discussion though.
    • Darklands (1996) dir. Julian Richards. I watched this again for a review I’m writing for Divination Hollow, and to see how the Director’s Cut (6min shorter) fares against the original version I watched in 2023, the year the Cut was released. This is… something. I have a whole post on it already, where I missed the antisemitism of the Lilith imagery of a character called Rebecca, on top of everything else it’s doing. Anyway, the new essay on this will be potentially cross-posted, but Divination Hollow will get it first.
    • Deváté srdce/The Ninth Heart (1979) dir. Juraj Herz. The third Herz film I’ve seen this month, this is one I also own on disc (thanks to the Severin Films Folk Horror Compendium). I didn’t like this as much as Panna a Netvor, but the hair was amazing. I don’t think it was a highlighted watch for me, but I do think I’ll be watching it again, and maybe this will grow on me.
    • The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) dir. Roger Corman. I’m not a massive Poe fan but I do like his work, and I do like a few of the adaptations of it. This is much more of a comfort rewatch for me just because of Vincent Price. I know there are loads of versions of it and I haven’t seen them all, but this is not a bad film. It was written by Richard Matheson, and I tend to enjoy his scripts.
    • A Child’s Voice (1978) dir. Kieran Hickey. An Irish made-for-TV short, 29mins runtime. Very much in the vein of Ghost Stories for Christmas, and strongly reminiscent of Mark Gatiss’s original story, The Dead Room (2018) which has a very similar premise and main character. It was a one-off, not part of a series or anthology, and only shown on UK TV once in the 1980s.
    • The Circle (2017) dir. Peter Callow. I’ve seen this one before and I vaguely remembered it was low budget and not awful, and I fancied the folk horror feels. It’s a Scottish set one, and I want to watch more Scottish horror where possible, like The Isle, Get Duked!, Dog Soldiers, Outcast, and Little Bone Lodge. The Irish horror scene is really flourishing, but Wales and Scotland are behind. A lot of that is budget and investment, so I’m on the lookout for more films by Scottish filmmakers. I don’t know if Callow is Scottish, but it does make some good use of the landscape and isolation of the islands!
    • Tattiebogle (2017) dir. Douglas Kyle. Made for £101.99, this was the start of a rabbithole I fell into while looking for more Scottish Horror. Douglas Kyle seems to have a production company, ChaosBox Productions, which has a YouTube Channel. He has a 62-episode no-budget Sci-Fi series, The Pandora Men, and several features and shorts. This is one of the features, made over 8 days in the cast & crew’s spare time. I really appreciate no-budget / microbudget films made by people having a lot of fun, and this is absolutely that. It’s an ecohorror/folk horror slasher, made in Aberdeenshire.
    • The Ghillie Dhu (2024) dir. Douglas Kyle. His latest short feature, roughly 37mins runtime. This attempts to be about anxiety disorder and, I guess, the horror of being consumed by your traumas and disorders, married with the Scottish folktale of the Ghillie Dhu.
    • The Yird Swine (2020) dir. Douglas Kyle. This isn’t on Letterboxd yet, I need to add it. The link is to IMDB instead. This has the same core cast, with another cast member from The Pandora Men series, Myla Corvidae (he/they), originally from Cardiff! This was a fun one too. The pacing wasn’t as good as Tattiebogle, but I really liked it. Everyone was obviously really enjoying themselves making it. I think if you’re into this side of amateur indie filmmaking, you should check out these films.

    DID YOU MISS ANY?
    CLICK THE CATEGORY TAG (“Media Round Up”) TO SEE ALL THE POSTS, BEGINNING WITH NOVEMBER 2025.
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    December 2025 Media Round-Up

    My monthly media round-up for December 2025 – all the books, podcasts, tv shows, and films I read/listened to/watched this month.

    by cmrosensDecember 30, 2025December 29, 2025

    November 2025 Media Round-Up

    I’m starting a new monthly series where I post a round-up of all the media I’ve watched/read/listened to for the previous month. Here is November’s media round-up!

    by cmrosensDecember 5, 2025January 26, 2026

    Subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated! I send newsletters around once a month. You can also subscribe to my site so you don't miss a post, but I also do a post round-up in my monthly newsletters, along with what I've been working on, what I've been reading, and what I've been watching. I will often update newsletter subscribers first with news, so stay ahead of the game with my announcements and discount codes, etc!

    First name Last name Email #BookReview #filmReview #mediaRoundUp #tvReview
    #bookreview #filmreview #mediaroundup #tvreview
  3. Chris 👾 @[email protected] ·

    #Hades II is finally available on PS5 and for €23,99 with 20% PSPlus it's a no-brainer (if you liked the first game). If you haven't played Hades 1 yet - its only €6,24 on PlaystationStore EU.

    youtube.com/watch?v=MawBCULz4vE

    #gaming

    #hades #gaming
  4. Chris Aldrich @[email protected] ·
    Watching people online chat, ask questions, and generally get excited about their planners for 2026, I thought I would spend a few minutes to set up my Memindex-inspired planner version using 4 x 6″ index cards and tabbed dividers. It’s amazing how useful a $2.50 block of 500 index cards can be for planning out your coming year.

    Interestingly, I’ve recently come across versions of this same sort of tickler file recommended in mid-20th century textbooks for filing and indexing in business contexts:

    Cadwallader, Laura Hanes, and Sarah Ada Rice. 1932. Principles of Indexing and Filing. Baltimore; Chicago: H.M. Rowe Company. page 134: https://archive.org/details/principlesofinde0000laur/page/134/mode/2up

     

    Kahn, Gilbert, Theo Yerian, and Jeffrey R. Stewart, Jr. 1962. Progressive Filing and Records Management. 1st ed. New York: Gregg Publishing Division, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc. page 190: https://archive.org/details/progressivefilin0000gilb/page/190/mode/2up 

    The careful observer will notice that both of the photos in texts by different authors nearly 30 years apart are the same! I would suspect that they’re from a manufacturer’s catalog (Remington Rand) earlier in the century. It’s even more interesting that one can still quickly create such a set up with commercially available analog office supplies now.

    #analogoffice #cardindexasdiary #cardindexasproductivitysystem #gettingthingsdone #hipsterpda #indexingpractices
  5. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·

    Patriarchs In Black – Home Review

    By Saunders

    Random dunks into the promo sump yield a variety of interesting, if uneven results. The element of risk and getting lumped with an unlistenable dud is counteracted by the odd chance of scooping up an unheralded stunner, or the next big thing. New York/New Jersey duo of scene veterans Dan Lorenzo (Hades, Non-Fiction) and Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative, Quiet Riot, Danzig) formed Patriarchs In Black several years back. Despite a relatively short career, the duo, armed with various guest musicians and vocalists, arrive at their fourth album, simply titled Home. Featuring an array of well-known and lesser-known guests, it almost feels like a compilation rather than a traditional album. This is especially evident through the varied musical terrain the seasoned vets traverse, exploring diverse and occasionally questionable musical territory with impressive ambition and a broad sense of adventure. Can this genre-hopping, vocal-swapping fest hit the mark and result in a compelling and cohesive listening experience?

    Home is an odd duck album, both adventurous and perplexing. At nearly an hour in length, Patriarchs in Black cram tons of material and excessive ideas into its weighty runtime, featuring a colorful cast of supporting characters, predominantly filling the restlessly shifting vocal duties. Musically, Lorenzo and Kelly boast big match experience and tight, punchy chops as they hyperactively shift between genres. The album fits both comfortably and loosely under the stoner/doom metal banner, yet this label only scratches the surface of the band’s repertoire. Elements of hard rock, southern rock, blues, nü, modern alt rock/metal, rap rock, and a swathe of ’80s and ’90s metal influences, lending retro flavors to the more contemporary and streamlined modern rock and metal tropes. It’s the old everything but the kitchen sink approach for better and worse.

