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happymetalgirl · 4 years

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July 2020

Machine Head - Civil Unrest

On this two-song EP, Robb Flynn once again leans into spur-of-the-moment inspiration in an effort to jolt Machine Head out of the creative fatigue that plagued the polarizing Catharsis, but unfortunately the approach that didn’t really work for “Volatile” doesn’t really work for “Stop the Bleeding” or “Bulletproof”, and it all adds up upon the revelation that these songs are constructed from scraps off the Catharsis kitchen floor. Robb’s finger is on the pulse of the tension underlying American politics and his heart is in the right place (which I commend him for his steadfastness to in the face of the apparently sizable chud subset of Machine Head’s fanbase), he just needs to take his delivery a little off the nose. Of the two songs, “Bulletproof” is definitely the stronger and more hard-hitting, while the goofy 2000′s metalcore melodicism of “Stop the Bleeding” meshes poorly with the grim subject matter Robb attaches to the track. In the grand scheme of Machine Head’s career, this EP (and the two non-album singles that preceded it last year) is disappointing filler that does nothing to lift the band out of the dry creative well they’ve found themselves in.

5/10

Khemmis - More Songs About Death, Vol. 1

A much more solid two-track EP, Khemmis’ More Songs About Death, Vol. 1 is comprised of a groovy cover of Misfits’ “Skulls” and an acoustic rendition of the folk song, “A Conversation with Death”, that the band had covered electrically for a split they did with Spirit Adrift. The band adapt well to the more original acoustic style of the latter song, as soulful as ever even with acoustic subtlety replacing their open-hearted doom metal. As for the Misfits cover, the band apply their signature harmonic doom guitar work to give it a signature seal while adhering to the core foundation of the song, and they show that the song does take to their brand of doom quite well. After Desolation and being signed to Nuclear Blast, Khemmis sure were excited to get working on their fourth LP. Now that of course sits on the list of many projects the pandemic has forcefully postponed, but these kinds of offerings and the band’s hinting that they might just come out of this with two albums’ worth of material is helping make the wait a little more bearable. Thank you as always, Khemmis.

more respect to Khemmis/10

Inter Arma - Garbers Days Revisited

Coming off the back of their magnum opus, Sulphur English, Inter Arma’s offering to hold the quarantined world over until the band’s next opus is a quick (by their standards) covers album of metal and hardcore classics, as well as some surprising classic and southern rock tunes. And the band manage the eight diverse songs with an impressive display of two-way adaptability. Turning “The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill” into a blackgaze blast-beat fest and “Scarecrow” and into a crushing blackened sludge-doom epic while layering their atmospheric black metal smoothly over the old-school rock grooves of Neil Young’s “Southern Man” Inter Arma show an aptitude for selecting cover songs that fit their style. It sure helps that they’re a versatile act too, bending their mammothian heaviness to suit the core appeal of covers of Cro-Mags’ “Hard Times”, Nine Inch Nails’ “March of the Pigs”, and Venom’s “In League with Satan” while shedding all that sludge to expose their southern rock roots on (slightly) more stripped back tunes like “Runnin’ Down a Dream” and Prince’s “Purple Rain” (a closer so fittingly beautiful it seems almost unfair), which find them embellishing soulfully and clearly enjoying themselves in the studio. A lineup of tracks like this would make be nervous for whatever band was trying to tackle them, but Inter Arma prove that can shapeshift back to their southern roots just as well as they can bulldoze as needed to do their own justice to these several tracks, making for one of the best cover albums I’ve heard for a while.

8/10

This Will Destroy You - Vespertine

Serving as a soundtrack project for a highly rated California This Will Destroy You seemingly took a long time with this project, having released the “Kitchen” single in 2017 under the same premise. The album is entirely ambient, and not quite as experimental with glitchy electro-ambiance as projects like Tunnel Blanket or Another Language were. Instead, Vespertine highlights the serene/somber atmospheric foundation of the band’s post-metal/rock sound that made the Young Mountain EP and their self-titled LP such transcendent experiences and exemplary advocates for post-rock upon their release. And it’s a great display of just how the band’s discernible ambient style can shine through even such a minimal approach. It is basic ambient music for sure, no additives, but it’s unmistakably This Will Destroy You to those who know them, and it hearkens back to some of their best work, so I see it as a welcome addition to the band’s catalog.

7/10

Static-X - Project Regeneration, Vol. 1

Rebooted in honor of Wayne Static after his untimely passing in 2017 the original line-up and Dope frontman Edsel Dope behind a mask resembling the late singer and the pseudonym Xer0, Static-X return after over a decade of radio silence since 2009′s Cult of Static to mesh the final recordings of Wayne Static for the band with contributions from Xer0 on the first of two volumes of new material under this premise of paying tribute. Despite the lengthy absence and the loss of the band’s central creative force, the album is a mostly smooth transition from Cult of Static with some callbacks to the electro industrial metal of earlier albums like Shadow Zone and Machine. While it captures the essence of Static-X across its 39-minute track list with a handful of hard-hitting industrial nu metal bangers, Project Regeneration - Vol. 1 is a bit of a dry recount of the band’s legacy, and I hope the band saved the better chunk of songs for the second installment.

6/10

An Autumn for Crippled Children - All Fell Silent, Everything Went Quiet

An Autumn for Crippled Children is an anonymous Dutch trio who are helping to keep the blackgaze movement going with their eighth full-length album here. The band released their seventh not long ago in 2018, but this year’s is my introduction to the band, which has been a pleasant one. All Fell Silent, Everything Went Quiet is a moderately sized offering of heartfelt blackgaze as you know it from the likes of Deafheaven and Ghost Bath channeled through more second-wave-like stylings of the Norwegian black metal scene; so it sounds kind of like if Mayhem made more open-hearted music rather than deflected edginess through Satan-worshipping (not to shit on Mayhem or anything). There is more to this album, however, than just diluted or lo-fi Deafheaven worship; through the haze of the band’s fuzzy blackgaze is some pretty dynamic songwriting and impressive. More than just soaking distorted guitars in reverb and juxtaposing blackmetal screams with post-rock ambiance, An Autumn for Crippled Children capture some of that emotional diversity that makes blackgaze at its best (...Sunbather) so divinely captivating. And the spacious beauty the band conjures out of the negative space in the static-y guitars and thin percussion on songs like “Water’s Edge”, “Paths”, and the title track is surprisingly enveloping, but the standout cut on the album I’d say is the very unashamedly Ghost-Bath-y “Silver” for its overt heartfelt delivery with every instrument and its integration of what even sounds like a piano. I doubt this would convert many black metal purists who idolize Burzum and Darkthrone. In fact I bet this album would upset them even more than New Bermuda, but for those without a stick up their ass, looking for some juicy blackgaze with a different set of ingredients than your Harakiri for the Sky or Wolves in the Throne Room, this is some good shit.

8/10

Bury Tomorrow - Cannibal

I gave this one a good several tries because 2018’s Black Flame grew on me significantly after my incredibly underwhelmed first couple of listens, but sadly Cannibal strikes melodic metalcore gold far less often than its predecessor and finds Bury Tomorrow knee deep in the unflattering tropes that the genre is trying to shake off. With a pretty one-note approach to melodicism that results in a largely homogeneously flat emotional tone across the album, it’s definitely a step down from the emboldened and invigorated Black Flame that negates any sense of the band’s ambition that that album might have given off. I can point out “Better Below” and the brief breakdown on “Gods & Machines” as mild highlights in the tracklist, but they only really stand out because the rest of the surrounding tracks are so dry. I’d like to say that things just didn’t click this time or that some experiments just didn’t pan out, but it’s quite clearly just the lack of imagination and ambition that sinks this project deep into the background of forgettable metalcore, and I know this band can do better.

