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Saturday, May 17 2008, 9:46 PM

This was a show that I had greatly anticipated for a long time. Opeth and Dream Theater are easily two of my favorite bands, so when I saw them both on the same bill many months ago, I was pretty excited. Both bands put on great live shows as well, so I knew I wouldn't be disappointed. I made the trek down to Detroit with my dad, Jessica, and Mike.

The first band to play was 3. I thought that we'd get there with plenty of time to see the opening bands, but we didn't. We only caught the last part of one of their songs. It sounded pretty good though, from the five minutes or so that we heard. They had a two drummer setup going, and they were seriously beating on the skins. I would have liked to see more of their set, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Grade: N/A

Between the Buried and Me played second. I hadn't really been exposed to them in great depth, and for some reason I had the impression that they were going to be another dripping-with-testosterone type band (like Throwdown or Bury Your Dead), but I was pleasantly surprised that they weren't. They do have the crappy barking vocals that is typical for a hardcore/metalcore band, but their music is way more complex. These guys can flat out play, and they pull a ton of different musical styles into their sound. It makes for a pretty cool experience. They only had a half hour so on stage, and they played all of two distinct songs. They wasted no time with blathering between songs either... they pretty much stopped only to announce the name of the second song and get a drink of water, then started playing again. They definitely merited further attention, which is why I bought three of their CDs yesterday. Grade: A

Opeth is the band that I looked forward to seeing the most out of the four. I've only seen them once before (compared to Jessica's ten[!]), and that was an abbreviated set at last year's Gigantour, where they were only able to play four songs. They ended up getting around an hour on stage this time around, and were able to play six songs - Master's Apprentices, In My Time of Need, Baying of the Hounds, Heir Apparent, Wreath, and The Drapery Falls. They had a pretty good sampling of songs from their newer albums, but none from the older four albums, which kind of disappoints me. "Still Life" and "My Arms, Your Hearse" are my favorite albums of theirs, and with two shows under my belt, I've yet to see them play any songs from those albums live. Oh well... there's always next time! Mikael Akerfeldt does a pretty good job of making the breaks between songs interesting as well. He's always got something funny to say, and it's pretty obvious to me that he genuinely enjoys putting on a show for the crowd. Grade: A

Dream Theater closed out the show in the way that only they can - with authority. This was the fourth time that my dad and I saw Dream Theater together, and they've never once disappointed. I've blathered on and on about how good they are in previous posts about them, so I'll try to save it this time around. This was the first time, however, that I saw them without having heard their most recent release. Their previous release ("Octavarium"), seemed kind of tired to me, and didn't really grab my interest much at all. Because of that, I didn't run out and grab their newest ("Systematic Chaos") when it came out last year. I probably should have grabbed it sooner. They played a few tunes from it, and they were pretty good. They opened the set with an instrumental passage from one of those songs, and I was really digging it. Their set list was expansive, and pretty typical for the shows I've seen. They played a good sampling from their albums, and played most of the first act from "Scenes from a Memory". They didn't play "Home," which kind of pissed me off since it is one of my favorite songs of theirs, but hey, you can't win 'em all.

One neat thing they did for this tour was turning something that is typically incredibly lame into something totally awesome. Jordan Rudess (the keyboardist) played a key-tar. Yep, the dreaded 80's pop instrument. In this case though, it was sweet because it gave him the opportunity to step out from behind is mammoth keyboard rig and get up close and personal with the fans like the other band members get to do. He mostly used it in extended "improvised" musical passages that break out of their normal song structures, and used his mobility to add a more visual flare to the frequent traded/harmonized leads that he does with John Petrucci in so many of their songs. I laughed when I first saw it, but it really did add a pretty cool element to their performance, which was already top notch.

