Archive for the 'Music' Category

Belatedly: Witold “Vitek” Kieltyka, RIP (drummer of Decapitated)

Published by Yuletide on January 25, 2008 in Metal and News. 0 Comments Tags: .

Drummer Witold “Vitek” Kieltyka of the Polish extreme metal band DECAPITATED passed away in a Russian hospital from injuries sustained in a recent road collision. He was 23 years old.

[From BLABBERMOUTH.NET - DECAPITATED Drummer Dead At 23]

This is such a tragedy for the metal community. I just found out today, as I was abroad in Mongolia since August. It’s completely surreal reading the progressing news reports, first an accident… then surgery but recovering, then DEAD?! I don’t even know what to say. My heart is with the families, and of course COVAN who should know the entire world of metalheads are pulling for his recovery. I’m wearing my Decapitated shirt in the honor of these incredible men and musicians. I sent a few dollars to the fund as well, hopefully it’ll make this whole ordeal a little easier for everyone involved.
From the band:

Witold “Vitek” Kieltyka – our brother and dearest friend succumbed to head injuries sustained after a bad van accident while on tour in Russia. He was 23.

One of the youngest and most promising drummers in the genre, together with Decapitated he has consistently released albums both crushing and invigorating in their musicianship. Extremely talented – he has been involved in other side projects: Dies Irae, Panzer X.

He will be missed and can not be replaced. The metal scene will be much sorrier with his passing…

[From MySpace.com - DECAPITATED]

See their myspace site for more news and to support the families of both Vitek and vocalist Covan, (who is still in the hospital) through the Vitek and Covan Charity Fund.

Basketball ist Krieg!!! and LoLmetal

Published by Yuletide on January 17, 2008 in Metal. 0 Comments Tags: .

Alright, since my previous post on this has become the #1 google hit for “Basketball ist Krieg”, I figured I’d post an updated one since all the links seem to be dead (and I might as well just host the images locally rather than leave things up to archive.org)

Alright, so as I dig through the archive.org archives, I’m finding other random materials which I figure I might as well host too, even if they’re around elsewhere. Not all of them are all that funny, and they may be offensive and/or obscene, but I’m hosting them (for now, maybe until I sort through them, and/or compile a list of my own from the ones that aren’t lame) just to make them available. This seems like it’ll become a slightly larger project than a mere blog post, and I’m not quite sure how I’m going to approach it yet (open directory? php?), but I’ll sort it out eventually. Stay tuned for more.

UPDATE: Allright it’s up now: http://writenothing.com/metal/

My Listening Stats

Published by Yuletide on October 23, 2007 in Metal and Music. 0 Comments

You could check my profile on Last.fm… or just look at these wonderful stats produced by iTunes Statistician:

Total songs listened to: 13219
Time spent listening to music: 5 Weeks, 6 Days, 15 Hours
Total songs in library: 27125
Top 25 Artists
-----------------------------
1. Beyond Twilight - 1297
2. The Offspring - 962
3. Kamelot - 890
4. Symphony X - 778
5. Sonata Arctica - 721
6. Ensiferum - 684
7. Children Of Bodom - 587
8. Alan J. K. Sanders - 471 (Mongolian language CD's)
9. Blind Guardian - 405
10. The Faceless - 403
11. Béla Fleck and The Flecktones - 347
12. Therion - 337
13. Turisas - 309
14. Nightwish - 281
15. Iron Maiden - 273
16. Smashing Pumpkins - 268
17. Cirque Du Soleil - 266
18. Detonation - 261
19. Finntroll - 254
20. Sitkovetsky-NES Chamber Orchestra - 240
21. Dimmu Borgir - 224
22. Into Eternity - 223
23. M.V.P - 218
24. Buckethead - 214
25. Labyrinth - 210