4/10

Kansas - The Absence of Presence

They’re hardly even metal-adjacent but for their sizable contribution to the 70′s prog rock movement that such a huge proportion of metalheads are into, a new Kansas album I suppose counts as on-topic for this blog. The band returned after a decade and a half of absence with a stuttering restart without iconic vocalist Steve Walsh on 2016′s The Prelude Implicit, and it was clear that they needed to do more than yearn for glory days to get the gears back in motion, so with The Absence of Presence the band’s new blood has stepped up to the plate to inject some freshness into the band’s compositional process. The band still sticks to that core violin-spiced prog rock that characterized their iconic 70′s albums, but the structuring and soloing style (especially the keys) are a bit more modernized than the band’s past work, and by modern I mean what Dream Theater sounded like in the 2000′s. Make no mistake, though, it’s an improvement on The Prelude Implicit, and it highlights the band’s talents and natural grandiose tendencies far more than the radio rock singles they’re most widely known for, and the cinematic bridge of the opening title track is sturdy proof of this. It’s a testament to the influence they have had on modern prog through the genre’s biggest bands like Dream Theater, and perhaps a testament to the two-wayedness of that street as well as fun, bombastic tunes like “Throwing Mountains” sound like they would fit easily on something like A Dramatic Turn of Events or as a break from all the melancholy on a Steven Wilson project. The album does wear a little thin on ballads like “Memories Down the Line”, but it makes up for its duller moments with plenty of exuberant prog expressiveness on most of the songs (the closing track being probably the standout example), which should be a good time for most of the band’s fans who fondly remember albums like Masque and Monolith, and any newer prog fans who may not be aware of the band’s influence on today’s prog metal.

7/10

Haken - Virus

Speaking of respectable modern prog though, Haken’s aptly named album this year serves as quite the easy bar to clear for prog metal so far this decade. I regretfully missed out on their 2018 sister album, Vector, but I am partially mending that ill by covering Virus here. Like I said earlier, it’s a solid record that captures the smoothness and tempered heaviness of Soen and the attitude of early Opeth with the angularity of Tool, but even if it ends up being the year’s best prog metal album, I don’t think it will be too long before one of the genre’s juggernauts (or even exciting new faces) kamehamehas this one away. The album starts out pretty solid in its first few tracks, but remains pretty meager and restrained in its explosiveness until midway through the album, relying on rather short bursts of typical prog heaviness like the opening of “Prosthetic”, whose rumbly bassline is a delicious highlight amongst the Townsend-esque choir implementation. The ten-minute “Carousel” ups the band’s expressiveness after the deceptive soothe of the second track with a clash of goth-y ambiance and pounding metallic bombast. The five-part “Messiah Complex” suite finds the band at their most adventurous, straddling the winding mid-song compositional whirl of Dream Theater with the occasional eccentricity and djenty heaviness of producer Nolly’s former band Periphery, the band still sound themselves and confident in every move they make, like true prog masters, ending beautifully on the two-minute “Only Stars”. I think it might end up being the year’s best straight-up prog metal album, and the band have worked hard to earn that honor, but I would honestly be surprised if someone else or Haken themselves don’t outdo it within a year. That’s to take away from what an exciting 52 minutes of prog this is, because with such a moderate runtime for such a tight prog album, it’s definitely deserving of the respect of a top album in its field.

8/10

Skeleton - Skeleton

Even though I tend to end up liking them, I find myself skeptical of projects whose aesthetic feels forcedly retro or whose marketing is focused heavily on nostalgia, and the self-titled debut from the Austin-based trio, Skeleton, complete with its intentionally cheesy and amateurish cover art, definitely checked those boxes. I even got the sense from 20 Buck Spin (being that I’m on their mailing list and follow their accounts and all) that they were more excited than usual to be releasing the trio’s debut. And honestly, after a few listens through of not being all too aroused by the crusty proto-death metal at the core of the band’s sound, the traditional heavy metal focus on infectious guitar riffs helped the album grow on me a good bit. The stylistic versatility of the guitar playing really is the cornerstone of the album, from the Kill ‘Em All-style riffs on “Taste of Blood” and early Sepultura-esque galloping on “At War” to the blackened punk grit of “A Far Away Land” and the even more catchy classic metal riffs on “Turned to Stone” and the melancholic old-school doom atmosphere on “Ring of Fire”. The snarled black metal vocals are gnarly in that old-school sense, throaty and raspy but kind of cheesily thin too to fit with the aesthetic the band are going for, and it’s a pretty similar story with the drums: not flashy at all by today’s standards but just right to supplement the guitar work and complete the vibe. And of course with 11 tracks not even grazing the half hour mark, the songs are pretty trim and compositionally bare bones, falling into quick, crust punk formats foregoing the typical verse-chorus paradigm. Yes, Skeleton has grown on me, and I’m curious to see if they end up expanding this sound like Ghost did from Opus Eponymous to stay creatively fresh or if they plan to draw from the long-abandoned (or less frequented) wells of musical elements they did on this album for the foreseeable future.

7/10

Burzum - Thulêan Mysteries

I know that in a lot of circles (including some I consider myself a part of), saying something even vaguely positive about Burzum invites a wave of disapproval for supporting (or at the very least, excusing) the black metal world’s most notorious villain’s racism, but I can’t say with a straight that Varg Vikernes didn’t play a huge part in shaping Norwegian black metal as we know it or that I don’t like Filosofem or Hvis lyset tar oss. I don’t think that amounts to supporting the guy’s racist bullshit, and luckily Varg has made it pretty easy not to support his racist bullshit because Burzum has been shit for a long long time now; in fact I’d say Filosofem was the last worthwhile Burzum album, with his pathetically bad ambient records during and after his time in prison and the three stale black metal albums that welcomed him back from prison. After such a weak return to music from prison and Burzum’s discontinuation-turned-hiatus, it seemed overdue that Varg finally retire the Burzum project after the unimaginative ambiance of The Ways of Yore. I mean the project has thoroughly emulated the trope of the white guy who views everything he touches as way more genius than anyone else does, which is pretty rich for a guy so willing to dismiss the current black metal scene as derivative, and he’s seemed more invested in whatever it is he’s been doing on YouTube or his blog. Nevertheless, Varg remains an infamous figure in metal probably to a lot of dudes who think there’s some esoteric genius to decode in his lore, to an extent I find kinda disturbing. The weird reverence a lot of the metal community has for the neo-nazi murderer’s cult of personality (the vast majority of whose discography is masturbatory throwaway doodling) is astounding. So this guy’s back, with an hour and a half of, by his own account, ambient scraps of dungeon synth music that he built up over an extended period of time and basically figured he’d compile into an album (because, like I said, everything he touches must be gold in his eyes), and goddamn it sure sounds like exactly what he pitches it as. The first track, “The Sacred Well”, is actually pretty soothing and decent helping of ethereal ambient music, but it doesn’t take long for things to go downhill. The annoyingly repetitive acoustic motif of “ForeBears” and the absolutely amateurish improvised piano plinking of “A Thulêan Perspective” quickly shed light on just how lazily patched together this thing is, while the subsequent “Gathering of Herbs” literally cuts off awkwardly like the full track didn’t upload fully. A few tracks like “Jötunnheimr” and “The Road to Hel” offer some fleeting promise in their eeriness, but they disappear as quickly as most of the tracks here do, in a flash of confusion as clearly incomplete ideas piled into an album for no reason that even Varg can justify. The last third of the album contains some of the longer tracks, but the swapping of fragments of half-assed keyboard doodles for half-assed demos spread thinner than tissue paper is a trade-off akin to the upcoming general election and it’s too little and way too late. I have to highlight the laughably farty synthesizer horns on “Ruins of Dwarfmount”; I mean thank god it’s quick because it’s absolutely awful, but the chuckle I get out of how bad it is is probably the best experience I have from this whole album. Just about everything on here is some combination of irritatingly repetitive, blatantly incomplete, or grossly unprofessional, and the thing that gets me is that it’s not like ambient music or dungeon synth is any sort of rocket science. I’m not at all the kind of music genius Varg’s weird devotees see him to be, but given the same equipment, even I could undoubtedly make a better ambient album than this. Although I’m not nearly as well-versed in ambient music as I am in metal, I have heard enough of a chunk of it to say I know the good shit and the bad shit, but honestly, this album is a new low for me. I didn’t know an ambient album could suck this much. It’s like an extended Daudi Baldrs with a slightly better keyboard, but with no excuse this time for the cheapness of the sound and certainly not the length. Yeah, piece of shit.

