Leaked Happiness from the Veins of Musical Genius

Okay, so over the past couple of weeks... about three actually hehe, some awesome albums from some of my favorite bands have been leaked all over the internet. Now, today the new single from Iced Earth was leaked. Since, I have loved Iced Earth since oh about the 8th Grade I was all over it. This new coming album marks the return of their old lead singer who was on such albums as The Dark Saga, Horror Show, and well... all of my favorite albums. :-). Now from this new songs on this EP I can only say we have a lot of good stuff in store forus as far as Iced Earth goes! I'll do a play by play of the songs here for ya.

I Walk Alone - Not a typical Iced Earth song. Starts of with some heavy melodic chords, then some nice heavy palm muting. Not typical lyrics either, "Fallacies of man" and "Dying in the purest form" being some cool lines from the song. I recommend everyone listening to this song who has similar views on politics as I do. This song pretty much just talks about everything I've been saying for a long time. Mankind is a very dishonest species, and we don't care about each other the way we need to. According to the song "I am the truth, and I walk alone." Whats even better about this song is that I feel like Schaffer is helping people grow as musicians still, the guitar solo from Troy Seele was really melodic and slow, but still kept that flair that is Iced Earth. Overall, an awesome song.

Setian Massacre - Really Fast Paced and fun song. Awesome guitar solo, reminds me of well, I can't think of it right now but I feel like I've heard these tricks before. Still, awesome solo. There's a typical backing rhythm throughout the entire song which is my only complaint. But that is one of the typical things from Iced Earth, they always make up for it with everything else. Like the awesome vocal harmonics throughout the song, and the way the guitars can harmonize with the vocals... which is awesome. Overall, not as good as "I walk Alone" but still awesome.

The Clouding - Really soft introduction, sounds very cool though. I'd love to actually see how this would be played live, there's even a slide guitar in the intro. Barlowe's voice is actually beautiful on this track and the harmonizing between Schaffer and Barlowe is just awesome. A wonderful and soft song, something we don't hear from Iced Earth very often. Very nice utilization of harmonizations between the instruments, and nice use of the slide guitar. Starts getting heavy around 5:30... oh man... awesome heavy build up. Really cool use of chord progressions in these heavier parts. You can still feel the old Iced Earth, but you know it's a new game. They even say "We'll never be the same" when the awesome guitar licks are being laid down. Wow, listening to this I realize where I got my influence in some of the things I've written on guitar over the years. Which really isn't a bad thing.

So overall, what can I give this EP? I'd say 8.5 - 9, but I'm only going off of 3 awesome songs here. I could have easily said 7.5 - 8, but I figured since I realized where some of my influences came from I'd give them a little extra. This is a really good EP though, and I recommend it to all of the Iced Earth listeners. If you enjoyed The Glorious Burden you should enjoy this EP, even though it's a lot different. Ehh, Just go out and buy the damn thing...

I wanted to do a review Opeth's new album, but someone already did a review of it which totally agrees with everything I would have said. The guy who runs Questionable Content, one of my favorite web comics also runs a music blog called "Yelling About Music" and his latest entry was Opeth, here's the link Yelling About Music. So if you enjoy Opeth and Iced Earth, you should back here once in a while... I think I'm just going to be doing my own music Blog... and well still have my little journal entries too, but still a lot of music as well.

Misunderstandings...

I really don't understand life sometimes. I know I've done things in the past that have always caught up with me... and it seems that they are finally catching up with me now. I had this wonderful friend for about two years and for most of our relationship we liked each other. Only I had a girlfriend. I left the girlfriend though to be with this new girl... and I now know exactly how my ex girlfriend. I was left, alone. While this new girl still wants to be best of friends with me, and she said if she feels the same way again she wants me to be the first to know so we can be together again... she says for now we need to be best of friends because she fell out of love with me. I don't know what else I should do. I have confidence that her and I will get back together, and I really hope and feel that her and I are together forever. We were supposed to be... she told me first that she wanted to be with me forever. I can't be angry with her though... I really can't. I feel so much for her that I just can't be angry with her... but it doesn't stop me from drinking a 6-pack of Sam Adams tonight... it won't stop me. I'll also be going to the gym everyday from now on since the only thing that restricts me now is my band. I love my band and I have the feeling that we will get famous some day... There's too much talent in the band for it not to be recognized. I have an awesome voice according to people... Mikey is just one of the best guitarists I have ever heard, Matt is awesome bassist... and he was never classically trained or anything... and Mick who has been playing drums since he came out of the womb is just awesome... I need to still have hope for everything... I don't know how to be emo so I can't sit here and think that the world is going to end because the love of my life left me. If it was really meant to be then she will come back to me, she will find her way back to me. I wish I really understood how love worked, because then maybe I'd stop hurting from all of this... but it's something that we have to deal with. It'll be fine one day I guess. Until then I think that everyone should come out and see "Man Who Flies" this Saturday in Syracuse... We are playing at a place called Funk N' Waffles. It's going to be awesome. Hope to see everyone there.

