Rockin’ Friday – Metallica Shmetallica?

Welcome again to Rockin Friday! Today a discussion on one of the most famous metal bands in history. Above is a picture of their frontman James Hetfield (before he grew his crazy beard O.o)
Anywho, Metallica are one of the best selling metal acts of all time, second only to bands such as Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. They are definitely the best selling and most widely known bands of the later generations of metal, which would include such acts as Slayer, Megadeth, Pantera etc etc.

After their first four albums, which includes what is seen as the best metal album of all time by many: ‘Master of Puppets’, they broke into the mainstream with ‘Metallica’, otherwise known as ‘The Black Album’, fronted by the single ‘Enter Sandman’, which is absolutely brilliant song. Since then, they have changed more and more into a hard rock group, becoming even bigger, but, as some see it, even more mainstream (and, therefore, shit. Depends how you look at it 😀 )

This spiral culminated in the ’03 ‘St. Anger’, which personally I think is a pile of crap (the single that is. Haven’t heard the album.) Basically, I believe they were going for the sound of a band jamming in a garage to try and bring their music back to the basics. While you can definitely feel the raw energy of the band, the downside is that it sounds like band jamming in their garage. I’d much rather listen to the polished music of a properly produced album. If I want raw, I’ll listen to the far rawer and polished sound of a band like Machine Head.

Back to the point, this led to great uproar among the people who’d consider themselves old school fans, as it saw a departure from their old thrash style into completely hard rock/nu metal. Which, for most metalheads, is considered rubbish.

Because of this, their new album is being widely anticipated, and hoped to be, a return to their old style and form. Recently, underground videos of their album in production have surfaced (considering what happened with Napster, I doubt Metallica would be too happy with this 😀 ) Anyway, this means you can judge for yourself. Are Metallica returning to what made them great in the first place?

There are a bunch more floating around as well.

Anyways, that’s all for this week. Enjoy!

Rock on \m/

Rockin Friday!

Hello again, and welcome to another edition of Rockin Friday!

It’s been a while, and unfortunately not a whole lot of underground stuff for you today. Next week I think I’ll look into how to rip iPods and whatnot, but for now just a bunch of random stuff.

Now bear with me American readers, as I will talk about two British music festivals. The first of these is Glastonbury, which is so famous it may even be known across the Pond. But otherwise, it is an annual festival, mainly populated by indie bands although it has plenty of other acts too. It runs for 3 days, and attracts a massive crowd every year, being the biggest greenfield festival in the world. This years festival has sparked some debate by announcing a certain rapper as the main headline act.

There we have Jay-Z wearing a wonderful pink sweater. Now, of course, announcing a rapper as the headline act at an indie festival is going to cause some issues, and many people have vowed to boycott the event. While I don’t blame them for not paying for an act they wouldn’t want to see, some of the fuss people have been making is a bit OTT, and in fact some people have been calling them up for prejudice and racism. Perhaps that’s reading a little too much into it, but they certainly have a point about them not being open-minded enough.

Now, my next festival is a perhaps less well known rock festival called Donnington Download. (It used to be known as Monsters of Rock if that’s more well known). Now, in their own words, it is a punk rock/heavy metal festival (I may have paraphrased slightly), but in all honesty it’s a primarily heavy metal gig. So imagine the furor when last year MCR and Linkin Park were announced as headline acts besides the legendary Iron Maiden. Now, both bands were bottled and booed, as both are understandably tagged as ’emo’, which is, of course, a major offense to all things heavy metal. Now don’t get me wrong, I personally have nothing against the two bands, and in fact enjoy some of their songs. I think it was wrong of the organisers to have them as headline acts when you look at the calibre of some of the bands supporting them (Megadeth, Machine Head, Slayer, etc). But what can you do? Throw piss at them? I’d rather enjoy the show to be quite honest.

This year, alongside the equally legendary Kiss we have Lostprophets and the Offspring, two bands which I actually thoroughly enjoy. But in similar fashion, this has kicked up a major fuss, what with Lostprophets being ’emo’ (Listen to their first two albums and tell me that!) and the Offspring not really being a metal band. Ah well, some people are blinded by their prejudice, be they gansta wannabes, indie kids or metalheads, and they’re unlikely to change soon.

(Lostprophets in full swing at one of their more recent shows)

That’s all for this week. Next week I’ll hopefully have something a little more underground for you, in fact I have something in mind. But otherwise enjoy your weekend and this fairly old song I recently rediscovered!

Rock on! \m/

TGI Friday! #5

Ahhhh, it’s the weekend once again! This week didn’t bring a whole lot to the table, but with a little help from a little birdy I managed to scrounge up some material for your pleasure!

First off, we have the release of the new SexBox 3600!

I think we can pretty much leave the rest to your imagination. Or if that’s too much effort on a Friday night read more here.

Next, Gizmodo and sister site the Consumerist have uncovered the conspiracy that is Monster Cables! Apparently they are insanely overpriced (with an up-to 80% markup price) for the same quality as any other cable. So bear that in mind when you’re looking for some cables! More can be found here.