The only downer in the show was that they played one of their new songs (I think - I didn't recognize it) for far too long, and it totally slowed their momentum. It was a slow piece of music, and it seemed to go on FOR EVER. Otherwise, they were phenomenal as always. Grade: A

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Tuesday, July 18 2006, 2:41 AM

This show was billed a bit lower on my list of concerts to see this year because there was only one awesome band on the bill instead of many, but since Shadows Fall is one of my favorite bands, I wasn't about to miss it. Jon made the trip up from Cincinnati for the weekend in order to see the show as well. It's kinda sad too. Jon and his wife are moving to Arizona within the next month, so this is probably the last concert I'll see with him for a looong time. This was also a first in that we went to a show at Harpos and arrived on time, and saw every band that played. Most of the time we show up fashionably late, miss a couple of the opening bands, and enjoy the higher quality bands later on. Well, we saw all six bands that played, for better or worse.

We also lost significant amounts of water through perspiration. It was over 90 degrees outside when we got there, and it was at least 20 degrees hotter inside. It was hotter than a snakes ass in a wagon rut. Combine 100+ degrees of heat plus a bunch of sweaty metalheads, and you get a recipie for a lot of stink. It was the only time I can think of where I can safely say that the shirtless sweaty mosh pit guys were the intelligent ones. They at least allowed their bodies to excise body heat in a more efficient fashion.

The first band was a local band tacked on before the bands on the bill, and I didn't catch their name. I think it was something involving the word Cold, but I didn't hear it clearly. They were solid and did what they did pretty well, although they could totally benefit from a second guitarist to lay down some leads. Their guitarist had some good rhythim chops, but their sound would have been bolstered with another guitarist. I can't say much though - I'm not up there playing. Grade: B-

The first of the billed bands was Still Remains. Interestingly enough, they're based out of Grand Rapids, and perhaps because of that, they seemed to have a pretty good following. It seems well earned too. They jammed. They only had 20-30 minutes of stage time, and they crammed it full... full of three songs. Totally my type of music. They sport dual guitars and a keyboardist, so they have all sorts of room for melody on top of the rhythm. I checked out their page on myspace, and I'm equally impressed with the recorded versions. I'll definitely be on the lookout for their stuff the next time I make a CD run. Grade: B+

The next band up was Bury Your Dead. Ugh. I totally could have done without these guys. I can't say they were totally horrible as far as bands go, but they were 100% not my style. They were serious testosterone-heads, like what you would get if you took Vinnie Paul, Dimebag, and Rex ouf of Pantera during the Far Beyond Driven years, and replaced them with three apes banging on things. All you'd have left is Phil Anselmo with some primates, and Bury Your Dead wasn't much different than that. Their entire catalog seemed to exist on the bottom two heavily down-tuned strings of their instruments, and that's not a good thing. You seriously could have cut the top four strings off each guitar, and the top two off the bass, and there would have been absolutely no difference. They also thought it was pretty cool to spin their guitars around their bodies in unison, hula-hoop-over-one-shoulder style, and it got really old. They did it at least three times per song. If they spent as much time writing songs as they did practicing their guitar-a-hooping, they would be much better. Grade: D+

Next up was Darkest Hour. They were also really good, and deserve a follow-up. Jon and I were both pretty down after Bury Your Dead, so it was good that Darkest Hour saved the day. I don't know if they mandated it, but there was some seriously out-of-place music being played before their set. We heard some Billy Ocean, along with bunch of lame 80's pop stuff that sounds like it came from the Top Gun soundtrack... at a metal show. WTF. Even though we were being inundated with lame music, we happened to see Darkest Hour's lead guitarst warming up, and we knew they wouldn't suck. The man was ripping off a serious solo in that warmup, and he did the same during their set, along with much more total awesomeness. I don't know if I liked them as much as I liked Still Remains, but they're close. Grade: B+

