mindspill

Top 10 Albums of 2009

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 23:12:28 GMT

1. Candlemass - Death Magic Doom
2. Spiritus Mortis - The God Behind the God
3. Hypocrisy - A Taste of Extreme Divinity
4. Forsaken - After the Fall
5. Ajattara - Noitumaa
6. Swallow the sun - New Moon
7. My Dying Bride - The Lies I Sire
8. Behemoth - Evangelion
9. Katatonia - Night is the new day
10. Nile - Those Whom the Gods Detest

An evil number of songs

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:45:20 GMT

Heavy Metal Farmer

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:58:11 GMT

Via Today's Big Thing

Dream concert - Ticket in hand

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:54:51 GMT

Is it possible to top up a concert with My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Anathema? Most probably not!

My next Eurovision vote is already cast

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:41:39 GMT

This is the Irish song ...

More info about Dustin the Turkey

Music in 2007

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:56:28 GMT

Amorphis - Silent Waters
Paradise Lost - In Requiem
Ajattara - Kalmanto
Finntroll - Ur Jordens Djup
Pain - Psalms of Extinction
Dark Tranquility - Fiction
Dimmu Borgir - In Sorte Diaboli
Samael - Solar Soul
Porcupine Tree - Fear of a blank planet
Battlelore - Evernight

This year it was very difficult to choose the best album of the year. It was a tough decision between the first 3 albums as all of them are great with very little to criticise. At the end I chose the Amorphis album because it's probably the easiest to listen to, and has the best cover art. The best music event of the year was Tuska, but then that's the first and only festival I've ever been so there was little competition there, even because there weren't loads of concerts in Dublin this year. The "revelations" this year were Pain and Ajattara. Even though they've been in existence for quite a while I only really listened to them this year.

Therion concert weekend

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:43:12 GMT

The highlight of this weekend was the Therion concert. Therion came to Dublin with a 7 man stage (2 female sopranos Katarina Lilja and Lori Lewis, 2 vocalists, drummer, bassist, guitar player), which was probably the densest stage I’ve ever seen so far. All the members are great showmen/women, and each one has his/her own act, either inciting the crowd, being funny or being just a treat to eye and ears. The funniest member was the blond gothic freak Snowy Shaw (Notre Dame) who had his own subshow during the gig.

They started the show with Mitternacht Lowe the first song on Gothic Kabbalah. Most of the songs were from this album, since this was the album tour that’s more than understandable. There were some problems with the sound at a certain point, especially during one of my favourite songs Perennial Sophia. My favourite songs of the concert were “Rise of Sodom and Gomorrah” and “To Mega Therion”, which was the last song they played. After a lot of shouting for an encore, they came back and played a Manowar cover version. I didn’t recognise the song but since all Manowar songs are pretty much the same sing along structure it was easy to lalala and jump to it.

After the concert we stayed over drinking some beer, and all of a sudden I spotted the girls from the band buying beer. We met the rest of the band who were welcoming photos freely, and we even attempted to get some snaps with the phone. The results weren’t spectacular but at least I’ve got proof that I was there. I made the amateur mistake of not taking a pen with me so I didn’t get an autograph. Piihhhhhhh.

I vegetated for the rest of the weekend. I watched almost all the Rugby World Cup matches and wasn’t impressed in the least by Ireland playing Georgia. Ireland barely managed to win and had a bad time trying to overcome the strong determination of the ex Soviet nation. Meanwhile both New Zealand and France made a complete mess of their opponents Portugal and Namibia respectively. Probably the most balanced game of the weekend was Tonga against Samoa, the Pacific Islands derby. (Interesting note: Samoa > Tonga in size and population. Both Islands are bigger than the dot but have less population). Yesterday evening we went to the shopping centre and I couldn’t resist the lure of the sushi belt. Delicious sushi dinner, even though the sushi belt isn’t the cheapest way to eat sushi.

Who is Maria Taylor?

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:49:27 GMT

Not many songs are likely to catch my attention at 7am in the morning, let alone an atypical song (for me) like a good start. But then again maybe I'm more receptive earlier in the day.

Just in case Maria Taylor was a huge artist I never knew existed (something not unheard of from me) I did a quick google on her and found out that she's a relatively small artist from Nebraska. That suits me fine, I like exploring new artists even though I doubt that I'll continue listening much to her when I really wake up.

I found from semantic bits blog.

Maria Taylor's myspace

How mainstream are you?

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 21:46:07 GMT

This this cool lastfm.com site tells you how mainstream the music you listen to is.

I'm currently 12.32% mainstream.

Tuska and Helsinki Pictures

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:59:15 GMT

I've just uploaded the Tuska festival and Helsinki Pictures on my SmugMug account. Click on the images for the different galleries.