Score: 25

Well, it took time, but here it is: the 25th post on Back To The ROFL.

"Captain Obvious strikes again"

It took more than half a year at an average of around 700 words per post to reach this goal, which is why I haven't waited 'till the 100 mark to celebrate. Also, judging by the constant delays and whatnot, HAD I waited 'till the 100 mark to celebrate, it would have been when I will have rediscovered "that blog I used to do as a teen... Back To The ROFL I think it was called" at the age of 71.

Anyway, before anything else, I would like to thank all the people who ever read this blog for their support because, believe it or not, it really does matter, and I'd be really grateful if you gave me your opinion on my blog (hate mail is always welcome). The feedback will really help me. Also, whatever album covers you'd like me to flame about, just tell me about it between the death threats.

Now, there are loads upon loads of candidates for appearing on Back To The ROFL, most of them encompassed within genres that include the root word "grind" somewhere. After all, a band whose music boasts song titles such as "Song Titles Are Fucking Stupid", "Shut Up Paul" or "I Lit Your Baby On Fire" is just begging to have itself made fun of...

"Come on! You know you want to."

Which is precisely why this entry will talk about Dream Theater's Score: X(middle thing)X 20th Anniversary World Tour Live with The Octavarium Orchestra, also known as Score.


Had I not owned this album, I would have simply said something like "Now that's WAAAY

too long for an album title, specially when it can be made so short", mentioned something about DT being pretentious and called it a day, but I can't because there is more to come on the inside of the album.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, this album is a three disk digipak. After fiddling with the pak so as not to have the CDs fall out of their slots while I try to place it on the scanner (and failing miserably) for a few hours, I have managed to scan the insides, and this is what they look like:

You have the mandatory thanks to alls and list of crew members,...

"Also, since we have an orchestra this time around, the background is, obviously, made to appeal to 65 year-olds who want to look posh"

... and you have one panoramic photo of all the musicians on stage spread amongst two pages.




This means that it is rather strange that Todd Kaplan claims that all photos in the album are of his courtesy. "All", like in "more than one".


But even if, as Todd claims, he has done ALL photos, he really shouldn't be too proud of it. I mean, this is a Dream Theater album, meaning that you should NOT make sure that the photo focuses on everything but the faces of the members of Dream Theater...,






Or, in the case that you can actually make out some facial features, make sure that they do not translate to "I hate myself and want to die"




Actually, you do have to give Kaplan credit for all the effort put into making Guy Who's Identity Will Be Kept Secret and Ms. Vulva so crystal clear in the picture.




On the other hand, that "all" in "All photos" may mean that Todd Kaplan also took the pictures of James LaBrie singing into a ghost microphone...,


... John Petrucci making the "jizzing pants" pose so popular among respected guitarists...,


... Jordan Rudess having a nap (probably while he plays a super complex solo)...,


... John Myung about to fall off the stage after a sprint looking at the camera...


... and Mike Portnoy opening his mouth to eat the drum kit.


All of which appear on the front cover.


Actually, on the other hand, Todd Kaplan has made an excellent job! To prove it, I just ask you to look at the rest of the artwork. Without the members of the band looking completely ridiculous on this release, the digipak would have been the visual equivalent of a deadly dose of Valium, so I have to thank TeeKay for saving my life.

Thank you.

Vinylheads Are Doomed From The Start

I will start this post the old-school, standard, boring stand-up comedy way (“So I was at the cinema/library/barber's/gallows the other day, when *yawn-inducing monologue for 15 minutes *”), so, here goes:

"Hold tomatoes at ready"

So I was talking to a blogger friend of mine on the IM the other day (he does a blog with another blogger friend of mine. It's very funny. Their posts are not long. This is their blog. (It's in Portuguese, by the way)), when he tells me that he was thinking about buying a stereo with a turntable. Obviously, my reaction was something along the lines of the usual “good for you *smiling face *” answer formula, but, the more I think of it, the more I realize that that is not such an awesome idea.

Vinyl has the advantage of providing sound quality that can't be achieved with digital formats, but, to actually notice any difference, you'd need a top-notch sound system, which is relatively easily attainable through the process of coughing up the dough. Lots of dough. So, it's easy to immediately realize that this option is only viable for true music lovers, in theory...

For the continuation of this post, let's assume that you got that sound system from a music lover's wet dreams. You have a state-of-the-art stereo, with a simply godly turntable and you have placed the full-range, top-quality monitors in the room in such a manner that will provide the most perfect experience possible. Yet, you still haven't actually experienced anything. You need to get some records.

You head to the record store (let's assume that it is a large one) and quickly find the section dedicated to vinyl records. Even more quickly, the thought “That's it?!” races to mind. You glare at the sadistically placed neighboring aisle of Jazz/Folk CDs starting with X, Y or Z, and then you look down at the 13 records in “A – All Genres”, where only 6 records actually are by artists whose name starts with A, and one of said records is AC/DC's Fly On The Wall.

