CW FOR BASICALLY EVERYTHINGCharlene Elsby is one of the most renowned literary horror writers out there right now, and her two most recent books, the novel Violent Faculties (Clash Books) and short story collection (House of Vlad) are both incredibly intelligent and utterly horrific.Music by Gutless: https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hi…

This time around, Eden is joined by Kyle Winkler, author of Grasshands and, more recently, the cosmic horror, punk-infused, metal-slinging tale of a biker who refuses to go quietly. They talk violence, revenge, metal as aesthetics, and more!Music played:Dance with the Dead - Neon Cross https://dancewiththedead.bandcamp.com/track/neon-cross-feat-bra…

Talia Lavin joins us to talk about her new book Wild Faith, on how the Christian Right is taking over America, but also raw milk, cruelty, demons and more. Also we declare Beef on another podcast.Music by MINTTTThe power of Christ compels you to join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DeathSentence…

Kazuo Ishiguro season keeps on truckin' to 2000's When We Were Orphans. After the divisive The Unconsoled, Kaz' is getting his groove back with this story of a gentleman detective who is so English that his brain doesn't work right.Music by Pig Destroyer and StreetfighterAv DEATH // SENTENCE

Ever wanted to live out your worst impulses in America's sweaty armpit? Of course you have, and debut author Jillian Luft knows this. Her book Scumbag Summer is about failing to live up to your potential in Florida and it is glorious.Music by Full of Hell: https://fullofhell.bandcamp.com/album/scraping-the-divineOur Discord has often been called 'T…

Langdon and Eden travel to a future-past where TV hosts bring nations to their knees (hahahah oh god that's just our present) with Norman Spinrad's controversial (and excellent) Bug Jack Barron! But first, they discuss the fading power of debuts, early works, and the role of passion in art!Music played:Excuse - Sworn to the Crimson Oath https://sha…

There are cars, hyperloops, even blimps - but no form of transport is better than the train. Gareth Dennis has been in the rail industry for a decade and hosts the podcast Rail Natter... and has been targeted by sleazy government officials after speaking up about safety. He joins us to talk about why trains are perfect, why hyperloop will never wor…

The Wizard's Tower emerges once more, this time gathering in its clutches Donald Ryan, author of Don Bronco's (Working Title) Shell! Meta-narrative, eggs (sort of), truth (not really), experimentation, and more!Music played:"I Cover the Mountaintop" by Elephant9 https://elephant9band.bandcamp.com/track/i-cover-the-mountaintop…

Eden is joined by Adam C. Jones of the Acid Horizon podcast to discuss his upcoming book - The New Flesh: Life and Death in the Data Economy! The two discuss cybernetics, the human as battery, data flows as cybernetics, and the fall and fall of cyberpunk.Music played:Graveyard Addicted by Warpstone https://warpstone.bandcamp.com/track/graveyard-add…

Langdon and Eden happily return to Vajra Chandrasekera's Rakesfall but first must unhappily return to the ongoing and intensifying genocide in Palestine. They discuss ideas that appear in both the book and our lived experiences of culpability, memory, storytelling, and future imaginaries as well as delay on the subject of hype and attention.Music p…

The Wizard's Tower appears out of the mist once more! This time, Langdon conjures forth Katye Terry of Tender Subjects to dive into The Handyman Method by Nick Cutter and Andrew Sullivan. Homeliness, horror, DIY, and real estate mix within!Music played:Adorior - "Scavengers of Vengeance" https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/track/scavengers-of-v…

Langdon goes into the Wizard's Tower and summons Morgan Giles to discuss the expansive and fantastic The End of August by Yu Miri which Giles translated! Family, memory, loss, betrayal, and war are contained therein!Music played:Floating Points - Vocoderhttps://floatingpoints.bandcamp.com/album/vocoder…

It's chaos configuration as Eden, Gareth and Langdon sit down to discuss the...sort of good and very hyped Between Two Fires! And also argue about dark fantasy, Dark Souls, and listen to some sick doom metal.Music played:The Flight of Sleipnir - North https://theflightofsleipnir.bandcamp.com/track/north…

On this episode, Langdon and Eden are forced to tackle the so-called "Hegelian E-girl Council" and explain why they suck. While they tackle them. To the ground.Then, they talk about the tantalizing, subtle, and down-right inimitable The West Passage. Weird fantasy, even weirder honey, and the weirdest eldritch beings in the form of Ladies, plus all…

In this solo episode, Eden talks about the Arthurian myth and its weird potentialities by covering Lev Grossman's The Bright Sword. Gender-bending, political disorder, and why weird fantasy matters and, of course, sick ass swords and cool mage duels!Eden's essay on the political uses of science fiction: https://www.notthesky.com/posts/essays/the-me…

In this episode, Langdon and Eden discuss the merits, oddities, and uses of mediocrity before covering a mediocre, but fun, book from an excellent author, Roger Zelazny. Time travel, making fun of Hitler, zen koan martial arts, dinosaurs, and a lot of confused writing!Music played:Lie Heavy - Burn to the Moon https://lieheavy.bandcamp.com/album/bur…

