Suffering from Sequel Syndrome

Ever bought an album just because the band's previous album was OK? I do, all the time. I kind of feel guilty because of it. It's worse when your expecting the album to not be too good.

Recently I bought 5 albums, 4 of them by artists I've had previous albums for ( even then the other one is Ziltoid the Omniscient by Devin Townsend who does Strapping young lad which I have all the albums for. ). I think that Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia by Dimmu Borgir is a genius albums. I then brought Death Cult Armageddon ( don't ask me about the album titles, most are 3 words that don't mean anything eg, Darkness Enthroned Triumphant, Spiritual Black Dimensions, Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia etc... ), still good but wasn't as good as Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia. I heard about In Sorte Diaboli coming out so I watch the single they previewed before the release of the album. Again the song just wasn't as good again as anything from the previous 2 albums. Coupled with a luke warm review I thought I won't bother buying the album. Just in the music shop and had a handful of new albums I catch an eye shot of In Sorte Diaboli and thought Balls to it and bought it. Sequel syndrome strikes! Yep In Sorte Diaboli isn't overtly interesting. It's alright but...

Thing is ( this is going to make this blog post a touch dubious probably. ) sometimes you're pleasantly supprised by an artist's new album. Bad Religion's new album New Maps of Hell is decent! Expecting the usual songs complete with an over zealous use of Let's go! or Whatcho!. Several songs just have an unusual twist to them but you still know they are Bad Religion songs. Before you die and Submission complete spring to mind. On the whole I was pleasently supprise by New Maps of Hell... they didn't even say Let's go! once!

See you next time.

Silent but deadly!

Right oh, being able to rip CDs to MP3 or OGG has been a real god send when it comes to things like Bullsh*t tracks where you just don't rip them in the first place thus saving yourself the torture altogether. But beware artists have other ways to annoy you that circumvents ripping their CDs.

I have ripped a load of my albums to OGG files and have taken them to work so I can listen there. Although I don't have to put up with any more fookeen ballads there is still something which bugs the f*ck out of me.

SILENCE

Yep silence. Nothing. Absolute zip. I'm talking about tracks which have several minutes of silence in them. Your busy working away letting the music playu in the background and suddenly the music stops and your wondering wtf has happened to the tunes. You check your music player program (XMMS in my case ) and see it's still working. You faff with the sound settings and then check whether you can still read the directory where the tunes are. You have one more look at your music program and suddenly realise it's fine. It's just one of those stupid tracks with 10 minutes of silence in them.. The ones with a song at the start then a huge break before something that would be classified under Bullsh*t tracks if it were on a separate track are the worst.

One fine example is Smash by Offspring on the album Smash. Has the smash song as normal (good song actually) then it has a little outro in the style of the intro track Time to relax. Great the song's finished but then the next track on your music player playlist isn't starting yet!!! WTF is going on!? Silence... You wait and wait and wait ( or skip if your not in the middle of something ) but nothing comes out. For pretty much 5 minutes! there is proper silence. Not a single note or anything. After 5 minutes there's a clean guitar doing the riff to Come out and play with several variations. Does this for about 1 and a half minutes and just ends. What is the point. At least if they had it as a separate track then you just don't bother ripping it but when it's lumped onto a proper song it's just balls.

Heavy Metal isn't imune to it either. Nevermore are guilty of this as well with 2 of their albums The Politics of Ecstacy and Dreaming Neon Black. At the end of The Politics of Ecstacy you have a song called The Learning ( one of those FOOKEEN BALLADS, a 9 and a half minute one at that! ). When it finishes, guess what! SILENCE. More that 5 minutes of it!. All the wait for was just for a freaky noise track with a distorted version of the vocals from an earlier track from The Politics of Ecstacy. Not worth the wait.

When you've got a load of songs on a play list constantly looping it's a ball ache to faff around when you have 5 minutes of silence in a song. Just don't bother, make our lives easier.

An apropriate little quote from Smash by The Offspring.
Well, 'til next time. Ta ta...











... Da da da da daeya da da daaa da da da... :)

Butchered Demos

Over the past couple of weeks at work my friend and co-worker Stephen Ward (who has just created a banner for me. Keep your eyes peeled for it's appearance!) had just got sick of listening to Weird Al Yankovic 8 hours a day so he decided on a change of band. Now hes decided on Dragonforce (formerly Dragonheart ) and is now playing that all the time. Thing is he loves it more than me by a large margin.

