DLC out soon. Cant wait, really looking forward to it.

Roadburn Rundown

These are the bands I saw at Roadburn this year. id like to do a full review but to be honest, too much fun was had, and I cant remember it at all. its like a blur and a haze. but fuck me, it was awesome. below are the bands that grabbed me enough to watch their whole set, or for the majority of it. I saw other bands over the top of heads from crowded rooms that I couldnt squeeze into but I didnt include them here because I dont deem that watching a band. Watching a band is being able to stand front row and see the band playing, and that is unfortunately impossible at roadburn if you make it too late to see the band you want in anything other than the main stage. my only complaint though! a wicked weekend. Walter works hard to get a decent bill and does a fantastic job. Im going to highlight my top 3 bands!


Agalloch    - Sublime, played an excellent set. would like to have met them, didnt find them.
d.USK/diSEMBOWELMENT –  grim show, heavy as hell. best dudes ever, gota love the aussies.
Killing Joke - were okay, not the best set I have seen. pssyche still ruled though.
Sigiriya - impressive, id go next time they play bham
Voivod - I cannot stand this band and endured bits of them twice. I wont make that mistake again.
White Static Demon vs JK Flesh - Met him this weekend and JK flesh raped my face.
Anekdoten - Really cool prog, with a moog. a real moog! watched them with Grutle from Enslaved.
Dopethrone - caught the first few songs then had to go outside, but they were cool.
Gnod - a very spaceman 3 vibe from these guys, and im from rugby so i like spaceman 3
Sólstafir -   Sublime, blew me away.
40 Watt Sun - much much better than when I saw Warning. Heavy sound. Awesome.
Leaf Hound - really enjoyed them, but I do wish Sad road to the sea was the same song as the LP
Necros Christos - they blew me away, fantastic death metal/doom.
The Obsessed - stunning in every way, heavy as hell. all the songs id want to hear, worth the trip.
Mike Scheidt - interesting to listen to, and id like to hear the solo album.
Sleep - I found them too repetetive, and I went to see Necros christos, came back and they were ace.
The Wounded Kings - evoke the feeling that Chutlu himself is rising through the ground due to the hymns sung at him, written by steve. lol
Coroner - same as the last time, standing still, boring to watch but technical to play I suppose. Nah.
Yob - blew my tits off playing the whole of Catharsis. thanks to the singer for giving me a guest pass to the show!

some images id like to share.

Forgot that I used to draw a lot. remembered recently. drew the dog, twice. just gona put em up here as a place to keep them.

Sleeping pug and awake pug

Skyrim Vs Dark Souls.My opinion on these 2 big fantasy epics.

                                                                                  VS

Ok so before I begin this. id like to make it very clear that I have played both these games top to bottom, explored them profusely and yes, they are both awesome. The reviews are right, and Skyrim is a brilliant piece of next generation gaming, beautiful in its scope and epic. the reviews claim Dark souls is impenetrable, hard as nails and a triumpth in gaming. both statements are very true. However, im going to relay the reasons that I believe Dark Souls deserves more accolades,  and that it has been painfully overshadowed by Skyrim this winter, and possibly indefinately.

Skyrim is a huge open world game, the graphics are gorgeous and there is so much to explore and do you could indeed spend 100s of hours within it playing the game. I personally gave Skyrim over 80 hours, and while doing so managed to achieve the full 1000G. it wasnt exactly challenging but it was fun, time consuming, and it was worth my effort in buying the game. Its a better peice of software than Oblivion ever was, and I believe its because it takes all the best bits from the 2 Fallout games and melds it all together to make the perfect bethesda open world game.  You start as Dragonborn, end as dragonborn and you are a god amongst men. That however is my main problem with Skyrim. You are indeed without a doubt the most powerful being in the game. after levelling up enough you can destroy dragons with a few hits, shout at them to bring them down, and virtually every enemy in the game you can annihilate. There is no consequence for dying because you can save at any point, and just do it again. Sure, its fun and it means you dont have to repeat but it does kind of eliminate challenge. Glitches plague the game the same way they did New Vegas also. and this in itself can be a big issue sometimes, removing the realism and immersion. Still, the game does make up for it, by its fun quests, its NPC characters and the amount of effort and detail put into the background, such as all the books that are fully readable for example and the daedric quests which I found to be the most fun in the whole game. So to sum up Skyrim, I loved it. It had all the right elements. However, I believe it epitomises all that is currently an issue to me with all the latest games released in the last 2 years and this brings me to my next point. The differences between these 2 games.

Dark Souls. Yes. It is indeed as difficult as it says it is, and it is utterly impenetrable...but spend enough time within it and something becomes very clear. As I said with Skyrim that as dragonborn, you are the most powerful creature within the game, with Dark Souls it is literally the opposite. You begin as the lowest of worms. Everything you encounter is either hostile, or unfriendly. and even after putting the first 10 hours in, if you can last that long, you come to realise that virtually every other being within the game wants you dead. you literally live within fear of staying alive long enough to explore the next area. but you see, if this sounds unpleasant and not fun to you then your missing the point. Dying has been used in gaming for years as a submission of failure. you die, and clearly youve done something badly or wrongly. this is true for Dark souls, if you die, its your own fault. However, unlike other games, Dark souls uses Dying a core game mechanic. Without dying endlessly, and without learning...the groove of that certain area, then you simply cant progress. Why? Because when you kill something, you gain souls. Souls are used to level up, which in turn makes you more powerful. So the game essentially forces you into suffering and grinding souls. because when you die your souls are left in the exact spot where you die, so you have to kill all the bad guys again to get there, and therefore your souls duplicate. Once you recover the souls, you can return to your save point (called bonfires) and hopefully use the amount you have gained to level up, and use the next powerful weapon you have obtained to make it easier for yourself. Only through learning the layout of the level, and becoming powerful enough to remove the enemies can you hope to progress, and move forward to the next bonfire. The story of the game is very minimal, almost non existent, but it is there and its dark. its fantasy, just like skyrim, in a similar world, but its a grimy, gritty, evil world that wants you wiped from it.