Top 25 Albums
-----------------------------
1. For The Love Of Art And The Making (Beyond Twilight) - 1109
2. Colloquial Mongolian (Alan J. K. Sanders) - 471
3. Akeldama (The Faceless) - 403
4. Smash (The Offspring) - 362
5. Ixnay on the Hombre (The Offspring) - 353
6. Ghost Opera (Kamelot) - 287
7. Solarium Delirium (Cirque Du Soleil) - 260
8. Victory Songs (Ensiferum) - 252
9. Gothic Kabbalah (Therion) - 250
10. Paradise Lost (Symphony X) - 249
11. Bach-Goldberg Variations (transcription for strings) (Sitkovetsky-NES Chamber Orchestra) - 240
12. Splinter (The Offspring) - 223
13. ALL STAR MIX 7 (M.V.P) - 218
14. Epica (Kamelot) - 212
15. Night Ripper (Girl Talk) - 207
16. Åsmund Fredgegjævar (Lumsk) - 193
17. V: The New Mythology Suite (Symphony X) - 192
18. Time (7 for 4) - 190
19. 10th Anniversary Live (Ensiferum) - 189
20. Section X (Beyond Twilight) - 188
21. The Varangian Way (Turisas) - 181
22. Cosmic Drone (Stéphane Durand) - 178
23. Remixed Plus 2 (Praful) - 174
24. Ur Jordens Djup (Finntroll) - 171
25. Fractal Possession (Promo) (Abigor) - 161

Top 25 Genres
-----------------------------
1. Metal - 4037
2. Progressive Metal - 3499
3. Power Metal - 3090
4. Death Metal - 2534
5. Melodic Death Metal - 2368
6. Heavy Metal - 1211
7. Progressive Rock - 1025
8. Technical Death Metal - 987
9. Punk - 973
10. Folk Metal - 697
11. Heavy Power Metal - 624
12. Melodic Metal - 614
13. Books & Spoken - 588
14. Progressive Power Metal - 527
15. Classical - 497
16. Black Metal - 479
17. Symphonic Metal - 461
18. Progressive Death Metal - 457
19. Gothic Metal - 438
20. Folk/Death Metal - 436
21. Hard Rock - 422
22. Rock - 405
23. Hip-Hop - 398
24. Hip Hop/Rap - 377
25. Bluegrass/Jazz - 347

Top 25 Songs
-----------------------------
1 and 2 were from my Learn Mongolian CD :-) 3. Dead Sound Of Misery (Blind Guardian) - 90
4. Lady in Black (Ensiferum) - 85
5. The Ghost Of A Stranger (The Faceless) - 75
6. WRMC - 75
7. An Autopsy (The Faceless) - 70
8. The Richest Man In Babylon (Thievery Corporation) - 70
10. Leica (The Faceless) - 65
11. DJ Sabs Best Of 2006 Medley (Various) - 60
12. El Péndulo (Fenomenon 'Northern Comfort Mix') (Cirque Du Soleil) - 60
13. The Sacrifice (Symphony X) - 60
14. All I Want (The Offspring) - 60
15. All Dark Graves (The Faceless) - 60
16. My Love (Feat. T.I.) (Justin Timberlake) - 60
17. Solitaire (Kamelot) - 56
18. Call On Me (Main Mix) (Eric Prydz) - 56
19. Africa (Cottonbelly Remix) (Cirque Du Soleil) - 56
20. Stutter (Double Take Remix No Rap) (Joe) - 55
21. Morbid Desire to Burn (Aeon) - 55
22. Friday Night (Girl Talk) - 50
23. Hazel Eyes (The Darkness) - 50
24. April Sky (Last Tribe) - 50
25. Seven Days (Royal Hunt) - 50

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Century Media = The Homophobic Metal Posterchild?

Published by Yuletide on June 24, 2007 in Metal. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Well, who woulda guess that the next installment in my rant-against-homophobia-in-metal would come straight from the guys on top? In their June 22nd newsletter, Century Media’s brilliant copywriters included this gem in the last paragraph, detailing the summer tour of Winds Of Plauge [sic, that's another thing that's always bothered me... THE FUCKING O ISN'T CAPITALIZED...!!! WTF]. So here we are (emphasis added):

What else are you going to do this summer anyways? Stay on your stupid computer and read stupid, gay shit like this all day in between your porn breaks? Well if you do, make sure to at least check out their latest video on their Myspace page.

My message to them? Get a life. And fire the jackass who sent out such an unprofessional, offensive, unMETAL message to thousands of fans. I guess it is an art writing copy that is edgy, yet not TOO edgy… but I mean, come on! This line is not a hard one to see and follow. But these lugheads have managed to completely trip over it and fall flat on their face. Adios… CM!

