I love last.fm. If ever you want to completely geek out on your music statistics, that’s the site to use. Since it’s the new year, I was looking at some of my listening habits have been and whatnot and noted that in the past year, I’ve attended twenty-three live shows. I like drinking; loud Metal madness and taking photos of bands. It’s my thing. I dig it.

For this new year, I think it’s safe to say I intend and will be able to double that amount.

I caught Norwegian Black/Viking/Progressive Metal band, Enslaved at BB Kings last night. The night was a total fucking wash until the they came on. One of the opening acts, The Agonist, has to one of the most depressingly shitty, pretentious, weak-ass bands I’ve ever seen live. Fucking shit generic sound, prancing around the stage and swinging their guitars around like total douchebags. It was embarrassing to just be there in their presence while they played. At least the band name was appropriate, since it was agonizing to suffer through their set. They need to retire, shoot themselves or whatever—just go away.

Another opening act, Arsis had a pretty good sound, but their bass player kept weirding me out. First off, the guy looked to be wearing woman’s jeans, which was fairly creepy. Second, every time before the band kicked into a song, he spent way to much time arranging his hair to hang in the appropriate Metal style. Third, he wasn’t a particularly great bassist and he’s got this huge six string, showing it off, posing and tapping the strings over the top of the neck with his right hand, something that from what I saw from his finger positioning etc., would pretty much sound like drivel, but sure did look spiffy. Still, they were a fuckload better than The Agonist.

Enslaved was awesome. Once they came on the night went from being a rip-off, to a good time. I have all of Enslaved’s albums and while I really liked them, never counted them in my top list of bands. After seeing them live, my impression of them is greatly raised. They sound fucking great. I took a good amount of photos and posted them to my Flickr stream for all to see.

I have absolutely fucking no love for TicketMaster. I go to a fair amount of concerts. Usually three to four a month, sometimes more. Recently, I’ve been booking my next couple months and have had to buy several tickets through TicketMaster or TicketWeb. TicketWeb is reasonable enough. Their service fees are usually anywhere from two to six bucks and they let you download and print your ticket for free. This, I can live with. Ticketmaster fucking bends me over and reams my wallet like it was a doe-eyed boy in a prison shower room.

For example, I’m going to see Amon Amarth at Irving Plaza, here in New York City in early December. The cost of the actual ticket is $19.99. If I’m going to buy it from Ticketmaster, first I pay a “Convenience Charge” of $6.20. Then, I’m slapped with a $4.90 processing fee. Finally, if I want to download and print my ticket, I’ve got to shill out another $2.50 for the privilege. This brings my bill to a randy, fat and sweating $33.59. They’re nailing me in fees for an additional 68% of the cost of my ticket. Totally fucking disgusting.

So screw them. From now on, any venue that uses them for online sales will be getting my money from ticket booth sales unless it’s something I absolutely have to see and can’t get a ticket any other way. It just sucks because I like to research what I want to go see online and then nail the ticket right then and there. It’s convenient for me, but I also spend a lot more money on venues that way. Impulse shopping…it’s supposed to be encouraged, not bludgeoned to paste.

While I was in San Francisco last week, post Hawaii, I went out to a club in the mission district to see the Japanese Punk/Comic/Costume band Peelander-Z one evening. After a couple lame-ass and tired bands finished their sets and the main act went on stage in their costumes, I took a mess of photos of what was a decidedly rowdy concert. Peelander-Z are hilarious and judging from the exuberant and violent actions of the crowd at the club, everyone loves them.

After I got back to New York, I hit BB Kings to see the Death Metal band, Daath and Swedish Black Metal bands, Naglfar and Dark Funeral. I noticed that there was more than a healthy population of South American guys under five feet in height and wearing corpsepaint in the crowd. I liked Daath a lot. I have a few Naglfar albums, which I think are pretty good, but for their first American show, they were fairly underwhelming. Adequate, would be a good descriptor. Dark Funeral was interesting to see live. They’re pretty old and fat for corpsepaint and all the leather bondage shit they wear. They’re a good band, but they look fucking stupid. I don’t really consider them real Black Metal, more like a hybrid with Death Metal. I like them, but they’re not exactly high on my list of top bands. The whole grim and cold Black Metal act falls flat on their beer guts and their lead singer seems like a bit of a douchebag as far as stage presence goes. Still, they were good. Embarrassing looking, but good. Photos of the concert can be found here.

Here’s a collection of albums that I’ve acquired recently since my last album post. Almost all are from eMusic, although I did have to order one or two of some of the more obscure ones. Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot more Sludge Doom. This is what I’m liking right now:

At thirty-eight minutes and just three tracks that are basically unnamed, Buried At Sea’s “Migration” is a massive, crushing Sludge Doom album that deserves many, many replays. I had to order it through the mail, which I totally hate doing, but it was well worth it. I love this shit. There needs to be more of it. I would kill to see this band live. I hear that after a retarded amount of years, a new album is finally coming out this October. If true, I will, I must find it and buy it. There can be no other way.