2/10

Boris - NO

Tokyo’s prolific sonic shapeshifters have all but given up on giving up, and I suppose the title of this year’s record summarizes their brief questioning of if they stop making music. The band’s first intended farewell album, Dear, which found them (not really) bowing out to the sorrowful drone doom of their most iconic record (Pink), was followed them by last year’s LφVE & EVφL, which saw them revisiting various shades of their career as comfortably as ever. NO finds the power trio on another stylistic tour of sorts, this time through some of their heaviest and most grimy territory, starting from brooding sludge doom to spending most of the album on Slayer-esque thrash and hardcore punk ripe with gritty attitude. The production is thick and nasty as is usually best for Boris, but the writing on this record is just kind of absent-minded for such a stylistically varied project. While the more drony opener, “Genesis”, rides its runtime well on the raw heaviness that the band put the pure simplicity of their slow groove through, the farther the band step away from their wheelhouse, the more apparent sparseness becomes of the more underwritten songs like the meatheadedly punky “Kikinoue” and “Fundamental Error”. We get some crushing riffs like that on “Anti-Gone”, but also some clumsy wailing about like on the song “Lust” that calls into question the effort Boris put in at the drawing board. The sheer power is there, but it’s being used generally inefficiently on a sizeable portion of NO. Still, it’s pretty cool to hear Boris at this pace, and the pure energy they pour into this project is enough to get the job done.

7/10

Tuscoma - Discourse

Tuscoma’s follow-up to the wildly eccentric Arkhitecturenominus is gets off to a slow start with its rather generic churn of blowtorch-blackened post-metal through its first two tracks and is short on risks for the reputably ambitious duo, but Discourse does eventually kick in to dig deep to tap as much of the frightful potential of the band’s sound and showcases a decent example of what the New Zealanders are known for and of lies out in left-field of post-metal.

6/10

Executioner’s Mask - Despair Anthems

Making their debut as a collective for Profound Lore, the quintet of seasoned post-punk creatives embark on an eccentric voyage through darkwave on a ship of modern gothic rock, and the results are as fascinating as they sound on paper, recalling the cerebral ritualism of Children of God-era Swans as much as the energetically veiled despair of Type O Negative and AFI while dipping the rock elements into the industrial side of darkwave every now and then. And again, the product is an effortless immersiveness into the record’s moody journey, not through atmosphere-building, but through the infectiousness of the goth dance numbers take you on. It’s certainly more of a metal-adjacent album than a bonafide metal album, but the way the band captures the despair they set out to is as effective through more subtly seething means as DSBM’s best, and the band’s adventurousness with their sonic palette alone makes for an interesting listen, or several, as I will certainly be giving this project more than its fair share of my ears.

8/10

Ensiferum - Thalassic

Very similar to Amon Amarth’s longtime solidification of their sound, the Finnish talents seem able to simply exhale exhilaration through their both tried-and-true and continually honed black-reinforced power folk metal. And it’s clear the band are on autopilot at least to some degree on Thalassic here because the writing is pretty homogeneous and formulaic nearly all the way through; that being said, the sheer energy of the band’s performances into a sound experience allows them to wield so effortlessly more than carries them across the seas they sing of.

7/10

Bedsore - Hypnagogic Hallucinations

Stepping out from the shadows of Italy to present the great big world of metal with their forty-minute debut-album, the four-piece on the 20 Buck Spin label make their grand atmospheric aspirations for their brand of death metal immediately known across seven tracks of hellish wails and haunted ambiance. Taking ominous clean guitar motif-writing and structuring influence from Neurosis to the point of uncannily resembling “Souls at Zero” on the second track, “The Gate, Closure (Sarcoptes Obitus)”, Bedsore still inject plenty of their own distorted flair into the cavernous death-metal-flavored howl they espouse on Hypnagogic Hallucinations. The band do bank rather heavily on the immersiveness of the atmosphere they try to conjure, leaving a blind spot in the album’s dynamic beyond the fluctuations between clean and distorted nightmare. Compositional shortcomings aside, this is a solid debut to set the Italians on a bright prospective future.

7/10

Spirit Possesion - Spirit Possesion

Blackened thrash metal is one of those smaller subgenres within metal that feels more like a niche occupied by a few stalwarts like Aura Noir, Goatwhore, and Deströyer 666, but now Spirit Possession is making the bid to join those ranks and potentially turn more spotlight onto the specifically hybridized style. The band’s self-titled debut brims with the thrash enthusiasm of Bathory and the old-school riffing that shaped the way the early progenitors of black metal composed theirs, and not only is the Portland duo’s riff-game on point, but goddamn does it sound savory and spicy as hell through the more flattering production and against the backdrop of modern black metal a la Watain. The nasty chug on the song “Swallowing Throne” really highlights the benefit of the thicker, tastier production. The exceptionally grand “Amongst Inverted Castles and Holy Laughter” is a fine example of the band straddling old and new with impressive flexibility, while the bulk of the album's indulgence into early black metal and thrash is impossible not to want to indulge with, like a really fun party with a good crowd that makes it so much easier to have a few more drinks than you originally intended to.

8/10

Defeated Sanity - The Sanguinary Impetus

Through just enough delicious riffing, memorable accentuation, and technicality on par with Dying Fetus packed into structurally creative bite-sized portions, brutal death metal stalwarts Defeated Sanity somehow make a pretty persuasive take-it-or-leave-it case for the genre.

7/10

Paysage d’Hiver - Im Wald

The boldly two-hour debut double-album from Paysage d’Hiver is also a bit of a double-edged sword, basing partly its very ethereal black metal atmosphere on the homemade sound that regularly kneecaps the grander feel the project is going for. And the album does indeed reach some soaring heights of blizzard-stung ambiance, which the biting sound of the tinny, but engaged, percussion and the vexed swooning of the tremolo-picked guitar playing across the album’s several indeed well-organized lengthy tracks. It takes a lot to trudge through the long path covered in thick snow that this album sets out on, and the lo-fi production often doesn’t help the individual elements that make Im Wald enjoyable stand out, and it can be all too easy to get lost in the homogeneous whitewash of the hazy winter wind. It’s a rewarding journey to finally make it all the way through with unbroken attention, but blame for the easiness of that attention being lapsed can at least partially be placed on the shoulders of Paysage d’Hiver for its mastermind’s one-note approach to an otherwise well-arranged and well-composed album.

