A Bit of Explanaition

On Tony's last day visiting Illinois him, me, and Kyle came up with the quick and desperate idea that we should have a music blog where we can share with each other what music is worth listening to.

I hoped that it would broaden my scope of taste as well as anyone else who was interested in keeping our musical interests somewhat synchronized, that way when we get visits from the likes of Tony (or anyone else for that matter) referring us to the likes of Feargal Sharkey we are not so taken aback. So if you were invited to author this blog and are wondering "what the hell?" just know that the vision of this blog is to have an expansive network of opinions and musical interests, including mostly people who have come to 1800 and partied, but also anyone else worth affiliating through work, school, or other channels.

In other words, administrative rights will be given to those who ask, as I do not wish to be directly responsible for administrating this blog, but am happy to have actually started it. Make sure to tell your friends or forward me their email addresses, as I'm sure we'd all be happy to have them here.

Rock on people.

A Sense of Purpose

In Flames, a band from Sweden, representing a genre sometimes dubbed 'melodic death metal,' released a CD in early 2008. It has become something of a controversy to those who have listened to the album as to whether or not this is their strongest offering ever. One long time fan claims: "This is my favorite In Flames album." However, haters have labeled this album emo. I think however, if one is opened to the style of this kind of music, that songs from this album will only sound better as time moves forward.

In older days "melodic death metal" functioned primarily on melodies from guitar tone, with seldom any tone coming from the singer's voice. Now, the reason why I bring this up is because the singer in this band, Anders, has come into his own not only as an artist, song writer, and lyricist, but as an extremely competent and versatile singer. I'm not talking about Tony's delusional, high pitched blazing screams of a retard. Anders is the real deal. His creativity is highlighted particularly on an 8 minute track of his design, the longest In Flames song ever recorded entitled The Chosen Pessimist.

This is definitely one of those albums that is nearly perfect from beginning to end. Musically very technical and fast, however also juiced with excellent guitar tone, catchy hooks, and short yet sweet guitar solos. The lyrics are something I've been wanting to talk about for a long time. The nature of most of the themes are a fear of lost control, losing self identity, and franticness. These emotions are seldom associated with musical inspiration, yet find a home perfectly in In Flames' new offering.

As with all things metal, it's all about the delivery and another really neat thing about A Sense of Purpose is the Album art. In Flames are professionals, and took a bit of a dare when they chose Alex Pardee to handle art direction, but the dare worked out perfectly because he inscribed all the lyrics in crazy handwriting that is different for every song, as well as included flares of color, appropriately illustrating In Flames trademark musical infusion of the strange color that goes with the dark things in life. Check out Alex Pardee's website if you wanna see some fucked up shit!

There was a DVD " making of..." released with the digipack. In Flames have their own studio in Sweden where they pretty much took a month to hang out together, party, and made this CD. Their past two CDs were not created this way, which may explain why I didn't listen to those albums much either. My favorite songs include, Sleepless Again, Delight and Angers, and March to the Shore, but I urge all interested to give this a listen from beginning to end, it's a real fired up and emotional experience.