Therion – Lepaca Kliffoth (1995)
If Symphony Masses was a step in the direction for normalcy for Therion, this album is a 30 minute car drive towards that location, followed up by an acid trip. You can hear the seams of traditional heavy metal, with tinges of groove and thrash, but the production, riffs, and instrumentation give this a very strange atmosphere that I don’t think the band ever tried to replicate.
Considering that this album ushers in latter day Therion’s favorite musical elements, like symphonic elements in meaningful quantities, opera singers, etc. while retaining tinges of the band’s death metal past, the atmosphere on display here could be best described as ‘gothic’ in more than one way. It smacks of effort to recall the glories of the past in a more accessible form. Besides, it has “The Beauty in Black”, which is the band’s first real effort at writing a ballad. Check out the cover art of that one, and tell me you don’t want to write cliched love poetry with references to suicide.
At times, this actually sounds more like a gussied up, symphonic version of ’90s Pantera than anything. It never goes into “ARE YOU TALKING TO ME” territory or 3 note riffs, but everything is simplified and slowed down compared to previous works. The opening track, “The Wings of the Hydra”, is a perfect example of this. The opening riff is stripped down as hell; eventually a violin keyboard patch is brought in over it. The rest the riffs gallop along in the groove-thrash mold, while all these new aesthetic elements dance over them. More simplistic grooving shows up on tracks like “Melez”, “Let the New Day Begin”, and “The Veil of Golden Spheres”.
This album’s songwriting is middle-loaded – there’s a string of awesomeness that begins with “Riders of Theli” and ends with the cover of Celtic Frost’s “Sorrows of the Moon”. The four songs in said bracket seem to merge the old and new aspects of the songwriting most effectively – “Black”, in particular is a miniature epic with the most coherent riffing and transitions on the album. In general, the songs are very theatrical and occasionally cheesy. It’s partially the aesthetics – some parts of the songs (like the middle of “Evocation of Vovin”) would still sound fairly silly if, instead of keyboard patches, they had real instruments. In short, it means that the major weakness of this album is that it suffers from the same attempted mix of softness and pseudo-heaviness that Dream Theater’s Awake did, if not to the same extent. If this album was rearranged using the musical language of Beyond Sanctorum, Lemuria, or some other non-transitional album, it might improve significantly. Anyways, it’s still historically interesting. I don’t know how much this album sold compared to other albums by the band, but this and Theli were definitely very influential on various symphonic/gothic metal bands.
Mudhoney – Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (1991)
In the deep past, I wrote upon the subject of alternative rock, and how similar it was to the classic rock that preceded it. In the process, implied that I enjoyed the works of the band Mudhoney. That was intentional.
Since the amount of grunge rock I’ve listened to is very minimal (mainly because I consider Alice in Chains to be a bona fide heavy metal band), I can easily say that this is the best of the genre that I’ve been exposed to. It’s pretty relaxed, smoothed out, slappy music, and I get the feeling that drugs were involved in its creation. Mudhoney, at their core, play somewhat lo-fi punk rock with a heavy blues influence. Nothing here is technical or flashy. There’s a bit of dissonance in the solos, and lead vocalist Mark Arm occasionally shouts on occasion, in addition to singing and yelping his way through the songs.
Why I like it? I’m not sure. Mostly, it’s because it’s A. A collection of fairly simplistic songs (albeit not entirely formulaic) that don’t try to pretend they’re anything more than good times, and B. It doesn’t use its’ accessible song structures and aesthetics to pander to the mainstream. In this respect, Mudhoney fills a relatively neglected niche in my listening rotation – that of non-contemplative relaxation. Like Devin Townsend, I end up listening mainly for the emotions, but I can appreciate the band on a musical level as well. Obviously, this leads to some occasional lyrical dissonance – take the song “Broken Hands”, the lyrics of which are what you’d expect it to be about. Again, listening to death metal for a few years has irrevocably altered my standards for what “dark” music would sound like, but outside the wailing vocals and minor key chord progressions, this isn’t very morose. In fact, its lyrics could probably be swapped out for a variety of topics, and unknowing listeners would be none the wiser. Another song, “Good Enough”, veers in the opposite direction; long story short, there’s more to mood than tonality.
Long story short; this album is more than the sum of its parts. Mudhoney isn’t very well known by the general public, but its members were also involved in the even more pioneering grunge act, Green River. Before Nirvana went all power-pop on Nevermind, Mudhoney/Green River was probably many a person’s introduction to the genre, and even now, they’re probably a frequent stepping stone into the Seattle scene.
I’m out of my league here. Has anyone ever done a fusion of grunge rock and death metal? That would probably incite me to further explore the genre if it was done right. Then again, it might not.
Blut Aus Nord – Memoria Vetusta I (1996)
Prior to being an avant-garde black metal band, Blut Aus Nord was a fairly typical black metal band – Sorcier Des Glaces level typical, enamored with the Norwegian scene and employing the same Mayhem/Burzum/Immortal/etc. cocktail that so many bands before them and after them mixed. On the other hand, BAN had the gift of songwriting that characterizes so many of the works I like. This album employs basically the exact strategy that Sacramentum used on their debut, to the point that I can summarize the differences between this album and Far Away From The Sun with a short list:
- Fathers of the Icy Age has more prominent and complex basslines. Sacramentum didn’t shy away from bassing it up, but their debut is pretty much carried by guitar counterpoint.
- Fathers of the Icy Age contains a greater variety of vocals, due to the addition of clean chanting, which is sometimes harmonized. The harsh vocals have less ‘body’ to them, and the entire vocal track is softer relative to that on Far Away From The Sun.
- Far Away From The Sun has a much cleaner production. While everything is reasonably well mixed on Memoria Vetusta, the production tends more towards the ‘necro’ style associated with Norwegian black metal, and in general goes for a more ambient ‘wall of sound’ approach.
- Far Away From The Sun‘s songs are generally faster than that of this album, in terms of pure BPM, and also riff/drumming changes. It has more blastbeats, as well. However, it also changes its tempos up within songs more than this album, which does it fairly infrequently. Even this album’s predecessor, Ultima Thulee, was more varied in terms of tempos.
Note how these are almost always aesthetic differences. Both of these albums rely heavily on their melodic/harmonic prowess to retain listener interest, but Blut Aus Nord’s second album is basically the atmospheric counterpart of its Swedish sibling.