    A snapshot of the guest vocalists finds contributions from Mark Sunshine (Unida, RiotGod), Kyle Thomas (Exhorder, Alabama Thunderpussy), Karl Agell (ex-Corrosion of Conformity, Legions of Doom), Dewey Bragg (Kill Devil Hill), John Kosco (Dropbox) and Rob Traynor (Black Water Rising) amongst others. Sunshine’s impressive pipes feature most prominently, including channeling Axl Rose and Chris Cornell on the sludgy, grungy groove of “Burn Through Time,” while adding some melodramatic theatrics with mixed results on “Celestial Yard.” Opener “Hymns for the Heretic” benefits from the well-worn grit of Kyle Thomas’s vox, pairing with infectiously bluesy, heavy rock-drenched riffage and fat stoner grooves. “The Call” keeps momentum rolling, as veteran Agell punches out an inspired performance atop a beefy and melancholic doomy rock base. “Storm King” is another gritty, noteworthy cut, riding some infectious, Clutch-esque grooves, featuring booming riffs and vocal grunt. Shit gets decidedly weirder as the strange journey hits some left-field bumps. “Kaos” livens energy and aggression, throwing down some angsty, goofy vox and meatheaded grooves to jarring, nü metal-adjacent effect. There are ill-advised, lamely executed rap rock ditties (“Where You Think You’re Going,” “Ready to Die”), and a decent modern blues rock number (“Enough of You”) that sounds awkwardly out of place, even by the album’s haphazard standards.

    Throw in a couple of overcooked songs lengthwise, and short, questionable interludes, including the jokey “The End,” a fittingly silly way to climax the album, and you are left with a unique and strange album. Home has fun elements and a handful of enjoyably groovy tunes and inspired vocal additions. Lorenzo and Kelly are skilled, seasoned musicians, sounding as though they are having loads of fun across intersecting and occasionally disparate genres, excelling most when delivering thick, bluesy stoner doom riffs and swaggering grooves. Unfortunately for all its charms and oddities, Home remains hamstrung by numerous less-than-stellar factors bogging it down. The length and choppy nature of the writing song-to-song makes for an overloaded, inconsistent and messy front-to-back listen. And while never dull, it’s an exhausting listen, marred by sizable missteps and too many clunky moments to overcome.

    One of the more intriguing albums I’ve heard in 2025, Home is an odd curiosity that could eventually fit into a time capsule equivalent of ’90s Metal Weirdness. While there are solid tunes and cool jams scattered across the album, the pros are dragged down by the cons. Entertaining and confounding in nearly equal measures, Home is hampered by considerable bloat, clunky flow and ill-advised experiments and stylistic decisions, resulting in a curious, if sadly mixed bag collection. Worth a listen to cherry-pick the gems, but prepare yourself for a rocky journey.

    Rating: 2.5/5.0
    DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
    Label: Metalville
    Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
    Releases worldwide: August 15th, 2025

    #25 #2025 #AlabamaThunderpussy #AmericanMetal #Clutch #CorrosionOfConformity #Danzig #DoomMetal #Exhorder #HardRock #Home #KillDevilHill #LegionsOfDoom #MetalvilleRecords #PatriarchsInBlack #QuietRiot #RapRock #Review #Reviews #RiotGod #SouthernRock #StonerMetal #TypeONegative #Unida

    #alabamathunderpussy #americanmetal #clutch #corrosionofconformity #danzig #doommetal
  6. Full Moon Storytelling @[email protected] ·

    Your favorite fantasy TV series was cancelled, now what? RPGs

    A few years ago it was the heyday of big, high fantasy TV series. Yes, the grit of Game of Thrones and Witcher were still popular, but there were also a selection of shows with a higher level of magic, higher level of heroism and a set of characters who you wanted to win. It was the era of peak fantasy TV.

    Slowly but surely these faded away.

    Screenshot of Willow on Disney+

    Some series got a reasonable run — The Magicians reached a conclusion. Some series were cut quite short — Willow, ended with more story to tell.

    Universes were announced to be expanding. Shadow & Bone went from having the Six of Crows spinoff announced to the entire project dying.

    There was big money in fantasy for a bit. These weren’t Brit TV specials like Merlin or modern attempts at low budget like Xena.

    The biggest money of them all is still around. Rings of Power, the prequel-ish endeavor by Prime Video churns along at price points that are normally saved for theater or Andor.

    The wheel weaves as the wheel wills, always turning.

    Sometimes the wheel destroys the things you enjoy, like Wheel of Time — especially the last half of season 2 and all of season 3 with strong reviews and great fan appreciation. While there was enormous pushback against the changes made to adapt to the shorter run time of a book plus a bit per season, as well as pushback against the attempts to be less coded and more openly diverse, the series was generally well received. It was generally profitable.

    It’s gone.

    The story won’t finish (except in the books, which will always be around). Yes, there’s a petition to Save Wheel of Time. I hope it succeeds. Brandon Sanderson seems to suggest it should, but will not.

    Petitions and book reading are passive.

    Don’t be passive — adapt those stories to an RPG

    Playing games in those worlds is active participation in the fandom, and helps build out that word of mouth.

    You don’t need to have an authorized book in order to play. Any fantasy series, movie, video game, book, comic, etc can show up at your table.

    You can instead borrow the themes, cultures, characters and put them in your world. Sure, you could play pure within the world created by Robert Jordan or Lev Grossman or Jonathan Kasdan.

    The power of roleplaying games is that the tale is yours, no one can take it from you. The rules can be simple enough to fit on a business card or so complex it fills bookshelves.

    What happens to Jade, Kit and Elora?

    That’s up to you.

    What happens to Mat, Perrin, Elayne, Min and the rest?

    That’s up to you.

    Take the themes, tropes and world of that story that a committee decided was no longer worth being told and tell it yourself.

    That’s why I fell in love with D&D and RPGs in the 80s.

    The unfinished trilogy, or maybe not

    Back in my youth my bookshelves were covered with science fiction, fantasy and encyclopedias. Words on a page were meant to be consumed by me, like a black hole consumes a galaxy.

    I’d shop at a used bookstore, looking for a new series to start. Except sometimes I’d never find book 2, let alone the inevitable trilogy. Sometimes I would start with book 3!

    One of my favorite tales, and I say this as someone who had pets but didn’t really discover the love of pets until my 30s, was a story about a fading order of knights who rode giant tigers. The hero wasn’t really part of the order. His family was and he had that extremely large cat. In this dying world they journeyed, starting as outsiders and immediately recognized as legendary. But they were just a dude and a great cat.

    They didn’t want to be heroes. It was so compelling, this story of man and beast who wanted to be normal while the world needed them to be great.

    I never found book 2.

    But I had already discovered Dungeons & Dragons. A character paralleling that tale was created. We roamed the worlds that Erik and Justin and Chis and Abel and Hayes and Jacob and Colin and Andrew and others created.

    We finished that tale.

    Wheel of Time is over, unless it isn’t

    The series explored slightly different things from the books. One of those was how tales are told. There’s a suggestion from the meta of the series that within a world where there are endless retellings of tales and history.

    What changes, and what stays the same is part of that story.

    Your RPG could lean into that by playing similar characters at different levels, at different times with a power to oncer per month to have a past power show up, maybe ramping faster as time goes by.

    Another possible exploration from the Wheel of Times series and books is how power corrupts. The nature of saidin is that man with power lose control of themselves — mentally, emotionally, physically.

    Want to toss a saidin power into your D&D?

