Letters From the Labyrinth 414

The Dream Police

“In promulgating your esoteric cogitations and articulating your superficial sentimentalities, amicable, philosophical, and psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosities. Are we really the Dream Police?” — Rick Nielsen

Good morning. I’m Brian Keene and this is Letters From the Labyrinth — a long-running weekly newsletter for friends, fans, and family.

The signed, limited edition hardcover of BENEATH THE LOST LEVEL is available for preorder via the Thunderstorm Books website. It is limited to 168 copies and costs $110. (The paperback, eBook, and audiobook editions will be available about a year from now). It has been up for preorder for a few days now, and is almost sold out, so if you want one, I’d jump on it today.

Here is the marketing copy:

Brian Keene’s epic weird-fantasy series continues in this thrilling fourth installment!

In the aftermath of their assault on the Anunnaki city, Aaron Pace, Kasheena, and their new friend — the young warrior Patamoose — find themselves trapped and lost deep underground. Their quest to find the surface and return home leads them through a subterranean labyrinth inhabited by killer robots, frog people, androids, and the remnants of the long-extinct Atlantean civilization. It may also lead to answers about the Lost Level itself. But if they ever want to see the sun again, Aaron and his companions will have to outwit an insane artificial intelligence and defeat the terrifying proto-Shoggoth. And doing so may cost them everything. Is there any escape from… Beneath the Lost Level?

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A Few Items Of Note:

1. If you enjoyed our novel SUBURBAN GOTHIC, Bryan Smith has posted the original, unpublished finale on his Patreon. It is *very* different from the published version.
   

2. Charlie Benante, currently on tour with Pantera, was kind enough to take a break while on the road and talk a bit about THE RISING: MORE SELECTED SCENES FROM THE END OF THE WORLD.
   

3. I unboxed the first Pandi Pack so you’d all have an idea of what to expect for the November box.
   

4. The first draft of the Programming Schedule for Scares That Care!'s AuthorCon V is finished. I’ll do a 2nd draft this weekend and then Jonathan Janz will go over it with a fine toothed comb. I hope to release it late next week. Tickets, workshops, and details for the event can be found here.

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Currently Watching: The Rig (which I erroneously called The Platform here last week) season 2 (Prime), American Primeval (Netflix), and Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (Max).

Currently Reading: The Exit At Toledo Blade Boulevard by Jack Ketchum, and The Song of Susannah: The Dark Tower VI by Stephen King. (Both are re-reads for me).

Currently Listening: This past week was heavy on .38 Special (to the point where I found myself belting out “Caught Up In You” in the middle of a grocery store that had it playing on the muzak. My fellow shoppers seemed alternately delighted and bewildered.

Yesterday I listened to nothing but Cheap Trick’s Dream Police album on endless repeat. Every Cheap Trick fan has a favorite album — and with 43 albums, 4 EPs, and 65 singles in their discography, none of us are going to agree on which is their best. But Dream Police has my sword all day, every day.

It opens with that infectious, frenetic, glorious title track — exhibit A for Cheap Trick’s long-standing ability to fuse hard rock and pop together into a unique soundscape. Few other bands were able to pull that off for as long, or as well, as Cheap Trick has done throughout their career. From there it plows into “Way of The World”, which is another impossible to skip rocker, followed by the punk-blues-bar rock riffs of “The House Is Rockin (With Domestic Problems)”.

And then… then we get to “Gonna Raise Hell” — probably the last truly great song of the 1970s. While other hard rock and metal bands of the era were embracing disco and failing miserably at it (for every KISS “I Was Made For Loving You” that actually achieved success, there are a dozen others by a dozen other bands of the era that you’ve forgotten about), Cheap Trick did something different. Rather than embrace disco, they trapped disco in a back alley, mugged it, stole its beat, and then layered that beat onto a crunching, dark, moody, absolutely unforgiving progressive hard rock epic that is nearly ten minutes in length. Each band member shines here.

The sonic glory continues with more rockers like “I’ll Be With You Tonight” and the wonderful “Voices”. Cheap Trick has always wore their Beatles influences on their sleeves, but for my money, of the early albums, “Voices” is the most Beatle-esque. The melodies and harmonization of "Voices" gave me goosebumps every time I heard it in 1979 and they still give them to me here in 2025.

Cheap Trick’s Dream Police album. It’s what rock and roll used to sound like, and it makes me very happy.

And here’s the video for the title track that I think perfectly sums up the entire vibe of the band.

And here is "Gonna Raise Hell". Turn your volume up as loud as it can possibly go.

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And that does it for this week. Thanks, as always, for reading. I’ll see you back here again next Sunday.

— Brian Keene