Monday, May 08, 2006

May 2, 2006

I was born on May 2, 1968 on an Air Force Base in Montana, which doesn't mean much of anything for anyone other than me or my family, but on May 2, 2006, t seems that the music industry gave me one of the best birthday presents ever. The release of several kick ass albums.
The most important release in my eyes was Rebel Meets Rebel. Some of the songs are a little too country for me, but the guitar playing is god-like throughout the entire album.

Vinnie's new record company also released the first of hopefully several Dimevision DVD's. AWESOME!!! This kept me rolling on the floor for the almost the entire length of the video. Several scenes from the video were also in a long video presentation that was shown at Dime's public memorial at the Arlington Convention Center the evening of his funeral, which made most of us leave that memorial with huge smiles on our faces.

Tool also released their new album 10,000 Days. I haven't heard the full album, but I was listening to it on the way to work this morning can't wait to hear the rest. The first three songs are killer. I will update this post after I've heard the rest of it.

Pearl Jam put out their album the day as well. I'm not a huge Pearl Jam fan, but the few songs I've heard off of this album sound pretty good. I'll update this post after hearing the full album as well.

Many other bands also released albums that day, but I've only listed the ones that I currently have. In addition, last Friday night VH1 finally played the Decades Live concert honoring Heart. I recorded the show for the sole purpose of watching Alice in Chains, but was pleasantly surprised at how good Heart sounded. I love TiVo.




Phil performs Would? withAlice in Chains on VH1's Decades Rock Live

All in all, a historic week for hard rock and metal. I highly recommend all releases listed above. Enjoy!

Update: Just completed listening to the entire Tool album 10,000 Days. WOW!!! That is one of the most solid albums I've heard in a long time. I seriously enjoyed every song on that album. The 3-D artwork is also very cool.

5 comments:

BlackLabelAxe said...

Great post, and happy birthday!

I bought all of those albums, as well as the new Soil CD. The Pearl Jam album really blew me away. I think it's probably my favorite of the bunch. Rebel Meets Rebel is just a badass throwdown of a record. I'll go ahead and give you a BND exculsive: R-M-R is trail-approved for off-road beer drinking and pickup truck thrashing. That seal of approval was earned in Dawson County, Georgia this weekend with a little help from my friends (and my beater F-150).

Dimevision is the best! The burnout scene is just simply insane. I think I can spot BND in the background in some of those 80's Pantera videos.

The Tool record really surprised me. It sounds more like the B-sides from Lateralus, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Since Lateralus was one of the most progressive pieces of music ever released, 10,000 Days is an attempt to out-prog themselves at the cost of economy and brevity. Don't get me wrong, I still like it, but it seems unfocused and unnecessarily lengthy in many parts. For a band that takes 5 years in between albums, there should be nothing even resembling filler material on these releases.

I had high hopes from Soil until I found out Ryan left the band. His unique vocals were the strongest part of the band, but the songwriting and axemanship has been solid in the first two Soil records. I'll be the canary for you here, "True Self" is a waste of money. You probably already knew that though.

Pearl Jam is such a great band. They keep their ultra-clean rock and roll sound alive here, it's an authentic 1990's vintage sound and great songs that you can enjoy anywhere at any time. This is well-worth the $8.99 pricetag, especially if you're like the rest of the world and feel like the Franz Ferdinands of the world just aren't worthy torchbearers to rock and roll's future.

BlackLabelAxe said...

BigNewsDay > Epistaxis

The domination continues! It's now the 2 week anniversary of that thread, and she still keeps coming back nomatter how hard we beat on her!

BigNewsDay said...

Hey Axe,

They showed that truck footage at the memorial. You had a huge room full of people that were in tears just minutes before, now laughing hysterically. If you ever come to town, I'll show you his house and some of the other locatons from the video like Kinney's convenience store where he did the 20/40 news bit (fucking funny as hell).

Lefty Metalhead said...

Happy Birthday Dude! The albums are indeed awesome. I'm downloading the Tool album from iTunes as we speak.

BigNewsDay said...

Thanks for the b-day wishes Axe & Lefty. I waited about a week to mention it, because I'm fucking 38 now & prefer my b-days kinda slide under the radar.