Plan for next few months

It's hard to believe I've been blogging since June. I'm not saying that because it's dramatic or anything: I look back on some of my old stuff and go "That's what I was writing back in June?"

I figured it was time to update you guys on my plans for the next few months leading up to 2014, since I've got an interesting idea for December that will have an impact on my writing for the next two months.

Throughout December, I'm going to review every single Judas Priest album that has been released so far. The Tim Owens stuff, Turbo, Nostradamus...all of them will get their turn in the spotlight and evaluated to see just what annoys the fanbase regarding them and whether such issues are warranted. Screaming for Vengeance, Defenders of the Faith, Painkiller, Sad Wings of Destiny...all of them will get reviews on whether they are the masterpieces the fanbase holds them to be. Everything else in between...they'll get reviewed to see whether any of them are classics that are awaiting rediscovery or albums that should be quietly forgotten about.

Now, most people will be thinking "That's great, but how does that impact the blog?" Well, considering that Judas Priest have released a not unimpressive sixteen albums (and one of them is a double album), it's going to take me a while to sit down and get everything sorted in preparation for December, so I'm going to be posting less than I would like to in the build up to it. This doesn't mean I won't be posting anything until December, though: I'm planning on reviewing Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime and Green Day's American Idiot over the course of October and, for Halloween, Alice Cooper shall be welcoming us into his nightmare, with a double review of Welcome To My Nightmare and the sequel, Welcome 2 My Nightmare (yes, I think that's a dumb title as well) gracing this blog. I don't have anything planned for November, but, considering that I've got sixteen albums to prepare to review, I think it's fair to say that I'll not be doing a lot. I've not got a schedule planned for the Priest reviews yet, but I'm toying with the possibility of doing an album every two days...

So, that's my plans up to New Year for the blog. Hope you enjoy what I put up and that you're looking forward to the Priest reviews! I know I'm looking forward to writing them: Judas Priest are one of my favourite bands and it's a great opportunity to look in more depth at their history while I'm at it, so I'm eager to get started and examine the evolution of the Metal Gods!

Crimson Glory "In Dark Places... 1986 - 2010" Review: Life In The Attic

Before I begin this article, I would like to apologise for not posting for about a month. I've had a lot of my free time cut into for the last few weeks and today has been the first day I've really found to write something. To make up for it, I'm going to review the boxset that helped introduce me to a band that I now hold dear to my heart: Crimson Glory.

If you aren't already familiar with Crimson Glory, here's their basic history: they formed in 1979 as Pierced Arrow (which was later changed to Beowulf and, finally, Crimson Glory). The line up of what would become Crimson Glory came together in 1983, when their vocalist, lead guitarist and bassist quit, although John Patrick McDonald (better known by the fans as Midnight) joined after the band's second vocalist (Mark Ormes) quit. The only members of the Pierced Arrow/Beowulf line up to make it into Crimson Glory are rhythm guitarist Ben Jackson and drummer Dana Burnell (although bassist Jeff Lords did play with the pre-Crimson Glory line up for a period of time before returning). After that, they rehearsed for a few years before releasing their debut self-titled album in October 1986, the tour for which caused a bit of interest due to the band's habit of wearing silver masks onstage. They cut these down to Phantom Of The Opera style ones for their second album, Transcendence, which was released in November 1988, before doing away with them completely for their third album, Strange and Beautiful, which was released in June 1991. This third album is commonly considered to be more like a Midnight solo album than a Crimson Glory album, since it featured a noticeable stylistic change and a cover that would probably make more sense if you were higher than a helium-propelled kite. They did have a different drummer on the Strange and Beautiful album, as he and Ben Jackson had quit after the Transcendence tour, forcing lead guitarist Jon Drenning to do the guitars for the album. Before they could tour for the album, however, Midnight left the band and retired for a decade. Although a replacement was found in the form of David Van Landing (I'm presuming that's a stage name: feel free to correct me if that's his actual name), they only did a short lived tour of the US before officially breaking up in 1992.

But that wasn't the end of the Crimson Glory story. In between the break up of Crimson Glory and their reforming in 1998, there were three bands out there which will be of interest to fans of the band: Parish (which included departed guitarist Ben Jackson), the oddly named Erotic Liquid Culture (I'm not making that up), which was the last line up of Crimson Glory, and Crush, which was pretty much the same band, but with Billy Martinez on vocals instead of Landing. They released albums in 1995 (Parish's Envision), 1996 (Erotic Liquid Culture's self-titled album) and 1995 (Crush's self-titled album) and...well, I've listened to one track by Erotic Liquid Culture and I heard a more hard rock sound to the song than the prog metal of Crimson Glory, which isn't bad in and of itself, but I felt disappointed by it. I've heard good things about the Parish album, though, so I might review it sometime in the future. Still, none of those albums really made an impact anywhere and you'd probably be lucky to find copies of those albums anywhere, so I recommend giving them a listen online before you consider purchasing them if you find them for sale anywhere.

