Monday, June 15, 2009
Not Hiatus exactly, but Hiatus-ish...
I'll keep this short. I'm going to Russia today for the next two months. I started a new blog specifically for this occasion. http://donutgoestorussia.blogspot.com. You'll follow it won't you? I'll also be contactable by email, facebook, etc. but with what frequency I'm not entirely sure. This doesn't mean don't try, just don't be offended if it takes a couple days to get back to you. Anyway, see you all around.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
On Racism
Resident Evil 5 comes out on Friday. I might-ish have a pre-order for it (the release date snuck up on me and I didn't realize it until pre-orders had closed) in the sense that one of the many awesome people at the Union Square Play n' Trade said he was pretty sure he'd have a copy of the game for me, and hopefully will call tomorrow to confirm so I can get it at midnight. Play n' Trade fucking rocks. Had I gone to a gamestop, they'd tell me I was too late, then demand I sell them my games for a dollar apiece so that I could preorder something else instead of, you know, what I want.
(Edit: Showed up at midnight, had a copy of the game with my name on it sitting in the box of preorders. Seriously, Play n' Trade fucking rocks.)
But i digress. What i really wanted to talk about was controversy, because nowadays it seems like no game can be released without some kind of big issue being broached by, well, idiots. The hot button issue for RE5? Racism. Wait, fucking what? Racism? Are you fucking kidding me? You kill zombies and fight an evil corporation who is evil for the sake of being evil. Pretty standard fare for an installment in the Resident Evil series.
Oh wait, back up: Did I mention the game is set in Africa? Did the "uninformed media schlock" alarm just go off in your brains? Do you see where I'm going with this?
Yes, people are accusing the game of being racist because you kill black people. In Africa. Say, wasn't that the name of the continent where like, there are a fuck ton of black people? Hell, there were so many of them that out of the goodness of our hearts we took them to America to live on biiiiig plantations so that they could chill and get out of the desert. Of course, then Abraham Lincoln kicked them all off of the plantations and they had to get jobs. At least, that's my knowledge of the situation based off what I skimmed on Wikipedia. My point, however, is that the game is set in Africa. You know what I would find a lot more jarring? A game set in Africa where there was nary a black zombie to be found (incidentally, if Rob Zombie and the guy from In Living Color teamed up, they should totally call their band Black Zombie). Shooting zombies that happen to be black because the infection hit in fucking Africa isn't racist, it's the plot of a fucking videogame.
I found an article on the Wall Street Journal via Joystiq that seems to sum up the problems with the allegations of racism in one particularly poignant line:
"the zombies hardly seem zombie-like when they control machine gun turrets and steer watercraft. Aside from when their faces open up and turn into tentacles, the zombies look like everyday African people, albeit ones that are trying to kill you"
Let's look at this a little closer, hmmm? "aside from when their faces open up and turn into tentacles"? Aside from? That seems like a pretty big detail to simply cast to the side when you're asking whether a game that's been in the works for years is denegrating an entire race. Also, if they look like Africans who are trying to kill you, wouldn't you be remiss if you didn't shoot them in the face? Also, I know Africa isn't the greatest place in the world to live, but if even the majority of citizens resembled the zombies in this game, then Africa would have been foresaken as a lost cause long ago. Christ, the spaniards didn't throw this much of a temper tantrum with RE4. Is the moral of the story that places that aren't predominantly white aren't allowed to be in videogames because if bad things happen to minorities it automatically means its racist? Hell if that was the case all crimes against minorities would have to be classified as hate crimes even if the crime had nothing to do with race, but that'd be sill... what? oh shit.
(Edit: Showed up at midnight, had a copy of the game with my name on it sitting in the box of preorders. Seriously, Play n' Trade fucking rocks.)
But i digress. What i really wanted to talk about was controversy, because nowadays it seems like no game can be released without some kind of big issue being broached by, well, idiots. The hot button issue for RE5? Racism. Wait, fucking what? Racism? Are you fucking kidding me? You kill zombies and fight an evil corporation who is evil for the sake of being evil. Pretty standard fare for an installment in the Resident Evil series.
Oh wait, back up: Did I mention the game is set in Africa? Did the "uninformed media schlock" alarm just go off in your brains? Do you see where I'm going with this?
Yes, people are accusing the game of being racist because you kill black people. In Africa. Say, wasn't that the name of the continent where like, there are a fuck ton of black people? Hell, there were so many of them that out of the goodness of our hearts we took them to America to live on biiiiig plantations so that they could chill and get out of the desert. Of course, then Abraham Lincoln kicked them all off of the plantations and they had to get jobs. At least, that's my knowledge of the situation based off what I skimmed on Wikipedia. My point, however, is that the game is set in Africa. You know what I would find a lot more jarring? A game set in Africa where there was nary a black zombie to be found (incidentally, if Rob Zombie and the guy from In Living Color teamed up, they should totally call their band Black Zombie). Shooting zombies that happen to be black because the infection hit in fucking Africa isn't racist, it's the plot of a fucking videogame.
