thedarkproject | Entries tagged with social

Over the last few years, we've seen the rise of Facebook, allowing people to connect with their friends in a fairly effective way. This has come at the expense of various other online networks - individual web forums are losing traffic, MySpace has obviously been cannibalised by people moving to Facebook, older haunts like Yahoo and MSN Groups have become deserted and closed down respectively, ICQ and Yahoo Messengers have lost favour, postings to Livejournal have dried up a lot, and so on.

All these other sites and services were a bit more anonymous. You could find interesting people and join their community or subscribe to their page and get to know them that way. Because they were mostly anonymous there weren't so many concerns about privacy and so you'd make new friends quite easily, by searching based on interests or whatever.

Now, we have Facebook which is big on having your real identity. In itself I don't think that's a bad thing, as there's definitely a place for networking with your real life friends and having a web site dedicated to facilitating that. But with real identity comes a need for privacy, which in turn means it's actually quite hard to find new friends on Facebook based on what they do or like. If you don't already have a mutual friend, you may never come across them, and even if you do, chances are high that their profile will be mostly closed off to you so contacting them is just a stab in the dark really. So as people have abandoned other services for Facebook, they've disappeared off the public web into a more private area.

I used to meet lots of people through online gaming. There was something really cool about going onto an online game and ending up on these make-believe adventures with people from England, the USA, Holland, Canada, none of whom you'd met before, but who you would get to know. But games things aren't the same any more either - it seems like most of the online games these days are carefully set up so that you can enter what is nominally a 'massively multiplayer world' and yet have as little to do with anybody else as possible, except for meeting up with your real life friends to go and play in a dungeon reserved especially for you.

I don't think any of this is a particularly good thing. It feels like the internet has lost some of its appeal in letting people form communities that ignore geographical distance, in favour of becoming something that just makes real world communities a little more efficient. It's a bit of a shame, I think. A lost opportunity.

Current Mood: disappointed

Now, 'tis time to tell thee of my journey to a Gaulish field to witness a gathering of wandering troubadours. Or something like that.
( Clickez-vous ici... )
Pictures, for the curious, can be found on Facebook here. If I find the time I may upload some of the better ones to Flickr too, but don't hold your breath!

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Rain Fell Within - "Burned Away"

This was fairly good. I got to the front for Long Distance Calling but after a couple of songs I decided it wasn't that interesting and that the sound, which was pretty awful at the front, might be better at the back. It wasn't. I found them competent but they drag the tunes out for far too long. People tell me that's what you're supposed to do with 'post-rock', but I think that's a poor excuse. And I hate the pretentiousness of labelling something 'post-rock' or 'post-metal'. Post as a prefix means 'after', but rock is still here. It's as if someone is claiming this is the 'new' music that is universally replacing the old, which is far from true. Anyway, I'd recommend Long Distance Calling for listening at home when doing something else but that's about all.

Swallow The Sun came on and were immediately hampered by both guitars being almost inaudible from where I was, and the bass being far too loud. Luckily this was rectified by the second song and they played a decent setlist. Most of the people in the audience seemed to look clueless throughout so I suppose it was mainly Katatonia fans in the audience this time.

Then Katatonia played and... they were ok too. I don't know if it's my age or the fact that I've seen most bands several times but I don't find most gigs exciting any more. I do find it disappointing when bands like Katatonia leave out huge swathes of their back catalogue however, the most notable omission being them not playing 'Murder' at the end any more. There was plenty to sing along to and they always perform well but as someone who thinks their new album is disappointing and their old albums are better, it wasn't terribly thrilling.

And that was it... apart from ending up in the Rescue Rooms where some DJ was playing... something... and a couple more drinks were had. And then home.

Current Mood: tired

There seem to be a lot of people who think that the key to promoting their event is to invite all their friends on a social networking site, and then send each person nagging reminders about it once every couple of days. Often this has no appreciable effect, sometimes a negative effect as people block the promoter from sending further invitations. Sometimes promoters get disheartened at this, blaming 'apathy', wondering why so many people replied as a 'maybe' and didn't show up, and so on.

I think these people are making a mistake. As I see it, promotion has two distinct aspects: discovering the people most likely to attend, and convincing them to come. Raising awareness and applying persuasion, if you will. In my (admittedly naïve) opinion, the mistake these people typically make is to almost completely fail at the first half and then make a very crude and counter-productive attempt at the second.

I don't have any magic bullets for finding new people to improve awareness of an event, but surely this includes using multiple websites (not just Facebook, but MySpace, Last.fm, forums for local clubs, etc), posters (pubs, bars, gig venues, rehearsal rooms), and physical flyering (standing in the street, or at gigs, or other nights). Use your brain though. I distinctly remember Rock City creating a poster for a monthly rock night and putting up a copy in a Derby guitar shop. This would have been a great idea, except the poster did not specify the venue on it. Similarly, a lot of gig posters I see actually say nothing about the bands that are playing. It's not rocket science - what, when, where, cost. Omit one at your peril.

A couple of years ago a rock night in Nottingham had its opening night on the same day and time as the local student-run rock night. The students were of the opinion that this new night would obviously fail since it couldn't 'compete'. As it happened, the new night did fail after a few weeks, but it was actually very well attended that first week at least, by a lot of people who wouldn't think of going to a student rock night, or might not have known it existed. Where did those people come from? Where did they go? One thing's for certain - they were reached by promotion, so someone was doing their job right.

Similarly, I met someone recently who's been going to many of the same clubs and pubs as me for most of 10 years, who also likes all the same obscure bands that I do. Yet I've never come across her before now.

The lesson is to not pretend that because you have several hundred Facebook friends and are affiliated with the local university's Rock Society that you necessarily know everybody or even most of the people into rock music near you.

As for the second part of the equation, the persuasion aspect, I think that many promoters don't really try and understand and provide what people want to see. If you put on an event for the love of it, that's great, but there's no point being bitter about low attendances if what you're offering isn't actually that interesting to many people.

I'll talk a little about what sways my decision as to whether I go out to a certain pub or rock night or other event that some person, place, or organisation is hosting. The main consideration, the mission statement in a way, is to go somewhere that will give me a more entertaining evening than staying at home. Generally speaking, this requires the right people, at the right place, with the right ambience, at the right cost. Obviously it also has to compete with any other venue offering those aspects to some degree, of which there are several.

