So I'm currently stuck trying to make the next few days go by as fast as possible. In my efforts to calm myself down I've been listening to Bruce Dickinson's solo work, if you don't know who he is, he's the lead singer of one of the most epic and legendary bands ever to grace God's good earth: Iron Maiden. I just recently rediscovered this old gem on youtube, when I first heard this song I was obsessed with it. One of the first songs I learned on guitar all the way through, gave me chills everytime, just thought I'd share it with you!

Monday wails its Siren song

Ok so by now most people in university are done exams, for the world being the way it is...I am not. I'm stuck writing my last two exams both on monday and I'm currently taking up residence in the library.

You know how in cartoons or television in general how students are often depicted with skyscrapers consisting of books and notes around them? Well that's what my little hole in the wall in the silent room looks like. I'm stuck writing my last paper to hand in monday morning and I'm usually content with 8 sources or so on top of my primary sources, it's only 2000 words...big deal. I have around double that amount! I know I shouldn't be complaining, but I've been doing this for the past month, so you can see why I might be just a tad on the insane side...fan-bloody-tastic!

Respect!

Walk:

Lyrics by Pantera

Can't you see I'm easily bothered by persistence
One step from lashing out at you...
You want in to get under my skin
And call yourself a friend
I've got more friends like you
What do I do?

[Pre]
Is there no standard anymore?
What it takes, who I am, where I've been
Belong
You can't be something you're not
Be yourself, by yourself
Stay away from me
A lesson learned in life
Known from the dawn of time

Respect, walk

Run your mouth when I'm not around
It's easy to achieve
You cry to weak friends that sympathize
Can you hear the violins playing you song?
Those same friends tell me your every word

Are you talking to me?
No way punk

On the Wednesday the Lord said, "Let there be metal!" And there was METAL!!

Today is my brief respite from constant paper writing and studying...welcome to my nightmare.

What I inscribe into the hallowed tracts of this blog is a summation of probably the best way to finish off classes for the year! 

Wednesday marked my last day of classes, and to mark that celebration all I had to do after my last class was take a little walk down to the other side of campus to the new arena where the hordes of metalheads were held at bay before the ensuing chaos. I found it quite amusing as I walked through campus. The ams blockparty was off in full swing, with some crap band that I've never bothered to pay any attention to, the roots or something like that...meh. The field was frickin packed with students, probably most of em drunk out of their minds (I was driving so I didn't bother). As I walked further on I finally found em: metalshirts, spikes, tattoos, raucious screaming, metal horns....what a night it will be. The really funny thing was that as we all took over the corners and streets along the new thunderbird arena, all the frats were heading down to the block party...loved seeing all the stares as they tried in their drunken entirety to avoid us. 

Ended up meeting with Chris and Elaine, seeing that this was their first metal concert experience, it looked like they had quite the first impression. Met up with my bro and proceeded to get in line, running into an old buddy from my last job as well. Once we got in we didn't really bother with the first band who was already playing at the time, Municipal waste. Spent the time instead grabbing some sick merch. God forbid went on next, pretty solid band. I wonder how much "greenery" the vocalist scored, he only asked 5 times when he said they'll be at the merch section in between sets. As they set up for the next set I get a text from my friend Kurt, who called me when he was at the block party when he heard there was a metal show goin on at the same time, kinda funny how i asked him a few months ago if he wanted to go and he said he'll be too busy. Sure enough the text says he's in the arena, perfect freakin timing bud haha, and he was sitting right in front of us a few rows down, so he joins up with us for As I lay Dying. Awesome band, I've listened to them before, not as much but they played a very solid set, gotta listen to em more.

Finally the next band to go on was Children of Bodom, what else can I say? Saw em last year at gigantour, and just like last time they absolutely tore it up, except this time we were a lot closer to the band, and I saw Chris' eyes light up like a kid's at christmas, I could tell she was happy! This was when I started thrashing around, headbangin to the max. Songs like Silent Night Bodom night, Angels Don't Kill, In your Face, Hate Me, Bloodrunk, Hellhounds on my trail. To finish it off, Randy from Log came out to commemorate a special date, that night was Alexi Laiho's bday! This promptly brought about a concerted happy 30th birthday greeting from everyone, don't get any more historic than that! To end it off they went right into Downfall, the same song I almost got whiplash from last year! Awesome show as usual.

