2009: Music

I used to do this on myspace (does anybody use that shit anymore?), but I figured since I have a legit blog now that I would do it here. I love the shit out of music, and every year I go over everything I listened to that was released this year and review it. But this year, I was not able to listen to as much new stuff as previous years. 2009 was more about revisiting/discovering older artists. So for this year, I'm going to go more in depth with each album, rather than just giving it a score.


AFI - Crash Love, 5/10

This is hard for me. I tried so hard to love this record, but it's just not possible to love something so devoid of emotion and boring from a band that has put out some of my favorite albums of all time. Every song here is completely forgettable radio rock, with the exception of the intro track, "Torch Song". I do like this song a fair bit, as it has some rad guitarwork and a catchy chorus, but it's all downhill from this song. "Darling I Want to Destroy You" is hands down the worst song AFI has ever written. I could spend an entire post tearing this album a new asshole, but I'll leave it at this: I still love you AFI, but this is an abortion of an album by your standards.

Andrew Jackson Jihad - Can't Maintain, 8/10

Musically superior, lyrically inferior about sums it up. The arrangements are more complex and interesting than previously, but the lyrics aren't nearly as clever and honest as some of their earlier stuff. Still my favorite folk punk band, though.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion, 7/10

I don't get the hype. Catchy art-pop type stuff that just kind of drags on at times. Still pretty solid, and some of the arrangements here are genius, but I just can't get into it as much as I'd hoped I would.

Banner Pilot - Collapser, 8/10

These guys are no Dillinger Four, but they do a great job of trying to be. After hearing lots of good things, I finally checked this album out, and was pleasantly suprised. Solid stuff.

Between The Buried and Me - The Great Misdirect, 8.5/10

I knew they wouldn't be able to top Colors. It's just too good. Instead of starting where Colors left off, this album abandons the schizoprenic stylistic shifts and goes for a more cohesive sound. The songs are long, but the passages flow seamlessy from brutal death metal to funky space-rock to acoustic diversions. The record is strange, to say the least, but it never loses steam.

Brand New - Daisy, 7.5/10

Not exactly what I had hoped for after The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, but there are some good jams on this record. "Vices" is nothing like the rest of the album, but its one of my favorites. Other highlights are "You Stole" and "Gasoline". Overall though, the album doesn't keep my attention very well. I don't see myself listening to this very often, but I like it.

Broadway Calls - Good Views, Bad News, 8.5/10

It blows my mind that Broadway Calls isn't the biggest pop-punk band in the world. Nobody in the genre can touch them. This was one of my most anticipated this year, and it didn't disappoint. "Tonight's Alive" and "To The Sheets" quickly became two of my favorite songs from them, and the record has a better flow than their S/T. If you don't like this album, you don't like fun.

Cattle Decapitation - The Harvest Floor, 8.5/10

Best CatDecap record yet. This album continues to grind my face off every time I listen to it. The vocals sound pretty gnarly on this one, and I'm not sure if I'm a fan of it or not. The dude doesn't even sound human most of the time. The riffs are heavy as shit and the drumming complements them nicely. My vote for best grind record of '09, although I listened to very little of it this year.

Converge - Axe to Fall, 9.5/10

Album of the year right here. This album kills it in every way. Ballou's riffs on here are heavy as balls, and he even throws in some shredding here and there. Koller's drumming has reached a new peak, and he has once again proven to me why he is my favorite drummer. I don't really have an ear for bass, but Newton does a good job complementing Ballou. Bannon's vocals haven't changed much from No Heroes, but who's complaining? The dude has some of the gnarliest screams/shouts in extreme music, and this album is no exception. The title track is the highlight for me, offering the best riff of the album, as well as one hell of a breakdown. Go out and buy this shit right now.

Darkest Hour - The Eternal Return, 8/10

Another of my most anticipated releases this year, but this one didn't live up to expectations. Deliver Us is one of my all-time favorites, and I knew they couldn't repeat it without Kris Norris. However, I was optimistic about it. This album is a return to roots for DH, sounding very similar to 2003's Hiddens Hands of a Sadist Nation, but with more guitar solos. The atmosphere and tempo changes are mostly gone, producing a record that shreds really hard, but doesn't have much lasting value.

