Coming soon…

In the next couple months there will be new albums from Marillion, The Fall of Troy, Transatlantic, Pelican, Slayer, Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Devin Townsend, Immortal, Converge, Boris, Between the Buried and Me, Steven Roach and many, many more.

Basically – tons of awesome stuff coming out. Be excited!

“The Fragile” – 10 Year Anniversary

It’s not everyday that an amazing album turns 10 years old, but today is one of those days. “The Fragile” by Nine Inch Nails is a modern-day masterpiece that sounds as fresh today as it did the day it was released. It’s the most diverse NIN album, featuring breathtaking instrumentals, emotional lyrics, and diverse instrumentation. It’s truly a classic that managed to break into the mainstream while still being a very original album – an event which doesn’t occur often.

I would probably say that I enjoy “The Downward Spiral” and “Still” more than The Fragile, but all three are essentially perfect. If you’ve never listened to it before, the complete album is available to stream on last.fm at this link. (click on the black arrows next to the song name) Give it a try!

Jazz Band

This is the first year that my school has decided to have a guitar in its jazz band, so I “tried out” on Thursday to become a part of it. By “tried out” I mean that I showed up, was the only guitarist there, so got the position by default. I’ve never played jazz on guitar in my life (though a bit on piano), so I’m going to have a lot to learn. Nevertheless if the first practice was any indication, we’re not going to be playing anything that complicated. It seems that the band director just wants a rhythm guitarist, so I’m not going to be doing much except strumming chords.

Anyway, it’s certainly something cool to be involved with. Regardless of how the year goes, I’m sure I’ll learn quite a bit from being in it. However, I have to say that I’m looking forward to Rock Ensemble a lot more – I’ve been talking to the teacher in charge of it and I may get to pick some Phish and Dream Theater songs to do with the group

Spotlight: “Metazoa” (Cormorant)

As I predicted, school is pretty much raping me and the workload is leaving time for little else. As such, I find myself not having any time to write reviews. Which is a shame, since there’s some music that I’m dying to write about. So instead of one of my full, detailed reviews, I’m instead trying something new called a “spotlight”, which as the name implies, is essentially just a shout out to new releases that I’m really digging that I don’t have the time to write a lot about.

The first of these artists is Cormorant, with their full length debut “Metazoa” being released this month. Their music is a highly creative blend of the best that metal has to offer. Though their sound is rooted in melodic death metal, it’s almost unfair to classify them as such, for every song is rich with experimentation. They really aren’t afraid to try anything. The album is simply bursting with creativity, which makes it hard to pinpoint any specific parts to highlight. The whole thing is just really damn good. All of the musicians are very talented, though I have to give extra props to the guitarist, his solos are sometimes just breathtaking.

A paragraph really doesn’t do the band justice, and their music needs to be heard. So give it a listen, support the band if you can, and spread the word.

School (a.k.a hell)

Tuesday marked the beginning of my Junior year of high school. It’s shaping up to be the hardest year of my education by far. The work load is going to be ridiculous – I’m going to burn out in a matter of weeks. June feels so far away…

Basically this means that my time spent on non-school activities is going to be extremely limited. I’ve always tried to blog a couple times a week but I apologize in advance if I don’t always meet this goal. I have no intentions of giving up blogging (especially now with 6,000+ hits), but updates may occasionally be sporadic.

School is becoming quite frustrating due to a number of reasons. The first being is the ridiculous amount of music coming out in the next few months. I’m completely broke right now and will continue to be so for quite some time. There’s literally dozens of releases coming out that I’m trying to get my hands on, and some of them look like the could be amazing. I’ll definitely try and review the ones that are particularly noteworthy. The flood of new releases starts next week and will last well into November. Unfortunately school is going to making it hard to keep up with all of this new music, but I’ll do my best.

And the most important reason school is so frustrating is the amount of musical projects I have at least in the developing stage. Lifting Shadows may have found a drummer (yet again), but it’s not definite so I can’t post anything right now (I will as soon as I can). My still-unnamed black metal project is in the recording phase, and I have some very cool ideas bouncing around in my head for Static Light (ambient-techno and space-prog? why not?).

Concert: Between the Buried and Me (9/5)

Yesterday Patrick and I drove up to Hartford to go to the Between the Buried and Me show in Hartford, CT. While I had been to the venue that they were playing at before (Webster Theater), I had only been at the main stage, and BTBAM was playing the “underground” stage. It was mad small, maybe 20 feet across and 50-75 feet back. At most there could have only been a couple hundred people inside and there was almost no separation between the stage and the crowd. Needless to say, it was a pretty intimate setting.