Personally I will want to go with my friends. There's little point being in a room entirely full of strangers because I'm unlikely to talk to any of them, nor they to me. In that case I may as well have stayed at home because it's offering me nothing I can't get there. It's not good enough to just be playing the right music. I have the right music here on my computer. No DJ is going to play a set that is more suited to me than what I can cue up for myself right here. So there have to be other factors too. This is the main reason why my RSVP of 'maybe' doesn't become a 'yes' - I reply with 'maybe' on the assumption that I will go if my friends do, but if it doesn't interest them then I will have a better evening elsewhere.

So what tips the balance between having a load of undecided people all waiting for others to convince them to go with them, and a large social group showing up en masse? There are many other minor issues which are often overlooked by promoters who are too focused on the music and not on the idea of providing a night's entertainment. Loudness is an issue. If your venue is too loud absolutely everywhere, then you can't chat to your friends. If it's too quiet, then people won't want to dance. If you can't accommodate both activities in the same venue then some people will stay away. A similar dilemma arises regarding seating and tables - too few, and you can't sit down and chat, too many, and you can't move and mingle and there's no dancefloor space. Drinks are important - if all else fails, people like to drink, as it is enjoyable and passes the time. But provide them with a dire selection of drinks, or make them overpriced, and they'll move on to somewhere else. By way of example, the SEVEN venue here in Nottingham has failed on all of these fronts the last few times I went to any special event there.

Live bands are a significant problem. If you have bands playing, and nobody knows them, why do you expect anybody to watch? Watching a death metal band growling completely incomprehensible lyrics over muddy and indistinct sound while playing songs you've never heard of is just not enjoyable for most of us. One of the organisers of the Hellfire festival said to me that £75 is good value for over 50 bands. But he was missing the fact that most people simply don't care about discovering new live bands that much, and with that in mind it's far too much cash.

When people say they like music, they typically mean that they like certain types of music or certain bands, and they enjoy knowing the songs and singing or dancing along. It's very hard to do either of those with a band you've never seen before, which is most likely sounding awful in a tiny venue. This is presumably why tribute and covers bands do so well. Probably the best thing you can do with smaller bands is to provide a second quieter room so that people can switch between checking out bands and chatting to their friends, and can enjoy the night even if all the bands turn out to be awful.

So yeah, in summary:
- don't spam people on Facebook. If I want to go, I'll go. One invitation and maybe one reminder just prior to the event is enough. Cast the net wider to find new people, instead of harassing those already on the list.
- sort out the problems with the venues that make them an uninteresting place to spend an evening. In an age where people can get as much free music as they like and carry it everywhere, your choice of music does not conquer all.
- think from the perspective of a customer rather than a promoter. It's likely that what you're offering is not as tempting a deal as you believe it is.

Current Mood: predatory

Last Sunday afternoon a small posse of us ventured down to Birmingham to the Hellfire festival being held in the exhibition centre. The original 3 day affair had been scaled down to 2 days, allegedly due to lack of interest, and this made getting information about when bands were playing rather difficult. Luckily we managed to establish a day or two before the event that "It's open from 12" and "The main stage starts at 5", at least. Since nobody I knew cared about any bands not on the main stage we got there a little after 4 to allow

darkwaveart a chance to do his various press-related things for an hour before it all started.

At first there was a lot of wandering around the concourse aimlessly because the main stage was behind closed doors and the other stage was rather underwhelmingly signposted, confusingly labelled as being 2 stages, but was really just 1. (There was a fourth/third stage too, currently under construction.) We went in and found a stage in a conference room where about 50 people were watching some awful band. We stayed for 2 minutes, then left again. I've no idea who the band was because there were no running order posters anywhere around the venue that we could see.

Apart from a half-mile walk to find a working cash machine, we just ended up waiting around outside the entrance to the main stage area until it opened. While there I encountered a variety of people following the same routine of wandering around in mild confusion. First up was

hakucho_cygnus , along with the not-terribly-talkative (at least to me)

neojezebel , followed by my Romanian friend Ada (who I didn't recognise at first, oops. Girls are always much shorter in real life...), and a bit later

synphony came by and was probably the first and last person I saw that day who had any idea what was going on.

At shortly after 5pm the doors opened and we made our way inside. The main stage was of a decent size and ambience, and there were a few stalls along the back and a rather odd bar area past the stage in a rather bleak warehouse/aircraft-hangar style setting. It felt a bit like the indoor Bloodstock events, except a little less cosy. Before long I met a few other people, eg.

omghellokitty ,

infestchris , etc. At one point I also got talking to a random redhead called Claire (or Clare (or Clair? who knows)) who was there on her own and had a strange half-Aberdeen half-Birmingham accent which sounded distinctly like it came from the Southern Hemisphere. I got my picture taken with her and someone else (might have been Leilani, I forget) by some Vince character who I think

yourapocalypse will know. "This might be in Metal Hammer - not the next one, the one after that" he said. I hope not, for the sake of everybody's eyes. I also shook DJ Beerman's hand, though I don't know if he knew who I was. That's ok, because sometimes, even I don't know who I am.

On to the bands then: Serotonal were good, although I still can't describe them adequately. (They're certainly not 'doom' despite how often that term is thrown at them, and 'dark rock' is far too wide to carry much semantic weight.) October File were awful (and almost everybody I spoke to agreed). Katatonia were great, but played exactly the same set I'd seen in Sheffield the previous Wednesday. Anathema opened with the first 4 songs from 'Alternative 4' which was a bit of a masterstroke, but with only 4 more songs to go it meant neglecting the majority of their back catalogue which is always a shame. Luckily the last song was 'Sleepless' featuring their original vocalist Darren White, which was great to see. After them came My Dying Bride who, since the last upheaval of their line-up, seem to like playing a mix of new songs and the more obscure tracks from their history which means I have little idea of what they played. It sounded fine, however. Finally came the Fields Of The Nephilim, goth icons that I was keen to see for the first (and probably last) time, and they put on an atmospheric and engrossing show. Possibly an odd choice to close a metal festival, since even though they play metal these days it's not their metal albums that they're most famous for. Still, I don't think many people went away disappointed.

Barring the last-minute disaster that nearly arose when Pink found out that he'd lost his car key (quickly finding it in the pub, quelle surprise), getting out and home was trouble-free, although standing around at 11:30pm in 3 degrees Celsius in just a t-shirt was an interesting experience, even for one so used to braving the icy winds as I.

