Iron Maiden-En Vivo!

The new The Mars Volta album wasn't the only album I picked up yesterday. The band that has grown to be one of my big favourites, Iron Maiden, have come out with a new release for the fifth year in a row.

Two of these records have been compilations, one has been a full length studio album and one of them was a live album.

The new release is entitled "En Vivo!" and this is also a live album (three years after the last one...) and it's a concert they did in Chile. I haven't listened to it yet and I'm not sure I ever will, I still haven't heard the "Flight 666" album... I'm not a huge fan of live albums actually, I prefer to listen to studio albums. I'll probably buy the "En Vivo" blu-ray so I can play it on our TV we'll just have to get a new soundsystem for the TV to make Iron Maiden (and other concert DVDs and blu-rays) justice!

Leaders of the extreme

On the front cover of Napalm Death's new album there's a sticker that says what the title of this blog post is.

ND have been around for nearly 30 years playing extreme music. They started out as a grindcore band and, except for some weird stuff in the 90's, that's what they've been since.

This record "Utilitarian" is their 15th full length! They sound as vital as ever. ND have in later years had a great mix of death metal and grindcore and this record builds on the same recipe. There are also a few surprises. How about a saxophone solo on a grindcore record!? Never thought I'd see that...

There's a great story about how this extremely influential band got back to their roots of playing grindcore again. That is one of when Shane Embury (ND's bass player since the 80's and competing with The Melvin's Buzz Osborne with the coolest hair do in music business) heard the debut album of a Swedish grindcore band Nasum. This really is a "build up" to a future blog about my Nasum collection...

Creation Records.

Wow, I wish I had ton of money at the moment. Alan McGee, the founder of Creation Records are auctioning of a bunch of his stuff. Think of the rare gems from the Creation days he must have lying around...

Read the post from Pitchfork.

Millencolin.

The skate punks in Millencolin are celebrating their 20th birthday this year.

They are celebrating this with a festival in their hometown, Örebro. Look at the bill! It looks awesome! Maybe I should pay my friend Jens a visit in June?

2011 best of list.

So my "best of the year" project turned out to be a little bit over ambitious. When you work full time and you've got a baby in the house time is quite limited. I decided to pu together a list of the ten best albums from last year. I won't rank them, but put them in alphabetical order.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Tao Of The Dead

The Black Keys - El Camino

Bon Iver - Bon Iver

Danava - Hemisphere Of Shadows

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light

The Haunted - Unseen

M83 - Hurry Up We're Dreaming 

Mastodon - The Hunter

Opeth - Heritage

PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Thåström!

Tomorrow I'll be getting this record!

It's the new Thåström album, for those of you who didn't know that... We got it in stock at the store today but I haven't been there today so I'll go tomorrow and pick up two copies waiting for me. One of each colour:)

Tomorrow there's also a record fair here in Tønsberg. It's a pretty small one so I probably won't buy anything but it's always fun to have a look and talk to some friends.

First buys of 2012.

We're nearly one and a half month in to 2012 and yesterday I bought the first records released this year.

The first one is the debut record of Lana Del Rey, "Born To Die". I first heard of her when my friend Markus made a post about her in his blog some time ago. I remember listening to that song but after that I didn't pay much more attention to her. That is until a few weeks ago.

We have VH1 here at home and I was zapping through the channels and I ended up stopping on VH1, almost being mesmerized by this woman in the video. The music was dark and rhythmic and the voice of this woman was pure beauty and really got to me. The woman singing was really beautiful and looked a lot like the typical pop queen and I thought to myself; "do I have a new guilty pleasure"?

When the video was coming to an end and it was revealed that it was the song "Video Games" by Lana Del Rey, I instantly remembered Markus' post and I had to go back to his blog and double check if this was the same woman.

After listening to the album a couple of times I've realised I have nothing to feel guilty about. The record is really good and Markus mentioned David Lynch in one of his posts about Lana which I think is really fitting!

The other record I bought yesterday is from the Norwegian prog rock veterans Motorpsycho. This is a collaborarion with Ståle Storløkken (mostly known from the experimental jazz group Supersilent) and they deliver a solid prog rock album as always. I haven't had the chance to give it enough listens as a record of this calibre deserves so I will have to get back on that matter later.

I was also looking forward to picking up the last album by Mark Lanegan but it sold so good this week that we didn't have anymore copies. I'll have to wait a few days until I get it. The first single "The Grabedigger's Song" sounds extremely promising!