Iceni

Utter shame.

You're right, I don't think they're quite on the same level - but I saw a small similarity. There was that meeting of dissonance and melody that was hard for me to pin down.

Well, it makes the cars pretty darn easy to steal. I don't see the appeal, just don't lose your bloody keys! A coded ignition would make some sense.

The idea of intelligence on the part of Americans is not an idea the BBC is willing to accept. Of course, the aggregation of weak force does result in an oddly low-friction environment of bodies closely tied to one another. When such a core reaches a critical mass, the near-amorphous result, large yet difficult to classify owing to the fact that it isn't solid in any sense, is known as a 'slip knot'.

No way, this is going to Nova. I'm not having those soggy military has-beens taking credit for American work.

More Haken...this time 'The Mind's Eye'. I wish these guys would get to the point more often. This is becoming a sort of bugbear of mine, Communic has this problem too. A lot of these songs are really only about 30% metal, if that, and it gets tiring. I suspect these bands think acoustic passages sound good, but they almost never do. They either have to have good lyrics (Black Harvest), pleasant vocals and ambiance (Threshold) or nice melodies (Equilibrium, Kamelot, Agalloch, Forest Stream) to make them work, but this is almost never the case.

'Stalled Armageddon' by Headspace. I'm glad I came back to these guys, this sounds awesome so far.

...so to speak.

It was a bilateral effort.

Darn. We're going to need two nooses this time.

You're right, I should have said 'my large-brained cyborg brethren of the proghead community'. Not so much 'people' as...the next step in sapient evolution.

Funny considering the preponderance of wind in spring.

'Nocturnal Conspiracy' by Haken. So, people have been raving about this band and I decided to have a listen. There are some nice inventive elements here, and it's solid, but I do think it progresses a little slowly and there's too much soft stuff. Conception's album 'In Your Multitude' was good stuff, with a smattering of 'African' percussion patterns that I'd really love to see more often in metal. I'll probably check out another album by them. I also listened to 'Astronomicon' by Without Face, which proved to be a very enjoyable progressive/'gothic metal' outing with nicely performed vocals and strong composition.

You said 'I don't like most of the material that is entirely about [these themes], which takes away a huge portion of doom [amongst other genres].' That suggests a link between the themes you listed and doom. I haven't heard a single doom song about any of the themes you listed.

That is as a matter of fact the most popular boy's name in the States right now.

You're scary sometimes, you know that?