Do you feel as though you have been abandoned?
Do you feel like you are not loved?
Well, that is b/c fuck you. In the nicest way possible. Eventually, I will have time to contribute something valuable.
I really absolutely fucking promise.
In the meantime, go check out iamaphonic.com and noirrrow.tumblr.com
Love,
me.
Have the briefest of moments, but I wanted to pop in and remind you that I am, indeed, still alive. And shall, most likely, continue to be so. My prolonged absence has been a mix of internet problems and finally tracking down a full-time bit of employment. I will likely still be somewhat lacking in time, but I have been feeling words worming about in my brainmeats of late and they have been breaking loose from time to time. SO! It is About Fucking Time to get some of them on here for you, my beloved huddled stinking festering louse-ridden drooling masses.
Keep your ear to the ground, children.
Okay, so, if you’ve visited Jesse’s page you have probably noticed that he has a list of people you should listen to; various favorites of his, and some of mine. (I’d say we share about 80% of what he has listed on his page, FYI. Two I don’t really know well, and two just aren’t really my bag, at least not enough to be considered favorites.) This is all well and good, but I’ve decided to step it up a bit and instead do a (semi)-weekly post detailing the reasons why I think everyone should listen to this person or that group, or at least why I love to do so. First up, ZAO.
“Why Zao,” you ask. Because I was listening to some of their newer stuff, off of Awake? and it got me to thinking about how frustratingly uneven their releases sometimes are and how that in no way changes how much I love them. My problem with Awake? is the same as my problem with The Funeral of God: it’s just fucking boring. The material feels uninspired, the vocalizations occasionally drive me batty, and I just can’t help but to feel with every track that the band was just kind of coasting. This isn’t said to say I wouldn’t listen to either of those albums over most of the crap that passes for metal and/or hardcore, but they just leave me feeling cold.
Now that I’ve bashed them a bit, let me tell you why I love them. Never have I found a rawer, more passionate, sometimes beautiful (lyrically and sonically), and often brutal group of musicians, ever changing though they may be, that have stuck around they way they have, both with me personally, and in the real world. They’ve done nothing but get bigger and badder, despite somewhat modest roots on nominally Christian label Tooth and Nail / Solid State (currently they share label space over at Ferret with another favorite, Every Time I Die, who will likely be covered in a future post) and the quality of the music they’ve put out has remained more or less solid throughout.
Back in the mid to late nineties, while living in Jacksonville, Florida, I used to listen to this little Christian metal radio show called The Rock Shop that aired live every weekend, usually from midnight til about 4am, depending on when the DJs got sleepy. You could call in, request, talk music, and, if you called as frequently (read: annoyingly often) as I did, just generally shoot the shit for hours on end and even get on the air from time to time. This was back before the station (which will go unnamed) went pussy on us and stopped playing anything more inventive than DC Talk and allowed a handful of magnificent bastards, namely Metalhead Ed and Griffin Decker (of about a billion local bands at the time), to play some of the best metal, industrial, goth, punk, ska, hardcore, et cetera et cetera et cetera that Christian music had to offer. And some of it was really fucking good and very much helped to shape my musical tastes. (Speaking of, I’m looking forward to a future post on the whole Circle of Dust / Celldweller clusterfuck of the fantastic.)
The above is important to this post for one very specific reason: it was on one of those late nights, sitting in my bedroom, drawing Apocalypse or Sabretooth or lord-knows-what in my sketchpad, that I heard Zao for the first time. They were playing “Steadfast” by Six Feet Deep (off of their last REX record, The Road Less Traveled) after, if memory serves, “Noah was a Knower” (which sounds stupid, but was actually silly and fun and makes me miss those days just a little) by an Australian(?) metal band called Mortification. Being the mixing masters that they were, “Steadfast” slid more or less seamlessly into “Exchange” by ZAO off of Splinter Shards the Birth of Separation and I was soundly knocked onto my ass.
From that day forward I was hooked. “His words were sharpened hooks beneath your skin…” I left them in.
The next year they released Where Blood & Fire Bring Rest, and after that the perfect and epic Liberate Te Ex Inferis, or Save Yourself From Hell. It was around this time that Jesse and I, newly minted BFFLs before they even coined the fucking term, finally got to see them for the first time at that little church at the Beach. I remember spending the day running around putting up handmade signs pointing to the venue and just being as stoked as could be. And boy howdy, but they did not disappoint. Recently discovered was THIS gem, a video featuring a song from that set with random extraneous footage, including a cameo by myself and my hetero-lifemate.