    Maybe your Rand-ish character is a Warlock that has to roll on the Wild Magic table every time they cast a spell.

    Of course, one of the most potent tales from the books that is amplified in the series is that women are not side characters. They are as important to the story, and powerfully so, as anyone else.

    You don’t need special rules for this. The modern versions of D&D encourage this.

    From Willow there is a connection in the series to the tales from the movie (history is a massive throughput in Wheel of Time as well).

    To see this at your table means connecting a current adventure or campaign to one that ended a decade, a century, a millennia, an age ago.

    A D&D campaign that builds off of former campaigns is a structure that generally needs some continuity of players, but can also be done through one-sheets, common knowledge pages and a regular re-telling of special moments.

    This could happen around the campfire, on the steps of a temple, inside a tavern or any place where the PCs meet NPCs.

    Find what’s important from these tales and make them your own

    It’s rough to lose a special story.

    You have your memory. You have your hope.

    You have a game to help you continue the legends that are important to you. You don’t need Rafe or Sera or Kasdan.

    You need dice, paper and a table of friends.

    #DnD #DungeonsAndDragons #fantasyTV #PlayingDD #RolePlaying #RPG #WheelOfTime #Willow

    #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #fantasytv #playingdd #roleplaying #rpg
  7. Chris Aldrich @[email protected] ·
    Watching people online chat, ask questions, and generally get excited about their planners for 2026, I thought I would spend a few minutes to set up my Memindex-inspired planner version using 4 x 6″ index cards and tabbed dividers. It’s amazing how useful a $2.50 block of 500 index cards can be for planning out your coming year.

    Interestingly, I’ve recently come across versions of this same sort of tickler file recommended in mid-20th century textbooks for filing and indexing in business contexts:

    Cadwallader, Laura Hanes, and Sarah Ada Rice. 1932. Principles of Indexing and Filing. Baltimore; Chicago: H.M. Rowe Company. page 134: https://archive.org/details/principlesofinde0000laur/page/134/mode/2up

     

    Kahn, Gilbert, Theo Yerian, and Jeffrey R. Stewart, Jr. 1962. Progressive Filing and Records Management. 1st ed. New York: Gregg Publishing Division, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc. page 190: https://archive.org/details/progressivefilin0000gilb/page/190/mode/2up 

    The careful observer will notice that both of the photos in texts by different authors nearly 30 years apart are the same! I would suspect that they’re from a manufacturer’s catalog (Remington Rand) earlier in the century. It’s even more interesting that one can still quickly create such a set up with commercially available analog office supplies now.

    #analogoffice #cardindexasdiary #cardindexasproductivitysystem #gettingthingsdone #hipsterpda #indexingpractices
  8. Chris Aldrich @[email protected] ·
    Watching people online chat, ask questions, and generally get excited about their planners for 2026, I thought I would spend a few minutes to set up my Memindex-inspired planner version using 4 x 6″ index cards and tabbed dividers. It’s amazing how useful a $2.50 block of 500 index cards can be for planning out your coming year.

    Interestingly, I’ve recently come across versions of this same sort of tickler file recommended in mid-20th century textbooks for filing and indexing in business contexts:

    Cadwallader, Laura Hanes, and Sarah Ada Rice. 1932. Principles of Indexing and Filing. Baltimore; Chicago: H.M. Rowe Company. page 134: https://archive.org/details/principlesofinde0000laur/page/134/mode/2up

     

    Kahn, Gilbert, Theo Yerian, and Jeffrey R. Stewart, Jr. 1962. Progressive Filing and Records Management. 1st ed. New York: Gregg Publishing Division, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc. page 190: https://archive.org/details/progressivefilin0000gilb/page/190/mode/2up 

    The careful observer will notice that both of the photos in texts by different authors nearly 30 years apart are the same! I would suspect that they’re from a manufacturer’s catalog (Remington Rand) earlier in the century. It’s even more interesting that one can still quickly create such a set up with commercially available analog office supplies now.

    #analogoffice #cardindexasdiary #cardindexasproductivitysystem #gettingthingsdone #hipsterpda #indexingpractices
  9. Chris Aldrich @[email protected] ·
    Watching people online chat, ask questions, and generally get excited about their planners for 2026, I thought I would spend a few minutes to set up my Memindex-inspired planner version using 4 x 6″ index cards and tabbed dividers. It’s amazing how useful a $2.50 block of 500 index cards can be for planning out your coming year.

    Interestingly, I’ve recently come across versions of this same sort of tickler file recommended in mid-20th century textbooks for filing and indexing in business contexts:

    Cadwallader, Laura Hanes, and Sarah Ada Rice. 1932. Principles of Indexing and Filing. Baltimore; Chicago: H.M. Rowe Company. page 134: https://archive.org/details/principlesofinde0000laur/page/134/mode/2up

     

    Kahn, Gilbert, Theo Yerian, and Jeffrey R. Stewart, Jr. 1962. Progressive Filing and Records Management. 1st ed. New York: Gregg Publishing Division, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc. page 190: https://archive.org/details/progressivefilin0000gilb/page/190/mode/2up 

    The careful observer will notice that both of the photos in texts by different authors nearly 30 years apart are the same! I would suspect that they’re from a manufacturer’s catalog (Remington Rand) earlier in the century. It’s even more interesting that one can still quickly create such a set up with commercially available analog office supplies now.

    #ticklerfiles #stationery #planners #memindex #indexingpractices #hipsterpda
  10. Chris Aldrich @[email protected] ·
    Watching people online chat, ask questions, and generally get excited about their planners for 2026, I thought I would spend a few minutes to set up my Memindex-inspired planner version using 4 x 6″ index cards and tabbed dividers. It’s amazing how useful a $2.50 block of 500 index cards can be for planning out your coming year.

    Interestingly, I’ve recently come across versions of this same sort of tickler file recommended in mid-20th century textbooks for filing and indexing in business contexts:

    Cadwallader, Laura Hanes, and Sarah Ada Rice. 1932. Principles of Indexing and Filing. Baltimore; Chicago: H.M. Rowe Company. page 134: https://archive.org/details/principlesofinde0000laur/page/134/mode/2up

     

    Kahn, Gilbert, Theo Yerian, and Jeffrey R. Stewart, Jr. 1962. Progressive Filing and Records Management. 1st ed. New York: Gregg Publishing Division, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc. page 190: https://archive.org/details/progressivefilin0000gilb/page/190/mode/2up 

    The careful observer will notice that both of the photos in texts by different authors nearly 30 years apart are the same! I would suspect that they’re from a manufacturer’s catalog (Remington Rand) earlier in the century. It’s even more interesting that one can still quickly create such a set up with commercially available analog office supplies now.

    #analogoffice #cardindexasdiary #cardindexasproductivitysystem #gettingthingsdone #hipsterpda #indexingpractices
  11. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·

    Patriarchs In Black – Home Review

    By Saunders

    Random dunks into the promo sump yield a variety of interesting, if uneven results. The element of risk and getting lumped with an unlistenable dud is counteracted by the odd chance of scooping up an unheralded stunner, or the next big thing. New York/New Jersey duo of scene veterans Dan Lorenzo (Hades, Non-Fiction) and Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative, Quiet Riot, Danzig) formed Patriarchs In Black several years back. Despite a relatively short career, the duo, armed with various guest musicians and vocalists, arrive at their fourth album, simply titled Home. Featuring an array of well-known and lesser-known guests, it almost feels like a compilation rather than a traditional album. This is especially evident through the varied musical terrain the seasoned vets traverse, exploring diverse and occasionally questionable musical territory with impressive ambition and a broad sense of adventure. Can this genre-hopping, vocal-swapping fest hit the mark and result in a compelling and cohesive listening experience?

