Tag: interview

Categories
News

News Roundup 2024-12-01

Personal / Website News

Book Review of Orphan Road

Brand new book review is up here at the website.

This is a little outside my comfort zone as I’m no expert on crime fiction, but I took a dive into Andrew Nette’s novel Orphan Road and enjoyed it. Check out the review proper here.

Interview at BoldJourney

Your’s truly got interviewed at BoldJourney.

Give it a read here. And while you’re at it, check out the interview with Philippe Gerber as well!

Danse Macabre Blu-ray

Artus Films have just released Antonio Margheriti’s Castle of Blood, under the Danse Macabre title, in a luxurious UHD Blu-ray boxset.

The boxset has 3 discs, postcards, pins and buttons, and a near 100 page booklet. The final page of the booklet contains a snippet from my master’s thesis on Castle of Blood!

Super chuffed to have some of my scholarship appear as part of a physical release of a movie I adore. The boxset can be purchased at the Danse Macabre product page at the Artus Films website.

H. P. Lovecast Podcast

Brand new episode of H. P. Lovecast Podcast is now online!

In this episode we take a look at issue 1 of the comic book Flesh Eaters by Philippe Gerber, Orville Thurstan, with art by Okiko. The episode can be streamed at the HP Lovecast Buzzsprout, via the embedded player below, or through your podcast app of preference.

Ep 62 – Philippe Gerber and Orville Thurstan's Flesh Eaters Comic – H. P. Lovecast Podcast

We have one more podcast for 2024 that we are planning to do. Nothing says X-mas time like angels, so we will be watching and talking about the 1995 film The Prophecy. Stay tuned!

The Best Horror of the Year Vol 16

Every year Ellen Datlow puts out a recap book called The Best Horror of the Year where she recounts notable releases and reprints some of the best stories and poetry.

Volume 16 just dropped and I’m chuffed to find out I’m mentioned in the book regarding my essay in the cosmic horror issue of Weird Tales. I’m super flattered!

This is actually the second time I’ve been mentioned in one of these books. A few years ago both Michele and I were mentioned in The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 13 regarding the collection we edited, Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern: Critical Essays.

Here is the text from that edition:

Both volumes can be ordered from Amazon – here is the link to #13 and here is the link to #16.

Panthans Journal #331

The newest issue of the The National Panthans Journal has been published. This issue contains a re-print of my review of The Moon Maid: Catacombs of the Moon #1.

Paraphrased from the zine: The National Capital Panthans Journalis a monthly publication issued as a .PDF file on the Saturday before the first Sunday of each month. Contribution of articles, artwork, photos and letters are welcome. Send submissions to the editor: Laurence G. Dunn at laurencegdunn@gmail.com in a Word document for consideration.

McFarland Holiday Sale

My publisher, McFarland, is having a Holiday sale on all of their tiles! From November 15th to December 2nd, if you use code “HOLIDAY24” during checkout, you’ll get a 35% discount.

If you want to support me, consider buying a copy of The New Peplum or Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern:

The New Peplum
Cover art for The New Peplum

McFarland Purchase link

Normal price: 39.99
35% = 13.99
Price after coupon: 25.99

McFarland Purchase Link

Normal Price: 29.95
35% = 10.48
Price after coupon: 19.47

If you want to support Michele, consider buying James Bond and Popular Culture and Horror in Space: Critical Essays (I have essays in both):

McFarland Purchase Link

Normal Price: 29.95
35% = 10.48
Price after coupon: 19.47

McFarland Purchase Link

Normal Price: 29.95
35% = 10.48
Price after coupon: 19.47

If you’re interested in another book that I have an essay in, consider The Many Lives of the Twilight Zone and Uncovering Stranger Things:

McFarland Purchase Link

Normal Price: 29.95
35% = 10.48
Price after coupon: 19.47

McFarland Purchase Link

Normal Price: 19.99
35% = 6.99
Price after coupon: 12.99

A Hero Will Endure Paperback Relese + Discount

Vernon Press, the publisher of A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator, has just released a cheaper, paperback version of the book, just in time for Gladiator 2!

The paperback is at the much more friendly price of $57 compared to $96 for the hardcover and $107 for an electronic version. All editions of the book can be found at the Vernon Press product page.

In addition, the publisher is offering a coupon on purchases of the collection! From now until the end of January 2025, if you use code SLZM30 at check out, you’ll get 30% off the title. So, the $57 book now becomes $39.99. Nice!

ECOF 2025

In September of 2025 there will be an Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship (ECOF) event down in Willcox, AZ. This event is to celebrate the 150th birthday of Burroughs while also honoring him with a plaque in the town due to his stationing with there the 7th U.S. Calvary in the 1890s. (Note: another ERB convention was held in Willcox back in 2019 and an event recap of that can be read at ERBZine #7059).

Here is a flyer for the 2025 event:

I’ll share more information about the event as I find out more on my website updates. There currently is a fundraiser going on to raise funds for the ERB plaque, and details for that can be found in the QR code in the above graphic, or by checking out the donation page at the Sulphur Springs Valley Valley Historical Society. 3.8K of 5K has been raised already. 

Michele and I will be in attendance for this convention, so I’ve added it to the appearances section of my website as well. 

Publishing Recap

Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2024.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #326.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#2″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #327.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#3″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #328.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus / Warlord of Mars #1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #329.

“Wondercon 2019 Coverage: Tarzan, John Carter, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.: What’s New?” reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #330.

Comic Book Review: “The Moon Maid: Catacombs of the Moon #1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #331.

Calls for Papers/Proposals

Here are some new pop culture CFPs that have crossed my path. Links to these will also be in the CFP page on the navigation bar.

Play and the Gothic

[Note: I = Simon Bacon]

I have a speculative CFP on “Play and the Gothic” to encompass any kind of gaming, boardgames, role-playing games, toys, construction games (Lego etc), dolls, collective or individual games across mediums, history and cultures that can be read in terms of play, playful, interactive, immersive, virtual, problem solving, psychological, well-being, materiality.

Their role in fictional fictional and non-fictive spaces, as the focus and instigators of narrative, their relation to the ludicrous gothic, their ability to gothicise spaces, or how they become gothicised via their use or environment.

This can equally involve the relationship between gaming/games/toys to certain kinds of gothic; happy gothic; regional gothic; ecogothic; folk gothic; children’s gothic; female gothic; religious gothic; gothic monsters (vampires/werewolves/ghosts/etc); the weird; cosmic gothic.

If interested send abstracts/ideas to me by Jan 31, 2025 at: baconetti@gmail.com

(Final essays of 6-7,000 words would potentially be needed mid 2026)

Monstrous Consumption:
The Diets of Monsters and Monstrous Diets in the Popular Imagination

Another Simon Bacon CFP:

If we are what we eat, what things do we eat to make us monsters And what things do monsters eat to make them so monstrous?

This can be read as broad as you like, and across history and cultures and in any media (games, comics, music, performance, literature, film, TV).

Possible areas could be, but in no way limited to:

  • magic foods that transform people into monsters
  • diets/foods that make other cultures/peoples monstrous
  • additives/secret ingredients with monstrous effects
  • diets/foods specific to monsters
  • the role of cannibalism and/or forbidden foods
  • toxins/poisons/drugs
  • shrooms/mezcal and hallucinogenic foods
  • allergies and intolerances
  • transgressive foods/diets
  • supernatural and/or magical foods
  • foods that are alive
  • food/diets in rituals/religious practices and the transgression of those
  • role of vegetarianism and veganism

The call is going really well, but don’t let that put you off if you have an idea.

Consuming Identity: Cannibalism and the Beyond Human Subject

Connectedly….there has been a lot of interest within this around Cannibalism with the possibility of a separate collection solely on this. So if you have any left field ideas to do with cannibalism in regards to:

  • Historical cases
  • Philosophy
  • Theology and religion
  • fantasy and science fiction (alien cannibals)
  • indigenous and cross-cultural examples
  • cannibalism and eco-criticism/environmentalism
  • cannibalism and decolonisation

Deadline for receiving abstracts is 31st December 2024, with final essays due early to mid-2026. If you have thoughts, abstracts, or relevant essays looking for a home…drop me a message at: baconetti@gmail.com

Panel: Airborne Gothic

ASLE 2025 Panel Organized by the Society for the Study of American Gothic

July 8-11, 2025

University of Maryland, College Park

This panel sets out to consider how gothic is carried and transmitted through air. Airborne gothic takes many forms: stories told around campfires; plague and Covid narratives; texts featuring ominous flying creatures (birds, bats, and bugs!); radiation/nuclear gothic; propagandistic talk about windmills as killing machines; airplanes or spacecraft as gothic sites; the winds and wutherings that course through so many gothic stories; and more. How do gothic texts evoke unrest, turbulence, undeadness, and/or trauma by way of airborne vectors? How does airborne gothic both thwart and encourage collective atmospheres?

Please send one-paragraph abstracts and short bios to Jennifer Schell (jschell5@alaska.edu) and Eric Anderson (eandersd@gmu.edu) by December 20, 2024.

TV Matters (Intellect Books)

Editor: Sabrina Mittermeier
 
TV Matters is a new series of short monographs (40,000 to 50,000 words) on television series, analysing their production history, cultural context, main themes, as well as fandom and audience reception. The focus is on shows that both have critical acclaim (as reflected by awards, media reviews), but more importantly, are genuinely ‘popular’. That means they have had a robust viewership and ideally an active fandom (watercooler discussions on- and offline, as well as fan production such as fic, art, vids etc.) and/or an unusual reception history (cases of bans, censorship or similar).
As the intended audience for this book series extends beyond academia, we expect an engaging/accessible writing style. This however does not mean less academic ‘rigour’ – authors should thoroughly research production history (incl. where possible through interviews with creators or archival research), include a solid textual analysis of main themes and should show familiarity with concepts and theories of fan and audience studies.

The aim of this book series is to engage with TV shows that were and are truly popular rather than just part of a canon of ‘quality TV’ or ‘cult TV’. The scope includes scripted/fictional programming, both live action as well as animation, but also reality TV, casting shows and documentary formats, if they fill the criteria. If it mattered to people, it qualifies!

This crucially also means shows outside of a Eurocentric lens of media production – K-Drama, Telenovelas, any popular TV in its respective cultural contexts, but also productions that crossed border lines and were adapted transnationally. In case of particularly long-running shows such as soaps or procedurals, or non-scripted content, ongoing series are also open to consideration.
To illustrate examples, series that tentative authors have already been approached about include Bridgerton(2020–), Game of Thrones (2011–2019), Ted Lasso (2020–2023), Ducktales (1987–1990), Star Trek: Voyager(1995–2001) and the Eurovision Song Contest.

At this point, we are open to any proposals on series meeting the criteria, but are especially looking for someone interested in writing on Supernatural (2005–2020), Friends (1994–2004), Buffy the Vampire Slayer(1997–2003), Grey’s Anatomy (2005–), Doctor Who (1963–), the CSI, NCIS, Law & Order franchises or long-running reality TV and transnational competition formats such as Survivor, Big Brother or Strictly Come Dancing. If this sounds like you please approach us!

As a first step, just send a short (!) pitch (500 words max), including what series you’d want to write on and why you think it matters, to the series editor Sabrina Mittermeier (Sabrina.Mittermeier@uni-kassel.de). If deemed a good fit, we move on to a more formal proposal. We expect the series to launch in 2026.

Gothic Crossroads

A conference exploring and celebrating the multi and interdisciplinary crossings of Gothic and Horror Studies.

Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University, 25th-27th June, 2025

Plenary Speakers: Prof Rosario Arias (University of Malaga, Spain), Dr. Maisha Wester (Global Professor, University of Sheffield, UK)

Physical crossroads have long been sites where the human, divine and demonic were felt to converge and potent sites for magical, religious encounters, rituals of transformation, binding of undesirable spirits, siting of gallows and links to ancient cosmology. This conference also considers the crossroads as a space where the boundaries between differing spheres are negotiable, asking what it means to walk in the interdisciplinary pathways and cross currents of the Gothic.

The crossroad is a geographical location and ancient symbol closely associated with folklore where two or more realms touch. It is historically and imaginatively connected with travellers and travelling, strange encounters, omens, choice and indecision, danger, suicide, criminality, apocalypse and renewal, guilt and judgement, punishment, ritual and ceremony, lovers’ meetings, hanging, summoning, access to Gods, devil dealing, casting out and death. The choice between paths can also lead to repercussions and consequences of “the wrong path”, “the path not taken” and “straying from the path”.

This conference invites creative and scholarly consideration of any aspect of these areas or any other creative/critical spin on themes of crossing/crossover/cross currents, travelling, intersection, interception, (con)junction, incursion, deviation and transitioning in any/all aspects of cultural production as it relates to Gothic and horror.

It also proposes the crossing as a metaphor for presenting and thinking on the interdisciplinary work of the Gothic and the intersectional/transnational spaces where the gothic is engaged and approached. Thus, we are particularly interested in “paths less travelled” and contributions from scholars and ECRs working in the intersections where the cultural work of Gothic and horror studies crosses boundaries and spheres, engaging with fields and disciplines beyond the traditional, and where new “crossings” can be discovered. This includes, but is not limited to: Gothic and horror in gaming, architecture and heritage, creative writing and practice, comics and graphic novels, scriptwriting, theatre, music, geography, plant studies and environmentalism, anthropology, libraries and archives, sociology and social studies, broadcasting, publishing, media and graphic design. We are sure there are more, so feel free to surprise us with your wanders, crossings, and encounters!

Please submit a 250-word abstract for 15-minute presentations by 28th February 2025 to Dr Emma Liggins and Dr Eleanor Beal at gothic@mmu.ac.uk

For all submissions, be sure to include your name, a short (50-word) biographical sketch, institutional affiliation (if any), and contact details. Please send your submission as an attachment (as opposed to a link to a server such as Googledocs).

Submissions for panels should be sent as a single submission with three to four 250-word abstracts, a brief statement of the theme of the panel and the information above about each of the presenters.

Submissions for workshops should indicate the length of the workshop (max. 45 minutes).

If accepted to deliver a paper or workshop, a number of travel bursaries up to £100 are available for selected international and UK postgraduates on application.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

Some fun things and shout outs from these past few weeks.

New John 3:16 Track

Philippe Gerber, who does the theme music to the H. P. Lovecast Podcast, has cut a new track on Bandcamp under his John 3:16 moniker.

It’s called “Terror” and it can be streamed/purchased here. Check it out!

Ancient Aliens Autograph

Arrived in the mail just before Thanksgiving was our copy of Ancient Aliens season 2 on DVD, but autographed by series guest Tim R. Swartz.

I posted the DVD sleeve to him and he was gracious to sign it, though my name is missing an “S”. I’m not saying it’s aliens that took it, but….

Categories
News

News Roundup 2024-11-17

Personal / Website News

Scandalous Swords: Interview with J. Manfred Weichsel

A new interview article is up here at the website!

I interviewed J. Manfred Weichsel, editor of the sword and sorcery anthology Sword & Scandal.

Check it out here!

McFarland Holiday Sale

My publisher, McFarland books, is having a Holiday sale on all of their tiles! From November 15th to December 2nd, if you use code “HOLIDAY24” during checkout, you’ll get a 35% discount.

If you want to support me, consider buying a copy of The New Peplum or Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern:

The New Peplum
Cover art for The New Peplum

McFarland Purchase link

Normal price: 39.99
35% = 13.99
Price after coupon: 25.99

McFarland Purchase Link

Normal Price: 29.95
35% = 10.48
Price after coupon: 19.47

If you want to support Michele, consider buying James Bond and Popular Culture and Horror in Space: Critical Essays (I have essays in both):

McFarland Purchase Link

Normal Price: 29.95
35% = 10.48
Price after coupon: 19.47

McFarland Purchase Link

Normal Price: 29.95
35% = 10.48
Price after coupon: 19.47

If you’re interested in another book that I have an essay in, consider The Many Lives of the Twilight Zone and Uncovering Stranger Things:

McFarland Purchase Link

Normal Price: 29.95
35% = 10.48
Price after coupon: 19.47

McFarland Purchase Link

Normal Price: 19.99
35% = 6.99
Price after coupon: 12.99

A Hero Will Endure Paperback Relese + Discount

Vernon Press, the publisher of A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator, has just released a cheaper, paperback version of the book, just in time for Gladiator 2!

The paperback is at the much more friendly price of $57 compared to $96 for the hardcover and $107 for an electronic version. All editions of the book can be found at the Vernon Press product page.

In addition, the publisher is offering a coupon on purchases of the collection! From now until the end of January 2025, if you use code SLZM30 at check out, you’ll get 30% off the title. So, the $57 book now becomes $39.99. Nice!

ECOF 2025

In September of 2025 there will be an Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship (ECOF) event down in Willcox, AZ. This event is to celebrate the 150th birthday of Burroughs while also honoring him with a plaque in the town due to his stationing with there the 7th U.S. Calvary in the 1890s. (Note: another ERB convention was held in Willcox back in 2019 and an event recap of that can be read at ERBZine #7059).

Here is a flyer for the 2025 event:

I’ll share more information about the event as I find out more on my website updates. There currently is a fundraiser going on to raise funds for the ERB plaque, and details for that can be found in the QR code in the above graphic, or by checking out the donation page at the Sulphur Springs Valley Valley Historical Society. 3.8K of 5K has been raised already. 

Michele and I will be in attendance for this convention, so I’ve added it to the appearances section of my website as well. 

Publishing Recap

Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2024.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #326.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#2″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #327.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus: The Flames Beyond#3″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #328.

Comic Book Review: “Carson of Venus / Warlord of Mars #1″ reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #329.

“Wondercon 2019 Coverage: Tarzan, John Carter, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.: What’s New?” reprinted in the National Capital Panthans Journal #330.

Calls for Papers/Proposals

Here are some new pop culture CFPs that have crossed my paths. Links to these will also be in the CFP page on the navigation bar.

Contemporary Indigenous Horror

Deadline for Abstracts: May 30, 2025

Contact: nborwein@uwo.ca

Edited by Dr. Naomi Simone Borwein and Dr. Krista Collier-Jarvis

Building on discussions in the edited volume, Global Indigenous Horror (University Press of Mississippi, 2025), this is a call for chapter proposal submissions focused on the topic of Contemporary Indigenous Horror. Beautiful, luminous and resonant moments of horror exist in the work of writers like Shane Hawk, Kim Scott, Tiffany Morris, Waubgeshig Rice, or Ambelin Kwaymullina. But Indigenous horror tales thrive in many narrative or storying forms—from fiction, plays, and music, to graphic novels, art installations, or experimental films fortified by sonic and oral manifestations.

In response to the forthcoming inaugural essay collection, Global Indigenous Horror (2025), Judith Leggatt states, “Global Indigenous Horror is a timely and welcome addition to the growing field of Indigenous Horror studies.” Over the past decade, there has been a (re)surgence in Indigenous works focusing on tales of horror, such as Anoka: A Collection of Indigenous Horror (2011; Hawk); Ajjiit: Dark Dreams of the Ancient Arctic (2011; Tinsley and Qitsualik); Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Anthology Collection (2023; Hawk and Van Alst Jr.); Whistle at Night and They Will Come: Indigenous Horror Stories (2023; Soop); Midnight Storm, Moonless Sky: Indigenous Horror Stories (2022; Soop); Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories (2019), Moosebumpz: Scary Stories from the Rez, and The Land Has Spoken—Tales of Indigenous Horror (2024; Hawk and Rogers), and Zegaajimo: Indigenous Horror Fiction (2024; Akiwenzie and Adler), just to name a few.

Responding to the widening gap between Indigenous horror and academic responses to it, editors Naomi Simone Borwein and Krista Collier-Jarvis solicit contributions for Contemporary Indigenous Horror. Shane Hawk broadly defines horror as that which “prioritizes the fear factor, often using graphic depictions of violence, monstrous beings, or otherworldly threats to achieve its effect. The ultimate purpose of horror is to confront the reader with their deepest fears, creating an experience that is visceral and unsettling.” When taken up by Indigenous storytellers, horror often engages with a colonial past that has never really passed, and as such, it haunts contemporary Indigenous peoples and communities. Indigenous horror thus often blends traditional stories as well as Indigenous ways of knowing and being with contemporary issues. In many cases, Indigenous horror is about our lived experiences, not as the victim of ongoing coloniality, but as resistance. According to Elizabeth Edwards and Brenna Duperron, “Indigeneity is a resistance — in the usual sense of opposition, repudiation, and refusal to comply […but also] resistant to assimilation. Indigeneity is the lived and embodied experience of peoples who have participated in that resistance” (94). In many other cases, Indigenous horror is about what Scott Gordon calls “colonial whiplash,” where “white people who haven’t turned into zombies [or other monsters] are at the mercy of the oppressed”—their Indigenous saviours. And in other cases, what Indigenous horror is has yet to be revealed.

Chapters (6,000-8,000 words including bibliography) may examine modern, contemporary representations of Indigenous Horror from a variety of perspectives. With a focus on analysis of current horror (narrative) production by self-identifying artists, writers, and other creators, some areas of consideration include, but are not limited to:

  • the future of Indigenous Horror;
  • Indigenous futurisms;
  • Indigenous futurism in relation to Afrofuturism;
  • the post-apocalyptic;
  • after the Anthropocene (or other labels);
  • pre-contact/post-contact;
  • Indigenous “monsters”;
  • Indigenous identity/identities;
  • unsettling, activism;
  • love, reciprocity, and horror;
  • Indigenous horror and visual, digital, or textual sovereignty;
  • mixed media, experimental media;
  • virtual, embodied, extended, or augmented reality;
  • multisensory installation and the horror experience;
  • ecological discourses and horror manifestations in relation to speculative narratives;
  • interrogation of “rewilding” and alternatives;
  • decolonization of Indigenous stereotypes in mainstream Horror and their counterparts in Indigenous narratives;
  • authentic Indigenous horror images, visions, “metaphors” or “motifs”;
  • social media and h/Horror in relation to fiction marketization;
  • sonic landscapes of horror;
  • systems of Indigenous horror that move between fiction, film, music, and other media;
  • NDN and Horror media;
  • inter-tribal horror/Horror and trans-Indigeneity or pan-Indigeneity;
  • exploration of various land-based, place-based, sky-based, star-based, or water-based horrors in narratives by Indigenous creators;
  • blood, heredity, categorization, and holocaust/genocide narratives;
  • reconciliation;
  • virtue signalling, horror, media cultures and spaces;
  • metacommentary;
  • analysis of Indigenous Gothic and Horror;
  • Indigenous Horror fiction and ways of knowing;
  • reading (and teaching) Indigenous horror fiction;
  • horror systems as epistemologies;
  • Indigenous Horror fiction and scholarship;
  • and more.

This follow-up collection seeks contributions from self-identified Indigenous scholars in any stage of their academic journey. We also encourage submissions from allies to the community. To acknowledge the various ways in which Indigenous scholarship may emerge, we welcome both traditional as well as more exploratory approaches, including submissions of proposals for non-fiction works by self-identified Indigenous storytellers reflecting on the process of writing, or otherwise producing, horror.