Poison The Well closed out the opening bands. Their set marked a first in my concert viewing experience. I've seen a lot of bands that I've never heard of before. Some I've liked, some I've hated, some I could tolerate, etc. With every other band I've seen, I've been able to key in on whether I like the band or not within a few songs. With Poison The Well, this was not the case. Starting with their first song, and ending with their last, I was completely confused. I couldn't latch on to anything in their music, good or bad. I watched them play, and what I saw indicated that they were skilled players, and what I was hearing should have been good as well, but it wasn't. I stood in a stupor for the whole time they played, and it didn't break until they left the stage. Jon has a strong musical background, and he was actually somewhat angry after hearing them play. He said they were breaking most of the 'rules' that define what makes music good, such as sticking to key signatures, time signatures, and other things. There are ways that you can alternate between key and time signatures, but they still typically follow some standard patterns, because those patterns sound good. These guys sounded like they were just stringing random riffs and song segments together, with no musical 'glue' to properly string them together. What is even more mind boggling to me is that a good portion of the crowd knew the songs, and was singing along word for word. It made me feel as though I was missing something, even though I'm fairly confident I didn't miss much of anything. Grade: F

Shadows Fall closed out the show, and they kicked ass. Their sound is huge on CD, and it's just as huge on stage. They played a somewhat abbreviated set, which was somewhat disappointing, but every song they played was sweet, and they totally nailed them. The show further solidfied my belief that Shadows Fall is one of the most talented in the newer wave of bands in metal, and that they'll be a driving force for a long time. There's absolutely no weakness in their lineup. Every member is grade A, top notch. The highlight of their set for both Jon and I was "A Fire in Babylon." That song is a total jam, and easily one of my favorite SF songs.

Another neat thing is that we got to see Brian Fair's legendary dredlocks. I can't say I've ever been a fan of dreds, but those things were intense. He appears to be around six feet tall, and his dreds hang down to mid-calf at least. It must have taken years and years to grow dreds that long. What's even crazier is that he headbangs with them when he's not singing. There has to be some coordination with the other guys on the stage, because his dreds clear a circle with a 10-foot diameter when he headbangs. They could easily knock an instrument out of someones hands - no joke.

I can't say that their show was top-notch because it was so short, only around 50-60 minutes, but what they did pack in there was awesome. Grade: A

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Monday, July 10 2006, 12:56 PM

I guess it's just not my year for concerts. First off I have to ask - who starts a concert, which lies squarely in downtown Detroit, at 5:30 PM? I've only once heard of a concert starting before 7 PM on a weekday, and that was Gigantour last year. They had to start early though, as they had 10 bands that had to play, and had Pine Knob's 11PM outdoor-concerts-must-stop policy to contend with. This show, however, did not. Since the show started so early, we completely missed the two openers - Some band I don't know, and Children of Bodom. It sucks that we missed CoB, but I've seen them twice before, so I know what they're like. The other bands I've only seen once at most.

We arrived just in time for Mastodon. I saw them once before at the last Slayer show I attended, and at that point I didn't know any of their stuff. I was well prepared this time. They played a bunch of good songs, and a couple new ones off their new album, "Blood Mountain," which comes out sometime later in the summer. As much as I like their music, I think that the transition to live music isn't always the best for them. Their sound is naturally very thick, raw, and unproduced, and when that's combined with high volume and less-than-optimal acoustics, it just kinda turns into a droning noise that really makes it hard to pick out the subtle nuances that make their sound so unique. I still dig the show they put on though. They're a supremely talented band with a bright future. Grade: A-

Lamb of God was up next. This was the only band in the lineup that I hadn't seen before, so I was hoping for a good show. They didn't disappoint. They played pretty much every song I would have liked to hear. One thing I noticed is that they played noticbly slower than the recorded versions of their songs. It just could be that they wanted to introduce another element of heavyness to spur on the moshers down on the floor - who knows. In any case, they put on a great show with a lot of energy. Good times. Grade A-

Slayer closed out the bill, and were another small source of disappointment in the show. They played a good number of their 'classics,' but they just didn't really seem into the show. They just went through the motions from my perspective, and I could have sworn that I heard a few miscues in a couple songs. Not exactly something you'd expect from a band that's been around as long as they have. One possible source of their lack of enthusiasm very well might have been the crowd itself. We all made the observation that the crowd in general was much more enthusiastic for Lamb of God. A good portion of people were just standing around while Slayer was on stage, and I actually saw a few people sleeping towards the end of the show. Well, they may have been passed out drunk too, who knows. Not everyone shares my no-drinking-at-concerts sentiments. In any case, Slayer wasn't looking great, and neither was the crowd. This may have contributed to something I've only seen once or twice in all of the concerts I've been to - the headlining band not coming out for an encore. I guess I can understand, but it's rather disappointing. Grade: B-