Anyways, the compositional similarities render this one of my favorites along with Far Away From The Sun, although that album still edges it out in riff writing and song structure. The amount of counterpoint at any given time is generally lower, as many of the riffs are monophonic, with harmonic reinforcement. The occasional keyboards and clean vocals are more likely to perform something that doesn’t quite match the guitars and bass. Percussion is provided by a drum machine, but the unknown W.D. Feld writes a reasonably large amount of mid-paced patterns. Variety is not as high as it was on the recently discussed Here in After by Immolation, but since the drums are relatively subdued and ambient compared to that album, that’s not really a problem.
Overall, how much you’ll enjoy this album depends on how much you like the melodic sorts of black metal. This is a very ‘predictable’ release, in that it conforms to a style that was well defined by 1996, uses fairly simple song structures, and isn’t given to variety. On the other hand, it does what it aims for very well. Vindsval, after writing this, probably felt that continuing to write in this style would lead to artistic stagnation, hence the transformation of BAN into a horrific, apocalyptic industrial beast that probably listens to more Immolation than is healthy. Opinions on it are divisive. It seems like the sort of music I’d like, but I’d actually have to give The Work Which Transforms God or whatever a spin to actually make that decision.
The Return of The Primary Writing Class – Final Paper
Several months ago, I showed you guys the short essay I wrote on blogging for my primary writing requirement class way back in my freshman year. Given some time, I’ve decided that my final paper, in which I discussed the value of video games in an educational context (mainly using the MMO Atlantica Online as a source of examples). It was written under time pressure, but it seems relatively coherent in retrospect, although the seams of heavy revision show (in the few days before I published it, I rewrote several pages of it). Anyways, you might find it interesting, so check it out (and the sources I cite, if you have access to them) if you’re into video games and justifying things.
“Why Video Games Have Use In A School Context”
As for Atlantica Online? It was fun in late 2009/early 2010, but I lost interest around level 95 (out of 130) or so, which incidentally is when the game starts getting much grindier than before. Nothing against the developers, although I’m not really seeing myself being able to get back into it.
Immolation (1996) – Here In After
In many ways, Immolation’s second album is particularly unusual. It walks very thin line between being very accessible and easy to pick up, and being very uninviting and difficult to comprehend. This may be its greatest strength. Sure, the riffs are dissonant, rhythmically complex, and arranged in complicated, ‘narrative’ song structures, but they’re also catchy and hooky as hell. The album makes significant use of pinch harmonics in its riffs, contributing to its unique aesthetic. It has a very deep, bassy production, but unlike, for instance, Suffocation’s debut (Effigy of the Forgotten), guitar tone is very strong, making each specific note easy to pick out. Ross Dolan leans towards the deep end of death growls, but his enunciation is excellent to the point where I can easily make out what he’s saying when I pay attention to the lyrics. Admittedly, my love of and acclimation to dissonant music (even before I got into extreme metal) may be skewing my perspective, but this is definitely a lot easier to get into than albums of similar complexity and ambition, like Obscura or Pierced From Within.
Every song here has its own unique identity despite the constant aesthetic. Immolation takes various sorts of riffs – dissonant blasting phrases, more spacious hook riffs, pinch harmonics, and builds a variety of songs from sets of them. Due to the sheer variety of drumming on this album, each riff is inseparable from the drum pattern underlying it. How many death metal albums can say that? Here in After, in short, smacks of massive effort and craft – the band took 5 years to write and record it.
Take, for instance, the second track, “Burn with Jesus”. A popular sentiment, I suppose, but the first 30 seconds or so (up until vocals come in) are best described as “infernal”, and the dissonance that the two riffs introduced here showcase is very open, unresolved. The riffs in the refrain (0:48-1:12) are also dissonant, but the melodies they trace out are provide some resolution. Again, one should note how the drumming enhances them – within this minute you can hear a rise and fall of intensity, moving from drum hits as accents, to various permutations of blastbeats, and back to drumming as accentuation. There’s a lot of circular writing going on here, but Immolation doesn’t spend the entire song trapped in one circle – they move between them. The second set of riffs, coming after the introductory material, are slower and again showcase the band circling through dynamics and dissonance induced tension, before transitioning back to the introductory material, and finishing with a coda, encasing everything in a larger circle. It’s basically the same form of songwriting that you see in classical music, with introductory themes, development in the middle, recapitulation/expansion of the theme at the end, and new material as a coda. Sections that would seem unrelated at first glance are hereby linked together.
Other songs showcase this same circular/narrative approach. The title track and “I Feel Nothing” contain the greatest degree of melody and consonance on the album. “Nailed to Gold” and “Away from God” give us a great deal of blasting, and “Christ’s Cage” is a lengthy, mostly down-tempo conclusion to the album. Outside of lyrical content, inter-song connections are fairly limited – I think there’s a general slowing down of tempo throughout the album, and the most accessible, ‘normal’ sounding songs are in the middle, but since this isn’t a strict concept album, such is acceptable. Anyways, due to its high degree of musical complexity, this album is definitely worthy of further study. Of course, if you just want to rock out to some death metal, there’s plenty of that to be found here. If you didn’t, you’d probably be at the local concert hall now instead of reading this blogpost.
Of Immolation’s albums, I have only listened to this one and Close to A World Below. The latter has better production, and slightly less dissonance in favor of melodic songwriting, although the songwriting is similar. It’s also the band’s best known and loved album. Coincidence?
Dissection – The Somberlain (1993)
So here’s the way I see it – this album manages to be interesting, creative, well written for 3 songs – “Black Horizons”, “The Somberlain”, and “A Land Forlorn”. Then it isn’t; why is this? It would be amiss of me not to mention that those three songs are at the beginning of the album, and are the longest on the album, taking up half its length. Having listened to the second half of the album with much greater scrutiny than I’ve given it in a longer time, I find that it relies on the same songwriting and playing techniques as the first half. It appears to be greater ambition that makes this first half worth my time, and the second one not so much.
This is not, in my opinion, a release with particularly special riffing, or particularly coherent songwriting. Many of these songs feel like a bunch of tangentially related sections stapled to one another. The transitions would be abrupt and jarring if the riffs were significantly different from one another, which they often aren’t. One of the key features of extreme metal is that many songs contain a large amount of seemingly unrelated riffs. When they succeed, it’s because of two things:
1. The transitions between the riffs smooth out the differences.
2. Said riffs are arranged in an order that strengthens their impact.
I know I’m getting into vaguely defined territory here, but albums with particularly good composition (like Altars of Madness and In the Nightside Eclipse) tend to create specific effects in the listener. Let’s take “Suffocation”, off Altars of Madness, which aspires towards chaos. The first three major riffs (verse, chorus, after-chorus) form a circle of sorts which ‘encase’ the listener. They’re played at a breakneck pace and transition effectively into the mid-paced bridge of the song, which importantly serves as counterpoint to the main riffs, creating a sense of dynamics without having to resort to something like acoustics or a doomy section.