Though there had been no opening act scheduled, a local band called “Beneath the Gallows” played for about 25 minutes before BTBAM. I have to say, I thought they were absolutely wretched. It was hopelessly generic deathcore with at least 3 boring breakdowns each song. A few people seemed to enjoy it, but I know I wasn’t alone in my feelings for them (I overheard the person behind me saying they were “fucking terrible”). Thankfully the aural torture didn’t last too long.

A little while after the opening act left the stage, I noticed someone pushing up through the crowd next to me. Much to my surprise, it was none other than Dustie of BTBAM. Apparently there was no backstage, and they had to go through the crowd to get up to the stage. Tommy followed soon behind him. While I didn’t get all fanboy-ish on them, I couldn’t help but think to myself “OMFG they just walked right past me”. Unfortunately there was some technical difficulties onstage involving the bass, but before long the show began…

…and it was pretty intense. The set started with “All Bodies” and “Selkies”, my two favorite songs from Alaska which worked well in opening the show. I was afraid that some of the crowd wouldn’t appreciate the softer parts of their songs (like the beautiful jazzy solos of Selkies), but I was thankfully proven wrong and I didn’t notice anyone being too annoying or distracting during these parts. After the two Alaska songs, the band played two songs from their upcoming album, “The Great Misdirect”. The first one, “Obfuscation”, seemed like a solid BTBAM song but it was really the second one that stood out. “Disease, Injury, Madness” is a kickass song that covers a lot of ground, mixing in atmospheric sections and blues solos/riffing into the BTBAM sound. It was definitely the highlight of the night for me, and I can’t wait to hear it on record.

The rest of the night was devoted to Colors, which I’m sure there was no complaints about due to the mind-blowing nature of the whole album. Foam Born is nothing short of epic live and Sun of Nothing was fun too. They ended with “White Walls”, which is my favorite part of Colors. Ultimately, I had no complaints with the setlist or the performance.

The crowd was fairly rough where I was (edge of the mosh pit, left side of the stage), but nothing I couldn’t deal with. The crowd would surge forward whenever Tommy stood on the edge of the stage, which was quite often. At one point he even stage-dived, which I thought was pretty cool. Unfortunately the venue was boiling hot. Since I didn’t get anything to drink the whole time I was inside, I was almost ready to pass out by the end of the show. Despite that, I waited a bit after the show to shake hands with Paul (the lead guitarist), which was cool. All in all it was a fun night, marred only by the disgraceful opening act.

I definitely recommend seeing Between the Buried and Me on this tour, at the very least to get a glimpse of the upcoming album.

Updates

Hey September, what’s up? Luckily for me, I don’t start school for another week so I’m trying to enjoy the last few days of summer as best as I can. First of all I would like to sincerely thank everyone who has given my solo album a listen. Judging from download counters, it would seem that at least a few people have. I know it’s flawed, but I’m definitely proud of recording, producing, and releasing an album (almost) entirely by myself (the almost refers to Charlie, who definitely provided invaluable help on more than a few occasions). Please leave me any feedback you may have, so I can improve my work in the future.

I haven’t blogged about any Lifting Shadows practices recently because, well, there hasn’t been any. Patrick and I decided in early summer to stop practicing with Taylor because it wasn’t working out (mostly due to the large distance we had to travel to practice and also due to personal reasons). We tried out a local drummer in late July, and while I certainly found him to be a good guy neither Patrick nor I felt that he fit in the band. So for most of the summer the project has been in limbo. I’ve been writing some great stuff and neither of us have given up on the band, but there’s also not any other options for a drummer at the moment, meaning it may be some time before we can hope at playing any sort of shows.

I’ve been blogging off and on for the past year on a black metal project and its finally come to fruition as last weekend Patrick and I started recording the first song. I have high hopes for the still unnamed project, as we have written some pretty killer riffs. Only a couple songs have been finished, but we definitely have the motivation to write more.

Lastly, I’ve been thinking about the future of my solo project Static Light. The early feedback I’ve received has been that the piano interludes and the quieter songs (I Lost the Sky, Dusk) are the best parts of the album. In the future, I think I would like to explore that sound further and delve into more classical-influenced compositions as well as ambient pieces, though short-term I’m going to take a break from the project. Probably not a long one, but at least a month or two so that when I start working on it again I’m recharged, so to speak.

Oh, and I would just like to mention that there’s an absolute flood of new releases coming out this month and next. I’ll definitely review some of them. It’s an exciting time to be a music fan, for sure

Sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to get all of my thoughts out there. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since getting seriously involved with music is that there’s no way to predict what’s going to end up happening, so I’m excited to see what’s to come.