Saturday, December 13, 2008

Metal Break or FIVE MINUTES OF METAL!!!!!!!!!!!

Metal Introduction to the Metal Post
So as you may have noticed if you read the last set of reviews, I've been listening to a lot (for me) of metal and metalcore. There is more to come (both reviews and metal). In this spirit I thought I would take a chance to do a little break here for all things metal. Not all things actually. Really just a few things. So here is a paltry few things metal.

Metal Name Generators.
Metal Names
Metal Band Names
I got these in a newsletter from Guitar Player magazine. They make me chuckle.

Metal News
Metal's favorite, anti-downloading sons, Metallica, have a new album. That's old news. What is news to me is that these ass clowns have garnered themselves 4 (count them, 4) Grammy nominations. Are you kidding me? I have to assume that a. this is part of the Grammys' ongoing campaign to relieve themselves of relevance and b. James Hetfield is still a douchebag.

Metal Video Clip
As much as I meant what I said above, this video is pretty ballin'. Dana doesn't like it, but she has a thing about zombies.



Thanks to my friend Chrissy for bringing this video to my attention.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

More Mini Reviews, and a Shameless Plug

Since I kind of enjoyed writing up my thoughts on that Fake Problems EP, I thought I'd try doing small quickfire reveiws for all the albums I'd listened to since. If I enjoy this I may continue to do it. If I don't I won't. It's fun being me!! So here they are from the album that came after Oh No! to the most recent:

Between The Buried and Me- Colors
I hadn't ever really listened to much BTBAM, but I figured I should check them out. I've actually seen them live once, but the sound was terrible and by the time they got it figured out, the headliner (who shall be named later) wanted them off the stage so they could tear it up. I was pretty impressed by this offering from the boys from North Carolina. They can certainly bring the brutal when they want, but they really aren't afraid to lapse into more eclectically influenced territory.
The Descendants- 'Merican EP
This EP has two of my favorite Descendants songs on it; Nothing With You and the title track so to be honest the other two could have been two minutes each of white noise and I would have liked the EP as a whole.
Norma Jean- Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child
Ah Christian Metalcore you are my weakness. There's something about the when the lambs of god starting getting wrathful that makes for some awesome metalcore. Stand out track for me is Memphis Will Be Laid To Waste, but that could be becase I've heard the Legion of Doom mashup with it and Ebolarama by ETID (B to the rutal).
Latterman- No Matter Where We Go..!
I can proudly say that I own all three of the Latterman albums and I've payed the boys for all of them. For the longest time however I haven't had the two albums on this list on my computer because I bought them on vinyl (thats right, records). So now I had the chance to complete my cyber collection. Best two tracks for me are Fear and Loathing on Long Island and Video Games and Fantasy Novels, but you really can't go wrong with anything on this album. Punk the way it was meant to be.
Shai Hulud- A Profound Hatred of Man
Shai Hulud has a thing about not liking people. This is a concept that I, personally, can embrace. This album has some great brutality from the transition between hardcore punk and its more technical brother, metalcore. I liked it but I have trouble getting past the fact that the guitarist now plays in New Found Glory. About that....
Dragonforce- Sonic Firestorm
Dragonforce was the aforementioned headliner and they do put on one heck of an epic-fest. What impressess me most about them is how in the midst of all the pyrotechnics there are definitely some dynamics and some hooks which make the songs listenable. While Sonic Firestorm doesn't have anything destined to be one of my all time faves, it's a pretty decent dose of epic.
HORSE the Band- Natural Death
This band and this album are perfect examples of what I like to think of as 'weirdcore.' I don't really mean that as a bad thing. I thought this album had less of the 8-bit sounding synths that I tend to think of when I think of HORSE the Band and at 16 tracks ran a little long for my taste.
Mineral- Power of Failing
Words cannot describe. Mineral never fails to amaze me. They are violent and peaceful at the same time, frantic and calm. Chris Simpson can write lyrics like a champ and is currently one of the bigger influences on my song writing in that he gives me permission to lay off the irony and glibness that I get from an adolescence spent listening to Brand New and Taking Back Sunday.
Latterman- We Are Still Alive
Latterman again. This album lacks the standout tracks of "No Matter Where We Go..!' and by this I mean when I looked at the track list I didn't recognize anything immediately. That said when I began listening I found I knew a lot of the words. So freaking anthemic. This band makes it to at least the top 10 of bands that need to reform (Jawbreaker I'm looking at you, I know you've played together in the past two years). I'm sorry Bridge and Tunnel's just not doing it for me.