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Sunday, April 23 2006, 1:59 PM

Last night I checked out Chimaira, Arch Enemy, God Forbid, and Hate Eternal down in the eternal shithole known as Harpos in Detroit. This concert marked a few firsts for me. Foremost, it's the first concert I've ever gone to alone. Why you ask? Because all the other people that said they would go bitched out. I wasn't about to miss the show though. The second is that this was the first time I've brought earplugs to a show. I didn't use them for the whole show, because they were crappy industrial type earplugs that muck up the sound completely, as opposed to other earplugs that I've heard of that let all of the sound through relatively undisturbed, albeit at a much lower volume.

Hate Eternal was the first of the "known" bands on the stage. I'd never heard of them before, and frankly, I wouldn't have been worse off if I hadn't seen them. Each of the guys in the band seemed talented, but for me at least, it didn't seem to add up to something good. To me, it just sounded like a wall of noise, and hence, I had the earplugs in for most (if not all) of their set. If I were to guess, I think this is the kind of music that metal-haters cite when they say that all metal is just neanderthal and barbaric in nature. I give them credit for being solid on their instruments, but not much more than that. Grade: C-

God Forbid was the next group up. I have to say that God Forbid was the first metal band I've ever seen where the non-caucasians outnumbered the stereotypical metal white guys. It's good to see that metal is reaching out and touching more people. It's also good to hear a band that rocks, and these guys most certainly did that. Their singer was a screamer, but he was counterbalanced by the two guitarists, which did some sweet harmonized backing vocals. It's always good to have throw that change-up to keep things fresh. The music was very heavy and had a serious groove. Each of the guitarsts have serious skills, and ripped off tons of solos each. There were also plenty of times where they met in the middle of the stage and played extended harmonized leads, which are always totally sweet. All in all, I'd give these guys two thumbs up, and would definitely check them out again. Grade: B+

Arch Enemy was up next. I've heard of them many times before, but haven't really taken the plunge and listened to them all that much. Well, I will be checking them out further, because they were awesome. More killer guitar work, to say the least. Lots of sweet riffs and hard driving rhythms. Tthey also have one of the only female singers that I've ever seen in a metal band. She's no candy ass either... she gets out there and lets it rip, and there's no doubt she's metal to the core. She's pretty hot too, but she's also vegan, which in my now-biased eyes, that reduces her hot factor. But that's a completely different story. Anyway, Arch Enemy is awesome, and they will definitely be getting more attention from me, and quite soon most likely. Grade A-

Implements of Destruction. And a phone.

Chimaira was the reason I made the 90 mile journey alone, and while I would like to say that they didn't disappoint, they did in a way. More on that later. I was beside myself when they broke into the first song - Implements of Destruction. My favorite Chimaira song. I didn't really think i would ever see it live since it's an instrumental weighing in at about twelve minutes, but they played it. And they nailed it. It may have been slightly abridged, but they played the vast majority of it. After they finished, the lead guitarist stepped up to the mic and said that we were in for a 'different' kind of Chimaira show tonight. The lead singer had a death his family, so he had flown home to be with his family. So, rather than cancel the show, he asked some of the guys in the opening bands to help out on vocals along with their keyboard/sound effects guy (who does backing vocals anyway). The singer for God Forbid came out and did their next two or three songs, and he did a pretty good job, although you could see that he was fishing around for the lyrics at times, and was putting the microphone into the crowd an awful lot. One of God Forbid's guitarists came out and sang the 'clean' vocals in "Down Again," and he did a pretty good job as well. The singer/guitarist from Hate Eternal came out and sang the next two songs, and he did a decent job as well, although you could tell he didn't know the lyrics either, and had to keep looking down at the lyric sheets they had written up and placed on the stage monitors. After that, the keyboardist moved his setup to center stage and took over the vocals. He at least knew the words, and the 4 songs or so he sang sounded pretty coherent and Chimaira-like. I think he pretty much wore himself out though. He looked pretty beat by the end. For the last song, which was "Pure Hatred" I believe, they gave a fan his biggest concert dream ever - they pulled him up on stage to sing. They called out for someone who knew every word, and this guy did. He nailed it. The only time he missed is when the band threw in a pause that wasn't in the album version, and he started too early. No fault of his own... it's not like he rehearsed with them.