Dead Swans - Sleepwalkers, 8/10

Solid hardcore from the UK. These guys really won me over when I saw them open for Comeback Kid. Fast and aggressive, while still showcasing some melody. My favorite kind of hardcore. One of the many great records that bridge 9 put out this year.

Dethklok - The Dethalbum II, 8.5/10

Hahahaha. Dethklok. I don't give a shit, I love listening to these songs. Some people don't understand the appeal, but it's just awesome metal. Nothing special, and no prog wankery, just good ol' fashioned metal with a comical take on everything. I know it's a parody, but it does such a good job of making fun of metal that in the process it actually is really good metal.

Every Time I Die - New Junk Aesthetic, 7.5/10

Better than The Big Dirty? Yeah. Although the first half of the record is infinitely better than the second half. It loses steam around track 6 or 7, not really sure. I was only able to listen to this once when it was streaming on their myspace, but I remember thinking it was pretty rad.

Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown, 1/10

Worst album of the year. Holy fuck, I can't even believe how badly this sucks. Every song is terrible. Every. Single. Song. And this is coming from a fan of American Idiot. Way to put out some of the most stale, generic radio rock shit I've heard in a long time Green Day.

Mastodon - Crack The Skye, 5.5/10

Booooooooring. I want Mastodon to go back to writing heavy-ass metal that rocks your fucking face off. This prog-metal wankery is a snoozefest. The album has it's moments, but you have to sit through too much garbage to get to them.

Mother of Mercy - III, 7.5/10

Not bad. Not exactly the most innovative group in hardcore, but I like their energy and "Fuck You" attitude. Last track on the record is the highlight for me.

Municipal Waste - Massive Aggressive, 8/10

MUNICIPAL WASTE IS GONNA FUCK YOU UP? Well, not exactly. They bring the thrash, but the party...not so much. Or not as much, I should say. This is definitely a more mature MW that is trying to progress their sound while still sticking to their roots. And for the most part, they succeed. Awesome record, but it's no Hazardous Mutation.

Polar Bear Club - Chasing Hamburg, 8.5/10

Bridge 9 fucking killed it this year. The songs are more straight-forward and shorter then their full-length debut, but it's catchy as fuck and some of the best melodic hardcore around right now. Man, I love Polar Bear Club.

Propagandhi - Supporting Caste, 9.5/10

If you had asked me just a few months ago, I would have told you this was the album of the year. Propagandhi have outdone themselves once again by putting out what may be their magnum opus. From start to finish, every song is flawless. Sometimes hardcore, sometimes metal, sometimes punk, but always unforgettable.

Ruiner - Hell Is Empty, 9/10

Prepare to Be Let Down is one of my all-time favorite hardcore releases, and this one doesn't disappoint. Rob Sullivan is a depressing mother fucker on this disc, and I love it. The music is less melodic, with a heavier sound and a much darker feel to the record, but every track rules. Hardcore album of the year? I think so.

Thursday - Common Existence, 9/10

The follow-up to 2006's A City By The Light Divided, this album does everything right. The musicianship and song-writing on this record surpasses everything the band has done before. While not packing the emotional punch that their first three records have, this album proves that Thursday still have it in them. Every track rules, except for "Friends In the Armed Forces". But if you skip that song every time, this album is nearly perfect.

Tombs - Winter Hours, 8/10

Awesome doom metal that rocks the shit out of everything. The guitar tone punches you in the nuts and takes you out to lunch (stole this line from the worst review I've ever read. It was Whitechapel). These guys have a promising future ahead of them, and just might be my favorite new find of '09.

Wolves In The Throne Room - Black Cascade, 8.5/10

WITTR have proved once again why they're the best band in black metal right now. Fuck people knocking them for all the hipster hype. The atmospheric passages here are the best yet, and the straight-ahead moments and just as abrasive and grim as always. Best black metal album of the year, by default, since it's the only one I listened to that came out in '09.

NaNoWriMo

So, FYI, November is National Novel Writing Month. If you're unfamiliar with the event, I suggest you read this. http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano

Even though I'm busy with school and other various things, I've decided I'm going to take part in it. Which means all of the time I spend writing will be concentrated on the novel. What that means for you is that this will be my only post this month. I know some of you must be heartbroken, but do not fret over it. The four weeks and two days between now and December 1st will go by painstakingly slow for all of you I'm sure, but life goes on. As for me, I'm looking forward to writing up an extremely rough and most likely incoherent novel over the next few weeks, but hopefully after some editing and exstensions it can become something that doesn't suck.