That’s all for this week, so I leave you with this masterpiece of a video. Enjoy your weekend!

TGI Friday! #4

Hello again to another issue of TGI Friday! As we enter into the month of February (it’s February already!?!?!?!?), I will quickly look at what happened in this last week of January.

First off, Super Smash Bros Brawl was finally released yesterday across Japan. Having received a perfect score in the famous Japanese magazine Famitsu (10/10 from all four reviewers), this is certainly something to look forward to America and Europe. Meanwhile, we can enjoy all the spoilers of secret characters. I for one am disappointed that Captain Falcon STILL hasn’t been announced, and sincerely hope he’s an unlockable character. The Smash Bros site will continue to update, now providing information on secret characters and other tips.

In other slightly less exciting news, yesterday a couple of cut cables in the Mediterranean put a lot of Asia’s internet out of service, particularly Egypt, the Middle East and India. Many of the Internet Providers in Asia reported a 50% cut n bandwidth, which was disastrous for some companies and businesses. Although this probably won’t affect many of our readers, it certainly puts a lot of things into perspective; how a little problem in Europe can screw over much of Asia. As of Friday though, this problem has begun to subside a little.

Finally, although not really technology related, Iron Maiden begun their grand ‘Somewhere Back in Time 08’ world tour today, setting off in their brand new plane ‘Ed Force One’, named after their mascot ‘Eddie’. This plane, a first for any band, will ferry the band, crew, roadies, and all the gear for the live show, to all of their concerts. For some, this is just cool. For others, it’s a greener and more practical approach to things, as it only involves a single plane rather than hundreds of different planes and buses. Not only that, it’s flown by the band’s lead singer, Bruce Dickinson! How about that! For more information, check this site out, and for Bruce’s Friday Night Rock Show, check here (may only be for UK residents).

And now I leave you with an awesome british beatboxer. Enjoy!

TGI Friday! #2

Welcome back to TGI Friday! While we look forward to what the weekend has in stock for us, I will look back at what happened this week in the world of technology!

As you all no doubt know, the Macbook Air was released earlier on this week. Yet again Apple have gone for the size factor and made an extremely small product. One of the main selling points is that it can fit inside an A4 envelope. That’s pretty impressive for a laptop, especially one that has (nearly) all the power of a normal sized laptop, one which already boasts amazing specs.

This does come at a cost though, as the Macbook comes without a CD/DVD drive. The solution is an external drive AND being able to load stuff wirelessly from another computer. For some this may be enough, for others though, along with the price tag of $1500+ (depending on additional features), this may be too big of a letdown.

Plus, I’m sure we’re all getting bored of Apple’s up-themselves approach to things… Even a MacFan such as myself.

Next up, the new Super Smash Bros has been delayed for a while yet till March 9th in North America. Still, looks like a hell of a lot of fun when it does eventually arrive. Check out their website for daily updates.

That’s all for today, so I leave you with the now infamous Corey Delaney interview. If you’re clueless, you’ll soon be filled in. Enjoy!

TGI Friday! #1

It’s possibly the greatest moment of the week when you get home after work or school, sit down and say ‘Thank God it’s Friday!’ For someone who lives as much for the weekend as myself, I know that Friday night is one of the most looked forward to points of my week. To show you just how much I love Fridays, here’s a picture I made a while back:

However, as much as it allows us to look forward to all the fun the weekend will bring, it is also a moment where we can look back on what the week has given us, and therein lies the point of these weekly posts. Every Friday from now on, I will endeavour to summarise as best I can what has happened in the Underground world of technology and perhaps bring certain other things to your attention, whether they will shock you or amuse you.

Perhaps the biggest thing this week was the CES, which stands for Consumer Electronics Show. If you’re still confused, think of E3 but for general technology. This year’s show brought to our attention the world’s largest LCD screen and also the Optimus keyboard, which has finally come out of development hell to ship in 2 months (if it’s not delayed…) with a huge price tag of $1500! However, this particular keyboard is probably worth it, considering just how awesome it is.

For a little more on CES, check out this article.

Technically this didn’t happen this week and so is quite old news, but nonetheless for those who still haven’t heard, three Texans attempted to sue Microsoft over a weekend of Xbox Live outages for $5 million. Naturally, as we all know that the Internet is serious business, this has been the source of much debate and argument. Should Microsoft face the price for a faulty service? Should these people just shut up and get a life? Read more here.

And news just in, Darth Vader and Yoda have been confirmed for Soul Calibur IV, for the PS3 and the Xbox 360 respectively! This is no hoax my friends, and is certainly a very interesting decision for a series that has already seen some major cross-overs in the form of Link, Spawn and Heihachi. See the trailer below!

And so with that, I’m off. So far you are being left with a hot picture every week, and so I will try and leave you with a humourous video every week. Seeing as CES was the main event this week, I leave you with this video of the guys at Gizmodo wreaking havoc with the monitors at CES. Enjoy!