All in all, their set was pretty good. They played all of the songs I expected them to, which made me happy. The disappointment factor stemmed from not seeing them as a unbroken unit, which led to some of the general vocal disarray. I can't fault them for it though. They soldiered on, and with some help from the opening bands, did the best they could and still made it a memorable show. I would probably have given the show a B-range grade, but they played Implements of Destruction in its (almost) entirety. Because of that - Grade: A-

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Thursday, August 18 2005, 1:48 AM

It would seem that I've been lax on my site updates again. It's easy for me to tell that I need to update more when my mom tells me that I need to post something.

The past week has actually been somewhat eventful, unlike the weeks before it. Last wednesday the Gigantour came into town, bringing much sweet music our way. Three of my favorite bands were there - Fear Factory, Dream Theater, and Megadeth - plus a few others that I wanted to see. We arrived at the show at about three, and after a short time we found that we had missed Nevermore's set due to a misinterpretation of the scheduling between the two stages. We were rather pissed, but we got over it I guess. Symphony X was pretty sweet, and all of the main stage bands were awesome except Dillinger Escape Plan. I thought they sounded like a steaming pile of dung. Matt says they're a lot better on CD. I hope he's right. They didn't impress me at all live. Fear Factory was sweet, as usual. Dream Theater was awesome as well, but to me their mix was too loud before the amplification, and it was causing their sound to be overdriven a bit. Megadeth was totally on, and Dave Mustaine sounded great. In the previous Megadeth shows I've seen he's always seemed to struggle with some of his more snarly vocals, but this time around he nailed them all. Excellent show all the way around.

My friend Annie got married this weekend as well. Unlike last year, where I lost nearly a dozen close friends to marriage, this wedding season has been rather tame, which is good. It makes me feel old when people my age bow out of the game. Anyways, I'm normally somewhat bummed when I go to weddings, because it seems like I'm always one of the slim minority of single people. Everybody is always so happy at weddings, but it always seems to remind me that I'm single, and have been single for a loooong time. Well, this wedding turned out different! I'm not going to go into detail here, because it involed me dancing, and nobody should ever hear a detailed description of said events. It's just too traumatic. Regardless, I had a *great* time, and who knows, there may be more great times in the future!

I've been on the midnight shift this week, which is never fun. I think the only good thing about this shift is that I don't have to wake up to an alarm clock. Oh well. I volunteered for it to help a buddy in a bind, so I have nobody to blame but myself. I'm dragging ass right now because I went out to the Peanut Barrel with Kate before work and had a few beers. Mental note: Drinking before a night shift is bad. You tend to want to sleep, and that can't really happen at work.

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Tuesday, June 21 2005, 1:39 PM

I had another eye exam this morning with Dr. Saxe, and he says he sees good improvement, although I don't really see much difference. My eyesight is up to 20/25 in the right eye, but I think that's kind of misleading. With my left eye I'm able to pick off the 20/20 line at a glance, but I have to strain for seconds at a time to see the lines with my right eye. The leakage has slowed, and he says most of the swelling inside my eye has gone. I guess that's good news, even though I don't really see it with my own eye.

I had a good time this weekend down with Jon and Michelle in Cincy. We caught a Reds game saturday night and watched the new Batman movie on sunday. Batman gets two thumbs up from all three of us. The plot and action were all great, and it was kinda neat because you didn't have a clear idea of who the bad guy really was until the very end. There were a few 'bad' guys throughout the movie, but arch-enemy super villan type wasn't revealed until the end. I plan on seeing it again soon. Very few movies get that from me.

I've got a few pictures from the trip up in the gallery, along with some others that I hadn't posted yet. It seems that I took more pictures of their cats than anything else. What can I say, they were cute!