Current Mood: tired

Yesterday myself and Becky went to try and buy a pub lunch in town. Easier said than done.

First stop, The Dragon. Nowhere to sit.

Second stop, the Pit and Pendulum. Having decided on burgers, we were told that they had no burgers (and that there was a 45 minute waiting time for food anyway). No good.

Third stop, the Salutation Inn. One cheese burger and fish and chips successfully ordered with drinks. Then, 2 minutes later, the serving girl, who had kindly given me a discount that I neither asked for nor qualified for, came over to say that she'd "had a blonde moment" - despite her hair being blue or something - and that they weren't actually serving food that day.

Finally, we got to the Old Angel, where we had to choose from about 45 different types of burger, and finally got food made and delivered by an authentic-sounding American woman. Added entertainment was provided by said woman walking straight into a table when taking our plates away. We should go there first next time.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Darkspace - "Dark 3.13"

The autumn of many gigs has begun, although not all has gone according to plan.

Friday was Finntroll and Battlelore. I really like Battlelore but having seen them twice now, it appears that they don't seem to be able to get the female vocals working live. It could just be coincidence that both times they were too quiet but I get the impression that if they turned them up loud enough to be audible, there was too much feedback. Perhaps she needs a better microphone, or have the rest of the band do without her vocals in the monitors if that's what causes it. Strange. Anyway, that was a bit disappointing. Then Finntroll came on and I just found them irritating unfortunately. Maybe it was just because about twenty teenagers started a big moshpit to songs they clearly didn't know leading to many a spilled drink, or maybe it was because a lot of Finntroll's stuff sounds the same and when things sound identical I tire of them very quickly. Either way I found it reasonably tedious and that contributed towards me not being in the mood for staying out in the pub with everybody else after the gig, so a relatively early night was had.

Saturday would have been Primordial and Swallow the Sun in Dudley but I had discovered during the prior week that this would be a logistical nightmare. Getting there would be awkward (train + taxi), getting back would be worse (taxi + train the next day), and that would require accommodation that night (2x taxi + hotel). I tried to book accommodation at a couple of places but they were already booked up, presumably with people in a similar situation to me. So in the end I gave up and stayed home playing The Bard's Tale 2 on the computer instead. It was a bit of a waste of a £40 ticket (which I'd bought on the incorrect assumption that since three-quarters of my friends like Primordial and/or Swallow The Sun, someone else would want to go), but on the other hand I saved the £70 or £80 extra it was going to cost me to travel and stay over. C'est la vie.

Sunday was The Atrocity Exhibit and Middenhelm plus 2 other noisy bands. I think one of the noisy bands had the drummer from Medulla Nocte who looks like the mancubus from Doom 2. Anyway, the 2 noisy bands plus The Atrocity Exhibit were mostly, well, noise. Well-executed and technical noise but it just seemed pointless to me. Still, if they're having fun, who am I to complain? Anyway, Middenhelm were the band I went primarily to see and they were a little better than the others, being of a more black metal persuasion and even having distinct notes that you could hear on occasion.

The next gigs in my diary are Ensiferum/Tracedawn/Metsatöll on Wednesday 7th, then Amorphis and Before The Dawn in London on the 10th (which I will go to regardless of cost and inconvenience) and Triaxis back in Nottingham the evening after.

Current Mood: bitchy

The last week or two I've been out and about catching up with various people, ranging from a quiet drink with Allan to a free bar funded by work on Thursday (which led to a few sore heads around the office on Friday). Holly has had to put up with my presence the most though, 5 days at least over the last 2 weeks, the poor thing. Still, nothing disinfectant and psychotherapy can't solve.

I also experienced the joys of Cheadle and Stoke and spent a couple of hours in The Rigger in Newcastle-Under-Lyme (I looked up, and saw no Lyme), where I ended up getting introduced to two Spanish girls into 'proper' metal, an event strangely reminiscent of a similar occurrence in Birmingham several years back. Not much else to report, except for Holly and Dan's 4am trampoline session (not dodgy, despite how it might sound!) and Lisa's cat becoming my personal sentry in the spare bedroom.

I've started buying the gig tickets on my list, although they seem to like to send them out very late in order to foil ticket touts. I generally support this, except I don't like the nervousness you get when the gig has sold out and your tickets still haven't come through the post yet. As I did with the Agalloch gig, I buy the tickets first and work out how I'm going to get there and back later. Exciting! ;) The gigs start up in a couple of weeks, so until then life will probably be a little quieter.

I've not got much done on personal projects of late, it all taking a back seat to getting out and seeing people and making the most of what was left of the summer. (Speaking of which, that's a third wet and disappointing summer in a row. Not so bad as last year, but still pretty dire, defying the Met Office's expectation of it being hotter and drier than usual. When will we get our heatwaves back?) But anyway, I have managed to write a little more music, although only parts of songs, not complete songs. Why is it so difficult to come up with the finished article? Ah well.

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Insomnium - "Down With The Sun"

I will try and keep this to one entry, without leaving out any juicy details. Bloodstocks are never as eventful as Wackens anyway. I'll put it under a cut to save the friends lists of the uninterested.

( 3 and a half days of metal mayhem in a South Derbyshire field... )

By 8:30am on the Monday morning we were out of the campsite and back on the road, thus bringing an end to the outdoor festival season for me this year. I've mixed feelings on this, as I will miss seeing so many great bands and meeting up with great people in such surreal surroundings, but camping is not my favourite thing and feeling sore and tired every day can get old quite quickly. Next year however I really want to do 3 festivals, as indeed I did this year, but it will depend on what the lineups are like across Europe. We shall see.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Forest Stream - "The Seventh Symphony Of..."

...safe and sound, and even healthy and well-rested enough to put in 2 hours of rocking at band practice tonight. A Bloodstock update will follow in the next day or two, and I'll try to keep it shorter than the Wacken one. (Having said that, I tried to keep the Wacken update short too.) And that concludes the outdoor festival season for me this year.

Current Music: Amorphis - "From The Heaven Of My Heart"

Not much more to say, thankfully.