If you want to know how things are coming along, click the link below. It will have an updated word count, as well as a very general synopsis of the novel. I still am not sure what I'm going to do with this story, hence the very broad plot summary. Maybe I can take it somewhere interesting, or maybe it ends up being a giant pile of shit. Either way, it will be good experience for me, and I look forward to doing it. And with that, I bid you farewell. Have fun with the shitty weather and over-eating that November provides.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/559024r

PS: No-Shave November!!!

The Penguin: More Butt, More Blood, More Murder

I know it's been practically centuries since the last time I posted, but it has been for good reason. Besides being busy with college and other retarded bullshit, I've been preoccupied with developing a major motion picture pitch. You may recall my post many weeks ago about the current state of horror films. I decided to take matters into my own hands. So for these past few weeks I have stowed away inside my dorm room, isolated within the darkness and within my own sick and twisted psyche, crafting what may very well be the the most horrific, sadistic story ever imagined. After working out all the kinks, I believe I've fine-tuned it enough to reveal it for the first time. So for your enjoyment, and before Twisted Pictures initiates a six-figure contract with me for the rights to produce the film and all the terrible sequels, I now give you the first glimpse into...The Penguin.

Reggie is a dolphin trainer at his local zoo. After a tragic training accident in which the eldest and most beloved dolphin, Giggles, asphyxiated on a herring under Reggie's watch, he is demoted to sanitation specialist at the penguin exhibit. Things start off well...until a voice in his head starts to tell him to murder employees of the zoo!

Reggie seeks counseling, only to be prescribed medications that do nothing for him. The urges become stronger and stronger, until one day... he caves in the head of the new dietician girl with an ice pick. The voice tells him hide the body deep in the exhibit, in a cave hidden behind a secret wall. It is there that he meets Brad.

Brad is a penguin. A penguin with the ability to communicate telepathically with humans. Having found the cause of his heinous impulses, Reggies trys to stomp the mysterious penguin into a jelly. But what he couldn't have predicted, is that Brad could control his every movement simply by thinking it.

Helpless to terminate the murderous impulses, he finds himself becoming the puppet of a masochistic arctic bird. One by one, Brad uses Reggie to systematically eliminate every worker assigned to his chilly abode. But after awhile, the bloodbath extends beyond the outskirts of the exhibit. Soon enough, the folks over at the bonobo attraction disappear, and shortly thereafter the workers assigned to "The Safari". A massive body count quickly piles up over the course of only a month. Desperate to end the bloodshed, Reggie stealthily advances into Brad's lair late at night, and attempts to chop him in half with a machete. Mere feet from Brad's sleeping body, an icicle overhead comes crashing down, shattering loudly and awakening Brad in the process. Discovered in the middle of carrying out his assassination attempt, Brad punishes Reggie for his disobedience. A punishment so torturous that Reggie wishes the icicle had split his skull in half rather then be subject to Brad's cruel and unusual disciplinary action. For five consecutive times, Reggie is forced to watch "Ghostrider".

Emotionally and physically devastated, he spirals into a state of insanity. Somehow, his madness renders Brad's mind control useless. In the climax of the film, Reggie ventures downward into the icy labyrinth armed with only a small hunting knife, intent on exacting revenge. A suspenseful cat and mouse scenario unfolds, with Reggie hellbent on chopping off Brad's buttocks and feeding it to him until he chokes to death, as retribution for the murder of Giggles the dolphin. Backed into a corner, Brad pleas for mercy, but to no avail. After several minutes of eating his own ass, Brad dies.

A broken man, Reggie stands over the corpse of the penguin. Overcome by his mental illness and his bloodlust, it seems Brad got the last laugh. Drenched in butt-blood, he finds himself wanting more. More butt. More blood. More murder.

The Curious Incident of the Wasted Douche in the Night-time

So last night, my roommate celebrated his 19th birthday by drinking with his friends. Typical tuesday night, right? I figured he would stumble into the dorm room around 2 in the morning, waking me up in the process, and drunkenly climb up into bed and pass out. Little did I know what I would wake up to in the morning.

