Icing on Vanilla (pt.1)

Now, I know I'm shooting fish in a barrel with this post, but, staying with that metaphor for a second, fish aren't sentient, so they won't know what hit 'em.

New race of fish, the Ichthya Metaphoris.

So, anyway, sorry for the longer than usual delay between the post about Those Whom The Gods Detest and this one. I can explain... actually, I can't. It seems that I had simply forgotten to post anything, which is rather embarassing.

So, ANYWAY, you might have already realized that this post is about none other, but Vanilla Ice, the walking depiction of the proverb "If you don't get it right the first time, try again.", with the single exception that he got it right the first time, but ended up having to try again anyway. Four times, to be exact, and soon to be the fifth.

He was the first white rapper to gain mainstream popularity, and he would have been the last, if it weren't for Eminem.

"And I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling wigger"

He started his career in 1989, with the strangely accurately named Hooked...

Apparently, in 1989, standing on blocks of ice covered in... icing (?) ... was considered arousing.

...since, merely a year later, everyone WAS hooked on Vanilla Man, when he pretty much released the same album again, only with a different name, and a few more songs.

Note that this is not his lamest cover. BY FAR.

You know V Ice's one and only chart topper? Ice Ice Baby? Well, yeah. It appeared on three of his albums. It appears on both Hooked and To The Extreme, and for some reason it's also on his newest album so far, Platinum Underground (I'll talk about that later). By the way he likes saying he's completely gone past his rocky beginnings. Not a good idea when you try to go back to them so hard...

After reaching the 899nth second of his 15 minutes fame, he decided it's a good time to completely change the way we look at things... or, more probably, what words mean. Put simply, since when is "cool" an insult?!

"I'm totally cool. Look at my motorcycle and sunglasses and super cool pants. Kandinsky made them for me. And did I mention the popped collar and ultra-rad purple background?"

If we associate "coolness" to an actual value of temperature, and if we for a moment assume Vanilla Ice is really "Cool As Ice" (slightly under zero degrees Celsius), we can safely say that the totally normal-looking girl he's apparently hooking up with, or trying to, will be associated with a temperature of exactly zero... Kelvin.

In other words, anything and everything is cooler than V Ice on that photo, so, anything and everything is cooler than ice. Much cooler than ice. In fact, if Mr. Iceguy was actually Cool As Ice, the whole universe would have simply been a large collection of electrons, protons and neutrons unable to react until collapsing back into being a singularity. That is, provided that the big bang even happened, since there would have been no energy in existence. Since nothing would have been created it would have been impossible to make any comparison in coolness to Mr. Vanilla, leading to a paradox in time and space and shit like that.

Above: The universe according to Vanilla Ice.

So, Vanilla Ice has just destroyed the entire universe and his whole fanbase (I'll talk about that later) solely with the power of an inappropriate title for the soundtrack of an inappropriately named movie.

OH SHI-


to be continued...

The Post With The Really Long Title In Honor Of A Really Great Brutal Death Metal Band

Hello, dear everyone and whomever. Behold: the post that hath been prophesied in previous post and the post before that. The post of ages. The post that shalt take thee to Ancient Egypt, South Carolina, USA. A journey through the inner reaches of this and that. I proudly present thee the band of ultimate... ultimate... um... something, I guess. Anyway, I'm talking about Nile, an excellent brutal death metal band from the US. They've been signed to Relapse Records, by the way.

Nudge nudge. Wink Wink. Say no more.

More precisely, I'll be talking about their new release: Those Whom The Gods Detest.

But, before anything else, I have to apologize to all dear readers of this shitty blog for the long interval since my last post. The reason for this is that if there is someone lazier than me on this planet, sloths have officially gained sentience,

Actually, I don't like climbing trees...

...And that I didn't have the right CD with me. Now that I do, I might as well tell the story of how I've discovered this album:

So, I'm at FNAC, browsing the CDs that were there, when, for the first time ever, I find exactly what I was looking for.

Grinning like as though I was trying to keep my face serious, I felt a warm blacnket of joy cover me as I held in my hands the true Death Metal CD.

Ithyphallic cries a little inside...

Sadly, this blanket of joy soon faded away as I turned the case around and saw the Nuclear Blast logo gloriously emblazoned onto the lower part of the back cover:

Wait a minute... Nuclear Blas? NUCLEAR BLAS?!! How could the musical equivalent of Volkswagen permit such a thing?! How could the most serious, scientifc, precise of the big metal labels let through a spelling error ON THEIR FUCKING LOGO?! I mean, from their other releases, you'd deduce that these guys consider metal a science, that they check the whole album through a microscope prior to even considering the possibility of even putting the "product" into the market.