I love their unrelenting hyperactive speed and ( in later albums especially ) complete madness (things that are missing in their ballads which I'm sure they feel obliged to do... DON'T. The're basically your normal songs with the decent bits removed, leaving in the cheeseyness and naff lyrics.) I first listened to the Dragonheart demos from mp3.com back in late 2000 and really liked them. Thing is it took me till 2006 before buying there albums (which they had done 3 of them by then), think I just forgot about Dragonheart ( then changed to Dragonforce ) in the 3 years till their first full length album came out ( think it was literally first couple of weeks in uni I got the Dragonheart demo songs but they didn't release their first album till they AFTER I finished uni. Easy to forget to do something in three years, significant chunk spent drunk/studying.)

The sound Dragonforce's demo is pretty dam clear and tight in the demo songs. Very impressive for a demo ( even more impressive when supposedly they were recorded in a week. ) The first album entitled Valley of the damned is just odd because it's just plain different. After the completely pointless first track Invocation of Apocalyptic evil ( a Bullsh*t track as mentioned in my previous blogpost GOD DAMN BULLSH*T TRACKS!!!! ) Valley of the Damned from the first Dragonheart demo starts up. First thing you notice is the keyboard doing more than was in the demo. When the vocals start up they sound like the singer ZP Theart ( how the hell do you pronounce that?! Comments welcome.) is about 3 miles away. They've gone insane with the reverb, acidently set it to 100% wet. Especially with Dragonforces music the vocals just sink down into the mix and just loose the punch they had in the demo. This continues throughout the album. As well as the mix on the re-recorded songs you notice Dragonforce has tweaked little melodies and bits here and there. This is most blatant on Black Winter Night ( Is it me going insane or shouldn't that be Black Winter's night? Have I become what I hate? Some nitpicky git moaning about the tiniest bit of iffy English? ). Just look at this list below.

• as the rivers run dry ( first time only )


• Prechorus (on the endless seas of madness ) now with overtly exuberant keyboards.


• Weird sudden stop in the music just before the main chorus then guitar does a dive bomb.


• Chorus .... COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! Different lyrics, different melody


• post chorus different lead guitar


• no more tommorow... dieing of sorrow sung by
  ZP Theart instead of shouted by band.

And that's before the main solo! It just feels like Dragonforce were obliged to change bits of the songs because the fans might not like the idea of paying for an album and getting only 3 new songs. I personnally much prefer the original demo versions of the songs. So much so that that's what I brought into work to listen to, not the first album versions.



Another example of different between demo versions and album versions now. I bought Soilwork's Figure Number Five pretty much as soon as it came out and it was a special limited edition (a decent limited edition... not like some sh*tty ones, eg... I got a "Special edition" of Beneath The Remains by Sepultura but it just took the piss! The only extra stuff on it was a couple of "drum tracks" (basically the ghost tracks that they played along to when they were doing their main recording. Basically sounds like the final recording but cack quality and no vocals! Just..... why??? Surely nobody is interested in that?)). The extra thing was a CD which contained the songs that were on Soilwork's first demo which is cool. I listened to them and the one song that instanly grabbed my attention was Wake Up Call . This song was just class, even in the nasty sound quality of the demo, It just had that nice build up and a decent chorus ( simply put it goes Wake up, wake up, wake... up... CALL!. What more do you want? ).

I read up on these songs and found that they were all re-recorded for the first album. Coolios! Wake Up Call in decent quality! I bought the first album and looked at the back cover immediately to see if it was the case. I saw My Need, In a close encounter, Skin after skin and Steel bath suicide there but where the fudge was Wake up call? Saddened I just accepted the fact it wasn't there (along with Bound to illusions and put the album on my CD player. Listening through I heard the re-recorded versions of the demo songs and was delighted in their new nice quality recording ( although where the hell did the clean vocals go? They had clean vocals on the demo but dropped them for Steel bath suicide and The Chain heart machine. When they brought them back in A predators portrait they were class!).

I got up to a track called Demon in veins and within 5 seconds I instantly recognised the intro to Wake up call. WTF is going on? To my absolute bemusement I realised that they changed the vocals especially the chorus. It now goes Demon... demon... demon... demon in VEINS! ......... bury head in hands.... That just sound ridiculous. Wake up call sounded ace ( I mean. even Rage against the machine (don't just call them Rage. I keep on thinking your talking about the heavy metal band Rage when your actually talking about Rage against the machine) got away with just saying Wake up repeated for decades... I couldn't stand it with Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
repeated.
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
SHUT UP!
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
STFU now!
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
Thats it! If you won't STFU I'll just break your neck!
Fuck you I CRIK.....
Ahhh thats better.
). Just .... why? Just an unecessary and ridiculous change. They didn't do too much to the other songs but this is just daft. Maybe just me moaning but if I was asked to cover it then it would most definately be the Wake up call version and not the Demon in veins version.