7/10

Gaerea - Limbo

Despite the members’ faceless appearances behind their fully-covering black cloth masks, Gaerea’s music does not hold back its sorrowful outpour through heavy atmospheric black metal that crashes through and drowns like torrential flood waves as much as it tears at the heartstrings through unabashed languishing. The massive weight of the band’s sound invokes the feeling of being in the presence of an incarnate deity weeping at the ills of mankind and the destruction they have forced this deity to bring about. Abstract descriptors of the album’s experience aside, the band aren’t really doing too much new for the atmospheric black metal they’re making, not breaking any rules or pushing any boundaries, but everything that makes the genre so attractive is turned up to eleven. I was ready to be as critical as ever, but I could immediately see not long into my first listen why Season of Mist were so excited to hype up the Portuguese outfit’s incredibly accomplished sophomore release. The guitar playing is simultaneously powerful and beautiful, much like that of the Ulcerate album from earlier this year (Stare into Death and Be Still) that I also loved, and the drumming is just as ceaselessly thunderous in support. The lamenting screamed vocals are possibly the least exaggerated facet of the album, but certainly not the the point of being unfitting, in fact they fit the chaotically despondent mood quite well, or a detriment to the record’s overall barrage of mourning. As for how all these massive pieces are arranged, they all crash in synchronized waves in a fashion, again, not at all unfamiliar to anyone who’s heard blackgaze, but the raw passion of the band’s performances exemplify why this strategy is so widely adopted for atmospheric black metal. Gaerea have made quite the statement of intent on this one, and I will definitely be enjoying it repeatedly throughout the year and beyond.

9/10

Upon a Burning Body - Built from War

Upon a Burning Body went full Lamb of God last year with their very trim and direct 31-minute fifth LP, Southern Hostility, focusing their efforts on making their southern brand of groovy deathcore as tastily whiskey-soaked as possible, laying on the groove heavily and unrestrained in a way that I thought definitely worked in their favor. Just a year later, the band are back with a 17-minute addendum to their infectiously brash display of muscular bravado, and it’s pretty much as brutishly intense as expected as the band bounce through single-string grooves and ripping drum rhythms to the same conclusions they did last year, only this time it feels so much more fatigued, like they’re trying to artificially replicate this genuinely pissed off attitude that produced results for them despite just not being in that kind of headspace at the moment. The songs are pretty baseline for them and generic as fuck, missing that X factor that made Southern Hostility’s distilled rage so tangible and fun. Built from War has some of the staple features that made its predecessor such a good time, but despite its few high-energy moments across the five tracks, it feels like an unnecessary rehash of the lightning in a whiskey bottle they had last year, just no lightning, so empty whisky bottles that bear the smell to remind you of what was previously in them.

5/10

The Acacia Strain - Slow Decay

I have been pretty harsh on The Acacia Strain in the past; they haven’t come up much on my blog, but the times they have, I feel I’ve been a little overly critical of their use of elements that I’ve perceived as excessive that they’ve used to forge their recognizable sound. The band released a mini album (It Comes in Waves) on Closed Casket Activities just before last year was over and I didn’t even hear it until a few months in to this year, and honestly, I wasn’t all too broken up about it because it was some of the band’s most lethargic, meandering material to date; dragging aimlessly until the last two tracks of the album, a significant step down from 2017′s already middle-of-the-road Gravebloom. So with those albums in recent memory I was kind of not looking forward to Slow Decay all too much, but a few days before its release, I refreshed myself on the band’s 2014 album, Coma Witch, which I remember as a culmination of what The Acacia Strain had been trying to morph their horrific, hardcore-tinged deathcore into since Continent, and it was a great time, that album, and it made me a little more hopeful for the band’s tenth LP (if you count It Comes in Waves). And Slow Decay indeed has The Acacia Strain back on track after the stuttering of the past two releases. The burgeoning metallic hardcore movement over the past few years has certainly vindicated The Acacia’s Strain’s steadfast adherance to their hardcore roots, and with there really being no time like the present for that kind of energy, the stars’ aligning has indeed brought the best out of The Acacia Strain. And on Slow Decay, it’s not like the band have changed up their hardcore-driven approach to djenty deathcore all too much from what they did on Coma Witch, they just sound energgized through a good batch of songs this time, the many situations at hand showing their influence on the rage the ban draws from bleeding through the lyrics ranging from critiquing anti-vaccine sentiments to blasting the snobbishly entitled attitude of boomers. The fiery disdain for the state of the world comes through hard on the blood-pumping chug of “Crippling Poison”, the punchy, pissed-off groove of “Inverted Person”, and the rest of the dissonant horror-tinged riffing all across the album, and it just goes to show that The Acacia Strain have found a groove that works for them and when they have the right fuel for their fire, they can incinerate anything in sight.

8/10

Imperial Triumphant - Alphaville

After revolutionizing the method of jazzification of metal music on 2018’s Vile Luxury, I was ready for a satisfying continuation of jazzy death metal from Imperial Triumphant, but I was not prepared for the wildness of the band’s ambition with their sound and beyond and the incredible success of their sonic expansion on Alphaville. The band are still jazzy as fuck on their successor to Vile Luxury but they’re not advertising it as blatantly like a product-placed soda can this time around, partially because they can’t with so much else going on in the nightmarish mix of sounds. The combination of dissonant grand piano chords over palm-muted chugging and merciless blast-beats on “City Swine” is perhaps the most overt example of the trio’s love for the traditional sounds of the type of jazz often associated with the big apple, but the palpable jazz influence in the winding guitar lines and dizzying drumming all across Alphaville continues to set Imperial Triumphant apart even within their wing of metal’s avant-garde. Indeed, their sound reaches beyond mere genre hybridization; the band incorporates various avant-garde elements in an experimental, yet clearly well-engineered manner all over the album. From the haunting fuzzy dissonance and disorienting electronics of the title track and the odd inclusion of taiko drumming by Meshuggah’s Tomas Haake to the gloriously frightful choir climaxes on both “Atomic Age” and “Transmission to Mercury”, Alphaville is full of surprises, and a size-able step forward for a band already bounds ahead of the curve on their previous album.

9/10

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 5 years

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Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider #4 Thoughts

The very, very, very end of Spider-Geddon and...a surprisingly great issue!

Covering this comic is very strange for me because I’m coming at it from two places mentally speaking.

Firstly I’m jumping into the fourth and final tie in issue to an event comic having not read the prior three issues.

Secondly I’m jumping into Spider-Gwen, a series I abandoned long ago, back in volume 2 issue #10 to be precise, which was published over 2 years before this issue was. It also had an entirely different writer/artist team back then.

Frankly I picked this up purely because I knew Mayday and some RYV characters were going to be in it. In that regard the issue was rather pointless, they cameo and do little else.

However I’m actually glad I bothered with the comic all the same. I was expecting this to be fluff and filler at best. An insufferable worshipping of Gwen Stacy, as so many comics (including Spider-Gwen itself) was when Spider-Gwen got big back in 2014-2016.

To my delight that wasn’t the case.

I admit to being rather lost with some plot points such as Gwen having a symbiote (this was brought up in Spider-Geddon #2 but it was unexplained there too) and how exactly Gwen can transverse dimensions.

However the rest of the issue was mostly good. Now I read Secret Wars: Spider-Verse, Web Warriors and Spider-Geddon #0-5 but I didn’t read any other Spider-Gwen or Ghost Spider issues so to me Gwen’s sense of loss over Noir and Spidey-UK felt rather unearned and cheap. It wasn’t that I didn’t think she’s be upset over losing a comrade but the deep sense of loss and words towards little habits within their respective relationships didn’t ring true to me. However that may have come up in issues I didn’t read so I’m willing to be corrected on that.