Now, although I must say that, counting with this one, I have a total of three CDs from Nuclear Blast in my collection, and that the aforementioned FNAC is constantly bombarded with Belphegor releases, I can't help but compare Nuclear Blast, or Nuclear Blas, to LIDL, a chain of supermarkets.

I'm fairly sure I'm not insane.

Although their "product" is well designed, comes with a bunch of stuff, feels complete and overall good, you never end up feeling that desire for more that you get from, say, Earache releases.

Compared to Nuclear Blas(t), Earache is like a toddler with a box of crayons.

And, like with LIDL publicity, with Nuclear Blas(t) you get the feeling their managers think the listeners are idiots, since with every release, you get a shitload of reminders that you're listening to something from Nuclear Blas(t).

Just in case you forgot...

Speaking of which, while Nile were really nice and considerate (note that this is not sarcasm) when giving us the 23 page booklet, since it really gives meaning to the songs, and they were really generous when they only made me pay 21,50 € for what is one of the most beautiful limited edition digipaks ever...

I dare you to say otherwise

...But there is a line between being helpful and "pointing out" that you're an idiot, such as this (what follows has only been said by person X within the reaches of person Y's imagination):

"We decided to be helpful, so we made one of the sidecovers so that everyone understands that this is Nuclear Blast material...


... And for the intellectually impaired (i.e. you), we made the other side cover so that you understand that this is Nile material.


Also, just to rub it in a little more, they've "helped" us humble listeners some more. I mean, is there ANY reason whatsoever to write the name of each song TWICE?


But, then again, you realize the reason for this the moment you see the names of track VI and VII. They were being pretentious. VERY pretentious. The song title Hittite Dung Incantation sounds like it was taken from a song name generator, but that's because they wanted it that way, And Yezd Desert Ghul whatever (which is just an ambiental interlude, by the way [they must be really proud of it]) and Permitting The Noble Dead Etc. wouldn't have had such long names. What is their excuse? They're Nile. Arra! Arra! Arra! Dagon! Dagon! Dagon!

You Can Literally Feel the Beat...

...For a few seconds, before your brain looks like it came from your large intestine and is coming out of your nose, due to the shockwave, and you are killed moments later by the falling debris.

Hmm... Something's not right here... and I'm not referring to the cover (were I, I would have been saying "Something's not wrong here"). Oh! Yeah! I was going to make a post about a completely different album, from a completely different style. Why did I end up doing a post about this cover first? Well, mainly because I haven't got the right CD with me at the moment, and my father has decided to relive some fond memories of five years ago by playing some HL2 (The man's 40 this saturday. I'd have done the same thing, if I were him :P .) and, because of that, I can't use the scanner, which eliminates my emergency CD.

Not you!

Fortunately, I stumbled upon The Coup's Party Music cover around the interwebs and it caught my attention. The Coup are a respected political hip hop band consisted of three people (let's assume the third member was at that moment planting the explosives) that started in 1991, and this album was released in early September 2001 . Take your conclusions from that, but I would say that the Unites States and America (sic) have simply become paranoid after 9/11.

Note that this album was released on the 9/11.

But still, America paranoid or not, this is a bad album cover. Even if we do assume for a moment that the late World Trade Center was in the middle of the suburbs and that there wasn't a single other tall building within an 800 square meter radius, that the smoke around explosions is translucent, and that the sun is in fact on the ground, we'll still have the problem with the message the cover transmits: if their album is called Party Music, and they show the WTC blowing up, does it mean that they're comparing their music to the sound of explosions (in which case you REALLY have to turn the volume down) or they're comparing blowing buildings up with partying.

PARTAAAY!!!!

Luckily, they decided to change the cover to something 10 times less stupid, and 100 times less interesting.

To someone with synesthesia, this cover probably tastes like "ZZZZZ".

Horrid Dissonance

Helloes, my dear fans/haters/people who accidentally stumbled upom this miserable piece of blog and are half a second from clicking the "back" button/everyone else.

Instead of keeping you waiting for two years and a half for the next post, I decided to do it now. And, like I mentioned on the previous post, in case you've checked it...

On second thoughts, don't check it.

...this post I'm going to rant my own demo's cover. You can listen to it here. So, here goes:

So, I was searching my computer files today, when I stumbled upon Ankhaos's (like in his) first demo: Horrid Dissonance. I usually wouldn't do demos, but the cover of this one has a lot to be told about.

Before anything else, I'll talk about this band Ankhaos (if you can call it a band). Basically, this is this one guy, under the nickname of Endrey, in Portugal, which is basically what can be called Spain's backyard, a speck of land next to it.

No, not Andorra.