I wonder how many other bands have done this? Made an awesome demo but then butcher the songs for their first album. Oh and Dragonforce... DON'T WRITE ANY MORE FOOKEEN BALLADS!. See you all next time.

Vomilicious lyrics booklets!

Well I seemed to have skipped a week in doing my post. Well I've got a few good excuses. A bunch of new toys! An MP3 player for my parents, a new guitar AND a new laptop which I am busy using right now (got Ubuntu Studio Linux on it, just got the screen resolution working, wireless with wpa aint >:[. Anyways enough faffing, while my shiny new laptop looks good the same cannot be said for some album lyric booklets I have seen. Well lets look at Whoracle by In Flames. While it's album cover looks quite good



One thing to note though, the (literally) faceless woman always cracks me up because it reminds me of Spitting Image ( remmember the bloke who had a question mark for a face instead of a nose and eyes? I've tried hunting for a picture of him on the net but I'll be buggered if I can find him. If anyone has/can get a picture please contact me and I'll update the post with it.) While the front cover looks kinda cool it's a different story for the lyrics booklet, just look at it!



EEEWWW... makes me vomit. Some freaky looking green marbled background and a horrible font for the text. It's seriously nasty, just take a closer look at some excerpt in it.



DOUBLE YEW TEE EFF DOES THAT SAY? inverting the fjord, imade the ny Lylinets? I really don't understand it what so ever. It just makes no sense, what a torturous font! Did nobody proof read it to check it was.... errr well, legible? It's just like that all the way through the booklet.

Well lets look at an example which does it right, something a little more pleasing and quirky. Darkane make some absolutely mad metal and it seems to be translated into the booklet design in Expanding Senses.



Already completely mad, JUST LOOK AT IT! Blokes in concrete! You think that's mad just look at the band pictures.



Looking mad in their white garb already, but wait there's an even more looney and amusing band picture inside with each separate member and they (somehow) manage to look even more fruity looped than on the back of the lyric booklet.



Good grief the're off their rocker. Looks like they should be in the asylum rather than keeping it. Would you let your mad friends and relatives be looked after by this lot? Just imaging the first day you leave your relatives there.

Yes... we WILL take good care of your relatives and no... we aren't patients like most people ask. People assume we are patients just because we are Darkane
OH BALLS... OK we're more mad than any of the patients so sue me!

Hope they keep making those records, the last one Layers of lies is also plain mad and Insanity is perfectly appropriately named. Oh yeah those two mad geezers on the left and right hand sides each have their own websites.

http://www.ChristoferMalmstrom.se/.

Don't be fooled by it's 1990's look it's full of good stuff including Darkane guitar tabs tabbed by Christofer Malmström himself and he's giving them away for FREE! ( my god what's this? Artists giving away tabs for free instead of shutting down websites like METALTABS.COM ? If that doesn't get him interned in the asylum then nothing will.
So Mr Malmström, what brings you here?
I errr.... created guitar tabs for songs from my band and.... gave them away for free.
WHAT! OMFG You ARE sick! QUICK, bring the straight jacket and prepare the padded cell! An artist giving away his own tabs away for free, what has the world come to?).

http://www.PeterWildoer.com/

This site has a few videos oh him performing some mad stuff. For example a bit of Darkane madness here.



And some more Avant Garde madness ( Avant Garde? what a weird term. Before being on on guard? Before standing to attention? Before watching? I dunno.. ) here with Peter Wildoer and Christofer Malmström performing some obscure mix of Jazz, Classical and subtle hints of ... errr ... Thrash/Death Metal



Hmm that's point. I've noticed that the band is actually on the front cover. Yep you've read that right, Darkane is on the front cover of Expanding Senses. The only album in Darkane's collection to feature the band themselves. Just look at this zoom up image below.





Talking of madness few are as mad as Devin Townsend and one of his many bands Strapping Young Lad. You though Whoracle's lyrics were unintelligible! Wait till you get a load of Strapping young lad's City album.



While Whoracle had a torturously nasty font that was unreadable City's font is just plain far too small! Just look at the first page!



See those white specs? Those are the words! It isn't dust! Here's a section zoomed up.



