I have, in my head, what several friends refer to as “Brian’s Jukebox”. My brain is never truly still and quiet, because if I’m not actively thinking, then there is usually music playing. That’s why I’m always humming, or whistling, or singing to myself. If you’ve ever seen me standing with an empty, vague expression or just sitting and staring into space, and you thought “Gee, I wonder what Brian is thinking about” chances are I wasn’t thinking about anything. Instead I was listening to the music in my head.
Much of it is songs by other artists that already exist (all genres). But there are also a lot of songs and instrumentals and riffs that I’ve created on my own — original Keene compositions that I have no way to ever make permanent in the world because I don’t know how to read or write music, and the extent of my instrumental ability is the harmonica, a little bit of piano/keyboard, and Beavis & Butthead’s ability to make killer guitar sounds with my mouth and hands.
The songs always appear in my head at random. While I can control the volume, I can’t record the dial. And because of that, sometimes, songs get stuck in my head on some sort of weird and endless loop.
Most recently, it was “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds and variations of Def Leppard’s “Love Bites”. Both are fine songs, and there is zero shame in loving them. The former is an anthem and a time capsule, and has rightfully never had a good cover version recorded. (Yes, although I’m the world’s biggest Billy Idol fan and a metalhead until I die, neither Billy’s nor Life of Agony’s cover versions do the original justice). And “Love Bites”? Well, that’s simply the second best hair metal ballad of all time (the first being Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home”) and there are many fine versions of that song, including one that Def Leppard did with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
But no matter how much you love a song (or songs) that endless loop can drive a person mad. It is Saturday morning as I write this, and I have spent the last week alternating between singing “Will you recognize me? Call my name or walk on by…” and “I don’t wanna touch you too much baby, cuz making love to you might drive me crazy…” to the point where I thought perhaps I’d need to be institutionalized and heavily medicated.
Enter YOB.
Yesterday (Friday) I loaded dozens of boxes of romance novels by Madison Score and Lucy Score into Red Sonja and transported them to our local library (they are signing there later today, and the event is sponsored by my store, Vortex Books & Comics). When I started up the truck to drive that one block, “Marrow” by YOB (off their album Clearing the Path To Ascend) came on at random and instantly shoved everything else out of my brain.
YOB, for those not in the know, are quite simply the best doom metal band of all time, and currently composed of singer and guitarist Mike Scheidt, bassist Aaron Rieseberg, and drummer Dave French. I’ve been a fan for a long time (as well as a fan of Mike’s side projects), and have written a number of books and stories with them playing prominently in the background (most notably THE SEVEN, SUBMERGED, and SPLINTERED all of which were written to primarily nothing but YOB and all of which you can get here). Their songs often begin with evocative and beautiful melodies that build and build to nihilistic explosions with the heaviness of space itself collapsing inward.
About six or seven years ago, I learned that Mike was a mutual fan of my work, so that makes the synchronicity even sweeter. You can see the influence of Clive Barker and Laird Barron in his songs, but I hope it’s not too arrogant to say that perhaps you can see a little bit of mine, as well.
Their songs are epic works of art — crushing, ethereal, sonic paintings that often last ten minutes or more. And if you’re slowly being driven insane by a 1980’s teenage anthem or a great hair metal ballad, then Doctor Keene recommends you take heavy doses of YOB until you’re right again. My absolute top favorites (in addition to “Marrow”) are “Beauty In Falling Leaves” and “Quantum Mystic” but they truly have no bad song.
Anyway, Mike, if you’re reading this, thanks, dude. You saved my sanity this week, and I’ve been walking around making Beavis & Butthead guitar sounds to mimic “Marrow” for the last 18 hours now.
Listen to “Marrow” via YouTube or Spotify. That segment between the 10 minute and 30 second mark and the 17 minute and 30 second mark? That absolutely fueled pretty much all of SPLINTERED: THE LABYRINTH Book 3.
Good morning. I’m Brian Keene and this is Letters From the Labyrinth, a long-running weekly newsletter for fans, friends, and family.
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I’ve noticed over the past 6 weeks that the open rate for this newsletter has gone down, sinking from the range of 70 to 80% down to 49 to 55%. At first, I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but author Daniel Kraus told me that somehow, Substack unsubscribed him from the newsletter. He had to manually re-subscribe again. So, if you’ve come here today via a social media link, rather than this newsletter appearing in your inbox, do me a favor and make sure you are actually subscribed still?
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The Stand anthology’s line-up is a veritable who’s-who of the biggest names in horror fiction (who were also mega-fans of The Stand), but Chris and I also wanted to spotlight some newer authors who weren’t yet household names but who we thought should be (and who, like the bigger names, were mega-fans of The Stand). One of those writers is Somer Canon, who contributes a story set after the events of the novel.
If you’ve not yet read Somer’s work, its evocative of Ronald Kelly and Ruby Jean Jensen. Had she been born a few decades before, Somer would have easily had a home at Zebra books during their heyday. And indeed, she grew up in West Virginia reading her grandmother’s Zebra Books collection.
She had a new collection of Halloween-themed short stories — appropriately titled Halloween My Way — come out last month, and I read it in two bathtub soaks this past week, and it’s some of her best work. The paperback is only seven bucks on Amazon and the Kindle edition is only three. Click here to learn more.
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And that does it for this week. Keeping it short because a) I’ve got a lot going on and need top focus on those things and b) I want to see if email length impacts open rate. Thanks, as always, for reading. I’ll see you back here again next Sunday.
— Brian Keene
I personally loved Life of Agony's version of Don't you( forget about me). The whole album, Ugly, is a great album. I'm a death metal guy but I loved that album.
Just wanted to say I recently received a “blind” horror book and didn’t really think it would be my thing. A couple weeks later I needed a new read and picked it up to flip through. In the front there was a review written by you so I obviously started reading it immediately! Thanks for not only writing great books but helping steer me towards others as well!