Mondays

In the words of Saint Bob, I don't like Mondays. My reasoning is obvious; I have a whole week of work stretching out into the infinite distance ahead of me, and I'm still hung over from the weekend. Brighton Uni was pretty cool, although I'm not sure whether I want to be doing Digital Media (what I've applied for) or Digital Media Development. They're basically the same course, but DM leans slightly more towards creative and marketing theory aspects, whereas DMD focuses more on the technical side, more advanced programming etc. Either way, it's apparently easy to swap during the first few semesters so I'll see how it goes.

Pretty good night at the Dungeon after Brighton. The Dungeon is a local club, full of metal and industrial types. Ironically, in the interests of saving money I decided I was going to try and not drink that night and deliberately only took enough money to get me home in the small hours of the morning (£3 - night bus is a blessing from Odin himself), but then ended up getting even more drunk than I did last week when I had money with me. This was mostly due to various people taking pity on me and buying me a diverse range of beverages, from Magners to Wet Pussys (a house shooter, no idea what's in it but I'd stay away from any woman who's genitalia tastes like that). The biggest contributor was probably my ex-girlfriend, who bought me four or five different drinks. Of course I was then subject to her sobbing on my shoulder later on in the night, as is her habit, but I considered that a small price to pay for the units of alcohol now playing havoc with my liver.

I've changed my mind about the netbook thing, I reckon I'll go with the Samsung NC10. It's basically the same as the Asus, but looks a little nicer and has longer battery life. It's still freakin’ expensive though, but I reckon I'll dip into my Uni fund to pay for it as I’m sure it'll be useful for lectures and the like.

Also, I did get the new Amon Amarth album, and it is awesome. Still not as fast and visceral as Avenger, but sounds a lot more like the Gothenburg vein of melodic death metal which is also cool. Here's the video of a song off the album, featuring fighting Vikings and bad special effects!

Guardians Of Asgaard ft. LG Petrov

Todays music selection

I listen to a shit load of music, so here are a few snippets of what I've been listening to lately.

I just got hold of a leak of Mastodons new album, Crack the Skye. Haven’t listened to it very much yet, but it's sounding like they've gotten a lot more proggy and a lot less heavy. Leviathan and Blood Mountain were fucking intense, but compared to them this sounds like something by Dream Theater. On the other hand, I'm hearing a lot of complicated guitar fiddlery, which is always welcome, especially from a band as freaky and unpredictable as Mastodon. I've seen them live three or four times, the last time being with Slayer just before Christmas at the Unholy Alliance 3. They didn't seem to have lost their edge at all, but then again they didn't play any new songs either. SPLIT YOUR LUNGS WITH BLOOD AND THUNDER!


Gama Bomb's latest album, Citizen Brain, is everything I love about thrash. Songs about Robocop, zombies and hitting people with hammers never cease to entertain me, especially when they're played with such speed and tongue-in-cheek ferocity by a bunch of Irish maniacs. Gama Bomb are probably my favorite band from the new wave of thrash, second only to Municipal Waste perhaps. And, it turns out; they also put on an equally incendiary live show. They tore London a new one supporting Exodus and Overkill in February, it's just a shame I missed Torture Squad on before them.


Stabwound, from Necrophagists (I think it's pronounced Necro-fay-jist) album Epitaph, came on while my mp3 player was on random a few weeks ago, and I've been listening to that one song over and over ever since. It's so brutally technical in a way that only a classically-influenced death metal band from the land that brought us the likes of Ludwig van Beethoven (A bit of the old ultra-violence, my brothers?) and Johan Sebastian Bach, could achieve. Another particularly excellent song is Fermented Offal Discharge from their other album, Onset of Putrefaction.


Their new album's out already, but for some reason I don't have it yet. Instead I’ve been listening to a lot of Amon Amarths old stuff, and I reckon their album The Avenger is best. Amon Amarth used to play grind core under the name Scum, and only really found their current melodic sound in the mid 90s, hitting peak with this album in 1999 before slowing things down a bit for their latter releases. Compared to those, this album is a much more raw beast, faster and heavier than Fate of Norns and With Odin On Our Side which seemed to take a deeper and almost melancholy turn (as amazing as they are). Viking warriordom seems to be in great demand at the moment, so maybe the new album will regain some of that berserker ferocity; I'll probably pick it up at the weekend.


Also, I’ve been listening to Amorphis, Bloodbath, Vader, Cannibal Corpse, Turisas, Turmion Katilot, 3 Inches of Blood, Korpiklaani, Fintroll, Primordial, Equilibrium, Immortal, Municipal Waste, Exodus, Testament, Saxon, Destruction, Kreator, Suffocation, Zyklon, Lamb of God, Skyclad, Athiest, Dismember, Desecration... And many more, a lot of which are regular listening staples.


And finally, here's a clip of Exodus. You can't really see, but I'm the guy who crowd-surfs over the barrier at 0:57. The bouncer with the retard hair who pulls me over threatened to throw me out if I did it again. I did it again 20 seconds later.