But based upon my reading Gwen feeling as sad as she did was a bit of a stretch. I also felt the milking of Spidey-UK’s death from a reader point of view was questionable because...did anyone honestly love that character? Spider-Man Noir I can understand, he has a fanbase (and this issue hammered home how asinine a decision it was to kill him back at the start of this event) but Billy Braddock? Who cares really? He was used for some cheap pathos in Web Warriors and that was about it. Now that being said I did love the idea behind him being buried in Lady Spider’s dimension as she was English (although if memory serves that was never confirmed outright, she may have simply lived in 1800s New York). I did wonder where the Hell Lady Spider was throughout this event though.

The addressing of Noir’s death though was much more necessary and as stupid as it was to kill him I do give Marvel credit for having an issue which addresses that. His fans deserved at least that much, particularly I think the Noir/Felicia shippers who are undoubtedly out there. I also very much appreciated how May, MJ and Felicia had different reactions to his death respectively.

Another great thing was that the general addressing of grief, sadness and death in the issue felt respectful. It felt real even though as I said the specifics of Gwen’s relationship with Noir and Spidey-UK didn’t quite ring true. It’s like it would’ve been perfect dialogue and execution if used for another character’s death. A small detail I especially liked in this regard was Gwen’s drumming as a coping mechanism. One of my major complaints in Latour’s issues was how Gwen’s hobbies and passions were underused and underdeveloped. She was a drummer but that didn’t factor that much into the stories I read. So to see McGuire embrace that is as welcome as Miles’ artistic talents in ITSV.

Now I admit, those of you who recall my thoughts on Latour’s Spider-Gwen book might be calling me a hypocrite here. Because another of my frequent complaints was how doom and gloom and glum Gwen typically was in that series from the outset, yet here I’m praising that.

I think the distinction is this. Latour came out the gate defining Gwen as grieving and guilt ridden, reeling from a tragedy that happened an undisclosed amount of time ago (but still making with the yuks and gags). Not only was this tonal whiplash but it also was a shitty way to set up a new ongoing series. It began world building for Gwen in media-res of extenuating circumstances and circumstances which were incredibly derivative of Peter Parker.

Where McGuire succeeds in this issue is by having not only a distinctly different tragedy but also the benefit of this occurring both after Gwen’s world has been built up and in the aftermath of a huge event. It’s totally realistic and earned that there would be a mourning for fallen warriors after a war. It’d be disrespectful for that not to be the case; in fact it’s kind of disrespectful that that mourning happens in a tie-in issue not the main book!

By having this issue actually deal with the aftermath it re-contextualizes the prior issues of the event. Spider-Geddon as a whole was definitely a bloated poorly written inconsistent mess. But this issue as a coda treats it with the weight the main book never had. There is an emotional realism to the story even though we are dealing with something as wacky as inter-dimensional travel and totem vampires.

This emotional realism is pulled off so well you even feel a little something for Karn’s death, you even feel bad he died alone and so violently even though again, no one is a fan of that character. No one gives a shit about him.

Part of this realism comes from McGuire from this one issue apparently being an inherently better writer than Latour ever was, at least for Spider-Gwen. Latour in all this works I’ve read emphasises style, and wants you to ‘watch’ the story unfold rather than feel like you are right there with the characters. You can ‘see’ Spider-gwen is upset but McGuire takes you inside her head and writes her grief from the inside out. Latour might’ve used internal narration but he rarely pulled this off, probably because he was too busy making a clown show on the side with stupid ass Spider-Ham cameos, wacky humour about the Bodega Bandit or building up Evil Daredevil instead of you know, the ACTUAL main character.

His Spider-Gwen work felt a lot like watching things sort of just happened rather than experiencing things unfolding like in this issue.

What further enhances this story is the deliberate or accidental metatext behind the story. No I am not talking about how Stan Lee had recently died when the issue came out, though that did make me tear up thinking about it.

Gwen has been rebranded Ghost Spider (though her recap page doesn’t quite admit that weirdly) and this is an issue about Gwen dealing with ghosts, dealing with death, spreading the grim news as a reluctant messenger of death. That angle just works in this issue and if embraced would work brilliantly as a new element to the character to latch onto. In no small part because, as the issue itself acknowledges, Gwen Stacy’s legacy is inherently linked to death.

That might be admittedly a radical departure from the punk rock youth vibe the series began with, but not only was that rather squandered by Latour (with bullshit like Hipster Electro and Hipster Kraven the Hunter, go fuck yourself seriously!) but at the end of the day that vibe is perhaps rather...shallow...for an ongoing character...??????

Other elements of the issue I liked was the artwork. It’s not much like what Rodriguez was going, which was I admit very distinct and gave Spider-Gwen’s series a unique identity. But this art is still lovely and works very well for the subject matter. What is particularly nice was the different period outfits Gwen adopted as she made her travels through the multiverse. Also, though this isn’t strictly ‘art’ per se, the word balloons at Karn’s funeral have a cool moment where everyone speaks a salute to Karn and the combined word balloons look like a spider. That was just a cool touch.

My final note is that McGuire has one of the best Peter Parker moments I’ve seen in a long time, and considering the quality of Spencer’s run that is not damning with faint praise (as it would’ve been just over a year ago). In the scene Spider-Gwen and 616 Peter discuss Gwen needing some time off and Gwen asks if that is selfish. On the one hand this is a little bit derivative of Peter Parker, King of Guilt and Responsibility. On the other hand I guess most heroes would ask this of themselves. Peter Parker surprisingly gives a very mature answer.

Now this answer is very much in character and logical for Peter, but it’s also something too often writers neglect in favour of writing Peter in a repetitive manner that renders him a caricature. Peter acknowledges it is selfish but that that is not wrong, He says the world will always need saving but the heroes get to pick their battles and have to sometimes rest, that indeed they deserve it.

Though a mere moment in a story not about him McGuire writes a Peter Parker who truly feels like a mature adult, that feels like the Peter who is truly the sum of his experiences.

Were this teenage or college aged Peter he wouldn’t have been likely to say that. If it was friggin Slott’s Peter Parker definitely not (even though he’d have still gone to play with Miles in the park rather than do his actual job). But a Peter Parker who’s insanely experienced and knows his limits? Yes absolutely he’d know he’s entitled to down time and more importantly needs it. It’s demonstrative of how guilt is present in his character and yet is not the defining trait. Responsibility is, and there is a responsibility to himself. Spidey-UK even echoes such a sentiment earlier in the story.

So with all that said I must admit this issue was a tremendous triumph from where I’m standing, I’d recommend you read it and would go so far as to call it the best issue of Spider-Gwen I’ve ever read sans her debut.

Does it change my feelings for Spider-Geddon as a whole?

No, it still sucked and was still pointless beyond resurrecting MC2 Peter (which in my book makes it worth it, sorry Spidey Noir fans, I’m sure he’ll be back eventually) but this last issue took it out on an unquestionable high note.

#Spider-Geddon #Spider-Gwen #Ghost Spider #Gwen Stacy #Spider-Man #Jason Latour #Robbi Rodriguez #Seanan McGuire #Peter Parker #Spider-Man Noir #Dan Slott #Nick Spencer #Lady Spider #May Parker

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ramajmedia · 5 years

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Why Carnival Row's Reviews Are So Negative | Screen Rant

Amazon's ambitious new fantasy series Carnival Row features a murder mystery, a troubled romance, and a fantasy world rich with neo-noir and steampunk aesthetics - but it's also attracted a significant number of negative reviews. Why has a TV show that seemed to have so much promise left so many critics dissatisfied?

Carnival Row stars Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne as estranged lovers Rycroft Philostrate and Vignette Stonemoss. Philo was a soldier who fought in a war in Vignette's homeland of Tirnanoc, until the human forces of The Burgue decided to pull out of the war and leave the fae defenceless against their invaders. Vignette and Philo met in the war and fell in love, but got separated in a battle that left Vignette believing Philo was dead. They're reunited when Vignette joins her fellow fae refugees in The Burgue and discovers that Philo is alive, well, and serving as an inspector with the city's constabulary.