Security was pretty crappy though in the set, funniest example was when a fight broke out among two guys who were badmouthing each other, few punches into the head and a tackle, it took like 30 seconds for security to jump in. All of the arena starts to chant and cheer as they're dragged off, just to enhance the comic aspect some random guy walks out past em with pop and popcorn and waves his hands around (cf. Rocky victory pose) resulting in the whole crowd laughing and cheering at him.

Finally Lamb of God started their set, fully took advantage of the stage (had a platform set up around Chris Adler, and a red carpet rolling out in front, dominated by their awesome logo behind the drums, so cool when Mark Morton, John Campbell, and Willie Adler all surrounded the drums). They started playing the acoustic intro from their new album Wrath (Can't stop listening to it, so damn good), and went right into "In your hands". Right away the crowd went nuts, circle pits opening up everywhere, crowd surfing, the whole package. In Randy's ever present opinion we were told once again how Vancouver is the band's favourite canadian city and how we always support them, the reason why they always come back to us first. I always love how the band has such a connection with the fans, especially in one of their fav cities. I was pretty much screaming and headbanging to everything, my neck is still healing from all that. Halfway through the set randy announces to the crowd that Britney Spears (who was playing at GM place at the same time) walked off on her gig 20 minutes into the set due to too much pot smoke, way to go for being the anti-drug activist you freakin hypocrite. So after tearing into her and the general laughing we are reassured that that will never happen at a Lamb of God show. Funny thing was after that, some chick jumps onto the stage and starts dancing around. "look everybody it's Britney Spears' body double courtesy of crystal meth!" before security dragged her off stage. Finally "even though Canada is such an awesome place, you guys can still act like a buncha rednecks!" and then the riff goes into "redneck," crowd went freakin nuts as they used that song to finish off their set and go into "Black Label". Then I saw something that hasn't happened in years, without the band's direction, the crowd separates and form the much dreaded WALL OF DEATH, youtube it if you don't know about it, pretty much picture a lord of the rings fight scene where two sides smash into each other. Left with the humbling image of Randy standing on the stage bowing and kneeling as we chanted "LAMB OF GOD" long past the house lights going up, you can definitely tell that there is a lot of truth towards what he said earlier about how freaking awesome Vancouver is. Definitely one of the best ways to finish off the school year!

Just a case of the mondays

Ok so this morning, I had another unfortunate run in with a transit gongshow. Last week on friday, a body was found at the foot of the ubc highway, turns out it was a murder in broad daylight, the victim was the sister of a vancouver mayoral candidate last year, so it's been pretty high profile. Unfortunate as it is, the cops and investigators have decided to block off the whole area, until friday at least. So this morning as I woke from my nap on the bustrip to class, I found out that we had to get rerouted, unfortunately that route took us down Dunbar, in the morning rush...fantastic. The result? Well it did add an extra 40 min or so to get down to campus, where going along the highway where we originally were supposed to go, would have taken 5 min. I ended up missing my first class, and was late for my next one, awesome! 

Upside to today though, I think God finally decided to flip a switch or something...Spring is officially here and the weather today was AWESOME! Didn't have to wear a jacket, got to enjoy walking to class, spent some quality best friend/ 2nd family time on the knoll, and I did enjoy my smoothie that for some bizzare reason exploded in the Bread Garden when they were making it. It was an actual explosion, smoothie flew like 8 feet from the girl, felt so bad when she was covered in the stuff and she was freaking out asking if i was ok! that is service right there!

Hooked on greatness

So I'm currently going out of my mind with finishing my term papers. Classes finish next week, and the celebrate I just have to take a brisk stroll down campus to the new arena. Lamb of God and Children of Bodom...need i say more? Can't freaking wait, LOG totally killed it when opening for metallica back in december and I'm totally digging their new album, Wrath (it is a welcome return to their roots). When I saw Bodom at Gigantour last year, first time seein em...loved it when they did their old stuff, not to mention their cover of Don't stop Believin! Quite excited for next week.

In other music related stuff, I stayed up late last night when I saw that Les Claypool (the bass genius behind Primus) was performing on kimmel. Holy crap it was pretty damn cool. I'm not usually a fan of abstract weirdo freak music, but Les has always been an amazing musician nonetheless, these new tracks though have surely grabbed a hold of my attention. Check out the vid below of him performing his new single, "Red state Girl."