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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 10 2004, 9:23 PM

Rumors of my demise are greatly overstated. I've had a couple people comment on the fact that it's been nearly two weeks since I posted something, and well, they're right. I mentioned to one of said people that there hasn't really been much going on worth discussing, but later I recanted and said that there are things going on, but that I just don't really feel like discussing anything right now. I'm not sure whether it's because winter's kicking in again and I freakin' hate the winter, or the fact that we're doomed to suffer another four years with an idiot president at the helm of our country, or the fact that it's been busy at work lately, leading most of us to get pulled in many different directions constantly, making it damn near impossible to get stuff done every day, or perhaps it's because I still sit here at home at a computer for countless hours after sitting on a computer for countless hours at work, basically taking breaks only to play the same old crap on the guitar. Whatever it is, I just don't really feel like posting much these days.

I think I just need a spark so that the flames of something new can be lit. My life is in such a set routine, and it hardly changes. Wake up, go to work, proceed with various customer annoyances, come home. Sit at computer, play guitar, be lonely. Go to bed, Repeat. Something needs to change.

I suppose I should talk about the Slayer show I saw the other night with Matt, since it was a pretty sweet show. It was down at Harpos in Detroit, and Harpos was hopping. I couldn't believe how many people were there. Crazy insane skinhead psycho types were all abound. The first opening band, Mastodon, was pretty sweet, and I would definitely buy a CD of theirs in the future if I were to find one. The second band, Killswitch Engage, was ok, but I wasn't as impressed with them as I was Mastodon. Just not really my type I guess. Slayer was freakin awesome. Never before have I seen a crowd so active at a metal show. The mosh pits were so active that they would consume entire halves of the floor, which is good if you're in it, not as good if you're trying to stay out of it. Keeping a stable footing proved difficult at times. Regardless, they rocked the house, and it was worth the drive. The ticket was like $35 after all the bullshit TicketMaster convenience charges though, which is total crap. No show at Harpos should be over $20, ever.

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Monday, October 11 2004, 2:50 AM

I'm up and I can't friggin sleep, so I guess I'll write this up now. Technically there were three other bands at the show, but Fear Factory and Children of Bodom were the bands we went to see. I went with my metal-concert-buddy Matt, and his friend Anne from LTU.

The first band was pretty bad to be brutally honest. I think they were a local band, because they weren't listed on the bill anywhere. They looked like they were going for some sort of gimmick, because they had three complete drum kits out on the stage, and there were always at least three guys beating on them. A few times, the guitarists and bass player would put down their instruments, and grab some drumsticks and start beating on a floor tom or something... It was really lame. Other than the lame drumming thing, the rest of the music was pretty lame too... totally simplistic riffs, lame vocals, just really not that interesting. I give them credit for getting out there and trying, but that's about it. Grade: D.

The next band that played was called Throwdown. They were all right, much better than the asshats in the first band. They were a hardcore rap-metal band, but weren't really anything special in the grand scheme of things. They got my foot tapping a bit, so I guess they must have been doing something right. Grade: B-

Next up was Children of Bodom. I saw them open for Iced Earth a while back, and I've been hooked ever since. They only played two songs I recognized from the one album I've been able to find, but it was still sweet. They have a lot of energy up on stage, and always look like they're having a great time, which helps keep the crowd into the show. I definitely need to find a way to get more of their CDs... stupid stores not having good music... Anyways, I digress. Their set wasn't nearly as long as I would have liked, but they're an opening band, such is life. Had they been able to play more songs, their set would have easily got an A grade, but since they only got 40 minutes, it gets an A-.