Please send a 250-word abstract and a 100-word bio to editors Naomi Simone Borwein (nborwein@uwo.ca) and Krista Collier-Jarvis (Krista.Collier-Jarvis@msvu.ca) by May 30, 2025. Accepted chapters will be due June 30, 2026.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

Some fun things and shout outs from these past few weeks.

Gladiator 2 Cinemark Popcorn Bucket

Collectable popcorn buckets are becoming a big thing now. Gladiator 2 has one, of course. Thankfully this bucket could be ordered online instead of actually going to a Cinemark theater. So, of course I ordered a bucket:

Sword and Sandal Blu-rays

Coinciding with the release of Gladiator 2 in November, there’s been a handful of older pepla getting new releases on UHD/Blu-ray. In mid November three came in the mail: Steelbook edition of the original Gladiator (2000), a new cut of Caligula (1979), and a new edition of Hercules Returns (1993).

Rest in Peplum Tony Todd

Tony Todd, horror actor extraordinaire best known for his portrayal as Candyman, passed away. He starred in a handful of pepla: Xena (1995-2001), Hercules (1995-1999), Beastmaster 3 (1996), and Minotaur (2006).

Michele and I had the honor to meet him way back in 2008 at a horror con in SeaTac. He autographed my Criterion Collection edition of The Rock (1996):

When Candyman 2021 came out I did an article on bands that sample dialogue from the original Candyman (1992). Do check out that article to see some innovative ways that Todd lives on via textual sampling.

Art of Michele Brittany

Michele has started a Facebook Page devoted to her crafting and art. If you want to check out her projects or purchase some of her journals, give the page a like and follow!

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565895377463

Categories
Interview Peplum

Scandalous Swords: Interview with J. Manfred Weichsel

The peak years of the 60s Italian peplum cycle and the 80s sword and sorcery cycle have many films with transgressive, subversive, erotic, or excessively violent content. The Italian wave of pepla presented overt sexuality with their portrayal of vamps, belly dancers, shirtless strongmen, harems, and sexual seductions. With lax attitudes of what could be portrayed in media, the 80s wave of barbarian films upped with violence with overt gore, but also turned retrospective with more meta and parodic content.

Iconoclastic writer J. Manfred Weichsel seeks to tap into these eras of subversiveness with his new edited anthology, Sword & Scandal. The volume contains twelve short stories of sword and sorcery that is on, as the title suggests, the scandalous side. In this interview Weichsel talks about his newest endeavor and the future where he wants to take the scandal formula with other genres. 

Book cover provided courtesy of J. Manfred Weichsel.

What is your relationship with the sword & sandal and sword & sorcery genres? What got you into them? What are some of your favourite texts from these genres?

I’ve been reading sword & sorcery for as long as I’ve been reading books. I’ve probably read all the same stories everybody has; Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mauser, Kane, and stuff like that.

As for sword & sandal movies, a friend from college who first got me into world cinema, Evan A. Baker, showed me the Mario Bava Hercules movie in the late 90’s, but I didn’t do a deep dive into the Italian peplum stuff until very recently.  

I’m a regular contributor to Cirsova Magazine. The publisher was doing an anthology called The Mighty Sons of Hercules, that was an homage to the old peplum movies. I was invited to contribute, so of course I did a thorough study of the genre in preparation for writing my story. And that’s how I got into it. I think my favorite one I’ve seen so far is Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules.

The Calydonian Boar Hunt by J. Manfred Weichsel

You’ve dabbled with the sword and sandal genre before with “Maciste in the Land of the Snakes” (from the aforementioned The Mighty Sons of Hercules anthology) and your short novel The Calydonian Boar Hunt. What was the genesis of how this story came about? What was the primary goal you wanted to accomplish with this specific book?

The Calydonian Boar Hunt is actually set during the bronze age, before there was hard metal to make swords with. I know it looks like the guy is holding a sword on the cover, but it’s supposed to be a stone knife!

The book is based on the eponymous Greek myth. I became interested in The Calydonian Boar Hunt years earlier, after seeing the famous Peter Paul Rubens painting at the Getty Museum in LA illustrating a scene from the story. Years and years after first seeing the painting, I was sitting at home during the pandemic, deciding what to write next, and I realized it was the perfect time to do a deep dive into Greek mythology. I remembered the painting and the impact it had on me and began to research the myth.

The Calydonian Boar Hunt takes place shortly after the story told in the film Jason and the Argonauts, and features many of the same characters. It’s the generation before the Trojan War, and many of the Calydonian hunters also either appear in the Trojan War as older versions of themselves, or are the parents of major figures in that story. It’s a very central myth in the Greek canon, so it gave me a lot to work with.

Of course, my books are comedies, so my retelling of the myth may be a little different in tone from what modern readers are used to. Well, many of the original Greek myths, such as the Argonautica of Rhodes, were comedies too, so my retelling is also closer in spirit to the original than many modern readers might suspect.

The Calydonian Boar Hunt by Peter Paul Rubens. Public Domain image provided by The Getty Museum.

The Kickstarter for Sword & Scandal hinted it was looking for transgressive peplum-inspired stories, but the final collection is less sword & sandal and more sword & sorcery. Based on the types of submissions you were getting for the project, was there a commonality you noticed? Something like you didn’t receive as many peplum stories as sword & sorcery (that one genre is more popular than the other)? Or maybe you received a decent amount of stories from both genres but that the sword & sandal stories tended to be lacking in those transgressive elements that you were looking for when compared to sword and sorcery? Or something else?

Of the twelve stories in the anthology, most can be described as falling into various subgenres of sword & sorcery. For example, “Kai-zur the Godless” by David Carter is a pretty pure barbarian story. But “Windblades” by C. L. Werner is a samurai tale, and a really violent one too, like a 70’s Toei movie. And “Flesh and Ink” by Rebecca Buchanon has a really unique premise. It’s about a female assassin whose tattoos leap off her body and kill her victims. 

There are also a few folk tales in the mix. For example, “The Baron with a Thousand Cats” by Gary Every is a retelling of an Italian tale about a groom who must save his bride from suffering prima notte with a grotesque baron. And “The Harem of Al’Azeri” by Jasiah Witkofsky is set in the Arabian world in 1,001 Nights. There’s even a weird tale the anthology in “Vermina’s Creature,” by Bitter Karella. 

I really only received two submissions that read like peplum movies, and while both were great, they shared the same problem, which was that I was looking for stories that placed their focus on sex, and these stories placed their focus on the violence. So, they were good, but they weren’t great fits for the anthology.

Sword & Scandal is overt in its want to feature stories heavy on sex, nudity, and violence. Aside from these facets, there other means to push genre boundaries to their limits. What are other transgressive and avant garde elements featured in Sword and Scandal?

The most subversive element you can put into fiction nowadays is humor. If you look at old books and movies, even if they weren’t comedies, they still had humorous elements, such as, for example, irony. But nowadays, humor is so absent from popular entertainment that audiences don’t know what to do when they encounter it. And because they don’t know what to do, they become frustrated, and respond by getting angry at the book or movie for frustrating them. This had led to a pervasive idea in our culture that if something is funny, that must mean it’s bad.  

I want to help society get beyond this prejudice. This shouldn’t be terribly hard a task. It’s such an ingrained part of human nature, that it should be obvious what you are supposed to do when you encounter humor. You’re supposed to laugh! So, I actively looked for stories that were funny, in order to reintroduce humor into popular entertainment.

One of the funnier stories in Sword & Scandal is “Abduction from the Seraglio” by David J. West. This is about a sellsword who is hired by a man to rescue his girl from a harem, but… well… I don’t want to give the punchline away. Another funny story is “Shaven Beards” by Ross Baxter. This one is full of rude British humor!

Were there any specific stories in Sword & Scandal that blew you out of the water because you had never read anything as uncompromising/perverted/graphic/etc. before?

Every single story in Sword & Scandal was one that, the moment I read it, I knew I needed it in the anthology. Many of the stories contain graphic sex, but not all of them. That wasn’t a prerequisite. A few were chosen not because they have sexual content, but because they have sexual themes. I was looking for stories that were dangerous in some way, and I think that describes all the tales in the book, whether they are graphic or not.

But, to answer your question, the sex scenes in “The Gateway of Pleasure” by Jim Lee are insane, like, really hardcore. This is a story where a knight rescues a damsel in distress, and she rewards him with a blow job and a lot of sex. “The Snow Princess” by Pip Pinkerton is, in part, an outrageous porn parody of Disney’s Frozen, with a great scene where the girls use magic to create an Ice Golem and then have sex with it. There’s lot of lesbian sex in this one too. And “He Who Sows” by Austin Worley is about two female thieves who break into a temple to steal the stone phallus from a fertility God, only to become enchanted by it and start playing with it.

In 80s sword & sorcery cinema terms, on a scale of Deathstalker I (for sex and nudity) to Deathstalker II (for irreverent humour), how would you situate Sword and Scandal?

I love both the Deathstalker movies for different reasons. Jim Wynorski has a few movies like Deathstalker II, where they were sequels to bigger budget movies, but instead of going for a cheap cash grab like other directors in such situations would, he created really unique movies that, while they don’t have much to do with the original, are a lot of fun. 976-EVIL II is probably my favorite out of these. 

As for your question, there is a lot of sex and a lot of irreverent humor in Sword & Scandal. Enough to satisfy fans of either film. 

Sword & Scandal was financed via a successful Kickstarter campaign. What were some of the obstacles you encountered while running the Kickstarter? Will crowdfunding be a model you will use go forward for other entries in your Scandal series?

I got the idea to use Kickstarter because Cirsova used it to raise money for The Mighty Sons of Hercules, a book I mentioned above. I made sure to play an active role in the Kickstarter, both to help that anthology happen, but also to learn about fundraising so I could run my own campaign one day.

Kickstarter was great because it allowed me to do so much more than I would have been able to otherwise. I mean, without Kickstarter, I wouldn’t have been able to offer payment to the writers or have interior illustrations! I would have just written the book myself like I normally do, which was my actual backup plan had the campaign failed. So, I will definitely use Kickstarter for any future anthologies I do, including my next one, Jungle Scandals.

My process was a little different from Cirsova’s. He asked the writers to write stories up front, and then used the table of contents in his fundraising campaign as he raised the money to pay us. I ran the Kickstarter first and then had an open call for submissions. I like doing it this way because it gives me the greatest flexibility in choosing the stories that are best for the anthology.

Author photo provided courtesy of J. Manfred Weichsel.

Your contribution to Sword and Scandal, “Confessions of a Wicked Harpastum Player,” was the result of one of the Kickstarter perks where the pledger could design their own story. That pledger, Alexander Joyner, wanted “a tale with a female protagonist, about women’s soccer, with torture and lesbians.” That is quite the order – how did you go about tackling this compared to stories you pen yourself?

Well, instead of soccer, I used Harpastum, which is an ancient ancestor of modern soccer. Then I added a lot of sword & sorcery elements, such as having them play the game with a severed head instead of a ball. I came up with a sexy plot involving torture and lesbians, and voila. 

Overall, writing it was a fun experience. I often start outlining a story with an image or a few images in my head, so outlining one where the images were given to me didn’t change my process very much. If anything, it forced me to be more creative and to think outside the box. It was a fun experience, and one I hope to repeat in the next book. 

Aside from your introduction to the book, you also gave space for your artist, Apolonster, to share his musings and importance of working on the project. How did you connect with Apolonster? How did you two collaborate on the interior artwork, juggling artistic asks, feedback, and so on.

