Colour Of Despair

Well, it's half past three in the morning, and I'm bored to death and about as sleepy as a hiperactive person who has had a fix of Red Bull straight into their blood, so, hopefully, staring at the flat, cracked screen on my pitiful excuse for a portable computer for an hour, while I try to churn out something half-decent as my brain cells lose their sensitivity due to lack of REM sleep, or something like that, will make my eyes hurt so much that I will end up simply having to sleep so as not to go blind (that sentence alone took me 10 minutes to write). Since this is supposedly a humorous blog, you can try to find unintentional hilarity in this entry as I try and most probably fail miserably at intentional hilarity with any coherence whatsoever during a time of the day when my thoughts have the consistency and texture of mashed potatoes in a swimming pool.

Which means that,right now, I am rummaging through my neurons for something to talk about.

Please wait...

Please wait ...
Please wait. ..
Please wait.. .
Please wait...
Please wait ...
Please wait. ..

I could go on like this forever...

Ok. I have a topic! Depression... Doom... Despair... Desolation... Katatonia.

Katatonia are a Swedish band that aims to make you feel miserable, having started as Death/Doom Metal, and then having moved on to Depressive Alternative Rock.

Now, I want to focus on the topic in hand: Depression and Doom. What is the best way to represent the relentless claustrophobic torture that is Doom Metal? Well, according to the guys from Katatonia, it's with violet. Lots and lots of violet.

...And roadkill.

This theory about violet does not only appear on Brave Murder Day, either. It also makes an appearance on Dance Of December Souls.

... or... um... Gouls?

So, basically, according to Katatonia, violet is the colour of hopelessness, void, despair, emptiness, and overall suffering. Either, that, or it represents the aggression and mercilessness of Doom Metal, since they were only the Katatonic Embodiment Of Purple Suffering (I'm only making Egypt-related acronyms because I have completely lost all sense of what is funny) for their first two albums, presented above.

But, well, to sum up:

WHYYYyyy...???!!!! Why was I born into a world with... with... such a relentlessly pleasant colour?! Why does it have to be this way?! This... this... menace... shows how bleak it all is! I'll never smile again... *author attempts to stab self with portable computer*

You Need To Remember Something, That's For Sure...

Now, you're probably wondering what I meant with such an ambiguous title. Well, it's pretty simple: the widely overlooked nu-metal band Korn will be releasing their their ninth studio album in less than a week, and, apparently, they are attempting to re-write history by calling it Korn III: Remember Who You Are.

Korn three? Why Korn three? You have released eight albums so far, so why Korn three? According to the members, this album will be going back to the raw style of Korn from their debut and and sophomore albums, so, are they claiming that everything between Life Is Peachy and Korn III: Remember Who You Are is... not true Korn? Well, the most likely thing is that they simply ran out of ideas for names after See You On The Other Side and just started naming all the albums Korn, so this is Korn III, the untitled album was Korn II (actually, it was simply called Korn), and the next album will be Korn IV.

Actually, the cover art seems to support both theories:

Not only does it share similarities with Korn (Korn the debut, not Korn, the other album), it also shares similarities in terms of cover style with Life Is Peachy (see why you should give a different name to each album? It's much easier this way.), but more so towards Korn (the debut): We have both that girl from Korn (once again, debut) and that creepy shadow guy from Korn (you got the idea). Also, it says Remember Who You Are, like in "You're that bitch from the cover from Korn (then debut), and don't forget that!"

"This album called Korn, and not the other one, now don't forget that!"

Beyond Cops. Beyond God. Beyond Logic...

Call me crazy, but Waking The Cadaver are not all that bad what comes to deathcore. I mean, you kinda come to expect that deathcore will be boring as all hell (Not that you'd find time to be bored in Hell, if it existed), so no surprises there. And they are much better than Emmure (to get an idea of what Emmure sound like, imagine the Black Eyed Peas on Headbangers Ball) (Their song "False Love In Real Life" can be broken down into 30 seconds of random noise, 8 seconds of thrash and a three minute-long breakdown.)

You have to know that, to Waking The Cadaver, there are two main eras: The goddamn terrible and downright boring era of Waking The Cadaver, which ranges from their 2006 Demo...

Where they, for some reason, put two band logos. Notice the way they seem to have crossed one of them out with horizontal lines over the words, and the other one with lines from every direction, like as though they're saying "There! Wait... no. Let's do it again. There we go... nah! It's crap. We'll try again somewhere over ... dammit! We have no more space left!".

...and Perverse Recollections Of A Necromangler,

Where they got the logo right the first time.

...and the simply boring era, which, so far, ranges from Beyond Cops. Beyond God. to... uh... Beyond Cops. Beyond God.

While the young Waking The Cadaver were mainly about masturbating to the lyric sheet (and stating how much they like shredded wheat), pig-squealing and clumsily blasting from breakdown, to breakdown, to slam, to breakdown of a breakdown to breakdown, and boring the hell out of people, the more grown up Waking The Cadaver is mainly about being a dickhead and killing people without degrading women in the process, including actual (read: stock) riffs, not unintelligible vocals and a new "L00k 4t mee!!1 were playing tr00 metull now!!!!LOLZROFL!No srsly!11" attitude... and boring the hell out of people.