Saturday morning came, and the weather was pretty good, blazing sun and a nice way to see the last full day of the festival off. Everybody else was slow to rouse so I wandered into the village by myself in search of food. I completely failed to find said food because everything I liked I couldn't pronounce. In the end I tried the food stand that Allan had recommended to me the day before, and found it to be infuriatingly slow. Three people stood around cooking food in there and someone getting served only once every two minutes or so. Don't they know I have somewhere to be? That somewhere was the rescheduled SuidAkrA show, and I managed to get me and my reluctantly-served bratwurst over there just in time for the start. Their brand of slightly-folkified melodic death metal worked well on the Party Stage and they finished with The IXth Legion which was predictable yet satisfying.

From there it was back to the campsite for some more protracted time-wasting as there was nobody I wanted to see until almost 5pm. However I was rudely disturbed by some of my companions who required that I go and watch Testament. All I can say about that is, why on earth do people still like thrash? With a few exceptions it's all the same, slightly syncopated simple guitar riffs over the same drum pattern and repetitve bassline. Lisa and I gave up on that after a few songs (or one long song with gaps, hard to tell), but then she went off somewhere with someone (...memory failure...) and I was wandering aimlessly until Borknagar came on. They were... ok. I was more impressed with all the pretty black metal ladies in the crowd than the weird sounds coming from on-stage. I think live they come across as more progressive than they do on record, and I'm not a progressive music fan really. I also prefer Vortex's vocals to those of current singer Vintersorg so this was never going to be amazing for me. I knew about half the songs, mostly older ones I think, and I think most of the others there were a lot more familiar with the new material so I felt like a real outsider. :)

It was during Borknagar that the return of the mysterious mini helicopter appeared. It hovered to the side of the crowd and flew around a bit before disappearing. I remember this blighter from last year, at the same stage too - what is it, and why is it there?

On my way back to the campsite I came across some unfortunate who'd passed out at the side of the path, and also saw another random person take up a large stick (which was probably a bit of broken gazebo) and start poking the poor guy with it to try and wake him. Eventually one of the drunkard's friends came to scare off the attacker with a glare and some stern words.

Most of this afternoon was pretty boring. Eventually I had to head off on my own again to see Pain because nobody else was interested. They were quite interesting, significantly heavier than I expected with some harsh vocals in places which I hadn't heard on the 2 or 3 songs I was familiar with. I think they had one of the two kick drums triggered up to give the vintage electronic kick sound and the other one acoustic for the more traditional metal sections, and the contrast worked well. Their songs are all cut from the same formula, with a fairly tame verse, a loud strummed chorus with several layers of vocals, and a staccato motif riff afterwards. Despite this, I did enjoy the set and the ludicrous number of fireworks. I left thinking that they would probably sound even better on record, but since then have tested the theory and decided it's completely wrong - they were far better live than the recorded sound does justice to.

Then, more random lone wandering, taking in the various sights while there was time. I came across another area of the campsite which featured Danish and English people like ours, except they'd done a better job of decorating the zone. The day before, we'd 'liberated' a small and colourful tent from... somewhere... and placed it in our camp to block a through route and thus deter people from walking through the middle. I got back to our area after Pain to find that Erika was taking it upon herself to climb a tree and put the tent up in said tree. Strange girl. I also found time to go and buy some leather trousers for 75€, which seems good value even if they may well be pretty average. No doubt some leather connoisseur could point out how bad they are, not being made of sheep scrotal tissue or whatever, but this is one of those cases where I like living in ignorance. I almost managed to forget my Visa card when leaving the shop too - score.

Next up: Machine Head. They clashed with Enslaved, but I wasn't interested in the latter because (a) they were a bit nondescript the last time I saw them, and (b) they're playing at Bloodstock this weekend anyway. So Machine Head it was. It seems like a lot of my peers don't like Machine Head, and got particularly angry at Robb Flynn recently after the Sonisphere/Limp Bizkit debacle, but assuming everything said was true (which is a big assumption), I am on their side. They played really well and I can't say I noticed any indication of the poor musicianship people have accused them of. (Poor songwriting however, sure... though they weren't playing those songs that night.) Robb's clean vocals have come on in leaps and bounds too, which is handy because there was at least one song where it was pretty much just him crooning over clean guitars for the most part. All in all, they were one of the better bands of the festival for me. (Pointless picture here.)

Afterwards, we went to grab some food, and most of the others retired back to the campsite during Saxon's set with the aim of returning for Korpiklaani's closing set on the Party Stage. I, however, was not going to do that because Korpiklaani are undebatably shit. Turisas these days (who I'd completely forgotten about and missed earlier) take the Scandinavian folk metal formula and push the bounds of cheese and comedy within it to almost breaking point, whereas Korpiklaani break completely free of such taste restraints, leaving all quality behind and trying to make up for it by appealing to the public's liking for alcohol. I hope they die in a tourbus accident with Alestorm. (Apologies to those who know members of such bands - would it be possible for just their musical personae to die in this hypothetical crash? I'm sure they're lovely people... really.) Instead of watching that drivel, I had an hour-long date with Gwar.

Yes, Gwar are a comedy metal act too, but are far more than a one-trick pony, unlike the Finns whose time-slot they shared. Where else could you find a zombie Michael Jackson, a large dinosaur called Gor-Gor, and the Intergalactic Wrestling Championship? Their set was partly following the wrestling story line with random other songs thrown in as interludes including some old classics that remind me of being back at school, when they were one of my favourite bands. They'll never win any awards for technical proficiency but their song writing covers a lot of diverse ground and the sheer spectacle of their stage show is hard to beat. So that was a fitting way for me to end the festival, and I trudged back to the tent at 2am quite satisfied. A few of the others were there, keen to enjoy the last evening with such good company and to sit around drinking and talking, but I think several days of festivalling had taken it out of us, so it was a relatively early night for most instead.

Sunday morning came around, and I poked my head out of my tent to be greeted by a great big fire engine about 10 steps away. Every 5 year old boy's dream, and I pretended to be 5 for a few minutes. Eventually though we all had to start packing our stuff away, taking down the tents, and saying goodbyes for another year. A light and welcome rain started to fall as we began the arduous journey back up the hill towards the place we parked the car, but it wasn't enough to stop us working up a bit of a sweat carrying all that stuff. Along the way, we passed an overturned vehicle, and I have no idea how on earth it ended up that way. Shortly after, we got to the car and left a little after midday, as I recall.