    Home is an odd duck album, both adventurous and perplexing. At nearly an hour in length, Patriarchs in Black cram tons of material and excessive ideas into its weighty runtime, featuring a colorful cast of supporting characters, predominantly filling the restlessly shifting vocal duties. Musically, Lorenzo and Kelly boast big match experience and tight, punchy chops as they hyperactively shift between genres. The album fits both comfortably and loosely under the stoner/doom metal banner, yet this label only scratches the surface of the band’s repertoire. Elements of hard rock, southern rock, blues, nü, modern alt rock/metal, rap rock, and a swathe of ’80s and ’90s metal influences, lending retro flavors to the more contemporary and streamlined modern rock and metal tropes. It’s the old everything but the kitchen sink approach for better and worse.

    A snapshot of the guest vocalists finds contributions from Mark Sunshine (Unida, RiotGod), Kyle Thomas (Exhorder, Alabama Thunderpussy), Karl Agell (ex-Corrosion of Conformity, Legions of Doom), Dewey Bragg (Kill Devil Hill), John Kosco (Dropbox) and Rob Traynor (Black Water Rising) amongst others. Sunshine’s impressive pipes feature most prominently, including channeling Axl Rose and Chris Cornell on the sludgy, grungy groove of “Burn Through Time,” while adding some melodramatic theatrics with mixed results on “Celestial Yard.” Opener “Hymns for the Heretic” benefits from the well-worn grit of Kyle Thomas’s vox, pairing with infectiously bluesy, heavy rock-drenched riffage and fat stoner grooves. “The Call” keeps momentum rolling, as veteran Agell punches out an inspired performance atop a beefy and melancholic doomy rock base. “Storm King” is another gritty, noteworthy cut, riding some infectious, Clutch-esque grooves, featuring booming riffs and vocal grunt. Shit gets decidedly weirder as the strange journey hits some left-field bumps. “Kaos” livens energy and aggression, throwing down some angsty, goofy vox and meatheaded grooves to jarring, nü metal-adjacent effect. There are ill-advised, lamely executed rap rock ditties (“Where You Think You’re Going,” “Ready to Die”), and a decent modern blues rock number (“Enough of You”) that sounds awkwardly out of place, even by the album’s haphazard standards.

    Throw in a couple of overcooked songs lengthwise, and short, questionable interludes, including the jokey “The End,” a fittingly silly way to climax the album, and you are left with a unique and strange album. Home has fun elements and a handful of enjoyably groovy tunes and inspired vocal additions. Lorenzo and Kelly are skilled, seasoned musicians, sounding as though they are having loads of fun across intersecting and occasionally disparate genres, excelling most when delivering thick, bluesy stoner doom riffs and swaggering grooves. Unfortunately for all its charms and oddities, Home remains hamstrung by numerous less-than-stellar factors bogging it down. The length and choppy nature of the writing song-to-song makes for an overloaded, inconsistent and messy front-to-back listen. And while never dull, it’s an exhausting listen, marred by sizable missteps and too many clunky moments to overcome.

    One of the more intriguing albums I’ve heard in 2025, Home is an odd curiosity that could eventually fit into a time capsule equivalent of ’90s Metal Weirdness. While there are solid tunes and cool jams scattered across the album, the pros are dragged down by the cons. Entertaining and confounding in nearly equal measures, Home is hampered by considerable bloat, clunky flow and ill-advised experiments and stylistic decisions, resulting in a curious, if sadly mixed bag collection. Worth a listen to cherry-pick the gems, but prepare yourself for a rocky journey.

    Rating: 2.5/5.0
    DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
    Label: Metalville
    Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
    Releases worldwide: August 15th, 2025

    #25 #2025 #AlabamaThunderpussy #AmericanMetal #Clutch #CorrosionOfConformity #Danzig #DoomMetal #Exhorder #HardRock #Home #KillDevilHill #LegionsOfDoom #MetalvilleRecords #PatriarchsInBlack #QuietRiot #RapRock #Review #Reviews #RiotGod #SouthernRock #StonerMetal #TypeONegative #Unida

    #alabamathunderpussy #americanmetal #clutch #corrosionofconformity #danzig #doommetal
  12. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·

    Patriarchs In Black – Home Review

    By Saunders

    Random dunks into the promo sump yield a variety of interesting, if uneven results. The element of risk and getting lumped with an unlistenable dud is counteracted by the odd chance of scooping up an unheralded stunner, or the next big thing. New York/New Jersey duo of scene veterans Dan Lorenzo (Hades, Non-Fiction) and Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative, Quiet Riot, Danzig) formed Patriarchs In Black several years back. Despite a relatively short career, the duo, armed with various guest musicians and vocalists, arrive at their fourth album, simply titled Home. Featuring an array of well-known and lesser-known guests, it almost feels like a compilation rather than a traditional album. This is especially evident through the varied musical terrain the seasoned vets traverse, exploring diverse and occasionally questionable musical territory with impressive ambition and a broad sense of adventure. Can this genre-hopping, vocal-swapping fest hit the mark and result in a compelling and cohesive listening experience?

    Home is an odd duck album, both adventurous and perplexing. At nearly an hour in length, Patriarchs in Black cram tons of material and excessive ideas into its weighty runtime, featuring a colorful cast of supporting characters, predominantly filling the restlessly shifting vocal duties. Musically, Lorenzo and Kelly boast big match experience and tight, punchy chops as they hyperactively shift between genres. The album fits both comfortably and loosely under the stoner/doom metal banner, yet this label only scratches the surface of the band’s repertoire. Elements of hard rock, southern rock, blues, nü, modern alt rock/metal, rap rock, and a swathe of ’80s and ’90s metal influences, lending retro flavors to the more contemporary and streamlined modern rock and metal tropes. It’s the old everything but the kitchen sink approach for better and worse.

    A snapshot of the guest vocalists finds contributions from Mark Sunshine (Unida, RiotGod), Kyle Thomas (Exhorder, Alabama Thunderpussy), Karl Agell (ex-Corrosion of Conformity, Legions of Doom), Dewey Bragg (Kill Devil Hill), John Kosco (Dropbox) and Rob Traynor (Black Water Rising) amongst others. Sunshine’s impressive pipes feature most prominently, including channeling Axl Rose and Chris Cornell on the sludgy, grungy groove of “Burn Through Time,” while adding some melodramatic theatrics with mixed results on “Celestial Yard.” Opener “Hymns for the Heretic” benefits from the well-worn grit of Kyle Thomas’s vox, pairing with infectiously bluesy, heavy rock-drenched riffage and fat stoner grooves. “The Call” keeps momentum rolling, as veteran Agell punches out an inspired performance atop a beefy and melancholic doomy rock base. “Storm King” is another gritty, noteworthy cut, riding some infectious, Clutch-esque grooves, featuring booming riffs and vocal grunt. Shit gets decidedly weirder as the strange journey hits some left-field bumps. “Kaos” livens energy and aggression, throwing down some angsty, goofy vox and meatheaded grooves to jarring, nü metal-adjacent effect. There are ill-advised, lamely executed rap rock ditties (“Where You Think You’re Going,” “Ready to Die”), and a decent modern blues rock number (“Enough of You”) that sounds awkwardly out of place, even by the album’s haphazard standards.