I found an article on the Wall Street Journal via Joystiq that seems to sum up the problems with the allegations of racism in one particularly poignant line:
"the zombies hardly seem zombie-like when they control machine gun turrets and steer watercraft. Aside from when their faces open up and turn into tentacles, the zombies look like everyday African people, albeit ones that are trying to kill you"
Let's look at this a little closer, hmmm? "aside from when their faces open up and turn into tentacles"? Aside from? That seems like a pretty big detail to simply cast to the side when you're asking whether a game that's been in the works for years is denegrating an entire race. Also, if they look like Africans who are trying to kill you, wouldn't you be remiss if you didn't shoot them in the face? Also, I know Africa isn't the greatest place in the world to live, but if even the majority of citizens resembled the zombies in this game, then Africa would have been foresaken as a lost cause long ago. Christ, the spaniards didn't throw this much of a temper tantrum with RE4. Is the moral of the story that places that aren't predominantly white aren't allowed to be in videogames because if bad things happen to minorities it automatically means its racist? Hell if that was the case all crimes against minorities would have to be classified as hate crimes even if the crime had nothing to do with race, but that'd be sill... what? oh shit.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Fuck TBNYU right in their stupid fucking asses
I simply cannot come up with a good introduction. I want to, but I'm so fucking livid right now that my thoughts can barely maintain some kind of coherent train. Let me dial it back about 17 hours or so to 9 PM last night, when our neighborhood friendly student activist group, "Take Back NYU" decided to "occupy" the 3rd floor of the kimmel center in protest of... stuff. I'd be more specific, but their list of demands is so all over the place it's like they took random passages from the anarchists cookbook and fed them through some kind of mad-lib machine. Their demands encompass everything from re-banning Coca Cola products on campus, to a flat and lower tuition rate, to student-led financial oversight committees, to 13 (yes, they specified a number) scholarships for Palestinian students, to making the NYU library available to the public, and of course, the usual request for amnesty for all involved. After all, a protest wouldn't be fun (that is the point of protests, right?) if people actually got in trouble. You can find their pitiful sham of a website (and I hesitate to post this link because then it means people might actually click through and give them the attention that they want) at http://www.takebacknyu.com where you can find their full list of "demands" and a half assed justification for their retarded actions.
So let's look at the things I've got the biggest qualms with. First off, the involvement of any demands related to palestine and "using our excess funds to rebuild the university of Gaza". What. The. Fuck. Are you fucking kidding me? Since when is TBNYU the fucking PLO? It's like they couldn't get enough people to support their stupid fucking demands so they tacked Palestine on to make it seem like they're culturally aware and oh-so-sensitive. This also makes their list of demands look like the aforementioned anarchist mad-lib.
Next up: re-banning Coca Cola. Come on, are you fucking serious? Do you really think Pepsi is the paragon of human rights in their south american bottling plants? Fuck no, they're just good at hiding it, and apparently were better than Coke. If a company has shit set up in the third world, they're probably abusing their workers, so stop treating Coke like they're the worst of the fucking crowd. Striking workers have been mowed down by the dozens in banana plantations, but does NYU ban Chiquita? FUCK no, so let it go, you fuckers finally lost.
Scholarships to Palestinian students? Look, I have very little opinion on the Israel/Palestine thing simply because I don't feel I'm informed enough to have an opinion, but answer me this: I get almost no financial aid from the university in spite of the fact that my family in addition to paying for NYU is still paying off my sister's education (she graduated last year). So why is some person based solely on their ethnicity more entitled to help from the university than I am. I am going to be paying this shit off until I'm about 108 if you count grad school. So FUCK you, you TBNYU fucks. If you care about solving problems for NYU students, why don't you try to make it fair for ALL of the NYU students, and not just 13 of the ones who happen to also be middle eastern.
Full disclosure of all the school's financial allocations with approval by the students? Is this a fucking joke? What do you think that our higher ups do? Believe it or not, John Sexton has a hard fucking job that makes him WORTH the six figure salary. NYU has done great under him. He is not some malicious overlord sitting in the top of some crooked castle spire counting the millions of dollars he's embezzled from the wide eyed youths of America. And full disclosure? DO YOU FUCKS EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT WOULD ENTAIL? Even if it did get released it would be literally thousands upon thousands of pages of pure financial jargon and do you know why? Because we have tens of thousands of students paying upwards of 50,000 dollars per year. That is a lot of fucking money, and no one, especially not an oversight board composed of the same fucking jackoffs who compiled this idiot manifesto in the first place would be able to make heads or tails of it without advanced accounting degrees. Guess who does that? The people whose salary you are paying to WATCH WHERE OUR FUCKING MONEY IS GOING. And the system works. How do I know? A guy in my office was laid off in fall 2008 for embezzling. They catch this shit, they are on it. You occupying a fucking cafeteria of all things solves fucking nothing you stupid dipshits.
The grand point I'm trying to make here is this: Thanks to the jerkoffs at TBNYU, this will now be the face of the student body at an institution that I am irrevocably bound to for at least the rest of the semester. There has been moderate press coverage, but only of their side, and it is not clear that while (according to the website, so its probably a lie) "over 200" (read "probably 50 or so") students are in fact functional fucking retards, the remaining tens of thousands of us do not agree with this bullshit and do not care to be represented in this retarded half assed wannabe revolutionary way. FUCK SHIT DICK COCK PISS!
That is all.
P.S. Including this sentence, the word "fuck" or some variant thereof appears 25 times total in this article. Can you tell I haven't slept in like 28 hours?
So let's look at the things I've got the biggest qualms with. First off, the involvement of any demands related to palestine and "using our excess funds to rebuild the university of Gaza". What. The. Fuck. Are you fucking kidding me? Since when is TBNYU the fucking PLO? It's like they couldn't get enough people to support their stupid fucking demands so they tacked Palestine on to make it seem like they're culturally aware and oh-so-sensitive. This also makes their list of demands look like the aforementioned anarchist mad-lib.