Getting out of the festival site was easy... getting onto the autobahn was easy... but as soon as we hit the first junction south of Wacken we were in a traffic jam. This situation then persisted for the next six hours, completely destroying our chances of getting back to Calais for our midnight ferry. However I must admit to enjoying the rather surreal scenes during the traffic jam, where we were able to sit about on the road, and enjoy the view from the central barrier, not to mention doing a bit of decorating. I had fun, anyway. Only once we got past Hamburg at about 6pm did we get any free roads without traffic, and we enjoyed the scenic route via Hannover which was free of ridiculous bridge rebuilding works. Eventually we got to Calais at about 3am on Monday, which was still pretty good going considering the roughly 5 hours of extra time wasted sat around in the middle of the road. We managed to convince the nice man at the dock to let us on a later ferry for free, which was the same one we'd arrived on. There was also a very beautiful girl on the ferry who smiled at me a couple of times, but fear not ladies, I'll never see her again.

After getting off the ferry I pretty much dozed the rest of the way back, opening my eyes once in Kent, once in Essex, and then finding myself back at Pink's house. We got some sleep and then Allan, Fiona and I drove back up to Nottingham that afternoon without incident.

Next year I am mulling over the prospect of going from Wacken to the Brutal Assault festival in the Czech Republic and then back to England for Bloodstock, if the dates are the same as this year. It sounds like fun and I can spend the 2 or 3 spare days each week on somerthing resembling a conventional holiday. Something to think about.

Apologies for the length of all this. It's Bloodstock from tomorrow evening onwards, and I promise to make that less verbose.

Current Mood: uncomfortable
Current Music: Agalloch - "She Painted Fire Across The Skyline"

So we came to Thursday morning, arguably the first proper day of the festival, although still with fewer bands than on Friday or Saturday. The rain was coming down quite heavily in the early hours but I think it had mostly passed by the time I got up at 10am or so. But after the rain, came the wind. It fell to myself and a few others to attempt to hold down the gazebo that we'd put up behind our tent. This worked well... for a while. Just when we thought we had it under control, a massive gust came along and lifted it clean out of our hands and up into the sky, it landing on some guy's tent about 100m away (rudely disturbing his reading of a Star Wars graphic novel, or so I'm told). I refused to be defeated so went over with Pink and a couple of others to retrieve the errant outdoor furniture. With the help of the guy who's tent it assailed, we carried it back across the campsite, a considerably awkward task considering there were about 30 densely packed tents we had to go round or over in the process. But, we got it back, and put it up again, albeit with the legs shortened now to avoid catching the wind.

There was no rush to see anybody that day until the evening, so Lisa and I headed up through Wacken village to the supermarket and procure some supplies. This went largely without a hitch and I came back with a six-pack of Paulaner 'Hefe-Wießbier' which was about the most palatable thing to drink that they had. And just like last year I bought two pot-noodle style things (and just like last year I didn't eat either of them), and some fruit so that I could get my five-a-week that the Government recommend. (It is per week, isn't it? ;) ) I think the supermarket was my first opportunity to use my favourite German phrase, 'Ich spreche kein Deutsch'. The person rephrased his question in English and it turned out that he was asking if I was in the queue. I bet that wouldn't have been in my phrasebook.

Once we were back at the campsite, we found Pink cooking what looked like half a pig over a tiny barbecue. Lisa went back to bed for a bit and I think I spent most of the next 4 or 5 hours between either the medieval area or sitting around on the campsite with people as they drunk various beverages I'd never heard of. To his horror, Pink discovered that some of the beer he'd brought with him was alcohol free. Attempts to offload it onto local non-alcoholics met with limited success.

The evening approached and I made what I think was my first foray into the main arena to see Running Wild's final show. Although they seemed nice enough people I can't say I was grabbed by their particular brand of pirate-rock or whatever you'd describe it as, so before long I found myself back at the campsite. I wasn't staying long, as Lacuna Coil were down at being on at 9:30. "They're on at 11" said Lisa, Henrik, and a couple of the others. The consensus was that I was wrong... so at 9:20 I wandered off to the Party Stage by myself. I get there, find my position, and at 9:30 the 6 Italians come on stage and launch into 'Survive'. PEOPLE SHOULD TRUST ME! I texted Lisa to let her know to come over and watched the show. It was heavily weighted towards the last two albums, which unfortunately I think are pretty dire in their percussive monotone Korn-worship with the sole exception of the song 'Spellbound' which would have worked on any earlier album. After that I shuffled left a little way to watch Heaven And Hell. I've never been a big Black Sabbath fan because I find the 70s vibe unenjoyable and Ozzy's voice pretty awful, but what I'd heard of later Sabbath hadn't been so bad so I was looking forward to seeing this post-Ozzy Sabbath line-up perform. Despite knowing none of the songs, I wasn't disappointed by their show which came across as something between any other mainstream metal band and partly arena-rock. Could have done without the drum solo though. Drums should be rigged to explode if they are used for more than 10 seconds at a time without guitars being played simultaneously. I was impressed with Tony Iommi however, who I guess is ultimately to blame for this festival, my hair 'style', and various other things I am, hear, attend, or do.

Not much else of interest happened that evening that I can recall. I think we sat outside shivering under the abbreviated gazebo while it rained all around us. Maybe someone else can jog my memory? Anyway, sleep beckoned.

Friday brought the day with the most bands I'd wanted to see, though Vreid and SuidAkrA clashed in the 11am slot. I chose Vreid, which was wise because I later learned that SuidAkrA had moved to tomorrow - result! Vreid were pretty impressive although I have to say that they were nowhere near as extreme as I'd imagined they'd be. In that respect they reminded me a bit of Enslaved. I don't even know what kind of music Vreid played as it came across as... metal... without anything distinctive. But that's not a criticism; I remember enjoying it. Except for being mildly irritated that they had a backing track that included guitars on it. Why not just play that bit yourselves, hmm? Oh... and although the British are always exhorted not to talk about The War around Germans, nobody told the Norwegians, boasting that this song is about the sinking of the Blücher in the Oslofjord; "1000 German soldiers died that day" apparently.

Next up, Endstille. This lot were a bit heavier, faster, and more abrasive than Vreid, and but again were quite nondescript in a way. I think there are some bands you can enjoy live without knowing the material, but most non-mainstream metal doesn't fall into this category, so you're just left to pick up a general aesthetic. Again, this band generally pleased me but I couldn't tell you what they were like without hearing the cd. They also had a sample which mentioned Hitler dying at the end of the war, but I guess they're allowed to because they're German.

