Concert Review: Night Eternal Above America Tour 2009-10-16

Last night was my first time attending a metal show by myself, and also the first time I’ve been in the front row. It was a pretty darn great experience. 6 bands played, two of them local and the rest from various places. The overall theme of the night was gothic metal due to the headlining act of Moonspell.

Todesbonden

The first two bands were local, Todesbonden being the first. They’re a very gothic band in the veign of Nightwish and Epica, with a female lead and lots of symphonic stuff going on. For an opening act they were quite decent indeed; the vocals were enjoyable and the bass guitar stood out to me as very punchy and energetic. The front-girl reminded me more of Simone (Epica) than Tarja or that new chick, which is cool because I prefer them.

Blood Corps

The second band was a bit more of a disappointment, especially compared to the rest of the bands. Still, they weren’t too bad. I guess they were some sort of gothic metal; not really anything more specific that I know of. This was another female-lead group, but it rocked more. I think maybe the thing that made me enjoy it less was one of the guitarists prancing around the stage with his skin-tight outfit and black lipstick. Their entrance was pretty fun though. The girl came out in a trenchcoat and spiked goggles, and let out a pretty long scream. Fun enough I guess.

Revocation

These guys  were probably the highlight of the night for me. I’ve never heard of them before which is a shame. They’re a death/thrash metal band that seemed to verge on grindcore, signed to Relapse records, home of a ton of great metal bands. Three guys, drum/bass/guitar, with both the guitar and bass guys doing (growled/screamed) vocals. This was a great break from the first two acts. Every song was fast, heavy and hella fun. There were a lot times that they reminded me of Pig Destroyer. They had great stage presence, often joking around between songs and just being all charismatic. I bought their latest CD entitled Existence is Futile to commend them.

EDIT: I’m pretty sure this is them at the very show I attended! I can’t see myself, but I should be right in front of the guitarist. Watch at MetalInjection.net

Secrets of the Moon

Apparently these guys are from Germany, and this was their first time touring the US. It was pretty cool hearing the front man counting off in German for the sound check. They’re a pretty straight black metal band, not much gothic about them, drums/2 guitars/bass. Thankfully they steered away from the corpse paint like most other BM acts seem to be doing now. The music was ripping. One of the coolest bits for me was the fact that the bass player is a girl, and she seemed very into the music. Of course being into black metal shows itself differently than for other music. Very awesome altogether.

Divine Heresy

Dino Cazares’ post-Fear Factory venture replaced Samael on the ticket for this show, I’m not sure if it’s a tour-long thing or what. These guys are really the reason I showed up. It was cool seeing Dino and Tim Yeung (the drummer) chatting it up with the guys in line before the doors opened. They’re quite decent fellows. The music of course was great, and it seemed most people in the audience knew all of the words. I knew at least a few, like Bleed the Fifth and some of Failed Creation. Really fun metalcore band.

Moonspell

These guys seem to be a lot more popular than I would have thought. Pretty much everyone in the audience sang along to every one of their songs. Seems strange for a gothic black metal band from Portugal. Anyway, the show was entertaining if not entirely my thing, as more often that not the gothic part of their subgenre would rear its pathetic little head and bring down the heavy. Still, a lot of their act tore it up quite decently. They played two encores, which I’d rather they hadn’t really as I was pretty worn out by that point.

The venue, a place called Jaxx in Springfield VA, was pretty nice. It’s a small place, kind of a glorified bar, sitting in the middle of a small plaza next to an afghan restaurant or something. There was hardly any parking but I got there early enough to not have a problem. I was able to buy tickets upon entering, and got right to the front row and didn’t leave until the end. There were a few points where the crowd behind me pushed me against the bars hard enough to make me feel pain, but it was all part of the metal experience. Now I’m living with the aftereffects; a really sore neck and lots of buzzing in my ears. Still, I don’t regret it.

Zombieland

I saw this opening weekend, (last Sunday) so it’s not the freshest on my mind that it could be, but I feel the need to write about it, because it was good. Like, really good. Take the awesome-itude of the trailers and multiply by about π, and you’ll have a rough number to describe how awesome it is.

Zombieland is much less about zombies than most zombie movies. In this respect (and some others) it’s similar to Shaun of the Dead or perhaps a comedy version of The Walking Dead. TWD is going to be a TV series by the way! Kickass! Anyway, the focus of Zombieland is on the two characters pictured above and two other ones that are a little more minor. One of them is a minor, fancy that.