From The Onion…

Published by Yuletide on June 21, 2007 in Funny and Metal. 0 Comments

The Onion

Open-Minded Music Lover Likes All Kinds Of Metal

LOGANSPORT, IN—Area music enthusiast Curt Webber, 22, is completely open to enjoying "all kinds" of metal, the self-described eclectic…

METAL MAPS

Published by Yuletide on April 19, 2007 in Energy, Environment, Geography and Metal. 0 Comments

I’m working on a mapping project for a cartography class. To map METAL around the world, and investigate its distribution. I’ve already compiled a list of all the countries which have bands listed on http://metal-archives.com (my main source of primary data thus far) and calculated a preliminary METAL RATIO, which is basically population divided by # of metal bands. While far from perfect, it certainly gets things to within an order of magnitude. Also, its clearly skewed by reporting error (internet connectivity is quite high in scandinavia, for instance). But still, the data remains useful.

I’m also putting out a request for anyone who has data I could use in this project. I’ve tried contacting the people at metal-archives.com to no avail, so I just scraped the data by hand. Ideally I’d like an excel spreadsheet (or at least an sql dump) of any kind of relevant music data with geographic relationships (music industry data, album sales, all that is good too). Also interesting would be user demographics for the popular metal forums and sites, though so far the responses have been so lacking on the forums I’ve tried I’m not hopeful anything will come up (at least for now, maybe things will change once I start posting the maps themselves).

random aside:

[posted with ecto]

OH, and as if we didn’t need more reasons to love Norway:
From USA Today: Norway aims to be carbon neutral by 2050

OSLO, April 19 — Norway wants to cut its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 in the world’s toughest national plan for fighting global warming, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday.
He said that Norway, the world’s number five oil exporter, wanted other rich nations to set similar “carbon neutral” aims.
“Norway would be the first country in the world to take on such a concrete commitment,” Stoltenberg said in a proposal to his Labour Party that was met by a standing ovation.

I should add some extra bonus points to Norway’s Metal Ratio, no?

Granted, they’re just buying a crapload of carbon credits using money they earned exporting oil and gas… but it’s a start, right?

Metal Mashup 101: Angel DJ’s Don’t Go Kill

Published by Yuletide on February 10, 2007 in Metal and Music. 2 Comments

My first (crude) attempt to create a mashup… actually came out kind of cool.

[audio:angel_djs_dont_go_kill.mp3]
Download the mp3 here

The songs being remixed are Angel’s Don’t Kill by Children of Bodom, and an vocals-only track of Go DJ by Lil’ Wayne, resulting in Rap-Metal that DOESN’T SUCK!

Created with the application djay using this process:
a) syncing the tempos of the songs
b) using trial and error to line up the tracks, by findind a starting point for each that would maximize the duration of awesomeness (when the songs fit together).

It works real well in the beginning, then falls apart for a bit in the middle, then—incredibly—syncs back up again at the end for a rallying finish… You gotta hear it to see what I mean (and remember, I did NO looping!)

[DISCLAIMER: Copyright whoever. I didn't make it. Or host it. The communists made me do it. Etc...]

GWAR

Published by Yuletide on December 14, 2006 in Music. 0 Comments

Sharita: Tell a person that doesn’t know much about GWAR a little history on the band?

Dave: Well Oderus would tell you that we’re a bunch of renegade space pirates that were marooned on earth millions of years ago for atrocities too numerous to mention, created the human race by having sex with animals and then were ultimately frozen in Antarctica for many years until the over use of hairspray by glam metal bands of the eighties burned a hole in the ozone layer and unfroze us. But I would say he’s full of shit and that we’re a bunch of crazy musicians and artists hailing from Richmond, Virginia who came up with a wacky idea. We were bored with music and what was going on and we were like if we’re going to pay to see a band what would we like to see? We would want to see giant mutant metal monsters from outer space chopping off peoples heads and playing really loud music and that’s what we created and darn it eighteen years later we are still going strong!

Higher Ground, This Saturday. w00t
(or should I say… GUAARRRRGHH)

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