Anyway, following liberate they released two so-so albums, ZAO and Parade of Chaos, but, like I said, two so-so Zao albums still beat the pants off of most of the other crap you are likely to hear. And, I mean, really, we got “Five Year Winter” out of that period, and it doesn’t get much better than that. “Burn it down and walk away” indeed. After that was The Funeral of God, which we’ve already covered, but it was followed by a two year silence that eventually gave us The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here (2006) which made me fall in love with them all over again. TFIWKUH (HA! at ridiculous abbreviations) was hard, heavy, fast and just kicked my ass in the best way possible. While I can’t really say it hearkens back to their earlier work, it certainly hit the same level of brilliance as some of that early material, almost tying with liberate as my all-time favorite. It makes me wonder what happened in the intervening three years between it and Awake?’s release and makes me hope that the next follows the one great one kinda crap pattern that the past few albums have taken.
As far as all the re-issues, best of’s and splits go, well, really, you would have to talk to Jesse about that. Although I can say I definitely prefer Spinter Shards to the All Else Failed re-master, (yes I know they’re not exactly the same album, but whatever) and that the ZAO / Training For Utopia split was one of my favorite little discs for a while. And to wrap it up, as silly as it may be, my favorites in descending order:
Absolute favorite, liberate te ex inferis. Notable Track: The Ghost Psalm. (Picking one is unfair and impossible, but if I list all my favorites, we’ll be here forever.)
Three way tie for second: Splinter Shards the Birth of Separation, Where Blood & Fire Bring Rest, and The Fear is What Keeps Us Here. (Notable Tracks: Exchange. A Fall Farewell. Everything You Love Will Soon Fly Away.)
Two way for third: Self-Titled and Parade of Chaos. (Notable Tracks: 5 Year Winter. Free the Three.)
Lastly: The Funeral of God and Awake? (I don’t care to list notable tracks from these.)
And with that we conclude our first foray into me rambling endlessly about shit I like.
(Image via the wonderful BoingBoing.)
the iPad looks slick as shit. I mean, gigantic, but slick.
[Update - Ars Technica iPad Article.]
Apple finally announced their iSlate / iTablet thingie with a name I don’t think anyone else gave it, and it looks loverly. And I want one. It’s kind of a really interesting answer, from Apple’s corner, to the whole netbook question. The screen is almost 10-inches diagonally, it comes in 16 32 and 64GB varieties, and seems to be kitted out to do just about anything, short of, y’know, real gaming. But it kind of eliminates the need to carry around both a laptop and an iPod, especially with its ten hour battery life. It already has a beautiful case you can carry it in, which immediately makes you think of flipping open the cover and reading something, which is handy, since it is poised to be a pretty badass little eReader, giving you more or less full-sized magazines, books, obviously, and it looks like it will be an absolutely beautiful set-up for comic books, which is what really excites me. Oh, and one more thing, its little keyboard dock? Fucking inspired.
I want it.
Check out all the specs and whatnot HERE.
I kind of want some fucking PowerBocks.
“What the fuck is that shit,” you ask. They’re these ridiculous vertically sprung shoes that might as well be a temporary cybernetic upgrade allowing folk to dash about at 20mph and attain mad up status. Apparently, one of the biggest manufacturers of these jumping stilts is based a couple of hours from here in Cleveland, with the unimaginative url getjumpingstilts.com
They get their name from the guy who patented the concept, a German fellow by the name of Alexander Bock, who called them powerskips. They’re silly as all fuck, but I kind of want a pair anyway.
(This’n may look a bit daft, but I think it illustrates the sense of just kind of hurtling through the air like a loon pretty well…)
There are plenty of videos on YouTube, but I am sure if you actually want to see them, you can tap a few keys on your own.
[Edit: And I meant to mention - these things have been/are being tested by the military under various circumstances. They have grunts wearing them, chasing after ATVs and the like. I'd love to see video of that.]
If I had a Weekly Want this week, it would be to be half as good as the guys on my favorite artblog, Gorilla Artfare.
It is filled with professional artists and hobbyists alike and I don’t think I have ever seen one sketch on there that sucked. In fact, the majority are great, if not absolutely breathtaking. Here’s a link to the full thread from that second picture above. It made my heart twitch, twist, and burst.
Sure, there are hundreds of similar sites out there, Deviant Art being among them, but none of those other sites have been anywhere near as consistent when it comes to inspiring me and leaving me just plain stunned. I think my goal for this year is to up my game to the point where I can proudly post my silly little sketches up there with the best of the Gorillas.
If you like what you see there, be sure to buy some prints! I know I want some of those pieces up on my wall.
A few more after the break.
Is not the same thing as apathy.”
That is all you need to know.
