When I first started this blog, it was a way for me to archive the daily journal entries that I'd write. (Because they were hilarious.) Anyone that has read this blog within the past two years, or looked at the sidebar knows that purpose did not last for long. But when I was writing those old posts I was a dogmatic, ritualistic kid who was obsessed with processes (You'll see that if you read even one of those old posts.) And I wound up making posting on this blog a daily commitment.
And I was posting about nothing important. Nothing that was important to anyone but me. And in the place I am now, some of that shit is a bit personal and embarrassing. I write about music, and sometimes politics. You don't need to be able to click through the sidebar and see an eighteen-year old me ranting about how much he hates school. And quite frankly, I don't want that stuff on the internet, even if some weirdo wants to read it.
I'm going to be taking down the more embarrassing and awkward posts. This place didn't take off until I started reviewing music anyway, so if you're the weirdo who was reading those posts at 2 AM, I'm sorry, bro, but no more of that shit.
Lately, I've had a lot more free time (Yes, the song reviews are coming back, shut up.) So I've been entertaining my inner child and playing a few LEGO games. And I know I don't usually write about videogames but I've been consistently seeing mean-spirited, fucked up shit in this one game; Lego DC Supervillains.
Like in one mission you have to help this henchman do acrobatics so he can bust out of jail. And after five minutes of walking tightropes, jumping off platformer and fighting cops you've bonded with this dude. And then this shit happens. (Watch it with the audio turned off. It makes it way more fucked up.)
Yeah, that guy gets killed and the game doesn't even acknowledge it. Usually when you beat someone up in this game they lie on the ground with cartoon stars circling around their head. The game tries to emphasize that they aren't dead, and you're not a murderer. I jumped down there and didn't see anything. That guy just blew up and died. Fuck him, I guess.
Before that, there's another guy dressed up like Evel Knievel who's going to motorcycle ramp into the prison. As you fix up his bike you find out it's because he's trying to break out his friend. And so you fix up the bike and the guy chickens out. So you ride the cycle over the ramp yourself. Take a look at what happens.
What the fuck? That guy would have died! Imagine this happening on a kids tv show. The villain smashes into a tree and dies while trying to jailbreak his friend. What the fuck is wrong with this game?
And I wouldn't be writing this post if inappropriately morbid shit like this didn't happen constantly in this game.
You can probably already tell with most of these things it's the implications that are messed up. A dumb kid wouldn't notice any of this. Which in my book makes it all the more messed up. Because someone wrote this stuff into a kid's game.
And now for the main attraction. All throughout the game you see posters for a movie called 'It Came From Krypton." It's clearly a parody of 50's science fiction movies except with Doomsday as the monster.
It's plastered everywhere and the NPC's even talk about it. It's a Joe Biden would say ,"A big fucking deal."
During one mission you have to hack into a locker and you need a six-digit code to open it. If you look to your right you happen to see this poster -
It's an 'It Came From Krypton' movie poster with a release date under it that opens up the locker.
But wait did you see that date? It says '28-01-86'. (January 28, 1986 for my fellow non-Europeans.)
That date on its own doesn't really stand out. But try asking Google Now (or whatever personal assistant you have.) what happened on January 28, 1986.
What the fuck???
Are we sure these guys should be making kids' games?
Edit: I am now aware that the date clearly says 29-01-86. Which was the day after
the Challenger explosion. (Which has some weird implications in itself.
Is this game trying to say Doomsday was responsible for the Challenger
explosion?) I am indeed tempted to say that this is just a coincidence,
but given all the weird shit I showed you above, and the fact that no one passes up a chance to make these kind of references; nah. Also, there's the fact that this game is clearly not set in the fucking 80's.
That specific date was selected for a reason. I just don't know why.
Hell, maybe the designer's favorite character debuted on that day. Who
knows? Am I overthinking this throwaway side-quest in a videogame for ten-year-old kids? Yes. Am I onto something? Probably...
Okay, so what I've done is hit the shuffle button on my songs to try to make getting through these reviews a little bit less tedious. That's probably going to mess things up in the future but it is what is. Now let's see what we're reviewing.