When I want to hire an artist, I usually go onto websites like DeviantArt and search artists until I find one that is already doing what I want to do. Then, I contact the artist to see if they are looking for work.

I found Apolonster when I was looking for somebody to do the cover to my novel Into the Bush. The moment I saw his portfolio, I knew I wanted to hire him, because he had some pictures that were exactly in the style I wanted.

I knew Sword & Scandal would be a much more complex project than that one was, because it needed a painted cover as well as interior illustrations. Apolonster is a talented and versatile artist who was classically trained at a European art academy, so when I started thinking of people to ask to do Sword & Scandal, he was my first choice.

My process for working on illustrations is that I write a worksheet that usually ends up being a couple of pages describing for the artist what I want, and then the artist gives me concept sketches. I pick one, and the artist makes the art.

Unfortunately, Apoloonster won’t be available for the next anthology for personal reasons. I already have the painting for the cover, and I’m looking for somebody right now to do the interior illustrations.

The next anthology in your Scandal series is going to be Jungle Scandals. What is some news you can share about that project? And aside form Jungle Scandals, what can folks expect to see from you in the near future? 

I’m currently writing a science fantasy book called Space Escapades, which I plan to be the final book in my Action Girls trilogy of books about three ditzy wannabe Hollywood starlets. 

I am creating the Kickstarter campaign as we speak. I hope to launch it early next year. I’m also working on a novel for the first time since my last one came out in March. Exciting things are on the horizon. 

The Mighty Sons of Hercules anthology published by Cirsova.

Do you see yourself revisiting the sword & sandal genre? If so, where would you like to take it next?

I want the “scandal” to be its own genre. I get into this in the introduction to Sword & Scandal. So, I want to do a bunch of differently themed books in the Scandal anthology series. The next one is Jungle Scandals, and then after that I want to do a science fantasy themed book, maybe called Planet Scandals or Outer Space Scandals. I’m going to do one called Scandal & Sorcery at some point, and might also do one called Sword & Scandal vol. II. I’m really taking them one at a time right now, so we will see what the future holds! 

I do know that Cirsova is thinking of doing another Mighty Sons of Hercules anthology, and I really want to be a part of that if he ends up doing it. 

I’ll probably revisit peplum at some point regardless. The thing is, if you look over my website, I have a pretty restless imagination and my books tend to all fall into different genres. I never really know what I am going to write next until I finish the book I’m working on. 

Sincere appreciation to Weichsel for his time for this interview. For more information on Sword & Scandal, J. Manfred Weichsel, and Apolonster, check out the following links:

Categories
Lovecraft

Bubbled Up from the Cauldron: Interview with Fred Phillips

Back in 2018 I conducted an interview with weird fiction poetry author Fred Philips that was published at The Witch Haunt. This website, however, has gone defunct. The interview can be read at a Wayback Machine cache of it, but for better posterity, I’ve republished the interview verbatim below. Enjoy! 

Fred Phillips is a poet, scholar and a bibliophile who has lived an adventurous life within various fandoms. He has two collections of poetry from Hippocampus press: From the Cauldron (2010) and Winds from Sheol (2017) and operates his own amateur press periodical, Sercon, for the Sword & Sorcery and Weird Fiction Transit (SSWFT) APA. 

Fred, would you be able to introduce yourself and tell a little bit about your background?

I was born in the same year Lovecraft died, 1937, in a Manhattan maternity hospital near 181st Street near the George Washington Bridge. I was an unwanted child; my father prospered as a hardware-man; my mother was able to afford to hire a wet nurse for me. My mother had one year of high school; in those days the youngest daughters of immigrant middle class Jewish households were expected to work their fingers to the bone to put their older brothers through college. My Uncle, Abraham Herbert Rothman, graduated from the School of Physicians & Surgeons of Columbia University. He married a girl who had her B.A. from CCNY and he opened a pharmacy on Hill Park Avenue, Yonkers, bought a house on King Ave. near the Yonkers Reservoir. They flew and took ocean liners all over the world and changed their car every two years.

My mother was an ignorant Ukrainian mouzhik (peasant). All she wanted was that I earn enough to satisfy the three basic needs of existence: food, clothing, rent. She was so stingy she refused to allow me to have birthday parties since she knew I’d invite my playmates who would have to ask their parents for money to buy me birthday presents. Thus, I was never invited to any of my friends’ birthday parties.

At 14 I joined a Scout troop, #191,District Two, N.Y.Councils. In three years I rose from Assistant Patrol Leader to Assistant Scoutmaster. My Scoutmaster and Assistant Scoutmaster were about to recommend me to be promoted to Scoutmaster because they said I had “charisma,” the ability to inspire devotion and enthusiasm among the younger Scouts. When they met me in mufti (civilian dress) they would snap me a salute to how me respect. At Open School Week in junior high school, my art teacher told my mother, “Mrs. Phillips, if Freddy keeps going this way one day you’re going to see his name lit up in lights.” In high school, because I wasn’t six feet tall, didn’t wear expensive clothing, didn’t drive my own car, and displayed no upwardly mobile expectations, I almost never got a date.

After earning my academic diploma my marks were too low for me to qualify for anything except for city college. I clerked at the Bronx branch of a city-wide chain of retail bookstores, Bookmasters, where I met Dorothea [Dee] Nissen and began courting her. Her father had died of cardiac arrest when she was ten. She and her younger sister, Joan, had to work early; their mother licked stamps for the Democratic Party. I took her to the Bronx Zoo, to concerts, to films. I shared my extensive book collection with her. My destructive witch of a mother tried to persuade me not to marry her.

At sixteen I suffered the first of a matched set of nervous breakdowns and was sent to the Psychiatric Observation Ward of Jacobi Hospital on Pelham Bay Parkway. I was given chemotherapy, recreational therapy, occupational therapy, and psychotherapy. My first psychiatrist was the Chief Psychiatric Resident of Jacobi. My second, Dr. Robert Langs, was a colleague of Dr. John Rosen, the “God” of American psychotherapy. In our recreation room, I played through several Beethoven symphonies on the piano, entirely by ear. When I was in the throes of a serious depression, my mother visited and said my Grandmother, who had doted on me, had died, which drove me deeper into depression. My psychiatrist had to forbid her to visit me till I recovered from my depression.

While clerking at Bookmasters I had taught myself so much the other clerks used to call me “Professor.” Dee (whom I married) persuaded me to register at the SGS (School of General Studies), the night school at Lehman College. As a Bookmasters employee I was given a 40% employees’ discount. When I knew which course I wanted to take, I’d buy the finest book on the subject, take it home and read it until I memorized it. In my “survey” course, Introduction to Anthropology, I raised my hand and asked our teacher, “Would it help if we read Kroeber and Malinowsky?” Excitedly she wrote their names on the blackboard. The kid sitting behind me punched me in the shoulder and hissed, “Shaddup schmuck or she’ll assign them!” I turned coolly around, looked him directly in the eye and replied “You’re taking this course to earn an extra three points. I’m taking it because it’s my major.”

My next anthropology teacher, Prof. Ethel T. Boissevain, arranged for me to address the college’s Anthropology Society, for which she was the faculty advisor. She selected me with a group of her leading students to attend the annual conference of the American Anthropology Society, held that year at the University of Toronto, a leading Medieval study center in North America. She arranged for me to present a paper, “Aspects of the Science Fiction Fan Subculture in Metropolitan New York City, 1965-1971,” which was duly accepted as a formal part of the proceedings (the records of the convention) by the chairman because it was brand new material. In this way I brought a description of fandom to the attention of academia. I won a debate against Dr. Margaret Mead. Some of the girls who came with us asked me if I planned to teach anthropology. I replied “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

I drifted into SF fandom in NYC in 1965 when I was invited to attend a bi-weekly Friday open house, FISTFA (Fannish Insurgent ScienTiFictional Association) held on 13th Street, near 1st Ave, Manhattan. There I met the names many of whom would soon be raised to prominence among the professional ranks of SF writers: Ted White, David van Arnam, John Boardman, &c. The next year I was invited to serve as Chairman of Publications for the CCNY Science Fiction Society. As such I became editor of the society’s newsletter and changed its name to Durendal. When the other members asked, “What does it mean?” I explained “It was from a Chanson de Geste (Song of Deeds) beginning before the advent of the 7th century. This was from the Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland) and referred to Count Roland’s magic sword, Durendal. When he fell, mortally wounded at the Battle of Roncesvalles, two legends arose about how he disposed of it: one that he threw it into a poisoned stream, the second that he laid it under him beneath a tree and sat on it, his face towards the foe, the standard ‘heroic death’ of many renowned European heroes through the 17th century.” In 1968 I was invited to attend the first Crown Tournament of the NYC branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism; you saw The Fred Phillips Issue of the Swords & Sorcery Weird Fiction Terminus Amateur Press Association, edited by my friend, Leigh Blackmore, current President of the Australian Horror Writers Association. 

In 1972 I was appointed Poet-in-Residence for the Fantasy & Science Fiction Society of Columbia University. In 1973 at the first Meistersing (Poetry Contest) held in the Royal Province of the Eastern Kingdom, against formidable competition, I became first Poet Laureate, initiating a chain of annual Meistersing events leading to the establishment of the Honourable College of Bards of the Eastern Kingdom.

Fred Philips photo provided by Hippocampus Press.

Fred, you’ve become quite well read in the study of witchcraft. What got you into witchcraft scholarship? What are the primary texts you’d recommend on the subject?

In 1971 my wife tried to persuade me to have the credits I earned at Hunter College transferred to Lehman College (also known in those days as “Uptown Hunter”). She informed me of a student seminar slated to discuss witchcraft that would be held in Lehman’s teachers’ lounge. I came up with a handful of titles that at that time represented the “cream” of witchcraft scholarship: H. R. Trevor-Roper’s essay “On the Witchcraft Hysteria of the 17th Century”; George Lyman Kittredge’s Witchcraft in Old & New England; the 1981 3rd printing of the Iceland Review Library edition of Ghosts, Witchcraft, & the Other World from the series Icelandic Folktales I; the 1968 Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London) edition of The World of Witches by Julio Caro Baroja; the 1970 Harper Torchbook TB 1539 edition of Witchcraft in Tudor & Stuart England by A. D. J. Macfarlane; the 1985 Aquarian Press edition of The Devil’s Workshop by Christopher McIntosh. These, in essence, are only part of my collection dealing with the history of (Occidental) witchcraft. The others inhabit my occult shelf and include Transcendental Magic by Eliphas Levi (aka Abbe Luis Constant), the 2009 Oxford University Press edition of Grimoires:A History of Magic Books by Owen Davies, (especially in reference to chapter 8, “Lovecraft, Satan, & Shadows”), the1970 Citadel edition of The Book of Ceremonial Magic: A Complete Grimoire by Arthur Edward Waite (originally entitled The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts). The key to my collection is the 1989 University of Toronto Press edition of A Razor for a Goat: Problems in the History of Witchcraft & Diabolism by Elliot Rose (professor in the Department of History, University of Toronto) which is probably the best of the lot.

To more clearly understand witchcraft, one must be conscious also of the history of religion. Two titles I can heartily recommend to insure that end: the 1982 Chapel Hill/University of North Carolina Press edition of Messianism, Mysticism, & Magic: A Sociological Analysis of Jewish Religious Movements by Stephen Sharot (associate professor of sociology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), and the 1989 Oxford University Press edition of Religion, Science, & Magic in Concert & in Conflict, edited by Jacob Neusner (visiting professor at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, distinguished research professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida), Ernest S. Frerichs (professor of Religious Studies at Brown University),and Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher (professor of the History & Literature of Religion at Northwestern University. But these are only drop in the bucket, my resources embrace many more reliable studies of both Occidental, African, and Oriental witchcraft.