Next up: re-banning Coca Cola. Come on, are you fucking serious? Do you really think Pepsi is the paragon of human rights in their south american bottling plants? Fuck no, they're just good at hiding it, and apparently were better than Coke. If a company has shit set up in the third world, they're probably abusing their workers, so stop treating Coke like they're the worst of the fucking crowd. Striking workers have been mowed down by the dozens in banana plantations, but does NYU ban Chiquita? FUCK no, so let it go, you fuckers finally lost.
Scholarships to Palestinian students? Look, I have very little opinion on the Israel/Palestine thing simply because I don't feel I'm informed enough to have an opinion, but answer me this: I get almost no financial aid from the university in spite of the fact that my family in addition to paying for NYU is still paying off my sister's education (she graduated last year). So why is some person based solely on their ethnicity more entitled to help from the university than I am. I am going to be paying this shit off until I'm about 108 if you count grad school. So FUCK you, you TBNYU fucks. If you care about solving problems for NYU students, why don't you try to make it fair for ALL of the NYU students, and not just 13 of the ones who happen to also be middle eastern.
Full disclosure of all the school's financial allocations with approval by the students? Is this a fucking joke? What do you think that our higher ups do? Believe it or not, John Sexton has a hard fucking job that makes him WORTH the six figure salary. NYU has done great under him. He is not some malicious overlord sitting in the top of some crooked castle spire counting the millions of dollars he's embezzled from the wide eyed youths of America. And full disclosure? DO YOU FUCKS EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT WOULD ENTAIL? Even if it did get released it would be literally thousands upon thousands of pages of pure financial jargon and do you know why? Because we have tens of thousands of students paying upwards of 50,000 dollars per year. That is a lot of fucking money, and no one, especially not an oversight board composed of the same fucking jackoffs who compiled this idiot manifesto in the first place would be able to make heads or tails of it without advanced accounting degrees. Guess who does that? The people whose salary you are paying to WATCH WHERE OUR FUCKING MONEY IS GOING. And the system works. How do I know? A guy in my office was laid off in fall 2008 for embezzling. They catch this shit, they are on it. You occupying a fucking cafeteria of all things solves fucking nothing you stupid dipshits.
The grand point I'm trying to make here is this: Thanks to the jerkoffs at TBNYU, this will now be the face of the student body at an institution that I am irrevocably bound to for at least the rest of the semester. There has been moderate press coverage, but only of their side, and it is not clear that while (according to the website, so its probably a lie) "over 200" (read "probably 50 or so") students are in fact functional fucking retards, the remaining tens of thousands of us do not agree with this bullshit and do not care to be represented in this retarded half assed wannabe revolutionary way. FUCK SHIT DICK COCK PISS!
That is all.
P.S. Including this sentence, the word "fuck" or some variant thereof appears 25 times total in this article. Can you tell I haven't slept in like 28 hours?
Thursday, January 22, 2009
To keep my mind off of the all consuming nausea
So it's been a bit since my last post, and what with one of my best friends leaving the university, the start of classes, and some devil-illness that caused me to vomit for 2 days straight (and still be unable to really eat solid food) I've been a bit busy, so this post is a bit dated. Anyway, I got me a pretty nice haul of video games this christmas and thought I'd share some thoughts on them.
Mirror's Edge: This game really got panned by the critics as not living up to the awesome-osity that was the demo. After having had plenty of hands on time with the full thing i can say that while many complaints about this game are valid, they simply don't hinder the gameplay THAT much. The biggest complaints were about the confined and confusing indoor areas, and the appalling combat. And while the combat would never be acceptable in any kind of FPS, it is important to note that mirror's edge is decidedly NOT an FPS. In fact, I liken it to a first person Prince of Persia (Sands of Time, of course, not the awful sequels), and if anyone remembers Sands of Time, they would do well to note that the game succeeded in spite of the combat mechanism, and after a few hours of play, you could figure out the chuggy and painful mechanics enough to beat the system out of forcing you to waste too much time on the battle sequences. The same can be said of Mirror's Edge in that when there aren't any enemies on screen, figuring out the running-jumping-sliding-etc. puzzles is a god-damn blast. The plot is kind of superficial (futuristic 1084-esque dystopia with government conspiracies out the wazoo), but provides a decent enough setting for your character's actions to make sense. It won't be taking home game of the year for me (that'll be Fallout 3 this year and every year until something better comes along) but I can promise one of the most unique experiences available on the 360 to anyone willing to overlook a few minor pitfalls. 7.5/10
Left 4 Dead: I feel like part of the experience of this game still has to come through for me because I don't know anyone who has a Live account and owns this game. Thusly my only co-op experience has been split screened, which is fun, but you really start to wish you had more screen space when say, you're getting reamed by approximately 50 zombies hungering for your brains or other innards. I don't have quite as much to say about this as I did about Mirror's Edge simply because as far as gameplay mechanics go, there isn't a lot there, but not every meal has to be gourmet quality. Sometimes you have a hankering for some McNuggets and goddamn if they don't hit the spot just right. If you ever wanted to know what "28 Days Later" the video game would play like, this is it. Fast, frantic, loud, gorey, and a lot of fun if you can get at least one other person on board to play with you. I'd say it gets roughly a 6.5/10, losing points only because the missions, in spite of varying enemy sets, the missions feel very interchangeable and samey, and the campaigns feel just a little too long at points. Still though, for a half hour of mindless zombie slaughterin', look no further.
