Tuesday, December 06 2005, 2:42 AM

Last week, Mike sent me a link to a cool music service called Pandora. It kind of scared me at first, because the email that was sent was one of those generic "Tell a friend" kind of emails, and didn't have anything mentioning that he sent it. The email said something about someone creating a stream called "Iron Maiden Radio", and I happened to be listening to Iron Maiden at the time. I was creeped out, and was partially worried that my workstation was compromised somehow. I talked to Mike the next day, and I was happy to learn that he sent it.

Anyways, what makes this thing so cool is that it can provide you with a bunch of music you may like based upon an artist or song that you enter when you load the page. Entering the artist/song creates a "station" of music that shares similar characteristics to the artist/song you entered. Each artist/song is classified based upon characteristics of the music, and the recommended songs are chosen based upon similarities to those characteristics. For instance, in my "Nevermore" radio station, I was presented the song "Unholy Confessions" by Avenged Sevenfold (which is actually a band I've been wanting to check out), "because it features hard rock roots, a subtle use of paired vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, varying tempo and time signatures, and demanding instrumental part writing."

You have the ability to tailor each "station" by providing feedback on each song that's played, so in theory, you can avoid stuff you won't like. It will only allow you to skip over a certain number of songs per hour, and you have no way to choose exactly what bands you want to hear, but that's part of the whole "station" scenario. It's kinda like radio, but it's much more focused on what you want to hear.

It's a very cool concept, and I'll probably use it a lot more in the future. Right now the Flash client that they run on your machine is not efficient at all, and totally makes my browser crawl. Hopefully it'll get better.

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Monday, April 18 2005, 12:05 AM

Shit, I meant to write up this post like two weeks ago, but Galeon ate it about 2 minutes before I was done writing it up, so I just said "screw it" and went to bed instead of typing it all up again. I guess I forgot to retype it. Well, here it is.

This summer looks as though it will be sweet for concerts. Ozzfest has a lineup that I definitely want to check out. Iron Maiden, Shadows Fall, Mastodon, and Black Label Society will be there, along with a few other bands that I want to see. I've never been to Ozzfest before, so it should be interesting. Dave Mustaine of Megadeth is putting together a similar show this year called "Gigantour", and its lineup excites me even more than the Ozzfest lineup. Dream Theater and Fear Factory will appear with Megadeth, which means 3 of my favorite bands will all be present in one place. It should be quite awesome.

I recently picked up a few albums that are worth mentioning. I grabbed "The Art of Balance" and "Of One Blood" by Shadows Fall. They're both really good, but the production quality on "Of One Blood" is a bit worse than "The Art of Balance." You can tell they hadn't hit it big yet. The good thing is that the songs have been better and better as the band matures. Lots of bands tend to lose their creative spark after a few good albums, but, thankfully, Shadows Fall doesn't seem to have done that. They've done nothing but get better. They give me faith that good metal isn't an art that has been lost upon my generation.

The other two albums I picked up were "Hatebreeder" and "Hatecrew Deathroll" by Children of Bodom. Their vocals still suck pretty bad, but they still seem to mix the albums so they're not as prominent as they could be, which is good. They're both sweet albums musically, with tons of energy and some crazy solos. The latter album is better in my opinion, but the former jams too. COB also is following the pattern of improving with each album released, so I can hope that the best is yet to come.

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Wednesday, November 26 2003, 1:09 AM

Got a few disjoint musical notes here. Most people won't give two shits about this stuff, but its my site, live with it. First, I went out and bought the single for the new Iced Earth album tonight. It's pretty cool, but nothing extraordinary. I do believe they're holding out the extraordinary stuff for the release of the real album - "The Glorious Burden" - so I'm not all that disappointed. There are four songs on the disc, with two typical Iced Earth metal-fests, and two slower songs, one of which is completely unplugged. I really wouldn't think of IE making an unplugged tune, but this is more of a ballad-y tune, so it's cool. This is the first material I've heard with the new vocalist Tim "Ripper" Owens, formerly of Judas Priest. He's not the same vocalist that Matt Barlow was, but he does add a lot of flavor to the songs. Speaking of Matt, he hasn't completely severed his ties with the band - he sings backing vocals on some of the songs on the single. Even though he's off doing his part for our country, it would be cool for him to get back in the studio with IE and have both vocalists rip on a few tracks.

I also picked up an Iron Maiden disc tonight when I got the IE single. I picked up their official greatest hits disc - "Edward The Great". After seeing them in concert this summer and enjoying it, I figured I should pick up some of their stuff. This seemed like a good place to start. I recognize a bunch of the tunes from the concert this summer. Great stuff. They aren't total metal like I'm used to hearing in bands like Metallica, Anthrax, or Slayer, but it's very easy to see how they paved the way for the next generation of metal bands. I'll be picking up more Maiden albums soon.

I read something today that kinda suprised me, and I was pretty pumped about it. About two years ago, one of my favorite bands at the time, Fear Factory, broke up. I was bummed. Well, I just read that they're back together sans guitarist Dino Cazares. I'm hopeful that it will be cool, but Dino was the princpal songwriter for all of their past stuff, so who knows.

I also read a blurb quoting Dimebag Darrel as saying that Pantera was officially done as a band. I guess it really isn't current news, but I hadn't heard it. For better or for worse, Pantera wrote some pretty sweet songs, and I own all of their albums except the last one, and they're all good. They got a little too "GRRR I'M TOUGHER THAN YOU!" in the last couple discs, but the music was still badass. I gues s Dime and Vinny Paul are going on with another band, so perhaps the sweet musical end of Pantera will live on without the raw testosterone that Phil brought to to the band.

Wow, just read another article about Anthrax... apparently they're going to record an in-studio live album consisting of 12 of their old Belladonna era tunes, and they're letting the fans vote for which tunes to use! That is totally cool, because John Bush is like 6.02e23 times better than Joey Belladonna. Vote here.

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Saturday, August 09 2003, 2:29 PM

Jon and I checked this show out kind of on a whim... I saw a link on my bank's webpage when I was doing some bills that said free tickets, so I checked it out, and lo and behold, there was Iron Maiden. I had never really listened to them, but Jon has, and pretty much every good metal band considers Maiden one of their bigger influences, so I was definitely up for going. We took our time in getting there, since Motorhead and Dio were opening for them. We had no desire to see Motorhead or Dio, but we got there in time to catch Dio's last 2-3 songs. They were ok, nothing special.

The set change for Iron Maiden took a while, but it was worth it. Their stage setup was really cool. They had a ramp going all around the stage, and it kind of enclosed the stage and made it look like an arena of some sort. Their set was pretty good, but it would have been a lot cooler if I knew some of the songs. I was just kinda taking in the vibe and enjoying the music... I tell ya, if you can make an award for best guitar harmonies, Iron Maiden would win it hands down. Pretty much every one of their songs has an extended harmonized lead section (or many), and it was damn sweet to hear them live. It was especially cool since they have 3 full time guitarists... Apparently they started with 2, one quit and another joined, then the first guy rejoined, and they just kept all 3. So they had all sorts of room to play the sweet harmonies without the rhythm end suffering.

Overall it was a pretty good show, but it would have been a lot cooler for me if I knew the material. Grade: B+.

As a side note, Jon and I decided on the way home that every crappy nu-metal band should be locked in a room for like two weeks listening to nothing but Iron Maiden, Old Metallica, Old Megadeth, vintage Slayer, and some Sepultura. That way, some of the better sounds and ideals from the greats of metal might permeate into the newer crap bands, and newer metal might not suck so bad.

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