Can you read that? To me it's just blobs. This is as good as I can get it, any more and you just see the colour divering into little spots.

It certainly doesn't make a good impression when people cannot even read your lyrics book. Just make life easy and double check the average person can read the lyrics and doesn't throw up at the site of the inside.

GOD DAMN BULLSH*T TRACKS!!!!

Do you have any albums which just make you bury your head in your hands and wonder why the hell they stuck it on there? I'm not talking about songs which are just bad like Pretty fly (for a white guy) but tracks which are just noise or don't really sound like a song. Tracks that just boggle the brain as to why they were included in the album and are just an annoying distraction to the rest of the album. Alot of these bullsh*t tracks are usually about 30 seconds long and consist of incoherent noises or voice clips scatalogically arranged by some numbty who just can't be bosched. They leave me bemused as to how and why they are in the album. Theres usually several people who would have to approve songs for albums so to see these stupid tracks slip through the net just makes me wonder how they got through.

Good friends and a bottle of pills starts off with some soporific bass playing while Phil Anselmo is having a bout of Tourettes. For 30 secs he's just making "nya.... hmmp... ulah!" noises! After the spaz out he starts with the first ( barely ) inteligable lyrics I fucked your girlfriend last night CLICK! is the sound you hear when I'm listening to this because I ALWAYS press the next button. After he's done some more lyrics sounding like hes got some JD vomit gurgling at the back of his throat he starts doing some inhuman random unitelligable catewailing... probably cause after what I have heard so far of the track I ran over and grabbed him by the testicles and started squeezing them till they popped Brock Samson style (see vid below 30 seconds in :)...



"STUPID NOISES?! I'll make you make stupid noises!" squeeze NYAGGHH WHATTISSSAAADOOBBLEEYAAAAWAAAWAWW! and he wouldn't have to worry about lumps after I've finished that's for certain.

Well Machine Head usually write proper songs most of the time but they had a bit of a "brain toast" on their first album Burn my eyes with Real eyes , realize, real lies. It starts off with a guitar riff that just sounds like Jaws and then quickly starts with random massively overly distorted voice clips ( I ain't got a clue what most of them say so don't ask me!). It does this for 1:50 minutes! before Rob Flynn shouts Why? Real eyes, realize, real lies, lies! and then quickly just fades out with a couple more uninteligable voice clips. Once it's over I just can't get the thought out of my head So they all sat around listening to this and thought yeah lets put it in the album. great idea, amazing.. Not one of them just turned around and said WTF are you all thinking ???? See those flappy things on the side of your head, USE 'EM!

One track that seems to fit the mold perfectly is Lucifer in love by Edguy from the Hellfire club album. It's 30 seconds long and just POINTLESS. Basically consists of the little piano intro from Down to the devil, which was earlier in the album, slowed down so that it stretches to 30 seconds. Then a dodgy voice over which just sounds like some bloke doing orgasmic noises slowed down. Did they just nick that bit in that Guns n' Roses song Welcome to the jungle which sounds like Axl Rose having a wank while Slash is having a fret wank (you know, about 1:40 mins into Welcome to the jungle Axl Rose starts making orgasmic uh.. uhh... ughhh.... ahhh... mwaahhhh... noises. ). Maybe it's actually the devil himself busy making love to the band as they discuss the future direction of the band just like Bill Hicks mentioned with marketeers. Edguy were there in the recording studio talking about the next album Ahh nearly finished this album... say how are we gonna get more sales in the future? Well lets see... we're an epic metal band with so-so popularity... I know we'll change our musical direction. Lets get rid of the epic.... and the metal. Hmm.... get rid of the bits which are good about us... lets do it!. While this conversation was going Satan was busy getting freaky with them all. Little realising the microphone was still on and recording. After Hellfire club Edguy released the god awful Rocket Ride which, as is mentioned above, has no epic... or metal anywhere in sight. It's just some cliché turgid hard rock that I listened to about twice... then gave in to Vinyl Exchange in Manchester.