Unlike your average zombie flick, this isn’t a pick-off-the-protagonists-throughout-the-movie-and-then-end-violently movie. It’s a character/comedy movie, with lovable people and great visual tricks to enhance the plot devices. Yes, there are brains and blood, but they are used humorously rather than indiscriminately. Also there’s a great bit in the middle but it shall not be mentioned.

The great part that follows from being less about the zombies is that little attention is given to how the plague started, and you don’t spend half the film watching people on the screen making stupid mistakes in order learn that you have to shoot them in the head. All that time is devoted to things that we maybe haven’t seen before, or at least not quite in the same light.

All in all, very entertaining movie, one which I will probably see again before it leaves theaters. GO!

Batman: Arkham Asylum

I played the PC demo for this game a while ago, and it was pretty cool. I'd been following the new on the game's development and whatnot for a while, and it had me excited. The demo didn't show much though, concentrating almost exclusively on the combat, which really doesn't paint a full picture.

So for this reason among others, I took advantage of the new PS3 pricing and got a Slim. I needed something to play on it, so I nabbed Arkham Asylum. The next few days outside of work were quite filled with the wonderful world of gaming through the eyes of the Dark Knight.

This game is great. I haven't played many Batman games; I think the only other one was Batman Returns on a Sega Nomad, which was pretty fun at the time, but I didn't play the whole thing. From what I've read every Batman game before Arkham has been pretty crappy. This time around, some major effort was put into adhering to and using the complex histories of the Batman universe, and making it a fun and beautiful experience. It's really quite amazing how much attention was given to even relatively minor characters, even if they don't technically appear in the game.

There are a number of different aspects of play to this game; combat (brawling or stealth), exploration, secret finding, riddle solving, skill leveling, and salivating over visuals and awesome voice acting. One thing that really helps the exploration and secrets bit is the complexity of the level design. Many locations within the main maps are inaccessible until certain skills are unlocked, which can be gotten through combat experience, riddle solving, or simple plot advancement. For this reason there is little need for a huge linear path like that of the Half Life games or whatever; you are really in Arkham Asylum. You can see where you want to go, but you can't go there yet! It really makes it a great feeling when you can finally break that wall.

As mentioned, the voice acting is spectacular, especially the talent brought by Mark Hamill, also known as Luke Skywalker. He voiced the clown prince on the animated TV series from the 90s, and he did a great job. Also brought in from that show are the voices of Batman and Harley Quinn, who are also great. Whoever did Edward Nigma's voice was good too.

The combat is really fun, especially the stealth stuff. I love hanging from ledges and roping up baddies upside-down. Brawling is cool too, with a combo system pretty simple in concept, but difficult to really execute perfectly without a lot of practice. There are unlockable challenge modes that help with this, although I didn't start those until I finished the storyline.

One technical issue I had with both the PC and PS3 versions is the visual quality. It's really quite pixelly, with pretty low anti-aliasing. I'm hopefully going to get a chance to play the full PC version very soon. Maybe they'll have added graphical controls to the settings (probably not).

EDIT: I just started playing the PC version, and they did everything right (well, almost). They hosted the free download on Steam for starters, which is great. The game launcher allows for full graphical control, even allowing for use of NVIDIA's PhysX technology. Since I now have high-end card (GTX 295) I was able to run everything on pretty much the highest setting, and it's absolutely beautiful. So much better than what I got out of the PS3. The only thing that I don't think is completely awesome is the use of Windows Live for achievements instead of Steam's, but it's not a big deal.

District 9

The first time I saw this movie I absolutely loved it. I saw it a second time tonight and I loved it just as much as the first time. This is probably the most believable sci-fi I’ve ever seen. The acting is brilliant, the dialogue (largely improvised) isn’t fake in the slightest, and the visuals are outstanding.

The coolest part of it I think is the pseudo-documentary style in which about half of it is filmed. It makes everything seem so real and part of the actual world. The South African setting is brilliant, and the accents really help to take the edge off of any leftover hints that this didn’t actually happen (at least for me, maybe not for South Africans). The docu-style eases off a lot during the second half due to the plot advancement, but it’s still wonderfully filmed and the composition of the CG elements is astounding.

One thing that is both a boon and a detriment to the film is that is based quite heavily on apartheid and real events that occurred in that area. The aliens (usually referred to as Prawn) take the place of black communities that were relocated against their will in order to maintain separation. This takes away a little of the originality of the film, but it also gives it great emotional backbone and adds a lot of power to the story.