What is something you’ve learned about witchcraft during your studies?

In Old English, there was a town meeting called Witenaġemot (meeting of the wise). In the 7th century, when England (Angle-land) converted to Christianity, if someone could be found who professed to having converted to Christianity but persisted in worshipping the former Anglo-Saxon deities, he was called a “Waer-loge,” or oath breaker. This evolved into the term “warlock,” a man accused of violating his oath to the “White Christ.” The word “witch” is descended from the Old English term “Wicce,” wise-woman, that in large part gradually evolved into the term used today. Its contemporary definition is “a woman believed to have evil magical powers,” not unusual in a male-dominated culture.

You have two collections of poetry published with Hippocampus Press: From the Cauldron and Winds from Sheol. Can you tell us a little about these books and what you’d like to accomplish with your poetry?

To describe through the eyes of a Lovecraftian reader/collector a medieval milieu, a reflection of the works of renowned writers such as William Hope Hodgson, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Lovecraft himself; to immortalize in print close personal friends I made in the SCA during the decade of 1968-1878; to exhibit my abilities in literary compositions in verse based on unusual or fantastic circumstances composed in an innovative way. I also wanted my family and friends to be proud of me. Regrettably, during the 20s, the modernists, such as Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot, abandoned rhymed and metered poetry until it and other branches of aesthetics were condemned to irrelevancy. In the rest of the world, rhymed and metered poetry still sells like hotcakes. If Shakespeare was alive in the U. S. today, he’d starve to death in a month. This represents a serious decline in American culture.

It was not only one main thing I wanted to reflect in my poetry, but several. I made close friends from around the world [such as] Ann K. Schwader (recently appointed Grand Master for the Science Fiction Poetry Association) [and] Leigh Blackmore (member of the Society for the Academic Study of Magic). My work appeared in the Hippocampus Press annual Spectral Realms. Winds from Sheol was nominated for the Elgin Award by the Science Fiction Poetry Association.

Sincere appreciation to Fred Philips for his time for this interview. More information on Philips’ works can be found at the below links:

Categories
Peplum

Reborn With The Strength Of Stone: Interview With Ben Lacy On Samson #1: Nazi Smasher

Hercules, Ursus, Maciste, Goliath, Samson, et al. – all strongman characters and archetypes founds in peplum cinema, both classic and new. They are singular in their exploits, be it mythical, folklore, or cinematic only, but also interchangeable for the same reasons. The strongman is a malleable character, who can be juxtaposed against a variety of ages and settings, leading to fun and interesting scenarios. These could be tales of a Hercules-style character in space, superhero adventures, time traveling adventures that can feature a fish-out-of-water element, and others. 

Ben Lacy’s comic book series Samson is one such text that takes an iconic peplum protagonist and Hebrew Biblical hero, and applies a different spin to the character. Lacy’s incarnation of Samson leans heavily into the superhero genre (which has always has a strong link to mythology, see Marvel’s Hercules and Thor characters for examples) by having his character, a concentration camp prisoner, become the subject of Nazi experiments that leads to superhuman strength – a Jewish equivalent to Captain America. 

Variant cover by David Gallart.

Samson, written by Lacy, with Jhonesbas Craneo (Tomb of Horror) on pencils, Anton Polkhovskyi (The Cthulhu Man) as the colorist, and Nikki Powers (Burn, Wayward Kindred) providing lettering, is currently going through a crowdfunding campaign to realize the debut issue. Lacy has generously provided his time to be interviewed about his strongman comic. 

From classic 1960s sword and sandal films, Hollywood Golden Age Biblical pepla, and even Gladiator and neo-peplum, is this a genre you’re into? If so, how did you get into these types of films?

One of the first movies I saw in a theater was The Ten Commandments back in the early 1970s. I’ll always watch it if it’s on. The same with the last half of Ben-Hur and the few good parts of Cleopatra. I’ve also always liked the Steve Reeves Hercules movies. Not only did they have a lot of cool action, I’d never seen anyone like Reeves (this was pre-Arnold times) and I always wanted a build like that (which I never achieved). For the same reason, I liked the ridiculous Three Stooges Meet Hercules movie where a nerdy professor turns into a strong man.

What are your favourite sword and sandal films, comics, books, and so on?

In addition to the movies mentioned, I’ve liked a lot of the Busiek run on Conan. I used to read a series of books by John Jakes about Brak the Barbarian that were a lot of fun.

Various Samson pepla.

Have you watched any of the classic Italian Samson peplum films (such as Samson and His Mighty Challenge,Samson and the Sea Beast, Samson Against the Back Pirate, etc.), and if so, your thoughts on them? Did you draw any inspiration or ideas from these films?

No, I’m afraid I haven’t seen any of these. I did see Samson and Delilah as a kid.

What is the general synopsis of Samson?

Samson is an epic tale that takes place over the course of fifty years from WW2 to just after the fall of the Berlin Wall. During WW2 we see how the Nazis took two young boys and experimented on them, giving one of them great strength, speed, and invulnerability. He takes on the name Samson as a way of inspiring people.

Years later, after the reunification of Germany, Interpol has discovered that the Uberfuhrer, a Nazi supervillain, may still be alive and living in America. They urge Samson to come out of retirement to take him down. The first story arc follows both the younger and older SAMSON as we learn what’s happened to him and his world over those many years.

What was the genesis of this comic?

I’d always wanted to do a superhero comic (my other books are more sci-fi and adventure oriented). As a Jew, the idea of creating a Jewish superhero whose origin is very much related to his being Jewish was something I thought would be both exciting and unique.

How does your iteration of Samson compare to the Biblical incarnation?

Samson takes his name from the Biblical version both to be a sort of Captain America figure for Jews and because his real name is conveniently Samuel.

There are a lot of stories out there about Nazis doing weird science experiments and creating super soldiers, monsters, etc. How does Samson stand out from these types of stories?

This is inspired by actual events. The Nazis did experiment on Jewish twins. The two scientists in this book are based on two of the real men who conducted these experiments. Of course the experiments they actually conducted were quack science, but in a superhero universe, they succeed, but may wind up regretting it.

What was something important you learned or a surprise you encountered while writing and Kickstarting this comic?

I’ve done ten successful Kickstarters. The first time I tried to Kickstart Samson, it failed to fund. I learned that I had to expand my audience to people who were interested in superheroes. I printed off a large number of B&W Samson mini comics and gave those away to the backers of my other books and to people at comic cons.

What is the biggest goal you want to accomplish with Samson?

At this point, I want to get it funded and get issue one out there. Hopefully, when people see it, there will be more demand for issue two because I think this story will excite a lot of people.

What can fans of the sword and sandal genre look forward to in Samson? Any homages to the classic character or to the genre?

Probably more in variant covers than in the story itself though when Samson ends up in Israel and gets his first costume, he will have the more traditional longer hair and beard.

And finally any other news and projects you’d like to share?

I have two other ongoing series, Shark of War and The Vicious Vixens of Dakuwanga. People can read the first issues of both at BitingComics.com. And of course Samson still has a six days left at Samson.BitingComics.com.

Sincere appreciation to Ben Lacy for his time to talk about his Samson comic. More information on the comic, including a link to the Kickstarter campaign, can be found in the below list:

Categories
Interview Peplum

Aut Caesar Aut Nihil: Twenty Year Retrospective of the XII Caesars Industrial Compilation

Twenty years ago can seem like ancient history when looking at both pop and underground culture, a feeling that becomes compounded when a textual artifact from the past is an examination of ancient history proper. Industrial music typically does not dive into the world of antiquity, (usually staying in the realm of post-modern concepts), but the inherent experimental nature of the genre occasionally pushes a music project or release to explore topics related to ancient history. The 2004 compilation, XII Caesars, released by the long since defunct Somnambulant Corpse, is one of those outlier releases where industrialism and antiquity collide. Twenty years later, the release deserves to be unearthed and re-appreciated, not only for its contribution to the industrial genre, but as a time capsule of the underground scene in the aughts – a literal aural artifact. 

XII Caesars Cover Insert.

XII Caesars is a concept compilation with a specific focus on Julius Caesar and the first eleven emperors of Ancient Rome as detailed in Suetonius’ influential text, The Twelve Caesars. Each track focuses on a specific Caesar and are presented in chronological order of each emperor’s reign with two exceptions: four emperors share track seven “Year Of Four Emperors (Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian)” and the last track is the epilogue “Ultor,” a reference to Mars Ultor, an iteration of the god of Mars during the period of Augustus.

The first track, “Julius Caesar, Dictator,” is by the ambient-industrial project Exsanguinate. The background drone of the song feels like one is being shaken or rattled, with distorted wailing appearing halfway through the track. There is a chilling, 4-beat rhythm that adds a catchyness to the track, giving listeners something to latch onto during the song’s duration. 

“Augustus” by Tugend is the album’s second track. An ambient song with some neo-classical and borderline dungeon synth elements, it sounds like the music one would hear from a church belonging to an apocalyptic cult, with the latter half of the track bringing a fire-and-brimstone drumming to it.

Card of Tiberius / Murderous Vision.

The third track is the ambient “Tiberius” by Murderous Vision. The song begins with a repeating sample “Hey, Caesar” with the background giving way to other, garbled, sampled voices. The gives the track an effect of hearing whispered plots and schemes, and a general uncomfortable vibe, no doubt recreating the feelings of Tiberius’ paranoia.

“Tiberius” is followed by “Gaius (Caligula)” by Bestia Centauri. A droning track with some atonal electronics, it would easily be at home on the Cryo Chamber label.

Card for Claudius / Post Scriptvm.

Post Scriptvm’s “Claudius” is the compilation’s fifth track. An experimental soundscape, the song is sample heavy of crying, weeping, animal baying, and water rustling. The samples sit atop a 1-2 beat that flows through the song, making the song unnerving and ominous while at the same time accessible and easy to latch onto.

The minimal-ambient “Nero” appears to be the only song ever released by The Great Despisers. 

Survival Unit brings the power electronics genre to XII Caesars with their “Year Of Four Emperors (Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian).” The track is both burbling and bombastic, peppered with muddled samples of speeches and screeches. It is volatile track, definitely mimicking the period of civil war in the Roman Empire. 

“Titus” by Önd is an extremely minimal, experimental song, bordering on a single note being held through the entire duration. 

The last of the twelves Caesars, Domitian, is the compilation’s penultimate track and composed by Axone, the project of Somnambulant Corpse’s owner Chris Donovan. An industrial soundscape song, “Domitian” feels both windswept and grating, like traversing stone tunnels constructed by giant bees.

The final track on XII Caesars is “Epilogue (Ultor)” by Marspiter. An industrial-ambient composition, the song feels like gazing upon a ruined city in the middle of a desert under a dark sky, a last glimpse of what once was.

Insert Back.
CD in tray.

The cover of XII Caesars shows the busts of the twelve emperors in a small, 3×4 grid, with a faint, dark, modern cityscape as the background. Inside the booklet shows a gladius while the CD proper shows the pillars and buildings of Ancient Rome aflame. The presentation proper is akin to the imagery used by VNV Nation during their Empires-era (late 90s/early 2000s). Included with the album is a series of large, double sided postcards, housed in a ziplock bag, each depicting a rendition of different Caesar in a hand drawn style. The entire package evokes both the ornateness and DIY philosophy expressed by small, extreme music labels of the aughts. 