    Throw in a couple of overcooked songs lengthwise, and short, questionable interludes, including the jokey “The End,” a fittingly silly way to climax the album, and you are left with a unique and strange album. Home has fun elements and a handful of enjoyably groovy tunes and inspired vocal additions. Lorenzo and Kelly are skilled, seasoned musicians, sounding as though they are having loads of fun across intersecting and occasionally disparate genres, excelling most when delivering thick, bluesy stoner doom riffs and swaggering grooves. Unfortunately for all its charms and oddities, Home remains hamstrung by numerous less-than-stellar factors bogging it down. The length and choppy nature of the writing song-to-song makes for an overloaded, inconsistent and messy front-to-back listen. And while never dull, it’s an exhausting listen, marred by sizable missteps and too many clunky moments to overcome.

    One of the more intriguing albums I’ve heard in 2025, Home is an odd curiosity that could eventually fit into a time capsule equivalent of ’90s Metal Weirdness. While there are solid tunes and cool jams scattered across the album, the pros are dragged down by the cons. Entertaining and confounding in nearly equal measures, Home is hampered by considerable bloat, clunky flow and ill-advised experiments and stylistic decisions, resulting in a curious, if sadly mixed bag collection. Worth a listen to cherry-pick the gems, but prepare yourself for a rocky journey.

    Rating: 2.5/5.0
    DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
    Label: Metalville
    Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
    Releases worldwide: August 15th, 2025

    #25 #2025 #AlabamaThunderpussy #AmericanMetal #Clutch #CorrosionOfConformity #Danzig #DoomMetal #Exhorder #HardRock #Home #KillDevilHill #LegionsOfDoom #MetalvilleRecords #PatriarchsInBlack #QuietRiot #RapRock #Review #Reviews #RiotGod #SouthernRock #StonerMetal #TypeONegative #Unida

    #alabamathunderpussy #americanmetal #clutch #corrosionofconformity #danzig #doommetal
  13. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·

    Patriarchs In Black – Home Review

    By Saunders

    Random dunks into the promo sump yield a variety of interesting, if uneven results. The element of risk and getting lumped with an unlistenable dud is counteracted by the odd chance of scooping up an unheralded stunner, or the next big thing. New York/New Jersey duo of scene veterans Dan Lorenzo (Hades, Non-Fiction) and Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative, Quiet Riot, Danzig) formed Patriarchs In Black several years back. Despite a relatively short career, the duo, armed with various guest musicians and vocalists, arrive at their fourth album, simply titled Home. Featuring an array of well-known and lesser-known guests, it almost feels like a compilation rather than a traditional album. This is especially evident through the varied musical terrain the seasoned vets traverse, exploring diverse and occasionally questionable musical territory with impressive ambition and a broad sense of adventure. Can this genre-hopping, vocal-swapping fest hit the mark and result in a compelling and cohesive listening experience?

    Home is an odd duck album, both adventurous and perplexing. At nearly an hour in length, Patriarchs in Black cram tons of material and excessive ideas into its weighty runtime, featuring a colorful cast of supporting characters, predominantly filling the restlessly shifting vocal duties. Musically, Lorenzo and Kelly boast big match experience and tight, punchy chops as they hyperactively shift between genres. The album fits both comfortably and loosely under the stoner/doom metal banner, yet this label only scratches the surface of the band’s repertoire. Elements of hard rock, southern rock, blues, nü, modern alt rock/metal, rap rock, and a swathe of ’80s and ’90s metal influences, lending retro flavors to the more contemporary and streamlined modern rock and metal tropes. It’s the old everything but the kitchen sink approach for better and worse.

    A snapshot of the guest vocalists finds contributions from Mark Sunshine (Unida, RiotGod), Kyle Thomas (Exhorder, Alabama Thunderpussy), Karl Agell (ex-Corrosion of Conformity, Legions of Doom), Dewey Bragg (Kill Devil Hill), John Kosco (Dropbox) and Rob Traynor (Black Water Rising) amongst others. Sunshine’s impressive pipes feature most prominently, including channeling Axl Rose and Chris Cornell on the sludgy, grungy groove of “Burn Through Time,” while adding some melodramatic theatrics with mixed results on “Celestial Yard.” Opener “Hymns for the Heretic” benefits from the well-worn grit of Kyle Thomas’s vox, pairing with infectiously bluesy, heavy rock-drenched riffage and fat stoner grooves. “The Call” keeps momentum rolling, as veteran Agell punches out an inspired performance atop a beefy and melancholic doomy rock base. “Storm King” is another gritty, noteworthy cut, riding some infectious, Clutch-esque grooves, featuring booming riffs and vocal grunt. Shit gets decidedly weirder as the strange journey hits some left-field bumps. “Kaos” livens energy and aggression, throwing down some angsty, goofy vox and meatheaded grooves to jarring, nü metal-adjacent effect. There are ill-advised, lamely executed rap rock ditties (“Where You Think You’re Going,” “Ready to Die”), and a decent modern blues rock number (“Enough of You”) that sounds awkwardly out of place, even by the album’s haphazard standards.

    Throw in a couple of overcooked songs lengthwise, and short, questionable interludes, including the jokey “The End,” a fittingly silly way to climax the album, and you are left with a unique and strange album. Home has fun elements and a handful of enjoyably groovy tunes and inspired vocal additions. Lorenzo and Kelly are skilled, seasoned musicians, sounding as though they are having loads of fun across intersecting and occasionally disparate genres, excelling most when delivering thick, bluesy stoner doom riffs and swaggering grooves. Unfortunately for all its charms and oddities, Home remains hamstrung by numerous less-than-stellar factors bogging it down. The length and choppy nature of the writing song-to-song makes for an overloaded, inconsistent and messy front-to-back listen. And while never dull, it’s an exhausting listen, marred by sizable missteps and too many clunky moments to overcome.

    One of the more intriguing albums I’ve heard in 2025, Home is an odd curiosity that could eventually fit into a time capsule equivalent of ’90s Metal Weirdness. While there are solid tunes and cool jams scattered across the album, the pros are dragged down by the cons. Entertaining and confounding in nearly equal measures, Home is hampered by considerable bloat, clunky flow and ill-advised experiments and stylistic decisions, resulting in a curious, if sadly mixed bag collection. Worth a listen to cherry-pick the gems, but prepare yourself for a rocky journey.

    Rating: 2.5/5.0
    DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
    Label: Metalville
    Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
    Releases worldwide: August 15th, 2025

    #25 #2025 #AlabamaThunderpussy #AmericanMetal #Clutch #CorrosionOfConformity #Danzig #DoomMetal #Exhorder #HardRock #Home #KillDevilHill #LegionsOfDoom #MetalvilleRecords #PatriarchsInBlack #QuietRiot #RapRock #Review #Reviews #RiotGod #SouthernRock #StonerMetal #TypeONegative #Unida

    #unida #typeonegative #stonermetal #southernrock #riotgod #reviews
  14. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·

    Patriarchs In Black – Home Review

    By Saunders

    Random dunks into the promo sump yield a variety of interesting, if uneven results. The element of risk and getting lumped with an unlistenable dud is counteracted by the odd chance of scooping up an unheralded stunner, or the next big thing. New York/New Jersey duo of scene veterans Dan Lorenzo (Hades, Non-Fiction) and Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative, Quiet Riot, Danzig) formed Patriarchs In Black several years back. Despite a relatively short career, the duo, armed with various guest musicians and vocalists, arrive at their fourth album, simply titled Home. Featuring an array of well-known and lesser-known guests, it almost feels like a compilation rather than a traditional album. This is especially evident through the varied musical terrain the seasoned vets traverse, exploring diverse and occasionally questionable musical territory with impressive ambition and a broad sense of adventure. Can this genre-hopping, vocal-swapping fest hit the mark and result in a compelling and cohesive listening experience?