As for the promised shameless plug, the boys and I have pretty much finished hammering out all the parts of the last song I wrote this summer (took our time didn't we?) and the other day at practice we played with Greg's pocket recorder going. The cymbals in particular are pretty dominant and besides a few shouted words you can't even tell there's singing going on, but it'll give you a very rough taste of what will be taken in the next batch into the studio. Listening can be done here.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Sadly Underwhelmed

So recently Adam gave me a ton of music and I'm slowly methodically loading into my computer's music player (yeah I'm not saying a brand name! why? because I'm punk-as-hell that's why). I say slowly because I'm listening to every song on every album at least halfway through to see if it is destined to become a favorite or not. I've been listening to everything from Katy Perry (yeah yeah shut up) to Converge (not laughing now are you?). Lotta Converge actually, I'd forgotten how happy they made me. I also finally got my hands on Every Time I Die's song Ebolarama which has long been a favorite of mine. But just a few precious minutes ago Greg and I were sitting around listening to Fake Problems' EP 'Oh No!' Now Fake Problems come fairly highly recommended. Their most recent album had critics and bloggers falling over themselves to compare them to folk punk icons (ugh ugly word) like Against Me! and This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb. This EP, I should note, is not that most recent album. In fact, it predates their first album by about a year. That said, I was completely underwhelmed. None of the songs really seem to go anywhere and maybe two of the six tracks even hint at the folk punk enthusiasm the band has since shown they were capable of. Most of the songs however are simply limp, meandering acoustic songs that would be better suited to some lead singer's discarded solo project. I'm so glad these guys turned the corner they did.

On a brighter note, this song by New England's own Smoke or Fire is fantastic. I burned my fingers out playing the riff over and over again and I still don't get tired of it. So without further ado, The Patty Hearst Syndrome.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Sittin' in the studio, talkin' 'bout a side project.

So on Friday, Greg and I met up Adam at the studio to do some vocal recording. Unfortunately, the studio was locked and we couldn't get the key anywhere so ended up heading back to our room and listening to music. A bit of back-story for this, Greg and I are constantly thinking of side projects we want to do and while we were in New York for a Mountain Goats' show I came up with the idea of doing an indie band called Funion. Back to present day, we're hanging out and as often happens when music people are hanging, a guitar is being passed around. Next thing you know we're throwing down tracks on a computer, creating a myspace page and Funion is born. So for anyone who wants to see said myspace page, that would be here. For those of you who are too lazy to click the link, here's a little taste courtesy of our friends over at last.fm.


Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Addendum

I would just like to throw my two cents in regarding Greg's now long departed Halloween Costume. While both the 50-cent and the Goldfinger costumes were pretty weak (albeit pun-tacular) the Lincoln hat showed a certain admirable craftiness and ingenuity.

P.S. For this to make any sense at all you have to go read my band's blog here.

P.P.S. Criteria is a fantastic band.

YAY

There is a new name!!! and now it's almost like a new blog. I swear to god I'm going to start updating more. My computer and I are still recovering from a particularly nasty little virus we picked up while attempting to watch the third season of a show called Psych. Fantastic show, terrible virus. Not really a good trade off, I'll watch it on dvd. In other (computer related) news, I have found (Dana found it first, but I was the one who tried it first so ha!) a really cool website where you can enter books/movies/whatever that you have read/watched/whatevered and rate them and it will suggest more things for you to read/watch/whatever.

books.livingsocial.com

add me as a friend, we can compare things we've gotten around to rating.

P.S. Dana-add a damn picture to your living social account.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

New Post New Name?

So I've been thinking that maybe I should change the name of this blog since I no longer record a song a day, in fact I'm extremely lucky these days if I record a song a month. That said, I'd like to start blogging more with my opinions on books, music, movies and still the occasional song or a news about the band, so the new name could be more generally reflective of that. If you have any ideas (you 3 who read this) feel free to send them along.