Altars of Madness is full of those little moments; it’s simple stuff, like the use of fundamentally different riff structures to demarcate sections of a song (Maze of Torment is the opposite, with complex verse and chorus riffs, and a simple bridge), and the use of harmony as emphasis, but that’s what makes it so memorable after 20 years. “The Somberlain”, by comparison, is a lot clunkier. Transitions are abrupt, riffs are samey, etc. Again, I feel that the musicians simply tried harder on the longer songs, so while they are afflicted by the same lack of craft that the rest of the album suffers, the greater ambition results in more anthemic riffs, more variety within songs, etc.
It’s not like those three songs are masterpieces or anything, but if the rest of the songs were given the same level of attention, this album would deserve the classic status it has. At its basic level, this is a simple combination of traditional heavy metal songwriting with the new forms of death metal and black metal of the time. One area where this fusion becomes most notable is the drumming, which mixes blastbeats (not the ambient sort) with the older thrash-beats and some slower, rock style drumming. They aren’t mixed together or hybridized (How would you?). The guitars are similar; they alternate between consonant riffs and more dissonant, chromatic riffs. It’s like the album is stuck between two modes of communication and can’t stick to one, or properly integrate the two together into something new.
I’ve heard that Storm of the Light’s Bane is closer to the nascent Gothenburg sound, but I haven’t listened enough to confirm this; maybe if I had enjoyed this album more I would’ve. Either way, it begins well, but the second half of it is markedly inferior; never really “bad” per say, but not worth your time. Bands like Rotting Christ and Necromantia pull off the heavy/black fusion better. Sentenced, At the Gates and Necrophobic write better riffs and have more interesting songwriting. Sacramentum (which is often seen as a Dissection ripoff) basically mastered this style on their debut full-length, then decided to show up the Dissectoids at their own simpler, more rock-like work on “The Coming of Chaos”. Definitely check those bands out if you’re into the whole ‘melodic metal’ thing; you can probably pass on this album.
Crazy Theories – Starcraft II as an interquel
Nerd alert!
I had this idea many aeons ago, as a result of looking at the plot of Wings of Liberty, and some of the stuff in the original and Brood War that didn’t get mentioned. The end result was that I found it wouldn’t take very many retcons to make Wings of Liberty take place between SC1 and Brood War, but actually making them probably would be fairly ill advised.
Now, I’m aware that a lot of things were retconned and expanded between the release of Brood War and WoL, and also that attempting to shoehorn this plot in creates problems of its own – but the main idea here is that forcing WoL between Starcraft and Brood War does resolve some of the issues that the chronology creates.
Examples:
1. The UED makes no appearance in WoL. Is it likely that everyone forgot about them, especially considering that they supposedly conquered the Dominion, however briefly? Besides, very little UED-related technology really shows up. Medics do show up in the campaign, but it’s not like the Koprulu sector Terrans would be unable to develop such technologies themselves.
2. Kerrigan supposedly was worried about the New Overmind on Char. If we assume the interquel theory, it would suggest that Kerrigan did in fact lose some of her powers as a result of the deinfestation, lending more weight to fear over control by the new Overmind. Brood War, at least, implies that Kerrigan is willing to make quick alliances of convenience.
3. Jim Raynor’s attitudes towards Kerrigan make more sense this way. At the end of Brood War, he has sworn to kill Kerrigan for the various murders, but at the beginning of Wings of Liberty, he’s desperate to save her. Is it more likely that he is capable of getting over the betrayal, the murder of Fenix, or that such events hadn’t occurred to influence his decisions?
4. The Dominion. Remember, in Brood War, Mengsk was forced to work with Raynor and Kerrigan in an attempt to get the Dominion back from the UED. However, the rebellion that Raynor’s Raiders caused appears to have had limited effects at best, and the Dominion was undoubtedly weakened by Raynor’s decision to work with Valerian in an attempt to “de-infest” Kerrigan, and the substantial casualties that occured. In the interquel theory, this may have given the UED’s small expeditionary force (the one that relied on already existent production, such as the Dylar Shipyards) an advantage in the conflict.
Notes:
- There are outside sources that I am ignoring due to lack of familiarity with.
- An interquel theory has problems of its own, such as:
A. Disrupting the timeline.
B. The issue of Samir Duran/Narud is left unsolved.
C. This causes issues with Zeratul’s prophecy, as well as the hybrids, although if we assume the interquel thing, it may have played a role in Jim Raynor’s “trust” in Kerrigan.
Remember, this is just a hypothesis that shifts things around substantially, and Heart of the Swarm may add details that render this illogical and obsolete.
On an unrelated note, how about Colossi that act like the Headcrabs from Half-Life? Full sized Colossi, in case anyone asks.
The oddities of internet advertising
In the course of browsing the internet, I find all sorts of advertising. This is nothing new; even I’m trying to get word out on things like this blog and First Contact Is Bad For You. To this end, I’ve been doing a lot of graphical design work in GIMP, and I’ve been learning a LOT about the field from it – take for instance this banner ad I designed.
I consider myself an amateur at this, but I think it fits the main criterions of an advertisement – eye-catching, informative, not annoying or gimmicky, etc. Hopefully, not the sort of thing that someone would download AdBlocker for.
On the other hand, someone’s decided that, in fact, they don’t have to be informative. They clearly think there’s no need to even tell potential audiences the NAME of your product, otherwise they wouldn’t have approved and uploaded an advertisement like this:
Technically, it’s far from the worst possible example. Whoever made it had the decency to put SOME visual cues into the thing, so that anyone who decides to click it has some idea of what to expect, what with the police car and the low polygon count. I did some basic research, and this lead to a website called “TimeWasterz”, which, as you would expect, specializes in online video games. You won’t find anything particularly interesting there, but they do have such favorites as “Counter Kill”, “Park Your Ride”, “Mafia Driver 3″… what do you mean you’ve never heard of such things? Oh right, you can’t be expected to play all the latest shovelware. So it was basically one of a million generic web gaming sites, probably designed to entice prepubescent boys in search of freebies, like OneMoreLevel.com. I also found a variety of shoddy advertisements on the site; some were of the anti-informative “Play” variety, others ripped off well known licenses, like Mario, and so forth.