That and the industrial coating of dust on top of the whole section makes you quickly realize that no one ever actually cares about this part of the store, and the staff is pissing on you. Nevertheless, you keep your hopes up. After all, it's called a record store, not a CD store. After some time, you start to actually “think” like the store, “get into its mind”, so to speak. That means that you begin to understand that if you're looking for Rubber Soul by The Beatles, you'll find it in “B – All Genres”, if it is Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys that you want, it'll be somewhere in the vicinity of “F – All Genres”, if you're looking for Feedbacker by Boris, you might as well give up now, and if you're still looking for No Line On The Horizon by U2, you're probably blind, since it's harder to discover a place where you can't find it (“U – All Genres” being one of them).

Eventually, your search is fruitful, and, after having paid the price for records, with all its extra BFYTW (“Because fuck you, that's why”) fees, you leave the store and come back home, having bought two or more of the following albums:

The Velvet Underground & Nico, by The Velvet Underground;
Fragile, by Yes;
The White Album and/or Abbey Road, by The Beatles;
The Dark Side Of The Moon, by Pink Floyd;
Are You Experienced, by The Jimi Hendrix Experience;
In The Court Of The Crimson King, by King Crimson;
OK Computer, by Radiohead.

Well, you've got everything you need now. Right? Right?! Actually, no. For the simple reason that you are a music lover, and, therefore, know all of the above albums by heart, unless you aren't in fact a music lover... You see, records such as those you only actually own for status, so that people respect you as a fan of music, so that people can look at your collection and say “Hey! You have Fragile by Yes... Nice... That's a very... um... very... Hey! Is that Left 4 Dead 2?”. No one really expects you to actually LIKE the albums, or even so much as LISTEN to them. You know perfectly well that you actually wanted Feedbacker by Boris from the very start, but you also know that buying it would have been really expensive. See where I'm getting at here? Pretty much all the non-mainstream bands you listen to make very limited amounts of vinyls, which are very hard to find, and that is considering that you're lucky enough that they make any at all. You have been owned.

There are mainly only four genres for which you would ever want to get a turntable sound system, and those are Classical, Post-Rock, Psychedelic and Drone/Doom. In other words, it either can be used as a way for people to show off their superiority in comparison to the rest of the human race (Classical and Post-Rock), because of course you COULD listen to Godspeed You! Black Emperor on CD, but every single Hertz that needle manages to catch that the laser can't is perceived as an extra millimeter on the owner's dick (at least, by said owner). Or it can be used as way to have more awesome trips (Psychedelic and Drone/Doom), because... fuck... it's awesome, need I another reason?

Sadly, music lovers don't like to be associated with the stoner group of vinylheads, and records stores feel uneasy about endorsing the group, which leaves us with the showoffs.

Conclusion: the sound system with a turntable is virtually useless, unless the only way you can prove yourself to be better than your friends is by your sound equipment.

I'm All For Acronyms, But...

...There are words that are better off without them, and "sin" just happens to NOT be one of said words. You can invent a shitload of great acronyms for it, and if you can't, the Internet is there to help you out in your time of need. Seriously! It's one of the words that offers the most flexibility in terms of possible acronyms that make sense (Summoning Involuntary Nosebleeds, for example, or Some Inbred Nationalists)! I just thought up two terrible acronyms on the spot right there! It's impossible that the German band Somewhere Into Nowhere (S.I.N.) couldn't have thought of a better band name than the one they have. After all, they've been together since 2002, and surely they wouldn't have had to come up with a name on the spot...

Does it even make any sense? We have two antonyms: "Somewhere" and "Nowhere", linked by a preposition, and of all prepositions they could have chosen from, they have chosen the one that will make the least amount of sense possible between the aforementioned antonyms. I mean, you could have used "on" and have made S.O.N., or "underneath" and have made SUN. Actually, having somewhere underneath nowhere doesn't make much sense, nor does somewhere on nowhere, but even those two would have made much more sense than having somewhere INTO nowhere... Come on! What the fuck is that supposed to mean?! Is that like a road that leads from an ambiguous place to an ambiguous... non-place?


But, then again, we have the "Into" in the middle, ruining everything! Unless!... (sic) It's a tunnel that leads from the ambiguous place directly into the core of the ambiguous non-place!

Well, according to the cover of their self-titled debut album, Somewhere Into Nowhere, the statement basically translates to "We were high out of our minds when we came up with the name. And the cover."

Now, you have to realize that within the world of Melodic Metal (encompassing Traditional Heavy Metal, Goth Metal, Progressive Metal, Power Metal, Symphonic Metal, Neo-Classical Metal and their Melodic variations), album covers are very vulnerable to cheese, and absolute cheesefests are not rare. The following album cover is actually pretty easy on cheesiness in comparison, but still holds pretty strong on the Cheese-O-Meter: A definite 6.5.

