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Showing posts from 2018

Best Songs of 2018

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         This has really been a BIG  year for me and Justine. First, we got married, then we moved to England, then we moved back in October, got new jobs, got a condo and got approved for our newest member of the family, Zoe! She's a little silver tabby, and we're picking her up in a week. Fun way to kick off the new year. I also decided it might be nice to have the blog reflect the year we had, so the background will now rotate in pictures I took while we were in the UK.      Let me just preface this first of several end of the year posts by saying that I found myself with less standout Songs, EPs, and Albums to make up end of the year lists. This doesn't necessarily mean that there was less "good" music this year, just that the genres that I'm more interested in didn't deliver as much as previous years for me. Because of this, there are a few surprise picks on these lists that I might not normally choose among other years. As with last year I'

Review: Swizz Beatz - Poison

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Release Date: Nov 2nd 2018 Label: Epic Album Link:      I was not at all expecting to review this album, nor was I expecting to hear it. Swizz Beatz, though he is a legendary producer in modern Hip-Hop, is not known to release actual albums. He typically just works production and raps on others songs. The only other album he has ever released is 2007's One Man Band Man . I pretty much exclusively know him from his production work on 2000's Kanye albums and Rick Ross albums, and he is always recognizable in his production style, which is often very slick and varied; mixing new sounds and old soul samples. His voice is also distinct, husky and dark, he sounds more like an old man than he does a skinny 30-something.       Poison is his newest album, and is only 32 minutes long but Swizz says he had "70 songs ready for this album" and decided to cut it down to 10. Though he left the purported Kanye/Bono song, and a same-song showcase of Jay Z, Nas, DMX, and J

Track or Treat: A Spooky Track Roundup

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     Well, one of the best months is over. Changing colours, a seasonal change in the air taking place, and Justine and I find ourselves back home in Canada. I'll be honest, the cooler weather is a welcome treat after the uncharacteristically hot London summer. We are happy to be home, and right in time for the best holidays. Which leads me into a special monthly Track Roundup.      This month, I will be focusing on a number of tracks which have been around for a while, some for decades. All to honour the spirit of Halloween, these tracks have been selected due to their close association with some Horror movies, lyrical nature, or general Halloween nature they give off. You may recognize some if you are a fan of Horror movies, there should be something here for everyone who can appreciate the uniqueness of October. Exhumed - Defenders Of The Grave ( Death Revenge - 2017)       Kicking off this special Track Roundup is Exhumed, the likely longest running "Gore M

The Shining: Book Vs. Film

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SPOILERS, OF COURSE      Over the years, and especially in the past several, Horror movies have had a resurgence in quality and atmosphere. Movies like The Witch , Black Swan , and most recently Hereditary have succeeded in creating and developing an atmosphere which is vital to the affect the movie can have on the viewer. In my opinion: these movies, though all great, owe a great deal to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 masterpiece The Shining . The Shining is the first "modern" Horror movie I can immediately think of in which the atmosphere is just as much of a character as any other member of the cast. It still stands as my favourite Horror movie, and one of my favourite movies.      On the other side of the coin, we have to give credit where credit is undoubtedly due. Though I am very new to the work of Stephen King (I have only just recently read my first King book with Salem's Lot , and am quite literally hot off the heels of The Shining which I finished the day

Seasonal Anime Report: Summer 2018

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        Well, I guess I can't deny it any longer. Summer is over, bringing another season of anime to an end. Evidently, I have been very busy over this summer (hence the lack of posts coming from me), but I did keep up with a decent amount of anime. That being said, there was a few that I missed out on and will need to check later. Regardless, here's a look at what I looked at this Summer 2018. What I Watched Airing This Season Steins;Gate 0     This being the headline anime should come as no surprise to anyone who even remotely knows what my favorite series are. I am a huge Steins;Gate fan. I have played both the visual novels that the anime adapts multiple times, as well as rewatched the first Steins;Gate anime enough that I almost remember the exact numbers for each of the world lines. Heck, I even did an Okabe Rintarou cosplay at Fan Expo this year. So does that make my short review bias? Probably, but I did have very high expectations for Steins;Gate 0, conside

Legacy Review: Opeth - Ghost Reveries

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L-R: Martin Mendez(bass), Martin Lopez(drums), Peter Lindgren(guitar), Mikael Akerfeldt(vocals, guitar) Release Date: August 29th, 2005 Label: Roadrunner Records Album Playlist:      For the first post of October, I wanted to kick it off with a new kind of review that will pop up every now and then on the blog. A legacy review is for, well, an older album which I hold very dear. There are many, and I would love writing about why specific albums are important to me and the genre in which they're found.      Naturally, I'm starting legacy reviews with my favourite album ever... Starting high, I know. Either way, I thought it would be fitting for this month in particular. I am aiming to make the blog posts this month more frequent and more topical, and believe me when I say this album IS an October album. Autumn is a season where I get sentimental and nostalgic for many things, I can't explain it but there are always bands and types of music I find myself listening

Track Roundup: September

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     This has been a busy month for both me and this blog, even during behind the scenes. I took a trip to France with my wife and my mother-in-law, which was really great and my first time there. Furthermore, Justine and I have been doing a lot of administrative "pre-planning" for our coming home in mid-October. We are both very excited and these past couple weeks have felt like when we were preparing to come to London in February. That is to say, it's been very exciting to be excited  to come home if that makes sense. We've been living out of suitcases for the past 8 months and are simply ready to start building our home.      In the case of the blog, I've been trying to post more than I did in August which I've already achieved and I am preparing for October. I love October and all the culture that comes along with it, so I've got multiple Halloween and Seasonal posts lined up and I've had a lot of fun thinking these up. I know I'll have