This could've been a post about how miserable I was. But y'know what? Bad day, I defy you. Six things that are making me happy today!

1) Bon Jovi, because Iron Maiden may be my all-time favourite band, but Bon Jovi were my first favourite band and they still make me smile when not much else can. I am going to be unashamedly sappy and make you all listen to Thank You For Loving Me. And also It's My Life, which is very appropriate to my current mood. ^_^

2) Being into the Good Bit of my 2009 WWE calendar, ie the last five months which consists almost entirely of my favourite Superstars. This month, I have Edge smirking from my bedroom wall. There are so many worse ways to wake up than this. ^_^

3) Equilibrium, who are brilliant. I'm particularly in love with Ruf in der Wind, which is the wildest dancing song I've heard in forever. Seriously, if I put this on and shut my eyes I can feel the whole sky spin above me - it's amazing. ♥ (For the German speakers on my friendslist, here are the lyrics - and if anyone has time to poke them, I'd love to know roughly what they mean! ^_^)

4) Text from Mum, to say that the tiny stray black kitten who was outside their house at the weekend has been reunited with his owners! ^_^ I'm so relieved. Tiny kitten was very tiny, should not have been out on his own!

5) My headcast. No special reason today, I just love all of them very much and they make my life a better place by leaning over my shoulder and poking me. ♥

6) And finally, as if to justify my decision not to whinge, I got a phone call right after I started this post to ask if I wanted to come and view more houses! ^_^ Why yes, I do. Excellent!

Laters,
Rath

Just for the record, I am so in love right now with Bai Bang's cover of the Sweet's X-Ray Specs that I may actually explode from joy. Man, the Swedish glam scene is awesome. Here, have a random pic of their bass player, to demonstrate just why the idea of this band being able to see through people's clothes can't be all bad... ^_^

Meanwhile, anyone who reads here but not LJ should probably refer to this post for important State of the Rath information. Also, I've been to Wacken if that sort of thing is of any interest - full review later!

Sorry if I missed anything while I was gone - if you need me to see anything, please let me know! Hope everyone is okay. Now, since it's four in the morning, I crash. Night guys!

Laters,
Rath

Writing! I'm going to take it as a good omen that I was feeling creative enough to dash this off. ^_^

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( Possible futures. )

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Laters,
Rath

*IS TEN THOUSAND TIMES DED*

Oh my... I cannot articulate how much I love this, mostly because I am laughing too hard. But seriously, this has just given me an entire year's worth of joy in the space of five minutes.

Okay, everyone knows The Wind Beneath My Wings, right? Here's Michael Ball's version, which I happen to like, for reference (excuse the Xena, but this was the only version of it I could find on Youtube). Classic, slow, sentimental, much loved song you can play at weddings, funerals and your Dad's sixtieth birthday bash. You know the one.

Now, here are my beloved, beloved boys Sonata Arctica (YES, the Finnish metal band, for those of you sitting at the back) doing their version of this pop classic. I... am INCOHERENT, seriously. Oh, my BOYS. This is simultaneously utterly and soaringly gorgeous and the funniest thing I have heard ALL DECADE. ~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~

Dear power metal scene, and Sonata Arctica in particular, I love you very, very much. Please do not ever, ever change, and in particular please do not ever develop ANY sense of how you look to people whose senses of the ridiculous have developed beyond the embryonic. Please keep doing wonderful, ludicrous, utterly unselfconscious things like this for ever and ever, because the world could more easily spare a million scoffers than it could spare one band THIS AWESOME. ^_^

...I would totally dance to this if it ever got played in a club. And if they play it live next time I see them, I bet I cry. ^_^

Laters,
Rath

I just got a spam with the subject line "For his Hat was a hundred and two feet wide". I... yep, it's definitely Monday.

( Random update. Cut for length (work, weekend, and general stuff). )

And (lj)lonescorpion just left me an email with hints on how to do the fourth mission in DoW, so I think that's my evening sorted, then!

So. How/what/who is everyone else doing today? ^_^

Laters,
Rath

Okay, does anyone feel like helping out a Rath? I need music recommendations, because I think I have just noticed an odd quirk in my musical tastes, and I want to see if there is a real pattern here or just an illusory one...

The thing is, W. was kind enough to give me the first Eisbrecher album (and the second one, but I haven't listened to that one as much yet) and I've been devouring it enthusiastically. My favourite tracks are, without question, Willkommen im Nichts and Fanatica. Schwarze Witwe is hanging around third place, tieing for now with Herz Steht Still (which is gorgeous but being left aside for now cos it doesn't fit the topic under discussion).

Now, what's interesting about these three tracks? All of them are quite heavy, quite crunchy, solidly rhythmical, but they have - either in the backing vocals (Schwarze Witwe), the main vocals (Willkommen im Nichts), or both (Fanatica), a bizarrely conspicuous pop influence. The prechorus of Willkommen im Nichts has a brilliant looping, dipping pattern that really does sound like a pop chorus in a horrible, black, spiky, grinning disguise, and the English chorus of Fanatica probably wouldn't sound out of place on a chart single if it weren't backed by distorted synths and being powered from underneath by a vocalist who sounds like he's snarling through a static generator.

