Monthly Archives: July 2019

Onslaught of the Ancient Gods

04 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by in Lovecraftian arts

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No fireworks for the 4th July, but a good heavy-rock album seems like the Lovecraftian equivalent.

Getting good reviews from metal-heads, the new metal album Onslaught Of The Ancient Gods (mid June 2019) from an Armenian band.

Track samples available on Bandcamp.

“Combining blackened death metal with elements of melo-death, tech-death, … orchestration and sci-fi synths, [the album] certainly stands apart form much of the extreme metal scene [and] for the most part [the band’s leading light] Erskine pulls everything together expertly. Lovecraft is no rarity in extreme metal lyrics, but where many simply pay lip service to the father of cosmic horror, [the band] Temple of Demigod is a project fully immersed in the Eldritch chaos. Not a flawless album, but to suggest Onslaught Of The Ancient Gods is anything other than a blindingly fun trip into the void would be criminal. Score: 8/10“. — Distorted Sound magazine.

“Onslaught of the Ancient Gods was a surprise hit for me; I was expecting to have some fun with it, but I’ve been addicted to it since its release. It’s exactly the right balance of sinister and cheesy, complex and catchy. It’s a great album if you like tech death but need a reprieve from the noodly side of the genre.” — Toilet ov Hell.

Kittee Tuesday: cats from the Twilight Zone

02 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Kittee Tuesday, Lovecraftian arts

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Celebrating H.P. Lovecraft’s interest in our fascinating felines.

In August 1983 Twilight Zone magazine treated its readers to H.P. Lovecraft’s “Something about Cats”, with a brief introduction and some explanatory notes by S.T. Joshi. While the essay is now found in better form elsewhere as “Cats and Dogs”, there were illustrations by Jason Eckhardt and two of these featured Lovecraft himself.

Behold, this dreamer (1939)

01 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by in Odd scratchings

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Here’s the opening illustration by Barnett Freeman for Walter de la Mare’s 1939 British anthology Behold, this dreamer: of reverie, night, sleep, dream, love-dreams, nightmare, death, the unconscious, the imagination, divination, the artist, and kindred subjects.

The book contains de la Mare’s perceptive introduction and what are effectively a long set of mini-essays, followed by the master anthologist’s judicious mix of selected poetry, prose and other texts. It’s deemed perhaps the best of his five anthologies, and is currently free on Archive.org via one of those basic Public Library of India scans. These scans, while welcome as readable freebies of post-1923 long-out-of-print works, regrettably all use such harsh contrast that they ruin any artwork or photography in a book.

Spine art…

1984 British paperback reprint cover by what might be another artist mimicking the style of the original art…