My Christmas shopping is now completed. I took Friday off from work and this ended up being a good decision since I needed to venture out to the stores to finish off my shopping stuff. But it is now completed and ready for our family gathering on Thursday (we do present stuff on Christmas Eve now since my sister is busy pretty much all day christmas)

Friday evening was quite a fun experience in City of Heroes. I joined up with Wassy and some of the folks that inhabit the Fan Art section of the City of Heroes forums for an evening of hanging out and chatting. It was really fun. Great conversation with everybody and I hope I get the chance to do that again at some point in the future. I was a bit apprehensive about fitting in since I’m more an outsider to that particular group of people but it was a really fun experience.

Speaking of art, Wassy has been working on the Christmas themed Frost piece for me over the past couple days. I’ve been trying to be good about not looking because I want to be surprised, but she gave me a peek yesterday and her current progress is extremely promising. I can’t want to see the final version. My levels of anticipation for this gift are high. I’m looking forward to it as much, if not even more than spending time with my family this week. I really, really appreciate it when she takes time out of her (now incredibly busy) schedule to do something for me.

Onwards to my other activities. I actually finished working on a web site design! After floundering around a months after finishing Wassy’s site, I was able to actually put another one through to completion, which was a website to host the City of Heroes Fan Art Forum art competition that she’s hosting next year. I need to have it done by January, so it’s a good thing I got it all set now. Eddy Swan (from the art forum, we’ve been chatting since we played the game together on friday night) helped out a bunch with a logo concept which was a big part of what the design was missing.

So now, to start working through the longest three days of work of the year before my huge vacation begins…

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Apologies for the lame heading, but it's early and you get what you get.

Last night was a very productive evening for me as I continued to dive into my C++ learning again. I'm reviewing classes now and working through all that fun object oriented stuff. But more on that in a minute.

Wassy sprung a neat little gift on me last night. She needed a little break from what she was doing so she sketched out a chibi version of Frost and sent it to me late last night. Very cool, and very cute. I do enjoy it when she springs random gifts like this on me. And, like I told her last night, there's not many (reasonable) styles left for her to be drawn in. Unless you want to do a abstract frost or impressonist frost.

Back to the programming…it's really coming back to me as I go through it so I looks like I just needed a refresher. I'm really itching to start working on some networking code a bit because that's something I only brushed with and was never really comfortable doing. I think I might start by writing a little chat client or something, which will give me experience with threads and network progamming all at once.

But we'll see what I actually write when I get around to writing it. I seem to change my mind an awful lot.

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It's that time again…the time where I look backwards and reflect upon this years new musical offerings. In order to be eligible for this list, the album must have been released in 2008. I might post a best new discoveries list later detailing the non-new music that I've stumbled across this year.

As far as new albums go, 2008 was a fairly slim year. Not a lot of new stuff that I was interested in getting (although I still have to check out other people's top music lists to pick up the things I totally missed through the year) but what it lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality. There's some really awesome releases this year. So without further delay…let's get right into this.

1. 

   Watershed

   Opeth

   Opeth – Watershed
   
   My top album of this year, without any doubt is Opeth's Watershed. If anyone isn't familiar with Opeth, they're claim to fame is blending death metal elements (growled vocals, heavy riffs) with much lighter elements (clean vocals, acoustic guitars, keyboards, etc) to create music that's all about contrast. Everything has a purpose, particularly the growling which isn't overused and adds emotional impact to the songs.

   Watershed is their first album after losing 2 out of the 5 members and replacing them, so I was a little worried about the direction it would go. As it turns out those worries were totally unfounded. This album is totally Opeth, but it's something different too. They're progressing their sound while maintaining the elements that make their music special and unique.

   Probably the best part of this release is it's composition. It plays really well for listening as an album. It's very heavy up front (after a short acoustic introduction) followed by a very mellow couple of songs and then returns to heavy territory towards the end of the album. Heir Apparent has quickly become my favorite Opeth song.

   So, in conclusion,  this was far and away my favorite release of the year.

