Angry Metal Guy

Lacuna Coil // Dark Adrenaline
Rating: 1.5/5.0 — Banal.
Label: Century Media
Websites: lacunacoil.it | facebook.com/lacunacoil | myspace.com/lacunacoil
Release Dates: US: 01.24.2012 | EU: 2012.01.25

Lacuna Coil is a band that I used to like pretty well. I’ve seen them live a few times and I thought they put on pretty good shows and I have a lot of respect for them as a hardworking touring band. Musically, though, I think they’ve been pretty hit and miss. While I enjoy In A Reverie, Unleashed Memories and liked a few songs off of Comalies, their modern sound has developed into something that is really quite derivative of the American nü metal trend—and specifically their last record Shallow Life was produced in a way that sounded exactly like Linkin Park and was entirely unlistenable to these ears. So I have to say that it was with consternation that I elected to start listening to this album in the first place.  Continue reading

In Flames // Sounds of a Playground Fading
Rating: 2.0/5.0 — This is not the In Flames you’re looking for
Label: Century Media
Websites: inflames.com | myspace.com/inflames | facebook.com/inflames
Release Dates: EU: 2011.06.15/17 | US: 06.21.2011

I know I’m late. Sure, this review isn’t coming out weeks ahead of time, and pretty much no one is looking for In Flames reviews now as it was leaked early and most everyone has already had a chance to hear the new record Sounds of a Playground Fading. For me, however, this is a record that needed some reviewing. See, I used to be a big In Flames fan. Their early albums rate among my favorite melodic death metal records of all time and they really defined and did that sound—their sound—as well as it can be done (I guess that’s a little redundant). But I, like many fans, became remarkably disillusioned with the band after Reroute to Remain. There is an irony that the year that record was released, Gothenburg took Ozzfest by storm—as well as a host of metalcore bands that sounded just like In Flames… had.

Since then, I’ve been remarkably unimpressed with the band’s output. The movement back towards a heavier sound has not been particularly successful, and the sickly sweet melody that really defined the band’s sound through Colony kind of disappeared along the introduction of a distressingly oversized dose of Anders’ new Jonathan Davis-like whines. But every time they release a record, I always feel a bit of nostalgia and hope. A hope that maybe this time In Flames will regain that magic they once had. With a name like Sounds of a Playground Fading, though, one gets the feeling that this record will be anything but. Continue reading

I just reviewed the new Behemoth record on here, and while it was good, there was one thing that had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the record that stood out for me.  I couldn’t really include it as a major critique in the record, but now I can at least mention it… OV.

Ov?  Really?  The first time I saw this stupid thing was with the band Kult Ov Azazel.  And yeah, that was stupid, but I didn’t think much of it because, well, unfortunately intentional misspellings are standard fare in metal.  Katatonia for example or, some of my personal favorites are the misuses of vowels from other languages: Mötley Crüe (I’m not actually sure how to phonetically spell how that sounds, but if you were to pronounce it correctly it would be fucking ridiculous), Mötörhead is another one that thought that the “Ö” (O umlaut) was really cool looking.  But my personal favorite is the band Dååth which pronounces their name “Dath” like, rhymes with bath, but spells it “Doath” like the ‘o’ in the word boat.  And actually, two ‘Å’s, for those of you who don’t know, actually would be an extra long ‘O’ sound, since Å is actually two ‘A’s put together.

Let’s not even talk about nu-metal, which spells EVERYTHING wrong.  Travesties like Limp Bizkit, Korn, and of course Linkin Park, forcing their shared stupidity onto the rest of the world, which actually likes to spell words correctly.  And even can.  So not only are these assholes responsible for irritatingly blending hip hop and metal into a travesty which should despised, but they also encourage stupidity among our youth!

But, I feel like OV takes it to a new level.  How fucking pretentious do you have to be to intentionally misspell a common preposition like “of”?  Do you think it’s stupid to use said preposition?  Then use the fucking possessive/genetive case!  You know like “Metal’s stupid trends” as opposed to “Stupid trends OV metal!”  C’mon, this is ridiculous and unnecessary and it makes me want to start a fire and feed it with babies!  How hard is this stuff?  Not very, in my opinion.  But heck, you know me, I like to spell things correctly.  I even attempt to use proper grammar.

The sad thing is this, as a person who is interested in language, it is obvious to me that one cannot control how language is used.  Every generation and decade brings us new words (för de svenskar som läser: kolla boken: Världens dåligaste språk av Fredrik Lindström—den är skitbra och förklarar jättemycket om ämnet) and language is meant to be played with.  According to some linguists,  no matter what your grammar books say, if you’re an inborn speaker of a language  you physically can’t be wrong about your own language.  So we invent new words, spellings, combinations and we try our hardest to coin new phrases.  Things like “bootylicious” end up in the dictionary (and my spellcheck no longer picks it up) and life continues forward with English as a functional language.

But there is a little language fascist in me that just wants to smack all the jackasses who insist on misspelling words for the sake of being COOL.  Kvlt?  Ov?  Wëll löök hërë yöü möröns.. IT’S STÜPÏD! SÖ STÖP!

What a stupid fucking trend.