iwrestledabearonce – It’s All Happening

This band is fun. Lots of people hate them, and a bunch of people, including me, like them. The reason they are maligned is they don’t give a shit about those people. Their image tends to group them into the “uncool” kiddy-metalcore scene, which the tr00 metalers can’t stand. They also don’t stick to the 100% evil requirement of metal, so they suck.

I don’t think they suck, at least not most of the time. I suppose they primarily fit into the metalcore genre. However, they cram in stuff from the electronic scene, 80s pop, grindcore, and technical death metal. Not all that different in concept from the insane Japanese group Maximum the Hormone; just a bit more leaning toward the metal side. Also, all the vocals are done by a girl. Not a common thing in this kind of music. She’s pretty impressive most of the time. A little bit of the clean singing falls flat once in a while, but she does a great job on the grunts.

Their tagline is “Metal just got gay!” I don’t think this has anything to do with homosexuality, just the attitude; it’s not evil metal, it’s fun metal. Chaotic pummeling with interludes of cheesy pop. They have awesome track titles too, like “Tastes Like Kevin Bacon,” and “See You in Shell.”

Anyway, this album isn’t as good as their self-titled EP from last year, but it’s still quite enjoyable. Enjoyable enough that I actually bought it when I saw it on the shelf at Best Buy today. I’m gonna be rockin’ it in my new car tomorrow. Check it out if you don’t give a crap.

Mass Effect

I don’t think I’ve ever played a real RPG, and this is about as close as I’ve ever gotten. Bioshock is probably the next closest thing. However, just from this experience, I have confirmed my suspicions that a MMORPG or its ilk would completely destroy my life.

Mass Effect is mostly boring. There is lots of lame dialog exposing the seemingly massive collection of lore the studio dreamed up, and quite a bit of time is spent just getting from point A to point B, although I guess that can be fun sometimes. However, the RPG elements of self-improvement and decisions affecting your development seem to drag me in like a freakin’ Sarlaac. It could have something to do with the promise of hot blue alien sex, which was actually pretty disappointing.

I chose the Sentinel class, which turned out to be kinda lame; the only gun you can use with any accuracy is the pistol, and relying on “biotics” for all your combat doesn’t really work. I still managed to kick a lot of ass though. I seem to enjoy inventory management.

I had a few technical problems with the game; at one point a boss threw me off the map, and I just started floating around, unable to even access the save/load dialog. Also a few times throughout the game my gun would overheat and not cool down, forcing a save and reload, which can only be done in non-combat situations, requiring retreats. It even happened on the final boss, with no option of retreat. Thankfully I was able to avoid the overheating by waiting around a while before shooting. It still sucked though. These problems might have been fixed in a patch; I didn’t have any patches.

So, this game is really addicting despite the lame story and often boring mechanics. I stayed up until 7:30 AM last night playing this crap, and then spent most of today finishing it off. I will never play WoW.

Deathspell Omega - Fas - Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum

"Divine law - Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire!"

Another black metal review. This album is from 2007, so it’s not breaking news or anything, but I was reminded of it a little while ago and remembered how awesome it is. Also, I haven’t reviewed anything from this fantastic band yet, which somehow seems wrong.

Deathspell Omega are a secretive group of metaphysical musicians with burning-church-loads of talent. They started out as an orthodox (i.e. lo-fi and rather crappy) black metal band out of France. Then a few years ago they started making good music, most notably with the most excellent three-track EP Kénôse. It was filled with avant-garde churnings of brutality, chaos, and somber ambience that left the listener dazed and amazed. Two years later, this album was released with a similar sound in 46 minutes of chaotic glory.

This is by no means orthodox BM. It’s dynamic as any classical composition. There isn’t very much structure to follow, but it flows very nicely when it isn’t tearing from one section to another and ripping your ears out (in a very good way). The vocals are top-notch for the genre, very much like the angry barking of some vicious dog. I don’t know what any of the lyrics are, but I’ve heard they are quite intelligent and philosophical, of course including the satanic themes ever-present in this kind of music. The title is actually a Latin translation of a line from the biblical book of Matthew, which is pretty neat.

Anyhow, the music is just too great. I’m generally not good at descriptions so I don’t think I’ll go any farther with it; instead, check out the opening track for a taste.

A Nothing Post from netbook land

I just got an Asus EEEPC and holy junk it's hard to type on this thing. There will be no more typing corrections past this sentence. I'm writing this post using WIndows Livce Writer because it was insalled by defaulkt on the machine , and I felkt likt etring it out. It seems pretty nice I guess, but I don't think it[s much better than using the bklogger interface,. I'm voing rto try putting in an image.

Seemsto work alrighyt. Maybe it is a little nicer; I guess I[ll leave it instlled for bnow,,. Bigday tomorrow, going to Virginia for an interviewwith Lockheed Martin. Wish meuck, dudes!

--edit--

Just installed Windows Live Writer on my desktop, as I’m actually a bit impressed with it. All you crazy bloggers can check it out here if you want. I’m not currently using any other Live software, but this is pretty nice. Kudos, MS.