Music & Gods

In general, music, like many other things, is 90% crap. I tend to fluctuate with my musical preferences and degree with which I seek out new music. With the summer coming up, and the big concerts coming around, now is as good a time as any for me to "get back into" music as it were. Next month I'll be seeing Judas Priest and Queensryche and later in the summer I'm going to Ozzfest. I've never seen Priest or Queensryche, but I've been a fan of both bands for a while. I happen to think Priest's Painkiller is one of the best metal albums of the 90s, one of those rare albums without a clunker of a song. And I listened to Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime so many times on tape, my tape wore out. Mindcrime was one of the very first CDs I purchased when I finally got a CD-player.

As for Ozzfest, even though the guys in Black Sabbath are pretty old, they are probably one of my top 5 bands, ever. Metal and Hard Rock started with Sabbath and I don't think that type of music would sound the way it does without the early music of Sabbath. I've seen Iron Maiden twice and again, an older bunch of guys, but still one of the 2 or 3 best live acts I have seen. I've been getting into Shadows Fall and I'm looking forward to seeing Jersey native Zakk Wylde and his Black Label Society. BLS's newest song, Suicide Messiah has a great riff. The other band on the first stage I like is Mudvayne. The second stage is headlined by Rob Zombie, who I saw with Ozzy a couple of years ago. Most of the other bands on the second stage I've heard once or twice and haven't really formed an opinion, positive or negative.

A band I've been hearing a few times the past week on local hard rock/metal station 89.5 WSOU is Nightwish, and I am really liking them. I think I need to acquire some of their music.

Two bands I would really like to see tour together are Shinedown and Godsmack. I've seen Godsmack twice, and I'm kicking myself for NOT seeing Shinedown this past Christmas at the Starland Ballroom.

On a non-music note, I have to say, Mrs. Blog o' Stuff is the best. She has always supported and indulged just about every hobby, fancy and form of geekery I get myself worked up about. Anyway, Monday marked, cumulatively speaking, 10 years together for us. As I've blogged before, I've been really looking forward to the PS2 game, God of War. Well, super-cool-hottie wife that she is, she got the game for me. It is absolutely amazing. It is fun, amazingly rendered and the difficulty is just about right, at least for now. All told, a very cool game.