I was permitted a short break before heading over to see Tristania. This was one of the very few bands left on my list of favourites that I haven't yet seen. And they were a bit disappointing, to be honest. Not sure why; I think their two singers don't look right, for a start, although I gather that the male singer was a stand-in, and the new girl is never going to be a match for Vibeke Stene (although she's a great singer in her own right). They also had a pretty lady filling in on guitar, who turns out to be Gyri from Octavia Sperati. All in all it felt like a bit of a session band and since they didn't play much old stuff (and what they did play, they complained about having to play it) the event wasn't all that enjoyable. Oh well, still, crossed off the list.

I took advantage of a lull in the action to visit the cd market area, which was pretty packed full of stuff, but just like last year I had forgotten to bring my shopping list of obscure bands. Luckily I have it up online and I was able to pull off some internet-on-a-phone shenanigans to look at it (at a cost of something like £5, I think...) I could have bought much more but limited myself to picking up albums by October Falls, Darkspace, Agalloch, and Ataraxie.

After that I went back to the campsite and enjoyed the farce involving Emil and far too much Fisk, which is basically an alcoholic drink based on the Fisherman's Friend recipe. This culminated in Alex, Rasmus, and Allan attempting to walk him to somewhere he could go to relieve himself, which was apparently desperately needed. This failed, and Emil tumbled to the floor, ending up lying on his side. Not to be deterred by his incorrect position and orientation, in his almost comatose state he managed to start 'going' while we stood around both amused and horrified. Once that was all done he was carried to his tent where he recovered.

There was still plenty of time to kill so I wandered around the shopping area and beer garden and, because it had been pretty cold the night before, bought myself a Dark Tranquillity hoodie from the lovely girl working the same stall she worked last year. Maybe next year I'll say more to her than "This, please", but, it's very doubtful. I also happened to catch a bit of Bullet For My Valentine from a great distance (ie. without going into the arena proper). On the big stage with the same sound system as everybody else they sounded much like any melodic death metal band with the exception of the slightly nasal choruses. A lot of people didn't think they should be at a 'proper' metal festival but they sounded better than a lot of the AOR and thrash dross that the German audiences lap up.

As soon as I got back to the campsite I saw the Danes and Lisa were leaving to go and see Motörhead with a cup of remaining Fisk, so I followed after. Motörhead were ok - not my sort of thing but nothing offensively bad or boring either. Lisa had enjoyed a little too much of the Fisk though and was starting to rely on us for keeping her upright. Eventually she was sat on the floor being quite ill and I had to convince our Danish comrades that it probably wasn't wise to carry her the half-mile back to the tent, past various security guards. To cut a long story short we ended up getting the paramedics who whisked her off backstage. I then spent the next couple of hours or so trying to find out where they'd taken her, which wasn't working very well with all the paramedics backstage and the security people out front not speaking English (and me not speaking German, naturally). By the time I found the first aid place she'd already discharged herself and got back to the tent, and I'd 'only' missed In Flames or Epica, Sarke, and Amon Amarth. Grr. :) In fairness I caught a couple of songs by Doro who was on when I had planned to see Sarke, and she was amusing in a way, and also a couple of tracks from Amon Amarth who were sounding awful on this occasion anyway.

The temperature had dropped significantly and when I got back to the campsite, there was an impressive mist over the lower-lying areas. My tent had dropped from being 40ºC inside during the day to 10ºC now. I wrapped up in my sleeping bag, inserted the most comfortable earplugs I'd ever used, and slept until Saturday...

Current Mood: hot

I'm gonna split this report up so I don't get as bored with writing it as you will reading it.

On Tuesday evening at about 7:30pm, Allan and Fiona came to pick me up from the house with my 2 rucksacks and tent. The first stage of the journey was the trip down to Essex to Pink's house for a very brief rest, to be followed by leaving again at 2am to head for the ferry at Dover. We got there ok, then Pink took us out to the brewery where he works to collect some free beers to take with us. Grand idea! Unfortunately I don't really drink proper ales and the like so it was little use to me, but hey, the others enjoyed it.

Once we got back from the brewery, there was a power cut, which meant navigating an unfamiliar house in the dark. Mostly we just got some shut-eye before piling into the car to head off for Dover. Getting on the ferry was nice and smooth and the boat trip pretty uneventful.

Then came the race through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany to get to our destination. Suffice to say that Pink was driving at some pretty impressive (and illegal) speeds here which is why we managed it in about 8 hours even including getting lost near the destination. (Which incidentally was at the only point where my navigation skills were overruled. Coincidence?) Two things did we learn during this roadtrip. Firstly, that Dutch drivers are the worst in North-Western Europe, at least in terms of safety, since they will pull out in front of you without warning, even if you are doing 50km/hr more than them and have to slam on the brakes. Even in Belgium and Germany the offenders always had an NL registration. Secondly, the reason German railways are so good is because that's the only way the country can function since their roads are appalling. There are roadworks everywhere, major roads often with only 2 lanes or even 1, and apparently this drags on forever because nobody works at night or on Sundays.

Right outside the festival site, we got stopped by the German police and Pink was made to perform all those embarrassing manoeuvres that you see on tv, like having to focus your eyes on a moving finger or stand on one leg. After 8 hours of intensive driving he was in no state to do the balancing act, so behind a hedge for a quick piss test it was. It came back clear (or slightly golden, I guess...) and on we went.

Anyway, we got into the campsite at something like 3pm on Wednesday. Jim (

ironlord ) and Jos (

jellybearwhore ) had already got there and parked their tents in the usual spot among the Danes who Allan meets up with every year, with an added bonus of Alex and Erika nearby with a large space reserved for us, so we had a pretty cool camp area between the 15 or so of us. Shortly after our tents were set up, Lisa arrived to become our token German and chief translator and our little grouping of Danes, English, a Swede and a German was complete.

I then headed off to check out this year's 'Metal Market' and the extended 'Medieval Area'. The former was a bit smaller than last year, with 2 aisles of stores rather than 3, but to be honest there's only so many band-tshirt, cheap wristband, gothic corsetry, and music poster stockists you need at any one festival, so I didn't notice any drop in variety or quality. The medieval area was quite cool though, with a bar in the form of a longship, several authentic bakeries, axe and spear throwing contests, and stalls selling armour and weapons, of both the real/replica variety and the latex/LARP variety. I was quite tempted to buy a LARP sword but managed to resist, since I knew I would probably never get to use the thing. The medieval area had a small stage for appropriately-themed bands, but I only managed to catch part of the set for one such band, which was Fejd who played that first evening. They seemed ok but didn't really grab me - perhaps I am just far too weary of the Scandinavian and Eastern European folk aspects creeping into so much metal music these days that anything with those aspects really has to be something amazing to get my attention. I think this may have played a part in why I didn't make much effort to revisit that stage when other bands were on, though they also tended to clash with the bigger bands on the main 3 stages due to playing in the evenings.