    Home is an odd duck album, both adventurous and perplexing. At nearly an hour in length, Patriarchs in Black cram tons of material and excessive ideas into its weighty runtime, featuring a colorful cast of supporting characters, predominantly filling the restlessly shifting vocal duties. Musically, Lorenzo and Kelly boast big match experience and tight, punchy chops as they hyperactively shift between genres. The album fits both comfortably and loosely under the stoner/doom metal banner, yet this label only scratches the surface of the band’s repertoire. Elements of hard rock, southern rock, blues, nü, modern alt rock/metal, rap rock, and a swathe of ’80s and ’90s metal influences, lending retro flavors to the more contemporary and streamlined modern rock and metal tropes. It’s the old everything but the kitchen sink approach for better and worse.

    A snapshot of the guest vocalists finds contributions from Mark Sunshine (Unida, RiotGod), Kyle Thomas (Exhorder, Alabama Thunderpussy), Karl Agell (ex-Corrosion of Conformity, Legions of Doom), Dewey Bragg (Kill Devil Hill), John Kosco (Dropbox) and Rob Traynor (Black Water Rising) amongst others. Sunshine’s impressive pipes feature most prominently, including channeling Axl Rose and Chris Cornell on the sludgy, grungy groove of “Burn Through Time,” while adding some melodramatic theatrics with mixed results on “Celestial Yard.” Opener “Hymns for the Heretic” benefits from the well-worn grit of Kyle Thomas’s vox, pairing with infectiously bluesy, heavy rock-drenched riffage and fat stoner grooves. “The Call” keeps momentum rolling, as veteran Agell punches out an inspired performance atop a beefy and melancholic doomy rock base. “Storm King” is another gritty, noteworthy cut, riding some infectious, Clutch-esque grooves, featuring booming riffs and vocal grunt. Shit gets decidedly weirder as the strange journey hits some left-field bumps. “Kaos” livens energy and aggression, throwing down some angsty, goofy vox and meatheaded grooves to jarring, nü metal-adjacent effect. There are ill-advised, lamely executed rap rock ditties (“Where You Think You’re Going,” “Ready to Die”), and a decent modern blues rock number (“Enough of You”) that sounds awkwardly out of place, even by the album’s haphazard standards.

    Throw in a couple of overcooked songs lengthwise, and short, questionable interludes, including the jokey “The End,” a fittingly silly way to climax the album, and you are left with a unique and strange album. Home has fun elements and a handful of enjoyably groovy tunes and inspired vocal additions. Lorenzo and Kelly are skilled, seasoned musicians, sounding as though they are having loads of fun across intersecting and occasionally disparate genres, excelling most when delivering thick, bluesy stoner doom riffs and swaggering grooves. Unfortunately for all its charms and oddities, Home remains hamstrung by numerous less-than-stellar factors bogging it down. The length and choppy nature of the writing song-to-song makes for an overloaded, inconsistent and messy front-to-back listen. And while never dull, it’s an exhausting listen, marred by sizable missteps and too many clunky moments to overcome.

    One of the more intriguing albums I’ve heard in 2025, Home is an odd curiosity that could eventually fit into a time capsule equivalent of ’90s Metal Weirdness. While there are solid tunes and cool jams scattered across the album, the pros are dragged down by the cons. Entertaining and confounding in nearly equal measures, Home is hampered by considerable bloat, clunky flow and ill-advised experiments and stylistic decisions, resulting in a curious, if sadly mixed bag collection. Worth a listen to cherry-pick the gems, but prepare yourself for a rocky journey.

    Rating: 2.5/5.0
    DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
    Label: Metalville
    Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
    Releases worldwide: August 15th, 2025

    #25 #2025 #AlabamaThunderpussy #AmericanMetal #Clutch #CorrosionOfConformity #Danzig #DoomMetal #Exhorder #HardRock #Home #KillDevilHill #LegionsOfDoom #MetalvilleRecords #PatriarchsInBlack #QuietRiot #RapRock #Review #Reviews #RiotGod #SouthernRock #StonerMetal #TypeONegative #Unida

    #alabamathunderpussy #americanmetal #clutch #corrosionofconformity #danzig #doommetal
  15. Chris Ferguson @[email protected] ·

    Guys....

    #Hades2 is really good.

    Been playing it on Switch 2 and have really enjoyed it.

    #hades2
  16. Dr. Tineke D'Haeseleer @[email protected] ·

    And so we see how history is forgotten... 36 years since the events known in the West as "Tian'anmen" took place. A little over one generation, and there is barely any mention of it.

    Listen to this podcast from last year (I think this year's edition may be coming yet, Chris is in a later timezone) to rembember: thehistoryofchina.wordpress.co
    #tiananmen #ChineseHistory #DemocracyDiesInDarkness

    #tiananmen #chinesehistory #democracydiesindarkness
  17. DoRaleigh @[email protected] ·

    Raleigh Church Service Schedule — Worship in the Heart of the City

    Discover Worship in Raleigh

    Whether you’re new to Raleigh, exploring faith, or looking for a new church home, the city’s vibrant faith community offers something for everyone. From historic sanctuaries downtown to modern ministries in Southeast Raleigh and beyond, each congregation welcomes you with open arms.

    🕒 Typical Sunday Service Times

    Most Raleigh churches hold Sunday services between 9:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., with some offering additional early morning, evening, or virtual livestream options. Family-friendly programming, children’s ministries, and coffee fellowship hours are also common before or after services.

    Popular Sunday service times include:

    8:00 AM – Early traditional services 9:30 AM – Contemporary worship & gospel services 11:00 AM – Main worship gatherings 6:00 PM – Evening praise & reflection sessions

    🙌 Notable Churches in Downtown & Surrounding Raleigh

    Christ Episcopal Church (120 E Edenton St.) – Historic downtown church known for its sacred music and community outreach. Edenton Street United Methodist Church (228 W Edenton St.) – Weekly Sunday worship at 9:00 & 11:00 a.m., with vibrant youth and mission programs. Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral (715 Nazareth St.) – The largest Catholic cathedral in North Carolina, offering daily mass and confession. Mount Peace Baptist Church (1601 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd.) – A cornerstone of Southeast Raleigh, active in education, food drives, and local service. Hayes Barton Baptist Church (1800 Glenwood Ave.) – Traditional services with choral excellence and strong community ties.

    🙏 Midweek Worship & Study

    Many congregations offer Wednesday Bible studies, prayer groups, and community service nights—ideal for spiritual renewal and connection beyond Sunday.

    Check each church’s website for exact schedules, or visit DoRaleigh.com/faith for weekly updates.

    ❤️ Get Involved

    Beyond weekly worship, Raleigh’s churches power many of the city’s food drives, youth mentoring programs, and holiday outreach efforts. Volunteering or joining a small group is a great way to meet others and make a meaningful local impact.

    📅 Plan Your Sunday with DoRaleigh

    Looking for a church near you or want to explore a new congregation this weekend?

    👉 Browse the Raleigh Sunday Church Service Schedule at DoRaleigh.com — your guide to faith, community, and connection in the City of Oaks.

    Follow Us: Instagram | Facebook | BSky | Linkedin

    #communityWorship #DoRaleigh #downtownRaleigh #events #faithInRaleigh #News #RaleighChurchServiceTimes #RaleighChurches #RaleighEvents #SundayService #TriangleChurches #worship #worshipServices

    #communityworship #doraleigh #downtownraleigh #events #faithinraleigh #news
  18. DoRaleigh @[email protected] ·

    Raleigh Church Service Schedule — Worship in the Heart of the City

    Discover Worship in Raleigh

    Whether you’re new to Raleigh, exploring faith, or looking for a new church home, the city’s vibrant faith community offers something for everyone. From historic sanctuaries downtown to modern ministries in Southeast Raleigh and beyond, each congregation welcomes you with open arms.

