MuttersomeTaxicab

New Cannibal Corpse! New Napalm Death! *headbangs off into the sunset*

Agreed on the Genghis Tron. Listening to them right now, actually. I don't think the new Torche has quite leaked yet. I've only got their first album and In Return. But there's two tracks up on their myspace. So far, the two tracks sound pretty excellent. Piranha's opening makes me think of Sick Sick Sick. Grenades seems a bit spacier/poppier. But that showed up on In Return anyways. Plus, with an album title like "Meanderthal" it HAS to be good.

^^^ Good stuff. This also completely went under my radar. Really happy when stuff like that happens. Pre-ordered: Cursed - III: Architects of Troubled Sleep - Jucifer - L'Autrichienne Ordered: S/T EP - Wildildlife Purchased: Murder by Death - Red of Tooth & Claw Napalm Death - Scum 20th Anniversary Edition Death - Human (Yes. I lol when I look at those band names together) Carcass - Symphonies of Sickness Pig Destroyer - 38 Counts of Battery, Painter of Dead Girls Genghis Tron - Board Up the House Torche - Self-titled Against Me! - New Wave NIN - Ghosts I-IV (Cd version) Fight Amp - Hungry for Nothing Pygmy Lush - Bitter River The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust Hide Your Daughters - The Teen Girl's Guide to Social Success Harlots - Betrayer

Murder By Death - Red of Tooth & Claw Fight Amp - Hungry for Nothing The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust Pygmy Lush - Bitter River Pig Destroyer - Painter of Dead Girls, Phantom Limb, Terrifyer

I'll back anyone who's mentioning Red Sparowes. Those guys have an incredible live show, to say nothing of their studio work, which is also stellar. Any time they come to the Toronto area, I'm there with bells on. I went on a pretty big post-rock kick last year. Went through about two dozen various acts before finally sticking with: Gifts From Enola Russian Circles Laura Pelican gets a lot of respect these days, but I always seem to find their stuff lacking somehow.

Genghis Tron - The Feast. Full of wins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwfTpZWd9IA

Pygmy Lush - Bitter River (click for review) http://www.sendspace.com/file/onqgpp

Cursed - Reparations

Yay for you being the only person I've generally agreed with. The new QOTSA rocked me more than I figured it would. That Spoon album is also pretty awesome. I've heard great things about Battles but not bothered to listen, much to my chagrin. Stuff that's occupied the play list more often than not: Matt Good, Grinderman, QOTSA (obviously) Carina Round - Slow Motion Addict jesu - pale sketches, life line (FYI Soundless Space, check these out, as they pretty much pwn Conqueror. The inclusion of Jarboe of Swans on life line eats my face every time.) Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works (Not as amazing as Miss Machine, but pretty much trumps most other heavy releases) High on Fire - Death Is This Communion (Massive points for association with Sleep, and former association with Melvins and Steve Albini) Oceansize - Frames The World/Inferno Friendship Society - Addicted to Bad Ideas Other mentions probably include: The Locust - New Erections Pig Destroyer - Phantom Limb Ministry - The Last Sucker And the entire Kyuss discography, which didn't come out this year, but dominated my listening habits for the entire year.

Agreed, and well said. I figured I`d be rocking Amputecture for a long, long while, but I found myself putting it away only a week or so after I picked it up. Then the new Isis came out, and I didn`t even bother with Amputecture until a week ago. It`s gotten a bit better after in some parts, but meanders way too much. Frances the Mute rocked my feeble clerk world, as did De-Loused before that (although none of which rocked me nearly as much as Relationship of Command could)

Anyone actually see Alexisonfire live? It's somewhat hard to avoid anyways these days. Anyrate. George does most of the talking. Dallas doesn't do the frontman thing well. Plus, if one considers the City & Colour lyrics... Sweet jesus. If anyone's looking for the definition of banal, there it is. Don't get me wrong, Dallas has a great voice, and he's decent on guitar, but he couldn't keep anyone's attention during their live shows. And there has been a shift in George's vocals. Mostly in terms of distortion on the mic. Which generally makes sense. There were a few times on the first album I heard his voice crack and cringed. Not saying it sounded horrible, but simply that it sounded like bordering on permanent damage soon. But yeah, there's a notable difference even in that between Crisis and Watch Out! - esp. in terms of intelligible lyrics. So yep. That's my rant. I'm glad they're still noisy-ish, and I'm especially glad George annoys so many people, too.