Anyway, in late 1996, plans for a reunion of Crimson Glory were being made by Drenning and Lords. They did contact Midnight, but he wasn't up to recording an album the band's standards and he wasn't interested, so Wade Black (then of Lucian Blaque) was called up, as was ex-Savatage drummer Steve Wacholz (although he didn't play on the final album, 1999's Astronomica). Ben Jackson rejoined before the album was recorded, as Parish had broken up. The album master tapes were stolen at one point, so the band had to re-record the entire album before it was finally released in August 1999. To say the album is somewhat like the Judas Priest albums with Tim Owens on vocals would be a good way to put it, since quite a few fans did not like Wade Black's performance on the album. However, the band did do a tour for the album alongside Kamelot and Evergrey. Issues came up during a tour and the band went on another hiatus in 2000.

The next five years didn't really see a lot of interesting stuff beyond a few solo albums (two from Ben Jackson, two from Midnight, who also made a guest appearance on Genius: A Rock Opera and Ben Jackson's second solo album) and a few other things by various other members of the band (a guest appearance by Steve Wacholz on Jon Oliva's Pain's 2004 album Tage Mahal, three albums with different bands by Wade Black (2002's Xiled to Infinity and One by Seven Witches, 2003's Until the Bitter End by Rick Renstrom and 2004's Dogface by Leash Law, as well as a guest appearance on Ben Jackson's first solo album) and 1989 live keyboardist (who returned to Crimson Glory in 2011)  John Zahner's two albums (the aforementioned Tage Mahal and 2003's Watching in Silence by Circle II Circle). There was a lot of talk about a potential reunion with the original line up, but, until their official reunion in March 2005, there wasn't a lot of confirmed reunion signs until July 2003, when Ben Jackson posted on his website that they were waiting for a sign from Midnight about a reunion to be ready to happen. This was before the guest appearance by Midnight on Ben's second solo album happened. The two of them also did an acoustic show together in July 2004 and were invited to do a meet and greet at ProgPower V.

So, when the reunion happened in 2005, there were plans to write their fifth album (intended to be titled Metatron, Lucifer and the Divine Chaos: later shortened to Divine Chaos"), re-record Astronomica with Midnight on vocals, release a DVD of their 1989 show in Bradenton and re-release their first two albums in the form of a boxset. However, disaster struck in May 2006, when their label closed down, meaning that these things never came to pass. Still, things were still going reasonably well for the line up until January 2007, when Midnight was arrested for driving under the influence. The band parted with Midnight because of his state putting the band at risk (it is possible there is more to this story than I know) and Wade Black rejoined the band. They played two more shows before fading into the shadows again.

The thing that caused the band to return again was due to the death of Midnight on the 8th of July 2009. At the time, he had his family, friends and bandmates at his side and, at 3:30, he passed away of a stomach aneurysm (the press statement incorrectly said it was total liver and kidney failure). At the time, he was 47 years old. In memory of him, the band did a headlining show at 2009's PowerProg X. The list of guest vocalists at the show is seriously impressive, but one name that will be of much interest to people is the guy who would later become the lead vocalist of Crimson Glory and is now singing for another of my favourite bands: Queensryche's Todd La Torre. He was a somewhat late addition to the show, as Jon Oliva's Pain guitarist Matt LaPorte mentioned him to Jon Drenning a few weeks prior to the show and he was added to the line up. According to some interviews I've read, people backstage already knew he was something special, despite the fact that he had only done backing vocals before then on an album that had not even been released yet (the 2010 Jon Oliva's Pain album Festival) and, in May 2010, he was officially added to the band as their new lead vocalist. He stayed with them until February 2013, when he resigned from the band due to inactivity (specifically, he tried to encourage them to release an album within a window of time, only for them to not work on the album at all beyond the demo track of "Garden of Shadows"). As things currently stand, the band have been looking for a new singer since February 2013, but there has been no more information about that at the time of writing. I personally suspect the band is likely to go on hiatus soon, if they haven't unofficially done that yet, but, as that is not based on any solid fact, I cannot say with any certainty how the band can come back from the loss of Todd. I've actually been tempted to send in a demo tape of myself singing some Crimson Glory stuff, although I am certain I'd never get the actual gig myself, since my voice is a lot more like Matt Barlow than Midnight.

The history behind this boxset is going to be of interest to people who aren't following the history of the band. See, this boxset was not authorised by the members of Crimson Glory: in fact, the band went so far as to encourage their fans not to purchase it, since they would not get paid for any purchases of it. The boxset was put together by the label Metal Mind Productions in 2010, at a limited quantity of 1000 copies (which are numbered: my copy is number 929, if anyone is curious) and with all of the albums remastered. At the time of purchasing the boxset, I was not aware of this bit of information and so was rather surprised to discover this. Considering that Crimson Glory are unlikely to visit the UK on tour at the moment, however, I didn't feel too bad about this. So, with all that history (finally) out of the way, let's examine the boxset itself.