Prince of Persia: I, um... Well, this is awkward because this game was so bad, so insufferable, that I sold it within 3 days of getting it after playing for approximately 90 minutes total. The characters are static, obnoxious, saturday-morning-cartooney stereotypes (wisecracking anglicized yet inexplicably "persian" Prince, mysteriously hot sorceress who is also a total cunt, evil sorceror reviving dark gods for some reason never fully made clear). The combat is even more insufferable than any other PoP title, featuring quicktime instant failure events at every goddamn turn and attacks that, while pretty, you never feel particularly invested in the execution of (pressing "B" will vault you into the air to hurl the enemy down with this spinning flair that seems almost too effortless to even be fun or visceral). Also, no one in the history of gaming has ever liked having to scavenge for 50 bajillion of one kind of item (light seeds, in this case) in between every mission. Remember finding the 100 hidden packages in GTA III? Imagine that half of the game was that. And your character never shut the fuck up. And the disk was printed on poop so that when you put in the drive your console burst into flames. 2/10, and it only gets those 2 because parts of it are kind of pretty.
Mirror's Edge: This game really got panned by the critics as not living up to the awesome-osity that was the demo. After having had plenty of hands on time with the full thing i can say that while many complaints about this game are valid, they simply don't hinder the gameplay THAT much. The biggest complaints were about the confined and confusing indoor areas, and the appalling combat. And while the combat would never be acceptable in any kind of FPS, it is important to note that mirror's edge is decidedly NOT an FPS. In fact, I liken it to a first person Prince of Persia (Sands of Time, of course, not the awful sequels), and if anyone remembers Sands of Time, they would do well to note that the game succeeded in spite of the combat mechanism, and after a few hours of play, you could figure out the chuggy and painful mechanics enough to beat the system out of forcing you to waste too much time on the battle sequences. The same can be said of Mirror's Edge in that when there aren't any enemies on screen, figuring out the running-jumping-sliding-etc. puzzles is a god-damn blast. The plot is kind of superficial (futuristic 1084-esque dystopia with government conspiracies out the wazoo), but provides a decent enough setting for your character's actions to make sense. It won't be taking home game of the year for me (that'll be Fallout 3 this year and every year until something better comes along) but I can promise one of the most unique experiences available on the 360 to anyone willing to overlook a few minor pitfalls. 7.5/10
Left 4 Dead: I feel like part of the experience of this game still has to come through for me because I don't know anyone who has a Live account and owns this game. Thusly my only co-op experience has been split screened, which is fun, but you really start to wish you had more screen space when say, you're getting reamed by approximately 50 zombies hungering for your brains or other innards. I don't have quite as much to say about this as I did about Mirror's Edge simply because as far as gameplay mechanics go, there isn't a lot there, but not every meal has to be gourmet quality. Sometimes you have a hankering for some McNuggets and goddamn if they don't hit the spot just right. If you ever wanted to know what "28 Days Later" the video game would play like, this is it. Fast, frantic, loud, gorey, and a lot of fun if you can get at least one other person on board to play with you. I'd say it gets roughly a 6.5/10, losing points only because the missions, in spite of varying enemy sets, the missions feel very interchangeable and samey, and the campaigns feel just a little too long at points. Still though, for a half hour of mindless zombie slaughterin', look no further.
Prince of Persia: I, um... Well, this is awkward because this game was so bad, so insufferable, that I sold it within 3 days of getting it after playing for approximately 90 minutes total. The characters are static, obnoxious, saturday-morning-cartooney stereotypes (wisecracking anglicized yet inexplicably "persian" Prince, mysteriously hot sorceress who is also a total cunt, evil sorceror reviving dark gods for some reason never fully made clear). The combat is even more insufferable than any other PoP title, featuring quicktime instant failure events at every goddamn turn and attacks that, while pretty, you never feel particularly invested in the execution of (pressing "B" will vault you into the air to hurl the enemy down with this spinning flair that seems almost too effortless to even be fun or visceral). Also, no one in the history of gaming has ever liked having to scavenge for 50 bajillion of one kind of item (light seeds, in this case) in between every mission. Remember finding the 100 hidden packages in GTA III? Imagine that half of the game was that. And your character never shut the fuck up. And the disk was printed on poop so that when you put in the drive your console burst into flames. 2/10, and it only gets those 2 because parts of it are kind of pretty.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Musical Superlatives (2008 edition!)
It's getting to be the end of 2008 and you know what that means: I cram my musical tastes down everyone's throat in my top 10 albums of the year. But don't take my word for it... no, no, DO take my word for it. Moving on...
10. ObZen - Meshuggah
Every time Meshuggah releases an album I always think to myself: "why bother dividing this into tracks?" But the thing is, their hour long fiddling with spastic time signature changes and attempts to see how many more strings they can add below a low E continue to impress me. Is it as good as Nothing? No, but it's damn fine and they pull out plenty of riffs that will surprise and impress.
9. Fortress - Protest the Hero
Their initial effort (Kezia), while technically very proficient, suffered from really shitty mixing. This is a problem when you do really high, technical riffing and coheed-esque wailing (in a good way, but it's still really high) and forget to put any bass into the mix. Fortress fixed this problem, and the songwriting as a whole has stepped up a notch. Sometimes incredibly disonnant, sometimes very melodious, but very tight, fast, and technical. A promising act.