"SONic The Boy In Pyjamas"

The whole thing simply reeks of photoshop, giving it an immediate 1.5 points. There's also the baffled little boy being attacked by luminescent jellyfish tentacles (as far as I know, even Japan looks down upon tentacle foreplay to pedophilia), who doesn't even seem to give a shit about the fact that he's suddenly in space in a fucking Sonic The Hedgehog course, with rings that are too similar to equilateral triangles to actually be called rings. Another 2.5 points. Also, if he's in outer space, why the fuck is there a grid over the entire starshowered horizon? 1 point for not making sense. And, as far as I know, were there a nebula shaped like a face, it would have been too retarded a discovery to have been made in this universe, or it would have been so fucking scary a discovery that everyone would have commited suicide. 1 more point. And, of course, you have the mandatory planet or two, giving a bonus 0.5 points.

Well, I must say that we CAN for a moment assume that the kid is actually supposed to be running toward the face, and the triangle-shaped rings are actually arrows, to show where he shold be going. Which brings us back to the title, Somewhere Into Nowhere:

He is running from somewhere INTO someone's forehead... hmm... Is the band saying that the guy's head is filled with nowhere? Like in: empty?

This means that, with this cover, they are probably in fact implying that their fans are dumbasses. Come on, guys! This is your fucking debut album! Prior to it, you have only released one single demo! Surely it's WAAAY too early to start giving your fans the finger.

Endangered Species Do Not Die Out Easily

Newsflash #1: "You can download stuff from the Internet."

If that and the title of this post are not enough clues for what Newsflash #2 will be, allow me to add an appendix to Newsflash #1:

"Music is no exception."

By now it should be perfectly obvious that Newsflash #2 will say..... Yup, you've got it.

Newsflash #2: "CD sales are low."

Now that my duty as Captain Obvious is completed, I can go on with my post.

"My job here is done"

What I was obviously implying with the newsflashes is that the music industry is coughing up blood because people keep downloading for free the music they listen to. Now, although I am an avid downloader myself, I have a reason for not having said that the music industry is dying, merely saying that it is coughing up blood. That is because it is not dying, and it will not die.

There's no denying that CD sales are low, but I can also assure that they won't become REALLY low, for one good reason: It feels good to have CDs. The traditional jewel case serves as a great way to hold an album's worth of music, along with its booklet, but there is a kind of holder that makes the music truly come to life, and that is the Digipak.

Digipaks come in all shapes and sizes (not entirely true, but try comparing the amount of shapes and sizes of a Digipak to that of a normal jewel case. 'Nuff said.), and they are like an extention of the art within the disk to a visual paradigm. In other words, I don't know what the hell I'm saying, so allow me to show you some pictures.

They're a fucking extension of the music. They're AWESOME! I dare you to disagree.

Look at them! They're beautiful! How could you more perfectly compliment the music on the album than with state-of-the-art... um... artwork? The artwork is what the CD comes in! It is now a whole! Platform and album, matter and soul, in perfect symbiose! It lets the bands be truly creative!

Slightly freaky, even...

Although there is something called way too much creativity...

What better way to present a chaotic album than with a chaotic digipak? NOW TRY TO CLOSE THAT, YOU SONUVA BITCH!

But, with independence from the shackles of the jewel case also comes responsibilty, and a need to have more care for quality. In other words, MAKE SURE THE BOOKLET FITS ITS FUCKING SLOT.

And, if it does, IT SHOULD BE PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE TO REMOVE IT FROM SAID SLOT.


Also, make sure that when someone opens the case, the disk won't come gloriously plunging toward the ground.

Or when someone picks the case up. CDs should not be used as wheels.

...or the disks.....


The image above is of a generous collection of three CDs in one digipak, where if the two disks shown above don't fall off, the third one does.

While we are on the topic of generosity, there can be too much of it,...

"ZOMG STICKERZ!!1!"

...with visible results.

That is one fat bastard (Although The Wall, on the far left, wins here with a fuckin' hog of a jewel case)

Although too little generosity doesn't help much either


So, concluding, the Digipak is a revolutionary case that lets the band drown you in gifts or be a greedy ass, make no fucking sense, destroy the disk and booklet trying to take them out of the case, and all that for a slightly higher price than that of a normal jewel case (usually, nearly twice as much). In other words, I have proven how badly they suck. Why isn't the music industry dying, again? Because people like me are stupid enough to buy their embodiments of greed or too much goodwill? A thousand times yes! Oh, there's also the little detail that Digipaks give an album character in a way the jewel case can't. But, well, nevermind that...


Uhh... actually, that's the only reason I like Digipaks in the first place....

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...