In terms of the packaging, the boxset itself is not that impressive. It's pretty much a square box that's made of cardboard (I think) and is open on the right, if you have the front of the boxset facing you. I do get that it contains four albums (and a CD made up of the War Of The Worlds EP from 2000 and demos from the Astronomica album), but you'd expect better packaging for a boxset that costs a fair bit (I spent nearly £50 on my copy). The front cover is of five masks, Crimson Glory at the top in a fake silver writing and the title of the boxset underneath the masks. Some might consider that lazy, but I think it's a nice acknowledgement of the history of Crimson Glory, so to each their own. The back of the boxset is just the titles of the CDs and the note confirming which number of the limited edition 1000 copies you have. The CDs are fine until you get to the fifth one, which is just labeled Astonomica on the back of the set. On one hand, the original release of Astronomica had a special two disc edition for some live tracks with Midnight on vocals, so that's a fitting reason to name it like that, but it will confuse people who haven't heard of the band, since they'll assume it's a double disc album. I'd personally have put "War Of The Worlds EP" or "Extras" instead to minimise the confusion, since it's pretty much the contents of that EP and the second disc of Astronomica. It's a solid enough package, but you may want to have a backup system in place if you want to take the boxset with you anywhere, as you may find that everything has escaped in your bag when you get there (I would personally recommend putting it in a smaller section of your bag if you have a bag like that, but rubber bands across the open section should be fine).

The contents of the boxset are ultimately going to depend on how you like your albums to be stored. The albums are stored in digipacks with replications of the original album art on them (with the exception of the War Of The Worlds EP, which is stored in another copy with the Astronomica artwork) without extras in the digipack, but all the details (with the exception of the details of who recorded the album and whatnot for the debut) are inside the accompanied 60 page booklet (which is, indeed, 60 pages long: I just checked). Personally, I'd say that the addition of the booklet and having the details in that is a good idea for boxsets, since many don't even bother to include them, so you can't check you've heard the lyrics right from the set. However, I don't think it's an idea that's going to become the new standard, since it would be easier to just include them with the album in question most of the time. There are a few spelling errors in the booklet that should have been caught, but, on the whole, it's an enjoyable read. A few strange choices for additional reading material aside (there are some negative things about the band being included and the final two page article isn't even in English), it's a good way to learn more about the band: for instance, the reason Midnight got his nickname was apparently because he was constantly late for rehearsals. I only found out that bit of information from the booklet!

The sound on the albums will ultimately depend on how you like your music to sound. It's been given a digital remaster using a 24-bit process (in other words: it's louder than the originals, so it can stand up to modern albums fairly well), but, to the best of my knowledge, it's tastefully done, as it's not so loud that you'll hurt your ears listening to it. The guy who did the remaster job isn't named (another credit I've just realised is missing: no information about who worked on remastering the set!), but I hope he gets more work, since I think he did a great job! As for the albums themselves, if you liked them before the remaster, you'll only not like them now if you're not fond of remastered albums. I personally would say that the general consensus regarding which are Crimson Glory's best albums is accurate, since their first two albums are really good and are definitely worth picking up. The other two aren't bad and do have some enjoyable tracks (I'm really fond of "Song For Angels" from Strange and Beautiful and "New World Machine" from Astronomica), but, if you skip them, you'd not really be missing too much.

So, if you can get a copy of this boxset relatively cheaply and always wanted to check out Crimson Glory, it's worth picking it up. Just make sure you give their stuff a quick listen first, as it's not going to be something you'll be wanting to purchase and regret later...

Overall rating: 8.5/10

While most fans will not need to get a copy of this, for a person wanting to be introduced to Crimson Glory, this is a great purchase. If the packaging had been improved, I'd struggle to have any complaints to make against this boxset!

Help

Hey guys, if any of you reading this are familiar with the prog rock bands who would take a shot at trying to do pop rock in the 80s (like what Genesis did), I need your help.

Basically, I'm wanting one of my next articles to focus on which of the bands made that jump, examine their outputs during their pop rock period and say which ones were most successful from a musical (not sales) perspective.

So, why am I asking you guys for help when I have the entire internet available to help with research? Put simply, I'm not a prog rock fan. I don't even like Pink Floyd that much, that's how low my opinion of prog rock in general is! I do have a few bands which I'll make a small exception to, but, even then, none of them are my favourite bands by any measure. So, I feel it would be better to ask you guys so that I can get pointed to the bands who I can talk about, rather than missing the big ones which people wants me to talk about or missing some under-appreciated bands who I've simply not come across.

So, if any of you guys (or someone you know) knows a lot about about prog rock (or prog metal) and want to help, please comment here and let me know the bands that fit that description. I'll do my best to critically examine their music and get the final article up as soon as I can.