G-spot rocks the G-spot.

Ondaatje = awesomesauce. Lamentably, I'm stuck reading suffragette fiction for an essay. Blergh. Edit: Equus is also fantastic.

I digs her. Could see why people wouldn't. But still. I love her weirdness.

I'm always a sucker for albums that bands release knowing they're going to piss off at least half of their fans. For serious. I only listened to Finch's "Say Hello to Sunshine" because I had so many emo kids come in trying to return it because they hated it. At which point, I gleefully informed them we would only issue returns or exchanges for a copy of the same album after it had been opened. Thus: Kid A is tops for me. Deftones: I respect Around the Fur. I even respect Max Cavalera, to a point. I just think he was completely unnecessary on that album. I'm going to disagree that it's their best album though. I always found it had a fair few throwaway tracks. Then again, I'm a White Pony or Adrenaline kid.

You are very, very, VERY correct. Jucifer is awesome.

;) No dice. The copy I found last year became a birthday present for my girlfriend, and my original copy fell victim to a klutz helping me move.

Hah, don't you already HAVE a copy of Loser Anthems?

Went to Future Shop to pick up Year Zero today like the good little angst-ridden mallrat I am. (Er. Or... I guess was. Is there an agelimit on mallrat status? What about if I haven't been to the mall for at least a month or two?) Anyrate. Oogled their bargain CD bin briefly. Found a copy of Loser Anthems for $1.97. This is the second time in a year that I've found Loser Anthems on the shelf @ Future Shop. What the hell?

It should be noted that most Grad Students are holed up in the library because they're being academically prison fucked. It's kinda like in some programs where they try to scare a lot of kids out in the first few years. I'm still convinced that when the calendar rolls over from April to May, the entire faculty is going to show up on my doorstep and yell "SURPRISE! YOU'RE NOT DONE YET! WRITE SIX MORE ESSAYS YOU FUCKER!" and then hand me a stack of forty papers to mark on top of it.

Damn skippy.

Awesome. Many thanks.

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007: Novelist of dark comic talent and moral vision By DINITIA SMITH THE NEW YORK TIMES NEW YORK -- Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels such as "Slaughterhouse-Five," "Cat's Cradle" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in New York. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island. His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and '70s. Like Mark Twain, Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence and, like Twain, had a profound pessimism. "Mark Twain," Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, "Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage," "finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died." His novels -- 14 in all -- were alternate universes, populated by races of his own creation, such as the interdimensional Tralfamadorians, and made-up religions, such as the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and Bokononism. The defining moment of Vonnegut's life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed as a prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids, many of them burned to death or asphyxiated. The raid was the basis of "Slaughterhouse-Five," which was published in 1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval. The novel, wrote the critic Jerome Klinkowitz, "so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age." To Vonnegut, the only possible redemption for the madness and apparent meaninglessness of existence was human kindness. The title character in his 1965 novel, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater," summed up his philosophy: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies -- 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.' " Vonnegut eschewed traditional structure and punctuation. His books were a mixture of fiction and autobiography, prone to one-sentence paragraphs, exclamation points and italics. Graham Greene called him "one of the most able of living American writers." Some critics said he had invented a new literary type, infusing the science-fiction form with humor and moral relevance and elevating it to serious literature. He was also accused of repeating himself, of recycling themes and characters. His harshest critics called him no more than a comic book philosopher, a purveyor of empty aphorisms. His first novel was "Player Piano," published in 1952, a satire on corporate life. It was followed in 1959 by "The Sirens of Titan," a science fiction novel featuring the Church of God of the Utterly Indifferent. His last book, in 2005, was a collection of biographical essays, "A Man Without a Country." It, too, was a best-seller. Godspeed, you crazy bastard.

Speak for everybody else. I've heard much about this Merzbow, and only actually heard a couple "remixes." I hear the collab. he did with Patton was ludicrous.