It’s quite a violent movie. I’m entirely cool with that. I suppose I’ve been a bit desensitized to this sort of thing but it didn’t seem gruesome to the point of un-watch-ability by any means, and it was all just very impressive, especially the alien weapons (e.g. pig-throwing gun).

Much like a lot of my favorite movies and shows, a lot is left to speculation; like why did the aliens come to Earth, where are they from, etc. Some of these holes might be considered plot holes, but the speculation part can pretty much cover that. Exposition ruins things.

So yeah. Probably the best new movie I’ve seen this year.

Inglourious Basterds

It was long and sometimes entertaining.

That’s it I guess. To be honest I didn’t like it all that much. The action was pretty okay and it was nice to look at, but Tarantino’s tendency for epic dialogue scenes begun to bloat a bit too much. In previous films he’s put down some really snappy and interesting scripts that make you want to go back a watch again. This one just has lots and lots of pretty dreary expositional stuff peppered with a few moments of the usual brilliance. There wasn’t much in the way of characterization that I was hoping for; only a few of the characters were really interesting, maybe three. Most were just faces.

Brad Pitt did a pretty good job and got the most laughs. Mike Myer’s cameo was pretty pointless. I was hoping BJ Novak’s part would be fun to watch, but it really wasn’t.

If it had been pared down to two hours I guess it would have been alright, it just dragged a lot. Yeah that’s all I have to say about it.

 

EDIT: Ooh ooh I know why it wasn’t great, Sam Jackson wasn’t in it! Big mistake Quentin. Big mistake.

The Goon

The Goon is awesome. It is also a comic by Eric Powell, and the main protagonist thereof. I just read it. Well, most of it, since its still ongoing presumably. Also there’s gonna be a movie.

It’s a sort of mobster-noir thing with zombies and a lot of rather sick humor. The art is often stellar, and the stories can often be quite emotionally gripping. The amount of character in the characters is pretty great. The Goon himself is a hulking semi-superhuman with a thinly disguised moral compass and an emotionally torn past. His buddy Frank is a loud-mouth crazy weirdo with a lot of loyalty to his friend. Together they help defend a town from hordes of zombies (they call them “slack-jaws”) brought by a mysterious, nameless man that goes by The Priest. Other odd villains show up from time to time, usually with hilarious beatings resulting.

It’s not always funny. There is some serious emotional stuff too. One part of the story was written as a graphic novel called “Chinatown and the Mystery of Mister Wicker” which ties in with the general storyline while flashing back to a significant part of Goon’s past. There are no laughs in the entire book; it’s pretty heavy. One of the first pages is simply black with big nasty letters saying “This Ain’t Funny.”

Still, it’s all extremely entertaining and loads of fun. I’m most certainly looking forward to seeing the dreadful duo on the big screen.

Six Feet Under

So, I’ve gone from my longest watch straight to my proportionately shortest watch. This show has five seasons at 12 or 13 hour-long episodes each, and I’ve stayed up late and angered my parents by sitting around in my room in order to finish it in about nine days. I watched Breaking Bad’s first season  in pretty much a single seating, but that was just seven episodes. No big deal. The reason for that was that it was a fantastic show, and it holds true for this one as well.

Six Feet Under revolves around a family-owned funeral home somewhere in California. That is, it centers on the family and their relationships with each other and their friends/enemies/loves/etc. In fact, all of these traits are often present in the same person. Everyone in the show is flawed to varying degrees, which sometimes made it difficult for me to like them depending on the flaw. I guess a show this close to my pessimistic view of reality just makes me mad.

Of course, there are good times along with the bad, which makes it watchable. The actors is superb, the writing is great, and it doesn’t rely on cliff-hangers nearly as much as most other dramas I’ve seen. A pretty cool trick they use extensively is the dream sequence, which almost always includes a conversation with a deceased loved-one. It’ usually made obvious that it’s not some mystical communication with the dead; rather, it’s all in the mind of the dreamer and a product of their emotional state. These mind-ghosts are a great way to get inside the heads of the characters without crappy voiceovers or whatever. Sometimes they’re funny and sometimes they’re pretty horrifying, but they always get their point across.

Every character in the show can be analyzed to hell. If I had the inclination I could probably write essays on them for quite some time, but I definitely don’t. The common theme for them is a seemingly self-imposed spiral to destruction. Everyone makes bad decisions over and over. Usually everything looks great for a little while and then just goes to crap. Cue the next disaster cycle. Repeat until the sappy montage at the end of the series. It was good to have a positive resolution.

It was a good watch, and I’m glad I watched it. Now I’ll be quite happy to find something light-hearted to enjoy.