The rest of that day was spent hanging around with the rest of our group, watching strange Danish drinking games, and visiting the beergarden where I enjoyed a few pints of Franziskaner. There was a little minor drama as Fiona disappeared into the ether for some reason but she showed up again a few hours later. The evening was finished off for me with a fine cardboard tray of pasta and tomato sauce purchased from Germans masquerading as Italians, before I retired to get the sleep I didn't manage to get the night before. The Bio-Ears earplugs I'd picked up from Boots worked wonders in this regard, helping to drown out the sounds of boisterous Germans (well, all except Lisa, anyway).

Next time: Thursday's shenanigans.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Ataraxie - "Anhédonie"

Thursday - I went out to the Tap and Tumbler and then Damage to listen to loud metal. That was the most fun I've had on an evening out for months, I think. Overconsumption of cider may have played a part. On top of the usual friendly attendees we had Charles visiting from California for his annual pilgrimage, which was good. Also, a girl spoke to me, which was novel, although she was just mocking my 'dancing', which is fair enough really.

During the evening I started developing a sore throat, which almost always signifies a virus of some sort in my case. Could it be Swine Flu? Rumours were going round that a friend of a friend had it, so I suppose it could have been. Friday morning came, and I still felt 'wrong', and I debated not going into work, but then I figured it would be a bit lame if I took a sick day and it turned out to just be a common cold. After work Charles summoned some of us to the Salutation to drink and talk. A table of geeks meant that before long we were talking about call with current continuation, developing in Objective C for the iPhone, and other stuff we wouldn't dare mention in mixed company. This led to the people on the table next to us abandoning their half-consumed drinks and leaving the pub. Forced out by boredom! Great.

Saturday rolled around and by now the sore throat had subsided and the runny nose started! Fun times. But, no fever or anything like it, so I guess this isn't Swine Flu, or even the deadlier variety, Man Flu. Disappointing. I met up with Lisa in the evening for fresh-and-expensive orange juice in the Alley Café and chuckled a bit at the noticeboard which was half full of your typical health food and natural living stuff and the other half full of counselling and psychotherapy business cards. Not getting enough meat makes you feeble-minded, it seems. I said nothing of this to my vegetarian companion.

Sunday, I arranged to meet Becky in the Pit and Pendulum for a Whine And Dine™ session. This was followed by wandering around in the sunshine, ending up sitting near a pub where Charlie was out enjoying Pimms. I went home briefly before being summoned back to town by Charles for more drinks. We started at the Pit and Pendulum again, which was was busy and noisy so we moved onto the bar at Broadway Cinema for interesting European beers, set to a soundtrack of some warbly folk/pop/world-music girl with an acoustic guitar playing in the bar area to mark the end of some sort of film festival - surreal. We had a few too many of these beers and I distinctly remember Andy writing something offensive on some sort of suggestions box in the reception area. So we can probably never go back there. A girl spoke to me there too, just saying 'hello' as she passed. That's quite unusual. Maybe she was as drunk as I was. I got home at a little before 2, which was a bad idea with work in the morning. I am normally much more reserved with my drinking but Charles isn't in town every week.

This morning, as expected, I was in a lot of alcohol-induced head pain. I blame it on not having had 2 meals the day before. It took at least 3 attempts to get out of bed and 3 further attempts at not falling straight back into it, but I still made it to work, with my headache and my lack of sleep and my lesser piglet flu. Go me.

We had band practice in the new practice room this evening, which went ok. The overall sound leaves a bit to be desired but I'm sure we'll tweak things over the coming weeks. It's great to have somewhere that doesn't force us to stick to a rigid time slot, although sharing equipment with people who have amputated arms and giant snakes attached to the drum kit will take a little getting used to.

Current Mood: productive
Current Music: Týr - Regin Smiður

Hello world! Things have been rather mundane this last week or so, therefore there is little to report.

On Thursday on my lunch break I went to the 'Fuzz Guitar Boutique' in town, which is a quaint little shop that sells overpriced guitars alongside trendy jeans and t-shirts. Quite bizarre. Anyway, I asked them if they had the Boss Noise Suppressor pedal in stock, and they quickly determined that they did not. However - they phoned up their 'mother' store in West Bridgford which, lo and behold, did have such a pedal available. Did I want them to bring it over to the city centre shop tomorrow? No, I said, I'll go over myself on Saturday. Thus, on Saturday I went to the West Bridgford store, and asked the assistant for the pedal. It turns out they didn't have one. A quick word with his boss determined that they had sent it to the city centre store yesterday, because someone asked them to do so. Grrrr. I got back to the city centre shop a little later and they had it waiting for me on the counter, so my mission was finally successful. On a tangential point, the guy who appeared to be running the shop in West Bridgford looked to be the same guy who owns Millennium Music and thus the new SoundCheck store in the old SoundControl premises. Can one person really own 4 music shops in Nottingham, or was I mistaken? Hmmm.

Thursday night was band practice time where I ended up using the studio's Line 6 amp head, making everything I play sound like it's being transmitted over AM radio. I'd use my own amp head but it is heavier than six elephants and thus not worth the effort. Apart from equipment issues things are sounding pretty good and we should be able to gig this year, IF we can get enough time with our vocalist, and IF we can sort out the second guitarist situation.

I had Friday off work, but squandered most of that free time. From that point on it was typical weekend goings-on, a few 'quiet' drinks with

jen_whitewave et al in the Salutation on Friday and Saturday, with the added bonus of a visiting Diane on the latter occasion. On Sunday I went to Flaming Dragon with

der_katzchen and wondered why they expect you to pay a service charge when you have to collect all the food from the buffet yourself. Ah well. All weekend, at pub and at restaurant, I have been trying to improve my tolerance for European lagers so that Wacken this year will be a bit more tolerable in the absence of readily-accessible cider. That's if I still go to Wacken at all, which is not guaranteed due to the somewhat poor selection of confirmed bands so far.