    🕒 Typical Sunday Service Times

    Most Raleigh churches hold Sunday services between 9:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., with some offering additional early morning, evening, or virtual livestream options. Family-friendly programming, children’s ministries, and coffee fellowship hours are also common before or after services.

    Popular Sunday service times include:

    8:00 AM – Early traditional services 9:30 AM – Contemporary worship & gospel services 11:00 AM – Main worship gatherings 6:00 PM – Evening praise & reflection sessions

    🙌 Notable Churches in Downtown & Surrounding Raleigh

    Christ Episcopal Church (120 E Edenton St.) – Historic downtown church known for its sacred music and community outreach. Edenton Street United Methodist Church (228 W Edenton St.) – Weekly Sunday worship at 9:00 & 11:00 a.m., with vibrant youth and mission programs. Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral (715 Nazareth St.) – The largest Catholic cathedral in North Carolina, offering daily mass and confession. Mount Peace Baptist Church (1601 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd.) – A cornerstone of Southeast Raleigh, active in education, food drives, and local service. Hayes Barton Baptist Church (1800 Glenwood Ave.) – Traditional services with choral excellence and strong community ties.

    🙏 Midweek Worship & Study

    Many congregations offer Wednesday Bible studies, prayer groups, and community service nights—ideal for spiritual renewal and connection beyond Sunday.

    Check each church’s website for exact schedules, or visit DoRaleigh.com/faith for weekly updates.

    ❤️ Get Involved

    Beyond weekly worship, Raleigh’s churches power many of the city’s food drives, youth mentoring programs, and holiday outreach efforts. Volunteering or joining a small group is a great way to meet others and make a meaningful local impact.

    📅 Plan Your Sunday with DoRaleigh

    Looking for a church near you or want to explore a new congregation this weekend?

    👉 Browse the Raleigh Sunday Church Service Schedule at DoRaleigh.com — your guide to faith, community, and connection in the City of Oaks.

    Follow Us: Instagram | Facebook | BSky | Linkedin

    #communityWorship #DoRaleigh #downtownRaleigh #events #faithInRaleigh #News #RaleighChurchServiceTimes #RaleighChurches #RaleighEvents #SundayService #TriangleChurches #worship #worshipServices

    #worshipservices #worship #trianglechurches #sundayservice #raleighevents #raleighchurches
  19. DoRaleigh @[email protected] ·

    Raleigh Church Service Schedule — Worship in the Heart of the City

    Discover Worship in Raleigh

    Whether you’re new to Raleigh, exploring faith, or looking for a new church home, the city’s vibrant faith community offers something for everyone. From historic sanctuaries downtown to modern ministries in Southeast Raleigh and beyond, each congregation welcomes you with open arms.

    🕒 Typical Sunday Service Times

    Most Raleigh churches hold Sunday services between 9:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., with some offering additional early morning, evening, or virtual livestream options. Family-friendly programming, children’s ministries, and coffee fellowship hours are also common before or after services.

    Popular Sunday service times include:

    8:00 AM – Early traditional services 9:30 AM – Contemporary worship & gospel services 11:00 AM – Main worship gatherings 6:00 PM – Evening praise & reflection sessions

    🙌 Notable Churches in Downtown & Surrounding Raleigh

    Christ Episcopal Church (120 E Edenton St.) – Historic downtown church known for its sacred music and community outreach. Edenton Street United Methodist Church (228 W Edenton St.) – Weekly Sunday worship at 9:00 & 11:00 a.m., with vibrant youth and mission programs. Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral (715 Nazareth St.) – The largest Catholic cathedral in North Carolina, offering daily mass and confession. Mount Peace Baptist Church (1601 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd.) – A cornerstone of Southeast Raleigh, active in education, food drives, and local service. Hayes Barton Baptist Church (1800 Glenwood Ave.) – Traditional services with choral excellence and strong community ties.

    🙏 Midweek Worship & Study

    Many congregations offer Wednesday Bible studies, prayer groups, and community service nights—ideal for spiritual renewal and connection beyond Sunday.

    Check each church’s website for exact schedules, or visit DoRaleigh.com/faith for weekly updates.

    ❤️ Get Involved

    Beyond weekly worship, Raleigh’s churches power many of the city’s food drives, youth mentoring programs, and holiday outreach efforts. Volunteering or joining a small group is a great way to meet others and make a meaningful local impact.

    📅 Plan Your Sunday with DoRaleigh

    Looking for a church near you or want to explore a new congregation this weekend?

    👉 Browse the Raleigh Sunday Church Service Schedule at DoRaleigh.com — your guide to faith, community, and connection in the City of Oaks.

    Follow Us: Instagram | Facebook | BSky | Linkedin

    #communityWorship #DoRaleigh #downtownRaleigh #events #faithInRaleigh #News #RaleighChurchServiceTimes #RaleighChurches #RaleighEvents #SundayService #TriangleChurches #worship #worshipServices

    #communityworship #doraleigh #downtownraleigh #events #faithinraleigh #news
  20. NBA News @[email protected] ·

    Wizards GM expects Anthony Davis to make D.C. debut this season, despite contrary reports rawchili.com/nba/593283/ #AlexSarr #AnthonyDavis #AtlantaHawks #Basketball #BrooklynNets #ChrisHaynes #Dallas #DallasMavericks #DerikQueen #IndianaPacers #KyshawnGeorge #MiamiHeat #NBA #NewOrleansPelicans #NextSeason #SacramentoKings #TraeYoung #Washington #WashingtonWizards #WashingtonWizards #Wizards

    #alexsarr #anthonydavis #atlantahawks #basketball #brooklynnets #chrishaynes
  21. Babs E Blue #ReleaseTheFiles @[email protected] ·

    #AOC on #ChrisHayes- damn ——#AOC2028!!

    #aoc #chrishayes #aoc2028
  22. Babs E Blue #ReleaseTheFiles @[email protected] ·

    #AOC on #ChrisHayes- damn ——#AOC2028!!

    #aoc #chrishayes #aoc2028
  23. Babs E Blue #ReleaseTheFiles @[email protected] ·

    #AOC on #ChrisHayes- damn ——#AOC2028!!

    #aoc2028 #chrishayes #aoc
  24. Babs E Blue #ReleaseTheFiles @[email protected] ·

    #AOC on #ChrisHayes- damn ——#AOC2028!!

    #aoc #chrishayes #aoc2028
  25. the-end-time.org @[email protected] ·

    Could AI Explain the Antichrist’s “Resurrection”?

    By Elizabeth Prata

    Synopsis: A thoughtful reflection on Revelation’s “fatal wound,” exploring whether the Antichrist’s resurrection is literal, counterfeit, or technologically fabricated through AI deception, while ultimately affirming Christ’s sovereignty, victory, and eternal promises.

    I have often wondered about this scene in Revelation. The Beast, AKA The Antichrist, will preside over the world during the time of The Tribulation. He will have seemed to be killed, or maybe really killed with a sword. It’s unclear. Here is the verse:

    A thought about ‘fatal’

    saw one of his heads as if it had been fatally wounded, and his fatal wound was healed. And the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast; (Revelation 13:3) underlines are mine.

    In the Greek fatally means Lit slaughtered to death according to biblehub.com Greek lexicon; or, “wound of death.” So, did the Antichrist die? Fatal means dead. On the other hand, the language says ‘as if he had been’.

    To continue-

    Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon. He exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence. And he makes the earth and those who live on it worship the first beast, whose fatal wound was healed. (Revelation 13:11-12) underline mine

    But did the Antichrist only seem to die?

