Power up your voxcaster, recite a litany of protection and light a lho stick as beer lover, wargamer and death metal LEGEND Karl Willetts braves the Immaterium to warp over to Derry and Toms and discuss Memoriam, becoming the vocalist in Bolt Thrower, Warhammer and his three rules of beer…
Memoriam’s latest release is Rise to Power and it and their back catalogue is available at all good stockists.
I also wistfully recall my first exposure to Bolt Thrower with the epic and massive game changer for British metal… Realm of Chaos
These past few days we took in our just about annual Thought Bubble weekend so we’ve been in Harrogate spending far too much money on comics, art, games and zines. It was a good time to do it too as it was a perfect distraction from the news.
There have been a number of times over the years when I’ve taken to shutting myself off from the news and social media for various reasons, but this past weekend was a perfect example of the insidious madness surrounding us at the moment. Twitter was a conflagration of flame wars consisting of competing videos of red-faced nazi dick heads in Victoria station harassing people of colour vs videos of women in McDonalds shouting ‘death to all Jews’. Meanwhile, a still of a right-wing counter-protest showed Israel flags being held high amongst ranks of bald pillocks throwing nazi salutes. When irony is this dead surely it’s the end times on fast forward.
I’d have gone and bought some napalm, but it was Sunday.
All the shops were shut.
In these circumstances, we could only power on and drink Black Tower spritzers (a proper end-of-world beverage if I’ve ever found one).
Fast forward a bit, it’s now Wednesday, we’ve just about recovered from our extended Black Tower Bender (although other beverages were consumed) and the news cycle has moved on. I won’t bang on about the current state of the UK’s zombie government other than to say it has now begun to eat its own tail in desperation. Truly we are living in a Realm of Chaos.
AND ON THAT LAZY SEGWAY…
I’ll be getting on to editing the latest show tonight, which will be out over the next day or two, and this was a fairly short notice affair consisting of a quick back and forth over the voxcaster with none other than Karl Willets, beer lover and legendary vocalist and front man of Bolt Thrower and Memoriam. This was pretty groovy for me as Bolt Thrower and their more short-lived contemporaries Sabbat were, to my ears, the saviours of British metal at the time they broke out. The Immaterium did present some comms challenges but I’ll be working through those this evening.
The rest of the itinerary remains semi-stable for the moment but of course, we’re heading into that busiest time of year in people’s calendars. Nevertheless, we have Corum, politics, Hawklords, Black Swords, very British Armageddons, birthdays and more to come.
Miles and Phil brave nuclear Armageddon, mutant rats, zoom meltdowns and horrific rabies treatment to join me in Derry & Toms and check out our patron-selected Halloween double-bill of James Herbert’s Domain and Bruno Mattei’s Rats: Night of Terror.
So paint your windows white, lock the dogs and cats outside, get safely ensconced in your inner sanctum and JOIN US!
In this, the second blow of that one-two punch of GNS brain matter, Graham and I welcome Tara Paulsson to Derry and Toms to talk about her Dad and his work.
Tara will be at Tamworth Castle’s Tales From the Darkside Week on Saturday 28th October and you can find details about ‘An Ode to Guy Newman Smith’s, 1970’s Pulp Fiction Horror’ and how to book at www.tamworthcastle.co.uk/darkside
Graham and Phil return to Derry & Toms to tackle our third adventure in the company of the mighty Professor Cliff Davenport in the first of a one-two punch of GNS-related early Halloween action.
Disturbing violence, saucy language and copious amounts of pus await the unwary traveller.
It’s a rare sunny day here in Bradford after a week of relentless rain and overcast. It feels decidedly autumnal in that crisp, golden-hued fashion.
It’s been a busy week too with some brisk activity in Derry & Toms, although you may not know it as it’s been three and a half weeks since our Letters From Hollywood episode. That’s largely down to external events and me fudging up a recording and having to do some head-scratching regarding ways of rescuing the audio.
And then, after figuring out what to do, realising that it took just ten minutes to correct.
If you know… you know… and if you don’t… you spend many hours thrashing around in the mire.
But at least I know now. I just hope I don’t forget by the time it happens again. Which I probably will.
Anyway, this just means we’ll have a bumper second half of October with three episodes landing between now and Halloween!
In the next day or two… The Phoenix in Obsidian AKA The Silver Warriors (Part One)
Then… CRABS ON THE RAMPAGE
And finally, as selected by the patrons… DOMAIN
As well as getting some podcasts recorded, we’ve had a lovely month in terms of support with new patrons arriving on the Donblas from as far afield as Lithuania, Australia, Finland and Israel.
And our new Patron Demon from Lithuania, Marius, sent me some truly marvellous images of Lithuanian Corum editions.- The Knight of the Swords (translated as Kalavijų Rikis) and the remaining Swords trilogy entries collected as Kalavijų Valdovai (Sword Rulers).
Even better, as well as these striking covers they feature some rather gorgeous internal B&W art…
Thanks for sending those over Marius (and also thanks to Jason Atomic over on Instagram who by some strange coincidence sent some of these the same week).
In other news, Chris AKA Dirk the Dice appeared on our Letters From Hollywood episode and in the outro I mentioned that he had a very special guest lined up for his next instalment of The Grognard Files. That show is now live and it features none other than Mike himself and, as you would expect from that podcast and Chris as a first-rate host and interviewer, it’s excellent. Check it out.
That’s all for now, I’m back to topping and tailing our new episode.
Chris (AKA Dirk the Dice) returns to Derry and Toms to discuss Michael Moorcock’s sort-of-memoir of his time in LA and wider California in Letters From Hollywood. Along the way we drink fusty northern beer, console one another about Pernod-soaked catastrophes in our salad days, wistfully recall the Moorcock/Tolkien Weekender and muse on what form it could take in the future (Dannus/Lud-in-the-Mist Premier Inn Takeover anyone?*).
Andy Darby shakes off the Monkey for an evening and drops by D and Ts to take a look at one of Moorcock’s 60s SF tales, The Fireclown (later retitled The Winds of Limbo but I’m sticking with the original title for vaguely defined reasons related to being old and finnicky).
Strap in for a political thriller laced with astute observations on the natures of media and personality politics, the odd sprinkling of futurism and some oddly prescient sort-of predictions.
A quick update this time whilst I’m waiting for some processing to complete on the latest pod (and listening to the newly remastered Hawkwind platter, Sonic Attack on the trusty Sound Burger as I type).
In the Patron Poll for the subject of our Halloween Special it looks like James Herbert’s Domain has an unassailable lead, leaving me kicking myself as it’s about twice the length of all the others. It is a page-turner though and last year we introduced a new sort of precedent when, following The Fog’s triumph in the poll, we did The Devils of D-Day anyway. So currently The Cats by Nick Sharman is in final place so maybe we’ll do that later in the year. It looks mercifully short. Probably a one-shit book in fact.
Either way, I’ll leave the poll up for another week or so, should there be any late gambits that drastically alter the field.
On the skinny book front, I’ve had another suggestion fly in from left of field and a one-shit book suggestion at that…
Snowcastles by Duncan McGeary. It looks gloriously rubbish. Therefore it has made the to-do list. Which is growing longer by the week.
Right, processing is complete. Back to editing. There was a time when a monthly episode was the norm but this year we’ve had a more productive spell, reaching close to two per month at times. I don’t want to let that slip too much so I intend to have this latest show out in the next day or four. Furthermore, despite recent developments in the realms of real life (and thanks for the lovely messages on that front by the way, they were highly appreciated), this is a passion project that is going to continue until I stop enjoying it. Or you do. Or both.
Breakfast in the Ruins Podcast 