So in the end these bands might as well jack off and shout IM A GENIUS, IMMM A FOOOKEEEN GENNNNIUSSS!! and record that because it'll be less embarassing and torturous to listen to. As mentioned in the previous post Perfectly skippable songs being able to just leave these pointless tracks off a playlist is a god damn relief cause if I accidently get an ear shot of Good friends and a bottle of pills... hmmm I was gonna mention murder but... FFS WTF DID THAT F*CKWIT HAVE TO KILL DIMEDAG DARREL!!!!!!!!!!! I don't dare mention anything at all when Pantera's involved now cause i'll get some tit moaning that it's in bad taste. I remember watching "Mock the Week" with Dara o'Briain talking about Englands defeat in the cricket and saying that This is the worst defeat since 1916 but back then they had an excuse... they all died in the Somme. Then the audience sighs the "disgraceful" sigh and Dara just pipes up Oh come on!!??? Too soon?. See that's the sort of thing you get nowadays. If I put a disclaimer in plain view before warning of tasteless material I'll still get a bunch of whingy gits COMPLETELY IGNORING IT and moaning anyway.... errr I'm turning into one of them so I'll shut up now. Hmm thats a point Bill Hicks... DEAD... Barry Manilow.. STILL ALIVE! oooo Bill wouldn't have liked that :) Cya next time.

How to finish off an album PROPERLY!

How many albums do you have that you listen to from start to finish that finish with an absolute ripper? Albums that leave you gagging for more because the last song was so dam extreme, so good, such a great finale? Well there's alot of classic albums that finish on a high, just consistent from start to finish, leaves you with a song that "rips your face off" as a common metal metaphor goes. I'm thinking of genius albums like Master of puppets by Metallica which finishes off with Damage inc., an absolutely ripping track that just doesn't let off till the final notes ( the only major gripe I have about the song is the 1 + min of dodgy uninteresting violining guitar notes as an intro... hmmm I see a future blog post. ) or A predator's portrait by Soilwork. These albums keep you interested till the very last second and when the album finishes your really up for putting another album on.

Now there are other albums which just end with a down beat calm slow song or even just filler. One band that regularly does this is Fear Factory where they finish absolutely ripping albums like Demanufacture with a song like A therapy for pain. As soon as the guitar starts doing the main riff you just know it isn't going to then start blitzing away like... well... the REST OF DEMANUFACTURE! A therapy for pain just doesn't go anywhere, the main riff pretty much plays throughout most of the song in some form or another which, when you consider it plays for over 6 minutes, just starts to get piss annoying ( Hohoho how clever am I? From Pisschrist to piss annoying!.... ok, not that clever, rather just coincidence. ). The vocals are the worst on the whole of Demanufacture (even though they are completely clean) with the long warbbling notes that feel purposely held back to attempt a creepier atmosphere. When you think the song is over after over 6 minutes (!!!) there is some weird keyboard sound effects going to play out, another few minutes! When A therapy for pain finally ends it clocks at the 9 minute mark. That's 6 minutes odd of funeral paced riff played nearly consistently and then 3 minutes odd of noise. By this time my brain is deactivated, dulled, numbed by this, Half the time I don't even noticed the album has finished because my attention would wander to anything else ( blog writting for example :) or just even day dreaming. You know you've lost people if they start day dreaming! ). I rarely sit and try listening to A therapy for pain because it's just one of those songs I could have mentioned in a past blog post Songs you just wanna skip RIGHT NOW! and with it being at the end of the album it's just far too easy and tempting to press the stop button.

Dragonforce are just plain mad with their hyperactive songs that just plough a way through your mind. All 3 of their albums have a ballad in them for some reason ( I don't know what it is with bands that on every album they do they put one track on it that is completely out of place from the rest of the tracks, usually ballads seems to be the most common type of these songs and Dragonforce are no exception. ). On the first two Dragonforce albums Valley of the damned and Sonic firestorm the ballads are in the middle of the albums but in Inhuman rampage it's at the end of damn album! When I first listened to Inhuman rampage I got through to track 7 The flame of youth (Yep, a rather dodgy song title but a good song) and was thinking Ahhh cool they've stuffed the ballad this time, surely they wouldn't stick one on the end of the album... ) but when track 8 Trail of broken hearts comes on and the piano voiced keyboards come in with the alternating chords and I just stop and think God damn it NOOO!!!. Just why do so many bands need these out of place songs in their albums? From then on I just could not be bother listening to the last track, I didn't bother skipping the ballads on Dragonforce's previous albums but on Inhuman rampage I cannot be bothered listening to the last track.

So my tip to you is DON'T END WITH A FOOKEEN BALLAD (or rather any weaker slow soporific song)! Your song will likely get skipped. Your album would not leave the listener craving more if you loose his attention before the end. If the listener doesn't automatically think OOooo... the album's just ended, better get some more tunes on then you might have failed to leave an impression on the listener. Just end with a brilliant song that doesn't tail off slowly or leave them with anything that leaves them high. Till next time cya later (See? No fannying around finishing this post. Just ends with Cya.).