NO, not France. To the West of Spain.

Umm... ok. That's technically Portuguese territory.

And this guy basically recorded all the instruments for the demo on his synthesizer. Surprisingly, it's actually quite good. A little unfocused but, nevermind. I'm here to talk about the artwork, which by the way looks like it's been done in, what, half a minute?

I guess it does represent the idea of Horrid Dissonance pretty well, but, then again, the only sign of dissonance in the entire demo is the intro, which isn't even on the Ankhaos Myspace page. How do I know this is the right cover, and not the cover for some other Horrid Dissonance? Well, the point is that you can't... unless you have extremely good eyesight... And can look at the cover for long enough without getting a seizure. If you look very closely to the top left, you might JUST be able to see it.

Look at image cautiously.

Now, seriously, guys... um... guy, it looks like you're not even proud of having spent half a year making a twenty minute demo! I had to stop writing and rest for 15 minutes because of the colour contrast! Sheesh.

I think it would have been enough bashing for this Myself guy's demo, but I'm on a roll now. Let's turn the case over.



Umm... actually you can't, since this guy hasn't made any physical copies of the album and isn't planning to, which leads me to my next question. If it's not possible to turn the case 90 degrees, then why the hell make the track listing vertical?!

Oops! Sorry. You can't see it.

There you go!

I must admit the colour contrast will probably induce less seizures, but still. Why the fuck make the track listing vertical? Is this guy expecting the people who would even care to listen to this fuming piece of demo to turn their fucking monitors 90 degrees? Or does he want them to just do that on Picasa and leave it at that? Actually, this guy had a point when being ashamed of this piece of seizure inducing (noun). He's actually done the right thing!

Now, I don't want to offend any member of Ankhaos. This is not meant to be offending. Although it might be... um... yeeah... it is. Look: sorry, guys... sorry... guy, but I swear I only made this for shits and giggles.

Causing seizures was entirely unintentional.

I've heard you're writing a concept album called Nuclear Outcasts, and, from what I've played and wrote, It looks like it'll be great. If you make physical copies of it, I'll buy one! Honest!

Just a "little" post for fun. I hope you enjoyed it. On my next post I'll be scrutinizing a an album that seems to have absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Rammstein

Helloes, everyone who was ever high enough to care about this blog.

Sorry for not having done anything on my blog. The reason for this was that I didn't feel fit to do something funny (IOW, I was initially feeling depressed, then, once I was cheerful again, I felt too lazy) and I'm really starting to suspect that I suffer from bipolar. The good thing about this is that I've left a lot to be told. For example, I've finally finished my Ankhaos demo. I'll talk about it in a little more detail in the next post.

Meanwhile, while you wait, I'll stay close to the previous band I mentioned, Front 242. The band is Rammstein, from Germany, known for being a source of 2nd grade web humour...








And for being gross. Yes. I'm referring to the third image. You can also consider "gay" as one of the attributes of Germany, but I wouldn't. Specially since Germany was the crib of amazing metal bands such as Accept and Kreator.




Actually, nevermind that. Got sidetracked.

So, anyway, Rammstein is an Industrial Metal band from the German proletariat (to give you an example, Till Lindemann, their vocalist, was an professional swimmer before being promoted to professional basketweaver) and their earlier music was mainly about people with guns, literal and figurative guns. In other words, their music was about dangerous preverts, and may have been the inspiration behind Twilight. Even so, these guys made music not for the light-hearted, but they hid this behind the most perfect disguise ever invented, called the shitty cover.

To show this, let's use Hans, the imaginary rivethead from Germany:

It's 1995, and Hans has thrown a party to celebrate his 15th birthday. His best friend, Albert, who is also a rivethead, comes up to him and gives him a CD as a birthday present. Carefully, Hans tears the wrapping off, and finds this.


He didn't know of a band called Rammstein, and so didn't realize that this is actually quite a good album. He thinks "What the fuck is this? An album called Heartbreak? A bunch of naked guys behind a flower? Is this some stupid gay boy band or something?" and tells Albert "Du bist scheiße! Fick dich!" before going outside and burning the CD. In a fire. Not a CD burner.

The next albums had better designed covers, which were not as gay, but then along came Rosenrot, which means something like "rose-red". Fortunately, they realized their mistake with Herzeleid and opted for a better cover.

Nothing screams Rose-Red like a frozen shipwreck.

And speaking of shipwrecks, they seem to really like them.

If they went to the length of putting what looks like a black box on the cover.

And the title for this album, Reise, Reise, being a traditional German wake up call on ships. So, the question is the following: do they like being perverts or do they like ships? Or both? Are they naviphiliacs, or something? Or do they just suffer from bipolar?