Iceni

Inventor of the pizza cone.

Grandpa and one of my uncles were in the army and another uncle in the Marines. Weirdly none of my South African relatives have served in the military even though full male conscription was on in the waning days of the apartheid regime.

Yeah, there's somebody in my hometown with one. I personally prefer the Panoz Roadster though.

'Our Fortress is Burning II: The Bloodbirds' by Agalloch.

Agalloch is great reading music, the songs are so long and drawn-out that I've been able to get through the more than 100 pages of reading I need to do to catch up on my backlog.

I'm well aware of that. Two of my uncles and my grandfather were military men too.

What, do you want it?

'Returning to the Source' by Persefone. Geez, the whole album should have been like this. Good thing they saved it for near the end though.

Why does nobody ever thank the police officers of this country for their sacrifice? We love our military to a fault in this country but the ingratitude we show to our cops is abominable.

And the 'Most Surprised' award goes to...no one.

'Spiritual Migration' by Persefone.

'The Majestic of Gaia' by Persefone. If they'd fix their harsh vocals these guys could be darn near perfect.

I'm glad you like them, they're an excellent example of classically influenced tech-death. '...and the Great Cold Death of the Earth' by Agalloch.

If you show them some good melodeath they might change. Most mallcore stuff, when it's any good at all, is blatanly ripped off from At The Gates, Insomnium, Dark Tranquillity and the like. I've got an acquaintance who's really big on metalcore but he also likes a bit of melodeath, specifically Arch Enemy. Not great, but he's getting there.

'In The Shadow Of Our Pale Companion' by Agalloch. This is another one of those albums people seem to rave about, and I do see what they're getting at. It's a slow but melodic and moody piece of work - and surprisingly I'm liking it so far. It doesn't seem to meander for the sake of meandering and the melodies serve a purpose.

That's most people's reaction to meeting me...

Galneryus are pretty generic melodic power metal. There was a time when I might have liked them but they don't interest me at all right now - other than the fact that they wrote the second ending theme for Hunter x Hunter.