I didn’t stop there, of course. First, I went to Quantcast and looked the site up – their traffic varies significantly, but for most of the months mentioned, over 50,000 (possibly unique? I don’t know) people visited the site each month. That’s an awful lot for one of these fly-by-night ‘arcades’, but most of them fell into the under-18, low-income part of the population, which was to be expected. Then, I found that the company directly responsible for the advertising services was called “Ideal Internet”. They supposedly manage web traffic for a bunch of these sites – besides the aforementioned TimeWasterz, there were a bunch of other crappy online ‘arcades’ with very similar page designs. II’s website is full of incoherent corporate babbling – for instance, check out their “About” page. Here’s some samples:
1. Our goal is to direct users to the appropriate website which best fits their interest.
Sounds honorable enough, but as an online gamer, I’d rather go to a GOOD, reputable Flash portal like Kongregate, Newgrounds, or Armor Games. The type of site you serve is the type I’d like to avoid.
2. This website should then be reconfigured in order to accommodate each audience group. Non-valuable traffic should be “equally traded” to another related website where it may hold more value.
In other words, they don’t want periphery demographics, and are willing to shunt them all over the place. Also, note how they’re more interested in redesigning websites so that they’re relentlessly targeted towards specific demographics than they are making user-friendly content.
3. This form of advertising is best suited for internet users who have no intention or real purpose online other than to waste time. Arcade websites present a near perfect environment for interactive advertisements and there is an abundance of internet gamers.
So in short, children. Quantcast is backing me up here. They rarely do their research beforehand, and also lack the judgement to avoid these dodgy advertisements/sites.
It’s an amusing combination – they’re working to ensnare an audience that not only isn’t capable of fighting back, but is difficult to profit off due to its lack of funds. That, combined with the fact their products are of inferior quality, is sure to catapult them into the public name overnight. The sad thing is that this sort of thing probably actually works – IdealInternet has been around since 2009 or so (according to a WhoIs lookup), and most people wouldn’t spend 3 years on the internet doing something completely ineffective.
Gargoyle – Furebumi (1990)
How many of you have heard of Gargoyle? I thought so.
This is probably one of those cases where information about the band is sparse because they write and perform in Japanese, which is actually quite rare in the metal scene. Other Japanese bands, like Loudness, Abigail, and Sigh tend to write in English to varying degrees of competency, which makes it more accessible to foreigners like us. Had I discovered this in 2008 or so, when I was more willing to delve through Japanese culture without the required language proficiency (like Nicovideo crawling and Google Autotranslate odysseys), it would’ve blown my mind, but it might’ve taken me a long time to determine the link between this band and the rest fo the metal world.
You see, Gargoyle is like Mac OS 7, which is arguably where Apple peaked in ‘coolness’. That OS (and therefore Gargoyle) provided a significantly different seeming experience than your average computer (band) of the time. When you look at the underlying hardware and design decisions, you eventually find that things actually ARE fundamentally different. In Apple’s case, they’d lost Steve Jobs to NextSTEP, booted Jean-Louis Gassée for “55% or Die”, introduced some low cost models, but remained fundamentally incompatible with IBM PCs, expensive, and prestigous. I don’t know if I would’ve bought a Mac had I been an adult in the early ’90s, but they were definitely more interesting machines than today’s glorified PCs with anodized aluminum and iDevice peripherals. But I digress.
How does Gargoyle compare? Well, in the late ’80s, they were obviously listening to some extreme thrash metal like Slayer and Kreator, but on Furebumi, as well as later albums, I can also hear the influence of early power metal, like Helloween and the country’s own X Japan. Of course, Gargoyle also came to the decision of playing every genre known to man on their albums at this point, several years before Sigh decided they wanted to do the same thing on their 1997 album Hail Horror Hail. Still, Furebumi is, at its base, a mixture of thrash and power metal, with various genre bending moments. Amongst other things, we see acoustic rock style picking on the otherwise extreme “Djirenma”, funk on “Naitzukushi”, symphonics on “Ryuuten no Seinite”, etc. Relative to their later albums, the genre bending wackiness isn’t all that pronounced, but the defining trait of Gargoyle is that they distill these elements down and make them fit in the core – when they don’t want to or can’t, they just write a ballad or hard rock song to fit it in.
As thrashers, they certainly excel – take for instance, the aforementioned “Djirenma”, which actually incorporates some playing techniques generally associated with death metal, like blastbeats (technically just extremely fast regular ‘thrash polka’ drumming) and especially fast tremelo picking. It also incorporates a ripping solo after the acoustic break – technically, it’s more conventional with attention to melody, and no Trey Azagthoth type whammy shenanigans. It’s still intense. The power metal influence generally results in more melodic songs – the two preceding (“Ounou No Goku” and “Tokimeki”) have a great deal of guitar leads over simpler, more tremolo oriented guitar riffing, and a later one, “Algolagnia” uses a relatively large amount of guitar strings to create a song that reminds me of Rage’s 1988 album “Perfect Man”. The key here is that the band excels even when they’re not drawing on outside influences, and is certainly worth your time if you’re into that sort of thing.
P.S: Gargoyle generally pulls out at least one crazy ‘funk rock/metal’ song per album. Here, it’s “Naitzikushi”. Other albums bring us such gems as “Renaniuyuji”, “Samurai Dynamite”, “Doumushishubai”, “Karappo”, etc.
Satan’s Host – By The Hands Of The Devil (2011)
Man, it’s hard to believe it’s almost 2012. To get it out of the way, I hypothesize that due to all of the crazed jabbering we saw about the Mayan calendar and so forth, that it will be the “Year of the Retard”, in which human intelligence reaches its nadir as people halfheartedly try to cause and prevent the apocalypse. Fun.
But let’s ignore that for a brief moment. This here is By The Hands of the Devil, the latest studio album by Satan’s Host. It’s where the band’s previous extreme blackened death metal reunites with the accomplished power metal vocals of Harry Conklin. Seriously – the guy has excellent range, tone, and his melodies are well written. He has everything – high tenor, Rob Halford style falsettos, a powerful midrange, and a small portion of screeches and growls backing him up. Quite frankly, the performance is impressive, and it acts as an excellent case for the incorporation of clean vocals into more extreme forms of metal. Obviously not everyone wants them, but when used right, they (of course) add depth to the songwriting.
Anyways, despite his presence, this is basically still full on black/death for its duration – there are a few nods to more traditional forms of metal, mostly during the slower sections. The riffing tends towards the more melodic side of the genre, with a relatively low amount of chromaticism and/or pentatonic chord progressions. In contrast to the last covered album, the drumming is far more dynamic, and definitely more audible.
