A few things

To start off with, I’m sorry. If you are following this blog, I’m sorry for my irregularity with posting. I seem to be the type that bottles things up for a while and then blurts them all out in a few days time and then is spent. To update: the vacation went great, we had a great time and got back home just fine. On the way home I listened to some Opeth for the first time. I liked the first album I listened to, “Blackwater Park”, and then listened to “Burden” and “Damnation”. Mostly because I was driving and that was alphabetical. Their cover of AIC’s “Would” did not anger me. Being that Alice is the band I’ve liked the longest in my life, that is very high praise. Right now I can’t really recall what else I listened to, so it must not have been very memorable an experience.

To get more recent, I usually give zero shits about Oscar nominations but the snub of The Lego Movie has really pissed me off. That is seriously one of the best movies I have ever seen in my entire life and my kids enjoy it to no end. Enough said.

It has now been well over three years since I have recorded my own original music and the ideas are overflowing. I don’t know if there is another Nilentropy album in me right now as I tend to think of that as the alternative instrumental thing. I want to make another alternative record but I want to finally record vocals and write lyrics and sing with my wife. I think we’ll have to come up with a new band name for that. Also in the works is a progressive metal album that will also have vocals. I have been practicing and writing guitar material for the last few months for this one and plan to try to use some of my mountain man friend’s poetry for the lyrics.

On that subject, I’ve also seen my crazy mountain man friend that I’ve mentioned here on the blog before, right before we left for vacation. I don’t know how I’ve failed to mention that. (Or did I?) Anyways. He looks good and seems to be as crazy as ever and says he is still writing poetry.

I feel like there is something else I was going to say but can’t think of it now so that’s it for now.. Peace.

My crazy mountain friend

I’ve posted before about my friend Ross who now lives in the mountains of West Virginia. Well, I’ve finally seen him again and he seems to be thriving. He has a girlfriend and he has many opportunities in the works. I hope to talk to him again soon and ask him if I can post some of his poetry. He really is one of the best poets I have ever read. Quite a brilliant mind he has.

Image him an old computer I had in a box that I had gotten from our old workplace. An old print server computer that I haven’t been using. I should have thought of it before I gave it to him but I have a much better computer that I could give him. I really want him to get his poetry out there in the world, I hope I can help him.

Christmas Traditions

Every year my parents watch the version of Scrooge with Albert Finney and Alec Guinness. It’s just what we do. I also usually try to catch Christmas Story at least once. Have a merry Christmas to all.

Vacation travels

Hey again. We made the long trip down from New York to Charleston and here is what I listened to on my turn driving:
Infectious Grooves – Groove Family Cyco
John Frusciante – Enclosure
Kittie – Funeral For Yesterday
Korn – The Paradigm Shift
Lamb Of God – As The Palaces Burn (remastered)
Marilyn Manson – The Pale Emperor

Some really good music, most of it was the first time listen as well. It’s been forever since I had listened to that Infectious Grooves album. I recently started getting into more stuff by those guys, including the Cyco Miko albums. Those guys from Suicidal Tendencies are so prolific. I always loved the first two I.G. albums when I was a teenager but only recently started listening to the suicidal stuff. After listening to Suicidal For Life a few times I decided to get some more of their stuff and ran across the Cyco Miko albums. I guess I just love that metal groove they have.

The same goes for Kittie. I had listened to Spit a few times and had read about the band so I decided to get the rest of their stuff. Really great vocals on the Yesterday album. I have always loved Korn but I lost track of them for a little while but this new album is really good. They are really on form.

Lamb Of God is a new one for me. Getting back into metal as I have, they were an inevitable choice. I really enjoyed the Palaces album and will continue to give them a good play-through. The new Manson album is a real treat, the guitar on the album is very prominent. It is a different style of guitar than previous Manson albums. Almost bluesy. A much more guitar centric album than I expected but really great.

Enjoy the holidays.