8. Shogun - Trivium
This is more of an award for improvement than for releasing a spectacular album. It's certainly no Ascendancy, but the way they removed everything I disliked about The Crusade, it's like this album was a personal apology to me, and that says something.
7. Watershed - Opeth
Opeth takes their usual sound here, but adds a lot of proggy little tidbits to distract from the Death Metal assault that their songs have a tendency to dissolve into. On the whole, this album feels more balanced than anything they've done in a while, which proves that even the most established death/prog acts can be subject to maturing once in a while.
6. Reason to Believe - Pennywise
These guys have kind of been phoning it in for a while, but this album gets them back to some silver age style Land of the Free type shit. It doesn't hurt when they just give the album out for free for the first two weeks of its release either. Point is, this feels like the first album where they've put in any effort in years, and it is a reminder of how great Pennywise CAN be. Now if someone could only convince them to play any songs from after 1995 in concert...
5. Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace - The Offspring
It has been 5 goddamn years since these guys have done anything, then out of the blue they came out with a full album and much to my surprise, it was really good. Like, at least as good as Splinter. A few too many slow-ish radio sounding songs, but the faster SoCal punk tracks completely make up for it. "Shit is Fucked Up" is probably one of the best songs they've done since "All I Want"
4. Agony and Irony - Alkaline Trio
The problem when a band's most recent release is your favorite is that the subsequent release is almost guaranteed to disappoint. This album, however, had me astounded at how fluidly the guys picked up from where they left off with Crimson, and keep moving in a new and fresh direction. They've gone in a less minimalist direction, but it's nice to see that they acknowledge that sticking with a minimalist sound stagnates quickly. Just another solid release in an ever improving series.
3. Appeal to Reason - Rise Against
You know, I have this written down as my number three, but coming up with specific reasons is hard. Rise against is one of the few bands where I like how relatively static their sound has remained, so the reason I liked this album so much is that it was exactly what I was expecting: More of the same, but a little tweaked for complexity's sake. This is a pretty subjective pick, but fuck you, you don't like it, write your own damn blog nobody reads.
2. Want - 3OH!3
I can't even begin to describe how much I love this album. I wish I could defend myself by saying it's an ironic love, but it has surpassed that. The songs are catchy, trashy, shamelessly self promoting, and probably the most fun ANYTHING I've heard in a long ass time. 3OH!3 is literally the only thing that I have a remote amount of Colorado pride for. Fun! Trashy! Catchy! Delightful! ETC.!!!!!
1. If - Mindless Self Indulgence
I mean, did anyone not see this one coming? Within 2 days of the album's release the top 15 on my iTunes "top 25 most played" were the tracks from this album. It exemplifies everything I loved about their last album, but even more so. I mean, MSI is totally one of those bands that you either like the sound or you don't. If you like MSI, you'll like this album, if you don't, you won't. I personally LOVE MSI and thusly would bed this album in an intimate manner. Several times. Consecutively.
And here is the rest of the crap that aaaaalmost made the list:
Scars on Broadway - Scars on Broadway - This was nixed because Daron is a bitch, no matter what captain "anonymous" says a few posts below. Also because half of the songs on it are shit, but the other half are really really awesome.
All Hope Is Gone - Slipknot - Maybe if Corey hadn't decided to make a new Stone Sour album featuring guest appearances by Slipknot, I would still care that this album existed. As it stands, it didn't bode well that when I went through the "list of 2008 releases" on Wikipedia, I saw this album and said "oh right, they DID come out with something this summer".
Death Magnetic - Metallica - A really solid effort. I just can't bring myself to honor James Hetfield or Lars Ulrich for anything. They are insufferable whiny bitches who just happened to make good music in the 80's and very early 90's, and then one more time in 2008.
Midnight Boom - The Kills - This album is really quite good, and their singer just has a very sexy sound (yes their singer is a girl, wiseasses). The problem here was that it was a little too samey and the sound never got quiiiite interesting enough to justify the samey-ness.
Well, that's that. See you kids around.
10. ObZen - Meshuggah
Every time Meshuggah releases an album I always think to myself: "why bother dividing this into tracks?" But the thing is, their hour long fiddling with spastic time signature changes and attempts to see how many more strings they can add below a low E continue to impress me. Is it as good as Nothing? No, but it's damn fine and they pull out plenty of riffs that will surprise and impress.
9. Fortress - Protest the Hero
Their initial effort (Kezia), while technically very proficient, suffered from really shitty mixing. This is a problem when you do really high, technical riffing and coheed-esque wailing (in a good way, but it's still really high) and forget to put any bass into the mix. Fortress fixed this problem, and the songwriting as a whole has stepped up a notch. Sometimes incredibly disonnant, sometimes very melodious, but very tight, fast, and technical. A promising act.
8. Shogun - Trivium
This is more of an award for improvement than for releasing a spectacular album. It's certainly no Ascendancy, but the way they removed everything I disliked about The Crusade, it's like this album was a personal apology to me, and that says something.
7. Watershed - Opeth
Opeth takes their usual sound here, but adds a lot of proggy little tidbits to distract from the Death Metal assault that their songs have a tendency to dissolve into. On the whole, this album feels more balanced than anything they've done in a while, which proves that even the most established death/prog acts can be subject to maturing once in a while.