2. Ayreon – 01011001

   

   01011001

   Ayreon

   This was the first new album I bought in 2008 and I knew it was going to end up on the list as soon as I had my first listen to it.

   For those not familiar with Ayreon…this band is the brain child of Arjen-Anthony Lucassen, a man who can do pretty much everything. he plays all the instruments on this release except for some guest spots, the drums and most of the vocals. In fact, Ayreon really is all about the vocalists…17 vocalists in this case. All of Ayreon's albums are concept albums, part of a much broader story. The music is very eclectic, pulling heavily from the progressive rock genre, but there's also a lot of electronic and folk influences as well leading to an interesting mix of sounds.

   This album's story weaves it's way through all of the previous Ayreon albums, referencing past efforts and story events, becoming a thread that ties the massive storyline together. Interspersed into the main storyline are several songs that seems to be disjointed, referencing the doings of current humans, seeming to try to send the point that we're all trapped in our own little worlds and that we should look up and see what's really around us more. These sections are my only real complaint about the album as they don't really fit in with the rest of the storyline.

   But overall, this is one of my favorite Ayreon releases and I'll be playing it in heavy rotation for some time to come

3. Frost* – Experiments In Mass Appeal

   

   Experiments In Mass Appeal (Special Ed. CD/DVD)

   I wasn't sure if I would get this album in time to include it on the list, but thankfully, it arrived just in the nick of time about 2 weeks ago.

   As the last two picks, I'll explain the band a bit…Frost* is the result of a Pop music producer and songwriter Jem Godfrey. While spending his days writing and producing jingles and theme songs for various things, his free time is spent working on progressive music that sheds many of the traditional cliches that one associates with the prog rock genre.

   Their latest album is different in feel than their first, but it has the same Frost* undercurrent running through it. A little off-putting to me at first, I quickly came to terms with the new, slightly more pop oriented sound and really got into the album. Jem's hallmark is a very busy "wall-of-sound" sort of production on his albums. There's a TON of stuff going on in there, but it's mixed in such a way that it's never confusing and never becomes just a bunch of random noise.

   It's not quite as unique as their first effort was, and overall I like Milliontown better, but this is a very solid effort that went a little too far into standard pop structures. I also prefer Jem's vocals to the new vocalist, but Jem still does nearly half the vocal lines on th is one, so it's not such a big downside.

4. Porcupine Tree – We Lost The Skyline

   

   We Lost the Skyline (Limited LIVE INSTORE Performance)

   Ok, so this is the part of the list where I start reaching for albums. I told you this year was pretty slim. This album is a live album, of an in store appearance of part of Porcupine Tree, performing for about 30 minutes.

   What makes it really interesting is that because it's only 2 members of the band (Steven Wilson and John Wesley), they did a stripped down acoustic set with just the two guitarists, which lead to some really interesting and unique arrangements of the songs. Some work better than others, but overall, it's a very solid album and I'd like to see some of these get studio treatment, maybe as a B side somewhere.

   The best part is hearing Normal played live and hearing Steven Wilson talking about how hard it is to play on guitar. And in fact, he messes up once and starts the song over to do it right.

5. Apocalyptica – Worlds Collide

   

   Worlds Collide

   Apocalyptica

   
   The only thing you need to know about Apocalyptica is contained in the opening sentence of their wikipedia page: "Apocalyptica is a Finnish cello metal band." All of the music is created with the cello and, these days, drums. They got their start working on metallica covers but eventually they started writing their own material. This album is almost entirely original material from the band, aside from a cover of David Bowie's Heroes done in German.

   The band shines on their non-vocal tracks, creating really heavy riffs and emotional melodies in a very unique way. Songs like Dreamer and Peace really showcase their beautiful melodic side whereas songs like Ion are really all about being very heavy. It can be hard at times to tell that all of the music is done with the cello and not an electric guitar, but…it is.

   The downside of this release is the vocal tracks. They lean very nu-metal and are my least favorite part of the album. They could really do something special with vocal tracks but instead when vocals are introduced into the mix the music automatically swings into the generic nu-metal spectrum. The lone standout is the cover of Heroes which ended up quite nice.