It was inevitable

If you’ve read me before you probably knew it was coming. I was getting back into music heavily. As you might remember Pantera saved my life. About a year ago I made the trip I am about to undertake for a second time. The long journey to Charleston, South Carolina for the holidays. Last time I drove back I had a marathon of Pantera and the blistering metal kept me going for the twelve hour car drive. It was inevitable that as I got back into more music this year that I would seek out more metal.

This year I started making a habit of learning more about the bands I was listening to. While not the most reputable site on the Internet, I still find Wikipedia to at least be a good quick and dirty place to get some information on a band. So I was reading and I was expanding on my music and then I started getting curious about genres and started reading those articles and you can see where things get to that slippery slope that people seem to talk about. Is that in reference to a landslide? That is what I think of when I hear that phrase and what it seems to symbolize to most people.

I wanted to hear something that sounded like what I used to love and what I now miss with the bands that just don’t produce anymore. Maybe that isn’t an accurate statement. I really love System Of A Down and the dynamic of their two very distinct singers. Serj has an almost operatic voice and Darren has a very nasally voice. I just love that contrast, it’s why I love Mesmerize and Hypnotize so much. They both have great vocals on that album and it is such a great ride from start to finish. If you call yourself a System fan but shun that record then fuck you. They are in top form as songwriters on that album and fuck you again.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Metal. I think I did a Google search for metal bands with two singers and it led me to some forum where I saw a few band names. I found The Arusha Accords. Great fucking music. I realized that it wasn’t really about singers all the time for me anymore. I hardly ever pay attention to lyrics as much as I used to when I was a teenager. The music really is what got me pumped. As I’ve said it before, I’m a guitar guy. Around the same time as all this reading about music and searching my sister posts a video for BABYMETAL on Facebook and I was curious, so I watched. Holy shit I was blown away! I got that album and had to stop myself from overplaying it. Besides what they do there I realized I needed some heavy metal. More reading, deeper searches. Long story short (too late) I have been getting into the really heavy world of technical, mathcore, progressive, djent, and whatever other labels fans or bands themselves give to the genres that they want, or ramble bumble fuck, I can’t express myself I am too fucking excited about music.

I know I have only scratched the surface. Here is what I’ve gotten myself into:
The Dillinger Escape Plan
Obscura
Gridlink
Necrophagist
Nevermore
Between The Buried And Me
Arch Enemy
Brain Drill
Gojira
Knights Of The Abyss

Spotify is a wonderful thing.

As well as some classics I hadn’t checked out until recently:
Slayer
Dio
Lamb Of God

On my list to check out soon:
Cannibal Corpse
Iron Maiden

I know, I know, like I said before I am only scratching the surface and my metal education is lacking but I will get there…

It’s been a while

What with school, family and work I haven’t had any time for this blog. I sure have thought about it a lot since I’ve been gone. I’ve also been watching ‘How I Met Your Mother’ on Amazon.com since the first episode. But I have been keeping on with my journey through music and I’ve also been expanding my collection as well. I’ve finally gotten all the Creedence albums and started listening to them from the first. The fortieth anniversary remastered versions of the Creedence albums sound absolutely amazing.

During the last few months I posted my sixth album and I’ve started working on ‘Consumed’. That album is really unfinished and I’d like to get back to it. There is even two chapters that I never released that I need to get back to. It’s the album I’ve always wanted to do some justice to. It was originally just one piece of music that I would play on guitar that I could never really figure out how to record. The demo I made of the composition, back in 2001, was 17 minutes long. It was the longest (at the time) piece of music I had ever composed. I need a real record producer for this one, but I’ll do the best I can.

7 months later…..

Okay so I just found the above draft of what I wrote back in late May. I apologize for not keeping up with this project but I do have plenty of excuses. School has been an ass kicker, then came summer and pool time and I got back into World Of Warcraft. I stopped playing guitar for a while but then I got an email from my old music partner Charles and I have been practicing guitar a lot now.

I’ve quit WoW and the year is winding down and I am almost done with school for the year as well. Music. Well that is a story as well. I guess it was inevitable that I would find my way back into heavy metal but now I am in deep. I’ve been reading a lot about all the different sub-genres of metal and have gotten into progressive and technical metal. I really love this stuff. I spend a lot of time on my computer organizing my mp3s so that my iPod is very organized. Getting a little manic about it all. I hope to share where my journey has taken me this year soon.

This is my year

I’m a horse and I turn 36 this year. It’s my year. And I am loving life right now. I love music so much right now, music past and music present. I just bought the “Night Visions” album from Imagine Dragons. It’s been very rare that I’ve liked so many tracks from an album that I’ve heard off the radio, but it has been happening a lot recently. There is so much good new music lately, it’s astonishing. I really like ” The Mother We Share” from Crvrches, but I want to hear another few songs before I buy their album. Vampire Weekend, Alex Clare, and so many others I can’t think of at the moment. And I’d like to hear more from Passion Pit but I haven’t gotten any recommendations from friends if they are any good besides the one song I’ve heard on the radio. Please comment.

Any way, to continue from where I left off with my last post… Another band I have been listening to a lot recently is Incubus. Their lyrics also tend to be about “her” but I find the music has such a high quality and I like the singer’s voice that it doesn’t bother me that the lyrics tend to be sometimes generic. They have a really prolific guitar that uses some very interesting modes in his playing.

I’ve been avoiding it for a while now, I said I would post some of my earlier writing and some poems from Ross, but not yet. Soon. I promise. I wanted to talk a little more on my musical explorations and falling I love again with music.

I think growing up with a band and really loving them makes you have really high expectations. I said before about how Alice In Chains was my favorite band as a teen and I was kind of disappointed when they reformed after Layne died and put out “Black Gives Way to Blue.” I can now appreciate the album better after putting away my judgement, preconceptions, and past love of them but I think I can also pinpoint why I dismissed that album. I wish they had really replaced Layne, but they didn’t. They took on William but Jerry took over as main singer and William just seemed to come on as a backup to Jerry. They really should have sought out a new unique voice that could fill Layne’s shoes. Layne was one of the most unique and talented voices in grunge rock. They should have at least tried to find someone as gifted as he was. It’s been 12 years, but still… Rest in peace Layne Staley.

Songs don’t always have to be about “Her”

Have you ever been listening to an album and realize all the songs are about “Her” or “You”? “She” this and “You” that. That was the major issue I had recently while listening to Everclear’s “Sparkle and Fade” album. I used to really love that album and was really into Everclear for a long time. For some reason or other I, like everyone else I guess, stopped listening to Everclear. Probably just the usual over saturation of music we had in the 90’s going into the 00’s. As usual lately I’ve been going back, and suspending judgement as much as I could, to listen to the stuff I haven’t heard in a while. After the halfway mark of Sparkle I realized why I was liking it. All the songs are about “her”. Not every song needs to be about her, guys. But that isn’t any reason why I shouldn’t continue to listen through their albums. I know Art Alexakis got better with lyrics as he went on. I just won’t listen to Sparkle any more. Done.

I listened to an album I never new existed the other day while on my daily walk. Green Day’s “Shenanigans”. They’ve always been a relatively popular band so I’m not sure why I missed that one. And I can’t remember hearing at least one song off that album on the radio. Must have been one of their unpopular periods. I can see why, it certainly isn’t their best effort. It has its moments. Again, not an album I’d listen to again. I’m on a streak.

Or at least I thought I was. In the G category after Green Day I decided it was about time I revisited Chinese Democracy. It was an album I had felt like I was waiting for my whole life. And if you were a die hard Guns N’ Roses fan like I was you were probably put off. Just like me, you had probably forgot to suspend judgement and try to put it up against the other Guns albums. I did, when I first heard it.  I really didn’t think about it, the band, what I liked about Guns, and what set this album apart. Even though it was a really long time coming, and I should have expected it. Well, I did it, I put aside my past love of the Guns and approached Chinese Democracy as if it was the first thing I had ever experienced from Axl. And I loved it, as you probably would have guessed if you have read any of my previous blog posts. This was probably my fourth time listening to it the full way through and I really enjoyed it. I had broken the streak… temporarily.

