JRRZZ Blog

Damn I’m spamming my blog today. Two post in one day. Oh my.

Anyway, I’ll be attending Symforce II (some people still have to learn myspace isn’t a hosting company). It’s a prog rock event featuring Opeth, Pain of Salvation and some great bands from the prog scene I’d really like to see some time. Damn, Opeth and Pain of Salvation on one stage, I just have to be there.

So if you’re a bit into prog, drag your ass in front of a computer and order some tickets here. If you’re not into prog, well, you might just as well go here.

We need more female fronted metal bands. Not only goth. Death, doom, black, devil, nu and heavy metal too please! If you don’t like female fronted metal bands you can go home and listen to Mariah Carey now. Seriously.

I’ve gathered some videos (yes, footage is important in this case) for the sake of argument.

This is Alžběta from Stigma, a death metal band from the Czech republic.

Sonya Scarlet from Theatres des Vampires, a black/goth metal band.

Otep Shamaya, a multi talented singer with a voice like thunder, from the experimental metal band Otep.

Who doesn’t know Kittie? An all-female metal band packing some punch. One of the few, I might add. I hope the lineup stops shifting or I’ll have to keep visiting them.

And the last one, maybe the most well-known of them all, Angela “Saint” Gossow from Arch Enemy. I’m going to see them live again, pretty soon.

Flatbeat and Battlefield 1942 make an excellent combination.

A long, long time ago, when I was a little boy, I got my first radio. It was an old white clock radio with big red LED digits. Sturdy rubber buttons controlled the clock and tuned the receiver. With the late seventies – early eighties design it was a perfect decorative piece to any geek’s hangout. It’s one of those things Star Trek’s Scotty would have used his famous saying for, “They don’t make ‘em like they used to”. My father gave it to me after it had served him for years before he got married. The thing had lost it’s whiteness but functioned perfectly, and still continues to do so.

Every young kid wants to stay up late, especially when their parents tell them not to. So I refused to go asleep. I used to turn on the radio and listen to it in secrecy. After a few months of switching between stations, I discovered a hidden station I had never heard before. I had to position the antenna wire in a very awkward position to remove most of the static out of the signal. It was a station I only seemed to be able to receive at night somehow, during the day the radio would only play static.

The guy presented himself as Mister Lee. His show was called “Mister Lee’s Crazy Washing Machine”. It could just as well be something else, because the guy talked English with a very heavy Chinese accent and I was six years old. It does make sense in a way, because most of the launderettes are run by Chinese people. Anyway, it was a radio show completely filled with him talking about stuff (and me guessing what the fuck he was talking about) and the most brutal metal I had ever heard. Actually, before Mister Lee came around I didn’t even know about the genre.

I think my taste for the right kind of music and my affinity with the English language at a young age are largely contributed by Mister Lee. As of now I will honor his doings by giving him the Sensei title. Now, here are some offerings to our new Sensei.

Progressive, but so good. Katatonia’s July is one of the best progressive songs out there and can line up next to Opeth’s Face of Melinda.

Kataklysm is to make up for the progressive. This song, Crippled and Broken, clearly shows their quality. Need I say more?

Classic. Like Death. Like it. Listen to it!

Just buy all their albums and listen to it, like I did.

This song was recorded at the end of their last tour, and brought to the public on an album called The Roundhouse Tapes.
Opeth – Bleak (live at The Roundhouse)

I just love last.fm. Don’t you? MTV eat your heart out! Next to radio.jrrzz.net you can also enjoy my favorite music on my blog from time to time.

This is a song by Exodus, Now Thy Death Day Come. It’s heavy. Just the way I like it. You should also like it, I’m sure!

This song is my favorite from Mastodon’s Leviathan album. Seabeast. That vocal riff is just so perfect, damn!

Like some of you people know I listen to Metal. I also listen to (Melodic) Power Metal bands once in a while. I don’t think it’s gay or something. One of these bands is the well-known Children of Bodom. I do like some of their songs, their early work did deserve the credit it received. I even bought a genuine Children of Bodom sweater because of it.

I’m still going to listen to their music, just because it sounds ok-ish. But I’m not going to wear their clothing anymore.

Why? Because of this. Warning! Explicit Content!

For the people who want to know what I’m listening to on the road. A song by Neurosis. Sludge.