Sleep my child

Work is easier when you have friends you actually give a shit about around you in the office and easier still when music keeps you company. Specially when the sky is as beautiful and grey as the one outside my window every morning.

Opeth - Death Whispered A Lullaby
Opeth at their best, I've been listening to them from the passenger seat of a car speeding through an autumn street


Opeth - In My Time Of Need
Again, Opeth, I wish more albums were like Damnation


Khanate - Dead
Oh, so many layers on this one. Listening to these guys is like listening to Black Sabbath for the first time when I was only 10, just scares me into a trance.


Tristania - Libre
Yes, I'm into this whole goth with a twist thing at the moment


Therapy - Screamager
But, after a couple of hours or three of metal-ish stuff, I need my Andy Cairns fix


The Gathering - Locked Away
And my Anneke Van Giersbergen fix too. This one for the retarded elf that makes me smile from time to time. Aragorn is a jerk that doesn't know what's good for him, girl.

Autumn leaves

I'm on my fifth hot cup of coffee, sipping down the fact that it's actually autumn time.

Take it away Beth

Beth Gibbons And Rustin Man - Sand River



Autumn leaves
Beauty's got a hold on me
Autumn leaves
Pretty as can be

Everybody knows this time
Shadows are drifting in silence
Where lost can't be found
Everybody knows this time

You'll get by
Move it on and let fate decide
And those water-coloured memories
Soft as a summer's breeze
You're as pretty as can be

Knowing now you'll never fake it
Whether my oceans divide
I'll try to understand this
But everybody knows this time

Everyone can see
Everyone except me

Autumn leaves
Beauty's got a hold on me
Autumn leaves
Pretty as can be

Hopelessly in love

with this season, this weather and the beauty and grace of nature's dying.

To very special people.


The Gathering - Electricity



I send your name
up into the sky
And the wind blows it
back into my face

You see, even nature
reacts on me
And all my electricity
will make it across your sea

With every wave the sea makes
My body gets weaker
and weaker... and weaker...

You see, even nature
reacts on me
And all my electricity
will make it across your sea

And provide you
with my love



Cheers

Leonard Cohen and Bjork can seriously damage your chances of ever getting back to earth

First, Leonard Cohen. Got the bus from the train station, me and friend exhausted from work, tried to get a nap on the drive to Malakassa, didn't exactly work. We arrived at Terra Vibe half an hour before the show, got a good spot corner spot on the wooden benches by the arena and waited. Lost and lots of people waiting with us, people of very diverse backgrounds, different ages, lots of, um, senior citizens let's say, the good kind, the ones that know all the lyrics to all the songs and are not afraid to sing them aloud. Lots of kids as well, a very diverse crowd. Leonard got a very warm welcome, greeted the crowd in flawless greek and, with his deep voice, concluded "Κι εγώ σας αγαπώ αλλά νηστεύω" and instantly won the hearts of everyone that wasn't a convert already. The concert started with Dance Me To The End Of Love and, looking at the moody smiles that immediately formed into people's faces and the way their eyes changed, their faces changed, their whole body changed to form a collective sigh, I was reminded of Kurt Cobain's line in Pennyroyal Tea "Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld / So I can sigh eternally". To be honest, I am not a big fan of Cohen's music per se, but I am a fan of the man himself, mostly for all his other traits, his poetry most of all. But after two and a half hours of melancholy under a clear, starry summer sky, breathing the air of the forest, listening to songs like Gypsy Wife, you fall in love with it all, you have no choice. The guy was awesome, besides the fact that he actually played for around 3 hours, he kept taking his hat off and bowing to the crowd after every other song, he introduced the band, literally showering his musicians with complimentary adjectives around 20 times, he was truly amazing. Also, Terra Vibe may suck for all of us that have no car but the place is quite nice and the sound is much much better than one might expect with the open space and all.