Basically, Dark souls epitomises old school, hardcore gaming. The days when Megadrive games were the norm, and you regularly got all the way to that bit in level 6, then got taken out because you hadnt been there yet and fell down a hole or got killed by a bad guy you didnt know existed. Later in the game you come across bosses 10 times your size, that without learning the patterns of their attacks, you have no hope of succeeding,just like the old games. The word is Challenge. It poses a challenge within a game that I personally haven't come across since yes, the early days of gaming. It harkens back to those days where you had to learn the layout of the level in order to beat it on repeat visits. where there no saving at any point, Dark souls uses a save system where you have to get yourself to the next bonfire in order to progress, until later on when you can warp to previous ones. So you cant just save when you want, you cant even pause. the developers have crafted a game of pure warped genius.

Skyrim is a next generation console game that despite its many many good points, poses no challenge or threat, because you are the most powerful being in the game. Dark souls is a next generation game where you are the downtrodden piece of turd on the shoe on every single enemy or indeed everything you encounter. But heres the big difference, when you endure, suffer, grind and finally become powerful within Dark Souls, you can literally own every one of those bad guys that once proved a challenge, yet...if your not careful enough, you can still be killed by a rat if its faster than you.

To sum up. If Skyrim is this:

Dark souls is this:

Grim.

Ok...Video games of 2011.

Now, this is the first post here since the original one that I havnt copied and pasted. This year for me has been a lot about video games. ive played way too fucking many of them, and wasted a lot of hours playing them. there are not many of my friends that I can talk to about games, because none of them waste quite as much time playing them. a new years resolution for me will be to cut down, in all honesty. for my sanity, let alone the fact that ive spent more time playing xbox than I have looking for a decent job. I cant think of any big games to look forward to next year either, they all came out this year! Im going to try and put together a top 10, but a lot of the time its lost in the midst of time. I believe these are the ones that enveloped my life the most.


Dark Souls
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Batman: Arkham City
Dead Space 2
Alice: Madness Returns
Crysis 2
Portal 2
Ms Splosion Man


I am planning to put together a blog gushing about Dark souls VS Skyrim. The two games just need to be compared. haha

2011..Music, or how I learned to love being poor. haha!

Quiet year for music. very quiet. been more interested in other things I think. Anyway, despite that, I do have a top 10 albums of the year. and they are....

Rival Sons - Pressure & Time
The Answer - Revival
Altar of Plagues - Mammal
40 Watt Sun - the inside room
The Wounded Kings - In The Chapel of the Black hand
Florence & the Machine - ceremonials
Edguy - Age of the Joker
Pentagram - Last Rites
Solstafir - Svartir Sandar
Communic - The Bottom Deep

Worthy mentions -

Explosions in the Sky - take care take care take care
Primordial - Redemption at the puritans hand
Hour of 13 - The Ritualist

As for concerts, ive been to very few. The best however were:

Godlfesh in london
high voltage - Neurosis
Kyuss Lives in wolverhampton
Saxon at leamington
Rush at the NEC
Church of Misery and witchsorrow at London underworld
Anathema at Leamington
Melvins in Birmingham
Primordial, Kreator, Forbidden at Bloodstock
Deep Purple at the NEC

I say the best, they were it. hahah!

My Albums of the year from 1969 to 2011

1969 - The Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed
1970 - Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
1971 - Alice Cooper - Killer
1972 - Black Sabbath - Vol 4
1973 - Free - Heartbreaker
1974 - Nazareth - Loud N Proud
1975 - Pink Floyd - Wish you were Here
1976 - Rush - 2112
1977 - AC/DC - Let There Be Rock
1978 - Bruce Springsteen - darkness on the edge of town
1979 - Motorhead - Overkill
1980 - Black Sabbath - Heaven And Hell
1981 - Iron Maiden - Killers
1982 - Witchfinder General - Death Penalty
1983 - Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind
1984 - Saint Vitus - S/T
1985 - Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion
1986 - Saint Vitus - Born too late
1987 - Pentagram - Day of Reckoning
1988 - Napalm Death - From Enslavement To Obliteration
1989 - The Cult - Sonic Temple
1990 - Winter - Into Darkness
1991 - Cathedral - Forest of Equillibrium
1992 - Solitude Aeturnus - beyond the crimson horizon
1993 - Sleep - Holy Mountain
1994 - The Obsessed - The Church Within
1995 - Saint Vitus - Die Healing
1996 - Neurosis - Through Silver in Blood
1997 - Electric Wizard - Come My Fanatics
1998 - Burning Witch - Crippled Lucifer
1999 - Anathema - Judgement
2000 - Electric Wizard - Dopethrone
2001 - Neurosis - A Sun That Never Sets
2002 - Isis - Oceanic
2003 - Killing Joke - Killing Joke
2004 - Witchcraft - Witchcraft
2005 - Primordial - The Gathering Wilderness
2006 -  Celtic Frost - Monotheist
2007 - Wolves In The Throne Room - Two Hunters
2008 -  Esoteric - The Maniacal Vale
2009 - Altar Of Plagues - White Tomb
2010 - Anathema - Were here because were here
2011 - Rival Sons - Pressure & Time