I have no idea how people knew about this already, since I didn't really tell anyone, but there is some new work (based loosely on the barn in Pineapple Express) up on my portfolio, in case you're one of the four people who hadn't seen it already. I can't say it's my favorite piece of work (thus its taking of the number three spot) but there are certain aspects of it with which I am very happy, and also I did it in like three days. This is a continuation of that new texturing technique I told you about. It's the one blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Brett Favre played his first game as anything but a Green Bay Packer (except for those two disasters he played with the Falcons about 17 years ago) last Saturday in a preseason game that didn't count. Favre himself was only involved in something like eight plays. The thing I wanted to mention is that the other guys on the Jets' offensive line seemed genuinely surprised when he'd jump back up after taking a hit. They're so used to their old glass-jawed QB Pennington getting hurt with every play that they really don't know how to respond to this. It should be noted that since Favre made starting QB he has never missed a game and never not started.
This is an animation called Idol. I first saw this over at Filmdrunk. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about it, except that I thought the music in the background was Boards of Canada, but instead turned out to be Howie B., who has done some work in the past with U2. Anyway, it's 8.5 minutes long and just twisted enough to keep me interested.
The metal community likes nothing more than controversy. They thrive on it, actually. The baser members love nothing more than being able to rub their lifestyle in the face of - in this example, anyway - the pious. As you know, or at least can understand, a great proportion of the heavier styles of metal, particularly death-, black-, and gore metal, rely almost exclusively on blasphemous, profane lyrics to go along with their music. For the most part, if you ask them, the lyrics are a condemnation of the rigid religious structure imposed on worshippers, as well as the perceived hypocrisy of major religion in the light of its advocating ostracization of those who do not embrace the message. Of course, there is also the frustration with the fact that the religious framework that many governments are built on and therefore are controlling members of the populace against their desires. But what happens when you reverse the elements?
There's a relatively new death metal band called Impending Doom (Encyclopaedia Metallum page here, MySpace here) who released their debut full-length (Nailed. Dead. Risen.) back in 2007. At first listen they sound like fairly standard death metal, with low guttural bellows for lyrics, pounding double-kick drums and some fairly mean-sounding power chords. Impending Doom add a little metalcore flavor with some interesting-but-not-mind-blowing breakdowns - in that respect this sounds like Job For a Cowboy's debut EP, although that disc was stunningly engaging while this is merely "pretty good." The major difference lies in the lyrics.
If you choose to Google Impending Doom's lyrics, you'll see that their subject matter is surprisingly pro-Christian; they border on right-wing militarism, actually, although that may just be a result of the medium in which they are delivered. Here's an example, from the title track of their new album, Nailed. Dead. Risen.:
"Nailed dead and risen, a perfect life divine sacrifice.
A despised savior-despise only me.
Silenced by the mislead who mock the God they never met.
The evil of men's minds knows no limits, who chooses hell over forgiveness.
You try and try to obliterate my fathers name, it sickens me!
I stay silenced no more.
A despised savior-despise only me.
You try and try to obliterate my fathers name, it sickens me!
I stay silences no more.
Send me to the depths of hell, and I'll bring back risen souls.
Despise our savior-just remember, nailed, dead, and risen."
As you can imagine, this is causing some controversy in the metal community at large. If you read comments on their videos on YouTube, for example (keeping in mind that YouTube's message boards are notorious for trolling), or even the reviews on their Amazon page, you'll see that the reaction is mixed at best.
It is unusual to see music like this being used to convey a message like the one above. Take, for example, Vital Remains. The musical styles are very similar, although Vital Remains is quite a bit more technical and more accomplished as far as musicality and technical prowess go, but overall we can say that their styles are similar. However, the message behind the music is diametrically opposed to that of Impending Doom. With song titles like "Hammer Down the Nails" and "DeChristianize," one can see plainly that their lyrical inspiration is quite assuredly different from that of Impending Doom. (Although, let's be honest, can you really tell what they're saying anyway? The lyrics are bellowed so low and so distorted that they're more akin to a deep-body belch than actual speech.)
As for me, what do I think? Well, overall the music sounds pretty mean. I know that this is not the only Christian metal band out there (As I Lay Dying being a relatively popular metalcore band), but to date this is the hardest/heaviest Christian metal band I've encountered, and certainly the only one that plays death/gore metal behind their lyrics. Their music is rather primitive compared to, say, Nile, and the production quality is spotty at best. The technical prowess of the musicians isn't quite as sharp as some more accomplished death bands, but they appear to have a good start on it. The tracks on their album do tend to sound alike, although that is indicative more of their genre than a lack of inspiration. Vocals are actually pretty respectable. The album itself is very short, with only ten tracks averaging under three minutes long each. Overall, as I said above, Nailed. Dead. Risen. is pretty good, but not spectacular. I would be interested to see what these guys can do in a few years, after they've honed their skills a little more, and maybe throw a little more variety into their mix.
For your entertainment, here's the video for the second single off their album, called "My Nemesis." As you'll see, unfortunately Impending Doom have been cursed with some fairly weak music videos. Watch closely and you'll see the lead singer wearing a Jesus t-shirt - unironically!
First things first, I thought Pineapple Express was a great movie. To place that into perspective, I am what you'd call a casual Judd Apatow fan. Apatow has produced, written, or directed almost every comedy to come out of Hollywood for about the past five years or so. I liked Knocked Up. I was apathetic about Superbad. I've only seen random pieces of The 40-Year-Old-Virgin. Anchorman was occasionally funny, although I completely missed on Talladega Nights. Walk Hard looked stupid from the trailer so I never saw it, as was the case for Drillbit Taylor. So, when I say that I really thought Pineapple Express was not only funny but entertaining as well, I would suppose it has some weight to it.
