Thursday 28 August 2008

Jared wins big at rock awards

ACTOR-turned-rocker JARED LETO was the vainglorious winner at last night's Kerrang!
Awards.


The weekly rock powder magazine honoured Leto's band 30 SECONDS TO MARS with
the best single AND best international band titles.

Click below to see more than photos from the ceremony:


"He kept sending drinks over to her table, but she altogether shunned him and
went home with someone else. He's by all odds losing his touch."


Other winners on the night included METALLICA, who south Korean won the intake
award, and RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE, who picked up the hall of fame
chime.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD, SLIPKNOT, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE and COHEED
AND CAMBRIA
also picked up prizes.



More information

Tuesday 19 August 2008

�Mad Men�: The Secrets Are Out

Photo courtesy of AMC



The last � best? � episode of Mad Men pitted Don Draper against the nasty comedian Jimmy Barrett and his even-nastier ball breaker of a wife. Beaten down and practically molested, Don bottomed out, then bounced back, unleashing a desperate, violent retort to Mrs. Barrett that might be television�s most shocking moment this season. It was almost a perfect episode � except we missed Peggy and Pete. But now she�s back! And, though we get just a little of Pete, we do get to see him in tightie-whitie tennis shorts.




The Pitch:

The past isn�t even past.



The Campaign:
Mad Men has been teasing us with glimpses of Don�s past, since he doesn�t exactly blather about his secrets, not even to his wife. Meanwhile, Peggy � who increasingly seems to be Don�s true prot�g� � treats her present like Don�s past. At the office, Elisabeth Moss plays Peggy with lockjaw restraint, using nothing but the slightest shrug or modulated glance (and maybe we�re just imagining those) to indicate that she brings anything like her own life into her job. Nobody at Sterling Cooper has any clue about how fraught her life is at home.



At the start of episode four, Peggy practices that same stony restraint at her mother�s apartment, where her jealous sister and cloying mother host a meal for the cute visiting priest, played by Colin Hanks. Tom�s son looks a bit like Pete, with his boyish face and slicked-over hair, and he�s a Christian cool cat too, a godly man who plays the guitar, likes a drink, enjoys a cigarette, and, it seems, Peggy. He first catches her slipping out of a sermon about �hidden dangers� and then escorts her home after dinner, asking for her advice on selling ideas. �It�s Palm Sunday,� he says with flirty false modesty. �I mean, you�re on deck for Easter.�



Later, the priest stops by to see Peggy�s family and drops off a copy of his sermon for her, asking after her and slighting Peggy�s sister. Uh-oh. The next time we see Peggy�s sister, she�s in a confessional, speaking to the lovely Mr. Hanks. She apologizes for taking the Lord�s name in vain, stealing a few coins from the laundromat � and, oh yeah, did I mention my slut sister had a kid out of wedlock and is a total tramp? Yeah, that too. It�s a brutal scene � portraying Peggy�s sister as both utterly manipulative and seriously disturbed. Either way, when Peggy bumps into the cute priest on Easter Sunday, he calmly hands her an egg (oh, the fertility metaphors!) and says, �For the little one.� Then he walks away � gobsmacking the typically unflappable Peggy, perhaps because she, like us, isn�t sure if he�s disgusted by her loose ways or, perhaps, turned on?



Meanwhile, at the Draper household, Don and Betty tie one on with a little help from their midget bartenders, who have learned that the proper recipe for a Bloody Mary is nine parts vodka, one part tomato juice. Mom and Dad kick the kids out of the living room and dance to Betty�s favorite high-school tune (Ms. America loves Bing Crosby; Don says he �sounds like Christmas� and grabs her ass). On the couch, the sight of Betty reading Babylon Revisited is yet another echo of her husband�s affairs (the book was recommended by her stableboy friend), and it�s a reminder that the show uses books as indicators of private betrayal, a naughty way to disappear into some charged fantasy, even while sitting next to your spouse. Next thing they know, Mom and Dad are drunk on their bed, which Bobby breaks � and both kids are starving because the parents forgot to fix dinner. Oops! Happiness is a problem, yes, but so is maintaining this delicate balance. Every pleasure has its cost.



Of course, Betty�s still clashing with the kids � �I�m here all day, outnumbered,� she screams � and she wants Don to spank her son. And as the momentum builds at home � Bobby breaks the hi-fi and burns his face on the griddle � Mrs. Barrett reemerges (!!), apparently still turned on by Don�s dominating, crotch-grabbing performance, and she convinces him to lock the office door behind them (Don�s definitely got his mojo working again). More important, the American Airlines crew bumps up their meeting to Good Friday and Don has to scramble, scheduling an impromptu

Saturday 9 August 2008

Coalesce

Coalesce   
Artist: Coalesce

   Genre(s): 
Rock: Hard-Rock
   



Discography:


There Is Nothing New Under The Sun   
 There Is Nothing New Under The Sun

   Year: 1999   
Tracks: 7


Functioning On Impatience   
 Functioning On Impatience

   Year: 1998   
Tracks: 7


Give Them Rope   
 Give Them Rope

   Year: 1997   
Tracks: 11




Coalesce's medicine has systematically pushed the boundaries of the hard-core and metallic element genres, forging a mind-boggling compulsion with unusual, shifting tempos with power, noise, vallecula, and a creativity paralleled only by the band's peers in Dillinger Escape Plan and Botch. The origins of Coalesce stern be traced indorse to a caboodle called Breach -- a grouping not to be at sea with the European outfit that shares their call. Breach formed in January of 1994 with Jes Steineger on guitar, Stacy Hilt on bass, and drummer James Redd. After a few unsuccessful attempts at finding a musical direction with a different singer, yeller Sean Ingram -- later of the band Restrain -- was invited to join the sheepcote.


As Coalesce, the quartette began to define its own heavy, bridging together odd meter signatures, an abrasive vocal style, and erratic guitar noise. They wrote quintet songs together and performed for free in basements, finally releasing a self-titled 7" individual through Chapter Records that speedily blew through its initial 1,000-copy pressing. The buzz generated by the single and the band's increasingly fickle live performances drew the attention of metallic element powerhouse label Earache, which invited Coalesce to suit the tierce lot aboard their fugacious New Chapter imprint. The resulting record was a CD interlingual rendition of their three-song 002 demo. A year by and by on, Coalesce released a split-CD EP with Britain's long-running Napalm Death. The two Earache releases were supported by a six-week circuit with likewise minded Florida stripe Bloodlet and Krishna-core mavens 108.


Upon reversive place, Coalesce skint up for the number one clip, with Redd exit sour to college in Baltimore shortly later. In 1996 the band re-formed, this time with frenzied James DeWees aboard. The fresh invigorated band signed a take with Philadelphia's Edison label, which released Coalesce's debut full-length album, Give Them Rope. It was a bludgeoning affair molded with Ingram's increasingly deep solomon Bellow and lyrical musings, personal polemics unlike many of the band's contemporaries. Split singles with Boy Sets Fire and the Get Up Kids followed, with Coalesce coupling up with each band to "reinterpret" 1 another's songs. Nathan Ellis replaced Hilt in the band around the time that Functioning on Impatience was released through band sidekick Dan Askew's Second Nature Recordings. The record saw the band streamlining their sound, sacrificing a bit of musical barbarism in party favor of a subtle handiness, all the patch left fabulously originative. The like label too released a record that presented freshly recorded versions of the 002 songs alongside tracks from a prospicient out of print undivided, titling it A Safe Place/002.


A trip to Red House Studios to record an album's worth of '70s tilt songs resulted in septet Led Zeppelin covers alternatively, as Coalesce became so beguiled by the smattering of Zeppelin songs they had primitively elected to platter that they distinct to pay tribute exclusively to them. The songs were released as There Is Nothing New Under the Sun through Boston's Hydra Head label, the same company that issued the split with Boy Sets Fire. All of these releases, conjugate with a smattering of live appearances, culminated in several larger metal-oriented labels pursuing the isthmus. After narrowing it down pat to two labels, Coalesce single-minded to go with Relapse, decision making to break up formerly once more before the recording of their newfangled label debut had even begun.


Conflate reassembled long enough to make 0:12 Revolution in Just Listening. It was arguably their topper elbow grunge by that point -- accentuated by Ingram's now unmistakable lyric prose, Steineger's now signally Jimmy Page-like approach to riffian writing (albeit combined with his possess outlandish time signatures), Ellis' runny basslines, and DeWees' scattershot and powerhouse drumming. Hydra Head asked for one last birdcall dynasty to include on the CD interpretation of the Boy Sets Fire split, so Ingram, Ellis, and producer Ed Rose improvised over an old acoustic track, creating "Bob Jr." A final depict, dubbed Last Call for the Living, was discussed much up to now never materialized. Members stayed busy -- DeWees with the Get Up Kids (for whom he had begun playing keyboards) and Reggie and the Full Effect; Ellis fronting a band called the Casket Lottery on guitar and vocals (together with the guy rope he replaced in Coalesce, Hilt). Ingram was tangled with various projects -- including a live appearance screaming for a then singer-less Dillinger Escape Plan at Krazy Fest 4 in Louisville, KY, and a long-discussed project with members of Seattle's Training for Utopia called the American Spectator.


A collection of old Coalesce recordings surfaced as a vinyl-only release through Florida's No Idea, with the band re-forming once over again in 2001. This time the card included Ingram, a returning Hilt on bass, DeWees, and a modern guitar player named Cory White. Operation on Impatience was the first record album released under this card, arriving on Hydra Head Records during the following summertime.





House Passes $118.7B Military Construction-Veterans Affairs Appropriations Bill