6. Reason to Believe - Pennywise
These guys have kind of been phoning it in for a while, but this album gets them back to some silver age style Land of the Free type shit. It doesn't hurt when they just give the album out for free for the first two weeks of its release either. Point is, this feels like the first album where they've put in any effort in years, and it is a reminder of how great Pennywise CAN be. Now if someone could only convince them to play any songs from after 1995 in concert...
5. Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace - The Offspring
It has been 5 goddamn years since these guys have done anything, then out of the blue they came out with a full album and much to my surprise, it was really good. Like, at least as good as Splinter. A few too many slow-ish radio sounding songs, but the faster SoCal punk tracks completely make up for it. "Shit is Fucked Up" is probably one of the best songs they've done since "All I Want"
4. Agony and Irony - Alkaline Trio
The problem when a band's most recent release is your favorite is that the subsequent release is almost guaranteed to disappoint. This album, however, had me astounded at how fluidly the guys picked up from where they left off with Crimson, and keep moving in a new and fresh direction. They've gone in a less minimalist direction, but it's nice to see that they acknowledge that sticking with a minimalist sound stagnates quickly. Just another solid release in an ever improving series.
3. Appeal to Reason - Rise Against
You know, I have this written down as my number three, but coming up with specific reasons is hard. Rise against is one of the few bands where I like how relatively static their sound has remained, so the reason I liked this album so much is that it was exactly what I was expecting: More of the same, but a little tweaked for complexity's sake. This is a pretty subjective pick, but fuck you, you don't like it, write your own damn blog nobody reads.
2. Want - 3OH!3
I can't even begin to describe how much I love this album. I wish I could defend myself by saying it's an ironic love, but it has surpassed that. The songs are catchy, trashy, shamelessly self promoting, and probably the most fun ANYTHING I've heard in a long ass time. 3OH!3 is literally the only thing that I have a remote amount of Colorado pride for. Fun! Trashy! Catchy! Delightful! ETC.!!!!!
1. If - Mindless Self Indulgence
I mean, did anyone not see this one coming? Within 2 days of the album's release the top 15 on my iTunes "top 25 most played" were the tracks from this album. It exemplifies everything I loved about their last album, but even more so. I mean, MSI is totally one of those bands that you either like the sound or you don't. If you like MSI, you'll like this album, if you don't, you won't. I personally LOVE MSI and thusly would bed this album in an intimate manner. Several times. Consecutively.
And here is the rest of the crap that aaaaalmost made the list:
Scars on Broadway - Scars on Broadway - This was nixed because Daron is a bitch, no matter what captain "anonymous" says a few posts below. Also because half of the songs on it are shit, but the other half are really really awesome.
All Hope Is Gone - Slipknot - Maybe if Corey hadn't decided to make a new Stone Sour album featuring guest appearances by Slipknot, I would still care that this album existed. As it stands, it didn't bode well that when I went through the "list of 2008 releases" on Wikipedia, I saw this album and said "oh right, they DID come out with something this summer".
Death Magnetic - Metallica - A really solid effort. I just can't bring myself to honor James Hetfield or Lars Ulrich for anything. They are insufferable whiny bitches who just happened to make good music in the 80's and very early 90's, and then one more time in 2008.
Midnight Boom - The Kills - This album is really quite good, and their singer just has a very sexy sound (yes their singer is a girl, wiseasses). The problem here was that it was a little too samey and the sound never got quiiiite interesting enough to justify the samey-ness.
Well, that's that. See you kids around.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Over the Shark, On to the Beach, and Straight on to Cancellation
I am willing to put up with a lot of stupid shit from my entertainment. I have watched every last episode of Lost and 24, I love the Die Hard series (including the new one), and still get perverse joy from watching Quentin Tarantino's cinematic tripe. As I write this, however, I feel that a certain line has been irrevocably crossed. What line, you may ask? The degree of bullshit I am willing to put up with from none other than Doctor Gregory House M.D.
The show has been going south for a while now, but I've stuck with it simply because Hugh Laurie plays such an unbelievable asshole that i marvel at the writing required to come up with somebody who is such a genuinely awful human being. This last week's episode has officially torn it for me. Perhaps you may have seen it, although if you have I'm surprised you're reading my blog instead of projectile vomiting all over your keyboard.
There were so many status quo changing elements in this episode that there is simply no way for any kind of return to a healthy equilibrium to make even remote sense. House almost got one of his doctors killed, alternated between chatting up and openly harassing a man with a gun pointed at him and other people, got the gun away from the guy, gave the gun back to the guy, then proceeded to be oh-so shocked and indignant when SURPRISE: the lunatic with the gun failed to act rationally in regards to other people's safety.
You don't play up a character's keen intuition into the workings of people's minds (all people are bad) and then take away that intuition when a character so repugnantly shallow even I could identify the, uh, character flaws starts waving a fucking gun around. And why did nobody think to simply breach Cuddy's office when this shit was still in first gear. Everyone in the House universe with the surprising exception of Chase and Foreman turned into hyper-emotional mongoloids, whining about their problems (sometimes to the fucking hostage taker) and talking through their inabilities to have normal lives. Hell they chatted so much you almost forgot that there was a man with a gun and a fucking SWAT team assembled at the hospital.