The next day, Bjork (Gudmundsdottir, don't you just love that "dottir" part? Does it not make more sense than her being called Gudmundsson?). The prospect of Bjork's quiet-to-loud voice dynamics bouncing around a basketball court scared me a bit but I was glad to be proven wrong. We got there a bit late and sneaked into the VIP lounge where we saw various semi-celebrities and socialites but had a nice view. We missed the support act that was an awesome Icelandic girl alone with her guitar and her ukelele that actually managed to get the crowd involved and even made us try out singing in greco-icelandic. Trying to figure out who she was cause I liked her a lot. Bjork came out around 20 minutes later, after a prelude by her all female brass band, the clown-like Wonderbrass and started off the concert with Earth Intruders. There were banners portraying what appeared to be a big salmon, Bjork's face was painted and she was wearing what seemed to be alluminum gift wrapping. Surreal anyone? Anyhow, impressive as all the imagery may have been, with the lazer show and the projections and the colorful stage, the concert reached its peak on Army Of Me, at which point Bjork had the whole stadium dancing and screaming and climaxed on Hyperballad and Pluto, and that was it. But the thing is, you can't not pay attention to her, it's her voice, it's as if you can hear it coming from an abyss, you just can't not be drawn into the music, and once you're there, it's, I don't know, quaint as it may appear, it's as if you're one with the universe, it's like a whole new perception, it's like LSD without LSD. I don' t know, many people complained about the stadium, about the support, about the show lasting only an hour and ten minutes, about her not playing their favorite songs (no Violently Happy, no Human Behaviour, no All Is Full Of Love), but I say, fuck it, it was the best concert of this summer, and if you were there and didn't leave the place floating around, too bad cause you missed it all.



With that, what was probably the most fruitful concert summer for me ends here. August is empty, it was nice but now it's over. Kind of sad, but there's autumn ahead, who knows?

Lacuna Coil

Me and two metalhead friends decided to pay the 60 euro tickets and go to the Rock'em All festival last week. The lineup was Pain Of Salvation, Moonspell, Messugah, Lacuna Coil, Iced Earth and Venom. I went strictly for Lacuna Coil, don't care a bit about the other bands and in fact I'd rather stay home and watch flies fuck over seeing Venom play.

The festival had been transfered from Lycabetus to Gazi which was nice for me since there would be a lot of space to escape when all the other bands played. Lots of people waited outside, even more people inside, everyone in black, hadn't been around that kind of an audience in a while and, ok, I admit it was nice to see they're still around. They are after all the largest audience in Greece, bigger than punks, bigger than the whole alternative bunch, way bigger than hip-hop and the electro crowd, in fact, in terms of market value (consumption of records and paraphernalia, concert attendance, etc) they may be worth more than the generic pop crowd as well.

First thing I noticed when the three of us met is that the only non-metalhead, me, was the only one that actually looks like one. One of my friends came with a white Polo-like shirt and trendy sunglasses and the other one with a normal pair of jeans, a plain black t-shirt and, again, trendy sunglasses. None of them has long hair or a raging bush of a beard. And there I was, dressed in black, long hair and a beard. I should have worn the purple Dinosaur Jr t-shirt.

There's a weird thing about metalheads. You can find tons of ethereal, succubus-like girls, pulling that dark grace card on you, but the guys always reminded me of orcs. Weird.

Anyway, I didn't catch Pain Of Salvation, I caught Moonspell though, yawned my ass off through their set. Messugah were interesting in a technical sense but nothing I'll remember in a few weeks.

Lacuna Coil, the one and only reason I went to that festival, were awesome. Much, much better than I expected, my only complaint is that they only played for what, 35-40 minutes. But they played Heaven's A Lie, my personal favorite and there set was the only time in that concert when you could see people that didn't exactly fit the typical metalhead stereotype converge to see the band play. Cristina Scabbia was as awesome as you'd expect (ok, it helps that she's pretty) and I found out that I'm actually not the only one that thinks this other singer dude, Andrea Ferro, is not exactly the highlight of the band's performances. At one point he said to the crowd "In Italy we say about greeks 'una faca, una raca'", to which a member of the audience replied "In Greece we say 'fuck you Italy'". Yeah, he's not that popular. I assume if Cristina had said the same thing the response would have been somewhat different. Double standards, but hey, whatever.

Anyway, unfortunately Lacuna Coil lasted only 40 minutes and then it was Iced Earth. I got my ass out of the crowd, found a quiet spot under some light, sat down and tried to read Mayakovsky's 'My Discovery Of America'. I was making some serious progress on that book until a group of guys decided to remind me why I never got into metal in the first place. They sat right next to me and started talking about pussy. If I had a nickle for every time they uttered the word pussy.

"So, dude, what are you doing this summer". "Oh, I'm going to this island". "What for dude?". "Pussy". "Alright man, high five". "You know what I had for breakfast? Pussy and orange juice".
"You know what's better than pussy? Two pussies". "Har har har, pussy".

Pussy this, pussy that, I felt seriously unmanly after 10 minutes of the whole thing. Anyway, even my metalhead friends were bored after Iced Earth and we left without seeing Venom. Thank god.

Swamped (anyone remember Vampire : Bloodlines?)


Heaven's A Lie (crowd went nuts on this one)


Enjoy The Silence (never liked Depeche Mode)