Since I'd like to have some time to listen to the bands in question, I ask that you provide the names of the bands and the albums that fit the description by midnight (UK time). I'll then make a note of all the bands and albums that appear in the comments, listen to all of them in my free time (which I don't have a lot of at the moment, so this article may take a while to finally appear) and critically evaluate them. While I do know a few bands who went in this direction, I encourage you guys to say even the most obvious choices (like Genesis and Rush), since I might not know about the ones which are obvious to prog fans.

Thanks in advance to every person who provides a band suggestion and I hope you enjoy the article when it's done!

The Big 4: why Exodus/Testament/Overkill/aren't part of it.

I'm sure everyone who looks up information on the Big 4 of thrash metal has heard people going on about how [X] band is better than the bands who make up the the Big 4 (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax) and that the band they like deserve to be in there (usually at the expense of Anthrax). The thing is, most of these people fail to realise is that the Big 4 term isn't actually a name that means "These are the best thrash metal bands, no question asked", but actually means "These are the bands who were the most popular thrash metal bands" (hence the "Big" part of their name) and, with it, came a huge opportunity to influence people which the smaller bands never quite managed (although all of the bands definitely are influential to quite a few retro-thrashers: most of them seem to be huge fans of Overkill, Exodus and Slayer if you sit and listen to their music, but some also seem to swear by a few other thrash bands, including Metallica. You don't hear a lot of people taking the route of Heathen, though...but I digress). However, there are quite a few reasons for many people to hold the belief that certain bands should be in the Big 4 at the expense of some of the bands currently there, so I'm going to try to break down the reasons and see if I can point out why those reasons don't hold water when you look at them hard enough.

One of the first reasons (and, sadly, one of the most common) is the mistaken belief that the big 4 term means "These bands are the best thrash bands out there". I've already pointed this out in my introduction, so I'll not repeat it here, but, needless to say, this is a popular mistake that many people who really should know better seem to make.

The second reason that springs to mind is that these people try to use technicalities to argue why the band they think should be in it should be included (one popular one from Overkill fans is that, since they released a demo the same year Metallica released their debut, they qualify as releasing thrash metal and, as such, were one of the first thrash metal bands and should be included). This is a flawed argument, since most people out there are more likely to purchase and listen to an album than they are to purchase a demo (to stick with the Overkill example), especially if they are not in the local area. Sure, it might be popular in the local area, but high sales in a local area don't necessarily mean high sales across the country, let alone the world. Also, demo sales don't necessarily prove anything to a record executive (and, by extension, the general public), who will be looking at album sales, not sales of a demo which the band likely self recorded in the bedroom of one bandmate. Granted, a high selling demo is likely to result in the band later being offered a contract, but this doesn't mean that the album will achieve the same level of sales when offered to the mainstream (especially among extreme metal fans: some of them consider a band signing to ANY label to be selling out).

The third one is that many people do not like the material that the Big 4 have released since the 90's and start to focus on the underground over the mainstream acts. This isn't a bad thing (there are some amazing underground metal acts out there), but this does mean that many of these people seem to act like these bands have personally offended them by releasing less-than-stellar material. However, what these people forget is that metal as a whole was in a pretty bad place during the 90's. After all, grunge had taken over the limelight, so metal bands were stuck in a catch-22 situation: they could adjust with the times and risk enraging their already established fanbase (as happened to many thrash bands, including Metallica) or they could stick to their guns and risk never being able to release another record again (as happened with many thrash bands). For all they knew, their style of music was dead in the water, never to become popular again and, as such, make them unable to pay their bills because they couldn't earn money to pay them. So many simply quit: they couldn't make themselves change their music, but they also couldn't afford to be unable to pay their bills. The ones who stuck around mostly found themselves receiving flack from fans who didn't like what they heard. I'll admit, I don't like most of what I've heard from the Big 4's 90's material, but I don't blame them for making the decision they did: at that point, they didn't really have much of a choice. For them, it became a case of riding the storm, hoping it would blow over and that they would still be standing later. And, luckily, it did work out for them: the retro-thrash movement sprung up thanks to bands like Evile and Municipal Waste, helping to show that thrash wasn't dead and made it become popular again (and then get a lot of scorn from old thrash fans due to the music not being as distinctive as it was in the 80's. They really can't make up their minds, can they?). Many of the old bands like Exodus, Death Angel and Heathen have made returns since then and, on the whole, I'd say the thrash scene has pretty much rebuilt itself up nicely. But, to me, I think the main reason the scene fell apart the first time was because there wasn't more new blood being pumped into the scene. As odd as it may sound, all the mid tier thrashers giving up was more the death of thrash than the Big 4 deciding not to continue being thrash for the sake of maintaining a career. Without more thrash records coming out, there simply wasn't a real scene left for thrash fans to continue following.

