Mark Lanegan is set to release a book titled Devil in a Coma that details a “terrifying account” of his battle with COVID-19. The veteran rocker was infected in March of this year, and at one point went “completely deaf” and was “slipping in and out of a coma.”
Lanegan, the former Screaming Trees frontman and erstwhile member of Queens of the Stone Age, was in Ireland at the time he was infected, having just relocated to the country. His bout with COVID is best described in the full description presented in a press release announcing the book:
“One blindingly bright morning in Ireland in March 2021, Mark Lanegan woke up and walked into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. Having gone completely deaf during the illness that had been slowly devouring his sick body, he found himself floored with cracked ribs unable to breathe. His body — burdened with a gigantic dose of COVID-19 — was quickly taken to Kerry Hospital with little hope of survival.
Slipping in and out of coma, Lanegan’s mind and body were left oscillating between life and death, unable to walk or function for several months. As his situation becomes more intolerable over the course of that bleakest of springs he is assaulted by nightmares, visions and regrets about a life lived on the edge of chaos and disorder. He is prompted to consider his predicament and how, in his sixth decade, his lifelong battle with mortality has led to this final banal encounter with a disease that has done for millions, when he has apparently been cheating death for his whole existence.”
Consequence reached out to the book’s publicist about Lanegan’s current condition, and we were told, “He has gotten his hearing back now but his health is up and down.”
Devil in a Coma will be released December 14th via UK publisher White Rabbit, and is available for pre-order at this location. The memoir follows Lanegan’s 2020 book, Sing Backwards and Weep, a Sunday Times best-seller.
Lanegan mostly releases music as a solo artist these days, but recently unleashed a collaborative album with The Icarus Line‘s Joe Cardamone under the name Dark Mark vs. Skeleton Joe. The pair’s self-titled LP arrived on October 15th.
See the book cover for Devil in a Coma below, followed by our video interview with Lanegan from 2019.
Devil in a Coma Cover:
