Tag: review

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Killing Is My Business . . . And Business Is Good! – Megadeth

This is a Megadeth album which I came to late. My start with Megadeth was watching a BBC2 documentary called “Heavy Metal”. In the film there was a clip of Megadeth playing Peace Sells at an outdoor venue in Northern Ireland. Quite a while after watching the show I kept playing the riffs over and over in my head and I thought I ought to get the album. I wasn’t quite a full on thrash metal fan and I remember being disappointing at the opening song Wake Up Dead. “just another thrash band” I thought. The song “Wake Up Dead” is listed on this site as one of my favourites, THREE classic riffs in one song.

When I got hold of this album a good few years later I was surprised and shocked. It has a very much less-polished feel that the other albums, I guess as you would expect for a band’s first album. It’s faster and more melodic than Metallica, which, given the history, you would expect. MegaDave play hard and fast melodies and it’s their signature sound.

Last Rites / Loved to Deth – piano opening getting you to think you’ve got the wrong album and a little wiggly guitar work and BLAM – Megadeth riff hits you. A fast, heavy, bruising song.

Killing Is My Business – that opening riff is ace. The bounce and feel of it is enough to get anyone jumping around. The songs ends in a speed fueled repeating chorus, lovely.

The Skull Beneath The Skin – the title sounds gross but is really probably just a line from a biology text book. Cantering opening and then a Dave scream with a climbing riff followed by ring chord strokes and then – Kaboom! A galloping ride of guitars and drums over the fields. It’s always amazed me how some riffs are so amazing and then bands only use them for tiny sections of their songs.

Rattlehead – Here I Come. A bass line I can’t comprehend, smash cymbals pushing you to jump either way and this is a dose of metal you need.

Chosen Ones – Oddly this is not a song that sticks in my head. It’s not that it’s bad, it just doesn’t quite do it for me.

Looking Down The Cross – very wiggly at the start. A good song with a blisteringly paced kick drum through. Excellent.

Mechanix – If you want a proper version of Four Horsemen by Metallica then this is where to come. I remember seeing Megadeth play this live at Cambridge and it blew me away. Amazeballs.

These Boots – you can guarantee that there’s always one shit song on a Megadeth album and this is the one on this album. They are like The Crue, chuck in one song that’ll annoy everyone. I do not like this one.

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Killers – Iron Maiden

There’s something about the raw power and sound in this album that has stayed in my core. Along with Iron Maiden, Killers has that kick in the teeth, it pushes you around and beats you up with its riffs and lyrics. I bloody love this album. My feelings for the first two albums often goes against the grain of general fandom. In my view Iron Maiden were good until the end of Seventh Son. After that they went shit. Or maybe I just grew out of them?

The Ides Of March – Borrowed from Samson and written by Bruce before he was part of Maiden. This opener gets you ready for the onslaught.

Wrathchild – rolling bass line with bouncy riffs. A great song.

Murders In The Rue Morgue – such a melody that I get shivers down the spine.

Another Life – You can imagine jumping around to this song in an East End pub in the early 80s. The riff change halfway through is ace.

Genghis Khan – This song pops with the main riff. What out for the speed change that doesn’t accelerate it just knocks you flat.

Innocent Exile – Another bouncy tune that keeps me jumping around the room.

Killers – Entirely about stalking someone and killing them. What do you expect from a band named after a medieval torture device?

Prodigal Son – Devil’s got hold of my soul. But with a ballad feel. Although it’s not a ballad.

Purgatory – high speed danger in this song. It races along daring you to join in.

Drifters – The symbol crashes on the off beat excite me in this song. Just one of those things. This song canters along with room for a breather at the end of each verse.

This whole album encapsulates a teenage yearning for power and respect. You can feel the angst in the writing and the production. It still excites me after over thirty years of listening. I bloody love it.

“Sanctuary” isn’t on this album and so probably wont’ get mentioned until “Live After Death”. That’s an “L” album and so won’t be too far away. As a clue I’ll let you know that “Live” is simply the best Maiden album.

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Kill ‘Em All – Metallica

I’ll keep posting album reviews here while I suffer from such anxiety and anger about the current state of politics in this country and the world. The entire Brexit bullshit needs to be mostly ignored else I’ll get too worked up and angry about it all. An electorate who were lied to with illegal spending and Russian money voted to leave an organisation it knew mostly nothing about because of a systematic campaign over thirty years by right wing newspapers to remove cooperation and friendliness between countries. If you aren’t sure about that last bit then have a look at this website. It’s a list of all the lying claims by the UK press.

Now it’s time to be happy about reviewing this album. This album starts a small series of “Kill” albums that are bloody amazing and ground-breaking. Kill ‘Em All is the fist studio album by a tiny band called Metallica and while they are shit now this collection of songs is bloody amazing. The sheer raw power and energy in the songs is more than in anything else they have produced. It is probably something to do with Dave Mustaine having helped write a lot of it. Once you get to the Black Album it’s all gone wrong. I’ll review that one in about a year I guess.

I was asked recently what is the last decent Metallica song. I took some time and went with “Harvester Of Sorrow”. The question asker plumped for “Shortest Straw”. Fair play. Blackened is also a choice for that but the rest of “Justice” aren’t that good.

Back to “Metal Up Your Ass”. This album, in my view, helped create thrash metal as a genre and introduced chugging as a “note” to be used below lyrics rather than the swinging bouncy guitars used by Iron Maiden.

Hit The Lights – starts with a crash ending of a song and I’ve always loved that. It’s hard and busy.

The Four Horsemen – smashes you in the face with it’s blistering pace and makes you want to rush into the pit.

Jump In The Fire – would be great to sing out loud. It’s got a good moshing pace and plenty of Hetfield trademark “yah!”.

Pulling Teeth – blows my mind. The noise and cacophony that Burton pulls from the basss guitar makes me smile and wonder at the talent. When Ulrich enters the drums create a rhythm perfectly matched that gives a good swing to this bass solo.

Whiplash – I can remember playing this at top volume in school. We were in the sixth form and there was a music box in the common room, which was opposite the staff room. We would open the windows, put Whiplash on full volume and leave the common room leaving the music playing as loud and obnoxiously as possible to the staff trying to enjoy their break time away from those pesky kids. Fast, heavy and a standard song in thrash. Seeing Newstead play this at Download in 2013 was brilliant.

No Remorse – chugs away with a canter. Brilliant. No regrets.

Seek and Destroy – I don’t think you can get better on this album than this song. It’s my favourite and I love it. I once saw Metallica at Milton Keynes bowl and I think the concert was broadcast live on Radio 1. I got a friend to record it from the radio for me and the version they played there crunched away in my head for years. Brilliant.

Metal Militia -we all are aren’t we? Why don’t normal people “get” this music? Why is it that when you play metal to someone who doesn’t understand you can hear their brains pop? You can see the disconnect in their minds as they struggle with the noise. I’ve tried to persuade people to metal over the years and now I don’t bother. I’ve tried playing aggrotech to people but they don’t get that either. It’s all fine by me. Being at a music festival with eighty thousand people all enjoying the same music gives a kinship.

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Lord Of The Lost – The Garage

Smith and I traveled to the lofty intellectual heights of Islington last night to visit the Garage venue just outside Highbury station. On the bill were Lord Of The Lost, a German rock band, the venue was meant to be Electrowerkz but I think they sold more tickets than expected and they moved the gig to the Garage.

This was my third time at the Garage and again I was impressed. It’s smaller than I remembered, a nice, cosy (but not squashed) venue. I will say now that the sound in the place was pretty impressive and worked well. Probably better than Electrowerkz but I think this is largely to there being a little more space. Possible improvements would be a light beam a little further out from the stage to light up the bands a little more from the front rather than from a 3/4 position.

The second band were just finishing as we entered and they weren’t that impressive.

One of my favourites on as last support act were Unzucht. I’d seen them before at two M’era Luna festivals and I was looking forward to this.

Unzucht
Unzucht

They were good fun and played a decent set. They play a good hard riffage and then go and mess it up with an almost-ballad in the middle but I enjoy their style and it was good fun.

The headliners came on and I wasn’t really aware of the time but when I did look at my watch it was only 21:30 so for some reason there was an early curfew. It looked like they were setting up an urban-disco type thing.

Lord Of The Lost were good. It was a solid fun set and they seemed genuinely happy to be playing to a large-ish crowd.

Lord Of The Lost
Lord Of The Lost

I don’t really remember what songs they played but they started with “On This Rock” and ended with “La Bomba” which is always good for fun. Somewhere in the middle they played “Drag Me To Hell”.

It was a good evening and one that I ended too early really because I needed to be up early the next day [boo!]. Normally there would be more written here but I’m tired.

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Kerbdog – Kerbdog

I do think that this album was another of my early buys on CD in the days when CDs were the latest technology. I don’t recall where I bought the album but it released in 1994 so that puts me at college. I don’t know a great deal about this band, I do know that when I got another of their albums I was slightly disappointed with it.

This album has some excellent riffs and can only be described as having “wavy” guitars. I used to have quite a bit of resistance to that term but over time I have decided it does represent a style of riffage.

I’m not sure I know any of the songs by title but I do know that I quite often hum the main riff from End Of The Green. It starts with a rolling riff that then hits hard when the rest of the band enter. The vocals are quite haunting also.

Dry Riser hits home as well. A good riff with a sudden pace change towards the end.

Dead Anyway crunches the squawker with its guitar work.

After that the songs fade from my riff-memory-centre. I’d definitely recommend giving the first few songs a blast over Spotify – whoops – just checked and this album isn’t on Spotify.

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Keeper Of The Seven Keys: Part 2 – Helloween

This album carries on the story from where Helloween left off. I don’t know what the story is though. Lyrics kinda aren’t my thing. I don’t think this is as good as Part One but it does contain more humour within the writing. I wrote about the speed-opera metal in the last communication. This album is just as epic.

Rise and Fall, Dr Stein, and I Want Out are my highlights from this album.

KotSK2.jpg
By Source, Fair use, Link

The titular track is over thirteen minutes long. I reckon if I had to go through that live I would fall asleep!

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Keeper Of The Seven Keys: Part One – Helloween

Gosh. I can’t remember when I got this album but it was probably in the late 80s. This was my introduction to German speed metal with an epic operatic over-arching theme. It was utterly different to anything else I had listened to. It has such a story telling power with blistering guitars and drums all the way through along with excellently written and arranged songs giving such a sense of completeness once the album is finished. I really like it.

Highlights from this album include “I’m Alive”, “A Little Time”, “Haloween” and the most excellent “Future World”.

I want to say that this album is listenable by all. But I expect I’m wrong on that. When I haven’t listened to metal for a while I get all misty-eyed and think that almost all songs are excellent and everyone would appreciate it. That feeling when you play some metal to your family after they’ve been listening to Heart FM and you promise they’ll love it but as soon as the first bar ends you know you’ve made a massive mistake. They don’t get it. They look at you ever more weirdly. Oops.

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Keep The Faith – Bon Jovi

I really liked “Slippery When Wet” it started my descent into metal. “New Jersey” rocked as far as I was concerned. It has a good collection of excellent songs.

Keep The Faith stutters it’s way through the genre and marked a turn in sound for the Jovi in my opinion. I don’t know what the sales figures are, I’ll come back in a moment, but this album pretty much left me cold. I didn’t like the indie-U2 feel of the song “Keep The Faith”. There’s a tranche of ballads which I guess the Jovi do very well. But it all just leaves me meh.

It sold 12 million compared to 18 million for New Jersey.

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Katmandu – Katmandu

If you Google Katmandu band you get a list of results that aren’t anything to do with this band. Many years ago in the days of music cassettes and long playing records I use to browse the music sections in the Our Price shop close to Harlow bus station. I was earning money in a job on my “year off” before university. I don’t really count that year as a “year off” but technically it was. I’m not sure if I’ve explained that within these communications.

I’d always be looking for new bands and music to listen to. I’d always browse the section called Rock/Metal but even then you can’t really be sure what type of music you are going to get. So I would often base my purchases on the cover or what I had heard about that band. Another album bought in these circumstances would be Blue Murder by Blue Murder.

With my pennies in hand I went and bought following music cassette to then listen on my “walkman”.

Katmandu – Katmandu [1991]

What do I think about this album? I love it. It’s a rare case of an album I bought without previous knowledge but I found myself really enjoying to vocals and guitar work. Is this “metal”? Nope. Not by a long way. I reckon it’s an album that closes off the excesses of 80s hair rock.

I do like bands with a decent plodding bass sound and this band manage that very well. There’s a certain slimy/creepy quality to the sound. The guitars are heavy and well produced. The songs are perfectly structured.

I remember liking God Part II and then I found out it was a cover version of a U2 song and I felt bad as I’d always slammed U2. I still don’t like U2 but am willing to appreciate their contribution to music, just.

The Way You Make Me Feel – the album opener and it’s a lovely heavy track with excellent mix of steady riffs and start-stop types of stuff. You’ll know what I mean if you listen to it.

Love Hurts – Oh yeah, it does. Also, in the chorus it has a lovely wacka-wacka guitar sound which is perfect.

Sometime Again – could make me cry on a bad day.

When The Rain Comes – A slower paced but still heavy track with vocals matching the guitars and a great middle section with rolling drums and steady-beat-bass.

Heart & Soul – A summer song for playing American Football on the beach, drinking beer and watching the sun set.

Ready For The Common Man – opens with a WTF moment with vocals suggesting the “sometimes I feel like a motherless child” and I have no idea what this is about. Then it smashes into awesome 80s riffing and halfway there are gang vocals. It’s a great mix of everything. This YouTube version misses the vocals at the beginning and so I think some of the effect is lost. Ah. I’ve just googled “motherless child” and now I’m not sure about this song. Is it cultural appropriation or a valid part of this album. Quick, turn that part of my brain off.

Only The Good Die Young – this we know. I’m pretty sure there’s a Maiden song called this too. This is well worth it. A lovely chorus and it would have been great to sing along to this live.

Let The Heartache Begin – opens quietly and then blasts you with a wall of classic ballad heavy rockin’.

Medicine Man – Whatever happened to the Medicine Man?

Pull Together – opening with a bass line and then heading to a wavy-riff of lovely erk sounding guitars.

Warzone – fast and war like. The vocals are perfectly matched to the subject matter here. Would be a good song to be in the pit while playing live. It’s the perfect pace and then the crowd would stop and scream out the chorus together. It’d be great. I do love a decent bass-drum bit with the guitars shutting up.

Look. This album was a lucky find. The songs still play through my head nearly thirty years after buying it. That’s the sign of a good mix of writing and production.

The band split up after this, their only, album.

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Black Celebration 2018

I spent a lovely amount of time with Smith at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town on Sunday. The event was the Black Celebration music festival of all types of dark music. Of most interest was the band Suicide Commando. The event was promoted by the Flag Promotions company who run so very many of the gigs and concerts I go to. Obviously my music tastes are aligned with some of theirs.

Black Celebration 2018
Black Celebration 2018

Here are my reviews of each band in order of viewing. As is my usual behaviour I write notes on my phone during or after each act to help me remember what I’ve seen. That is why the comments may be pithy or short.

Machine Rox – were first up. We arrived towards the end of their set as Smith and I were having make-up issues. But they were ok. My notes indicate the following: female singer, there was a guitarist but I couldn’t hear him.

Machine Rox Machine Rox

I liked the dancers who came on for the last song wearing outfits similar to the lead singer. It was a nice touch.

Next up were DKAG who are quickly becoming my most-seen band. They are supporting many bands over the next year. While the music is good there are no vocals and so unless I am wasted on alcohol I’m not that interested. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before but I like crowd interaction from the band, I want to know that they are enjoying it. Two guys with their keyboards doesn’t quite hit the mark.

There was now a short dinner break for me. The local cafe was very welcoming and the food was nice. Recommended. It was Mem’s Cafe on Kentish Town Road.

The return to the Forum meant the last few songs from Sulpher. This band sounded good and heavy with a decent industrial feel.

Sulpher Sulpher

My notes are: guitars and heavy stuff. A little bit of samples mixed in. We saw about 4 songs and it was alright.

Let me explain the “alright” comment. This means I enjoyed it more than a lot of others. While “alright” might not seem a glowing review it means that the music was OK, suitable etc. [I’m trying to renormalise the term AVERAGE and OK to mean what they really mean].

Empathy Test came up next. I have seen this band before although I couldn’t remember exactly where or when. Smith and I had a discussion about who the lead singer was. Once they were on stage I figured out that they had played Infest last year and I saw them there. Here’s what I noted at the time: only 20 seconds in and I was done. Remember them from Infest. Boring vocals and drone-like. Slow. Female drummer who looks like she’s concentrating too much. Well constructed songs but boring.

Suicide Commando rocked the venue. I don’t mind the graphic visuals of people with holes in their bodies where holes shouldn’t be. This band was really good. A real uplift from the previous band.

Suicide Commando Suicide Commando

I still maintain that a live drummer rather than a machine or dead person makes such a difference to a gig. I really enjoyed Mr Commando!

My notes say only the following:

heavy, fast and dirty. Great.

More Suicide Commando More Suicide Commando

And then we get to Mesh. This might be the third time I’ve seen Mesh and they seem almost bored to be on stage. There’s not a lot of interaction. My only notes were:

Kinda boring

The Young Gods came on stage next. I knew nothing about them but I could see three white lights thinly blazing over the positions of the band on stage and I liked that set up. It worked really well. The first song was very Pink Floyd with a slow build up to not-a-lot and then a slow wind down. It felt like the crowd didn’t really know when the song finished. But, this band were older and clearly excellent musicians with that easy style of people who have worked together for so long.

The Young Gods The Young Gods

My scrawled notes say:

Interesting but not really my stuff. turning into experimental upbeat music. Still quite psychedelic. Good beat to some songs. Enjoyable.

Finally we had DAF. A band I had seen at M’era Luna and a band that didn’t impress hugely. I get it that without DAF and other older bands that my style of preferred music wouldn’t exist but I’m also allowed to find their stuff a little boring. I think I would be the same with Nitzer Ebb and other bands from the 80s and 90s. Smith and I stayed for a while but in reality we both had work the next day and long-ish journeys home. Maybe I’ll see a complete Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft set one day.

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First Man

Days ago I went to the cinema at Rochester to see the film First Man. It has taken me this long to process what I thought about it along with being away and in an area of limited data coverage. Before I explain what I thought about the film there are some formalities to cover.

I have no idea on the state of the tide that evening. I didn’t particularly look at that tidal area of river as it was dark and raining. I could look it up but that’s not the point. I also rated this film on IMDB and you should see this particular communication which explains the rating system, I’ll give you a hint though, I broke the system for this film.

I’ve a slight feeling that this is going to be a little controversial. But then again, it’s my view and I’m not a professional critic so I don’t make or break movies.

I’m not sure I liked this film.

I wanted to like this film. I wanted to love this film and be amazed at it and learn a bit about Neil Armstrong. I’m not sure I did and that pains me. I think it took me two days before I rated this film on IMDB as I wasn’t sure what score to give the film.

So, we know I am a nerd and I know a fair bit about the moon landings and space travel. I didn’t mind that I didn’t learn anything new about those aspects of the film. I also knew that Mr Armstrong was quite private and quiet but also a professional and extremely clever man. I’m not sure this film captured that.

Here’s what I did like. The emotional aspect of Armstrong attempting to deal with the death of his daughter. This film heavily places that at the centre of the story telling and I am fine with that but it’s almost fiction as the man himself never really opened up about it. I loved the final touch of his offering to the moon and would love that to be true.

What I didn’t like was all the shaking camera work. This film was like watching a tense emotional marriage drama with episodes of shaking camera and stress. I guess that’s what the astronauts’ lives are like but I just don’t like blurry screens.

I didn’t like the way the film side-stepped the knowledge and understanding and skill that is needed to be an astronaut. I like the technical stuff. I know that’s just me and so I get why this film has rave reviews.

So, in the end this film has a 5/10 from me. I didn’t hate it. I just didn’t like it enough.

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Johnny English Strikes Again

Well, today I took a trip to the Cineworld cinema in Harlow. Not the one in the Harvey Centre but the one on the edge of town. I can’t remember the last time I went to Harlow town centre but I’m pretty sure I thought it was shit. Harlow, you see, is a new town. It’s a classic example of 1960s urban planning with a concrete town centre to boot. It may have improved I guess but don’t know because I didn’t go there.

The cinema I patronised was close to the river Stort but that isn’t tidal. In fact there are no tidal reaches close by so I can’t give you a decent idea of where the tide was at. I can tell you it is pretty much a full moon out this evening. Also, a new one for me in the 40 odd years that I’ve lived and moved around this part of Essex I actually saw deer in the first field coming out of the village.

I should probably get on with the film and the review type stuff. I rated this film on IMDB and there’s a communication here detailing the scoring process. You can even search in the little box on the right to see more reviews and things or use the drop down menu directly below my header picture. I tweeted my IMDB score:

So, as you can see, 4/10 is a pretty pants score. There’s been a few others recently that scored that and there’s even a film where I went completely away from this trusted format. Why did this film get a 4? Mostly because it was shit.

I did like the idea that they were trying to train Johnny English into understanding that the world has moved on and that women can have jobs of power although they could have gone into this much more. The idea that women should be treated the same as men, although it probably doesn’t work so well in this movie franchise compared with Bond because Johnny English is generally a fool whereas Bond is full of misogynistic toxic behaviour that deserves to be corrected and then consigned to the rubbish heap of shit things.

No, this film was pretty shit. Other people in the cinema laughed plenty and I chuckled a couple of times but it wasn’t far enough on the dinosaur discovering a new world idea and it wasn’t enough Mr Bean.

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K – Kula Shaker

I bought this album because didn’t they feel like they could be a rock band? I’m sure there was one good song.

I’ll pop it on the music maker thingies in the house.

<waits>

First song: “Hey Dude”, seems ok, I guess. Nope. Change that. Got to the chorus.

<skip>

Nope.

<skip>

<repeats>

Oh, here’s a song called Hush. Pretty good song. But it’s NOT theirs. It was by Deep Purple. That’s why it’s a good song. It also isn’t on this album. I added after downloading it.

 

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Just Say Ozzy – Ozzy Osbourne

The thing about this album is that the bass sounds so bloody lovely. It’s a live record and when you look at who’s involved you see that Geezer Butler is playing bass guitar and you go “ah, now that makes sense”.

The tracks on this are all proper Ozzy. Really good songs with blistering guitar work.

Miracle Man, Bloodbath in Paradise, Shot In The Dark, Tattooed Dancer, Sweet Leaf and War Pigs.

The last two are Sabbath classics. This is a great album [EP], well worth a listen, but not necessarily worth the £15 on Amazon I just saw! I’d recommend Tribute instead.

Zakk Wylde on guitar, Geezer on bass and Randy Castillo on drums? What more do you want?

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Judgement Night – Various Artists

This perfectly amazing album is what happens when a music label crosses over its artists. I will write about this album as if the second song had never appeared on it as I think it’s a travesty. Here’s what you need to know:

“Just Another Victim” by Helmet and House Of Pain: an excellent opener giving you a taste of what’s coming. The grinding opening riff rips your brain out. The pace change half way through bounces your grey cells once more. Brilliant.

“Me, myself & my microphone” by Run DMC and Living Colour: ringing chords leading to heavy riffs and a hiphop beat. Heavy crashing sounds.

“Judgement Night” by Biohazard and Onyx: Yeah, motherfucker. A bouncy beat with squealy guitar sounds throughout. A bonkers song.

“Disorder” by Slayer and Ice-T: Sorry Ice-T but Tom Araya smashes your scream, he takes it, rolls it up into a small box and disintegrates it to a million pieces. We don’t need your war. A rolling beat with classic Slayer riff and solo until halfway. Hold on to your hats because this song knocks you off your feet. It hits you the way the LA riots hit LA.

“Another Body Murdered” by Faith No More and Boo Ya T.R.I.B.E. A classic Faith No More start to this song with pumping rap lyrics and the gentle piano in the background. The screams part way through are horror-movie standard.

“I Love You Mary Jane” by Cypress Hill and Sonic Youth: this is one chilled out song. A slow rolling beat with the distinct vocal style of Cypress Hill. This works. It’s relaxed. It’s strange and smooth.

“Freak Momma” by Mudhone and Sir Mix-A-Lot: I know little of Mudhone but what I do know is this song is in their distinctive style. The beat catches up with itself at times and tries to overtake in your head. Almost a summer garden song.

“Missing Link” by  Dinosaur Jr. and Del the Funky Homosapien: a groovy bass line with rapping and a singing lead guitar. Another chilled out song. Something to relax to.

“Come and Die” by Therapy? and Fatal: imagine you’ve got zombies chasing you around the neighbourhood. You are jogging away, hoping you don’t turn a corner and get caught by a separate hoard. That’s the pace and feel of this song. It’s also the music that should be playing in the movie where you are running from zombies. It’s a meta song.

“Real Thing” by Pearl Jam and Cypress Hill: want to bounce your head, nodding with the beat while walking or chilling in your sofa in the garden. Well, get the wickerwear out, put the cushions on and lay back and relax. Hold a finger in the air and direct the music from your slouch. Feel the beat take you.

The song I’ve not mentioned is “Fallin'” because it’s shit.

This entire album was the soundtrack to a chunk of my time at university. It was amazing and still is. It has that raw powerful sound of anger and sadness. I feel like we haven’t moved on. Society is still suffering and these songs and artists could easily make all this again.

At its time this was an amazing album, a collaboration of artists of metal and rap who weren’t Aerosmith. This crossover is brilliant. I love it. I really love it.

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Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop – Jeff Beck

This album was originally bought on music cassette and has since bee played a reasonable number of times. My ignorance comes to the fore here as I don’t really know who Jeff Beck is. I think he wrote “Hi Ho Silver Lining” but I could be mistaken. I don’t want to Wikipedia him because that’s cheating. My suspicion is that he used to be a member of an awesome 60/70s rock band and then was part of a few super-groups.

This album was late 80s or early 90s and it’s good fun. It’s not rock by a long way but it has gentle rhythms and sampling along with some spoken word lyrics. I quite like it as something different for the summer evenings. Perfectly pleasant for company I guess.

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Jar Of Flies / SAP – Alice In Chains

It has been a while since I wrote some stuff about albums I own and what I think about them. Hopefully I’ll have a push to produce more communications over the next while. It’d be nice to get a load of stuff written that isn’t just pretty pictures I’ve taken. This site was turning into a little bit of a photo-blog and while those communications are important I should be getting back to the purposes of originality.

Jar Of Flies.

Don’t listen to this if you are slightly depressed and alone. It’s a struggle to listen to this EP when perfectly happy and emotionally stable and alone so any worse off and you need to hide your shoe laces away.

This EP perfectly uses the haunting vocal style of the lead singer [dead – drugs] and the gentle guitar sounds of Seattle. Every song on this album makes me feel. This was one of the first ten or so CDs I bought, I think I owned it before I owned a CD player. This EP is perfect and tearsome.

You must listen to it at some point. Preferably when you are well. And in a brightly lit room. Laying on the floor, in the dark, with sunglasses on and beer in your system is not the ideal listening position.

Well, it is really but we shouldn’t go there. This album takes me back to 1994 with the opening three seconds.

Get your fucking hair cut.

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Mile 22

Yesterday I went to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester to see the film Mile 22. I didn’t know what to expect but as it was rated 18 I thought it might be better than some of the other films currently showing. As I journeyed the sun was shining and it was a lovely day, only ruined by my need to tidy the garden and pull some weeds. The tidal state of the river Medway was quite high.

River Valley
River Valley

You can’t see a great deal of the river in this photograph but it is there and was lovely and still giving nice reflections of the valley sides opposite.

As is usual I rated this film on IMDB when I left the cinema. I also then share stuff via Twitter because once it’s embedded in this page the tweet looks pretty good! You should see something written about my rating system and it just so happens I have an explanation in this communication.

Why the low score? Well, this film was shit. That’s why. I didn’t actually walk out although I did think about it. I was less than enthused about ten minutes in. After that the film just kept getting worse.

I don’t like shaky hand-held camera work. It’s lazy because it means there’s more space in the choreography of fighting than there should be. Hand held cameras give the idea that you are part of the fight and therefore you can’t see all the fight. You have no fucking clue what is going on. I gave up trying to track what was happening at times and let the scene play out and I would back-fill the fight from who was left standing at the end.

Some of the vocals were so poorly recorded or had such terrible accents that I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Had I been watching at home I would have put the subtitles on. Which wouldn’t have made a huge difference to my understanding of the film because the plot was fucking terrible.

The Mark Wahlberg character was a piece of shit. We had some back story about him being really gifted and using “pain” to stop his mental thoughts but he was just an abusive person. I hoped he died. As a group of my friends would say “he’s a right proper Cynthia”. He was the leader of a super-secret cell of USA government hard bastards who went in and did the job and got out. Except we saw them resign their posts before using this super-power and therefore weren’t members of the CIA while they were blowing shit up.

