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.

Incoherent raving and rambling goes here.

1.”flash should be removed from the game for saving fucking bad players”

2.”my team veryu nb”

3.”stfu hes annoying” (In response to a hero balance thread)

4.”LOL IDC REPROT ME NUBS”

5.”f u noob or i have baby with ur mom”

6.”its grammer trust me im in 5th grade”

7. “he was a total dick he kept calling me a faggot when in reality he was

the faggot and he played karthus and ksed me all the time what a fucking

faggot”

8. “YEAH YOU DON’T KNOW ME DOUCHENOZZEL”

9. “u are fu cking shi t” (multiple times, with spaces in words despite no

filter)

More from the same guy:
“u sh ut up u suck bitch tranny dick”

10. “You tried to kill jax to die”

11. “1/6 vayne, stfu about ad veigar”

12. “COMMONG STOP DIEING”

13. “i said i am solo but that noob din’t listen me”

14. “yer only reason i died cause u 4 v 1 me nooobs”

15. ” i can lose ur game” reply: ” you already are”

16. “OMFG FCKING LATOPO WOWW LAGG”

17. “maphite and moakai gays boyfriends = BG”

18. “Stop ****ing makign me type”

19. “TWITCH MAKE TIHNG FUCK YOU ARE LUCK”

20. “she was telling me bad things just because i said that the kill wasnt

good and now she is getting ther whole team to report me and get me banned

for a week which i dont think is fair because i dd not do anything at all

and she is getting her whole team to rerport me which is not nice”

21.”you guys aren’t good either, ksing and sucking dick and drinking beer”

22.”he spam am noob”

23.”swallow my loadplease and alot…”

24.”non stop fking me and lost the game newbie”

25.”wtf dont tell bad alistars how do the w/q move”

26.”got gucked garen”

27.”Get got afk at the biginning so they could taik down der turrets”

28.”I’m reporting you all for stacking magic resist”

29. “HE CALLED ME A BITCH, I AM NOT HIS BITCH, I AM MY MOMMYS BITCH”

30. “ASHE IM SOLO U ASS BUMB”

31. “reporting only works if the game is under 25 mins”

32. “Plz restart the server ot take down is not a good idea stay online with

problems”

33. “player quite game and did not come back towards the end with no

explaination”

34. “oriana is being a faq”

35. “get a life loserrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

36. “NO MISTAKE I DIE. I BRAVE”

37. “And you will why we had lose”

38. “i will really feeding i swear god”

39. “owned noobn big foig”

40. “ommg disinstall stop insiding”

41. “i fidn u an fuk u up u her”

42. “ur life is sucker”

43. “don y you seen jerker booblist”

44. “MOTHER FUK SHIT NOB I SOO TIRED TO PLAY WITH FUKERS”

45. “QQed all day long and cussed at me and my teemates and fed and was a

noob and sux so much!”

46. “this kid’s horrible…why am i failing lol”

47. “i am junlie”

48. “fuck off baddie”

49. “Left The Game, Nuff Said. A Team!!!”

50. “he leave the game till it not finish and he have an negative attitude

with the team.”

51. “HAI GAIZZZ WUTS A M I A”

52. “fukk you and your mission statement punk !”

53. “because there are a little Overpowered.”

54. “i do this every gae and never get suspened”

55. “He was a jerk to us the whole time calling us noobs and he even called

us a slang term for a female bodypart. This is the type of player that makes

me dislike this game when I play he was a jerk and wouldnt leave us alone. I

wish that you would ban this person from playing on his ip address!”

56. “he sat at the bace the hole game doing nothing accept dissing his howl

team”

57. “plz let him out of rank game..”

58. “no phaton dance you gison and gomblad omg”

59. “nub is ur dads middle name”

60. “making the team bad when U say all NOOBS”

61. “lever ban”

62. “we nee dot deal with”

63. “fk u all ima start feeding cuz im a fkn feeder”

64. “got pised raged at malp then sucided”

65. “i prefere to feed and help my team doing kill over solo and dont help

us team do kill and survive”

66. “swore all game, made me cry and play bad :’(“

67. “nobody cares about you lagg so repror you”

68. “CALLED MY TEAM NOOBS WTF WHAT A DICK”

69. “idiot dont wont to tock or do any thing always using baf langueage”

70. “AFK/LEAVER PLZ FFFFN BAN THEM ALRDYYYYY”

71. “omg fukken worship my c0ck qqqqqq”

72. “ROROFLORORLF”

73. “all reprot veiger unskiled palyer ty”

74. “he was calling people retard and cuurseing me out”

75. “and keep saying gg ruined my game”

76. “i mid u fucks”

77. “I didnt know i died”

78. “i take ur turrent score win bonus in game?”