How to get your song noticed

Ever had a band advertising a new song and it had some stupid title that just put you off bothering to download it? Out of a big list of free songs to download you notice you click on ones which catch your attention? Well with the use of the Internet in today's world more and more often people are finding out about new bands and songs by just seeing a downloadable version. The first thing they notice before clicking on an mp3 ( OGG ) is the band name and the song title and not the album cover like in the past. Put it this way would you download a song called "Sniff my pantyhose"? Whoops, everyone's pressed the back button now. See what I mean? Titles are very important and really should at least be given a second thought before emblazing it on the web.

Well let's see a few examples. In Flames have come back on form with their latest album Come Clarity after the slightly dull Soundtrack to your escape ( see, album titles are also important. Come Clarity? Oooo sounds intriguing, Soundtrack to your escape? ..... errr... ok.... ). WIth a quick scan of the song titles I see Take this life and Reflect the storm are one's that catches my eye and already get me curious as to what they are like. Now look abit further down and you have Your bedtime story is scaring everyone .... just .... what??? For a start it's so long it could be a Bal-Sagoth song ( eg The Dark Liege of Chaos is Unleashed at the Ensorcelled Shrine of A'Zura Kai (The Splendour of a Thousand Swords Gleaming Beneath the Blazon of the Hyperborean Empire Part II), no honest this is a Bal-Sagoth song. ). The fact that it mentions Your bedtime story is just plain off putting. MY bedtime story??? I'm sorry... just no.

Coincidently Take this life and Reflect the storm are actually really good songs while Your bedtime story is scaring everyone is just one of those bullsh*t tracks which aren't proper songs at all. Don't take that sentence to mean all songs can be guesses from their song title. An example is Peepshow by Sikth. Peepshow is probably the only really serious sounding metal song on Sikth's first album The trees are dead & dried out, wait for something wild ( yep, a dodgy album title. ) with the utterly macabre singing prevelant on most of the songs held back for this one as well as the guitars not going mental over the fret board too much. While when you listen to songs like Pussyfoot and Hold my finger they sound as mental as their song title implies while Peepshow just sounds like it's implying another nutty song but the actual song isn't particularly mad.

Now you can forgive bands who's mother's tongue isn't English for coming up with odd song titles but Sikth are British so they don't have an excuse... no wait... yes they do... THE'RE MAD, FRUITY LOOPED, DOLLOP OF MASH, OUT OF THE SPACESHIP.... Not like the guy who made Bloodshed dev C++ for Windows who had got complaints so he explains why he used the name "Bloodshed" ( admittedly slightly tenuously ). I especially like the bit Heavy metal / Hard rock music is not really my cup of tea.. Certainly telling of the general image of Heavy metal. It's like the GNU Image Manipulation Program ( previously known as General Image Manipulation Program. ) or GIMP for short. It you didn't know what the GIMP was and someone sent you a message or email saying go to this website www.gimp.org would YOU dare click it? I suppose on the flip side the amusing acronym does help you remember the GIMP. While I'm on the subject of proper free ( libre and gratis ) open source graphic applications and titles another program I really love is one called Inkscape ( see a webcomic that was done by my friend utilising the unique calligraphy tool present in Inkscape. The bloke without glasses is actually me. Right too much shameless plugging and drifting off subject, back to the fold. ). Inkscape is pretty much the perfect name for a graphics program for the Ink conjures up thoughts of familiarity with drawing while the scape gives you thoughts of a large open canvas with which to fill to you imagination's content. Now Inkscape is a fork ( bit like Warrel Dane and Jeff Loomis left Sanctuary to form Nevermore. You could say that Nevermore is a fork of Sanctuary. ) of a program called Sodipodi... Sodipodi? What sort of name is that? Certainly harder to remember and not as obvious what it is compared to Inkscape. I wonder if the names of the programs were responsible for Sodipodi failing while Inkscape succeeded. It would not surprise me if it was.