So after all that talk about how I don't record songs anymore, I did actually get one done tonight after about an hour and a half of work. I wrote 3 or 4 songs over the summer for the band and I'm hoping to get demos of all of them recorded at some point here. This one was the first of them and if it sounds a little different from all previous ones, that's because it was recorded onto two tracks! I'm getting very high tech now. It actually sounds different though because instead of my acoustic this song is being played on my new, beautiful Epiphone Dot. The song is called Daedalus Wept Bitterly and I hope you like it.

Daedalus Wept Bitterly

NOTE: A little housekeeping, it seems my web-hosting services won't let you simply play the song online and is making people download stuff. Just think of it as a free gift!

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

And We're Back

So I finally got off my ass and deleted a bunch of the old recordings that were on my web space and so I could finally make the link to the song in the last post work. Here's hoping the legions of people who previously read my blog will come flooding back and bring their friends. And while they're here they should check out the hottest new punk band in Worcester, MA, Kid Omega at their myspace page, the address of which is:

www.myspace.com/kidomegaband

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

This Is Not A Politcal Blog

This is not a political blog and that said, when I talk about what I did yesterday I will attempt to bring it back to music. Yesterday I went with several of my friends into Boston to see Barack Obama speak at a rally at the World Trade Center. With a minimal amount of gushing, I would like to say that the man made me a believer. I think the time is right to have a candidate with perfect comedic timing and that candidate is Barack Obama (seriously the man makes jokes, he's enjoying himself). The way I tie this into music is that of all my experiences in life, the rally was most like the first time I saw Against Me! play live. This is before they went all hypocritical and changed their sound to suit a more commercially viable audience (Note how I did not use the reactionary 'sold out'), back when they believed and you could believe with them. That was the show where I found myself singing along with the man next to me, smiling and nodding to each other even though we had never met. Last night after a particularly important point I yelled "Yeah" at the same time that the man standing next to me said it. We turn and acknowledged each other and when later as the rally built into a fervor and the man muttered to me "He has to win" it seemed normal. I waited in line for 3 hours, my calves and back were dead, and in that line I talked and made friends the way you can in a crowd of just under 10,000 people who all have the same goal for just a brief time. This is what punk music has always meant to me, in the face of cynicism and the status quo joining with other people, however different, who share our veiw to support the cause we believe in.
To that end I've decided to make my first musical post the new song that Kid Omega is doing. The song is called Elysion. This is the original acoustic demo I did.

Elysion

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Bad News, Worse News, hope?

So first the good news that didn't seem to find its way into the title. I finally finished (for the most part) the song I have been trying to write for a couple of months now. To say that I am pretty excited would be a mild understatement. The bad news was that as I was playing to the first person (Dana) to hear it, in fact as I strummed the last triumphant variation of a D chord, the D string snapped. This means that, until I put new strings on the guitar, I can't record the song as either a demo to send to Greg or to post here. In fact I can't record anything to post here (yeah yeah excuses excuses). The worse news is that Greg in his wisdom did some research and it would appear that the booking agency I was so excited about is a scam so that's kinda the end of that.

In far more positive news I went on a bit of a buying spree at my local independent record store and picked up among other things the (comparatively) new album from Canadian Indie rockers The New Pornographers, Challengers. I was surprised to notice that apparently I had been ignoring my itunes labels and have been enjoying a track off of Challengers for quite some time now. For me at least, the song Mutiny, I Promise You is the standout of the track from the pipe organ hook at the beginning to the echo-y boy girl vocal build of the chorus and finally the chorus itself a simple two line affair that was what attracted me to the song in the first place. Other favorite tracks on the album include the call and answer Myriad Harbor and the opener My Rights Versus Yours. As far as the overall sound of album its the same catchy and melodically complex stuff as previous Pornographer's albums but it struck me that it seemed there was a bit more of a folk/country elements to a number of songs which I hadn't remembered from other work by them. Even when she wasn't singing, it reminded me a bit of singer Neko Case's solo work. In all an excellent use of my money I feel (and I so rarely feel that way).

A final note about formats. I bought the album on vinyl and since the band is on Matador records the vinyl comes with a free mp3 download of the songs. A couple other labels do this as well including my personal favorite Saddle Creek. It is without a doubt my favorite trend in music today. Singlehandedly it has made vinyl a reasonable format to purchase music in again. I guess the new mp3/usb turntables do too but I don't have one, so screw 'em.