Complete packaging of XII Caesars.

Though ten industrial/ambient/noise artists are showcased on XII Caesars, only a three survive to the present day: Murderous Vision, Post Scriptvm, and Survival Unit (though Exsanguinate appears defunct, the project’s mastermind, Thomas Garrison, continues on prolifically as Control). Post Scriptvm and Stephen Petrus from Murderous Vision have graciously shared their experiences and thoughts about their tracks, providing incredible insight not only into their craft, but of industrialism of the period. 

What is your relationship with antiquity, classics, or (in the case of pop culture) the sword and sandal genre? Are these topics that interest you or influence you in any way?

Murderous Vision: Outside of an affinity for the Jason And The Argonauts film as a child, I don’t have a notable interest in the genre. I do, however, have an interest in all things historical. So, when creating my Tiberius themed contribution, I tried to keep his rule in mind. Something sounding epical, orderly and underlying dread were the things I attempted to execute.

Post Scriptvm: The name of my project, Post Scriptvm, as well as its specific spelling, is inspired by the mid-1970s BBC series I, Claudius, which portrays the early Roman Empire and is narrated by Emperor Claudius. Although my project has consistently been influenced by the ideas and aesthetics of Russian art and literary movements at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly Russian Futurism, I opted for this Latin name because, to me, it implies fin de siècle or the end of an era.

Murderous Vision, photo courtesy of the artist.

Outside niche subgenres such as neofolk and martial industrial, industrial music generally doesn’t dabble in pre-1900s history, let alone antiquity. From your perspective why do you think that is?

Murderous Vision: I think it may be related to the actual sounds of these genres. The instruments used and song structures involved evoke the way one thinks music sounded in these periods. With standard industrial music, the instrumentation is very clearly of the 20th and 21st centuries, and might be sonically incompatible with these historical periods. Authenticity and effectiveness reign.

Post Scriptvm: Many industrial music artists that I particularly appreciate, such as Bad Sector, Werkbund, Internal Fusion, SPK, Inade, among others, find inspiration in ancient mythologies. To me, this makes perfect sense. A 20th-century art critic once observed that the avant-garde serves as a continuation of classical art within modern contexts—an intentional continuation of an ideal that has been lost and ruined. For me, industrial music, particularly its more extreme, dark variety, has always served as a soundtrack to a civilization in steady and catastrophic decline. We primarily grasp, value and interpret antiquity through its ruins entombed within the sterile museum morgues, while a minuscule portion of surviving texts suggests an expansive realm of ideas forever beyond our reach. Industrial music, in parallel, reflects the decay of modern civilization, frequently finding inspiration in the ruins of ancient cultures. By referencing ancient ruins to depict the downfall of our own society, we are essentially shaping our own antiquity.

Post Scriptvm, photo courtesy of the artist.

What was the genesis of your involvement of the XII Caesars compilation?

Murderous Vision: At the time I had a close relationship with Chris Donovan and his label Somnambulant Corpse. I had previously been involved with the label on his Lovecraft themed compilation [note: The Outsider], and released a split CD with his personal project Kuru, called Blood-Brain Barrier. Both of these were released by Somnambulant.

Post Scriptvm: I received an invitation to contribute to the compilation from the owner of the Somnambulant Corpse record label. A couple of years prior to XII Caesars, Somnambulant had issued my debut album [note: Guaze], and I had previously contributed a track to the label’s earlier compilation dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft.

Did you get to select your emperor or was one assigned to you?

Post Scriptvm: The label actually had assigned each artist a Caesar to dedicate a track to, stating that the compilation’s subject matter necessitated a somewhat dictatorial approach.

Murderous Vision: It was assigned to me, based on his personal feeling of which emperor he felt suited the sound of each project he chose to include.

Your track on the compilation, was it an untitled song you had in your repertoire that you submitted or was it a song composed exclusively for the release?

Murderous Vision: It was composed exclusively for his compilation.

Post Scriptvm: For this compilation, I created an entirely new track, incorporating samples from both I, Claudius and the 1979 film Caligula, another one of my favorites.

How did you go about capturing the theme of your respective Caesar and conveying it in your composition?

Murderous Vision: I started by reading what I could online about the history and life of my Caesar. In drafting the sounds I kept in mind that I wanted to use reverbs that would evoke vast marble halls and open ancient stadiums. I recorded everything with a degraded VHS copy of Caligula playing on the TV in the background. 

Post Scriptvm: Apart from incorporating samples from the mentioned films and submerging myself into both The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius and The Roman Empresses by Jacques Roergas De Serviez prior to recording the track, I did not deviate from my typical approach for composing Post Scriptvm tracks at the time. As an undergraduate student back then, I had only rather primitive, rudimentary equipment at my disposal, which, in my view, was well suited for interpreting the ambiance of the ancient Roman Empire.

Going back in time to 2004, what do you recall the reception of the XII Caesars was like?

Murderous Vision: I don’t think it was widely circulated, but deeply appreciated by those who did get one. I seem to remember some favorable reviews circulating. 

Post Scriptvm: The reception was very positive. Despite being a DIY homemade CD-R release, the compilation was sold all over the United States and Europe and received several positive reviews in the underground press. The early 2000s marked the pinnacle for underground industrial music artists and small independent record labels like Somnambulant.

What are your thoughts on the compilation as a whole, from the presentation to the other contributions?

Murderous Vision: I was quite proud of my involvement. The label pulled no punches in the presentation, using high quality artwork and paper stocks to present the art panels, and professionally produced media sealed the deal. Every other act contributed great sound materials. It was a stellar compilation from a golden era that was known for stellar compilations.

Post Scriptvm: It is certainly of its time both in terms of sound production and its distinctly DIY presentation. It’s a wonderful testament to the era when underground experimental music flourished, showcasing the passion and dedication of the record label and every artist involved. Regrettably, the record label and the majority of the artists are no longer active.

Reflecting on your song for the compilation, are there any changes you would’ve made for it? Any thoughts of updating, remastering, or remixing your song and giving it a second life?

Murderous Vision: I think the track was a nice representation of the sound of Murderous Vision in that era. I think it stands as a good representation of both the band and the theme. The version that appears on there was truncated by the label for whatever reason he had at the time. The full, unedited version did, however, appear in 2006 on the Murderous Vision retrospective Ghosts of the Soul Long Lost Volume 1 [Note: listed as “Tiberious (Full Version)”].

Post Scriptvm: If I were to reinterpret that track now, it would have a completely different sound. I prefer directing my attention towards the future rather than dwelling on the past. Nonetheless, having to revisit it would provide me with a compelling reason to reread The Twelve Caesars and The Roman Empresses and to rewatch Caligula and I, Claudius.

Finally, what are some upcoming project news you’d like to share?

Post Scriptvm: My new LP titled Eisstoß is now available on Tesco Organisation, and I have a cassette EP titled Секта set for release in April on DumpsterScore Home Recordings.

Murderous Vision: This year will be another filled with activity. 2024 actually marks thirty years since the inception of the project. Among things that will happen this year are a performance in May supporting longtime friends Awen in NYC. There are a couple special surprises planned for the gig, but one must attend to see what they are! This year will also see the release of a new full length album called Pestilent Black Breath on Germany’s excellent label Dunkelheit Produktionen. Work is also well underway on a retrospective book of reflections on thirty years of Murderous Vision that will be packed with photos, flyers and ephemera from the beginning to present times. The machine chugs on…

Sincere thank you to Stephen Petrus and Post Scriptvm for their time and answers. More information on their projects can be found at the below links:

More information/tickets on the upcoming Awen/Murderous Vision/Autumn Brigade/DSM-III can be found here.

Categories
News

Biweekly News Roundup 2023-11-19

Personal / Website News

Flesh Field Interview

New interview is online now!

I had the honor to interview Ian Ross from Flesh Field about their newest album, Voice of the Echo Chamber, their first album in album two decades! Back in the aughts I listened to Flesh Field all the time and even caught them live in Seattle in 2005. I’m so happy to see the project resurrected. So, check out the interview and check out the new album!

The New Peplum Citation

Dr. Connie Skibinski’s essay “Crazy Man-Killing Monsters: The Inimical Portrayal of the Amazons in Supernatural‘s ‘Slice Girls'” cites Valerie Estelle Frankel’s essay “Hercules, Xena and Genre: The Methodology Behind the Mashup” from The New Peplum.

Dr. Skibinski’s essay has been published in the open access journal Thersites and can be read here.

Emmanuelle Legacy CFP Re-opened + Bibliography

Since garnering publisher interest, I’ve re-opened the CFP for the Emmanuelle legacy book. The updated CFP can be found here.

I’ve also started annotating Emmanuelle scholarship and posting it here at my website so other scholars have a nice bibliographic resource. The bibliography and annotations can be found hereand it’s a major WIP.

Publishing Recap

Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2023.

Published in February, this collection contains my essay “Dance or Dēcēdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling.”

Vernon Press Product Page

Published in May, this issue of Weird Tales contains my essay “When the Stars are Right.”

Weird Tales Product Page

Published in late March, the first issue of the zine Footage Fiends, contains my essay “Analisi Della Cosa: Found Footage in Caltiki and Italian Theater Going Practices.”

Limited to 50 physical copies.

Order via Patreon.

Published in early August, Dark Dead Things #2 contains my essay “Correlating the Contents: Mimetic Desire in H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Call of Cthulhu’.”

Order via Dark Dead Thingswebsite.

Miscellaneous Tidbits

Skinny Dipper Kickstarter

Will Penny (Tiki Surf Witches Want Blood) has a new Kickstarter going on for the next project via his Sex and Monsters endeavor: Skinny Dipper.

From the Press Release:

Chillwave pioneer Nite Jewel is making her comics debut alongside a variety of talented writers and artists in Skinny Dipper. This 32-page comic zine launches October 31, 2023 from Sex and Monsters and is accompanied by an original soundtrack single from the internationally lauded singer/songwriter.


Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, R.H. Barlow, and H.P. Lovecraft, Skinny Dipper is a meditation on love, death, and the mysterious lure of the ocean. The zine features the talents of Emily Roberts, April Snellings, Jelena Đorđević, and more – and is perfectly complimented by Nite Jewel’s hypnogogic
siren song, which serves as a haunting electro-pop soundtrack for

the story.

Both the Skinny Dipper zine and soundtrack single will be available from Sex and Monsters on Kickstarter starting October 31, 2023
(www.sexandmonsters.com/skinnydipper). The zine features 32-pages of art printed on silk matte stock with spot UV coating. The single will be available on 7” vinyl in a deluxe gatefold cover featuring artwork by Emily Roberts. The music will also be available to stream online and can be purchased digitally from Gloriette Records (https://nitejewel.bandcamp.com/music).

Skinny Dipper Press Release

The Kickstarter campaign can be found here.

Categories
Interview

Resurrected and Reloaded: Interview with Flesh Field’s Ian Ross

In the late 90s through the aughts the industrial scene saw a new trend of incorporating orchestral sounds into the genre. Ronan Harris via his VNV Nation project took hold of this orchestral-electro strain, infused it with trance and synthpop elements to develop a new genre: futurepop. The formula was a success and futurepop began to pop up in the music of projects such as Icon of Coil, Apoptygma Berzerk, Covenant, and others.

Concurrently with the development of futurepop, Ian Ross of Flesh Field was taking orchestral-electro in a completely different direction. Ross took the emerging aggrotech genre, tuned down the harshness that one would find in acts such as :wumpscut: and Suicide Commando, and incorporated orchestral elements to create a unique brand of industrialism, counter to futurepop. 