So this album is one of powerful riffing, with varied song structures (there are some verse/chorus type songs, but even those have a variety of sections), and so forth. Lyrics are about as satanic as you’d expect from a band named “Satan’s Host”, which is to say they’re up there with Marduk and Dark Funeral. This would be a flaw on any other album, but the way they’re delivered makes them sound a lot better than they probably are.
Highlights: “Black Hilted Knife”, “Revival”, “Shades of the Unlight”
So anyways, you might want to know what 2012 holds for this blog. A few major points:
- Don’t expect any “Best of 2011″ list or anything. I didn’t actually listen to enough albums from the year to make a good decision about it.
- Expect to see some First Contact Is Bad For You paraphernalia. Not sure what yet. It could be some short stories set in the universe, some comics, a video. Don’t know. The sequel is being written as we speak, but progress is slow.
- Flying Pillars Across The Universe is still ongoing. Check it out.
- I am preparing storylines and such for a webcomic project unrelated to any of this stuff. Currently, I am searching for an artist; I could do it myself, but that would take a lot of time, and my interest in drawing things is not very high at the moment.
I also want to draw attention to a particularly laughable bit of junkmail I recieved recently. With the subject “Permanent Blog Post”:
I was looking at your site invisiblesandwichtm.wordpress.com today, especially the (blog, news, post) that talks about (online games, entertainment, hobbies). I was wondering if you could place a link on your site towards the site of my client. How much do you charge for this?
I shouldn’t have to tell you how that’s sad, but suffice it to say that the ‘client’ was not named in the email. Happy 2012, people!
Sorcier Des Glaces – Snowland (1998)
Sure, it seems like an abrupt departure from the 2011 coverage. But in a few days, the band is going to release Snowland Reprise MMXI, a remake of this that apparently showcases a new, much beefier production. That means it counts… right?
Silliness aside, this Quebecois band is somewhat obscure, but have been receiving greater attention lately due to their increased productivity as of late – their 3rd studio album came out in August 2011, and their next (Ritual of the End) is scheduled for July 2012. This one is supposedly a tribute to many of the Norwegian black metal bands of the early ’90s, with its lo-fi production, melodic riffing, greyscale cover art, and so forth. The production is worth talking about – the vocals are fairly low in the mix, and the drums are hard to hear, especially when they blastbeat and the cymbals are the only thing I can hear. The guitars have a limited degree of treble, giving them an even more atmospheric and windblown sound than your average BM band. The overall effect is that this sounds much more laid back and contemplative than your average extreme metal album. Keyboards are used sparsely, with plenty of wind sounds, and ambient sounding patches. They too are lo-fi (and tuned slightly sharp), but that’s more than acceptable considering the style of the album. These keyboards get 2 instrumentals to show off – the lead in track that sets the mood for the album, and the more martial “Darkness Covers the Snowland”.
Adding to this contemplative feeling is the nature of the riffing. It’s melodic as usual, but Snowland showcases a lot of unusual melodies, with infrequently seen chord progressions and voicings. The middle of “Onward Into The Crystal Snows”, for instance, showcases many minor/diminished 7ths in a descending pattern starting around 1:38. In general, these techniques give Snowland a refined sense of melody, that, while not particularly increasing the heaviness (like it does for Necrophobic and Sacramentum), adds a rarely seen level of compositional intricacy (like At The Gates’ debut). Possibly as a result, the riffs aren’t related to the degree that a more direct band would use, giving the whole album a sort of wandering feel. Overall, combined with the winter/fantasy lyrics, listening to the album is like taking a contemplative journey into a foreign land, full of interesting sights and events. “Pure Northern Landscape Desolation” is probably the ‘heaviest’ track on here, with its lengthy buildup from 0:00 to 2:46 enhancing the rest of the song.
Overall, this Norwegian-style outing both benefits and suffers from its adaptation of the aesthetic. Obviously, it excels in creating atmosphere, and the guitar techniques used in that specific sort of black metal lend themselves well to the unique riffing this band showcases. On the other hand, the muted production makes it much more difficult to establish dynamics and almost completely marginalizes the drumming. Overall, the melodies carry this, but I will certainly want to listen to the remake, as well as the band’s later albums to see how they evolved.
Highlights: “Onward Into the Crystal Snows”, “Pure Northern Landscape Desolation”, “Night Throne”
Devin Townsend – Deconstruction (2011)
Continuing my unofficial ‘coverage’ of 2011′s metal albums is the third of Devin Townsend’s project output, starring most of the better known metal vocalists, and almost as many symphony orchestra/choir members as Septic Flesh’s “The Great Mass” did. It’s a little bit overblown, contains a good deal of humor, some farting, and was supposed to be “heavier than Strapping Young Lad”. Then again, so was Physicist in 2000, and that didn’t really come close.
You see, Devin Townsend’s influences have changed over the years. In the mid ’90s, he must’ve been listening to a lot of Fear Factory, Godflesh, other industrial, thrash, death metal bands. Maybe he still does so today, but the main spice that separates the solo work from the strapping work is musical theater. Granted, it doesn’t show up on all of his work – it’s most prevalent on Infinity and Ziltoid the Omniscient, and less so on other albums, but Deconstruction is so laden with it as to be a whole 70 minute mini-musical, going through the whole range of emotions and intensity. Listening to it in one go is quite the experience, with dizzying highs, placid lows, creamy centers, and so forth.
The album’s songs alternate (with the exception of the opener) between fast, intense, ripping songs, and more varied, extended compositions. For instance, track #4, “Planet of the Apes”, is essentially the album in miniature, alternating sections of tense, aggressive instrumentation with poppy, catchy melodies. It contains some vocal contributions from Tommy Rogers of Between the Buried and Me, but they mesh in to the point that someone who wasn’t familiar with the guests might think Devin’s still singing. Such is one of the key points of the album – the vocalists on the shorter tracks come to the forefront more than those on the longer tracks, who tend to be more subtle. Despite having so many guest vocalists and a full choir, this isn’t nearly as much of a vocal-driven album as you’d expect.
In fact, all of the various instrumentation is quite balanced – most of the ‘heaviness’ actually comes from the drums, which play a great variety of beats at a variety of speeds – one should note that Dirk Verbeuren (who plays mostly on the second half of the album) generally does a better job than the other drummer (Ryan Van Poederooyen). There is a gigantic keyboard/symphonic presence on this album, possibly exceeding the other symphonic ‘extreme’ metal works of the year (By bands like Septic Flesh, Mayan, and Fleshgod Apocalypse), and this is where of the melodies come from. Said melodies alternate between extreme metal riffing, of the type you’d hear in SYL, and the pop/musical theater ones that you don’t hear much outside of Devin Townsend… or in actual pop music and musical theater, but whatever.