Halo is an Australian duo with a Sludge/Industrial Doom thing going on. “Guattari (From The West Flows Grey Ash And Pestilence)” is some serious skull-fucking shit. Gigantic bass thumping, distortion and noise. Loud and charged. It’s a really good album. Great listening for when you’re totally shit-faced in the middle of the night and about to fall on some subway tracks and end up a smeared mess of multi-colored goo. In other words, you should make sure you have it loaded on your MP3 player because you never know when you might end up as track lubricant. As I’ve been writing this post, I downloaded another album of theirs and a couple tracks in, I’m really liking it.

“Documents Of Grief” is a self-released album by the Sludge Doom band, Graves At Sea (Don’t ask me what the deal is with nautical-themed band names in Doom Metal, I don’t know). With slow, Stoner riffs, super-heavy bass lines and vocals that are reminiscent of Black Metal, I find these dudes often occupying a spot on my playlists. I like ‘em. I dig ‘em. I carry them on my MP3 player and I listen to them often.

A couple nights ago I dragged my still semi-sick ass out to BB King’s on 42nd Street to see a few bands. The main headliner was Nile, who I didn’t know too much about. Mainly I was there to see ChthoniC, the Melodic Black Metal band from Taiwan. Since it was primarily a Death Metal show, graphic band tees were in full effect, there was a hell of a lot of hair, as well as an extremely large representation in the crowd from the South American continent. Rock hard, my Spanish amigos. Eighty-percent of the metal acts on this planet would tank if it wasn’t for your die-hard loyalty to head-banging.

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I saw Unearthly Trance, Earth and Pelican at Luna Lounge in Williamsburg last night.

Unearthly Trance was annoying. I like their album, “In the Red“…not so much “The Trident“. Anyway, nice guys, but they took forever to hit the stage, preferring to hit the bar up for drinks and they only played a few songs. I just wanted more bang for my buck.

Earth was awesome. Mesmerizing, loud and droning. Worth the price of the ticket.

Pelican…whatever. I’m not into that kind of jam-band stuff. I gave them two songs and walked out.

Luna Lounge kind of sucks. First and foremost, by virtue of being in Williamsburg. I used to live there, but I can’t stand it anymore (or recognize it, for that matter). It’s like “Busch Gardens - Brooklyn” for trust-fund, up-and-coming douchebags. Secondly, the club has a kind of shit sound system.

Since I’m kind of all over the map on what I like to listen to, for this post I’m going to stick specifically to the Doom Metal genre of albums that I’ve picked up from eMusic that I find praiseworthy.

There’s only one full album that Warhorse ever put out and it’s balls-out awesome Doom. As Heaven Turns to Ash has some of the heaviest, slowest and lowest bass lines I’ve heard. The style leans on the psychedelic side with the main tracks interspersed with light and at times folk-like short instrumentals. It sounds weird as I try to describe it, but it works. Heavily inspired by Black Sabbath and L.S.D., Warhorse ranks right up there with Electric Wizard as one of my favorite Doom bands. If you’re not into Doom Metal, this album will change that. This is really good shit.
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Since I’m still loving eMusic and have been racking new albums every month, I thought I’d list some of the better to best shit I’ve accrued lately.

Electric Wizard is by far one the dopest, heaviest bands around. Their Ozzy-era Black Sabbath-inspired, Stoner/Sludge Doom Metal style is straight-up 70’s era evil psychedelia. It’s loud, chunking and very slow. I have all of their albums and my latest addition, “Come My Fanatics“, is by far their best work and definitely one of the best albums I’ve ever owned in my life. It’s low, slow, evil-hippy vibe makes me want to start wearing denim jackets, grow a fu-manchu, contact Satan and start living out a van (complete with air-brushing). I highly recommend this album.

Boris is a Japanese experimental band who are difficult to place in a genre. Though I only have one of their albums, I’ve read they bounce all over the place with different styles of noise/music. “Absolutego” is one 65-minute long track of ambient noise/Drone Doom filled will slowly plodding bass, buzzing guitars, lotsa feedback and heavy usage of the e-bow. There’s no riffs, melodies or anything. Just ambient guitar noise for over an hour and it’s great. Truly creepy, bad acid trip shit. This is a soundtrack to accompany corpses crawling out of graves. I’m definitely going to check out their other albums.

Similar in style and direction is the band Sunn 0)) (pronounced “Sun” and named after the amplifiers they use). Extremely slow and heavy, using droning, heavily-distorted guitars and sound effects to create a dark, malevolent soundscape, Sunn 0)) are prime examples of Drone Doom. The album “Flight of the Behemoth” is five really long tracks of ambient doom, despair and inscrutable evil. I love these guys. To top it all off, the duo that makes up this band wear evil monk robes whenever they perform live! Could it be cooler?

In fact, I love them so much, I bought another one of their albums, called “The Grimm Robe Demos“. It’s exactly the same kind of shit, which is perfect. Evil, weird, down-tuned and long. Lacking any discernible form or structure, it is music for alien landscapes. That said it’s not for everyone. If you’re not into evil, ambient noise then this music is either going to scare you or give you a headache (or quite possibly both), but if you dig the heavy, creepy shit, you’ll love Sunn 0))) and these two albums.