Related: Amazon's Carnival Row Cast & Character Guide

Those who have already fallen in love with the world of Carnival Row have no need to fear that the negative reviews will end it after one season. Amazon announced Carnival Row season 2 alongside the release of the first season, so we can expect to see Vignette and Philo return no matter what. Currently the show has a "Rotten" score of 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, and here are some of the reasons why reviewers were less than impressed - in their own words:

New York Times:

"Reanimates bits and pieces from different branches of the fantasy genre into a glum and lumbering beast that only occasionally sparks into life... The energy left over from this exercise in world assembly doesn't appear to have gone into creating vivid characters or an involving mystery or romance."

Variety:

"Bloom, pitching his voice low as a human detective, does little at all while trying to solve various uncompelling mysteries. However much narrative energy spent ginning up an alternate universe in which divine creatures exist seems wasted as Bloom plods through cases that are either uninspired or inspired by every Jack the Ripper copycat in history."

Slant:

"Not an episode goes by that doesn’t make one wonder what Carnival Row could have been had it not bitten off far more than it can chew. There’s much to like here—mostly the kaleidoscopic genre-mixing—but not enough to overcome the show’s confused handling of the socio-political allegory at its core. Would that this beast were more thoughtfully stitched together."

CNN:

"World building is hard enough, but as circus acts go, Carnival Row is like a juggler on a unicycle. It's kind of interesting to watch, but nobody really needs it. Nor does the prejudice directed at the mythological races really come alive, as allegorical as it might feel."

The Week:

"Carnival Row leans heavily on ornamentation to distract from shallow tropes and cliché plots. But whimsical sets do not make a show inherently interesting. Neither do fancy-sounding names like 'Vignette,' which only serve to gussy up the one-dimensional characters underneath."

Carnival Row uses the influx of fae into The Burgue as a transparent allegory for real-life issues such as immigration and racism, but a lot of critics said that this aspect of the show falls flat - either because it's too clumsily inserted, or because its an element that feels like it's been done too many times before. The show can also be somewhat alienating to those who aren't already enthusiastic fantasy fans, with its rapid-fire world-building and cast of characters with names like "Tourmaline Larou" and "Agreus Astrayon." However, Carnival Row is already finding an enthusiastic fanbase among viewers, and some reviews are considerably warmer towards the new series:

Hollywood Reporter:

"It takes a few episodes for the series to introduce and spin out this cobbled mythology — and that will undoubtedly lose some people — but ultimately it works when it gets going. Carnival Row has a strong cast and if you're in the open-minded mood to see how humans, fairies and inter-species creations fight to get along in a dark world of magical realism and Jack the Ripper-era British police tactics — replete with political machinations, an otherworldly serial killing spree and disparate tribes of combatants — then this is precisely your stew."

Entertainment Weekly:

"If a group of hardcore genre fans got together and wrote a TV show, and then somebody’s rich Uncle Jeff (Bezos) Venmo’d them several million dollars to produce it, the result might be something like Carnival Row... At times, the mythology can feel needlessly complex, but there is something truly endearing about Carnival’s earnest, irony-free storytelling."

Sydney Morning Herald:

"As a piece of fantasy fiction, this is rich and engaging... The visual touches are stunning, an intoxicating blend of Victorian grime and gilded age polish, where mansions and slums clash, sliced in two by monorails of clanking steam trains overhead."

Ultimately, it seems like Carnival Row is a show where you'll have to watch for yourself to find out if its your cup of tea. And it's worth at least giving it a chance - after all, there aren't a lot of steampunk fantasy shows that feature Jack the Ripper-esque murder mysteries and puppet shows starring tiny kobolds dressed up in costumes on TV right now.