To a ( slightly ) lesser degree band names are also important. There is something intriguing about the name Soilwork. It's just a peculiar band name. I went to a gig in Manchester to see ( if I remember rightly ) Arch Enemy wearing a Soilwork long sleeve shirt ( A predator's portrait by the way. The album before Soilwork went downhill. ) with blatantly emblazoned on it Soilwork in huge letters. I was walking down Oxford road and every 2 or 3 people I walked by had a good look at my shirt then, after I walked pass, I'll hear them muttering in a slightly perplexed voice Soilwork?. Copywriters ( yes "Copywriters", not "Copyrighters" ) would sell their liver to get people looking at a title and wondering in fascination just to create titles like that every week. I wonder if Soilwork spent a long time pondering about their name thinking about whether it would get people talking about them, or did the conversation go like this,
Hmmm.... how about Soilwork?
.... sounds odd... but doesn't sound stupid. Balls to it we're "Soilwork"

I admit there isn't one rule for all with song titles. What would attract the attention of one person could be missed by another person. For example Vim by Machine Head on Through the ashes of empire earns brownie points for being named after my favourite text editor Vim :) .



Well OK I doubt the band were thinking of Vim the text editor but I cannot possibly think what Vim could mean. Vim cannot be Roman numerals because what would Vim be? 994 cause of v + i - m or 996 cause of v - m + i or 1004 from m - i + v but none of these are correct Roman numerals. To people who have never heard of Vim the text editor this song title would normally skip past their attention.

I spent a good chunk of time thinking of the title to this blog post. First I was thinking of just calling it Song titles ARE IMPERATIVE then I was thinking of going for You know song titles ARE IMPERATIVE. I was not so sure about the Imperative bit so I thought I would go for the present title How to get your song noticed. Although slightly cheap it looks to have got your attention at least so it can't be all bad. So remember, THINK TWICE about your next song's/album's/band's name. In the Internet which is rather text based your song title gets seen first. More Reflect the storm and less Your bedtime story is scaring everyone.

Any song titles you think give a positive or negative impression on the reader? Just post them in the comment section. I would like to see what the general populace thinks of them. Until next time. Cya.

Songs you just wanna skip RIGHT NOW!

Do you have any albums that are generally good, even some absolutely cracking songs on them, but there are also songs you just must skip immediately!? Songs that are either coma inducingly boring ( is "inducingly" a real word or have I just adjectivanised "coma inducing" to describe how utterly boring some skippable songs are? "Adjectivanised"! Yet another example of blantent language butchering... I love it! ) or so intolerably unpalatable that they make your ears bleed.

Right time for an example. The Offspring make some absolutely class songs and some absolutely ass songs. They (come out) swing(ing) from one end of the spectrum to another with just a simple change of track in one fell swoop! For example on track 3 of Americana you have Staring at the sun. When it kicks in it goes like the clappers and you realise how good The Offspring actually are but then..... Pretty fly (for a white guy)... oh dear, this song is so painful the Americans were thinking of using this in Guantanamo bay but feared that it would get sonic interrogation banned ( Interrogation.... hmmm... euphemism for torture by the sounds of it. Just like the phrases "Martyrs" instead of suicide bombers and "Enemy combatants" for prisoners of war. I could whinge with glee till my lips rot talking about the double speak that goes on )! Just the intro vocals gives an immediate sense of dread that you will not enjoy this song. Give it to me baby.... aha aha SKIP.
If you dare to keep listening you get subjected to more stupid lyrics like he asked for a 13 yeah but they drew a 31 ... eh? What the fudge? Actually I think I'll probably be better off not knowing what it means. I can see why they say ignorance is bliss but not enquiring about this song. Think that Give it to me baby.... aha aha was the preserve of the intro? Think again this spine twisting insipid torture is the main chorus, the central piece of the song. Just no.

I use to think that The Offspring were a bit pants in the past because I heard songs like Pretty fly. Only later after not listening to the singles that the album only songs are actually really good. Songs like The noose and Genocide to name a couple as well as a slew of others but these are intermingled with dull or intolerable rubbish like Original Prankster ( British peeps guess what bit of crude wordplay I can do to the word "Prankster" to more appropriately describe the song. Leave a comment with the correct answer and get a Brownie point! ) or She's got issues which starts off with lyrics I'm seeing this girl ... WRONG! I cannot think of a song where the subject is about relationship problems that is actually any good ( though maybe Weird Al Yankovic might have done a funny one ). Just some god awful mid toned mid tempo-ed pop pants that makes me loose faith. There are about a dozen ( about half the singles Offspring have released are actually the songs I hate ) songs which regularly if not always get skipped. It's a good job the're on CD rather than tape so they are easily skipable. In fact with mp3s ( or rather Oggs, sound better than mp3s for the same amount of hard drive space usage and music programs and players can include support for them libre and gratis ( that's free and err... free in english. I won't mention the difference here, maybe in the future. So no excuses not to support Oggs... APPLE! ).) you can just delete them. Not quite satisfactory punishment for the songs being condemned to bit heaven but what can you do?