These aren't the only reasons, but these are the reasons that tend to crop up the most. If I've missed anything that you want to bring up, feel free to comment!

Nickelback: worst band ever or horribly underrated?

OK, let me stress this now: I do not consider myself a Nickelback fan. That said, I'm not like pretty much the entirety of the internet and hold them on a level of contempt that cannot be measured. If you despise them and don't think anything will ever change your mind on them, I urge you to go read something else, because this post is going into detail about the hatred for Nickelback and why I find it very extreme.

...To anyone still here expecting me to praise Nickelback to the heavens, you're also reading the wrong post. Sorry, I don't think they are the saviours of rock and roll or whatever you guys think they are. You can stay if you want, but don't be too surprised if I have to say stuff you don't like. I'm preaching to the minority of people out there who either haven't heard of Nickelback or don't get the hatred behind them.

OK, now that the biggest haters and fanboys of Nickelback have left the page, let me start by saying the obvious point that needs to be made.

Nickelback are not that bad.

Are they worthy of all of the hatred that so many people are determined to give them? No way!

Are they under-appreciated geniuses that history will look upon as a music revolution? Nope!

Are they a decent band? If you pushed me to answer that...yes.

OK, maybe decent isn't the best word: in their genre, let alone the music landscape, they are an average band. They can write catchy songs, Chad's vocals aren't that bad, their music is not so complicated you couldn't learn to play it with a few years of practice, their music is probably a little on the overproduced side and they have fun with their music. But those do not make them a great band. If you pardon the potential insult, they are somewhat like the Flo Rida (or Poison) of the post-grunge scene: they are big, but not necessarily because they are the best in the style.

Which immediately begs the question: WHY are they big? To which I have to give a somewhat controversial answer and a bit of a theory of mine: it's not the best bands in the style who help people realise they are fans of the style, it's the middle grade bands who help them.

Let me give you an example from thrash metal: just about everyone with even a passing interest in metal will know about Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax, as they are the biggest thrash metal bands out there at the minute. To just about every thrash metal fan, you cannot call yourself a thrash metal fan if you have not listened to all of their 80's material (plus the records released in 1990: most thrash diehards count them as 80's releases, which seems a bit suspicious to me considering they all were released more than halfway through the year, but I'll let the thrash diehards believe what they want to there...). But these thrash fans will also be able to name quite a few thrash bands who haven't broken into the mainstream or made it to the top of the thrash ladder, like Exodus, Testament, Death Angel and Heathen (and that's just from the Bay Area thrash scene: there's the Teutonic scene from Germany, to name another one, which gave us the Teutonic Trio of Kreator, Destruction and Sodom (some throw in Tankard and call it a Teutonic Big 4, but I personally think Teutonic Trio sounds cooler)). Many of them broke up before the 90's really begun and returned in the 2000's producing some amazing records (some of which, I would not be afraid to admit, are far better than anything the Big 4 (the casual name for the group of Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax) have produced in that time, although, admittedly, it's not too difficult to beat Metallica's stuff, as they've released two bad albums and one album which was decent...). To say these bands have a lot of respect from thrash fans would be an understatement, to say the least! But, without them, thrash pretty much floundered when the 90's hit: there weren't new releases of the style for people to check out and, gradually, the style pretty much died in the eyes of the mainstream (as did just about all metal, come to think of it...). People who liked what they heard of the Big 4 in the 90's couldn't find new stuff by other, well respected bands in the style to compare it with because there pretty much wasn't any other stuff. Throw in the fact this was before the internet really happened and you would literally have to find a fanzine about the style or know someone who was a huge thrash fan to have a chance to keeping up to date with it. Some amazing thrash albums from the 90's (believe me, there were a few) slipped through the cracks because there was nobody who was waving the banner for it in the mainstream. So, if you will, it's not the best bands holding the banner high that helps keep the scene together: it's the bands who aren't cut out to lead the charge who help keep it together, because they help the interested people stay there when their interest in the bigger bands dries up.

And that's where Nickelback are shining: they aren't the best post-grunge band out there by any measure, but people who like them are usually huge fans of the style. Without them and the many bands out there doing the same kind of thing, post-grunge would die out because they don't have the numbers necessary to keep the scene alive. Them being big...I guess they're just an example of a middle tier band who got big somehow. I don't really have an answer to that one...but, really, did you expect an answer? At the end of the day, Nickelback are big. They don't deserve their fame (if you want it in tier terms, they are a middle tier band who produce middle tier music, but are somehow in the upper tier), but I certainly think people calling for their heads (metaphorically: I don't think it's happened literally yet) are getting worked up for no reason. At the end of the day, Nickelback are just a band doing what they are doing. They haven't done anything that's dangerous to mankind as a whole and, from the little I've read about them, they are a bunch of nice guys who don't take themselves too seriously.

