My Fake Plastic Love
My god, this resurgence in Radiohead listenage I’ve been going through is glorious.
Fake plastic trees must be one of the most brilliant tracks ever, just listened to it and got the feeling you get when a song is just “that” good.
I also finally listened to the entirety of Hail to the Thief and it was a revelation to be quite honest.
Portal-ey goodness!
Seeing as I probably won’t be able to afford the orange box anytime soon, I found this pretty damn amazing flash version of it on newgrounds, thought others may just be interested.
It’s pretty darn tricky later on in the game, I got stumped a few times, at least 30+ levels.
The Running Free
Just listened to the sample track to the new Coheed album, “The Running Free”, and I must say I’m impressed that it’s really quite good, despite being quite dissimilar to their older material. It sounds a bit like there’s a little bit more synth influence added in the background, while remaining remarkably “proggy”.
Also, Claudio’s voice is still unnaturally high pitched.
In other (quite possibly old by now) news, here’s a bit of Team Fortress 2 machinima, to entertain and educate about how bloody ace the game looks. Enjoy.
Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume 1.
The true album art, hidden under the rather mundane cardboard sleeve.
I was introduced to this album in the baptism of fire that was joining my first band, about a year ago. I entered the house and once everything had been set up, we went through track 3, “Welcome Home”. Admittedly the practise did not go very smoothly (I was astonishingly poor at playing my part (and still am tbh), but the seed of Coheed & Cambria was planted. I eventually acquired my own copy of the whole CD, and was suitably impressed.
The first thing you notice is most definitely the vocals. Claudio Sanchez, despite being a veritable afro-bear of a man, has one of the eeriest, and also most high pitched voices I’ve ever heard. Some people may find this a bit of an acquired taste, but In my opinion it just adds to the uniqueness of the music. The music itself consists of heavy rock guitars, drum and bass, as you might expect, but the style has a very grand feel to it, and other instruments such as strings and piano also lend a hand in certain songs, such as the classical first track.
Although a newcomer to the series may not notice, there is a huge sci-fi story encased in all this prog rock. The Amory Wars, as they are called, are something akin to Star Wars crossed with Lord of the Rings, telling the story of Claudio Kilgannon (the similarity to the lead singer is most likely intentional) and his quest to bring down a galaxy spanning dictatorship by destroying all civilisation. The references to what is going on are slightly obscured compared to earlier albums, but a good listener shoud be able to work out what is going on (failing that, there is also wikipedia).
The thing that impresses me most is the consistency of quality between all 15 songs on the CD. The complexity of lyrics and chords never lets up, and the final five songs make up their own mini series of extreme progginess, each one well over 7 minutes in length. The album artwork is also very impressive (I obsess over such things in a CD purchase) with detailed and well coloured depictions of the major events in the story.
Although I can only imagine the naysayers who tar this album with labels such as “emo”, I myself was very pleased with my purchase, and would recommend it to just about any of my friends. A very clever and most of all, different piece to listen to.
9/10
Our Ever Loving Benefactors….
I need to find a copy of Half Life 2: episode one somewhere, somehow. This may be one of the main reasons for buying the Valve Orange Box. Not to play the games contained within (at least, not yet), you understand, but to play the final chapter of the Minerva: Metastasis mod series. I’ve played the previous two chapters, and being unable to access the latest one is torture tbh.