One of the female characters was so cool under fire that it was highlighted by the film but then she couldn’t hold her emotions together when she was talking to her ex-husband. What a load of toss. Bullshit.

I don’t even want to go into all the problems with the plot and how it doesn’t really fit together or make sense. This film was terrible. I hated it.

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A Simple Favour

As part of an entertainment weekend I booked a seat to see A Simple Favour. A film about something. I didn’t know really, it was a film on at the right time for me to get to the cinema. There are things to be done you see. Also, hopefully it would stop me overdoing it at the SITD gig. There was a method to my planning. The last thing I needed was a big hangover.

It was raining as I drove to the cinema and so I did not notice the status of any solar-lunar effects on the Earth. I can tell you the tide was just below high when I drove away as the skies had cleared to sunshine.

I rated this film on IMDB and there’s a communication which covers the rating system called IMDB Ratings. Then my customary behaviour is to share my score via Twitter.

So, what did I think of this film? It was alright I think. It wasn’t super stunning or scary. It was a little full of too-perfect people, although I guess they had their flaws exposed as the movie went on. I guess my problem is I’m not sure who was the baddie. I am pretty sure both the main female characters were not heroes.

I think I saw a movie similar to this a couple of years back. A woman gets all scheming and fakes her own death. Etc.

Maybe we are meant to find both women horrific in their own ways.

I think I have one comment about the rest of the school mums and dads. This film had school mums and also a single dad who was probably a gay character. Perhaps the film-makers could have realised that there are life situations where the dad might be staying at home in a heterosexual relationship. I don’t think there was a need to make him gay. Unless, of course, there are quotas. On second thoughts, well done movie for showing a gay dad in a positive light and messing with the heads of all those crazy christians in the USA. Anything to get in their heads.

This film was a good waste of two hours. It’s worth a watch but maybe don’t pay for it.

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[:SITD:] – Electrowerkz

Throughout the rain I struggled yesterday to get to Angel. Well, it wasn’t a struggle but I wanted drama! Smith and I got to Angel with plenty of time for a few drinks before heading to Electrowerkz for an evening of music and atmosphere.

First band up on this quadruple bill was My Hysteria. They had a good solid beat but the songs were a little long and the singer needed more variation in his voice. He also didn’t manage to fit his audience participation in with the music but maybe that will change for him as the band progresses.

My Hysteria
My Hysteria

Second band were called Matt Hart. That may have been the name of the singer, the guitarist or the band. I don’t know. I also missed the beginning of the set. My notes go as follows:

Singer. Guitarist. Heavy bass drum beat, samples. Heavy guitar. Not quite working. Not sure why. Needs a live drummer??? Distorted voice. Lacks an “energy”.

I guess that’s something they could work on as well. I do understand that this reviewing stuff is very subjective and so should you. We probably don’t like the same things. However, I do like a decent live drummer.

Matt Hart
Matt Hart

Thirdest up was a band I had seen twice before. Biomechanimal are a regular support band over here and they played before the headliners. The main question is whether I thought they were any good. I’m not sure they were. My issues with this band are that the vocals are too distorted, I can’t hear the bass player and apart from the last two songs which were very “dance” the rest were a bit, meh. I have previously written about this band and commented then that I couldn’t hear the bass player. Disclosure: I play bass.

Biomechanimal
Biomechanimal

Finally we get to the German headliners. Shadows In The Dark or [:SITD:]. They were really good. I’d seen them at M’era Luna before. I like listening to their albums. I do think that their sound can get a little repetitive and so I thought it might be a bit like the Hocico gig. However, it was way better than that. The sound was very good. They proved that the right band in the right venue can be awesome. All their songs were enjoyable and the beat varied throughout to keep interest. It did not feel like an eighty minute set.

SITD
SITD

It was quite clear that the lead singer is suffering with his identity dealing with hair loss. I don’t think there’s ever any need to wear a beanie hat indoors. The main singer was reasonably energetic and even got down into the crowd to sing a verse and chorus of a song, a nice touch.

SITD
SITD

The [:SITD:] gig gets a solid 7.5 out of ten. I very pleasant and enjoyable evening drinking amaretto and cranberry juice. I definitely don’t have cystitis now!

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