Since it seems like a useful skill to have, I started learning how to program ActionScript 3 at the weekend. However I must confess that I never even got as far as writing a line of AS3 code, instead just getting as far as writing the XML to open a blank window, before getting distracted. Oh well, there's always tonight. If I'm not too busy enjoying the poor voice acting in Deus Ex, that is.

Today I am back at work and appear to have lost my USB cable for my mp3 player. Since almost everybody else on the planet has an iPod the chance of being able to borrow a cable is minimal. Walking to and from work without music is a rather different experience.

Tonight is band practice, then I have nothing planned all week until Saturday when I might go to the metal night at J7, although I might not because the music selection was not to my taste either of the two times I've been so far.

Current Mood: busy

On Thursday I ventured down to London to see Agalloch, Dornenreich, Mely, and Fen play. If you've not heard of any of them that's not terribly surprising as they are a little bit underground, but that made it even more impressive that the gig was so well attended, the queue stretching right round the block. It's interesting how small the scene is - I found myself in the queue behind two Australian girls who were comparing the slowness of the queue to the one at the Paradise Lost/Anathema/My Dying Bride gig last year that meant lots of people missed Anathema, and which I was at (along with with several of you). This queue took something like 45 minutes to let everybody in and it was for this reason that I didn't catch Fen's set, but Mely were ok, Dornenreich were intriguing and Agalloch were excellent. I picked up a long-wanted Agalloch t-shirt (although they had none of their full-length albums on sale, unfortunately).

It was my first time navigating the capital without assistance too so it was encouraging that I didn't miss my train or get lost. I figured that it would be a bit lame to miss rare opportunities to see bands that hardly come to the UK on account of not having anybody to travel with, so doing that was a useful experience. Just a shame that trains stop running so early as that precludes going to a lot of other stuff.

Anyway, it's good that I enjoyed the Agalloch gig as the the weekend was pretty much written off socially due to people becoming unavailable on Friday (seeing someone else), Saturday (called into work), and Sunday ('female' illness). LAME. Instead I stayed in and wrote some black metal, and completed Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, which is quite an average game with poorly explained continuity between levels, some very unforgiving situations, and a very anti-climactic ending. Next, I should probably complete Oblivion before I have owned it for 3 years. Or maybe finish off Thief 3, although that involves going back into Shalebridge Cradle - ouch.

Tomorrow is work as usual, although if our admin girl gets back to me and insists that I need to take my 2 holidays before the end of March, I may well be walking right back out again, as there are only 2 days of March remaining. We'll see!

Current Mood: lazy
Current Music: Agalloch - "A Celebration Of The Death Of Man..."

Ok, so I just ended up seeing Hellboy 2, and:

- How on earth did one of the former members of Bros end up playing an elven prince with immense combat skills?
- Why was the underlying plotline so close to that of the computer game Age of Wonders?
- Why does it have Balor The One-Armed, when Balor was traditionally one-eyed, not one-armed?

Apart from those odd aspects, it was good fun, crap dialogue and failed attempts at character development aside.

In completely unrelated news, why have there been so few barbecues this summer? Or perhaps more accurately, why have I been invited to so few barbecues this summer? There've been some nice evenings recently, reminding me of cool outdoor antics of previous years, but this year has seen precious little of that. Shame really.

Current Mood: geeky

Consider these the edited highlights. Obviously it'll still be quite long though.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: calm

What have I been up to...

Last Wednesday I met up with Chris in the SpeakEasy after work and chatted about band stuff, and the fickleness of women. I also taunted him with my parcel, which was the new Daylight Dies album and t-shirt. (Although I have to confess not being 100% convinced by the album to be honest.)

Thursday saw the unfortunate postponement of Damage Inc, so a reasonably large bunch of us ended up at the Salutation swapping stories of drunkenness and toilet humour. Good times.

Friday morning, I was ill, and injured myself. We shall speak no further of this.

On Friday evening, Allan and myself went over to the wilds of Sneinton to play "Rock Band" (I won't link to the actual site as it doesn't work at all on Firefox 3 and is pretty damn antisocial to IE too) with Matt, Russ, and Gareth. That went on for hours and eventually ended up with Matt on drums, Allan on guitar, and myself on vocals. I must admit that my Shirley Manson voice is not too good, my version of 'Detroit Rock City' by Kiss was worse, and my Die Toten Hosen rendition sounded like one of the Nuremberg rallies. However, I did score 100% on Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid', which is about 30% better than Ozzy Osbourne would manage.

Saturday saw me taking a late lunch with

der_katzchen and getting stared at by women. Strange. I have little recollection of what I did in the evening but I'm pretty sure it involved wasting time sat at my computer looking at websites. As usual.

Yesterday I spent much of the day editing an article on programming; joy. I also found myself playing Football Manager 2005, ostensibly to research gameplay for the web-based game I've been working on for the last 6 months (at the rate of about 2 hrs per week... *sigh*). I do tend to get addicted to management and strategy games though, so I was up until almost 3am, with work in the morning. Gah.

Today is the aforementioned work, followed by a walk home in an inevitable rain shower, and then 3 hours of band practice.

Current Mood: accomplished

The scene: myself, accompanied by a few friends, at a well-known 'real ale and rock' pub in the city centre, Nottingham.

Me: "Hi, can I have a J2O, please?"
Barman: "A J2O?"
Me: "Yes. Oh, it's not for me. I'd like an orange juice and lemonade, please."
Barman: "Orange juice and lemonade?"
Me: "Yes! Sorry."
Barman: "Would you like anything else that's fucking gay? Like, a man's ass to fuck?"
Me: "Maybe later!"

If I didn't know the guy, and know he was gay himself, I might have been mildly horrified. ;)

Current Mood: amused

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I have memories, clouded by sorrow

Of a time in life when blood ran through my veins

Entries tagged with social

befriending

Hellfest - Clisson, France, 18-20 June 2010

Katatonia / Swallow The Sun / Long Distance Calling gig

Promotion and evening entertainment

Hellfire Festival, 8th November

The search for Saturday sustenance

gigs

happenings

Bloodstock Open Air 2009

Back from Bloodstock...

Wacken Open Air 2009, part 3

Wacken Open Air 2009, part 2

Wacken Open Air 2009, part 1

Since last Wednesday:

Periodic report

Agalloch, etc

hrm

Wacken trip, part 1

diary

abusive barman award