Plus, no matter how bad people claim their stuff is, they never descended to the level of releasing pure crap like Lulu or Dedicated to Chaos...

Sampling: laziness from artists or something else?

Time for me to step outside my comfort zone! Yesterday (at the time I started writing this), I happened to hear Pitbull's recent single (you know, the one with the sample from "Take On Me" by A-Ha). This caused me and my sister to get into a debate about sampling in music and, to make a long story short, we pretty much agreed to disagree. To me, at least, sampling is a tool like Auto Tune: it has uses that are undeniable, but is frequently misused by lazy artists. In the Auto Tune example, I do not mind it when it is used for effect, as it can make your singing voice sound hollow and mechanical, which I think is a great use for it, but many use it to disguise poor singing, which I do not agree with. Let me give you a ridiculous example to illustrate my point: let's say Johnny Rotten wrote "Bohemian Rhapsody". Would you let him sing it and Auto Tune him to make him sound like he can sing it or would you give it to someone who can sing it? I'm sure just about everyone would give it to someone else, which is my point. Back before the Beatles, songs were written and given to people who could sing them, which may seem odd in todays post-Beatles market, but trust me, it's like that a lot in folk music even now. While I will not say I want a return to the old days (after all, I'm a metalhead at heart, so that would mean giving up metal), I will say that pop has become dominated by singers who rely on Auto Tune, which, to me at least, is not right. At the risk of losing all of my credibility as a metalhead, this is why I respect Lady Gaga (key word being "respect": I would not say I am a fan of her music beyond a few of her songs): she doesn't rely on Auto Tune to cover up her singing, she uses it as a tool to enhance her music. So, now you know my stance on Auto Tune, when would I be ok with sampling?

Well, to start with, a sample, as a snippet of another song, will naturally earn comparisons to the song sampled, so I think a good sample is of a song that is old enough for it to be forgotten by a good number of people. That might seem like a strange comment to make, but hear me out: if you pick an obscure song, you're bringing exposure to an underrated (or justly forgotten, depending on your viewpoint) artist, which helps them out. If you pick an obscure song, you mutually help each other out, since it's unlikely people will know the original song, so they will go look it up and hopefully become fond of the original song while still appreciating the elements you added to the song (I'll go into more detail about that later). If, however, you pick a well known song (like Pitbull did), you're dooming yourself before you start, since it's rare that your sample will be seen with anything other than contempt by fans of the original and you'll be accused of laziness by a lot of people. Let me give you an example of a Pitbull song that I do not like, but appreciate the sample from: his song "Back In Time" features the guitar riff (and possibly the chorus: not sure whether Pitbull and someone else recorded it or it was a direct sample) from a song from 1956 called "Love Is Strange" by Mickey & Sylvia. As I'd never heard of the original song, I had no problems with the guitar riff being sampled, as it was a seriously cool riff that helped enhance the song (although the chorus really did not fit the song: again, I'll go into this in more detail later). With "Feel This Moment", I'm pretty sure everyone and their mother knows that song, so, to me at least, he was jumping on the success of the song and, in the process, produced a sample that did nothing to make his song better and pissed off fans of the A-Ha song like myself. So yeah, if you're going to sample a song, make sure it's not a well known (or, probably better, well respected) song, as you're going to receive a lot of flak no matter how good your song is. Obscure songs are ok, because you help give exposure to the other artist while minimising damage to yourself.

The next thing about a sample is that it has to fit the song. If you pardon me focusing on Pitbull again, the chorus of "Back In Time" was pretty much made up of the line "Oh baby, you're the one". Since this is meant to be a song about the Men In Black, the sample simply doesn't fit the song (unless you're really determined to make it fit, but I'm not a shipper here). If it had been just the guitar riff and had another sample for the chorus (maybe even the theme to the first Men In Black film), then I wouldn't have had a problem. As an example of a sample that does work, Flo Rida's song "I Cry" features a sample of "Piano In The Dark" by Brenda Russell. The chorus might be shifted into a much higher pitch compared to the original song and the whole song might be pretty much standard Flo Rida stuff (I honestly don't bother listening to Flo Rida that much: again, I'm a metalhead at heart), but it actually does fit the song (well, maybe not the "Gave up on the riddle" line, but, as it's a song about Flo Rida's life so far, I'm letting him off on that one). If you want a ridiculous example to highlight the point, you wouldn't sample "Back In Black" by AC/DC for a soft, mournful ballad song, you'd sample something like "Changes" by Black Sabbath (if you're daft enough to ignore my previous point, of course) or the obscure-even-to-Black Sabbath-fans song "She's Gone".

