5. Alien: Romulus, Sleep Token, and GODS
The frightening realization that I have to come up with a title for these every week...
Comic Stuff
I had a meeting with Bob this week about AVALON. I'm so pumped for that book. It's been in my head for so long, so it will be continually surreal to see it coming to life, and I can't wait. It's a great feeling being on the same page with a creator and just being hyped for the project you're both working on.
Last week I mentioned two other stories that I'm brainstorming currently, and I've been making some strides with both of them. An issue count for one of them clicked into place so that's always a good guiding point. I need to be able to understand or visualize the end of a story before I get started. I need to have some idea of where I'm going. I'm hoping that I can have a solid outline for it done this week and can maybe even start scripting the first issue by week's end. That's a bit optimistic on my part, but here's hoping.
Reading, Watching, and Notes
I saw Alien: Romulus this week. I'm deeply conflicted about it. On the one hand, the technical expertise on display is brilliant. Every facet of the production was fantastic. Cinematography, sound design, score, direction, set design, costumes, VFX, it all creates one of the best visual/audio experiences I've had in a theater. This movie does some of my favorite pure space stuff ever. Its use of light throughout is nothing short of jaw-dropping. It also absolutely embodies the entire aesthetic and sensibilities of the Alien franchise, sometimes to a fault.
There are a handful of narrative choices that are just deeply weird to me. The film undercuts itself multiple times when attempting to do something fresh in the franchise but then reverts to things we've already seen. It's also got an intense reverence for the franchise itself as a franchise, which feels odd. There's a line between homage and embracing what you're a part of and just feeling like pandering. I haven't even seen most of the franchise (ironic considering I think it's one of my favorite franchises) but there are a lot of examples in this film of characters just straight-up reciting lines from other entries, which feels out of place. I couldn't even recognize all of them, but you can feel it when it happens.
There's also surprisingly little screentime for the Xenomorph. Not that it's not featured at all, and it's also not a problem inherently that it doesn't have an excessive amount of time on screen, but given the marketing and emphasis that's been put on how much practical work was used to bring it to life for this film, it seemed like there should've been a little more with it.
I don't want to get too into the details of my problems with the movie, because they're mostly spoilery and it just came out. I still had a great time. It has, I think, some of the best suspense sequences of the entire series, and I put it as my second favorite entry in the franchise, but it's the most frustrated 4 stars I've ever given a film.
I made a Tiktok/Reel recently stacking up my long backlog of physical books to read. I'm trying to get through them by the end of the year. We'll see if that happens. I finished Loki's Ring this past week which was awesome. Both the book and finishing it. It only took me four days, so here's hoping I can keep that pace for a lot of my other books. I've also started trying to do more active reading and note-taking while reading. I'm tired of reading something and finding value in it in the moment and then immediately forgetting everything I thought was interesting or insightful as soon as I'm done with the book.
So, I'm now going through and underlining while I read and will then transfer over everything I underlined and include notes on why I underlined it and what other thoughts I have on it into my Obsidian. That way I'll have notes for my physical books as well as my Kindle ones.
Loki's Ring was phenomenal though. It had a lot of compelling ideas about artificial persons and questions of rights and identity when it comes to them. I just in general love seeing all the different solutions, problems, and creativity that writers employ when creating sci-fi worlds. This book certainly doesn't disappoint in that area. I think the cast was maybe a bit too large, it was a little hard to keep a solid visual representation of each of the characters in my head, but they still all had super unique personalities that made it easy to differentiate them, if that makes sense. I couldn’t remember who looked like what, but I could remember who was who. The story was also super engaging from start to finish.
I read all of G.O.D.S. by Jonathan Hickman, Valerio Schiti, Marte Gracia, and Travis Lanham this week, and what a phenomenal experience that was. I reviewed the first issue whenever it came out but quickly fell behind and never caught up. With all 8 issues out now I just sat down and binged them and it's simply incredible stuff. The way Hickman crafts narrative and worlds is so compelling to me, and the ideas at play here are close to where my headspace is at for one of the stories I'm working on, so this was super inspirational. Schiti is also just an absolute powerhouse. Definition of a visual feast with this series. I know Hickman had said that it'd be cool for this series to operate as an ongoing (which didn't happen), and I would like to see more of a continuation for it, but I'm also satisfied with how these 8 issues wrapped up.
Sleep Token
So, Sleep Token is by far my favorite band, which is a bit weird to say considering it was Starset for so long, but it's Sleep Token now. I first boarded the Sleep Token train around the time they released the Granite single. So right before Take Me Back To Eden dropped in all its glory. I've been enthralled ever since.
For those of you who don't know anything about Sleep Token, trusty Wikipedia says:
“Sleep Token are a British rock band from London, formed in 2016. The group are an anonymous, masked collective led by a frontman using the moniker Vessel. They have been categorized under many different genres, including alternative metal, post-rock/metal, progressive metal, indie rock/pop, and djent.”