I'm here to talk about the more grown up Waking The Cadaver. More specifically, about the new album's cover (by the way, the album will be out in August 10th this year, if you want to get it).

So, behold: Beyond Cops. Beyond God.


As we see here, apparently the greenish-yellowish-grey-skinned killer from the debut album got himself a bluish-grey-skinned girlfriend, and now they're going by bike on a straight road, while innocent bystanders are shot in the eye by randomly materializing bullets, with a turret mounted to the motorcycle that uses up nine rounds to shoot just one bullet. Why do I say this? Notice that the bike is not at all tilted and that the wheels are aligned, which means the couple is going straight ahead, which means those bullets could not have been shot by the (really inefficient) turret.

Also, why is Mask Guy's girlfriend shooting at nothing?

And it's just two fucking people! Do the authorities really need missiles (and the death of around 283 innocent bystanders) to kill two people on a motorcycle? Specially if the helicopter that is chasing said two people is mounted with a FUCKING LASER (which does not happen in real life, by the way)?! And another thing, shouldn't blindness be a no-no if you are plannning to operate a rocket launcher? The police is hitting buildings that are 100 meters away!

The most logical explanation I can think of is that Mask Guy is actually a Jedi, and possesses the powers of the Force. That also explains how he manages to safely state that the authorities will never catch him in the song "Connoiseurs Of Death". He uses Jedi mind tricks! I mean, just look at the lyrics!

"My thoughts control me.
i can't hold back any longer,
i must commit these acts,
my fantasies compel me,
watching,
stalking,
waiting,
planning this perfect crime.
i have studied your surroundings for months now.
i know exactly when to make my move, and exactly how i'm going to make my move.
a perfect murder to me is all about strategy,
so unaware as i stalk flawlessly,
repeatedly in my dreams i have pulled this job.

in front of the mirror as you prepare for sleep,
this is when i sneak behind and put the barrel of the shotgun to your head,
i like it when you see my face.

a blow to the skull, i make sure your still alive.
i only kill quick when necessary, but this is a score i must settle.
now is when my fantasies come, so i reach for my blade
inflicting this mutilation, slashing your face, stomping your body,
i love to see you in such pain, for this pain is my extasy.
suck the barrel, and look at me in the eye,
do you think i really give a fuck about what i'm going to do?
decapitated by 12 gauge slugs, i can't even recognize half your body anymore.
your family will probably tell the authorities i'm a suspect,
so i eliminated them before i eliminated you,
dragging you to the basement, i place you with the rest,
nude, in perverted positions with your loved ones.
fiendishly i masturbate to the scene i have created,
the investigators are going to be shocked.
my payoff, my crime gets televised,
overwhelmed with laughter as i realize,
they'll never catch me."

Not only he uses just one capital letter in his entire poem, the sentence "A perfect murder to me is all about strategy, so unaware as i stalk flawlessly, repeatedly in my dreams I have pulled this job." Makes about as much sense as Miss South Carolina,...


..."your" in "your still alive" is spelt "you're", "extasy" is spelt with a "c", not an "x", and the head of a person does not equal half a person, no matter how big your head is, wouldn't the victimized family's friends tell the authorities that Mask Guy is probably a suspect? Also, if he fiendishly masturbated to the scene he had created, wouldn't his semen be tested for DNA?

Maybe he is in hot pursuit because he's the main suspect everywhere like such as, and...

George Bellas: The Path To Decency (AKA Saturn Is Coming)

I wouldn't usually pick on some super talented neoclassical progressive metal playing guitarist who opened a music school and shit like that while still in his teens who no one has ever heard of, but I just had to share this, and his covers are simply inspirational (not in a good way).

So, like I said, George Bellas is a guitarist. He started playing guitar when he was 7. Also, he is very pretentious. And his mentality stopped developing when he started playing guitar. He also likes space and cheesy sci-fi.

This image actually appears on Encyclopaedia Metallum.

For that reason, he gave his albums names which made him sound superior and intelligent, like Turn Of The Millenium, Mind Over Matter, Planetary Alignment or Venomous Fingers and Step Into The Future. Also, the names will make you think he gets weggies from his students, and they make him sound very silly.

The covers don't do much to help either.

Turn Of The Millenium was released in 1997, and, according to Bellas, this is what should have happened then:


Apparently, there was going to be a guitar penetrating a gate in space, while a clock came from behind, and a broken LCD screen would be watching the fun not far away. The symbol representing infinity would also materialize, as well as Einstein's famous formula that states that the energy of a body is equal to its molar mass multiplied by its capacitance times two (If the guy wants to look pretentious, at least he should do some research...).

The thing that worries me, though, is that we're already in 2010 and Saturn still hasn't collided with the Earth... Could 12/21/2012 be the big day that happens? Could he be trying to tell us something? I mean, the cover for Venomous Fingers seems to be warning us of some demented apocalypse taken right from the most insane nightmares...