As to whether you’ll like it – it’s theatrical, gigantic, has an immature sense of humor, and is physically exhausting to listen to in its entirety. Fans of Townsend already have this album, especially if they liked his more recent works, like Ziltoid the Omniscient (who makes a ‘cameo’ in “The Mighty Masturbator). Fans of the other symphonic extreme metal would probably enjoy it, as well, as long as they didn’t get offended by the silliness. The rest of you, on the other hand, probably shouldn’t start here, or for that matter, with any of the 4 “project” albums. They really aren’t representative of Devy’s overall style, as they seemingly intend to explore different styles of music. Moreover, the Project strikes me is a reboot of Townsend’s first “quadrilogy” (Biomech, Infinity, Physicist, Terria). One of those albums is probably a good place to start; while they differ significantly in style, those four explore similar concepts to their corresponding Project albums while being significantly more accessible. Ziltoid the Omniscient and Strapping Young Lad’s 1997 album, City also make good starting points. But if you’re not into following advice, by all means start here. Just don’t come complaining to me when you find it’s too real for you.
Highlights: “Juular”, “Planet of the Apes”, “The Mighty Masturbator”, “Pandemic”
Vektor – Outer Isolation (2011)
So if you’ve been paying attention to this blog, you’ll notice that I was a fan of this band’s previous album, Black Future, and its ‘progressive’ approach to thrash metal. Outer Isolation takes that approach and strips out most of the fat in favor of more concise, aggressive songwriting, with riffs that are best described as ‘insane’, or ‘highly chromatic and intricate’ if you’re into actually doing a good job of describing things.
Amongst other things, the band continues rerecording tracks from Demolition here, and said tracks are closer to what we saw on the previous album, with more consonant melodies and more complex song structures. The new songs, on the other hand, have more complex riffing, showing all sorts of chord patterns and rhythms. For instance, the first track, “Cosmic Cortex” is 10 minutes of ripping, Voivod style riffing (In that it’s frequently dissonant, and uses many if not all of the strings on a guitar), outside its relatively placid, albeit tension inducing intro. The next two tracks (Echoless Chamber and Dying World) share the same formula of midpaced beginnings, and then turning into frenzied thrashers midway thorugh. Personally, I find “Dying World” to have the better riffs of the two, in that they’re melodic while retaining the typical dissonant edge. Of the rerecordings, “Tetrastructural Minds” is my favorite – it rivals not only the Black Future tracks for melodic prowness, but retains the intensity of the new stuff. I took the opportunity to listen to the original version of it on the “Demolition” demo – the basic structure and riffing was there, albeit played slightly slower, due to the lack of 4 years of extra practice.
Basically, this album has simpler, more obvious song structuring than its predecessor (so no “Forests of Legend”). The riffing, on the other hand, has improved substantially – take what I said about Cosmic Cortex, and apply it to the rest of the songs – all sorts of chord shapes, and a variety of rhythms. Essentially, all of the members have improved their abilities – the drummer plays more varied parts, the bass is more audible, the guitars are more technical (dur), and David Disanto’s trademark screeches are even more abrasive here, although he occasionally experiments with a more melodic form of delivery. Whether this is enough to outbalance the simplification of song structures from “Black Future” is up to the reader.
Highlights: “Echoless Chamber”, “Dying World”, “Tetrastructural Minds”, “Outer Isolation”.
Septic Flesh – The Great Mass (2011)
Symphonics aside, this really isn’t all that different from Sumerian Daemons or this band’s seminal ’90s works. I haven’t listened to Communion yet (except for the ‘evil Meow Mix’ title track) , but I’ve heard that this is basically a continuation of the approach heard on that album. Compared to what I have listened to, this seems to add a significant infusion of slow, doomy sections to the songwriting formula. Otherwise, it’s still the frequently contemplative, yet theatrical/gothic approach. The aggression levels are similar to that of their 2003 album,the operatic vocals remain (albeit with a greater emphasis on choirs), and Sotiris’ vocals keep the distinctive flavor they developed on Revolution DNA.
In short, the aesthetics differ, but the techniques and songwriting remain similar to what the band has been delivering for almost two decades. That’s not a bad thing. Case in point: “Rising”, the 7th track, is probably a deliberate throwback to the earlier aesthetic, as it lacks any sort of symphonic backing. It particularly benefits from the beefy Abyss Studios production (thank you again, Peter Tägtgren), but if that was altered, it could pass for an Ophidian Wheel outtake. On the other hand, tracks like “A Great Mass of Death” and “The Undead Keep Dreaming” bathe in the symphonic approach to create some apocalyptic, thunderous death metal. Most tracks are somewhere in the middle – from the relatively restrained “Pyramid God” with its abrupt mutation midway through the song, the relaxed “Oceans of Grey”, the dissonant “Mad Architect”, and so forth. Lyrics are good as usual, probably less contemplative than they were back in the late ’90s, but they stand out less when a band has had as much opportunity as Septic Flesh to practice their craft.
I read somewhere that the band made a serious effort to avoid what they perceived as a stereotypical ‘film score’ style of orchestration. Nothing sounds like that, but if I heard a track from this album in a film, I’d be seriously impressed. It took a long time for me to find ‘extreme’ symphonic metal as good as this, and I’m not letting it leave my clutches. Silliness aside, totally worth the purchase, even though the band hasn’t changed all that much from when they hit their songwriting formula in the 90s. Out of the few albums I’ve listened to that came out in 2011, this is one of the frontrunners for the best. The other is Vektor’s “Outer Isolation”, but that’s another review.
Highlights: “The Vampire from Nazareth”, “A Great Mass of Death”, “Pyramid God”, “Rising”
Stupid LoLSpeak #5: Edible Nuts Edition
So apparently League of Legends has experienced explosive growth in the last few months. People can say it’s ‘less competitive’ and more ‘noob friendly’ than DotA, Heroes of Newerth, etc, but try as they might, the League of Legends community can’t outdouche all the other AoS communities. Neither can they keep up with Halo and Call of Duty players, no matter how hard they try. Still, if you play for too long, you’ll go mad from the inanity of these fragments. Commentary in italics.
101. “u go kill securing again and i go feed propouse”
I’m not sure if he meant ‘Porpoise’, or ‘Proust’, but I don’t think either of them particularly appreciate gorging on human flesh.