The thing with Sleep Token is that it seems when people get into them, they get really into them, and I'm absolutely part of the latter. One of the things that pulls me towards them is the lore. They're a concept band. Starset is also a concept band, so you can start to see a pattern emerging with my favorite artists, but I digress.
Anyway, Sleep Token has lore, and it's awesome. The super short of it is that Vessel was visited by the goddess Sleep and the songs are Token's for Sleep and he is a Vessel for/through her. I don't want to get too into the weeds doing lore deep-dive stuff here, other people have gone super deep with it in a much more articulated and understood way than I could. The main point here for me, though, is that I'm a lore nerd.
It depends on the context, but generally, I think lore is awesome and mostly additive to things. So a concept band that has this in-depth (depending on how deep you want to go) lore as a throughline across songs and albums is deeply interesting to me. I think the story here is also endlessly compelling and relatable. I've seen a ton of different interpretations for the meanings of different songs or albums as a whole or exactly what type of journey Vessel is on across the three albums we have. I think that gives the story power.
The story engrained in the band is something that is just defined enough. There's an air of mystery, there's room for interpretation, but there's also a heavy amount of vibes. Vibes are a key part of this band, honestly.
The wiki summary kind of mentions it, but Sleep Token is hard to pin down, genre-wise. That's no accident. Vessel has spoken about the intention to blur genre lines, arguing that there is no genre and that it's all just music. There are influences from all areas of music, rock, metal, gospel, R&B, and electronic, it's all there in some form or fashion. They lean more into the rock, metal, and heavy side of things overall, but there's such a healthy blend of everything that creates this cacophony of vibe.
I don't know how to write about music at length, I'm not a music major or study or anything like that, so I don't want to spend too much time just repeating variations on "I like the way it sounds", but their music just hits a particular feeling. Which I mean, that's what music does, right? We listen to it and we make it because there's a particular feeling we get from it. It moves us in a way that we can't articulate normally, that's why it's music.
I've got to talk about II. So, there are four main members of the band and 3 supporting vocalists for the concerts. Vessel is the frontman and vocalist, and then the drummer, bassist, and guitarist go by II, III, and IV since they're anonymous. II, the drummer, is absolutely my favorite drummer right now. His style is so unique and such a refreshing blend of so many different things. I grew up around the drums with both my dad and uncle playing them, and I roughly know my way around a kit (I'm not good, just maybe serviceable). II is just a revelation. He rips and such a huge part of the sound of the band comes from his drumming.
Then, of course, there's Vessel. First off, what a lyricist. I legitimately can't count the number of jaw-dropping lines in their songs. It's unreal. The level of writing achieved across these three albums is something I aspire to. It's visual, visceral, emotional, and beautiful storytelling through and through. And good god that man's pipes are equally out of this world. Unbelievable lyrics delivered by an astounding voice. If you'll allow me the terrible pun, I can't sing his praises enough.
This band has had an IMPACT on me, to say the least. I mentioned that I've been listening to them since the release of Granite, which was in January of last year. It's pretty much impossible for me to listen to anything else now if I'm listening to music. Aside from movie and video game soundtracks that I listen to while working (shoutout to Tenet, Oppenheimer, The Batman, etc.), it's pretty much just Sleep Token and the instrumental versions of their albums. I'll try to listen to another band or artist, but I just end up being like "This isn't Sleep Token" and wanting to go back. Starset has released two new singles in the last couple of months and I've given them a couple of listens but then just shrugged and went back to Sleep Token. It's wild.
There's probably (definitely) more I could say on them, but I think 1000+ random words on them is enough for one newsletter. I just realized I didn't even talk about the concert. I got to see them in May, I was like 10 rows from the barrier, it was incredible and one of the best experiences I've ever had, but again I'll cut the rambling here.
I said I was going to cut the rambling but that was a few days ago (a peek behind the scenes, I write these throughout the week and do final touchups on Sunday), and they have since announced A GRAPHIC NOVEL???? So that's amazing. I can't wait for that.
I also realized I didn't even talk about the whole three albums being a trilogy for one story thing. I mentioned lore and an overarching story but Sundowning, This Place Will Become Your Tomb, and Take Me Back To Eden form a beautiful, haunting, incredible journey that's just top tier from start to finish and so well connected and realized. The end of the very final song brings things full circle with the first song on Sundowning and it gets me every time.
TLDR: I really love this band.
Links
I found this episode from that clip going around of Deborah explaining and then instantly Jon in a game of Dungeons and Dragons, I haven't even gotten to that part of the conversation yet but this is just really great stuff.
This is the episode of Within Reason that I've been getting through this week. I'm not a religious person but I think it's important to still learn about and it genuinely fascinates me. I've got about 10 minutes left in the episode and definitely recommend giving it a listen/watch.
That's all from me this week.
Be nice. Be kind.