Fast forward to 7:30, and my roommate Jacob (who sleeps on the top bunk) was getting up to use the bathroom. But as soon as his feet touched the floor, he knew something was amiss. I heard him proclaim that the floor was wet. Well that seems logical; I mean this is western Washington after all. Jonah probably walked home last night in the rain and his wet shoes left a puddle in the room. Jacob had a different theory, however.

It was then that Jacob accused Jonah of pissing on the floor. Jonah laughed it off, thinking it was a joke, and we all went back to sleep.

Then, right on schedule, the alarm went off at nine. At this point, the room was illuminated much better then it had previously been during the initial confrontation. Enough light cascaded throughout the room to reveal a very wet floor. Disgruntled, Jacob called out Jonah again. The story goes, Jacob woke up when Jonah came into the room early this morning. Quite awake, Jacob heard a peculiar noise. It sounded like somebody pissing into a garbage can. But...no. Surely Jonah wasn't so wasted that he was pissing in our garbage can...was he? Sure enough, upon further inspection we found the garbage can doused in urine. And not only the garbage can, but the entire surrounding area. It looked like the aftermath of a toddler trying to pee standing up for the first time. The worst part was, there was more pee on the other side on the room. How the fuck did he manage to get it way over there, in the opposite direction? Did he pull a Matrix move and arch his body backwards, directing the stream over his face and behind him? Probably not, considering the flexibility and coordination required to successfully pull off that move is daunting while sober, let alone in a drunken state. Is Jonah simply a mischievous asshole, and thought it would be funny to prance around the room in the dark while urinating? Probably. That's what I'm going with.

Jonah insists that he recalls nothing about the incident. His side of the story is that his brother has a history of pissing in the clean laundry hamper while sleepwalking, and that he must have fallen victim to genetics and carried on a similar activity. No Jonah, what you have fallen victim to is belief perseverance. The tendency to stick to your initial belief even when the evidence contradicts your stance. We have an eye-witness account (ear-witness, I should say) from Jacob that puts you at the scene of the crime within a few minutes of returning to the dorm. This means that unless you crawled into bed, passed out, and commenced your sleepwalking in a very timely manner, you were conscious and aware of your actions. Let's just attribute the incident to drunken stupidity and put it behind us, shall we?

The real miracle here is that my backpack somehow survived the ordeal unscathed. My backpack was right at ground zero when the attack on the garbage can occured, and yet it managed to walk away safe and dry. The one and only bright light in an otherwise tragic and dark moment in the early history of this dorm room.

Boombastic Banging

Why does it seem like every weird person/loser on campus flocks to me? Seriously, aside from some of the people in my dorm, I've met like five cool people here. Everyone else has either displayed an exceptional case of douchebaggery, or been terribly uninteresting. Outcasts seem to be drawn to me like Muslims to Mecca.

Is it something about the way I look? Does my band t-shirt/jeans combo somehow give off the impression that I care about how much of a chode you are, or that I want to listen to you spew some shit about your infatuation with Shakespeare? Or maybe I just have an aura about me that suggests I enjoy the company of dweebs. If so, what does that say about me? Am I a closet dweeb that just simply has not found the courage to reveal myself yet? Hmm...

I find myself in a most unwanted predicament. I'm too nice to tell these people to leave me the fuck alone and go mingle with other weirdos, yet too selective in my friend seeking process to actually enjoy being around them. So what do I do? I'm not socially confident enough to simply walk up to a stranger and initiate conversation. Which means I rely on others to make the first move, 90% of the time. The same situation applys to my romantic life. Do I just tough it out and wait for someone cool to cross paths with me? While that would be my first choice, it isn't exactly a proactive approach to meeting people. Worst case scenario, I meet absolutely no one and live out my freshman year of college as a hermit, biding my time in my dorm room, cursing the rest of humanity for not acknowledging my existence. That doesn't sound so bad, right? Fuck that noise.

No worries. I'll find some guys and gals worthy of being graced with my company sooner or later. And who knows, if I'm lucky one of those gals will be down for some boombastic banging.

PS: You were all witness to the first, and last time I will ever use a Shaggy lyric in my writing. I'm actually kind of ashamed right now, but boombastic banging just sounds too awesome to edit out. In fact it's so awesome that I will title this post as "Boombastic Banging". No shame, no regrets. Word.