Metal also has irritatingly bad songs that would wake the dead just so they can skip the track. I have just been listening to Sikth ( yep, that's how it's spelt ), a completely mad band that plays some nutty and very heavy and complex music. However there is one song on their first self titled ( The trees are dead & dried out, wait for something wild ) album that I ALWAYS skip every single time. After a weird ( this one is weird even compared to their other songs! ) song called Tupelo ( a somewhat curious listen. When I hear this song I always keep on getting images of Andrew Lloyd Webber in my head... shudder! ) you get this song called Can't we all dream?. It starts off with a creepy little atmospheric keyboardy ( there I go again. "Keyboardy" - like a keyboard or has properties that are similar to a keyboard. ) noise ( the best part of the song. Because it's the only part that does not make you skip immediately. ) mixed with random hollering with lyrics alternating between love is in the air, hate is in the air death is in the air in all sorts of silly screeching to lowly whimpers. You listen to this and start getting a little impatient, you turn to see how long this has been going on for and you see "2 MINUTES"! This dodgy rubbish goes on for more than two and a half minutes!!! I'm sorry but... skippable already unless there's some redeeming feature in the main song.
When the intro is "over" you get some subtle delicate drum work and the atmospheric keyboards get less piercing. The hollering lyrics change to some random ramblings that aren't worth noting. Another look at the clock and you see "5 MINUTES"! Bloody hell when's this intro going to end? Surely this is the longest intro ever. Around this point there's a little breather where the drums go silent and the keyboards go quiet but only for a while before it returns to the torture. At 6:10 suddenly the vocals go all Tourettes and sounds like he's having an epileptic fit! Around this time... if you have not died of boredom or suspended belief... you hear the can't we all dream? song title mentioned for the first time. Woohoo the song's about to start bit no it sort of sticks to the same tosh as before. Just after 7 minutes... YES THAT'S CORRECT! 7 MINUTES. seven, sept, shichi ( think that's correct Japanese ) the vocals just start repeating can't we all dream? while the instruments tail off and go silent. Oh I see, no actual main song is it? Just going to end with can't we all dream tailing off... I said we "tail off" with it... yes we finish now... 30 seconds after the rest of the instruments have finished and the vocals are still going strong. 1 minute in and still going!!!
The song finally finishes off at 8:50 minutes. That's nearly ONE AND A HALF MINUTES of can't we all dream? sung really stupidly. What sort of song's this? It's just PLAIN WRONG. Why oh why did they think that was a good idea just boggles the mind. It's weird because most of the rest of the album's great. Songs like Scent of the obscene ( the first song I heard of Sikth ) are still completely mad but they are genuinely good highly original decent songs I'll keep listening to again and again. But Can't we all dream? ... skipped every time without prejudice.

Now here's one that's gonna get me murdered ( DON'T YOU EVEN DARE CONTEMPLATE PUTTING A COMMENT DOWN ABOUT "how untasteful that is" UNTIL YOU'VE READ THE WHOLE OF THIS ARTICLE!!!), Walk by Pantera. I don't understand why it's everyone's favourite song? It's just so pedestrian ( excuse the pun... man that's so bad I'm not sure which is worse. Saying Walk is horrible or that pun. ), just so slow and monotonous, just doesn't go anywhere. Walk just sounds like filler especially when it ends and Fucking Hostile suddenly rips on your stereo. Suddenly any memories from Walk just vanish.
Ok Walk is not one of those songs that can wake the dead to change the channel but it's ( in my humble opinion ) the dullest song on Vulgar display of power by a long margin. With genius songs like Mouth for war with it's classic riff pinched by ID software for Doom ( probably knew that heavy metal fans and computer geeks are almost completely mutually exclusive sets of people and few people would notice. ) and Rise ( my favourite Pantera song ever. Perfect except for Phil Anselmo's slightly "odd" singing ( "odd" singing... sounds like another blog post. ). Also nicked for Doom.) I'm affraid Walk is just dwarfed by these giants.
Man that pun was bad, unless I've been murdered stick around for more posts vaguely ( Knowing me, very vaguely... ) to do with music and things related to it. Cya later.

If anyone feels I might have stepped the mark with talking about being murdered for something trivial to do with Pantera. I am aware that Dimebag Darrell ( or Diamond Darell during Vulgar display of power ) was shot and killed merely for breaking up Pantera. It boggles my mind and sickens me to the gut to even contemplate somebody doing that for such a relatively tiny insignificant thing.