Iceni

Nowadays it's writing or working. I get a lot of sedentary time, metal helps mitigate the ass-numbing.

'Momentous' by Aetherfallen. I want to like this stuff but the muffled grandeur is irritating me. It sounds an awful lot like the one man behind this group is trying to hide something. I'm reminded of a slightly cheesier low-production-value Borealis, but I'm only two songs in.

Huh. I toyed around with checking them out, maybe I will give them a shot after this.

'Brain Lab' by Dol Kruug. Enjoyable, to be sure - but they sound like they're holding back. They could be like an industrial Wormed if they let the guitars and drums have more fun. Lightbridge is a good composer and I think a keyboardist by training, but he's not always great on the other instruments. The album's too repetitive.

'Part 13: Pool of Blood' by AnovA. Still a strange animal, I don't know if I like these guys or not.

'The Old Barge' by Manticora. I keep forgetting how awesome this band is.

Such is the paradox of my being.

'Restoration' by Amiensus.

Well, I can only speak for myself, but - if they're anything like me they assume the latter and the former results. I only keep things even faintly clean because if I don't I start losing self-esteem and get all mopey, but I'd be a good deal cleaner still if I thought the odds of having (interesting, attractive) female company were any higher than a Congolese blizzard. The other thing is that I thought I was reasonably clean but I got very rudely bitched at by my f*cking shitstain of a flatmate early this summer, so I might be a little more touchy about this than most people.

'Eyehatesalt' by Slugdge. I hear a lot of the best parts of Bolt Thrower in this, and the main riff is just great. Reverberating, potent and crushing.

'Nova Persei' by Smohalla. Different from what I remember, but still awesome.

Get used to that, they're too lazy to contact people they aren't hiring. I know your educational situation is peculiar, but I'd recommend asking about research assistant positions from any professors you like. It's worked out for me so far, I got absolutely bugger-all from pretty much every other place to which I've ever applied.

Big band, Gregorian chant, Enya... Ghost Ship Octavius' s/t again. I didn't want to jump into buying this album - I suspect I'll pick it up but I want to make sure it doesn't wear off quickly.

'In Dying Summer's Glow' by Severnaja 'Indoctrine' by Blood Revolt 'Shining Silence' by Gravity Rain and finally received my copy of 'The Great Cold Distance' by Katatonia.

Twizzlers bites and probably a gyro later on.

Just a bunch of random stuff by Vampire Squid, and I'm annoyed at how bored I am by this stuff. There is really potential here from some heavily cybergrind-influenced tech-death with funk rhythms, but it just sounds like a dull smoothie grab-bag of generic extreme metal combined with all the stuff from 'Betcha Can't Play This' so far. I should revisit this but as with Cormorant I cannot for the life of me understand the hype. At least these guys are actually kinda good...

'Bite the Hand, Purge the Flesh' by Blood Revolt. Thanks again to BAN for this.

Huargh. I am finally done moving all my stuff (all by hand, mostly without a cart) to my new assignment. It was scorching hot outside, of course, and I'm pretty bushed. Still, I get the rest of the day off so that's nice.

Finished up 'Angelmaker' by Seventh Wonder and on to 'Eiszeit' by Eisbrecher.

Jordison drums for a metal band. Granted, he's not in it, but he's clearly playing for some hypothetical tech-death group whilst pretending to play for Slipknot. In the meantime, I thought Rush was ambiguous so I went ahead and included them.

He's thrash, he doesn't count. I did miss Kollias though, shame on me.

'Restoration' by Amiensus. Now that my headache is gone this melodic prog/black is really doing it for me right now. I even like the clean bits...

Specifically, how many metalheads can name a favorite drummer who's not Peart, Hellhammer, Hoglan, Jordison, Lopez, Duplantier, Vitek, Mounier or that one guy from Korn?

I might, yeah...only problem is, I have one of the worst headaches of my life so I might wait a little bit to give it a try.

Huh, OK. I figured it was some kinda dehumanizing thing. Isolation would make some sense. Overall I love the harsh black-and-white pen and ink schema for the whole thing. It reminds me, I actually have some pen drawings with which I'm fairly pleased.