The last thing a good song with a sample needs is that the sample either needs to be the building block upon which the song is built or be used to make a point that the building block approach wouldn't succeed with. I can't think of any real bad examples of this off the top of my head, but I can think of a good way to do it: if you're writing a song about a broken romance, you can either sample a song about that or you can sample a love song and use the love song to make a point that things used to be different. Both would work well, but the latter, if done well, shows a hint of regret that the former wouldn't be able to manage so effectively. If you want to add something to the original song through your sample, you'll need to make sure you use the sample to build up your song, not get so caught up in everything else that the sample feels pointless. To return to my old point, if you're sampling "Changes" by Black Sabbath, you'll need to make sure you're talking about how your life has changed over time and how it's always going to happen if you're using it as a building block to make a point. If you're using it with the other approach, you could use it to say "I'm not changing who I am any more" and the sample is pretty much saying "Nope, you're still changing". If you will, you can use the sample as part of your own voice or as another voice against you. What you can't do is use the sample without thinking about it.

All told, I think sampling is like Auto Tune: it is a tool which can enhance the music if used well. However, many people don't use it well (or, at least, not as well as they could). At least in my viewpoint, the ways I've pointed out are the ways sampling should be used. It's not something you just do to give your song a chorus: it's a key part of the song and, if you don't think about it carefully, you're setting yourself up for a serious fall.

I encourage you guys to let me know whether they think I've made fair points on this topic or whether I'm so far off the mark that I'm actually invisible.

Iced Earth Alive In Ancient Kourion Review: Hear The Ghost Of Violence

I'll admit it: Iced Earth are not a band that I understand the hype behind. For me, they are a band made up of great musicians who simply don't write good enough songs to hold my attention. Now, to be fair to them, US power metal metal isn't my favourite metal subgenre of them all (that would be European power metal: US power metal probably comes fourth on the list, under thrash metal and glam metal), so I'm probably not the best person to review this DVD. However, seeing the DVD gain so much praise online left me wondering what it is I'm missing about them. So, I'm going to sit down and review it. Hopefully, all will become clear...

First of all, let's look at the setlist. Now, I've checked it a few times online and I know they played "End Of Innocence" twice due to sound issues, but the song doesn't appear at all on the DVD! There's a very noticeable jump from when the first performance of it originally was, as you'll see and hear Stu go "Alright" as if he's about to lead into it, only to suddenly move forward into a close up while he introduces "Dracula", which is odd, as the second transition is so seamless I didn't even notice it. This isn't acknowledged on any of the bonus features on the DVD, so I cannot help feeling a bit cheated that we aren't given a complete show. Maybe I'm being harsh, but the point of a live DVD is to show the band live, warts and all, not necessarily give the best show the band has ever given by trimming the songs that didn't work. At the very least acknowledge on the bonus features that there was a track which didn't go well! Otherwise, the setlist is not one I was especially familiar with: I recognised the songs from their most recent album, Dystopia, but, if you took away those songs, I would have only  recognised nine songs from the whole setlist (for the curious, they were "Declaration Day" from The Glorious Burden, the three tracks from Framing Armageddon: Something Wicked, Part 1 ("Motivation Of Man", "Setian Massacre" and "Ten Thousand Strong"), "Watching Over Me" from Something Wicked This Way Comes, "Dante's Inferno" from Burnt Offerings and the three tracks from The Dark Saga ("I Died For You", "The Hunter" and "Slave To The Dark"): since I had barely listened to that album, I only recognised "I Died For You" on my first listen). Needless to say, I was hopelessly out of my depth in terms of recognisable material, as someone not familiar with the band's greatest works, although I was interested to spot the absence of any tracks (I'm not counting instrument interludes) from The Crucible Of Man: Something Wicked, Part 2. You can read into this what you will, but my guess is that the fans aren't the only ones who think the Owens years and Barlow's second return weren't that great...

In terms of the actual performances, I have to say that the band did a good job live. Jon Schaffer, as much as I dislike his tendencies to act like an asshole to ex-band members, does a great job on the guitar, playing all of the songs almost exactly like on the record and his lead vocals on "Stormrider" had me wondering why he isn't the lead singer of the band, as he did a better job on that song than a good few professional singers do on their own material. Probably can't do the high falsetto stuff the other songs demand, I guess. His backing vocals were also seriously good, but the thing that really impressed me, as a singer myself, is that he never let his vocals dominate the rest of the music: he just did his bit and then went back to playing the guitar. The bassist (considering he apparently had less than a week to learn the entire setlist before joining the band on tour: he replaced their earlier bassist in the middle of the tour) does a great job and his backing vocals made me think a bit of Tim Owens's clean singing. I know he has his own band, so saying he should do his own thing is pointless, but it's true: he should be leading his own band, doing lead vocals and playing bass at the same time. I have a feeling he would be great at it! The other guitarist doesn't stand out as much as Jon does, but, to be honest, that's not really a bad thing for him: Jon really does stand out so much on the guitars that I actually forgot there was a second guitarist at first! However, he does the solos like on the record and some of them (as any Iced Earth fan will be willing to tell you) are pretty difficult. The drummer (who left the band fairly recently, albeit on good terms) does a great job on all the tracks, but otherwise doesn't really do anything that crazy like a drum solo or something. While I'm not a huge fan of drum solos, I reckon this might have helped enhance the DVD a bit. The true hero of the DVD, however, is Stu Block. Holy fuck, this guy is awesome! He delivers the Ripper material (well, except for "Ten Thousand Strong", but I'll cover that later) and the Barlow material brilliantly, but he doesn't shy away from doing the Adams and Greely material with a conviction that I'm sure Barlow couldn't manage. His audience interaction is maybe more in line with what you'd expect from a metalcore band (he refers to the audience as "Brothers and sisters" quite frequently), but that's not necessarily a bad thing, since it does feel a bit more personal than just going "Hey, we're playing [song], hope you like it". Also, Jon does the same thing. Another cool thing he does is the "Heavy" "Metal" chanting he encourages the audience to do at one point: it looked like it was a lot of fun for the audience and I would have happily taken part in it had I been there.