Which got me thinking, now, what other bands and songs do I like that feel like this? And the list is interestingly long. Lordi - are a melodic hard rock band with a harsh lead vocal, using a lot of pop and rock lyrical concepts with a dark twist. Devilish Presley - feel like the Fifties like the Fifties never were, twisted sideways by Johnny and Jacqui's sneering snarls and skewed lyrical concepts. Marilyn Manson covering Sweet Dreams. Children of Bodom covering Bed of Nails. Carpathian Forest covering the Cure. Power metal versions of ABBA songs. W.A.S.P. ballads. The list goes on. And as far as I can nail down, the mystic link between them all is the combination of pop/rock melody structures and/or mirrorverse-style twists on mainstream musical ideas, with vocals that are theoretically too harsh for but nevertheless follow the conventions of the melodic structure.

So. Dear flist, do any of you have any songs that sound like they fit this description (any genre from metal to electronica to goth to whatever, guitars not obligatory!) that you think I should hear? Caveat: I still tend to strongly dislike filks, "novelty" covers or pisstakes, some of which would fall into the description above. Some degree of straight face and musical integrity has to be involved, so the band in question has to be doing this style because it's what they want to sound like, rather than because they're looking at the audience going "are we funny yet?" But that aside, I'm sure there must be more Stuff That Sounds Like This, so if anyone has any, please wave it at me? Thank you!

In other news, a) I am going against the trend and actually kind of gutted at what happened to Jeff Hardy at Extreme Rules (and I really hope his shoulder and finger heal up quick, best wishes Jeff!), b) I think I have a cold, and c) I need more sleep. >_< How are you guys?

Laters,
Rath

A propos de rien, except that sternenstaub mentioned the Eurovision, I've just found the bestest photo of Lordi that I've seen in ages. Castle + monsters = win. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

WUS last night was completely off the sanity chart, since we got a prog set and a weird covers set right after each other. Word to the wise: don't cover Megadeth. You do not sound like Dave Mustaine, and consequently absolutely nothing you can do to the vocals will do anything but detract from the awesome. On the good side, I did get to headbang myself into rapturous oblivion to the Children of Bodom cover of Alice Cooper's Bed of Nails, which is one of the most brilliant things ever. There's this one moment in the chorus where the lead guitar line collides absolutely amazingly with the note Alexi's singing and it makes the back of my neck tingle every time. Eeeeeeeeee. *shivers*

There were also two (that I picked up) weird Manowar covers in there and now I have a terrible urge to listen to Manowar a lot. Okay, I don't think that's so terrible, but I bet everyone else does.

Meanwhile, I am so dead of tired right now. Luckily I am off work this afternoon. Downtime plz...

Laters,
Rath

Bon Jovi, Heartbreak Eyes.

This apparently is a lost demo from the first Bon Jovi album. The user who posted it has a ton of similar outtakes, demos and so on (man, gonna be here all night!), but Bon Jovi has a particular place in my heart, so this is something a little special for me.

Cos... one of the fucked up things, for me, about the invention of sound and video capture technology is that even while it gives us chance to have the past at our fingertips, it really rams home the fact that you can't have it all, ever. There's more material already on record than any one person could ever sift for everything they wanted to hear, and much of it locked in vaults or forgotten in attics where you couldn't get to it anyway; and that's before you start asking for the stuff that wasn't caught on the magic reels, the one-nights-only that nobody taped, the old episodes that the BBC threw out. The rehearsals where someone achieved that one perfect riff while the deck wasn't running.

And even what we do capture and get to general release, is never the same as being there. This is why I love eighties hair metal videos and watch them with tears in my eyes; they're like tiny perfect splinters, sent shattering to the winds when the nineties put a sledgehammer through my sonic birthright and sent the pieces flying through time on the precarious wings of VH1 Classic and fans' old tape collections. And somehow, miraculously, they survived until now, twenty years later, they can embed themselves under my skin and dump their small cargos of preserved light and sound and beauty into my veins. I'm staring through a Youtube-sized, pixellated window into an age that doesn't exist any more and probably never did outside the daydreams of a pack of fluffy-haired adolescents in tight trousers, and it hurts so much to know that it was broken before I ever got there - but I can never stop hunting for more pieces.

...maybe some part of me still does believe that one day I'll find them all and be able to put it back together. *soft smile*

Rath

If you can hear this sound somewhere in the distance:

./~BURN DOWN JERUSALEM
My wish is your command...!./~

it is almost certainly me singing along on the astral plane loudly enough to be actually audible. Cannot... stop... listening... to Dream Evil's Crusader's Anthem. And every time I play it I seem to be turning it up another notch.

Have not felt like this since was seventeen and playing air guitar while standing on bed listening to Dio and Manowar. Currently not sure which of mp3 player, heart, brain, and universe is going to explode first. \m/^_^\m/ ♥ ♥ ♥

SEND HELP. AND BIGGER SPEAKERS.