Look at it! If this is not a prophecy, then the guy was smoking pot at the time. You know those drawings you made when you were 5, where you basically included pretty much everything you liked and the drawing ended up making no sense? Well, this is that drawing, were it made by fuckin' five-year-old Satan... On Photoshop.

We have a full house here! We have flying guitars and violin,




A sardine with legs plunging towards a sea of blueberry jam,


A clock materialized out of fucking nowhere,


And, in the middle of it all, a giant hand and an electrified marble.


Oh! And Saturn spookily looms on the top left corner of the cover, ready to kill the fuck out of us all...


And the album is simply called Venomous Fingers? I mean, Goliath is about to be electrocuted by a marble with a guitar in it, there are fish and guitars torpedoing themselves towards the surface, a clock is just floating there, telling us our time has come, and FUCKING SATURN is about to collide with the Earth, and all you could come up with for a name was Venomous Fingers?!

I'm not surprised, though, since he apparently removed his brain and put it in a jar for safe keeping. It resembled an egg more than a brain anyway...


Also, that makes it understandable why he considers himself to be a planet, or even a star system.


In fact, he has only finally managed to make a decent album cover with his, so far, latest album: Step Into The Future.


It does make the future seem rather lame, but at least the future is presentable...

Focus On The Message!

Before being one of the many considered godly "One-time apparition" bands in Death Metal, Cynic were your usual Thrash Metal act...

...With your usual Thrash Metal logo.

Having started in 1987, this Floridian band, known for being your unique Technical Death Metal/Jazz Fusion/Progressive Metal/With A Vocoder act...

With your unique Technical Death Metal/Jazz Fusion/Progressive Metal/With A Vocoder logo,

Slowly changed their style, until being signed to Roadrunner, and releasing their debut album, Focus, in 1993. Now, Roadrunner Records was, and still is, a subsidiary of the effing WMG, so this album was a pretty big deal! They knew this band was onto something. They knew their style was unique.

"-They look like normal people, yet they do Death Metal...
-Holy crap! They are unique! We've gotta sign them!"

Which is precisely why they needed an ingenious, captivating, interesting and unique cover for their debut, and what could possibly be more suiting than a black hole shaped like female genitalia?


Yes, I admit that sex sells, but sex also doesn't have a tendency to crush every atom in your body into carbon porridge before you can say "...". What were they thinking?! The album itself is fucking called Focus, like in "Cynic is a serious band, so it needs a serious cover"! Did the cover artist have artistic tourettes, and couldn't help drawing vaginas on everything?

Well, at least it IS unique...

Changing the topic a little, you might have noticed an opinion poll where you readers could tell me how fucking awful this blog is. The results are unanimous, with a gargantuan 100% of the 1 votes going to "I like turtles.". Seeing this fact, this blog will now completely change its main topic from album covers to turtles (I'm already thinking up turtle jokes: "Who has a turtle's favourite oil? Shell! HAHAHAHAHA... ok, I'll try again."). NOT!

Icing On Vanilla (pt.3)

I told you it would be concluded...

Yeah, yeah... I haven't written anything for months now, but I'm back, and, this time, I'm seriously back. Now, why haven't I written for so long? Well, I guess I didn't seem to care about the blog, just like Darth Icey didn't seem to care for the cover on Platinum Underground.


Just for the hell of it, let's analyze this shopped load of meh:

-He is still convinced that his fanbase is stupid (which may or may not be true), and won't be able to understand it's Uncle V just by the logo, so he also puts his name in the most cheesy font imaginable;

-The cover seems to scream "LOOK AT MY TATTOOES LOL!!!111!", one of them claiming he is a quality product of the States (does America REALLY want everyone to be a patriot?);

-He makes a good decision by recommending parents to be informed of what lyrics their kids are listening to (the poor things will miss those dead brain cells);

"Ninja, ninja, RAP! Ninja, ninja, RAP! Ninja, ninja, RAP!
GO GO GO GO
Go ninja, go ninja, GO; Go ninja, go ninja, GO!
Go ninja, go ninja, GO; Go ninja, go ninja, GO!
GO GO GO GO"
is a really inspired chorus...

-He also puts some random, unneeded crap;



-...And a lunar eclypse with bats, for good measure.


All of this is, of course, completely useless, and he realizes that. He himself states WTF on his soon to be released new album...

Need an extinguisher there?

... Which leads us to the final part of Icing On Vanilla:

You'd think that, by now, his fanbase would consist of him, Vanilla Ice, and V-Ice. Think again. If you took the time to check that link, you might have noticed all the 5-star ratings there. That means he has a rather big fanbase that is devoted to him like if being a fan of Vanilla Ice were a religion...

Above: God

And that makes you think: This guy sucks ass, but he tries time and again, doesn't give up, and keeps sucking ass. Yet, he still smiles (stupidly, but at least he does...). He knows he sucks, but he does music because he likes to. He doesn't get recognition because he doesn't deserve it. He is not a sellout. He has experienced fame, and has turned away from it, and there are people who understand him and support him no matter what. Isn't that all a musician wishes for, when you're in it for the music? Sometimes, it's good to follow the example of an idiot...