102. “spawned little lb babies of satan who tried to demonicly penetrate me without magic resist in which was absorbed by my bv like manilness”
This is one of the more borderline statements. You don’t see many of them.
103. “U SO BAD U RLY A FCKING VIRGIN”
104. “i intentionally made us loose cuz of eve”
105. “nop mapreading we neverw in”
106. “omg 2 mid so noob”
Alas! The lanes are unconventional! That will result in instant defeat!
107. “eat fken red bitch”
108. “your both stupid for tanklingshit to ur own players”
109. “he has a catalisty as first item, and say "their ashe has hack"”
Their Ashe plays Hack? Someone should introduce her to ADOM.
110. “score means heaps bro i take norarlssrsly”
111. “STUCK IN ELO HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL WITH FUCKING RETAD”
Maggots are your sheets, brimstone your blankets, and the fire that sears your soul is your own.
112. “i was typing to out fail fucking riven”
That’s not very nice. But in my experience, Riven players don’t tend to be very well mannered.
113. “play better?2×1?huauhauhhua noob”
114. “report for inspiring drugs in a videogame”
115. “wtf mf so gay she wait till i get really low lives than kills me what a noob”
116. “smd nigggersssss!!!!!!!!!!!!1111 your all fucking gay!”
117. “I WANT MID NO I WANT BOT OMG NO I REPORT YOU”
118. “she used words like idiot homo and so on! it is an offensive language!”
You know what’s a really offensive language? Catalan. Apparently.
119. “U NB UNISTAIL”
120. “Dear gentleman of RIOT !!! I hope you do somenthing related to that player. He killed himself the entire game, feeding too much. Nigga spoke words as racist among other things. Thx”
Funny how only people of African descent are allowed to speak the infamous “N Word” without social repercussions. Also, racists supposedly aren’t allowed to talk.
121. “haha want you am noob die”
122. “Karthus omg fuk suk”
123. “thsi guy is a fucking dooshbag who vried about mia’s whe whole match and cussed the other players out… thx roit for letting dumb ass retaerds who buttfuck their firends while playing this game “
124. “God your fking retarted trynd U SUC MY MOMS FAT @SS U ONLY WIN CUZ POPPKY FEED U U GET HARD BY GUYS U FKING FLAMER”
I think this guy has a dissociative disorder. Why else would he get so pissed at himself?
125. “i killl florest i no ggo help this team next time”
Dude. What have florists ever done to you? I mean, maybe they overcharged you for a corsage- oh wait, crap, I was assuming you were above 13 again.
Others might believe in letting the dialogue speak for itself, but not me.
Fear Factory – Demanufacture (1995)
By the time this came out in 1995, industrial metal was a trend. There were essentially two parallel approaches to the genre at this point. On one hand, we had the grindcore influenced, ultra-abrasive method influenced by bands like Throbbing Gristle and Swans and exemplified mainly by Godflesh. On the other hand, we also had a more electronic, accessible approach popularized mainly by electro-industrial and alternative rock acts, like Nine Inch Nails. Obviously, there was some overlap, and Demanufacture sits squarely in the middle of the spectrum.
This basically means we have simplistic structures and melodic composition with extreme metal aesthetics. Burton C. Bell’s clean singing is especially useful, since it adds much needed layers to the sound – case in point: Self Bias Resistor, which has a chorus that simply wouldn’t work if it was shouted. He uses his harsh vocals (not quite low enough to be growls, but definitely not shrieks) efficiently as well. Outside of the dual vocalled approach, the rest of the instruments fall into a percussive groove/thrash mold – riffs are either fast, or midpaced, depending on the song. Unfortunately, the riffs are fairly basic, generally consisting of power-chord chugging and tremelos, and occasional chromaticism. The drumming is moderately technical, showcasing a variety of patterns over a large amount of double bass drumming.
On this album, the strongest moments, surprisingly enough, are the melodic and laid-back portions. While the title track evolves into a ripping thrasher, and “Self Bias Resistor” keeps up the intensity, “Zero Signal” is the first high point of this album, employing a lot of catchy, poplike melodies and captivating textures. Also fitting the same mold are “Dog Day Sunrise” (a Head of David cover) and “Pisschrist”, which is relatively laid back considering its intentionally controversial name. Sure, when the band decides to recall its death/thrash roots, that’s good, but they often mix in a lot of foolish sounding groove/nu-metal type sections, which are filler at best. The laid back songs, besides demonstrating the band’s ability to write good melodies, have relatively few of those.
In the end, this proves to me that that Fear Factory could easily write a laid-back “ambient metal” album and have it turn out well, but they didn’t end up doing that. You know who ended up doing that? Devin Townsend. It sounds like a gigantic detour, but two months before this came out, Strapping Young Lad released their debut, which at times sounds like a much heavier, faster version of this, sharing the tendencies towards melodic writing, and occasionally having laid back moments. City is fairly similar in that regard, except with further streamlined songwriting, and a massive production boost – similar to what happened between FF’s debut (Soul of a New Machine) and this. I’m going to put that down to similar influences. Anyways, “Ocean Machine” probably counts as the ambient metal album analogue that Fear Factory never ended up putting out, but could’ve. And nowadays, Fear Factory is 50% SYL by weight, since Byron Stroud and Gene Hoglan ended up flocking to its banner. Strange for sure, but back then, the bands had a good deal of common ground. Fans of this should listen to SYL, and vice versa. Don’t think I won’t recommend this on its own merits, though.
The Red Chord – Fused Together in Revolving Doors (2002)
Guy Kozowyk used to drive a bus for the mentally ill. Considering the lyrics (which are written to sound like the ramblings of insane people), and the overall approach to songwriting, it’s clearly intentional that this album sounds so fragmented and manic. At its base, this is a death metal album with a good deal of hardcore punk influence, although most of that is probably streamed through the Suffocation/Cryptopsy filter. This implies various things – breakdowns (or at least slow sections, since the riffing continues through them), blastbeating, and an overall percussive, rhythmically complex approach to the genre. It’s also quite technical, with plenty of atonal riffs and demented solos going all over the fretboards, although nothing really reaches the level of an “Obscura” or a “Nespithe”.
This, on its own, is about the same as a gigantic portion of the genre, so what really sets The Red Chord apart from other acts is the schizophrenic mania. It manifests in the songwriting, with its intentionally abrupt transitions, amongst other things, and is where the hardcore/metalcore influence is most felt. The key here is that it is not random, yet everything is highly chaotic, with relatively little repetition of riffs, and tempo changes all the time. We also see a variety of vocals – death growls interspersed with higher snarls, and a small amount of spoken word, and the occasional section of ‘easy listening’ (check out the introduction to “Dreaming in Dog Years” for an example). It’s all about dichotomy, as songs warp back and forth between contrasting ideas abruptly and dramatically, providing breakdowns for the scene kiddies and diversity for the rest of us.