More: Read Screen Rant's Review of Carnival Row

source https://screenrant.com/carnival-row-amazon-reviews-bad/

#screenrant

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lucykogo-blog · 7 years

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Monitor

The room was dark as I switched on my monitor, with a satisfying, audible click. The static buzz that filled my ear as the electronics around me came to life felt nostalgic, familiar even. My knees up to my chin, a comfortable, even fetal position as I sipped my can slowly, firing up my browser. It felt like an eternity since I had allowed myself to engage in the world of the web, a habit of mine that I had long known I needed to curb. The familiar, custom homepage I hosted myself greeted me. Having dropped out of a computer science course, I knew the odds and sods about web programing, and I created my own little safe space, a bubble that served me exactly what I needed. And that’s where I resided, stagnant and, well, safe, for months, before my parents finally cut my expense account, finding out I had dropped out of the prestigious course they had so much hope for. That was a wakeup call for me, an epiphany that I had failed somewhere along the way. Realizing how much of my life had been wasted by the virtual, I permanently shut down my computer and found myself a real, grounded existence. For the last 6 months, I had been working at a construction site, a true, honest, if thankless task. For 6 months, I had managed to stay away from anything virtual, anything remotely resembling the internet. I had even gone out of my way to buy an old brick phone, and used it only for calls from work, and the new friends I had found myself. Friends, who just like the new me, shunned the virtual. I had even saved enough to move out of the crummy, derelict student accommodation I had been inhabiting. After packing all my things, it had come to my abandoned, locked away computer room. I felt that, after 6 months of abstinence, I deserved a quick look. The people I had left behind without a word deserved a message, something to remember me by. The hum of my custom-made pumps was so soothing to my ears. I had truly missed this. The first site I loaded was a video sharing site, a beautiful collection of the world’s most creative minds. 6 months’ worth of content was a large collection to be admired, and I savored every moment of catching up to these people I knew so well. My most loved subscription, a small, independent vloging channel had only one video, and I knew this was something to be left till the very end of my rendezvous. Next up was a blogging site I had frequented. This service, much easier to create content for than the video site by far, had much more work I had fallen behind with. Dramas, relationships, breakups. So much can change in the life of the world in as little as 6 months. I felt a slight pang of guilt, even jealousy, when I found out my best friend, a blogger by the name of Alice had married, and I wasn’t invited. But of course, upon checking my messages, I had discovered that I was invited, in fact, many times. My inbox was a stab straight at my heart. When I disappeared, at first people sent heartwarming messages, about how much they missed me, that they hoped I was ok, and that I would come back… But when it became clear I wasn’t coming back, the love and sympathy turned to anger and resentment. Reminders of promises, of vows and loves came scathing at me, each one hurting like a bullet straight into my heart. I was called a lying whore, a disgusting fake. In a way, they weren’t too far from the truth. I wasn’t really who I said I was, although deep down, I think I was. I think every time we invent a persona, it’s something within us that wants to be free. And when we kill this persona… well, sometimes, our mind just cannot cope. And neither can the minds of the people around us. While checking my messages, I found some from a blog that I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember following. Of course, 6 months of non-contact and make specifics blur, but this was such a distinct, atmospheric page that I found it strange I couldn’t remember ever looking at it. The background, as was common on this site, was a tiled repetition of the same gruesome, “attention grabbing” image. In this case, it was the slender, beautiful, pale white wrists of what looked to be a young woman. The image was grayscale, although probably, color would have made it one hundred times more impactful. The girl’s wrists were slit, in several places. Never along the veins, only over them. For attention, as so many of the young people on this site. I sighed with relief at having abandoned this community, remembering how close I had come to this pitiful state myself. Of course, I did not judge, or even think less of people who stooped to this. I understood them. Understood them too well. Not remembering this blog at all, I decided to have a quick skim of it, to see if anything jogged my memory. The first post started innocently enough; “My main blog is too well known, I am getting all sorts of creeps! From now on, I will post on here, for my real friends!! ;) ;)” I smirked at that little entry. Oh, how many times had I had the same idea, to just emigrate to another blog space, another site, another domain… And yet it was always the same, the people who wanted to find me, they always did somehow. If only this community dedicated as much attention to real world problems as they do to their little dramas, petty loves. The blog continued, predictably, with hate on the authors parents, peers and whoever else they thought dragged them down: “Ugh THEY JUST DO NOT UNDERSTAND ME! THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT I WENT THROUGH, WHY I FAILED THAT EXAM. TO CUT ME OFF, TO DISAOW ME, LIKE THAT.” The readers of this blog seemed to be sympathetic enough to this cliché entry, spouting truisms and tried bull about the world not understanding people “like us”. And to think I came so close to falling into the same echo chamber, the same trap. Finishing off my drink, I decided to call it a night. I still had a lot to pack, and I was growing truly tired. Maybe I had wasted a bit too much time on this trip to the past. * * * The next day at work, I felt kind of ill at ease. The supervisor was being especially difficult, and the project we were working on was coming to an end. We were building a sanatorium out in the mountains, apparently for people who were too “stressed out” by modern living. My parents had often mentioned such places to me, with the hopes that I would move to one. “We can see how you struggle, we understand. We can help you.” Of course, if I had wanted to, I could have had such a facility all to my own. There are perks to having parents in the banking industry, of course. Not that those perks apply when you are cut off. Downing my fifth coffee of the day while still regretting the first, I swallowed my discontent and pushed through the rest of the day. When I arrived home, I quickly started packing up the rest of my belongings. Mostly routers, servers, firewalls, laptops and other crap I had bought second hand with my allowance from dodgy sites. I had used them all to bounce my browsing habits, in the hopes that I could one day hack my way into riches that my parents couldn’t even imagine. Riches that would make them proud. There was at least ten thousand dollars’ worth of equipment here, and I made a mental note to research the proper prices and get at least some of my money back. It would be a good kickstart to my new life. When I had finished packing everything except my main computer, I decided it was a good idea to take a break. Fetching my last crate of beer from the fridge, I sat in front of the PC and switched it on again. I decided to continue reading the blog from the other day. Laughing at people like me felt like a good way to blow off steam. As I scrolled through months’ worth of this blogs posts, they became less and less coherent. Some even mentioned murder of some loan collector who had come by the authors house. This was of course, attention calling garbage, garbage of the type that I had engaged in before during my “career” as a blogger. I had even had the police called to my apartment, multiple times, because of such “white lies” I wrote to increase my fanbase. This post seemed particularly gruesome though, describing in detail dismemberment and disposal of the poor worker’s body. Apparently, it was pretty hard with a “shattered wrist from the fight”. This kid’s imagination was wild, must have watched far too many movies. Sulfuric acid? Really? Smirking, I turned off the PC and packed it into the last box, ready at last to move out when the trucks came tomorrow. * * * Interestingly, I had had my own run ins with the tax collection agencies. When my parents cut me off, I had taken a massive loan from a “friend” at university, to get me through until they realized they cannot win a war of attrition and came scuttling back to me. Unfortunately, it turned out they could hold out longer than me and the debt collectors soon came a knocking. After a few scuffles, one which involved a broken bone, was when I decided to get myself together and found my construction job. It wasn’t easy, but I paid off the debt, and even managed to open a real bank account, getting a real credit card to help in times of need. I thought about this as I waited for the moving men to arrive, who were getting ridiculously late. When I became bored of waiting idly, I unpacked the computer and decided to finish off reading the blog. There wasn’t much left according to the post counter, I was only about 100 posts from the end. Each post became less and less coherent, less and less sane. I became sorry and worried for the kid. Their self-harm seemed to increase, with more and more pictures being posted. This made me scratch at my own wrist, covered in a bandage from an accident I had earlier moving the desk. The kid spouted on and on about murder, revenge on society, and lastly, suicide. Suddenly, they announced they will live stream it, with a link to my favorite video sharing site. By this point I was worried sick, although I cannot deny a gruesome interest in whether they did it. I clicked on the link, which took me to my favorite channel, the one I had left as a dessert to my goodbye to the Internet. There was only one video. Streamed today. The title, “It all Started 6 Months Ago.” Speaking of which, the first post of that blog was 6 months ago. Strange. As I clicked on the video, I looked down at my feet. Why were they floating above the ground?

#story #short story

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itsfreesportstips-blog · 6 years

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Premier League the toughest for goalkeepers - ex-Liverpool coach Xavi Valero

LIVERPOOL -- Former Liverpool goalkeeping coach Xavi Valero will be back at Anfield on Sunday for the first time since leaving eight years ago. Now goalkeeping coach at West Ham United, Valero was part of Rafael Benitez's coaching set up between 2007-10, working with Pepe Reina at the height of his Liverpool career. The Spaniard then followed Benitez to Inter Milan, Chelsea, Napoli and Real Madrid before joining up with Manuel Pellegrini at Chinese Super League side Hebei China Fortune in August 2016 and now again in London. ESPN FC caught up with Valero ahead of his Anfield return. Q. How much are you looking forward to being back at Anfield and how are you finding life at West Ham? A. It's going to my first time back. It was a happy time of my life in Liverpool on a personal level and on a professional level. I'm looking forward to going back to Liverpool and Anfield. It's been a really nice welcome and I obviously liked to come back to England and a club with a huge history, like West Ham. I think the project looks really good for us and we are doing things in the right way. I'm looking forward to this season, to improve things, be competitive and to challenge for the right targets. Q. You'll be facing Alisson, the world's second most expensive goalkeeper, on Sunday in your Premier League opener. What do you think of Liverpool's new Brazilian? A. I think Liverpool always have a good tradition of goalkeepers, very strong goalkeepers. I think Alisson is one of them. Apart from the market prices, it's getting a bit crazy, I think Alisson since he came to Europe back in Italy has been performing at a very high level. I expect him to do the same in England. Q. Have the demands of a goalkeeper in the Premier League changed since you were last here? A. English football has always been tough for goalkeepers, so it's always tough for new goalkeepers coming into the Premier League to perform. They need some time to adapt. Comparing the Premier League to other leagues in Europe -- Spain, Germany -- I think it's a much tougher league for goalkeepers. Obviously the game has progressed and now most of the teams demand very complete goalkeepers that can be good in all aspects of the game -- from distribution to covering when playing with a high defensive line. Q. Looking back on your time at Liverpool, you were there when Pepe Reina was one of the world's best. What was it like working with him? A. I worked with Pepe at Liverpool and then in Naples. Pepe, in my opinion, has been one of the most complete goalkeepers for a long, long time. I think Pepe is the kind of goalkeeper where you could ask anything from him on the pitch. He will do that for you. He was outstanding on and off the pitch -- very positive for the team, for the club. For me, it's been a real pleasure to have been working with him for such a long time. Q. Reina was really good with the ball at his feet. Someone I've spoken to said you judged him on every single one of his movements in a game and wanted him to control the pitch, not just his penalty area... A. As I said before, the game is getting very complex. Goalkeepers resolve any kind of problem that happens during the game. Focusing a lot on controlling the game and making the goalkeeper aware of what happens before he gets in touch with the ball -- which is the last part of a game situation -- is key to improve the performance of a goalkeeper. Sometimes we just focus too much on what happens at the end and when the goalkeeper gets in touch with the ball. But because the game is so fast, the players are so competitive and the game is more complex, you really need goalkeepers to be able to read the game and be in the right position at the right time in every single moment of the game. To go through every game, and through most training sessions, with the goalkeeper is key to be able to give their best during the game. Pepe was the kind of goalkeeper that could tick all the boxes during the game and he was always willing to improve. Q. Your work wasn't just strictly limited to goalkeepers though, was it? Fernando Torres has said you often spoke to him about the goalkeepers he would be facing. A. Because we're training with goalkeepers and we always know how goalkeepers are going to react, I like to let the goalkeepers know how the other team is going to attack them, how they're going to attack our goalkeepers. Sometimes there's some relevant information for the strikers to know about the goalkeeper. With Fernando, and other players at different teams, I always tried to give him some tips. If there's any weak point we can exploit, we tried it. It's good and sometimes helps the striker to have that information when it comes to the very last moment of the game or finishing in one-versus-one . We will try to do it , but not all the 'keepers have weak points. If you find one then you have to exploit it. Q. Jurgen Klopp recently said that "Liverpool is a difficult goalkeeper place." Is that something you would agree with? A. Being a goalkeeper of a top team is always hard. I think Liverpool is one of the strongest teams in Europe and you need players that can perform in every position at that level. Obviously you're under big pressure and you're not allowed to make too many mistakes -- but that happens at every top club in Europe that wants to fight for top targets domestically and in Europe. One thing that I would say about in favour of the players is that Liverpool is a demanding place -- as all the top teams are. But you've also got the right support and Liverpool fans are very supportive, very understanding and very positive with the club and its players. It's a demanding place, of course, but it's also a special place to play because you always have the support behind you. What makes Liverpool special, without a doubt, is the big fanbase. Read the full article

