Posts Tagged heavy metal music

Telepathic Review of The New Trivium Album “In Waves”

Remove all tight fitting clothing. Find a cool and comfortable place to sit down where you will not be disturbed.  Relax.  Try to block out all thoughts that are running through your mind.  Breathe.  Make yourself an entirely empty vessel, like a glass that has not been filled.  Relax.  Breathe.   I am going to count backwards from 10 and when I reach 1 you will begin to hear my review of the new Trivium album.

10…9…8….7…6…….5……….4……….3………..2………..1

I will now transmit my review directly into your mind…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

, , , , , , , , ,

6 Comments

83-Year-Old Ida Mae Thrasher Reviews In Solitude “The World, The Flesh, The Devil”

The new In Solitude album “The World. The Flesh. The Devil.” is simply remarkable.  Since I first heard it, I have been on nearly a non-stop In Solitude binge.  I’ve listened to it from beginning to end somewhere in the neighborhood of five times a day.  Whether I’m vacuuming, making dinner, or putting all of my issues of Boys’ Life magazine in alphabetical order, the album has been my constant companion.  I had a plan to review it, but I feel like I have lost all degree of journalistic objectivity.  The only way to truly get a fair assessment of this album is to turn it over to a stranger and see what they think.

This was not a simple task.  I live in the American South and, for the most part, strangers are to be feared.  I spent all day Thursday walking around the North Dekalb Mall in Atlanta asking people to sit with me for an hour listen to the record and answer some questions but was refused over and over again.  I even had a woman threaten to get her husband and have him “give me a beating”.  Six hours of rejection and nothing to show for it.  I needed a new plan.

Friday, I went to the park near the local Senior Center.  I immediately descended on a seemingly good natured woman sitting on a park bench who looked like she needed company and, more importantly, seemed like she’d have difficulty getting away quickly.  I spent 10 minutes talking to her about her life and her allergy to penicillin.  Her name was Ida Mae Thrasher.  It was too perfect!  This had to be the one!  I made the offer, but this time I had figured out how to seal the deal.  I offered her a 50-dollar gift card to the local Rite Aid.  All she had to do was listen to the album and answer my questions.  She tentatively agreed to do it and I quickly slapped a pair of headphones on her.

Our conversation after listening to the album went like this:

Keith:  Well…what did you think?

Ida Mae:  It was…..ummmmmmmm…..it was good.

Keith:  Good???  Okay.  Can you be more specific?

Ida Mae:  It was very good.

Keith:  Ida, can you please give me something with a little more detail?  I’m trying to write an article here.

Ida Mae:  Well, I liked the first song.

Keith:  If you want the gift card, you are going to have to give me something more to work with.

Ida Mae:  Well, it was kind of….well….loud.

Keith:  Do you mean the volume?  I could have turned it down.

Ida Mae:  No, it was just….you know….loud.

Keith: (sounding somewhat offended) Listen Ida, loud is a term that applies to volume. Loud is not a valid description.  It tells me nothing.  Tell me something about the amazing guitar solos, tell me something about the raw production style, tell me that you like the interplay between the drummer and bassist, tell me you appreciate that they have taken early 80s sounding British metal and put a fresh and unique spin on it.  What the heck does “it was loud” tell me!?!?!?! 

Ida Mae:  (appearing nervous)It was fine.

Keith:  Okay, maybe I need to be more specific.  Did I remind you more of early Paul Di’Anno era Iron Maiden or Mercyful Fate?

Ida Mae:  Yes.

Keith:  WHICH IS IT?!?!?

Ida Mae:  Both.

Keith:  You are avoiding the question!  I’m seriously starting to question your commitment to heavy metal!!!!!

Ida Mae:  You said I’d get a gift card if I listened to the album and answered your questions.  Well, I did both.  Please give me my Rite Aid gift card and just leave me alone.

Keith:  There is no gift card!  Not for you.  Not with answers like that.  You just totally wasted my time.

Ida Mae:  HELP!!!  Someone get this maniac away from me!!!!!!!!!  HELP!!!!!!!!!!

