A More Positive Entry

I feel kinda bad that the post I left my blog with for so long was the one in which I ripped into a band for their video. Regardless of my opinion they are at least talented enough to be in the position of getting to make videos for their song and this is a position I envy. In retrospect I feel a bit like an ass for my negativity (which is not to say that I take any of it back, cause I mean, come on!).
On a more positive note, Dana and I got Chinese food last night and watched the collegehumor show's third episode last night. It was pretty close to a return to form from the first episode, which I thought was great. I liked the second episode less mostly because I kept feeling really sorry for Sarah Schneider.
I think I'm going to start doing posts on other blogs and podcasts that I like. If you know me, you know that I have a ton of podcasts and that I check my blog reader several times a day. Now you readers of my blog (both of you) can have a peek into some of the blogs and podcasts that make update to my blog reader and my non-brand-affiliated music/media player. Look for that to begin soon.

This is awful

For someone who believes in the importance of community in music as much as I do, I sure do a lot of shit-talking. That said, when Punknews.com brought the existence of this video to my attention I realized that I really wanted to do a post on it.

I don't know exactly what about this bothers me so much. I think I could start by pointing out how blatant a rip-off of New Found Glory this is. Starting with the lead singer, who's voice seems to be calculated to mesh perfectly with that of a 14 year old girl, it progresses through the bros-before-hos lyrical content reminiscent of "My Friends Over You" and layers it all over the sort of bubblegum hardcore riffs and drums that NFG and later Fallout Boy would build their careers upon. Even the promising (to me) gang vocal lead-in to the (albeit cookie-cutter) break down got ruined by the falsetto garbage that carried on straight through.

On the video side of things, the viewer is allowed to pick their poison. Will you find the 'Mean Girls'-esque background action grating to the nerves or will it be the ubiquitous food fight that concludes the video? Will you be more annoyed by the range of stereotypically scenester outfits the band is clad in or concentrating on the obnoxious posturing of the lead singer? The finger-pointing and elbow waving alone are enough to do it for me.

On the positive side, I have to admit that for the godawful bubblegum pop that this is, it is at least done well. The hooks are hooky, the chorus memorable (sort of) and the breakdown is a clearly a breakdown without you needing to worry about getting roundhouse kicked by a guy named 'Somerville Pete.' If I were a teenage girl looking to diversify an mp3 player already overfull with Rufio and Cartel I would snap this up.

Post Show Recap -or- Name-Drop-Link-Fest '09

On Friday night, Kid Omega played in the Fighting Freuds Battle of the Bands here at Clark University. It was fantastic. Playing live with this band has never felt so good. We had fun and it seemed like the crowd did too. We played a short set of Swagger, Overwrought pt. 1, Rainn Wilson, Elysion, and Song for Geoff. We have video of the last three for everyone who wasn't there. You can find the video of Rainn Wilson Stopped the Drought over at Greg's Blog. The video of Elysion is posted over at our band's blog. That was easily my favorite because at the end the crowd clapped and sang along when we asked them to. This leaves me with the video of A Song for Geoff to Sing to post on my blog so hear it is:



We had a great time playing the show and to cap it all off, the battle itself was eventually won by Sister City aka Adam. To be honest I'd never really listened to his stuff but I sat in on some of his practices with Sean, who he borrowed to do the show, and I was really impressed. He writes songs like a pro. You can hear more of his music at their myspace or you can read his blog here.

Final Note: If bouncing from blog to blog in search of videos isn't your thing you can find all three videos from the show on youtube and also on Kid Omega's myspace. Also thanks to James for being our videographer (he's the one you can hear whooping after every song), keep your eyes out for his band Tiger Trap.

A Little Rock History

I'm back from break and now that I'm spending more time in front of my computer hopefully I will be blogging more, but for now I thought I would share a fun fact about this week in the not too recent past. This comes straight from the newsletter of Musician's Friend. The week of January 8th marks the 4 year anniversary of Kid Rock being kicked off the roster of acts to play as part of George W. Bush's inauguration festivities. How awesome is that? He got iced because tons of concerned Christians wrote in an complained about how he promotes a negative lifestyle of sex, drugs and partying. It must have been a bitch to find acts trashy enough to be willing to play at Bush's victory party and yet not so trashy that they offended the delicate sensibilities of the trashy people that elected him.

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.

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.

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.