A Day of Life

So today, in particular, I am feeling rather melancholic. Now it's not depression but it's not entirely thoughtful either. I'll tell you what happened today, a day in the life. I finished my proposal for a class this morning and I spent most of last night recording the song I needed to submit as part of the proposal. I bring the proposal in, they tell me that most of the work I've done is probably to no avail seeing how I cannot properly function Flash and Photoshop. I didn't mention this is an ART CLASS, being strictly music wasn't good enough when I first submitted my initial draft. Now that they know I'm not good at ART though they tell me "Oh, it's okay. Just do the music." Now this, to me, sounds like they're saying to me "Oh you're damaged. You don't know how to do ART. Just do whatever sounds good then." What they are not considering is that MUSIC IS AN ART FORM JUST AS MUCH AS THAT OTHER BULLSHIT IS. Oh jeese, red on orange over a white background is sooo pretty isn't it? Compared to music though? Music takes it's place any time. Yea, whatever though. So my project is writing manifestos for the song's talking about how they relate back to the topics at hand. EASY PROJECT.

MOVING ON!!

Then later I spent two hours talking to my buddies and one of the cleaning ladies at our school about politics. I always seem to make politics funny even if I'm being completely serious. Mainly because the government, THE US GOVERNMENT, is just ridiculously silly. Imagine, the country goes from being one of the world's super powers to being felt sorry for by other countries... being hated by them was commonplace a long time ago. And you know, this country is being bought up by other countries in order for the country to feel better? Does anyone ever notice this stuff? NOPE. Not at all... it's the news under the news. I understand that most people don't like the news. I don't understand why and I don't understand how people can consider Brittney Spears or her douche bag sister news versus the crisis going on in our backyard. It's going to destroy this country that people care more about actresses, actors, musicians, and train wrecks more than they care about their own populous and their own well-being. Oh well.

So, I've been writing a good deal of poetry lately. I stopped doing it for a while because I had nothing to write about. I felt false, I felt fake. Since this is a kind of private blog though, I can actually post stuff up here without feeling guilty about the stuff I put up here. There's nothing to post at the moment... but I'll definitely post some of my recent poetry on here.

Introduction and Initial Rant

Hi, so I'm new to this whole Blogging thing but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. As of late I find myself with a lack of people to talk to and a even more lack of things to do. So I figured I could introduce myself to all of you... the imaginary people on the internet. Deep inside the shy kid I was in Junior High is saying "Oh Boy! I hope they like me!" and the person I am now is saying "Who cares? I don't know any of these people. They're just silent observers to my rantings." So if your all silent, then I know your imaginary.

Anyways, this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce myself. Hi!! I'm Ryan and I'll be your blogger this evening. At the moment I'm sick... I have some stupid Esophageal condition that makes me barf up greasy food, so as of late I've been pretty sick. So sick, lonely = bored... boredom = blog! Yea... so my own boredom converted me to the Blogosphere... I'm going to have to get one of those "Bomb The Blogosphere" T-Shirts from Questionable Content now. I'll tell you a little about myself really quick.

I'm 22... Sagittarius, and I get bored easily. I read almost 2-300 pages a week without typically getting a break. I'm an English Major, so that's pretty much all I do. When I was younger I was reading my Mothers Psychology and Philosophy books rather than reading most typical children's lit books. My brother taught me to read when I was 4 and I felt that it was better to read good stuff rather than childish stuff. I did read Goosebumps though. I had all of them... until Goosebumps like 99 or whatever, that book with the ugly black cat on the cover (i think)... when R.L. Stine started sucking. Just so you know I'm beginning to rant... and this is a mild one. I'm on radio and I've been known to rant for an entire hour straight about why religions of all kind are bad.

Now its not that I think religions themselves are bad. Sure, people follow the light right off the empire state buildings sometimes. And that's EXACTLY what I think is wrong with religions. People who choose to follow texts and scriptures by the book; non-translatable and non-changeable. That's a load of crap and the rest of the world knows it... at least us Atheists know it. And I don't want to hear that bull crap about evolution is fake because Darwin converted on his death bed... because he didn't. That Nun who spent his last 6 months alive trying to convert him told that story to preach "faith and understanding." It's bullshit. People need to figure the world out for themselves. You don't need religion to do it and you don't need to study science, although it's pretty highly recommended. People need to discover that the world is a place of the unimaginable and wondrous. Walt Whitman said that he was a part of the world and a part of the world he would be forever and I couldn't agree more. We all belong to the world so we need to embrace it.

I caught myself in ignorance of my own logic. I don't really practice what I preach because I've done so much with my life already. I've traveled, gone into several branches of the working environment, driven cross country, played live shows with bands, been in competitions and won, OH and I do Voices. So I guess I've practiced what I think everyone should do. Everyone should also watch all movies, including horror because if you keep your kids from watching horror at a young age they'll more sensitive to the actions and words of people than say like... ME hehe. I was raised on horror movies, Scooby Doo, Heavy Metal and Country Music. Now look at me... I'm a rockstar! Well anyways... I think that's enough of a would be rant for the night. Goodnight blog readers... if there ever are any... I know you're all imaginary :-).