Mike's Weblog :: Mike Neir's Page

The American election system is in trouble. Why you ask? The strings holding the pens to the voting booths are attached at the right side, and are much too short! How is a lefty supposed to vote if he can't mark the right areas on the ballot!?

A funny/odd coincidence happened to me after I filled out my ballot. I placed the ballot in the scanner machine, and it registered the number "666", which I assume means that I was the 666th person to vote. Some of the older ladies running the voting area were like "uh oh! 6-6-6!" After I got back to the car, I turned on my iPod, which was on random. The Slayer song "Cult" came on as I was buckling my seat belt, which, oddly enough, has the following lyrics..

I've made my choice. Six six six

While I doubt they were referring to the voting process, the coincidence struck me as funny. I guess that means I'll be voting Slayer in 2012.

Over the past few weeks I've been quite the "consumer whore," as Gene would say. With my recent transition back to bachelor status and a nice raise at work, I've had a lot more cash laying around. Because of this, I decided to splurge on some music that's caught my attention. Over said few weeks, I've picked up three albums by Amorphis, two by Meshuggah, and one each by Megadeth, Killswitch Engage, Demiricous, and Iced Earth.

Out of all of the albums I picked up, the Iced Earth album ("Framing Armageddon") was the only one I had any plans on picking up. It's the first half of a sci-fi-ish narrative Jon Schaffer has been brewing up for some years now. He laid the foundation of the story quite a while back with the "Something Wicked" trilogy, and things have come to fruition. I was kind of thrown off by the style of the album. It has a lot of the signature Iced Earth elements like Jon Schaffer's robotic-arm triplet-riffing and a strong vocal presence, but the music has a distinctly different feel in many places. I'm not saying it's bad, but its not what I expected out of Iced Earth. Since the story is divded into two parts on separate CD releases, it's my guess that the first CD is a more subdued lead-in, kind of the calm before the storm. We'll see once the second half is released I guess.

I'm really digging the two Nordic components of my purchases - Amorphis and Meshuggah. The former used to be much more of a doom/deah metal band, but they've expanded on the typical musical palette of those genres greatly and incorporated clean vocals and an assortment of typically non-metal instruments (such as saxophones, flutes, and sitars). The result is a very cool blending of styles, and it's quite pleasure to listen to. Meshuggah, on the other hand, could probably be quite painful to listen to if you weren't into their particular way of doing things. They're abrasive, intense, and their compositional style is downright weird. The current last.fm description probably says it better than I ever could.

Among the band's most recognizable qualities are lead guitar player Fredrik Thordendal's abrasive, chaotic and dischordant solos, singer Jens Kidman's vocals, which resemble manic screams and shouts; the churning, dissonant rhythm guitars and the polymetric drum beats. In a typical Meshuggah song, drummer Tomas Haake plays two separate rhythms: a standard 4/4 beat with his hands, and a completely different metrical subdivision with his feet. The guitars mostly follow the bass drum work, creating an awkwardly pulsating rhythmic pattern to work as the basis of the song.

To give an example, the main riff of the song "New Millennium Cyanide Christ" from their 1998 album Chaosphere follows the aforementioned blueprint. Haake beats a rather slow 4/4 rhythm with his hands, while the bass drums and guitars play a repetitive 23/16 rhythm pattern on top of it. As the subdivided pattern is repeated, the pattern's accents shift to different beats on each repetition. After repeating the 23/16 pattern five times, a shorter 13/16 pattern is played once. These patterns sum up to 128 16th notes, which equals exactly 8 measures in 4/4 meter.

Speaking of "New Millenium Cyanide Christ" - its music video has to be one of the funniest I've ever seen. A band air-guitaring to their own song on their tour bus. Genius idea. Anyway, I digress. Dispite its chaotic nature, I find their stuff quite easy to work to. I found myself getting quite a bit done the other day when I was listening to it at work. Strange.

The remaining three albums have been outshined by the aforementioned works, but I'll listen to them more eventually. The new Megadeth CD ("United Abominations") is pretty good. I've come to expect their newer stuff to be much more hit-and-miss than their defining works, and this is no different really. There are some pretty fine moments on the CD, and some others that are less stellar. Overall, I'd have to say that its more consistently better than its predecessor ("The System Has Failed"), though. I'm completely in love with Demiricous' style. A lot of people seem to dog them because they sound a lot like Slayer, but what's so bad about that? They have certain aspects that sound similar, but overall I think there's enough differences to keep them from sounding completely derivative. They've got a new album coming out in a few weeks, which probably means my trend of CD purchases won't stop soon. The Killswitch Engage CD I picked up has really been eclipsed by all the other stuff I've picked up. I'll listen to it more, I swear!

It was a dark and stormy night.... Er, wait. It was a cold and stormy night.... Nah, that's not right either. It was a cold and windy night... Now we're cookin. It was certainly cold and windy, but I didn't care much since four of my favorite bands were going to share the same stage. I went with a few guys from work, Gene and Nick, and their buddy Aaron. We all made the pilgrimage to Pine Knob, one of my favorite spots to check out a show.