   While I really like this album, the vocal tracks dent it's awesomeness enough to where if there was anything else released this year that I had purchased, it would probably get dumped off the list.

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What are your top 5 CDs/albums of 2006?
Submitted by eliz. s.

Barenaked Ladies Are Me

1. Barenaked Ladies – Barenaked Ladies Are Me

   If we’re not counting live releases, the new Barenaked Ladies CD would have to top my charts for the best release of 2006. They went independent and it shows, when them taking the time they needed in the studio to perfect this group of songs. They take the band in some new directions and mash up a whole bunch of different musical styles into a cohesive package.

   My favorite tracks include the very funny “Bank Job”, “Everything Has Changed” and “Maybe You’re Right”.

   I was hoping to go see them in concert again this year, but unfortunately, things didn’t work out.

2. OSI – Free

   Coming back from their debut album, this side project of Kevin Moore, Jim Matheos of Fates Warning and Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater deliver a slightly heavier album, mixing electroinca influences with heavy guitar riffage. I ended up liking this effort a lot more than their self titled debut album.

3. Frost* - Milliontown

   This is my pick for the best new discovery of the year. I wrote a blog post about them earlier, so I’ll refer you to that for the full details, but just in short, this is Progressive Metal without a lot of the progressive metal cliches. It’s a really fresh sound, and really original. It’s really too bad they called it quits recently, as I was looking forward to the next album from these guys. Hopefully the breakup is temporary because it was time related.

4. Spock’s Beard – Spock’s Beard

   Here’s one I didn’t think I was going to be listing so soon, but I really can’t stop listening to this album. It’s started to really grow on me. I still don’t enjoy the instrumental track on it, but I’m getting more and more into it.

5. Muse – Black Holes and Revelations

   Muse can be a hard band to get into. Musically, this effort is probably the most interesting thing that I’ve heard from them since I got into them with Absolution. However, I’m getting a little bored with the vocal lines which don’t vary much from song to song. They become almost predictable at times. Still, a good album by a good band.

If we were to include Live albums, Dream Theater – Score would be my number one pick. Dream Theater + Orchestra = goodness.

Runners up also incuded Iron Maiden’s A Matter of Life and Death and The Flower King’s Paradox Hotel.

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What albums are in heavy rotation for you right now?

First up, we have Frost* – Milliontown. I got turned onto this particular group through the Mike Portnoy Forums when somebody posted over there that people should check them out. It’s made up of a bunch of people from other bands, like Jon Jowitt and Andy Edwards from IQ.

The main creative force behind it is Jem Godfrey, who is primarily a pop songwriter who secretly has a love for Progressive music. Frost* is his take on what progressive rock/metal should be. I’m always horrible at explaining how music sounds, so it might be easier for you to go check it out and listen to some of the samples It’s a very well produced album, and probably my favorite release of the year so far.

Another CD that’s been played a lot recently is from Spock’s Beard. Their second release after the departure of Neal Morse, Octane, really shows their growth as a band. I think they’ve finally found their sound, which is a cross between Prog and more popish songs. They’re really not that great at making long epic songs anymore, but the individual parts of A Flash Before My Eyes can stand on their own. What they excel at are tracks like There Was A Time and As Long as we Ride which are shorter songs with great hooks and wonderful production and playing. I can safely say I enjoy both the Neal Morse era Beard and the new Post-Neal era stuff.

Oh, and ONE WEEK until Dream Theater – Score is released! This is a live DVD and audio CD release from one of the best shows of Dream Theater’s carreer at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The best part is they got a full orchestra to play along with them in the second set and encore. I’ve heard samples of Metropolis Pt. 1 played along with the orchestra and I can’t wait to get the full audio quality of this one. There’s going to be a teaser preview happening this weekend on VH1 Classic if you get that channel. About an hour of the concert is going to be shown, and each showing is preceded by an episode of Metal Mania hosted by Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci

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