    In Revelation 13:3 and verses 12 & 14, the word fatal is used four times. Fatal means lethal, deadly, mortal, terminal. So why does the verse above say ‘as if he had been fatally wounded’? It’s the same Greek usage, too, of John saying he saw the Lamb ‘as if he had been slain’. But we know Jesus really was slain. (Revelation 5:6).

    Some interpret it by saying that the antichrist really dies and satan heals the antichrist and resurrects him to life. But John 1:3 says that in Jesus is life, and Colossians 1:16 says in Him all things were created, and by Him all things were created. Revelation 1:18 says Jesus holds the keys to death (and Hades). So how could satan legitimately perform an action in a power that only Jesus possesses? Satan can perform counterfeit miracles only so far, as we saw Pharaoh’s magicians do at first, then God’s power shown through Moses left their miracles in the dust.

    We read in chapter 13 verse 14-

    And he deceives those who live on the earth because of the signs which it was given him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who live on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life. v 14

    And it was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast would even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed. v 15

    A counterfeit miracle healed a near-fatal wound?

    Another interpretation is articulated by John Walvoord:

    Another plausible explanation is that the final world ruler receives a wound which normally would be fatal but is miraculously healed by Satan. While the resurrection of a dead person seems to be beyond Satan’s power, the healing of a wound would be possible for Satan, and this may be the explanation. The important point is that the final world ruler comes into power obviously supported by a supernatural and miraculous deliverance by Satan himself. (Source: John F. Walvoord, “Revelation,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary)

    2 Thessalonians 2:9 says satan possesses great power and can do counterfeit miracles:

    that is, the [lawless] one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and false signs and wonders,

    2 Thessalonians 2:11–12 says that this time will be one of great deception, with the world being deluded.

    So, could satan fake resurrecting the Antichrist? His wound seemingly killing him but satan performing a counterfeit miracle to make is seem that the Antichrist is alive-again? Again, it’s unclear.

    Here’s where AI may come into play

    Or this: here is my own thought. As I see Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly refine itself, it’s getting harder to tell which figure in videos are real and which are digital phantoms.

    Perhaps people previously trying to interpret these verses could not understand how a fatal wound could be healed and the Antichrist given breath again to the extent that the whole world believes it and marvels. (Revelation 13:3). But nowadays we know that digital fakery is so developed and so precise that we see digital fakes of people and animals every day and do not know they are fakes. AI could perhaps display a digitally enhanced Antichrist with only an inner circle knowing he isn’t living any more.

    Here’s why I think this-

    In the end of WWII, an antichrist prototype, Adolph Hitler, sequestered himself from the public and was rarely seen except to his closest advisors. After an agitator tried to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, Hitler rarely appeared in public any more. He refused to visit destroyed cities or go see frontline troops, appearing only in highly curated photo opportunities.

    Remember Forrest Gump?

    Fifty years later, in 1994 the movie character of Forrest Gump played by Tom Hanks made it seem as if he was really appearing alongside historical leaders like Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon. These digital effects were achieved through groundbreaking “invisible” visual effects created by special effects company Industrial Light & Magic. In the movie it really looked as if the titular character had directly interacted with those real historic presidents. People marveled at the trick.

    Given what we know about the advancing refinement of AI digital personas, in the near or far future, the Antichrist being given ‘breath’ easily could be a digital fakery presented to the world as if the Antichrist actually was resurrected from death to physical life. It would not be hard at that future time to fool the world into thinking the Beast was alive; IF he had been killed and was all dead and not mostly dead.

    We can’t be dogmatic about these things. Though the Bible is perspicacious and its meaning is accessible, not hidden, and though it is a book not for scholars but for anyone to understand, there are hard things in it that take time and patience to unravel. And there are some hidden things in it too- namely prophecies like what the Seven Thunders had said (Revelation 10).

    But personally, I believe AI will pay a major role in this ANtichrist wound scenario described in Revelation 13. That is just my opinion.

    In the end it is good to focus on the fact that Jesus wins, that He loves His believers, and His Bride will be spotless and enjoy Him forever on a renewed earth. No Antichrist, no Satan, no unrepentant sinner in sight. Let me conclude with Pastor Tom Ascol’s good words. He had been talking about the crumbling political, social, and civic compact here in the US, and how the world is changing in front of our eyes. We are living in dystopian times, the beginning of. Yet,

    “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Created it by himself for himself. He has a plan. He has an agenda. He has a purpose. And sin didn’t thwart any of that. Sin actually, in a mysterious way that we don’t fully comprehend with his providence, was factored into it, was a part of it. And he is going to redeem this world. He is going to renew this world. He is going to bring a people safely to a reconciled state with him to be sinless forever.”

    “And we’re part of that. And we have a role to play here and now in the overall purpose of God. And that purpose will not fail. And as we know him in Jesus Christ, we can be sure that nothing will come into our lives that hadn’t been filtered through his hands. That nothing will happen to us that is not a part of his purpose to do for us what he’s promised to do. And he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion in the day of Christ Jesus.”

    ~Tom Ascol, The Sword & The Trowel recent podcast: TS&TT: Assassination, Corruption, & Social Decay: Understanding the Times

    Further Resources

    AI essays from The End Time:
    When the Teacher Isn’t Real

    Logging Off to Lean In: Focus in a Distracted Digital World

    Book Review: From digital fatigue to analog renewal- Thom Rainer’s “The Revival of the Analog Church”

    Answers in Genesis-

    AI: Useful Tool or Existential Threat?

    The Effects of Artificial Intelligence part 2. Includes a downloadable Study Guide

    Challies: Wise and Helpful Ways for Christians To Experiment With AI

    #ai #antichrist #bible #christianity #God #jesus #prophecy
    #ai #antichrist #bible #christianity #god #jesus
  26. miriam heddy @[email protected] ·

    I'm just going to put this here. #Privilege #Pundits #Predictions #ChrisLHayes

    #chrislhayes #predictions #pundits #privilege
  27. Charming Malcontent @[email protected] ·

    #ChrisHayes talks with #EzraKlein on a potentially fascinating overlap between satisfactory #outcomes (what all sentient #Fediversizens want) and the "#weaponization of #execution" (cutting away #process and #bureaucracy, apparently enabling #efficiency) to get actual shit done.

    castbox.fm/app/castbox/feed/58

    #outcomes #weaponization #execution #chrishayes #ezraklein #fediversizens
  28. Radio Free Trumpistan @[email protected] ·

    OH WOWZERZ!!

    It's one thing for #MSNow to repeatedly attempt to rehabilitate #ChrisMatthews under new management (and they were about that business before they got spun off) but it's quite something else to see #MehdiHasan back on the network that gave him the boot over Palestine reporting earlier. It's how he founded #Zeto -- but here he is on #AllIn with #ChrisHayes by golly. Welcome back, Mehdi!!!!!

    #mehdihasan #chrishayes #msnow #allin #chrismatthews #zeto
  29. Radio Free Trumpistan @[email protected] ·
    Well, there it is, people, via #AllIn with #ChrisHayes saying he's not clear on how a congresscritter could proclaim that #Venezuela took American land. As I pointed out yesterday, it's about Venezuelan nationalization of #Citgo , an American company taking Venezuelan oil and there are GOP critters wanting to take all that back FROM Venezuela. #ToldYouSo
    #venezuela #toldyouso #citgo #chrishayes #allin
  30. Michael ☕️ @[email protected] ·

    Hayes: Newsom's mockery campaign of Trump is 'SPOT-ON'
    youtube.com/shorts/2Dg1z77lr5M
    #USPol #ChrisHayes #AllIn #MSNBC #GavinCNewsom #PotusTwitterStyle

    #potustwitterstyle #gavincnewsom #msnbc #allin #chrishayes #uspol
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