Category: The Americas


Ho boy, have these guys gone far. From fighting in the clubs in Tokyo’s scene to Europe, Australia, and now the U.S…. and now with a record deal with Metropolis – awesome. Now you can experience one of Japan’s hottest industrial rock outfits at your computer!

An hour of glorious Japanese underground music recorded in high-quality video. Watch and SCREAM boys and girls!

Shopping online helps people find alternative and fresh items quickly and efficiently. However, as we all know, sifting through the immense amount of content on the Web for the right information and contacts can be a real burdensome experience. Essentially we all need a guide to help us cut to the chase so to speak. Here is where Shopwiki.com come into play to make your clothing selection process easier and fun.

Shopwiki.com provides comprehensive information about clothing for women including the latest fashion trends, designer fashion, a handy tool for those needing special sizes and a seasonal fashion forecast (summer, fall, winter and spring). The site also includes an environmentally friendly information section.

Visitors can define their own wardrobe or just pick up specific pieces online. For example, you can look for work suits, casual work outfits for special occasions, or look for particular items such as jeans, tops and more. Regardless of your tastes the site’s guides discuss all manner of details needed to be considered for clothes shopping – covering nearly every imaginable piece of clothing you could need. Using a thorough Wiki-powered search the site offers a plethora of data organized ready for your research.

The wiki and its buying guides, together with store listings help users find what items they want and where they can buy them at the most competitive price.

Well, I got a nice CD choc-full of very metal tune and a flier, tape and even a bag of cotton candy (fairy floss) which disappeared in about five minutes upon its opening. Oh, did I mention the band? It is called Magnum Carnage (Myspace page) and the album rocks it with some dark, heavy stuff. The title of the album is pretty long – More Unreal Than a Box of Precious Metal and Radioactive Ore.

Magnum Carnage is an American black metal band from Honolulu, Hawaii. Originally formed in 1996, the band has gone through a number lineup changes all of which have been led and assembled by band leader Kai Laigo.

Now the review. Overall the album is hot, fast and (did I mention this?) heavy metal. It thrashes about like a crocodile chowing down a guy who didn’t read the warning message. Furthermore, like the croc’s lunch this band is very tasty and it’s hour-plus length cannot be devoured in a single bite. I found the first time I listened took a day as the tracks just overwhelmed me with the intensity of the music. Spinal Tap’s amps might go to 11, but these guys kept on cranking their amps to jet engine! Really, this music is really strong stuff and once you’ve got through it you’ll find yourself more than satisfied with the sound.

The album starts with the metal anthemesque head pumping Titanium Apocalypse, interspersed with speech during the track. It plays pretty hard, but this is just the start of a CD of madness. Track 2, Drowning in Feces/Death (The Slow Process), starts as a much more fierce track with machine-gun drums and ax-work slowing down midway to a heavy stomping vocalized tune.

Suitcase Nuke is a heavy, slow beating ensemble including a pepped up interlude, with the screamer giving a nice touch to the ax-oriented work. Following Suitcase Nuke is the raucous Night of the Chupacabra with spiced speed metal, strong screaming vocals and a quiet finishing flourish.

Divine Comedy Pt. 1 – Damn this Age plays like a metal version of a Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells) tracks. This is a multi-layered track that I particularly enjoy. Demon City Honolulu is a neat piece of thrash metal including Spanish guitar riffs during and fine, quieter drum- and guitar-led pieces. The quieter ax-work seems to almost sing. The song also includes some great vocals and scream-work.

The Wolf starts off as a slower track with goth-metal ove, before moving onto more higher-tempo metals midway during the song. The Ballad of Brian Well is a heavy rock piece that plays well with distorted guitars throughout the track.

Platinum Hell Tour is a short track that screams at you with every piece of equipment the band has to through at you! Temple of Doom starts pepped up on strong guitars and drums. The track mixes hard guitars and slower vocals. Depraved Fantasy is a straight hard rock/metal track with the screamer plying the song with his voice. There are some parts to this track that are reminiscent of other metal artists – though my knowledge of who is what in the metal would is very limited!

No Fear Pt. 2 Speed vs. Stupidity starts stomping away before guitar and vocals take over. As with other songs in this album it intersperses the metal with more melodious and ambient tunes to take the pressure down midway in the song. No Fear Pt. 3 Xmas Fight Song is a calmer song letting the song’s vocals clearly cut through the noise as the ax volume turns itself up to dominate later in the song. A fine drum-supported guitar solo kicks in later in the track.

Gold is a short heavy rock song with more straight-laced sounds coming from the band. Bronze plays along edgier lines with pumped up drums and guitars from the start and has a catchy beat and vocals. Silver is another catchy heavy rock song that plays easily to a rock/pop crowd.

Plutonium (Awesome Song II) is head-pumping and foot-stomping from the start. The music plays towards the vocals allowing you to hear the story of the song. It’s rocky style with twists and turns make this one of my favorite tunes on the disk.

Buick ’88 starts off with melancholic guitars, slowly building in intensity to heady rock before cranking into metal with screamer vocals.

Video Games of the Gods is short track featuring of epic metal from the 70s & 80s. Grain Reaper is a hot piece of metal with clear vocals ruling over the instrumentals. Again the Mike Oldfield influence can be heard in the second half of the track.

2012 is a psychedelic pop-rock piece reflecting the subject – the insane world in the near future.

The final song, Nightmarish Full-Scale War, starts hard and heady and just keeps on rocking the whole way with epic-styled metal.