Fear Factory was up next. I've been listening to them for a long time, proabably since I heard Zero Signal on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Yes, I own the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Shut up. I've been a sucker for any decent music with a double-bass drum presence, and Fear Factory gives out huge doses of that. Raymond Herrera is freakin nuts when he's playing. I don't know how his legs move that fast. It's as much of a quandry to me as Jon Schaffer's (Iced Earth) insane triplet riffing. Damn rockstars and their bionic limbs... This was also my first glimpse of the new Fear Factory lineup... You'd never know Christian used to be their bass player. He's picked up the guitar duties without missing a beat. He doesn't have the stage presence Dino had, but the metal was surely flowing freely from his guitar. Due to the dual-headlining nature of the show, they were also forced into a shorter set list, but they made the best of it. They opened up with the first two songs of Archetype, Slave Labor and Cyberwaste. They set up a pattern where they played two of the better songs from each of their albums, which was sweet. If I remember right the set included (in no particular order) Martyr, Big God (raped souls), Demanufacture, Zero Signal, Replica, Shock, Edgecrusher, the before-mentioned Slave Labor and Cyberwaste, and Archetype. Those are pretty much the Fear Factory A-List as far as I'm concerned. The only two songs I would consider "missing" would be Obsolete and H-K. Had the set been longer, perhaps I would have heard them, but alas, that's the nature of the beast. Overall, they rocked. Grade: A.

We left after Fear Factory, mainly due to the fact that none of us except Matt had heard any Lamb of God songs, and he said he wasn't impressed by them. So we took off early, beat the crowds, and got a head start on getting shitcanned back in Anne's room. All in all, a very good night.

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Saturday, May 22 2004, 1:23 AM

Yah, someone accused one of my last few posts of not being in english, and in a way they really aren't. I've been working on some technical projects over the past couple weeks, so my brain has been in the computer dork mindset, which leads to all sorts of technobabble. I'll try to translate some of it here... My wireless LAN project was basically a way to encrypt all of the traffic going between computers on the wireless network (my laptop, Joe's laptop, and the communal Windows machine in the living room) and the gateway machine, which is the computer that connects to the internet. The reason that I'm doing that is because the encryption protocol used on my wireless accees point is inherently flawed, leaving it wide open for breakin by a patient person. IPsec (IP security) is a much better alternative, offering a very secure encryption that's not easily broken. The concept of a honeypot is basically something that is left wide open that people will get into and meddle with, for the purpose of learning different methods of attack from the not-so honest people out there. The honeypot is meant to be infiltrated, so anything bad to it isn't really damaging.

The laptop stuff was Matt and I being total dorks, although in this case, Matt was definitely leading the way. Basically his PHP-code based retort translates to the following: open your laptop, and while the laptop is unloved, pour love into it. The humor is really lost in translation though... I seriously laughed out loud when he typed that.

Hmmm... now to current events... I haven't been up to all that much. I'm fairly confident that the pre-mentioned IPsec stuff will be stable and do what I want, which is good. That means it's not just a learning experience... :) I've been spending a lot of time at both work and home working on the latest revision of the server monitoring program that I wrote to keep tabs on things at work. It will probably keep me busy for quite a while, but I've got the data collection framework in place, and it's collecting and storing the data as it should, albeit from one server, and only when I'm testing things. I'd like to get it on other servers soon to make sure it behaves as it should, but I -really- want to get some form of an automatic update system set up first, so that when I do make updates, I won't have to log into a bunch of servers to update things manually. There's also a lot of work to be done... Apart from the data collection I still have to create the alert system that will notify us when things are 'out of whack', the log averaging and trimming system that will give us a cool historical record of server performance, tendencies and general changes, and the whole display and admin interface that you need to use it all... It's quite the undertaking, but I look forward to the challenge. Once Josh gets done with his current projects he may lend some of his rather extensive talents to the project, and Joe Doss really wants to dominate my interface/display pages with his CSS kung-fu. Greg also said he would help, so we'll see where we can fit him in... ;) Ok, enough geek talk.

I went out with JDoss, his girlfriend Abby, and her friend Allison to see Shrek 2 this evening, and it was hilarious. Most of the humor was totally directed at adults, which was cool. The computer animation was really good, although there seemed to be quite a few parts where the spoken words were noticably out of sync with the animation on the screen. I know that it's exceedingly difficult to replicate human expressions, but it did seem like the first Shrek movie, and other CG movies, have been more successful in their timing. Oh well, it was still friggin hilarious. I enjoyed the company too! :) Thanks for the invite Joe!

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