Peter and Eden kick off with a leisurely check-in — outdoor Godzilla screenings, Eden's miniature laundry room diorama with a 1/12-scale mahjong set, Peter's Amon Amarth/Dethklok concert recap, and new releases from Periphery and LE SSERAFIM. Then, with an assist from ChatGPT's Codex, Peter has assembled roughly 45 of the internet's most-agreed-upon worst album covers for a tier list ranking — S being the most catastrophically bad. The resulting hour-ish is essentially an appreciation of outsider art, deeply cursed Photoshop, and the specific chaos that was '90s rap cover design. Key revelation: the Rednecks, who made Sex and Violins, are Swedish, and that is the Cotton Eye Joe.

SHOW NOTES

• Outdoor Movie Night Gone Right: Eden's projector plan collapsed due to daylight, so they wheeled the TV outside and screened the 1998 Godzilla with Matthew Broderick — which Eden argues holds up better than its reputation suggests. Friend L contributed an observation about American Godzilla's gender presentation that Peter and Eden both find compelling.
• Daikon 3 & 4 / Studio Gainax Origin Story: Eden showed friends the legendary fan animations made for the early-'80s Daikon convention circuit — blatant copyright-violating anime crossovers that nonetheless launched the careers of the people who would go on to found Gainax (Neon Genesis Evangelion) and later Trigger (Delicious in Dungeon, Season 2).
• Roombox 3 Progress: Eden's current miniature diorama project is a laundry room featuring a vending machine, an arcade cabinet, and a complete 1/112-scale Chinese mahjong set (all 144 tiles). Models are being dressed in fabric soft clothing rather than left as bare plastic.
• LE SSERAFIM New Album: Eden's favorite K-pop act has a new record out. The second track samples La Macarena, which prompted a mild generational crisis at the comic shop when the younger staff noted it predates them.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl / Discworld Detour: Peter is finishing Book 8 of Dungeon Crawler Carl (narrated by Jeff Hayes, whose per-character voice work Peter genuinely enjoys despite usually disliking that approach) and has resolved to go into Terry Pratchett's Discworld next as a pressure valve from heavy genre fiction.
• Amon Amarth / Dethklok Concert: Peter drove to Salt Lake for the Amon Amarth/Dethklok tour. Amon Amarth was a highlight — Johan Hegg commanding a full audience Viking rowing session — while Dethklok left Peter cold; the Metalocalypse spectacle on screen keeps the audience at arm's length from the music. Castle Rat opened and was a solid short set.
• Forza Horizon 6: Peter is ~15 hours in on the Japan-set new installment and finding it an ideal low-commitment diversion. Fits easily into 20-minute sessions or longer stretches.
• Periphery — A Pale White Dot: New album from the djent-adjacent prog-metal band. Peter's read: fewer peaks but also fewer low points than usual — more consistent, somewhat more middling. Flagged as interesting rather than essential.
• Bad Album Art Tier List: The main event. Peter used Codex to compile ~45 covers from various internet "worst of" lists into a tier list app, with S = truly worst. Notable rankings: The Faith Tones' Jesus Use Me nearly got its own tier above S; Rednex' Sex and Violins landed S upon discovering the band is Swedish and responsible for the definitive Cotton Eye Joe; Iron Maiden's Dance of Death — described as looking like "Baby's first Blender" — is an A despite being one of their best 21st-century albums; Badfinger's Ass (donkey with headphones, hand holding a carrot) closed the list as a deserved S.
• Creed Sidebar: Human Clay cover triggers a genuine conversation about Creed's arc — good debut, one-and-a-half good albums, then nothing. Peter credits Alter Bridge as the redemptive outcome.

Peter and Eden dive into the first four issues of Larry Hama's classic G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero comics — a Kickstarter Peter may have regretted until roughly issue three, when a self-reassembling mech changed his mind. Before getting to Cobra, they cover Eden's return to Final Fantasy XIV and a crash course in Riichi Mahjong, Peter's take on Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 7 (enthusiastically defended as entertainment, explicitly not art), the emotional weight of the new At the Gates album The Ghost of a Future Dead, and a handful of other metal releases. The G.I. Joe discussion turns into a genuinely good riff on comics history, the widescreen movement, and what it feels like to read a 1982 military action comic with 2025 eyes.

