The Sadist

That's how it has felt from the management at work the last couple of weeks since Tell-Day for the lay-off's has been pending and pending. Just to know almost every 5th person at work have to leave is hard, not knowing if being one of them is really stressful. Ok, I was never really worried for myself. I have a lot of years in Ericsson and good skills for my work but the ones I'm working with. The team is really good and it was definite some changes would come. Especially since it was communicated (although taken back for a while) that my position would belong to Stockholm instead of Borås, which mean a new manager for me but not the rest of my team...

Anyway, I still have my job and the rest would be sorted out later.

Then I'm not sure how I missed that Saint Vitus is playing at Truckstop Alaska tomorrow. Maybe since they're playing Copenhell and the assumption was that we were going to see them there. And then, deciding not to go to Copenhell it kind of slipped our minds. But at least we found out in time so now it's concert time tomorrow.

And then we're having a few weeks of Concert vacation before the real Festival Season starts. Metal Magic, Bang Your Head and then Headbangers Open Air...

The last for sure is one of the highlights of the year. Awesome people and awesome bands. Not the major Headliners but a lot of good bands anyway, and frankly, compared to the bigger Festivals there are always more bands I haven't seen before at Headbangers, which always is fun. Ok, I still think it's fun to see Motörhead and Saxon even if I've seen those bands well over 30 times each.

I'm really looking forward to see Treshold, Satan, Rock Goddess, Iron Angel, Hurlement, Stormwitch, Hexx, Hirax... Ok, it's useless to list all bands, gonna be a tough one again.

And of course, it's not really a Festival but a Warm-Up for a coming one... 2 Heavy 4 You reemerge after 15 years and the line-up is a killer. Of course, it include Void Moon so that makes it more fun.
The warm-up is damn good too, Hungarian Omen, Ram and Stonegriff.

But first it is midsummer, nothing planned but it will be really nice with an extra day off and to stay at home and do nothing. Ok, I have tons of things to do so it will be a busy weekend but you get the point. No travel, no concerts... Should gather some energy and sort out the vinyl shelf. I should have done that around Easter but then I was busy recording.
Speaking of the bands. We had the first Cult Of The Fox rehearsal in 3 years. I know the band was put to rest but hey, getting on offer to play live can change such a decision. So yes, we're playing the Malta Doom warm-up show with Iron Void and Hooded Priest and some more. We're kind of the odd sods in the bunch but it sure will be fun. The rehearsal went really well also and it feels good to have the privilege after just one rehearsal to be able to pick the songs we want to play rather than taking the ones we've had time to nail... We nailed more than needed so that's good!!!!

I should have some record packages coming in for the weekend too which will be good company to the cleaning activities planned for the weekend also. And, in the freezer right now I have a batch of Wolf Pale Moon Ale's which will be a nice addition to the midsummer herring (Sill is a must at midsummer) or BBQ!  

CHEERS
E

NP: HELLOWEEN - My God Given Right

 

Who's getting the votes?

And no, even if it's very actual right now in Sweden, this is not about politics...

So hmmm, it’s just another 9 days before Album of the Year list is due for Metal Kaoz. For some reason I have listened to rather little music this year compared to how it normally is. I’m not sure why but that’s the way it is. This of course mean that the pile of records that potentially ends up at “Could have made it to Top 10 if I’d listened more” is huge and the batch of the ones already qualified to top 10 and the ones that has a potential chance now already is rather sparse. So, this last weekend was spent digging through the vaults of new records that I haven’t listened to yet. 

Because yes, even if I haven’t listened as much as normal it doesn’t mean I’ve been buying less. Nope, not at all. I have almost 2 shelves in an Expedit worth of vinyl’s and 2 full IKEA CD pillars (don’t know the name of it, it’s since long out of the catalogue) almost completely full with CD’s. And of course, Peter has almost the same amount of new-buys for this year. So there’s a lot of music to take in…

 

Right now, the ones that I’m twisting and turning to try to figure out if they’re top 10 are first and foremost these;

Accept, All Seeing Eyes, Astral Doors, Behemoth, Entombed AD, Evil Masquerade, Grand Magus, Grave Digger, Holy Moses, Iced, Earth, Judas Priest, Masters Hammer, Overkill, Portrait, Riot V, Sanctuary, Slough Feg, Steel Prophet, Tankard, Tryptikon, Wolf...

What have I missed?

I’ve loaded a few in my mp3 player to be able to catch up during the week. It’s good to have at work, closing everyone else out and be able to focus. But I really miss the time when I could sit and read on the album cover straight through a record and do nothing but listen to it. That rarely happens these days, there’s always something more going on. 

And as if this wasn’t enough I’d been buying another bunch also (since the rules for putting a record on top 10 is that it should be physically in the collection) that could qualify. But I guess these will end up on the list of good ones I should have listened more to (just got a notification from TPL that they’ve packed 7kg worth of records for me now). We’ll see about that!

I've also been checking around in several forums to make sure I haven't missed out on anything important. As of now it don't seem like it, but it's hard to know what's missing! The thing I reacted on though, which was the most common comment. "Has there really been 10 good releases this year?" Strange I think! There's always good music available. Hellion's "Karma's Bitch" for example, but that doesn't qualify to the Metal Kaoz list since it's just an EP...  

One that really surprised me though and one of few smaller bands in my list right now is All Seeing Eyes. I got it as a promo and normally I don't pay much attention to these links (since there are SO MANY of them) but this one caught my eyes because Ben Jackson was mentioned to be a part of it. I couldn't resist and now, to my surprise it's actually as a candidate to Top 10... Very nice Queensryche, Crimson Glory type Metal...

Well, so many records, so little time.

Cheers

E

NP: ALL SEEING EYES - Trinity Road