On later albums, this band upped the hardcore influence and the insane rambling lyrics further, and based on the strengths of the debut, I’ll want to check such out.
Highlights: “Like A Train Through A Pigeon”, “Dreaming in Dog Years”, “Nihilist”
Therion – Beyond Sanctorum (1992)
So over the last few years, I have had much to say about Therion, and how they went from being a death metal band to being a symphonic power metal band (or something) over the course of a a few years, as well as being the greatest recruiting tool Dragon Rouge could ever hope for. It’s hard not to like them, even with such massive stylistic changes, and my appraisal of the band has become ever more positive as I listen to more of their albums.
“Beyond Sanctorum” was the 4th album by the band that I listened to (after Theli, Symphony Masses, and Vovin), and probably the one that has brought me the greatest amount of enjoyment so far. Mostly, it sticks to death metal – much has been made of the brief operatic vocals on “Symphony of the Dead”, but it’s only two lines. The outro, “Paths” relies more heavily on them, but don’t dwell on it. Lepaca Kliffoth is where the style of singing actually became a significant part of the band’s aesthetic, as opposed to here. Other deviations from death metal are more prominent – we see some keyboards, but more importantly, there are several sections of songs (like the latter third of “Future Consciousness”) that indulge heavily in melodic riffing, reduced tempos, etc, creating a spacious effect.
Speaking of aesthetics, this album has an excellent production – even in their early days, the band always managed to sound excellent, with strong, abrasive guitar tone, clear bass (more notable on the next few albums, where it was more ambitious). The riffs aren’t very technical, but they are powerful, varied, all good things. The solos are intentionally simplistic, and avoid shredding like the plague – in many cases, it’s like having another riff playing over the base one, and this approach is responsible for the overall melodic sound of the album. The songwriting here is ambitious, and at times, it strains the abilities of the songwriters – “Future Consciousness” is one of the band’s older songs, for instance, and it’s the messiest thing on here, having relatively weak transitions between riffs, before the melodic ending. “The Way” is 11 minutes long, and probably could be cut down by a minute or two, but it does keep the interest level up by putting out a massive number of riffs, exploring all sorts of ideas. It took them until 2007 to write something longer (“Adulruna Rediviva” on Gothic Kabblah), and on an album level, they’ve definitely gone beyond this, but to have this much ambition so early in your career, and to do a relatively good job of achieving it is probably a good sign. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to listen to the band’s later output and see if they succeeded or not.
Highlights: “Cthulu”, “Symphony of the Dead”, “Enter the Depths of Eternal Darkness”, “The Way”
Stupid LoLSpeak #6: Zeal Stacking Edition
Actually, to be honest, the degree to which League of Legends players say incredibly stupid things has decreased a bit over the last few months. I’m guessing Tribunal is working. This, of course, is corroborated by the overflowing amount of threads in which people claim they were unjustly banned, while admitting in their threads that they rage and quit frequently. People don’t learn, but they sure do get punished. I can’t really judge the macro trends of the game’s population, so I’ll leave that to Riot. Commentary in italics.
126. “he always said this word, Suck my dick and fuck It’s really angry to my mind -”
As you can see, words are getting longer. Pretty soon, people will use the entire bibliography of Shakespeare as an adjective meaning “ornate”.
127. “suck ez so bad go hell”
128. “FUCKING I RAPE MY LANE NOW I LOSE TOWER CUZ OF U BAD”
129. “ill report you for not knowing how to spell virigin tard”
Ah, sweet ironies. then agian, i Am totaly a fukin swett literacy guy
130. “fiz only kill me cuz u are higher lvl of noob”
Actually, I’ve occasionally died because I expected a player to not make mistake X, and then their doing it throws me off.
131. “k noob u hate u fuck range”
132. “he foul languaje sid homosexual”
Let me guess: this guy hates the Commodore Amiga even more.
133. “doesnt stop telling everybody is noob and shit … most annoying one i never see”
You know, I could try to misinterpret this literally for comedic effect, but my brain’d explode.
134. “ks that duh support should never she dumb as fuck”
135. “FIGLe WTF!!1 FUCK!! WHY WQHY!!”!”! “
How about you try to come up with a witty comment for this one? It’s pretty hard.
136. “team my is nb”
137. “he has done lots of innaporpiiate word”
Who is this guy? I want to ask him what it’s like to fuck the word “fuck”. Does “ass” have a nice ass? And so forth.
138. “omg i report u for unskilled i dont want u playing at my level”
I did some research, and I found that correlation does not imply causation. For those of you who don’t know, if a player recieves a significant amount of “Unskilled player” reports, their ELO is adjusted downwards.
139. “WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 y does it freaking lag wenevr im fiting?!!!?!?!?!?!??!”
Your clothes aren’t making you lag, but your shirt’s collar might be cutting off the circulation to your brain. It’s been known to happen.
140. “oh im sorry but GET SOME SKILLS U BALL SUKING BLOND ASS HOLES!”
141. “CHOGATH CALLED ME RUSSIAN NAZI SCHWEINEHUND; BUT NAZI WAS IN FRANCE; NOT RUSSIA OMGGG.”
I trust this player. He’s in 5th grade. He’s a paragon of virtue and knowledge.
142. “INTENTIONALLY NEEDS TO UNINSTALL WORST LABLANC EVER!”
I’ve never played Final Fantasy X-2, but it’s supposed to be pretty controversial, right?
143. “so many noobs trynd jungle and fail”
Because you can’t spell “Tryndamere” without “Try”.
144. “your so fucking awful stop fucking in my chat”
Why is your chatroom a brothel?
145. “called me a derogitory name.”
146. “shaco i suck u don’t know how or play but at least im not suck u”
147. “u helped ur team win i reprot u for Assisting Enemy Team”
148. “and kat says i die so much cause shes a noob”
149. “COME ON GUYS DONT SEE THAT SHIT fuck team”
You could just give them the URL for Net Nanny or some other children’s web censorship software.
150. “suck my dick emo useless lama shit”
Hey, man. Be nice to the Dalai Lama. He’d be nice to you!
Maybe I’m just more selective. These are arguably stupider than the ones in the first installment or two. I still don’t know who “Junlie” is, although I have a few theories.
Note: WordPress really needs to stop ‘rescuing’ things I delete from my posts.