I had a lot of time to reflect on things while I was waiting for my wife to arrange bail.  This experience taught me a lot.  Some people just aren’t in a position to appreciate great music.  I’m just going to have to live with the fact that the Ida Maes of the world will have to live their lives shrouded in a veil of musical ignorance.  That doesn’t mean you have to.   Buy as many copies as you can of “The World, The Flesh, The Devil”.   Quit your job and do nothing but listen to it.  Make your kids memorize the lyrics and if they don’t, refuse to let them watch television and send them to their rooms without dinner.  It is really that good.

Check out Serpents Are Rising from “The World. The Flesh. The Devil.” here.  The song is 160 percent amazing!

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

4 Comments

Metamorphosis on Main Street: A Psychological Review of Graveyard’s “Hisingen Blues”

I started off trying to review Graveyard’s new album Hisingen Blues.  Things were going really well.  I had a neat little intro where I talked about their 70’s retro sound and compared them to a few bands.  There was a cool section where I discussed the driving intensity of their sound and compared them to a freight train.  It was going really well.  All that is gone now.  All that is left is chaos, despair and panic.  I’m sitting in my car in the parking lot of a Burger King fast food.  It’s 4:47 in the morning.  How did I get here?

I was writing the review at the kitchen table.  My wife and kids were playing in the other room.  In the distance, I heard the vaguely menacing sounds of Dora The Explorer.  My ears were much more attuned to magniloquent sounds of the song Hisingen Blues by Graveyard.  I’d listened to the album a few times, but kept coming back to the title track.  “WHERE IS THE FUTURE?!?!?!?!”

I was grooving to the song.  I closed my eyes.  The next thing I knew my wife was screaming.  “WHAT ARE YOU!?!!?!??!?!?  GET OUT OF HERE!!?!?!?!”

I tried to say “Honey, it’s just me.  Why are you screaming?”  But it came out “Kjqgjgnqrwlkgnjwqrngljnwrjlgnlg?”.  I sounded like the creature in the Predator movies when it tried to talk.  What was happening?

My wife picked up a broom and started hitting me.  “Stop it!” (“Njndgjlqwrnlgkn!”) The sounds that came out of me only made her more frightened.  I ran upstairs.  Suddenly, I started thinking about our cat.  I have to eat the cat.  I have to eat the cat.  I sprinted around the bedroom looking for the cat.  I thought of how good the cat would taste.  I have to eat the cat.  “WHERE IS THE FUTURE!?” echoed in my minds ear.  I need to eat the cat.  It would be so delicious.  I have to eat the cat. I looked under the bed, I looked in the shower.  I looked in the closet on my wife’s red sweater where it likes to sleep. All at once it occurred to me that we don’t have a cat.

I looked into the mirror.  What looked back at me was horrifying.  Green neck, green skin, pointy nose, scales.  I was…..a lizard!!!!!!!  Dear God….A LIZARD!!!!!!  I ran downstairs to try to explain it to my wife.  She had both of the kids in her arms and she was screaming into her cell phone.  “SDGASFHAFSHERJJET!” I pleaded.

“Get away you…..BEAST!  What have you done with my husband????”

My children’s eyes were filled with confusion.  I was not daddy anymore.  I was some “thing” that they could not possibly understand.  Some “thing” they conjured up in a nightmare, but not daddy.  “WHERE IS THE FUTURE!?!!?!!” My wife’s eyes gleamed with hate and fear.  I was a stranger to them.

I grabbed my keys and ran out of the front door towards my car.  Our neighbor was blissfully jogging up the street with her headphones on.  At first, she did not notice me.  All at once her face grew pale.  She turned and sprinted away from me.  I leaped in my car.  Could I even drive?  Could I get the key in the ignition?  My lizard fingers clumsily pushed the key in and I was off to somewhere.  But where?

Most of the last nine hours has been about staying alive.  I have cat scratch marks all over me that I cannot explain.  I feel the empty exhaustion of a sleepless night.  I don’t remember much of what has happened, but I am here.  Soon, the sun will rise.  I have to stay safe.  There is no room for my kind on the street.  Not among the animals.  Not in the daylight.