We definitely didn't record this three months ago and only remembered to post this now! Langdon's computer definitely didn't die at the end! Stations of the Tide is DEFINITELY an excellent and weird book and Spring is definitely NOT the best season (that last part is true, actually)!Music played -BIG | BRAVE - I felt a funeral https://bigbrave.band…

In Mobility, Lydia Kiesling really bildungs the heck out of a Roman. Bunny is a foreign-service brat who wants a conventional life and, spoilers, she gets one - but it's a conventional life while the oil industry and American imperialism kills the planet. Music by Orgone.Av DEATH // SENTENCE

Babe, wake up, my new favourite book just dropped.Music by Sauna Youth.Av DEATH // SENTENCE

Imagine The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and It. Okay, imagining that? Okay, now make it gay. Gayer. More gay than that.That's returning guest Gretchen Felker Martin's follow up to the masterful Manhunt.Music from ScarcityFind more half-human Cronenberg creatures on our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/deathsentence…

This time around, Eden is joined by none other than Vajra Chandrasekera, author of The Saint of Bright Doors and Rakesfall! The two discuss time, history, anti-colonial and colonial violence, the legacy of Arthur C. Clarke in Sri Lanka, memory, scale, science fiction and the New Weird as a genre and so much more!Music played:Wormed - PROTOGOD https…

This episode is titled FOUR because Langdon used it to talk to Eden about FOUR books. We have read too many books and all the Smart has leaked away. The books range over topics like psychosis, the death of art, idealism, hauntings, and introspection. You know, Death // Sentence things. The books are:The Passion According to GH - Clarice LispectorAg…

What if the real horror story didn't involve skeletons and boggarts and whatnot... what if the real horror was your boss? There is probably more to returning guest Jon Greenaway's book Capitalism: A Horror Story than that, but we mostly talk about how sick the Saw films were.Music by Valerian SwingAv DEATH // SENTENCE

After 1989's masterpiece Remains of the Day made him a superstar, Kazuo Ishiguro returned in 1995 with the baffling, divisive The Unconsoled. James Wood said that it created a 'new category of badness' and... we kind of agree.Music by Tribulation and Krallice.Av DEATH // SENTENCE

We're here at last - Langdon's journey through the work of Kazuo Ishiguro reaches one of his greatest novels and perhaps of the greatest novels of the past fifty years, Remains of the Day. Music by Enslaved.Would it please sir to visit our Patreon? https://www.patreon.com/DeathSentenceAv DEATH // SENTENCE

Langdon and Eden cover the weird, gothic, Catholic-horror, and unsettling Woodworm by Layla Martinez. But first, they do the unthinkable and wade into the discourse around Litvrgy. There, they discuss theosophy, the limitations and pitfalls of Litvrgy's ideas, but also the vicious instinct of the dogpile and the vociferous cycle of discourse.Music …

Elle Nash is back on the show to talk about her new book of bodies, babies and bugs, Deliver Me. We talk about parenting, YouTube, the life of a writer and making it in literature in the 2020s.Music by WinterfyllethAll of our Patrons are our babies, and you can join them here to get access to our Discord and hours of bonus content: https://www.patr…

That's right, we have decided to open up the terrible portal called "The Internet" and ask our listeners some questions! They cover topics like non-metal music we like, books we wouldn't recommend, shows we would undo or prevent, and all sorts of other negations, recommendations, and inquiries.If you'd like to join us on Discord, we're here: https:…

Ve believe in nothing Lebowski. Gareth has been trying to get Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound since it came out, and in this episode he enlists Langdon to explain it to him. Will they take the Enlightenment to its ultimate conclusion? Will they understand the world through various oozes and gels? Will there be digressions? Yes.CW for discussion of sui…

Spencer Sunshine joins us to talk about a book that is as cheery as his name suggests: it has Nazis, Industrial Music, Child P*rnography, Charles Manson, Neo-folk, Black Metal, At*mwaffen. It appears that the edgy Feral House guys of the 80s and 90s weren't ironic Nazis - they were Nazi Nazis, and Spencer has the receipts.…

What if the way we interact with art is like a parasite inside of it's host? We talk to A.V Marraccini about her genre-hopping, dare we say Deleuzian work of critical theory/autofiction/memoir/manifesto We The Parasites.Music by ThouAv DEATH // SENTENCE

Vampires are having a bit of a moment, and the best book in the current wave is Genevieve Jagger's Fragile Animals, a literary maybe-vampire story set in Scotland. We talk about why vampires are back, Catholicism, trauma and the best vampire films (Near Dark and The Only Lovers Left Alive).Music by Glassing and Inter Arma…

Eden sits down with the non-fictional representative of the book of webs, Jesse Kohn, to talk about the weird, beguiling, and bubbling Love Chronicles of the Octopodes by Karen An-hwei Lee! Gene editing, Emily Dickinson, internal monologue, cosmic adventures, the Moon personified, and more whirl in this unique and scintillating book!Music played -T…