#Blog #BlogPost #EnglishPremierLeague #Liverpool #WestHamUnited

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junker-town · 7 years

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5 great moments you might have missed from Cubs vs Nationals

Just in case you were focusing on other baseball.

Whether because of overlap with other postseason games, the times of day this series was televised, or the fact that about 60% of the innings were baseball’s form of that video of a Norwegian train traveling for hours on end, it feels like of all the division series, Nationals vs. Cubs was the one that received shortest of shrifts.

That whole mold and flu thing happened, but that was more about baseball debates than the actual baseball since Strasburg still pitched lights out while apparently having a small valley’s worth of spores in his lungs.

When it comes to things that actually happened on the field, without a Game 5 this series might have slipped by without the attention that some of the moments rightfully deserved. (Only some of the moments though, because as I said half of some of these games were REAL SNOOZERS.)

These are the five best moments from the series the got an eeeensy bit overshadowed by the other baseball happening.

Stephen Strasburg’s pitching performances

Strasburg pitched in probably two of the most important games of the series. Game 1, which was meant to set the tone for the Nationals and start them off with a win and Game 4, which they needed to win to stay in the series at all.

He accomplished both of those things, even though the team behind him dropped the ball on the first part of the that deal by allowing two unearned runs with him on the hill on the way to a 3-0 loss.

His stat lines for both games, the second one even somehow better than the first.

Game 1: 7 IP, 3 H, 2R, 1 BB, 10 SO

Game 2: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 12 SO

That’s...not human. That’s not terrestrial. Which baseball-loving space species sent us Stephen Strasburg and who do we send the thank you note to? Is there extra postage required for inter-universe mail? Because we might not actually have that much cash handy....

Regardless, the point stands. Both of these pitching performances were like watching a ballerina flawlessly execute a turn on pointe seven times in a row without resting, or a track star leaping over each hurdle without issue at top speed.

It’s the kind of pitching you want to tell your kids about one day, and it’s especially impressive when you consider he may or may not have been peer pressured into the start by a fanbase and organization that really, truly needs to finally win a playoff series.

Jon Lester picking off Ryan Zimmerman at first

Are you still shocked this really happened? I’m still more surprised this happened than when Princess Buttercup found out Wesley was the Dread Pirate Roberts.

It’s been a full day since it went down and my face still hasn’t snapped back to it’s non-astonished form. It might be frozen that way. Forever a mark of how incredible it was that not only did Jon Lester finally pick somebody off at first after years of barely being able to throw over, but he did it in the playoffs while pitching multiple innings of relief in a potentially clinching game for the Cubs.

Watch it happen if you missed it, or watch it again if you need to. Ha, just kidding. Everybody needs to watch it again. Or nine more times. We’ll wait while you take ten minutes to watch this on a loop.

JON LESTER POSTSEASON PICK-OFF http://pic.twitter.com/TXp4YoCniv

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) October 11, 2017

Everybody back from 19 straight minutes of watching that on a loop? Ok cool.

Whether this was the cure for his legendary yips, the result of an extensive long con that he consulted with Danny Ocean on, or simply a fluke that he didn’t even mean to happen, the fact that it did is still amazing.

Mostly because nobody expected it, and no one who was watching at home didn’t feel a little good for Lester for pulling it off. He might not do it again for the remainder of his career, but he did it once! In the playoffs!

Washington’s Game 3 comeback home runs

It looked like the Nationals were going to head for heartbreak ahead of schedule (or right on schedule depending on how much credit you give them in the postseason) with a Game 2 loss. Facing down the possibility of a two-game hole in the bottom of the eighth inning, the Nationals’ top star came through in the clutch to tie it.

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Which would have been enough to at least give his team a chance to score more the next inning, except for Ryan Zimmerman decided that it wasn’t going to take that long and jacked his own three-run home run shot to put Washington ahead for good.

That’s baseball heroism in it’s most classic form. We’re losing, so let’s hope our strong baseball boys can score runs by sending baseballs over that there wall a few hundred feet away.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. When it does though, it’s awesome.

Cubs rally after Bill Murray sings

Sometimes, without something especially historic or physically impossible taking place, baseball can just be really cool. That’s part of the fun of the sport -- outside of walk off wins and no-hitters and perfect games and amazing catches — the things that happen because it seems like the baseball universe wants them to at a particular moment and because the stadium’s emotion seems to will it to happen.

In Game 3, there was one of those moments. For the first time since last year’s World Series, maniacal Cubs fan Bill Murray did the seventh inning stretch honors and sang Take Me Out to the Ballgame with his brother (no no not that brother, the other less famous brother).

Right after he finished with his (maybe not super sober) rendition of the classic, the Cubs rallied. With Murray in the front row in his old school Cubs gear, eyes on each player like he was casing the field for a heist — which, incidentally, would make a great movie — and almost immediately tied things up in the bottom of the inning.

They’d end up winning it with another run in the ninth to seal it, and maybe the timing had absolutely nothing to do with baseball magic or the moment, but it certainly felt like it. And sometimes that’s all that matters.

Surprise hero Michael A. Taylor

The Nationals didn’t advance, but just because we know the outcome doesn’t mean watching Taylor jack home runs in back-to-back games (and, technically, back-to-back at bats!) was any less entertaining.

All of his runs that were helpful in the games not actually mattering because the Nationals lost the series doesn’t make them any less fun to watch.

There are people you expect to come to the rescue in high-pressure postseason situations — your Anthony Rizzos and Bryce Harpers of the world — and then there are those who just step up and do the dang thing out of nowhere.

Don’t pitch to @Taylor_Michael3 either. #NLDS http://pic.twitter.com/NmwrhQAQTW

— MLB (@MLB) October 13, 2017

Michael A. Taylor was one of those people. He’s no slouch but not somebody that you would automatically choose to hit an eighth-inning grand slam against Cubs reliever Wade Davis to get his team four extra insurance runs, only to hit a three-run go-ahead homer his first at bat the very next day.

So that’s that. Whether it’s because you were out living life during these games or simply wanted to focus on your favorite American League team at the expense of this series, these are all the fun moments you missed that made the series a pretty solid one.

There were other, depressing, moments that mostly belonged to the Nationals. But let’s keep it all positive for this one post.

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