Ross’s formula was also a success and Flesh Field dominated the club scene at the same time of VNV Nation and other futurepop acts. But like Roy Batty in Blade Runner, Flesh Field burned very bright yet very quick. Flesh Field only released three albums between 1999 and 2004 before Ross retired the project, abdicating his spot in the industrial pantheon that no successor act attempted to claim. 

But, volcanos only stay dormant for so long. Nearly two decades later Flesh Field has unexpectedly exploded back into the industrial-electro scene with a brand new album, Voice of the Echo Chamber (VotEC). Released on November 3rdfrom Metropolis, Flesh Field’s new album is both familiar and new. The anger present in older Flesh Field tracks is focused in VotEC as Ross tackles gun violence, mass shootings, and what compels individuals to walk down this dark path of no return. It is a strong, complex album, and Ross has generously answered some questions about his new offering and comeback to the music scene. 

Ian Ross headshot from Facebook.

For Voice of the Echo Chamber (VoeTC) were there any old lyrics or songs that you’ve had sitting in your repertoire that you were able to incorporate into the new album, or is the entire album built off song writing and composing done fairly recently? 

In between albums I like to create new sounds, loops, samples, and drum kits. I had quite a few of these left over from the Tyranny of the Majority era that I had never used before, so some of them did end up on VotEC. Similarly, I used a melody from an unreleased track I wrote around 2008 called “In Perpetuity” in the beginning of “Rampage” on VotEC. I always liked the melody and wanted to make sure I used it somewhere. Other than that, everything else is entirely new. I started writing in March of this year and finished up in early August.

Personal copy of Voice of the Echo Chamber.

Your new album contains the Flesh Field trademark elements of electro and orchestral, but also contains quite a few samples of firearms: reloading, shooting, etc. This has a strong resonance of the film scores of Jóhann Jóhannsson, especially that of Sicario (2015). Are you a fan of Jóhannsson’s work? 

I haven’t seen Sicario, but it’s totally possible that I have heard Johannsson’s work before and enjoyed it without knowing it was his. His is not a name I’m familiar with, but I did check out “The Beast” a bit ago based on your question, and I definitely thought it was cool. I’ll have to start listening to more! On VotEC, nearly all of the firearm samples are original. Michael Prince from Diet of Wires is a very good friend of mine, and when we were talking about what I was trying to do with the album, he offered to record some of the firearm samples using his own collection. There are samples from every weapon mentioned in the track “Arsenal” spread out through the album with the exception of the .38 revolver. We didn’t have one of those. 

Personal copy of Strain.
Autographed by Ian Ross.
Autographed by Wendy Yanko.

Since your last full album, Strain (2004), there’s been new waves of electro-industrial bands that have popped up. Have you heard your influence on newers acts in the past few years? Or, have any projects reached out to you to express your impact on them?

I haven’t really kept up with what’s happening in the genre at all in the last fifteen years or so. If there are newer bands that have taken influence from Flesh Field, that’s amazing. I know how important to me certain bands are that have influenced me, so it’s really humbling to me when I hear that Flesh Field has had the same impact on others. I’ve had a few artists tell me this recently. It really is an honor every time I hear it. 

You had a working relationship with Metropolis who released Strain. How was it to reach back to them to see if they would be interested in releasing a new Flesh Field album? Since the passing of Dave Heckman last year, how has working with Metropolis changed?

Dave Heckman did so much for so many bands and for music fans in general. I really feel privileged to have known him and worked with him. Metropolis has always been great to me, so they were the first label I went to with VotEC. They have continued to be just as awesome under Gail. I sent them an email sometime in July I believe letting them know VotEC was coming and asking if they were interested, and they got back to me the next day saying they were. Everything has been great with them since. Nina has really helped me out with Spotify and social media, two things I really knew (know?) nothing about how to utilize properly. 

Personal copy of Belief Control.
Autographed by Ian Ross.
Autographed by Wendy Yanko.

It looks like you’ve maintained a lasting friendship with folks from Imperative Reaction, recently with them providing music and art for VotEC and you remixing their songs. How long do all of yall go back and how have you’ve supported each other over the years? 

Imperative Reaction and Flesh Field go back a long way to the early aughts. We’ve toured together, we’ve remixed each other, and they have crashed at my place on two occasions during separate Imperative Reaction tours. There are fun stories! We’ve shared the stage during tracks (I sang along with him on “Rift” onstage during a show, and he of course performed “Voice of Dissent” with us onstage). Ted has always been like a kindred brother in music to me. It really has been awesome to get to know him.

Personal copy of The Azoic’s Forward.
“Evolution” remixed by Flesh Field.

Flesh Field has a legacy of remixes of other fellow industrial and synthpop acts music: SMP, Collide, The Azoic, Glis, many others. With a rejuvenated Flesh Field you’ve recently done remixes for GenCAB (“The Badge”) and System Syn (“The Light Was a Lie”). A three part question regarding your remix work; first, how do you get involved with remixing other artists? Are these brokered by labels or do the projects reach out to you (and you them)?

When I remix other artists or other artists remix Flesh Field, it’s usually one of four ways: because we know each other somehow (The Azoic, Assemblage 23, Dubok, Imperative Reaction, for example), we’re label-mates (Project-X, Individual Totem, L’ame Immortelle for example), the label had organized them, or the bands reach out directly to me or I to them. The remix I just did for System Syn happened because Clint and I go way back, and I wanted to do something for him to say “thank you” for the artwork he did for Voice of the Echo Chamber. Plus, I really dig the track “The Light Was a Lie” and had ideas for remixing it the very first time I heard it. With GenCAB, Jim at Metropolis put David Dutton and me in contact since we were both inquiring about remixes after finishing our respective albums. He’s a really cool guy, and really talented. I chose to remix “The Badge” and he chose to remix “Catalyst,” which turned out awesome. I’m hoping to put out the GenCAB mix out along with some other stuff as a follow-up to Voice of the Echo Chamber. Still trying to figure out what that looks like. 

The Light Was a Lie cover art included in Bandcamp download.

Secondly, what is your philosophy when remixing another artist’s song? Is it to Flesh Field-ify their song? Or is this a chance to step out of the Flesh Field box and do something else?

I like to start from scratch and rebuild the track as if it were Flesh Field. The majority of the time, I only ask the artist for the track BPM and the vocals. No MIDI files, no samples, no loops. I figure if the artist or a label wants a mix from Flesh Field, it should sound “Flesh Field-y,” so I don’t really use remixes to experiment any more than I use Flesh Field to experiment. 

The Badge cover art included in Bandcamp download.

And finally, in your canon of remixes is there a specific one you’re especially proud of?

Tough one. There are a few that I’m really happy with, but might sound dated today, like the remixes I did for Croc Shop, or Individual Totem, or Cesium 137. I think the one I had the most fun with out of any remix I’ve ever done was the remix I just did for GenCAB, and I think it’s musically evident from the very beginning of the remix how much fun I had. I love the way David does vocals, and they gave me all kinds of ideas, particularly for the chorus. Listening to the new GenCAB album Signature Flaws really inspired me to up my game when it comes to vocals on anything I do post VotEC. The amount of thought and effort he put into those vocals makes me want to try harder on mine. 

Personal copy of Viral Extinction.

A technical question regarding creating music in the 2000s to creating music now. You mentioned in a different interview (DiscoveringBands) that you had to procure new, modern equipment. How does this impact old samples and music composed back in the day? Are you able to salvage some of your library from back then to use on new equipment, or is there versioning and compatibility issues? If Flesh Field decides to play live and decide to dig into some old classics, will you have to re-create your songs anew?

I do think I have some backups on digital audio tape of some of the old tracks for live performances, so if I ever needed them, I should be ok as long as my DAT player still works. It’s almost a quarter century old now, though. I don’t know how playing old tracks would go over though without Rian or Wendy performing onstage, so if I ever did play live again, that would be something to consider. I did revamp “My Savior,” “Overload,” and “Cyberchrist” for live performances only right after Belief Control was released to try to update the sound on them a bit. Those versions have only ever been played live. 

Personal copy of Crackdown.

Flesh Field music has been featured in films, TV shows, and video games. For example, years ago you appeared with other industrial acts in the xbox 360 game Crackdown (2007). In your interview with We Have a Technical you talk about sounds in games and how to realize them as music. When you have downtime, are you yourself a gamer? If so, any particular genres of games you’re drawn to? 

I definitely USED to be a gamer, but I rarely ever play video games anymore. I used to be very into online FPS games (PC only – I can’t hit anything on console). The last game I got really into was Ark: Survival Evolved. My children loved watching me tame dinosaurs in that game. The problem was that the children got attached to the pets. I had four tamed dodo birds that my kids loved, and one night while they were in bed and I was playing, I accidentally punched a triceratops, and the triceratops killed all my dodos. So, I had to stay up for another few hours re-taming four new dodos and naming them with the same names as the dead ones just so my children wouldn’t be traumatized. I will play Battlefront with my son from time to time. 

Dodo from Ark: Survival Evolved for adorable reference.

KMFDM was one of the bands that had to deal directly with mass shootings (Columbine), and many years later responded to gun violence very, very, very tongue in cheek with their song “Me and My Gun” on their album Blitz(2009). VotEC has a gun centric song with “Arsenal” that lyrically recalls “Me and My Gun.” However, your song doesn’t go the route of KMFDM irony and instead goes with a scary, dark, sinister perspective. How do you juggle such subject matter, making sure your message is that of condemnation and not endorsement?

“Arsenal” was the second track I wrote for the album, and the first track I wrote lyrics for, and I had that exact concern, particularly on that track. With this type of subject matter, I didn’t think it was enough to just hope that people understood from the context of the entire album what I was actually trying to say, especially since people will likely be buying one track at a time instead of the whole album, which means that they won’t have the full context. I included a statement in the liner notes explaining the context due to that fear, but I don’t know if that will be enough since that statement isn’t included with the downloads. I don’t want to explain everything on the album too much, since that might ruin the experience of it for some, but I do try to talk about the overall point of the album as much as I can during interviews.

VotEC has been out for a week and some change. Fans have been excited on social media and places like Reddit for your new album and now it has dropped. What has been the feedback so far? Are you feeling reinvigorated for your next endeavor?

The response has been amazing. I really didn’t expect it to land as well as it has, at least so far. I’ve received a number of messages telling me how great it is to have Flesh Field back, and the same is true for me. I feel whole again.

Sincere appreciation and gratitude to Ian Ross for his time in doing this interview. For more information about Voice of the Echo Chamber and Flesh Field’s resurrection check out these other interviews:

Voice of the Echo Chamber can be purchased online at a variety of locations:

Categories
News

Biweekly News Roundup 2023-05-21

Personal / Website News

Heavy Music Mothers Authors Interview

First new article up at my website is an interview with the authors of the brand new book, Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions.

I had the honor to talk with Joan Jocson-Singh and Julie Turley on their book. It can be read here.

H. P. Lovecast Podcast

New episode of H. P. Lovecast Podcast is online!

Michele and I return back to the Lands of Dream to talk about the one-shot comic Dreamquest by Clay Adams and Mick Beyers. The episode can be streamed at our Buzzsprout website, via the embedded link below, or via your podcast app of preference.

Ep 58 – Dreamquest by Clay Adams and Mick Beyers – H. P. Lovecast Podcast

And for fun, here is my autographed copy from the original Kickstarter campaign:

Fan2Fan Appearance – Akira

2023 marks the 35th anniversary of the legendary anime Akira.

