Festivals!

I just checked the lineup for the Bloodstock Open Air festival in August, and it seems to get more and more brutal every time I look. Bloodstocks usually a pretty low key affair, but at this rate they might actually start selling out Catton Hall. Glad I got my ticket already.

Highlights (for me anyway) so far include:
Arch Enemy
Carcass
Municipal Waste
Saxon
Battlelore
Million Dollar Reload
Apocalyptica
Enslaved
Kreator
The Haunted
Amon Amarth
Gwar
Satyricon
Equilibrium
Moonspell
Turisas

If you look at the complete lineup, you'll see the above list is most of the bands there. There are literally no bands I don't want to see. I fucking love bloodstock. It's also Turisas' only UK show this year, so there's no way I could miss it even if the rest of the lineup was shite.

Download is also looking pretty damn amazing, although looking at the current lineup they should just call it Monsters Of Rock and have done with it. Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, ZZ Top... The crème de la crème of classic rock will be in attendance and it's gonna be brilliant, but there are some modern bands to balance the scale too. Korn, Devildriver, Killswitch Engage, Down, Opeth, Meshuggah, Clutch, Five Finger Death Punch to name a few. Also, amusingly, the massively underrated Anvil. They've been playing top-notch heavy metal since the heyday of Iron Maiden, but for some reason never met with any descent measure of success. Things look set to change this year though with festival appearances, a headlining tour (I think) and a documentary of their failed 2007 European tour in the cinemas that actually seems to be getting some pretty good reviews. I'm surprised to see Architects on the bill, I thought they were going downhill. I saw them a bunch of times supporting Sikth (awesome but now defunct prog metal band) and they were always nice and heavy and put on a good show, but then they got a new vocalist in skinny jeans and a white top 5 sizes to small for him and started using strobe lights and glow sticks at their gigs. That sounds like a depressing recipe for mainstream success, but they also got a whole lot shitter and just dropped off the radar.

Don't even get me started on Wacken. There are so many good bands playing, and they've only announced a fraction of the full lineup. Particularly looking forward to Korpiklaani, who I missed in London just before Christmas, and having just come from Finland and Denmark I'll be well into the heavy-drinking forest clan folkmetal spirit. Announce Finntroll too and I'll be in heaven.

In other news, my Netbook just arrived and I’m suitably impressed with it so far. Samsung's preinstalled software is surprisingly good with diagnostic, backup and power management utilities and a 90 day subscription to McAffee Security Centre. Of course when that runs out i'll just install AVG, but it's the thought that counts. Tonight I'll dump a load of music and films onto it, and try out some MAME ROMs to see how they handle. If I can play Metal Slug on this thing my flights will breeze by.

I had to go meet up with my ex last night. She just split up with her boyfriend and needed someone to cry on, and as usual this duty fell to me. What's hilarious is why they split. He spends way too much time playing Xbox and World of Warcraft, and she was feeling neglected (high maintenance girl), so she told him to choose between her or playing less WoW. He chose WoW.

Oh, and just to fill you in on her and my history; I had this girlfriend in college (Girl1), and she was amazing. We stayed together for the best part of two years, long after we both left college, and then, predictably, she dumped me. A few months of extreme depression later, I meet a new girl (Girl2, the ex that was crying on me last night) and I attain a vague semblance of happiness again. The sex is great. We went out a lot, me and Girl2, and one time we ran into Girl1. Knowing who she was, Girl2 made a point of making out with me quite vigorously in front of Girl1. A few chance meetings with Girl1 later, and we start talking again. We get along, then on MSN, she admits she still has feelings for me, and links me to her blog (you'll like it better than mine, it has her sexual fantasies about me). So I do something very very stupid, and break up with Girl2 to get back with Girl1. Happy days with the exception of Girl2 you'd think, I'm back with the girl of my dreams, but unfortunately things are never that simple. Me and Girl1 see each other for a while unofficially, then she goes to Uni and I cease to exist. I'm still screwing Girl2, and she's getting increasingly emotional about things, to the point where I can't stand to be around her. I know, I'm a bastard. Times a great healer though, I go to Dubai for a short while, we don't see each other for a bit, she gets a new boyfriend and we've been the best of friends ever since.

First Post... Continued

Right, I mentioned I was working full time at the moment and that I had some adventures planned, so I thought I'd elaborate a little on both.

I work for a small ISP, we mostly serve businesses with Internet and VPN solutions as well as the usual web hosting and email service malarkey and loads of other random crap. I'm 1st/2Nd line technical support, so when something breaks and a customer phones in, I pretty much do everything from answer the phone to fix the bastard. Oh, and i hate my job.

That's work covered, now for the adventure! On the 5Th of June 2009 I will be leaving work for the last time to embark on a summer filled with festivals, traveling and anarchy. First up is the Download festival at the legendary Castle Donnington, then soon after that I'll be flying out to Helsinki, Suomi Finland. From there I start an epic Viking pilgrimage through Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, traveling mostly by train, finishing in North Germany for Wacken Open Air, the largest metal festival in Europe. After the heavy metal onslaught that is Wacken I'll be heading back to English shores for Bloodstock Open Air, a smaller and lesser known but equally brutal metal festival.

When it's all over, after two months of rampaging through Europe in a sonic frenzy of hair and steel, I'll have the best part of a month to catch my breath, so I'll probably need to find some local part-time work to keep myself liquored up. Then I'll be off to university. I have a place at Brighton Uni, studying Digital Media, which covers pretty much everything I do in my spare time (while sober at least) so, combined with standard student antics, should make for an entertaining three years.

I've been working 9 to 5 since I left college almost two years ago, and I've really come to hate it. A lot has happened since then and I've generally become a lot less happy with life due to various reasons; women, terminal illnesses in the family, etc, etc. I'm sick of the monotony of the weekly routine I'm subject to. Monday to Friday i get up, go to work, come home, sit about, sleep, repeat. At the weekends I drink myself under the table by night and sleep by day. I guess it's the same for 90% of the modern world, but I refuse to accept that this is all there is to life. I figured, if you hate something, change it. So I'm shaking things up a bit, quitting my job and going in a completely different direction. Despite everything I'll be doing in the coming months, the thing I'm looking forward to the most is getting out of gainful employment and no longer being a wage slave.

Bring on the Summer. Bring on the sun, booze, bitches, blood and BATTLE METAL!!!