In honor of the world-ending eclipse that's scheduled for today, Gareth and Eden sit down to tackle Sven Holm's Termush! The novel explores an atomic post-apocalypse and the parasitic, depraved, neurotic, and straight up weird well-to-do people who try to survive it. The two tackle ideas of middle class violence and manners, radiation and climate c…

Ernst Bloch is probably going to be unknown to many listeners, but, according to Horror Vanguard's Jon Greenaway, he's one of the most overlooked and important philosophers of the 20th century. We talk about what Utopia means and what it can mean now that it seems further away than ever.Music by Necrot.…

What if nasty commoners were going around breaking all the nice people's art? What if we've been getting morality all wrong? We consider all this and more when talking about Kay Dick's rediscovered masterpiece They.Music by Sleepyime Gorilla Museum: https://sleepytimegorillamuseum1.bandcamp.com/album/of-the-last-human-being…

What if everything you were taught about Neoliberalism was wrong? What if it's not a free-market free-for-all but as tightly controlled as any planned economy? Grace Blakeley joins us to discuss her new book about this, why everything is so expensive, where all the money went and what we can do about it.Music by Full of Hell.…

Langdon talks to Ian Cory, former editor-in-chief of the almighty Invisible Oranges blog and now lead of genre-agnostic (but generally heavy) band Lamniforms.Av DEATH // SENTENCE

We're 'mad for it' on this episode! And by 'mad for it' we mean mad about how Manchester, the city where capitalism and communism were invented, has turned into a nightmare of hotdesking 'spaces', dumb concept bars that last two weeks and towers to store insufferable yuppies. Isaac Rose is here to talk about his new book The Rentier City: Mancheste…

It's a very chipper and uplifting episode, as Langdon and Eden tackle the question of revolutionary optimism, the role of hope (or lack thereof) in revolutionary politics, and the question of "doomerism".Then, they dive deep into a workplace novel unlike any other, the incisive, empathic, and deeply sad Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind. Dreams, quot…

This time around, Langdon and Eden talk about how the Internet is dead, actually, and who has killed it. Then, they stay on the topic of demise by diving into Nicole Kornher-Stace's Archivist Wasp, a weird and twisted exploration of death, the afterlife, and trying your best.Music played:Vitriol - Locked in Thine Frothing Wisdom https://centurymedi…

Josie Riesman joins us to talk about her book on Vince McMahon, the head of the WWE and arguably the creator of modern wrestling, who is now undergoing a long-overdue downfall after certain allegations came to light. Music by Darkspace: https://darkspace.bandcamp.com/I'm sure you'd like a tasty beer to go with this episode - give the cooperatively …

On this solo episode, Eden kicks off a series looking at a new format for Death // Sentence - the science fiction poem! He does it by diving deep into two fine examples of the format, Aniara and Deep Wheel Orcadia, focusing on themes of language, translation, belonging, deep space, and religiosity!Music played:Ranges - The Slings and Arrows of Outr…

The singular entity known as Langdon/Eden records a solo episode continuing the long-promised series on Kazuo Ishiguro. This time around, they tackle "An Artist of the Floating World", Ishiguro's second novel and his attempt to tackle post-WWII Japan, masculinity, old age, honor, shame, and more!Music played: Jesus i betong by Cortex https://heartw…

This time around, Langdon and Eden explore the shadowy and religious urbanity of The Saint of Bright Doors, a fantasy book about knowledge, imperialism, and violence. But first, they talk about the shadow urbanity of the United States of America and Langdon's trans-dimensional adventures with Power Wash Simulator (yes).Music played:Pessimystic - Bu…

Why aren't books hitting like they used to? Partly it's because of how they're sold, Dan Sinykin says in Big Fiction. We talk about how everyone from Cormac McCarthy to Stephen King and the Million Little Pieces guy explains the Conglomeration Era of fiction.Music by Fawn Limbs & Nadja and Panopticon.Theme tune by Caina.…

Matt McManus is one of the most perceptive critics of the conservative movement out there, and in The Political Right and Equality: Turning Back the Tide on Egalitarian Modernity he takes them on their own terms, reading major figures from Socrates to Burke, Hegel, Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche to find what links them.Music by Rosa Faenskap and Afterbi…

On this episode, Adam and Craig of the Acid Horizon podcast join Eden to discuss their new book, "Anti-Oculus: A Philosophy of Escape". The three dive deep into cybernetics, the blindness of the Israeli genocidal apparatus, what it means to control and be controlled, pathways of escape, and how to write good introductions to books.Music played:Exul…

Langdon and Eden sink deep into M. John Harrison's masterful, erudite, oppressive, and creepy "The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again"! The two discuss the fading landscape of England, London's dire straits, the numbing reality of the Midlands, forests, ponds, disappearing women, post-modernism, and more. But first, they critique the very current and…

Highly aerodynamic tech investor Marc Andreessen has written a 'Techno Optimist Manifesto' that cites arch-edgelord dork Nick Land as a 'Patron Saint of Techno Optimism'. Has he read Nick Land? Sean of the Wyrd Signal podcast and I conclude no, he hasn't, and in doing so we talk about Land's ideas, Martin Heidegger, Degrowth, Dystopia and The Meg.M…