The Navigator

Lupie? Saw these and thought of you! (All SFW, the worst thing here is a lot of bare male torsos. *g*)

Servant of Tzeentch. Apparently one fairly high in his lord's favour, as well, to look at him. I absolutely love this.

Someone's version of the King in Yellow, whoa. I have no idea if this actually looks like him or not, btw, but that face(s) gives me the shivers. O_O

WOLF!

Necromancer type thing.

One in scarlet and one in white, which are so gorgeous I couldn't pick my favourite, and demonstrate exactly what you can do with a simple recolour. ♥

Meanwhile, as a matter of completely unrelated public record, I am currently listening to Hammerfall's Riders on the Storm and trying very hard to stay sitting down because it is a bloody awesome song. "Riders on the storm - one with the wind, defenders of creation-!"

Laters,
Rath

And, 'nother meme! This one from zeldenthuis. You comment, I give you a letter. You post five songs that start with that letter, ideally with some kind of upload or link!

Apparently, annoyingly few songs I love start with an R. >.> Still, I can cheat if I have to, because the word "Rock" does indeed start with an R...

( Onward! )

Actually, there are more I could've included, but I'll be good and stop. Anyone want a letter?

Laters,
The Navigator

I didn't post this when I got in last night in the end because it was late and I was exhausted. So Friday's six, first:

1. Finishing work for the holidays! This is very important, obviously.
2. Getting a pack of the bracelet-type glowsticks on our table at the Downing Christmas dinner! And being very amused that all my colleagues were too, ah, mainstream to know what they were and how to make them work. *g* I stole two green ones in honour of DX, and a pink and a blue one just for the hell of it.
3. The fact that the puddings at said Christmas dinner CAME UP THROUGH THE FLOOR. Murray Edwards College (aka New Hall), where we were eating, has a servery area that can be raised through the middle of the dining hall floor, and they used this to bring up the dessert plates! Dimmed lights, sparkthrowers on the corners of the counters, and the James Bond theme as an accompaniment (O_O) - it was a fantastic piece of spectacle. Whoever came up with that one deserves a bonus.
4. Managing, early in the evening, to hit the DJ with one of those long balloons that you blow up and let go of and they go flying across the room. SCORE! (I wasn't even aiming for him, but don't tell anyone.)
5. Playing air guitar to Status Quo in front of all my colleagues. Admittedly that was the only thing they played at the disco that called for air guitar at all, but still. And the video was up on the screens (Rockin' All Over The World, for the record) and my gods, the Quo boys were adorable when they were young. ^_^
6. Stopping off on the way home to lie on the grass out on the fens, just basking in the knowledge that I was free for the next two weeks. I love the night, and the sky, and being alone just sometimes.

Admittedly (lj)naranek stood me up for said dinner, but you can't have everything. *pokes and grins*

And today, ie Saturday:

1. Being on holiday, which is still making me happy!
2. The epic success that was the Triad early-Christmas-dinner. I made a full roast dinner with all the trimmings and ate until I can currently barely move. No fewer than FOUR kinds of pudding were involved. I rock.
3. Getting awesome Christmas presents from my friends, the absolute pinnacle of which has to be the pageful of chibis that deepbluesquee drew for me. There are no words for how thrilled I am with this.
4. Decorating the Christmas tree(s) and getting tinsel all over everything and everywhere, including on my own head (where it still is).
5. Spending the evening belting out Twisted Sister, Lordi, Zodiac Mindwarp, Blue Oyster Cult and Whitesnake. I fucking love proper hard rock. I love feeling my heart lift and my feet tap and not being able to do a damn thing to stop it. And I love how easy it is to do anything from cooking to dishes to cleaning when I've got something to sing along with, too. Best of the night had to be Whitesnake's Saints and Sinners, which was one of the first rock albums I ever owned (taped for me by my cousin when I was only about fourteen) and I always love to hear again. I'm such a sucker for good memories. ^_^
6. The simple delight of hanging out with people I love... and who can reduce me to laughing until I think I'm going to turn inside out. Never underestimate the joys of daft, perverted, and completely deranged friends.

So yeah. Good day. Gooooooood day. *contented sigh* How are you guys?

Hail Slaanesh and happy Christmas,
The Navigator

Dingo, House Without A Name - I would never have heard of this song if Lordi hadn't done very evil things to it. Thank you Lordi, as ever!

Domination Black, The House of 1000 Eyes - someone, somewhere, will love this song as much as I do. Right?

Also, I have succumbed to temptation and now own a DX belt buckle, as an early Christmas present to myself. Ah, DX shinies - the ultimate mixed message. "Yes! I'm a rebel - and I have twenty bucks worth of corporate merchandising right here to prove it!" ~~God knows god knows I love this perfect world...~~ ^_^

Rath

I can't, cos I'm in CB2s, but never mind, because I always knew the Eagles were cooler than people gave them credit for. This song is just... yes. Exactly like this, dammit!

And a tribute to the power of the OTP that is Google/Youtube, too! All I had of this song was the chorus refrain and a memory of how the guitars sounded, and from that, I found it in less than fifteen minutes. How cool is that?

Laters,
Rath