And what of my condition?  How did I end up here? Something in the song brought me to this place.  I have become the poetry of doom and horror.  Something in the song turned me into this creature.  Something inside of me, both wretched and righteous, has escaped and become my form.  “WHERE IS THE FUTURE?!?!?!”  I am no longer what you would call human.  I wear alienation as my skin.  As the moments recede backwards into the night my fate stands before me.  I am lost.

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

6 Comments

Op-Ed Response to the Sarah Palin Oystergate Scandal

If you want to find out what started this whole mess, here’s a link to the original article.

Get more coverage of  Sarah Palin and Oystergate on Facebook or Twitter


There have been many scathing editorials written throughout America on the Sarah Palin Oystergate Scandal.  This recent item was a column that appeared in this morning’s Fort Worth Examiner. Jonathan Winthrop, who is referred to in his bio as a “true, red blooded patriot”, writes a weekly column for the paper called “America:  Love It or Leave It or Don’t”.

Even Bloodier Libel

By Jonathan Winthrop

If there’s one thing Americans have had enough of its Sarah Palin bashing.  First, the liberal media machine said she was not “intellectual” enough to join their little club.  Next, they said her words were causing deranged loners to turn violent.  Now, they are saying that she hates Swedes.  By the end of the year, they’ll be accusing her of the Kennedy assassination, breaking into the Watergate Hotel and turning Jeffery Dahmer into a cannibal.  It is interesting that every time that Kenyan in the White House has his poll numbers drop or has to go to the sentencing of one of his former Chicago cronies, Sarah Palin says something that gets herself in trouble.  If one looks closely, it starts to become obvious that the Obama administration, along with the wealthy Hungarian-American George Soros, are behind this latest round of Sarah bashing.  Sound crazy?  Let’s look at the facts.

First of all, lets clear up the comments made by Palin.  We need to face the uncomfortable fact that much of what Palin said is true.  Unless they started having elections recently without me noticing, Sweden is a socialist country.  Tax rates for the average Swede are right around 99.3 percent.  According to several studies, the average Swede works two and a half hours a week.  Yet, for less than 12 hours of work a month, Swedes have full health care, a chauffeured limousine ride once a week to the local “free store” and are given up to four massages a month.  And who pays for all these perks? Why the taxpayer, of course!

From a young age, Swedes are taught not to work.  The most commonly used Civics Textbook in Swedish classrooms is a malignant piece of socialist propaganda called “Why Work…The Government Will Pay You Anyway”.  The crime rate among Swedish teens is appalling.  By the age of 15, 1 in 2 Swedes has committed a violent crime, stolen a car or missed more than 10 days of school in a year.  Most young Swedes wile away their time hanging out with friends or listening to violent so-called “heavy metal music” or surfing on the Internet in these things they like to call “chat rooms”.  Their government sponsored schools and socialist parents are getting them ready for a life of reading Lenin, taking government handouts and mugging senior citizens all while the US tax payer foots the bill.  In this context, Palin’s point makes a good deal of sense.  Do we want our young men and women forsaking their commitment to truth, justice and the American way and becoming like young Swedes? I, for one, do not.

Much of the rest of the story includes your usual cast of characters.  Wildly inaccurate MSNBC stories, articles written by deranged (George Soros sponsored) bloggers and money hungry former employees and their fictitious accounts of anti-Swedish tirades by the Palin family.  All the while, the Obama administration skillfully manipulates the media into anti-Sarah commentary and Swede-baiting.  It is not a coincidence that several of the states with large Swedish-American populations were toss-up states during the 2008 election.  Minnesota, Wisconsin and Indiana could all sway the 2012 election in favor of Obama.  The Obama administration, a ruthless organization of Chicago pols bent on forcing all working people to their knees at the altar of Godless Islamic Communism, is again playing puppet master, pulling the strings of the media in order to force good people to believe bad things.

Before we join in with the legions of torch carrying former 60’s love children eager to step on the throats of hard working Americans with their collective Birkenstocks, let’s remember the lessons of 9/11.  The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.  The price of eternal vigilance is abiding loyalty.  The price of abiding loyalty is everlasting devotion. Let us never forget the dream our forefathers struggled and died for.  Let us never forget the price some have paid and others may pay and still others haven’t paid.  We must defend freedom!  We must defend liberty!  We must defend Sarah!

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

6 Comments