At the end of the day, all I can say is “Wow” – this is the only response I can come up with. To listen to it takes you on an hour-long hell of a sound ride. What I would do if I heard it live is stomp till my feet dropped off and scream at them until my head explodes. The only down side I found was that it the vocals were hard to pick up, a small thing, but a bit more clarity of the voices would have made the experience a bit better. Yes, this is good with innovative solid sounds that should grab you by the shoulders and scream at you!

Igor scores it 8/10 – very hot

I have gone through most of the CDs that I have received relatively recently and don’t have any CDs left to review. Anyone want their CD reviewed? Just contact me via “Contact us” above.

Fashion Bomb

Fashion Bomb

Hailing from Chicago, Fashion Bomb delivers an infectious mix of hard industrial, laced heavily with rock and metal in “Devils to Some, Angels to Others.” Indeed, the metal plays such a significant role that it could be considered a dark metal album with Gothic overtones. Either way, this is an exciting work that should satisfy those who like some bite in their music. Weighing in at 14 songs plus one remix, this is one powerful CD. View full article »

Since Gothers.com is quietly reaching 600 members I was rather surprised to see this on WSJ.com:

Thirty-five percent of the online communities studied have less than 100 members; less than 25% have more than 1,000 members – despite the fact that close to 60% of these businesses have spent over $1 million on their community projects. “A disturbingly high number of these sites fail,” Moran tells us. Full article (subscription required)

A million dollar uber-flop with less than 100 users – sheesh. Meanwhile I’m just letting the old Gothers.com site slowly tick up to 1000. It is only a matter of time and patience and only cost a few hundred plus some amateurish coding to string together.

I guess I am not tied to satisfying customer (company) needs and dreams, just to what I think the user/member may like.  No need for fancy logos or company colors, just what I think or can do. But at a million dollars even a failure would need to pull in 1000 surely? Maybe not.

The members of Stiff Valentine describe their blend of music as “industrial metal disco” (well that’s what some mag said), which rings true with their mix of electro, guttural screamo vocals and heavy guitar riffs found on their EP, Loveless. There is also a strong anger pumping through these songs as evidenced by the almost homicidal hatred of the number 23 in the bands opening track by the same name. The songs are a twisted mix of aggression with a strangely dancable beat thumping throughout the album.

Aside from Number 23 the band serves out a number gamboling vitriolic selection of songs.

The second track Absolution is a speedballing riot of a song, while Prison G starts as a slower somber track which explodes into a heavy rock part-way through. The forth track, Breaking Point, a quality hard electro piece, is followed by straight hard rock in Subsonic. The final song, Suck, is a fun speed rock piece.

Overall, I found this EP quite enjoyable and quite refreshing with tongue-in-cheek songs like Number 23 and Suck. The other songs also go down well on my iPod. Just don’t mention the number 23 around these guys.

Check them out at Stiff Valentine or on Myspace.

Loveless Tracks
1. Number 23
2. Absolution
3. Prison G
4. Breaking Point
5. Subsonic
6. Suck

Advertising various products and thinggies in the blog recently has helped me get a little online stash allowing for purchases of things like games and music. About two weeks ago I bought and downloaded Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV purely instrumental release. I have listened to the entire series a couple of times and I have grown very fond of it. View full article »

For the two years I have been under the influence of iPod. My little black nano has been my entertainment center with my music along with various podcasts. However, the last year has seen me move away from music to more talk-radio (mostly lefty stuff) and podcast theater and audio novels. Today I would like to introduce you to one of the coolest podcasters out there, the sci-fi horror novelist, Scott Sigler. This man’s horrorcasts are works of art filled with intense drama, good plots and lots and lots of violence! View full article »

Enki smallOriginally released in 1999 Lorin Richards’ Enki album harkens back to the dark electronic music of the 80s. One name in particular keeps coming to mind – Gary Neuman. If you are a fan of electronica from the 80′s and 90′s then you should enjoy Enki by Lorin Richards.

From the Product Description at Amazon:

Enki is a theme, a beautiful collection of stories based on a sci-fi interpretation of ancient Sumerian religion. Imagine the beginning of the world not as an evolution over millions of years, or a creation that lasted six days, but a creation by beings of another planet. Beings seen in the eyes of early civilization as gods. A race so advanced that they had robots guard such fantastic places like the Garden of Eden. This is the idea behind Enki.

Personally I really enjoyed the electronic music and melancholia of the vocals throughout the album. Many tracks also include a Japonisme or oriental feel to them which explains the Japanese characters used to make the title on the album jacket.

The album’s introduction is Asian strings and wood pipes, then moves onto an ambient vaguely oriental electronic melancholia with The Mourning of the Day.

It is difficult to talk about each song individually as the tracks have similar all the tracks have strong flavors of the electronica of the 1980′s with a twist of oriental flavored instrumentals throughout. The songs I found standing out most were Due to Us and Recreate, which play a little louder with the stronger vocals. Many of the other tracks tend to keep the vocals in the background.

Essentially, this is a well-produced Japonisme/late 80s electronic album. The sounds are very crisp, and the ambient style of Enki is a nice change of pace. I would recommend it for anyone looking for a more peaceful electronic album.

Enki mediumEnki :: Tracklist
01. The Fortune Cookie Breaks (0:51)
02. In the Mourning of the Day (4:08)
03. Lying Naked (5:02)
04. Have We Given Our Way (3:25)
05. The Eagle Has Landed (3:44)
06. Take a Look Into My Eyes (4:21)
07. Little Words (1:12)
08. My Love for Enki (3:52)
09. Building a Saviour (4:39)
10. Due to Us (5:25)
11. Recreate (3:50)
12. Reprise (0:57)
Total time: 42 minutes
Lorin Richards’ site.