New music!

(Yeah, I forgot to post yesterday. This was largely because of a truly mind-numbing project that hit my desk a little before lunchtime yesterday. At least it's 90% done now.)

So, I haven't talked much about new music lately. To remedy that, I've got a new-ish band and two new albums to talk about!

The new-ish band is Velcra. I say new-ish because they've been around since 1999, but I only heard about them very recently. Jerome found them totally on a fluke, and we both love their stuff. Wiki calls them industrial metal or rap metal. I guess I can kind of see that, though they remind me a bit more of Conjure One, which is sort of techno/electronic music. Yeah, I don't like trying to put stuff into a genre... :) At any rate, good stuff, female fronted, and from Finland. Yay! :)

Then today, I was in Ballard running errands, and my bus stop to come home is right outside Sonic Boom. This is a dangerous thing for me, because my bus is NEVER there when I get there, so I start looking at Sonic Boom, and then I get sucked in, and buy stuff. Very clever. :)


Anyway, I knew that Avenged Sevenfold's new album was supposed to come out on Tuesday, and dammit, I just can't resist those boys. :) So in I went, looking for the CD. I didn't find it at first, but instead found the new She Wants Revenge. We saw them open for Placebo last year, and they were exceptionally good live. They're also exceptionally good on CD. So I grabbed the newest one, This is Forever, because it was only $10.

Now, I joke around a lot that She Wants Revenge ALWAYS sounds like She Wants Revenge, even when they do Nightmare Before Christmas songs. And they do. But you know what? I'm okay with that. Because their music makes me dance around, and Justin Warfield's voice is utterly amazing. (BTW, if you like She Wants Revenge and want to laugh a bunch, check out "Spite & Malice" by Placebo. Justin Warfield RAPS on that song.) So yes. This is Forever = good.

And I did find the Avenged Sevenfold CD. I just got done listening to it (after listing to SWR). The album cover is totally boring. Black logo on white background. Bleh. It's also self-titled, no clever name. Bleh.

But the album is amazing. It basically still sounds like Avenged Sevenfold has sounded since their last album (when M. Shadows stopped screaming all the time). Then I got to "Lost," which is the 8th track. I started laughing a little, because I know Jerome isn't going to like that song very much. It gets sorta New-New-Wave towards the end, and he's gonna call it emo. I suspect, however, that he will immediately take it back when he gets to the last two tracks: "A Little Piece of Heaven" and "Dear God." WOW!

"A Little Piece of Heaven" has horns and other such amazingness. It's almost cabaret sounding! From A7X. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either! "Dear God" is also nothing like what I'm used to hearing from them. Of course, now I have to go listen to the whole album again, because I was trying to work on other stuff during the first half, and now I'm afraid I missed some other gems!

I'll probably write up full reviews of both of these soonishly. I just have to write my other paid articles first!

Two new articles from Cindy:

Limbaugh's Statement About Michael J. Fox: Crass but Not Malicious

Which was an "Editor's Pick"! Congrats to Cindy! :)

How Much Money You Make at Associated Content is Up to You

And I concur wholeheartedly with this. I do this mostly to give myself a little bit of extra spending cash, particularly with the holidays rolling around. If I plan things well (and stop buying silly stuff), I may be able to do almost all of my holiday shopping just with the money I've made from writing. That would be pretty kewl. :) And it would mean I can spend my money from crocheting on tattoos. :)

Seriously, though, if you're interested in making either a little money or a decent amount of money through writing for Associated Content, E-mail either Cindy: lgunnin (at) hotmail (dot) com, or me: scarywhitegirl (at) gmail (dot) com. If you know Cindy in real life, use hers; otherwise, you can use mine. Yeah, we get a little bit of money for referrals, but once you're started, you can refer people too. :) And you can invite us to be your buddies, too. :)

You get no articles from me. Because I had a week of being a slacker when I didn't write much. I should have more coming up this week, but as I'm off work from Wednesday through Friday, I doubt you'll see anything about them till next Monday.

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Halloween is tomorrow, and if I am ambitious tonight, I will have quasi-Bride of Frankenstein hair tomorrow. This involves putting all of my hair into braids, and Jerome laughed when I asked him if he knew how to braid. Ah well. :)

Wednesday, I'll be headed out for my after Halloween sales (YAY!), and Thursday, we are off to the distant frozen northlands. This is also known, to most people, as Chicago. Jerome and I will be hitting the Art Institute on Thursday night, the Field Museum on Friday afternoon, and the Placebo concert (with Jesi and friends) on Friday night. Then on Saturday, we get to get up early to make the drive back. Well, I can cross my fingers and hope that perhaps they will give Jerome Saturday night off, in the hopes of him working Sunday morning, which will allow us to not leave Chicago super early on Saturday.

And in other news, Vlad has been sick. :( He goes to the vet this afternoon, to see if she can determine something is wrong with him, or whether it's just a case of upset kitty tummy. If it's the latter, I've already got some possibilities on ways to fix that, so that's a relief. It was not nice to hear him start hacking, and then backing up, before upchucking onto the floor. I'd be upset about the mess, but I'm more upset because he made a horrible little mewling noise right before it happened, so he's obviously not a happy kitten. :(
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You know, I thought about posting yesterday, and then forgot completely.

But I don't have much to say in the way of crafts at the moment, so we'll do music today, as I do have a bit of commentary there. :)

J showed me some neat stuff on Pandora last night, so now I have three separate Pandora stations. Easy to do, and gives me more options than just trying to cram everything onto one station, and then getting frustrated when I'm not finding more of the bands that I want to find... :)

One of my stations is an emo/punk station, and while this makes me die a little inside, I'm really liking it. Only one real find for this morning, and that's a band called Ultimate Fakebook. So far, I like it.

J's station last night decided to play a cover of "Eleanor Rigby" by Godhead. Must. Have.

I am also developing the talent of determining whether a band is screamo. It's not foolproof, yet, but I know right when the screaming SHOULD kick in if they are... yay for more useless music related talents! :)

And my other band of mention today is The 69 Eyes. I've actually had a song that I'm pretty sure is them for quite some time; I just had it labelled as Type O. The lead singer has that Peter Steele SUPER deep and gravelly voice thing down perfect.

Speaking of Type O, they've got a concert DVD coming out in less than a week. I think I'll pick that up. :)

And Placebo's new CD comes out next week! :)
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Yay, new music to talk about! Not a new band, but new music nonetheless...

So I have now heard the new Placebo album (due out March 13th!) three times, and I am digging it, big time. I don't know that I really have anything specific to say about it, other than the fact that some of the songs have a really great energy to them, and others are considerably more mellow, but nice nonetheless. I think I may have to look into a band called The Kills, as VV of The Kills sings on one song, and it is good. Michael Stipe allegedly sings on another song, but I'm having a hard time picking out his voice... then again, that may be due to my crappy internal speaker on my work computer. Will have to listen to it again at home tonight. :)

In other news, I'm not grumpy today. J called me in the middle of the afternoon and asked if I wanted to get dinner with him, so we hung out for about an hour last night, and then I watched "Velvet Goldmine" and chilled out for the remainder of the evening.

In other other news, it's snowing big time, which might normally allow for the possibility of sledding. However, as you can't go sledding at night, the snow will probably not last past tomorrow, and this weekend is booked anyway, there will likely be no sledding. Poo. J's sled really wants to go sledding... or maybe I do... ;)
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Second post today, cuz I just found out happy happy news!

New Placebo album. March 13th.

I am so there.

Now, Brian, PLEASE tour America this time?!
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