SHOW NOTES

• Eden returns to Final Fantasy XIV: The new expansion Everkold was announced and Eden is skeptical of the premise. They made a new character on a new data center with a self-imposed gimmick — only picking classes that use magic, which leads to some fun justifications for Dark Knight and Reaper.
• Riichi Mahjong crash course: Eden attended a learn-to-play Mahjong event at a local board game lounge and has been practicing at the Gold Saucer in FFXIV. The tiles are described as resembling Haribo frogs — thick, satisfying, extremely edible-looking.
• Eden's reading: Clematis and Wisteria series: A contemporary fantasy series set in a majocracy where healers are second-class citizens bonded to mages. Features two prickly, genuinely unlikable protagonists in a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers arc. Eden is several books in and very much into it.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 7: Peter finished it and reaffirmed his position that it is not art — it is McDonald's. A fun, genre-appropriate palate cleanser, nothing more. This generated at least one spirited reply from a listener on social media that Peter declined to further engage with.
• Dresden Files Book 18 (Cold Days): Peter is halfway through and pleasantly surprised by how contemplative and low-action it is so far — Harry processing trauma rather than punching things. He expects crazy stuff by the end.
• Metal roundup: Peter covers several recent releases — Grief Collector's The Death of All Dreams (classic doom), A Dream of Poe's Katabasis: A Marriage Among Ashes (gothic/symphonic doom from Portugal, came with a personal thank-you email from the artist), Avertat's Dead End Life (death-doom), and Sepultura's swan-song EP The Cloud of Unknowing. Peter delivers a hot take defending post-Max Sepultura and does not mince words about the Cavalera brothers.
• At the Gates — The Ghost of a Future Dead: The most affecting music note of the episode. Lead vocalist Tomas Lindberg was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, recorded demo vocals for the entire album in one day before surgery, and ultimately died from the disease. The band completed the album using those recordings. Peter calls it a real banger and a worthy send-off.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Issues 1–4): The main topic. Both Peter and Eden started skeptical — Peter "made a hundreds of dollars mistake" on the Kickstarter — but came around by issue three when a self-rebuilding mech shows up. Eden provides a solid comics theory digression on the widescreen movement, Silver Age overexplaining, and where 1982 G.I. Joe sits in that history. Larry Hama's background (Asian American, invented characters alongside Hasbro, writing it into his 60s) gets discussed, as does the book's period-typical racism and sexism, Snake Eyes' ambiguous deal, and Cobra's complete lack of motivation.
• Free Comic Book Day plug: Eden reminds listeners that Free Comic Book Day is the following Saturday. The Dungeon Crawler Carl zero issue will be available. Eden also shouts out G.I. Joe: Silent Missions and a single issue written by friend-of-the-shop Phil Hester.

Peter watches Mad Max: Fury Road for the first time in decades, and Eden — who has seen it at least a dozen times — watches the black-and-chrome edition alongside him. Peter finds the opening act almost too uncomfortable to watch, given its uncomfortable parallels to the current political moment, but gets fully on board the moment the sandstorm hits. They dig into what makes the film a masterpiece of practical filmmaking, why Furiosa holds up better than the prequel, and what it means that George Miller also made Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet.

SHOW NOTES

• Check-in / What we've been up to — Eden is riding their cargo bike in 35mph Iowa wind gusts; Peter is heading to Austin for an Intuitive Surgical robotics event. Eden vents about 18 months of accessibility compliance work being ignored by faculty who don't read their emails.
• Peter's picks — Finishing Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 6 (fun but disposable, and the online fandom's intensity baffles him); finished Season 2 of A Man on the Inside (Ted Danson and his real-life wife Mary Steenburgen falling for each other on screen — highly recommended); Taskmaster Series 21 has started, featuring Kumail Nanjiani.
• Big metal week — Peter covers a stack of new releases: Slave Machine by Nervosa (vicious all-female death-thrash from Brazil); Too Fast to Die by ArchSpire (potential album of the year if not for Neurosis); new Inferi album featuring departing drummer Spencer Moore; Descent by Immolation; and Master Boot Record's first live album Realtime Execution.
• Eden's picks — Eden is scrobbling again on Last.fm and shares a chaotic top-four week: Portishead, Rebecca Black (Salvation EP praised as a stone-cold classic), Neurosis, and new discovery Javiera Mena, a Chilean electro-pop artist. Also watched two bad movies with the bad movie crew: Firecracker (notable for a truly unhinged sex scene) and American Cyborg: Steel Warrior ("Children of Men with a $13 budget"). Currently reading a 3,500-page Chinese web novel called Long Awaited Feelings / My Feelings Can Wait.
• Why Peter struggled with the opening act — Peter found Immortan Joe's cult of worship uncomfortably familiar, given current events, describing it as George Miller predicting how "stupid and gullible people can be." He warmed to the film as it progressed, with the sandstorm sequence being the turning point.
• "A perfect action film" — Eden's framing: not their favorite action film, but possibly a perfect one — no wasted frame, no wasted scene. They've seen it at least a dozen times, and this watch was the black-and-chrome edition, which Miller originally intended before the studio overruled him.
• Practical effects deep dive — 80–90% of the stunts were practical, shot on location in Namibia under miserable conditions. They highlight the pole-cat war boys actually swinging on moving vehicles, and the real flamethrower guitarist who was instructed not to hold the guitar too high.
• On the cast — Charlize Theron gets full credit for owning the film as Furiosa. Tom Hardy's near-silent, physically understated performance is praised. Nicholas Hoult's arc as Nux — going from zealot to sacrifice — is called out as the emotional hinge of the film.
• Frame rate trivia — Eden flags that 50–60% of the film was shot below 24fps, with Miller manipulating frame rates shot-by-shot to control tension and legibility.
• Furiosa comparison — Eden recommends the prequel but notes its heavy CGI and green screen make it feel cheaper and less embodied than Fury Road. Peter says he's now interested to watch it.
• The Babe 2 revelation — The episode ends on Eden's genuine disbelief that the director of Fury Road also made Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet, and a fun piece of trivia: Immortan Joe's actor, Hugh Keays-Byrne, also played Toecutter, the villain of the original Mad Max.