So, Dr. House, I say to you this: I have had it with your stupid bullshit. You have run out of medical scenarios that could even be minutely based in reality and thusly have to revert to waxing existential on mortality for about 20 fucking minutes every episode, and when that doesn't work, you throw in a bunch of people with guns, only you fuck that up too as nobody who would ordinarily be trained in using them seems to remember that they even have them. To say this show jumped the shark with this episode would be giving it too much credit. It's as if the show tried to jump the shark, but didn't quite get enough momentum and fell straight into its gaping maw, where it was promptly digested and shat out to become plankton food.
Oh also, the above paragraphs contain spoilers or some shit.
The show has been going south for a while now, but I've stuck with it simply because Hugh Laurie plays such an unbelievable asshole that i marvel at the writing required to come up with somebody who is such a genuinely awful human being. This last week's episode has officially torn it for me. Perhaps you may have seen it, although if you have I'm surprised you're reading my blog instead of projectile vomiting all over your keyboard.
There were so many status quo changing elements in this episode that there is simply no way for any kind of return to a healthy equilibrium to make even remote sense. House almost got one of his doctors killed, alternated between chatting up and openly harassing a man with a gun pointed at him and other people, got the gun away from the guy, gave the gun back to the guy, then proceeded to be oh-so shocked and indignant when SURPRISE: the lunatic with the gun failed to act rationally in regards to other people's safety.
You don't play up a character's keen intuition into the workings of people's minds (all people are bad) and then take away that intuition when a character so repugnantly shallow even I could identify the, uh, character flaws starts waving a fucking gun around. And why did nobody think to simply breach Cuddy's office when this shit was still in first gear. Everyone in the House universe with the surprising exception of Chase and Foreman turned into hyper-emotional mongoloids, whining about their problems (sometimes to the fucking hostage taker) and talking through their inabilities to have normal lives. Hell they chatted so much you almost forgot that there was a man with a gun and a fucking SWAT team assembled at the hospital.
So, Dr. House, I say to you this: I have had it with your stupid bullshit. You have run out of medical scenarios that could even be minutely based in reality and thusly have to revert to waxing existential on mortality for about 20 fucking minutes every episode, and when that doesn't work, you throw in a bunch of people with guns, only you fuck that up too as nobody who would ordinarily be trained in using them seems to remember that they even have them. To say this show jumped the shark with this episode would be giving it too much credit. It's as if the show tried to jump the shark, but didn't quite get enough momentum and fell straight into its gaping maw, where it was promptly digested and shat out to become plankton food.
Oh also, the above paragraphs contain spoilers or some shit.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
A Double Dose of Post-Concert Wrapups
Due to an ever shrinking checking account and the simple fact that no particularly interesting bands have come through New York (and when they do they cancel their tours for no reason *cough*scarsonbroadway*cough*) I haven't gone to a terrible amount of shows this year. Fortunately the last 5 days have completely made up for this disparity by offering me Dir en Grey with The Human Abstract on the 14th and just last night (the 18th) 3OH!3. So without further ado, my thoughts:
Dir En Grey w/ The Human Abstract
November 14th @ Terminal 5
Having seen Dir En Grey twice now and The Human Abstract once, I figured I knew precisely what to expect from this show: 3 or so hours of pure fucking awesome. Sadly, however, this was not the case. See, The Human Abstract recently (well, like 3 months ago anyway) released a new album and hence were promoting it on this tour. All well and good if they had managed to release an album that was actually worth listening to. Instead they tried to sound like the love child of Avenged Sevenfold and Opeth, but somehow missed every element that makes (in A7X's case, made) those bands any good and instead came out with a mishmash of boring and generic metalcore bullshit that had maybe one interesting riff per song. Now the problem with promoting your stupid shitty pseudo-prog album is that you have to play a bunch of songs from it. Thusly, we were treated to about 40 minutes of off key wailing while they meandered through emo keyboard driven sobfests followed occasionally by a song from the album where they were, you know, fun to listen to.
Dir En Grey was also promoting their new album, which I have yet to listen to fully because the rip I found of it was of appallingly poor quality, but it seems pretty ok, and they knew that we weren't there so that they could play all of their new stuff while disregarding more beloved songs. Thusly the set list was composed of songs from Withering To Death, Marrow of a Bone, and a handful from their new album and Vulgar, but that was totally ok. No one was expecting them to play shit from the 90's anyway. Kyo did about 3 minutes of whale mating calls combined with demon tongues at 2 points during the show, which was hilarious, then kind of annoying, then REALLY hilarious when the stupid overdramatic fuck passed out midway through the subsequent song. The band just played and I distinctly saw Karou and Die roll their eyes as they continued to play vocal-less. Still though, they put on the kind of show I was expecting and my neck was in agony for days afterward, which is always a good sign. Moving rapidly onward:
3OH!3 feat. Cobraconda, Chain Gang of 1974, and Innerpartysystem
November 18th @ Blender Theater at Grammercy
This was, categorically, the best show I have been to all year. For anyone who might not know, all of these bands are from Colorado and to date 3OH!3 is the only thing capable of instilling the slightest sense of state pride in me (because my stony black heart will only be moved by electro/crunk combinations apparently) because they are the epitome of what every band's attitude should be: fun and interesting (be it because it is danceable or because it's deep. 3OH!3 is obviously the former and none of the latter). They're a couple of skinny white nerds from Boulder and they don't give a shit how ridiculous it is that they are proclaiming that they will "hit you from the back and make you holler till you pass out". Nowadays everyone is so fucking serious (obnoxiously so in the metal scene) that it seems more and more bands are forgetting that music is supposed to be fun, not a taxing and elitist chore (I am looking squarely at you every hipster indie band). ANyway, Cobraconda was amusing as an opener, even though their costumes (a farmer, a cow, and three bananas inexplicably) reeked of desperation for everyone to think that they don't care what we think. Chain Gang of 1974 was pretty awesome, although their music is a pain to come by at present as they're still relatively underground. Innerpartysystem had the best light display I've ever seen at any show. To try to describe it in mere words would be silly and it also would not sound particularly impressive. You had to be there (and be as sauced as I was. Tangent: venue bars prey on people who go to shows by themselves. You're standing around by yourself and you see your wristband and you think, "well why the fuck not?" and then 25 dollars and 2 incredibly strong Gin and Tonics and a Beer later you're so soused that you don't even care that you just dropped 25 dollars on 3 drinks, one of which was a fucking Budweiser). Anyway, 3OH!3 had almost no real set, and no special lighting, but their performance was driven by pure energy. The crowd was so into it that you would have to be a damned statue not to get swept away. Opening with Punk Bitch, they segued through one of the best constructed setlists of all time. At no point did the energy die (Even on the slower Colorado Sunrise) and closing with Don't Trust Me while every member of the opening bands charged onstage to jump around like jackasses (in a good way though, we were all doing that) was fucking inspired. Anyway, I'm getting nasty looks from my supervisor, so peace out etc.
