Peter and Eden watch 1981's Escape from New York and land, predictably, on opposite sides: Eden had a blast, Peter was fighting sleep and checking the runtime. Before getting there, they spend a significant chunk of the episode on a surprise Neurosis album drop — An Undying Love for a Burning World — that apparently derailed any other listening either of them did for a week and a half. They also work through a stack of new metal releases, Eden's ongoing Continuity Comics deep dive (cliffhangers with no resolution, going all the way down), and the inevitable sidebar about Ready Player One being one of the worst things ever committed to paper.

SHOW NOTES

• Continuity Comics / Death Watch 2000 — Eden is deep into the indie comics boom-and-bust era. Death Watch 2000 (20 issues, zero through nineteen) ends on a cliffhanger because issue 20 never came out. The follow-up crossover, Rise of Magic, also ends on a cliffhanger — because the company went under. Eden is reading Ms. Mystic through all of this.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl — Peter is on book five (nearly six) of the LitRPG series. Eden remains skeptical on principle, largely due to the covers, a detailed bit about the Mantar illustration, and a Chuck Tingle tangent.
• Project Hail Mary (film) — Peter saw it in St. George during spring break and liked it. Eden knows the twist, is annoyed it was in the trailer, and delivers the hot take that the film is secretly about "exospecies gay love" — which, they argue, makes Andy Weir's claims to apolitical writing somewhat complicated.
• New metal releases rundown — Peter ran down a week where six metal albums dropped at once: Exodus's Goliath (disappointing 😞), Garea's Loss ("what if black metal Sleep Token" 🥺), Ethereal Darkness's Echoes (solid), Hanging Garden's Isle of Bliss (melancholy melodic death for the right mood), and The Holeum's Ensis (Peter's second favorite of the batch after Neurosis). New Winterfylleth also dropped.
• The Neurosis surprise drop — An Undying Love for a Burning World hit Bandcamp with zero announcement, and both hosts describe it as a fully realized return to form. Aaron Turner (of ISIS/Sumac) joins as second guitarist and vocalist, filling the Scott Kelly-shaped hole. Both Peter and Eden consider it a vital, emotionally resonant album for 2026.
• Fire in the Mountains Festival — Neurosis is playing a festival on Blackfeet Nation land in Montana this summer, organized in part by Steve Von Till, with proceeds going toward suicide prevention for First Nations teens. Peter is trying to figure out the logistics post-London trip.
• Escape from New York (1981, dir. John Carpenter) — The main event. Eden loved it unreservedly and immediately downloaded the soundtrack; Peter found it slow, confusing, and full of deus ex machina plotting. They both agree Snake Plissken essentially does nothing heroic in his own movie.
• Peter's mystery genre director — A running thread emerges: Eden is trying to figure out who Peter's equivalent of her John Carpenter is. The search is ongoing; James Cameron is a candidate. Mad Max: Fury Road is teased as the next watch-along.