The first half of the movie is more outright funny. Those who know me know that I do not laugh out loud often. I would have to say I LOLed probably like two times, maybe three. It was awesome. The second half of the movie was more story-oriented, and had a lot more action. Overall it was incredibly entertaining.
We all know this is a stoner flick, and therefore has crazy drug references and characters smoking weed onscreen. However, one thing that I would point out for those with weak stomachs is that the second half of the movie is also surprisingly violent and tremendously gory, which caught me totally by surprise. I thought it was hilarious, but Melissa (with whom I saw the movie) had some trouble with it. Aside from graphic gunshot wounds there is dismemberment, torture, disfiguration, burned and cut flesh, stabbing, spurting blood, and a casual attitude to the violence that surrounds them. Again, I thought it was hilarious, but those with a weaker stomach might not find it as funny.
As you know I've written about audio compression, dynamic range and the loudness war several times before. I have to bring this up again because I've discovered what I think is the worst example of this that I have certainly ever heard. The offender in question is, well, the entire new album by The White Stripes called Icky Thump. First I have to say that I really like the music on this album. It's eccentric and wildly varied, and thoroughly entertaining. However, the actual recording quality is so God-awful that I literally cannot listen to this CD in my car or on my stereo system - the digital compression is that bad.
Here's one of the worse tracks, called "Little Cream Soda." It's got a great, stomping beat and some really interesting spoken-word lyrics. However, let's look at the waveform:
A little newer album that has similar problems is Portishead's Third. Again, this album suffers from compression distortion, but it's nowhere NEARLY as bad as Icky Thump. One of the songs affected by this is the opening track, "Silence." As you can see from the waveform, there is occasionally some peaking here, which while not obvious throughout the whole album, does make itself known sporadically on nearly every song:
It gets down to how loud the music is recorded. There are a great number of producers out there who, unfortunately, merely want the music to be as loud as possible. These are the people who do not care that YOU, the LISTENER, have a volume knob on your stereo - they want you to listen to the music as loudly as possible because they think it'll make their record stand out when you hear it on the radio, etc. They will do anything they can to make that recorded music as loud as possible, including ruining the music to do so. It's pitiful, it's shameful, and what nobody realizes is that it's been going on for nearly 15 years now.
I won't go into deep details but, as I think I've said before, this all started with the big pop revolution that sparked in the early- and mid-90s when acts like Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys and N'Sync started really battling for record sales. I don't blame the acts themselves, I blame their producers, who wanted their act's music to be louder than everbody else's noise.
Will this end? Well, as I see it there has to be some sort of limit as to how crappy the music we listen to will get before we, the listeners, revolt. I'm sure that day will come.
New work up at the portfolio. The thing is, it's more like a re-textured older model rather than strictly new work. I read about a new texturing technique in a book I recently bought (after it was recommended to me by an employer in the process of rejecting me), and I decided after making two models using this new technique that I would go back and see if I could use it to make some older stuff better. I think it has succeeded brilliantly.
I present old and busted:
As you may know I'm a huge fan of the author HP Lovecraft. Yeah, he was a racist and yeah, he can't write dialogue to save his life, but, to paraphrase Neil Gaiman, Lovecraft paved the road between fantasy and science fiction on a bed of horror. His writing constitutes some of the most entertaining, wildly imaginative fiction to grace and blaspheme the pages of pulp publications in the early years of the last century. Unfortunately, every single movie that is even indirectly based on his works has been so unbelieveably God-awful that they make Manos: The Hands of Fate (a movie made on a dare) look like the freaking Godfather.
Anyway, a new movie coming out August 22 (in the US, anyway) called Cthulhu actually appears, on the outside, to have promise. Let's face it, it has a lot stacked against it. Tori Spelling is in there, and the track record of the previous Lovecraftian movies isn't stellar. Also, the IMDB rating for this one is, well, not promising. Obviously it doesn't appear to have a great deal in common with the actual story, except that it takes place by the ocean. For some reason, at least from the trailer, it looks like they made the main character gay.
However, I really like the look of the movie. It's shot digitally, and it has a really palpable feeling of the drab, washed-out seaside town that I had imagined when I read the short story over and over. Anyway, I had heard about this a long time ago, and even posted about it on my old blog (I won't even give you the link), but this is the first I've heard of it finally being released. Check out the trailer:
So, this is what it looks like when you make a guitar amp out of a freakin' Tesla coil. It uses more electricity than a hospital but it looks fricking wicked. Also it sounds mean as hell. For the curious, you can catch a snatch of "Stockholm Syndrome" by Muse as the guy's noodling around on the demo.
Infinity Ward - Encino, Ca
KAOS (THQ) - Manhattan, NY
Big Huge Games - Baltimore, Md
Rockstar - Boston, Ma
BottleRocket - California somewhere
Blizzard - Irvine, Ca
Raven - Madison, Wi
2K Boston - Boston, Ma
Powerhead - Manhattan, NY
Harmonix - Cambridge, Ma
Vicious Cycle - Charlotte, NC
Demiurge - Boston, Ma
Midway - Chicago, Il
Crystal Dynamics - Redwood City, Ca
Treyarch - Santa Monica, Ca
Sanzaru - San Mateo, Ca
Nihilistic - Marin, Ca
ArenaNet - Bellevue, Wa
Amaze Entertainment - Kirkland, Wa
Insomniac - North Carolina
Big Huge Games - Baltimore, Md (Again)
Infinity Ward - Encino, Ca (Again)
Black Lantern - Austin, Tx
Mass Media - Moorpark, Ca
