Good stuff. Time to do drinking?

Hey dude, how's tricks?

The ongoing hunt for good djenty acts has come up trumps, found an excellent Irish act today: http://shatteredskies.bandcamp.com/ It's a bit like Textures, they've got the balance almost too right. Almost.

Glad you liked it

I think the second half is the strongest. Alone With You into Allure is the biggest highlight for me.

Yeah, the guitar work takes precedence over the vocals. Just wait 'til halfway through- the heaviness and the shoegazey stuff completely meshes, hair-raising stuff.

Did you check out the Fallujah album in the end? The only thing that kept it from my top spot was the somewhat anonymous vocals. If it had been fronted by Joe Duplantier or someone else of that calibre, it would've been number 1, no question.

Yeah, it's a bit frustrating. Heard good things about Skyharbour and Intervals, but they were rather disappointing when I heard them. Textures do the clean thing too, but I think their songs are a cut above their peers and they forego most effects on the vocals.

Might buy some Meshuggah albums soon. Was tempted to ask my grandparents for Destroy Erase Improve just for their reaction

Been doing some digging lately for djenty-but-melodic acts, been surprising hard to find any I really like. Aside from Textures they all use a bit too much autotune for my tastes.

It's one of my favourite albums of the year, I'm just encouraging you to check it out

Went over the Lantlos album agian. there's a bloody massive *shels-drumming moment in Cherry Quartz

I can live with that I've done pretty well, should hit the 35 mark by the time we put our votes in for the poll. At least half of it is metal this year.

You never did give me an improved name for Fallujah's shoegaze+death metal thing. Which you still ought to hear.

So much good metal. I still haven't heard the new Electric Wizard in full.

You're going to Mastodon next weekend, right? My first impression from Krokodil is that they'll be good fun supporting.

The Krokodil stuff I've heard is also promising (you're going to see Mastodon, am I right? They're supporting)

Hey, did you hear the Machine Head and Fallujah albums in the end?

Well, what I've heard of the Electric Wizard album is great, but I don't think I can do the whole 60+ minutes tonight.

I'd recommend not going anywhere near it.

Yeah, I've been listening to Blue Lines and Dummy by Portishead quite a bit lately (a friend used Biscuit on a kayaking short film recently, and that set me off on a Portishead binge). Mezzanine's my favourite of their albums, but Blues Lines and Heligoland are awesome too.

I'm completely with you on the Shake It Off vs Anaconda thing. Heard the latter today at work, and it's almost as bad as the new Limp Bizkit song.

I need to delve into their experimental stuff.

Good grief, how brutal is that Godflesh album? I don't think I've heard guitar tones that nasty since Koloss.

New Dark Ages is savage. I always wondered what real sludge would sound like played on an eight-stringer.

Turns out a couple of friends put out a new video yesterday. Enjoy

I don't do any editing myself (my computer is a bit crap for it, and I don't have any software for it) so I just give my footage to other people. I'd like to do some edits at some point, but I'm busy most of the time working or job-searching.

I listen to less and less of the middle-ground stuff these days. Though it's nice to have a smarter-than-average act from that area like Byzantine and Textures to come back to when I want something more consise than Lantlos or Isis.

Allelujah! and Skinny Fists. I reckon that the main RIFF section of Mladic would be awesome on a paddling video. Don't think I'll ever run anything suitably epic myself, but I've suggested it to a couple of friends.

I've heard some incredibly bad metal lately. Limp Bizkit's new song, Issues (the band) and this godawful thing called "thug metal." It's like they've taken all the worst things about old numetal, and added all the most tedious things in today's scene.