The songs themselves will really depend on your thoughts on them on the album: if you didn't like them on the album, you ain't gonna like them here. There are a few minor exceptions to this rule, but the biggest one is regarding "Ten Thousand Strong". Put frankly, it's shit here. Instead of dropping it down to a more comfortable place in his voice like he did for "Satian Massacre", Stu tries to sing the entire song at Ripper's pitch, which basically makes the song painful to listen to. Granted, Tim struggled with this track live himself, but Barlow pretty much proved that he can't sing at Ripper's pitch through making the same mistake, so why is Stu doing it? While I do praise Stu for trying, a suggestion for the next tour would be to drop it down to a more natural pitch for your voice: it might sound wrong jumping so high up to a falsetto scream if you want to still do it, but trust me, it's better than giving a bad performance of the song again and again. Other than that, I liked the performances of all the songs I knew, found a few new favourites ("Pure Evil" stands out at the minute) and found a few tracks I'm probably not going to want to bother with in the future.

The picture quality is a little bit haphazard: it's very clear, but I found myself comparing it to Iron Maiden's Maiden England '88 DVD instead of En Vivo, as the quality felt closer to the re-release of Maiden England that 2012's En Vivo DVD. I don't know why, but the cameras don't seem to be of a particularly high quality overall, based on the picture quality. What you do see is really good, although I do think the band could maybe do with having some more energy on stage, since Bruce Dickinson on En Vivo has more energy than all of the performers except the drummer and Bruce is older than all of them (if my maths is right, by almost a decade compared to Schaffer, Iced Earth's older member).

In terms of how long the DVD runs, I have to bring up my biggest complain with Iced Earth: having to hear triplets for so long gets rather boring. There is a reason why Steve Harris doesn't make his bass so prominent in the mix that it overpowers everything else: hearing triplets constantly can become rather dull, as there isn't a lot of variation you can get when you're using triplets to form the bulk of your music. This is something that Jon Schaffer needs to learn (or, at least, mix things up a bit with), as I find my interest starts to wane at about "Wolf" because I start going "Can you mix it up a bit?" In their own right, the songs are good, but, with all the triplets in them, they start blending together into one after a while and I start to fall asleep. The concert goes on for about two hours and fifteen minutes, which is far too long for me! By the time "The Hunter" comes around, I'm actually relieved it's all over. For comparison, when Iron Maiden's En Vivo ends, my reaction is "OK, that was a good setlist and it ended at a good time." Maybe I'm nitpicking unfairly there, since it is part of their signature sound, but I think that it would be nice to have something different in the setlist to jolt those who are getting bored back awake.

In terms of extras, you get your basic behind-the-scenes section to cover what made them decide to film the DVD where they did, which was very interesting to watch, the band's thoughts on everywhere they'd played up to Kourion (which was the last show of the tour) and a photo gallery. While these were nice to watch, I think it would have been nice to get interviews with the band regarding their thoughts on the show. I also think the extras were maybe a bit thin overall, since you don't really get a lot of information out of them and I can't really see myself watching them again.

Overall, despite several issues, I can't say this is a bad DVD. Is it a perfect DVD? Not really. Is it a good DVD? Yes, it is. Maybe it would have been better with improved camera quality and some more extras, but I'd highly recommend this DVD to fans of Iced Earth. As a word of advice, if you do want to get this DVD and aren't familiar with Iced Earth fan, then make sure you sit yourself down with an hour worth of their music and listen to it all the way through before making your purchase. If you start feeling bored while doing this, then I suggest you either get this fairly cheap or skip it. If you don't like them...well, you'll not be getting this anyway, will you?

Overall rating: 8.5

A bit too long for it's own good, few extras and the quality of the cameras bring it down a bit, but, in the end, it's a great DVD for Iced Earth fans and a good place to check the band out if you haven't already.

(This is my first attempt at a DVD review, so any constructive feedback you guys have would be appreciated.)