My next blog entry will address my expectations of the bands I grew up with and love and how they moved into their transition periods and my reactions to them. It will also address this current topic of “It doesn’t always have to be about her.” Too many thoughts at once….

I’ve lost it.

I started my Master’s degree online via Keller Graduate School of management. I’ve got three books going. My kids have been sick. Long story short I’ve got no time for recreational writing. I totally lost track of my musical exploration. I’ve tried to get back on track but have only listened to some repeats. I listened to Blue’s Traveler’s “Four” again. Still a great fucking album. I really need to get some more music but I haven’t bought anything recently.

The last album I listened to in full was today with The Foo Fighters’ album “In Your Honor.” The first half of the album (the rock part) was good but the second part (the all acoustic) just plain sucks. I’m not sure where they were coming from when they wrote it, but no. I like an occasional acoustic jam on an album but all the songs on that album just did not do it for me.

I also found another band that I will probably never listen to in full again. Cake. I like their songs occasionally but they are really quite intolerable to listen to for a full album. I finally just gave a really good full listen to Megadeth’s first album and I’m really glad they moved in the direction they did. It must have been really hard to get out of the shadow of Metallica but I think eventually Dave Mustaine has won that war by attrition. The last five Megadeth albums (I think it has been five since “Risk”) have been awesome. In that same amount of time Metallica have just been awful, just plain awful. But I really need to get “Death Magnetic” and try to give it a fair shake. I got a bootleg copy of the album, because you know fuck them, but the copies are horrible and I need to hear the final masters of the songs.

I recently tried to start a fight with my internet service provider because I found out that the wireless router they gave me was broadcasting a separate free SSID to other customers that use their service. I thought it was bullshit, I tried to get them to disable the free shit but they said they couldn’t do it. Just know that if you have Optimum internet and they gave you a router that you are providing free wireless internet access to other Optimum customers on your home network. I couldn’t take that shot without my consent. Nope.

Later.

Metal saved me

I’m back from vacation and the first thing I am thinking about is how metal saved me. It was a grueling 12 and 1/2 hour drive from South Carolina back to New York and I got through it thanks to, mostly, Pantera. I was listening to an audiobook during the first part of the drive but started to get sleepy and needed the proverbial splash of cold water on my brain to get me through the rest of the ride. I put on “Cowboys From Hell.” I never really listened to that album until recently during my recent exploring of the iPod and my reawakening to old music that I have talked about.

Another part of the problem I had while in my musical rut was a tendency to dismiss albums that came previous to the album that got me to love a band. I came into my Pantera phase with “Vulgar Display of Power,” which if you know it is a fantastic album of mind blowing metal proportions. After listening and having my brain wired for Vulgar, I just couldn’t get into Cowboys. And I stayed that way for a long time. I got into the follow up album to Vulgar, “Far Beyond Driven,” but nothing after that. After I got into drugs I tended not to listen to metal music as it usually “harshed my mellow.” I went towards stuff like Pink Floyd and The Beatles, like most people do when they take up smoking weed. Being sober for quite a few years now and loving guitar more than ever, I’m back into metal in a huge way right now. I have to say, I’m sorry I never gave Cowboys From Hell the fair shake it deserved. Because it really is an awesome album. Dimebag Darrell’s guitar work on the album is superb.

Another band that comes to mind as having received a similar treatment, as Pantera, is Megadeth. I got into them with the album “Countdown to Extinction,” and really became fans with “Youthanasia.” I never really got into anything before those albums until a few years ago when my love of “Rust in Peace” blossomed. This vacation I really got to give a good listen to their earlier albums and really enjoyed them on the road home.

Merry Christmas

That is all. Have a good one.