New Stuff We Dig

The feeling one gets when one discovers something new is a unique experience...

After discovering Daylight Dies here I immediately got hold of their latest album and set about drowning myself in their unique brand of melancholy death/doom. Having never heard them before I was genuinely impressed and enraptured at the same time. Step two, secure their entire back-catalogue with the intent to immerse myself even further in the Daylight Dies experience. Having done this and having been thoroughly converted to Daylight Dies at the same time, the next logical step for me was to share the experience with the rest of the world. more

New Stuff We Dig

I almost gave up on this....

I had just sat down to review Bloodshot Dawn's self-titled offering from earlier in the year and within the first few minutes of "Beckoning Oblivion" I was about to write off the whole album, when I got kicked in the head from this amazingly furious riff, and I sat up and listened again, then I heard another awesome riff, then a killer solo, then I couldn't help myself. I sat down and gave this album another listen. This time a serious listen, like when you're in the record store (kids, there was a time when the ONLY time you could sample amazing music before buying it was in the record store when your buddy was working the counter and there were no other customers) and your buddy has recommended this awesome album from a band you've never heard of but he swears they are better than your current favorite band. more

Welcome To My World

Tonight is lazy entry night.

I'm exhausted from the 12 hour shift I just finished, all the family has gone to bed and the only thing I actually feel like doing is sleeping for a month. Unfortunately I suffer from a complex disorder which distorts a great deal of my social interaction, and never really gives me any rest. The name of this complex disorder, which appears to be absent from the majority of most people I do have some kind of social interaction with, on one level or another.....guilt. more

Shows We Saw

Tonight was going to be the big night....

Make Them Suffer were going to obliterate my already industrial deafened ears with their awesome brand of blackened deathcore and announce to the world that they are the new force of the underground  metal sound. Alas, it was never meant to be. As soon as we got into the venue, which took 15 minutes of driving around the outer-suburban wastelands of Pakenham to find, we discovered that Make Them Suffer had cancelled, citing illness within their ranks as the culprit.

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. To suggest that I could spend the rest of the evening not thinking about the fact that Make Them Suffer were not playing would be a complete and utter lie. So I had to make a choice right there and then. Do I say goodbye to my hard-earned $10 entry fee and take the gang home and wonder what could have been or do I suck it up and put up with a line-up that would never live up to my lofty expectations? In the end I made the choice that any other fan in my shoes would make. I hadn't heard any of the bands on the bill so my unconquerable musical curiosity won. more

Random Music

Okay, so I've got this blog thing worked out to the point that I can hold a coherent conversation with the "blogasphere" and not get twisted up into a pretzel-shaped donut....

Well, I'm not in the mood to post a review or complain about anything so I'll do the next best thing and post a link to an awesome song. Hopefully someone out there in the blogasphere will like it and say something....more

New Stuff We Dig

When I was younger I was never a fan of melodic death metal.

I was entirely engrossed in the death/grind sound bands like Napalm Death and Carcass were churning out by the bucket-load. I wasn't interested in anything but absolute brutality in music. That young man's need for the guitars to rip your head off your shoulders is still entrenched in my brain. As with all things, when one reaches a certain age ones needs change.

And so I found myself searching the metal scene more and more for that something special, that awesome blend of head-smashing brutality and my new, more mature musical need to hear awesome music. And so we come to the album at hand, Before The Dawn's latest masterpiece "Rise Of The Phoenix". This album is actually a few months old (released April this year) but as I've said before I have a pile of recent albums I would like to review. more

Welcome To My World

Wednesday 3rd October

Tonight I can't be bothered.

I get out of the shower after my weekly basketball game, and sit down with my humble blog, fully intending to review some masterpiece I have stashed away on my hard drive since the beginning of the year. As soon as I get comfortable, I have to decide what album to review. Before I even open up the media player, the thought comes to my mind, most of the albums on said hard drive have been listened to a billion times in the past few months, and I really couldn't be bothered listening to them again.

So what do I do? I turn on the internet radio on my humble laptop and hope and pray that some decent metal comes out the other end. This is the problem I have with modern metal, and to a large extent music in general. Of the 90 minutes I've been listening, I've heard one song from a band I've never heard of which merited a search for their material on facebook or youtube, just to ensure I actually did heard a good song. the remaining 85 minutes have been a frustrating glimpse into the current state of our beloved metal scene.

I have some bad news.....more