79. “lost game watch me how i fed”

80. “ufag and bad”

81. “im gunan fuck up everything in mah house”

82. “u wotn gonna talk u fink noob”

83. “this moron duo wiht a troll”

84. “FUK U IN MIS WHAT IS MIS”

85. “omg u two shit hopeless”

86. “noob dont go positive u has 2 feed”

87. “omg i report u cuz i call u nigger and ur not nigger”

88. “spamming but really spamming plz check chat suiciding whinning”

89. “1v5 and u run? fukken uninstall”

90. “he sais i dont care im goona fuck the game”

91. “if you dont ban him i curs you”

92. “fuk u like a dam woman”

93. “he sauck so bad not stupid”

94. “say me fuc king noob”

95. “YOU MOUTHERFUCING ILLETERAL”

96. “CRIED THE ENTIRE FUC|<ING GAME. OMFG CASTRATE THIS |3ITCH!”

97. “i use feeding to have noob team”

98. “WAKE HE FUCK UP DMBFUCK”

99. “BIG TALKER, can stop insulting our garen and she can’t handle die

without talk.”

100. “takeing blue buff perpussly 2 times in a time spane of about 1 min”

101. “u go kill securing again and i go feed propouse”

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”

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”

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 &quot;their ashe has

hack&quot;”

110. “score means heaps bro i take norarlssrsly”

111. “STUCK IN ELO HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL WITH FUCKING RETAD”

112. “i was typing to out fail fucking riven”

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!”

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”

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”

125. “i killl florest i no ggo help this team next time”

126. “he always said this word, Suck my dick and fuck It’s really angry to

my mind -”

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”

130. “fiz only kill me cuz u are higher lvl of noob”

131. “k noob u hate u fuck range”

132. “he foul languaje sid homosexual”

133. “doesnt stop telling everybody is noob and shit … most annoying one i

never see”

134. “ks that duh support should never she dumb as fuck”

135. “FIGLe WTF!!1 FUCK!! WHY WQHY!!”!”! “

136. “team my is nb”

137. “he has done lots of innaporpiiate word”

138. “omg i report u for unskilled i dont want u playing at my level”

139. “WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 y does it freaking lag wenevr im

fiting?!!!?!?!?!?!??!”

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!”

143. “so many noobs trynd jungle and fail”

144. “your so fucking awful stop fucking in my chat”

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”

150. “suck my dick emo useless lama shit”

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.

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.

Speaking of stats, here are some more:

• The busiest day was March 10th, 2011, when WordPress recorded 80 views. This month, the most views I’ve received on any given day were 35 on January 7th.
• March 2011 was also the month with the most views – 478.
• 2011, although light on traffic so far, has still been more active than 2010. The highest view count in 2010? 209 for December 2010; only in one month of 2011 did I receive less traffic (June 2011).
• Out of all the articles, the one with the most comments is this one, where I claimed that the brief use of a King Crimson sample in the single track “Power” by Kanye West would not contribute to the awareness of the former. This was before I decided it was best to ignore mainstream pop. As of this writing, it only has 4 comments. It’s followed by a writeup on Morbid Angel’s 5th album, “Formulas Fatal to the Flesh”.
• Akismet (the blog’s spam protector) has detected a whopping 3,510 spam comments. They have been blocked, and for good reason. The greatest number of them came in August, 2011; in that month I received 626 spam comments.

If it seems like pointless masturbation over numbers, that’s because it probably is. At this point, I have a large amount of content, but it’s mostly aimed at niche audiences like League of Legends players and metalheads. What you guys can do for me is tell your friends and family about this blog, get them to read it. It probably won’t benefit you in any way, but did you think about that when you forwarded that video of the sneezing panda to your entire workforce?

I thought so.

My spring semester classes begin tomorrow. They ought to be fun, or at least useful.

P.S: I’m not blacking out the site for the SOPA/PIPA protests on 1/18. While I support the complete and utter destruction of everything these bills stand for (and the removal of its supporters from their positions of power), I just don’t have the site traffic for it to matter.

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.

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.

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!

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”

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 probably, at least to some extend, is a rehash of Townsend’s first “quadrilogy” (Biomech, Infinity, Physicist, Terria). One of those albums is probably a good place to start. 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”

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”.