The four lesser-known bands that opened the show were all decent-to-good, the best being Overkill. They've been around for a long time from what I gather, and easily had the largest following of the opening four. They brought an old-school metal sound into the mix, with a lot of New York attitude. A huge sod fight also broke out on the lawn during their set. I can't remember if it was as spectacular as the one that took place during the Jerry Cantrell/Metallica show I saw at the Knob in '98, but it was a sight nonetheless. It also got old pretty quickly, but the teenager types thought it was a riot to pelt the people further down the hill with tufts of sod. I didn't think it was all that fun, but I remembering having a lot better time back in the day when I was the one throwing the grass. I guess grass-throwing loses its appeal with age.

Arch Enemy was the first of the larger bands to play. With eight bands playing, even the bigger bands had pretty abbreviated sets. AE probably played a good 45 minutes I would imagine. They played a good mix of songs, and the crowd was enjoying it, mostly because of Angela Gossow, their singer. Yep, she's hot. And her vocals would scare small children. Both are good qualities for a woman fronting a metal band. Given that they could only play for 45 minutes, they made the best of it. Definitely a good showing. Grade: A

Opeth was up next. They were the band I wanted to see most, by far. I had seen the other three big bands there at least once, but I hadn't seen Opeth yet. They made the most of their 45 minutes as well... by playing four songs. Opeth songs tend to be quite long, to say the least. They opened up with "Ghost of Perdition," followed by "Windowpane," "The Leper Affinity," and "Deliverance." It was a pretty good mix considering the curcumstances, but I really wish they had another fifteen minutes so they could have fit another song in there. Hearing something like "Blackwater Park" or "Serenity Painted Death" probably would have forced an accident in my pants. I was cracking up a decent amount during their set though. There were quite a few people there that knew Opeth and their style, but there were also a bunch that didn't. They were easily identified by the "WTF?" looks on their face whenever Opeth would drop into a clean section of a song, or pretty much through all of "Windowpane." These sections don't exactly fit in a stereotypical metal show. I don't care though - Opeth rules. The only bad thing about their set is that one of the guitars was barely audible, which made the songs sound pretty funny in places. Grade: A-

Lamb of God occupied the next-to-last slot, and because of it, they had a longer set, probably on the order of an hour and a half. They're a force to be reckoned with nowadays, and it was evident as soon as they came out. They showed up Slayer when I saw them together a few months back, and they were aiming to claim this show as their own as well. They easily had the tightest and most well-mixed sound of all the bands that played, and they weren't taking prisoners either. They played quite a few older songs, including my personal Lamb of God favorite, "Vigil." They also played a good three or four songs off the new album "Sacrament." They were on throughout their whole set, and the crowd was loving it. They definitely achieved their goals and stole the show. Grade: A

Gigantour is Dave Mustaine's baby, so it's natural that Megadeth headlined the show. This was my fifth time seeing Megadeth, but sadly, it was probably the worst show I saw them put on. I'm not sure why, but Dave Mustaine just wasn't on. He seemed visibly agitated for the first couple songs, walking off to the sides of the stage to talk to stage hands between songs and during long instrumental breaks. It may have been due to time restrictions, because he made a point of announcing that they had to rush through their set due to the hard kurfew present at Pine Knob. In any case, he just wasn't on his game. His vocals were pretty weak through most of the songs. He sings with a few distinct styles, and it didn't seem like he was hitting any of them. The mix was also really bad. The vocals and drums were noticiably quiet, while the guitars were way too loud. I like loud guitars as much as the next guy, but they shouldn't drown out the rest of the band. The set list was pretty strong, and they played a new song off the album they're releasing next year. It sounded pretty good. Not "Rust In Peace"-era Megadeth good, but good nonetheless. Grade: B

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-

I was just looking through my cached posts from the Metal Underground RSS feed and put together a list of concerts I want to see in the coming months. The list is pretty good so far, and this is a good thing.

4/22/2006 - Chimaira and Arch Enemy @ Harpos, Detroit. I've been wanting to see Chimaira for a while now, and now I'll have the opportunity. Nevermore is on this tour up until 4/14, which kind of chaps my ass. I'll miss them by 8 days. Not such a bad thing though... keep reading.

5/13/2006 - In Flames, Evergrey, and Nevermore @ The Orbit Room, Grand Rapids. This show has awesome written all over it. I'll finally get to see Nevermore after the near miss at last year's Gigantour. Evergrey and In Flames are also top notch. I've seen Evergrey once, and their show was a lot of fun. I can only expect that this will be great as well. I might have to put together a pilgrimage for this one given its saturday night timeslot.

7/6/2006 - Slayer, Lamb of God, Mastodon, Children of Bodom @ Cobo Hall, Detroit. This concert is going to be like a ten ton wrecking ball with guitars. I saw Slayer and Mastodon last year, and barely escaped with my life. This one should be even better. I'm a huge fan of all four bands mentioned, so this concert will be something to remember.

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.

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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