Dir En Grey w/ The Human Abstract
November 14th @ Terminal 5
Having seen Dir En Grey twice now and The Human Abstract once, I figured I knew precisely what to expect from this show: 3 or so hours of pure fucking awesome. Sadly, however, this was not the case. See, The Human Abstract recently (well, like 3 months ago anyway) released a new album and hence were promoting it on this tour. All well and good if they had managed to release an album that was actually worth listening to. Instead they tried to sound like the love child of Avenged Sevenfold and Opeth, but somehow missed every element that makes (in A7X's case, made) those bands any good and instead came out with a mishmash of boring and generic metalcore bullshit that had maybe one interesting riff per song. Now the problem with promoting your stupid shitty pseudo-prog album is that you have to play a bunch of songs from it. Thusly, we were treated to about 40 minutes of off key wailing while they meandered through emo keyboard driven sobfests followed occasionally by a song from the album where they were, you know, fun to listen to.
Dir En Grey was also promoting their new album, which I have yet to listen to fully because the rip I found of it was of appallingly poor quality, but it seems pretty ok, and they knew that we weren't there so that they could play all of their new stuff while disregarding more beloved songs. Thusly the set list was composed of songs from Withering To Death, Marrow of a Bone, and a handful from their new album and Vulgar, but that was totally ok. No one was expecting them to play shit from the 90's anyway. Kyo did about 3 minutes of whale mating calls combined with demon tongues at 2 points during the show, which was hilarious, then kind of annoying, then REALLY hilarious when the stupid overdramatic fuck passed out midway through the subsequent song. The band just played and I distinctly saw Karou and Die roll their eyes as they continued to play vocal-less. Still though, they put on the kind of show I was expecting and my neck was in agony for days afterward, which is always a good sign. Moving rapidly onward:
3OH!3 feat. Cobraconda, Chain Gang of 1974, and Innerpartysystem
November 18th @ Blender Theater at Grammercy
This was, categorically, the best show I have been to all year. For anyone who might not know, all of these bands are from Colorado and to date 3OH!3 is the only thing capable of instilling the slightest sense of state pride in me (because my stony black heart will only be moved by electro/crunk combinations apparently) because they are the epitome of what every band's attitude should be: fun and interesting (be it because it is danceable or because it's deep. 3OH!3 is obviously the former and none of the latter). They're a couple of skinny white nerds from Boulder and they don't give a shit how ridiculous it is that they are proclaiming that they will "hit you from the back and make you holler till you pass out". Nowadays everyone is so fucking serious (obnoxiously so in the metal scene) that it seems more and more bands are forgetting that music is supposed to be fun, not a taxing and elitist chore (I am looking squarely at you every hipster indie band). ANyway, Cobraconda was amusing as an opener, even though their costumes (a farmer, a cow, and three bananas inexplicably) reeked of desperation for everyone to think that they don't care what we think. Chain Gang of 1974 was pretty awesome, although their music is a pain to come by at present as they're still relatively underground. Innerpartysystem had the best light display I've ever seen at any show. To try to describe it in mere words would be silly and it also would not sound particularly impressive. You had to be there (and be as sauced as I was. Tangent: venue bars prey on people who go to shows by themselves. You're standing around by yourself and you see your wristband and you think, "well why the fuck not?" and then 25 dollars and 2 incredibly strong Gin and Tonics and a Beer later you're so soused that you don't even care that you just dropped 25 dollars on 3 drinks, one of which was a fucking Budweiser). Anyway, 3OH!3 had almost no real set, and no special lighting, but their performance was driven by pure energy. The crowd was so into it that you would have to be a damned statue not to get swept away. Opening with Punk Bitch, they segued through one of the best constructed setlists of all time. At no point did the energy die (Even on the slower Colorado Sunrise) and closing with Don't Trust Me while every member of the opening bands charged onstage to jump around like jackasses (in a good way though, we were all doing that) was fucking inspired. Anyway, I'm getting nasty looks from my supervisor, so peace out etc.
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