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.

Peter and Eden kick off with Eden's very dramatic Iowa snowstorm (back of the house: buried; front of the house: a dusting) and a quick check-in before diving into their respective "what have you been checking out" updates — Eden on two gloriously bad movies from March Badness, plus a deep dive into obscure 80s/90s indie comics; Peter on the new Lamb of God album, Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 4, and the news that he scored VIP tickets to the Rest Is History Festival in London. The main event is a 64-entry tabletop/board/card game bracket that Peter built himself, working through matchups fast and loose until Uno improbably but correctly takes the whole thing.

SHOW NOTES

• Eden's snowstorm saga — A dramatic morning shoveling reveal: six inches of heavy, shovel-sticking snow piled against the back door; the front walkway needed about five seconds of clearing. Wind had blown everything to one side of the house.
• March Badness — Eden attended a bracket-format bad movie night with friends. The event has been running since 2022 and involves voting down from 32 trailers to four films, then watching two. This year's picks: Oblivion (1990s sci-fi western featuring the very tall man from Twin Peaks in a towering top hat — "boring bad") and Hell Squad (1986 exploitation film about Vegas dancers recruited as mercenary commandos — "the second worst movie I've ever seen," edged out only by the 2025 War of the Worlds with Ice Cube).
• Defiant Comics / Warriors of Plasm / Ms. Mystic — Eden acquired Issue Zero of Warriors of Plasm, which was released as a series of trading cards you assemble into comic pages. This spiraled into a rabbit hole of obscure 80s/90s indie publishers, including Continuity Comics (founded by Neal Adams), and Eden declaring that Ms. Mystic — a character with 15 issues total — is now her favorite superhero on the strength of her zipatone-gradient costume alone.
• Lamb of God — Into Oblivion — Peter's been on repeat with the new Lamb of God album (released Friday). Highlight: the single "Sepsis," which opens as an unexpectedly sludgy, slow-burn bass groove before shifting into more traditional territory. Peter calls it his favorite LOG album since Resolution (2012). Ten songs, 39 minutes — "comes in, punches you in the nuts, and leaves."
• Dungeon Crawler Carl — Peter finished Book 4 on the drive back from Boise and is into Book 5. The epilogue of Book 4 opens up the surface-level lore in a meaningful way.
• Rest Is History Festival — Peter won a lottery for VIP tickets to the inaugural Rest Is History Festival, July 4–5 at Hampton Court Palace (Henry VIII's palace) in London. He and his wife are planning a 10-day trip around it. He notes the podcast pulls ~45,000 paying subscribers and around a million YouTube streams per episode.
• The Board Game Bracket — The main segment: Peter built a custom bracket website (following his tier list site) and ran a 64-entry tabletop/card/board game tournament with Eden. Notable moments: near-unanimous hatred of Monopoly (Eden explains the original Quaker socialist two-part design that Milton Bradley gutted), Cards Against Humanity deemed fun exactly twice before becoming "the Edgelord game," and genuine anguish over Little Flower Shop vs. Carcassonne in the Final Four ("Sophie's Choice").
• The Winner: Uno — Uno defeated Little Flower Shop in the final. Both agree it's the rare game that works straight out of the box, with house rules, and across weird spin-off versions. Eden: "Maybe the quintessential card game."
• Notable early exits: Settlers of Catan (Eden: "Fuck Settlers of Catan" — Cassie concurs), Ticket to Ride (fun twice, then "okay"), Munchkin (Eden used to own five versions; now owns zero).