The cool kids over at Fan2Fan have invited me on their podcast to talk about the iconic Japanimation film. Part one can be streamed at the Fan2Fan Libsyn, in the embedded podcast player below, or via your podcast app of preference (Akira part 2 is with Allan and Rebecca and can be streamed here).

Akira 35 Year Anniversary Part 1 – Fan2Fan Podcast

Fan2Fan also did an episode in their 5 Minute Friday series, this one devoted to the famous motorcycle slide.

This episode can also be found at the Fan2Fan Libsyn, on your podcast app of preference, or in the player below.

5 Minute Friday – Akira Bike – Fan2Fan Podcast

And just for fun, here are my two copies of Akira, one of them autographed by old school Streamline folks, Robert Payne Cabeen and Wendy Horowitz.

In addition to the Akira 5 Minute Friday, Fan2Fan also has a 5 Minute Friday on Vampire Hunter D!

This episode can be streamed here, in the player below, or via your podcast app.

5 Minutes Friday – Vampire Hunter D – Fan2Fan Podcast

Also, here is my trustworthy, old school Vampire Hunter D DVD:

Book Reviews

A few reviews of some of the books I’ve been involved in have popped up.

First, there is a fairly positive review of The New Peplum that appears in Cadmo: Journal for Ancient History, 2022, No. 31., written by Inês Simão Sebastião. The review is in Portuguese.

Next, there is a review of Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern in the debut issue of The Incredible Nineteenth Century: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Fairy Tale. The review, by Hogan D. Schaak, is not a positive one at all. Take it with a grain of salt since the reviewer butchers Michele’s name as “Brittany Michelle.”

Publishing Recap

Below is a recap of my publishing endeavors so far in 2023.

Published in February, this collection contains my essay “Dance or Dēcēdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling.”

Vernon Press Product Page

Scheduled to be published in May, this issue of Weird Talescontains my essay “When the Stars are Right.”

Weird Tales Product Page

Published in late March, the first issue of the zine Footage Fiends, contains my essay “Analisi Della Cosa: Found Footage in Caltiki and Italian Theater Going Practices.”

Limited to 50 physical copies.

Order via Patreon.

Categories
Interview

Return of the Mother(s): Interview with Joan Jocson-Singh and Julie Turley on Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions 

It’s Mother’s Day so what is the best way to celebrate moms out there? A nice brunch? Flowers and treats? A present? Presents are always nice, especially if it’s a copy of the brand new book Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions (HMM) by Joan Jocson-Singh and Julie Turley. 

In HMM, Jocson-Singh and Turley dive into the world of mothers who listen to/create heavy music by citing memoirs and conducting their own interviews with musicking mothers. The book is the first of its kind to focus on mothers and their stories in a scenes historically seen as misogynistic. In anticipation of HMM’s immanent release, Jocson-Singh and Turley have been gracious to be interviewed about their work. 

What got you into extreme music?

Jocson-Singh: My soon to be ex-husband, who I met when I was 17, introduced me to Carcass and Death. At the time, my ears weren’t attuned to death vocals and I fondly recall telling him that “it wasn’t music.” I was coming from a New Wave and classical music background so it was hard for me to comprehend. But then when I was 23, my mother passed away and my ex played Carcass, Death, and Crisis again, and all of sudden those growls, tremolo picking, double bass drumming, and downtuned guitars made sense. Especially hearing Karyn of Crisis belt vocals that alternated from clean to death, I was in awe. Her proto-feminist metal made even more sense to me and I found that extreme metal could be both cathartic and empowering. It was like coming home. 

What was the catalyst of Heavy Music Mothers? How did this book come about?

Jocson-Singh: The catalyst for Heavy Music Mothers was meeting Julie at a library conference. A mutual colleague said Julie was the “Rock n’ Roll Librarian” and should therefore meet me, the “Metal Music Librarian!” We ended up chatting and talking about my previous graduate research which was all about interviewing women in NY and their participation in the Extreme Metal Music subculture. From there, we realized how much we had in common as unconventional mothers, librarians, and music fans. We knew right away that we couldn’t be the only ones with these kinds of stories. 

For HMM, how did yall go about defining heavy music? Is it centered on punk and metal? Or do other extreme genres fall under this umbrella, such as power electronics and noise?

Jocson-Singh: I think for the most part, we defined “heavy” broadly. At times it was structural music that didn’t adhere to typical musical structures, compositions, and convention. We looked at “heavy” music with a subcultural lens – one where women weren’t welcomed due to typically male-coded elements of performance, aggression, hardness – where hard music “might be a place where every trace of the feminine has been expunged” (Reynolds and Press, 247). As far as genres, for me extreme metal became an umbrella term used to encompass music that’s often considered tonally aggressive, often incorporating harsh, unrecognizable vocals, down-tuned guitars, extremely fast percussion, rapid “wall of sound” drumming through use of double-bass drumming and “blast beat” techniques, frequent tempo and time signature changes and inhuman vocal style. Lyrical content is frequently described as misogynistic and nihilistic in theme, often relaying stories of murder, rape, death, suicide, Satanism, the occult, and madness (Jocson-Singh, 2016). 

Turley: In general, our book focuses on women in punk, rock, and metal, but many of the women we included don’t fit neatly within these genres. For instance, Amy Rigby, whose memoir is discussed in chapter three, makes music in the tradition of Americana singer/songwriter tradition. Her great 90s-era all-female band The Shams were unplugged, after all. Heaviness is largely associated with amplification. Rigby’s memoir is among my favorites of what I’ve termed the “rock mom memoir,” and her songwriting is heavy in that it deconstructs love and relationships in complex ways. Likewise, Dafna Naphtali and her work have been included in the book. A music professor, she’s an experimental musician, who messes with a variety of musical traditions, from classical to heavy metal. Would her work be neatly classified as rock, punk, or metal? Conventionally speaking, no. Is her work and position as a musicking mother worthy of attention in our book? One-hundred percent yes.

Author photo provided by Jocson-Singh.

Can you provide a preview of some of the musician mothers you interviewed for HMM?

Jocson-Singh: I’m going to let Julie answer this when she gets a chance. She had far more interviewees than me and I think her perspective sheds some different and important insights.

Turley: The heavy music mothers who make up the heart of our book range from music lovers, to performing musicians–with a heavy metal deejay, and a writer/rock journalist who directed the 2022 docu-series Women Who Rock on Epix thrown into the mix.

How did you go about contacting folks for interviews? Were some acquaintances in your music circles or perhaps folks you had not met before and you reached out?

Jocson-Singh: For me, most of my interviewees came from the women I had interviewed during my graduate thesis work. I had kept in touch with the women who became mothers like myself, and others who were already mothers who had mentioned the challenges of being in the metal “scene.” We also conducted an online survey which asked participants if they wanted to be part of one-on-one interviews for us to gather further qualitative data. 

Turley: Many of the musicking mothers were already within our respective circle of friends. Or extended circles. I had been a fan of Jessica Hopper’s book The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic for years and followed her on Instagram. And then I noticed she was a mom and reached out.

Without revealing too much from HMM, were there any major commonalities that were shared in the responses received?

Jocson-Singh: I felt the “return to autonomy” was a common pattern. I think the mothers we interviewed felt that when they became mothers they had to learn to be all the things that society embeds in us to be “good”mothers, thus personal interests and self-care activities went out the window until they were able to once again take up that mantel. Few were able to create new identities that incorporated being a successful mother and musician, though it was possible. 

Turley: In almost all cases, including the data gleaned from published rock star memoirs, maintaining a “heavy music” identity in whatever iteration was crucial for a sense of overall mental health and well being. If one of our subjects felt compelled to “give up” a music identity, they at some point felt a strong pull for reconnection. 

What was the biggest challenge encountered while composing and researching the book?

Jocson-Singh: For me, I would say timing. We started interviewing back in 2016/2017? A time when I was attending the DC Women’s March because Trump became president so you can imagine the social climate. I was on tenure track and pregnant with my second daughter and just trying to manage my career and life/work balance. Julie and I decided to formally start our study with women in the tri-state area somewhere in 2018/2019. We had been interviewing women for some time anyways. We got approached to convert our findings into a book from our publisher who attended one of our conference presentations.

But the biggest timing challenge was when I decided to take on a new position as the Library Dean at CalArts in Valencia CA. I had to move my family of four cross-country from New York to California at the height of the Covid pandemic (summer of 2020). The world was just a mess. On top of this, my twenty year relationship and marriage started falling apart. To be honest, this was happening while we were still in NY but I buried myself in work and research. In any case, these challenges served to be a multitude of lessons for me. I came to understood what it is to be a single mother; I became and heavily relied on my friendship with Julie and the moms we interviewed. And I came back to my first love – metal – to find myself again. 

And conversely what was the biggest surprise that you learned?

Jocson-Singh: The biggest surprise I learned was that I wasn’t alone with my personal struggles, that other women were empowered by extreme metal music and its transgressive nature. I learned to be kinder to myself and navigate love in different ways. I know too many people think love and metal seem antithetical to each other, but for me, it’s their elements of being unconventional and unique that bridged a way for me to approach life more openly. 

Your publisher’s book description says this is the first book of its kind. Are there more concepts you’d like to explore in successor material that you didn’t get a chance to in HMM?

Jocson-Singh: I agree with our publisher whole-heartedly! While there have always been women and mother-musicians talking about challenges within their musical subculture, I didn’t see enough ethnographic titles that reflected “lived” experiences, especially in heavier musical subcultures. As for successor material, I really want to explore more vigilante feminist practice, both with lyrical compositions in extreme metal music as well as performativity (how are women, mothers, trans, and non-binary folks performing in typically masculine spaces?).

Turley: Our bold assertion could be said to be based on a relatively cursory perusal of what we’ve seen online and in bookstores and libraries. As librarians, both Joan and I have been engaged in building library collections for years. So, to the best of our knowledge, ours is the first book to focus solely on the experiences of mothers who participate in what we’ve termed heavy music subcultures. The term “heavy” can have a variety of meanings and iterations. To answer your question, I wish we could have been a bit more exhaustive in our coverage. There were many rock moms we missed discussing, for example. Likewise, the book is frank about its limitations: our conclusion discusses contemporary and necessary challenges to the historically constructed binary and the nuanced iterations of mothers and bodies that give birth. I would love the chance to do an expanded edition.

Since some of HMM has been presented at academic conferences, how has the material been received so far? Did you have any attendees that identified with your work?

Jocson-Singh: Overall I think our research has been and continues to be well received. Most of the women I encounter tend to be artists and musicians and oftentimes they find our work very relatable. 

Turley: The presentations Joan and I did together early on consisted of data from the still open online survey and resonant quotes pulled from the qualitative interviews. From the Museum of Motherhood Conference to the Modern Heavy Metal Conference in Helsinki, audiences were very receptive and excited about the topic. In Helsinki, an amazing rocker in a touring Helsinki-based band let us know that our presentation gave her hope that she could integrate motherhood into extreme, high-participation musicking. 

With HMM concluded, what are your next projects or news you’d like to share?

Jocson-Singh: I continue to be interested in gender and musical subcultural practices all the time. The latest news I get to share is that for the next two years I will be busy helping to start up the library at the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art which will be opening here in LA in 2025. So for now, I’m learning all about the special collections at Lucas and thinking of ways in which the library can be both a welcoming and innovative place for all patrons interested in narrative art.

Turley: Right now, I’m hoping the book does well enough to warrant a second edition! I have some things in the works. Still trying to make every subject rock ‘n’ roll.

Sincere appreciation to Jocson-Singh and Turley for their time for this interview. For more information about Heavy Music Mothers and the other endeavors of these authors check out the links below. The book is slated to be published May 2023 by Rowan & Littlefield.