[Concert] Metal Royale '09 - Napalm Death

Lets get one thing straight: I love Napalm Death. They are without any doubt my all-time favourite metal band. I have every album, except "Suffer the Children", "Harmony Corruption" and "Utopia Banished" (although I'm pretty sure I used to have it, so if you borrowed it from me, please give it back).
There - now that you know how I feel about ND, we can get on with it.

Last night I wen't to part one of the 2009 Metal Royale (a two day, indoor metal festival) here in Aarhus, Denmark (my hometown). Obviously to see ND. There were other bands playing as well, but I was there for ND - so this review is only about Napalm Death.
Now I haven't seen them since they were here shortly after relasing the ground-breaking album" Fear, emptyness, despair", which I also consider a musical turning point for ND. With Fear... they took in a completely new style and sound which went right in with me, and just seemed to get better and better with "Diatribes" and "Inside the torn apart". And the gig promoting Fear... was fantastic. Great sound and great music. And this was more than ten years ago now. Obviously I had HIGH expectations.

But sadly I was royally disappointed. Not by the band, or the fact that they didn't play any of my favourite tracks from Fear..., Diatribes, or Inside... They've been around for almost 30 years now, and have an impressive catalogue of music. In fact, the set was really well composed - fastpaced and energetic, to support the pace of the upcoming album "Time waits for no slave", which is proably the fastest album from ND in a long time. And front man Barney, did a good job of stirring up things with his manic and almost spastic act and gesturing. No the band did absolutely great.
Why was I disappointed then? Well - the sound was fucking excruciating - and I don't mean that in any positive sense. Now I don't know if it was the venue, but I doubt it, because when I saw Soulfly a few years back, it was great. Was it the sound engineers then? Probably. I suspect them of making sound with their earplugs in. And that really doesn't fly at a live show, when the vast majority of the many hundreds of concert goers don't use plugs. I understand that after a day with 6-7 bands you'll have busted your hearing if you don't take care. But last night was just pure rape. I don't think I've ever walked out on a concert before time - untill last night. I just couldn't stand listening to my heroes like that. So I left with a ringing in my ears, that will probably not go away for the first couple of days. I wouldn't mind that, if I had just had a great experience. Unfortunately I didn't. I should probably mention that the Metale Royale seems pretty well organized and set up, so my criticism is purely directed at the sound. I REALLY hope they do better today. I'd hate to see Destruction suffer the same fate as Napalm Death - and I'd REALLY hate walking out on two shows in a row - but I'm bringing my earplugs just in case. At least I'll avoid the ringing again...

On a sidenote, I really miss Jesse Pintado (R.I.P.) in Napalm Death. And I think they should get a 2. guitar player again - at least for the live shows. It just doesn't sound the same with just one.

Rating (unfortunately) :


*image courtesy of someone else...

OMG-sockets... 'nuff said!

a lawsuit waiting to happen ;)

Back in 2003/2004 I ran a little series of comics about the Matchbox Men on Vomic.com (now vomic.hatetank.dk)
One of the first images was this one :



- today I was shown this cute tee-shirt design
I can't help but wonder where he got the inspiration ;)

Tattoo project, part 1

I've had a tattoo project planned for quite some time now, and yesterday I finally got started on it. First part was a cover up of an older tattoo which was rather poorly made about 16 years ago or so. It was a big tribal thingy - not the easiest to cover up I recon. But thanks to Helle at Alletiders Tattovering in Copenhagen, there's no trace of the original tattoo anymore.
The cover up was not as such part of the tattoo project itself, but I didn't want the old one in combination with what I have planned. So I gave Helle absolutely free hands to cover it up, only it had to be somewhat in theme with the rest I have planned.

Here are a few pictures of the cover up:


- outlining begins.


- outlining done.


- shadows and detail done.


- final result, and the old one next to it. Nice!

And a little sneak peak on the outline for par 2 of the project (there are MANY parts planned):

- Forbidden Evil album cover.

Whaddayaknow - even more new toys...

Last weekend, I installed ProTools with the little 2-track Mbox. It is Mike's old rig, and we used it up untill a month ago or so when we were practicing with the band. But Mike has bought a 16 track Mbox in order to be able to split out the drums on more tracks. All good, and the new rig is sweet. But more important - me having a similar (but smaller) rig means that since we're recording our practice session, I can bring it all home on a USB-key, and work with it here at home, which is absolutely brilliant. It's like practicing in a recording studio, and then continuing in a smaller studio at home. I can now replace my guitar tracks and edit the music as I see fit here at home, when it suits me. How fab is that?
- I guess it's because of technology like this becoming more "publicly available and affordable" that more and more professional recording studios are having a hard time - after all, we're using the same tools the studios are.

It was no easy task installing software and hardware.Oh no. The Mbox is an external soundcard, connected through USB og firewire I believe - and it IS a little more advanced than the Line6 Guitar Port which I'm also running (on another computer), but oh my god the ProTools is being picky about PC-systems...
First I tried to install it on my little MSI Wind laptop - no luck. I got what appeared to be some kind of buffer error, and there was no way to adjust my way out of it within ProTools. So I tried instaling it on my work machine here at home - which is an old, but powerfull machine which should be more than capable of running ProTools. But I had the same problems on this machine as on the laptop. So I started reading forums and stuff, and found that many other users were experiencing the same problems. And the solution was a rather lenghty optimization guide for Windows XP, created by the good ProTools developers. The guide included some pretty standard stuff like uninstalling useless applications and software, defragmenting the harddrive(s) and harmless stuff like that. But also tampering with firewall, antivirus, various system services and disabling network etc. But worst of all - tampering with the BIOS. Not really an option for me, when I also have to use the computer for work and games and of course ze interwebs...
- luckily I have an older machine, and I ended up installing the rig on this machine, and go through parts of the optimization guide, and luckily I got it working without having to tamper with tje BIOS and other vital system stuff.
- but I DO think it is a little harsh having to go through such a process. But then again - it IS a piece of professional equipment and software, and you'd usually buy dedicated systems for something like this.

But I got it working, and that all that matters :)

More new toys...

Well - Blackie obviously needed a wireless network, so today I actually bought an Apple product - no not a green/red chewy thingy - but a white Airport Express... because wireless access points are just so goddamn hideous. It was nice and easy to set up - took me less than ten minutes and it works like a charm. Wonderful.
I also got me a wireless phone for my stationary line. How very modern...

New toy :)

Meet Blackie :)



- ain't she cute? It's a MSI wind - very portable. 10" screen, 1gb ram, Intel atom 1.6 Ghz processor and 120Gb HD. Weighs no more than a kilo. And it runs Quake3 hehe.
I'm gonna try at some point to get my music-setup running on it - maybe I'm lucky and even ProTools will run on it. That'd be sweet.
Right now I'm just really pleased to have a laptop, and not be tied to the desktop pc's in my office.

- other nice features include Wifi, Bluetooth, Card reader, built-in webcam and loads more. Runs Win XP and so far it's been a pleasure.