I like this track. Hell at this point, I think we all know that no one from Iron Maiden can do anything wrong.
Well, anything too wrong...
But when you break up the members shit just doesn't go right.
Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson are like the soul of Iron Maiden. As a whole, Iron Maiden is like a sports car. Bruce is the amazing paint job and Adrian is that kickass horsepower. And the rest of the guys in Maiden are like the brake system on that car. You separate them and it's a recipe for disaster. Sure, you've got something amazing for a little while. But you have no way of stopping the car when things fly off the rails. And what the hell are brakes without a car?
Pictured: The musical equivalent of brakes without a car.
And this song is a perfect example of that. It's Bruce Dickinson crooning and swooning ... about something. The lyrics don't really make much sense. It sounds amazing. But lyrically it's repetitive and it doesn't make any sense. Which is not something you could ever say about Iron Maiden. I like it, but I don't like it as much as regular Iron Maiden.
Ten Masked Men have been making black metal covers of pop music since the 90's. They covered N'SYNC back when they were actually popular. I like Ten Masked Men. I don't know this song, though. And most of the value of a death metal cover is how much it adds to the original song. Yes, this is a decent sounding song, as Ten Masked Men are some decent musicians. Just judging this song as a standalone song and not as a cover, it's great. It reminds of that mixture of death metal and rock that Carcass did in their early days. I could listen to this one again and again.
Right off the bat, this edgy fucking title turns me right the hell off. And the crazy riffing and screaming does not help. This song is pure early metalcore. It doesn't sound melodic enough to listen to for pleasure and the clean singing and weak screaming would make it a bad listen for when you're angry.And Jesus Christ, the production is so shitty, it sounds like I recorded this song off the radio. This is bad metalcore and I don't even know why I have it saved. I could've gone without ever hearing this.
This song reminds of all the times I rage-quit or put on invincibility, because of how many times I'd die repeatedly on E2M3. Especially in that big fucking room towards the end with all the flashing lights. There's always an imp or an invisible fucker waiting around the corner to kill me right when I let my guard down. I can't find any pictures of it, but if you know, you know.
I don't know how I've never mentioned this here, but I've been a religious Doom player since high-school.
Also, apparently Bobby Prince ripped off this Pantera track to make this song. I don't really hear it but this article IS suffering from a severe lack of Pantera.
It's been so long since I've heard the original AC-130 (or listened to Attack Attack! for that matter) that I have no clue what it sounds like anymore. This remix on the other hand, sounds like Deadmau5 if he made music exclusively for the niche demographic that both take ecstasy for fun and frequent hot topic. Which is to say that it's decent. I ain't actively seeking out to listen to music like this, but it was decent background noise as I wrote about Doom for five minutes.
Edit: I'm listening to Smokahontas as I edit this and this song has the most insane breakdown I've heard in my life. It went- ¡El pollo no hablas English hermanos! [Bubblegum pop music]
Speaking of metalcore, Chasing Safety is literally one of the first metalcore bands I started listening to. And to my surprise this song still holds up.Unlike It Dies Today, the singing is decent, and the screaming is pretty nasty. It's an excellent blend of two opposite ends of the musical spectrum. Melody and chaos come together as one. And dammit, that's all it takes to make good metalcore. Not two-minute breakdowns, endless uninspired chugging and cringeworthy crab-walking...
As if the universe is trying to call me out for being a lazy fuck, somehow a song from the exact review that I've been putting off for the past six months is on the shuffle list. I've written about this song three or four times but I've never actually published any of it. So here's a sneak peek of The ABC's of Song Reviewing: All That Remains Part 4 via screenshot -
Jesus Christ, this is a perfect way to end this review. This song sounds exactly like In Flames with a black metal vocalist. And I never knew I needed to hear that until now. And the way they let the song end with the chorus and then just two more guitar notes is the perfect formula to make you smash the replay button. (Or whatever normal people have.)
I don't have anything else to say here. I'm pretty satisfied with my awesome music collection. I don't like that there weren't any outrageous tracks (And believe me, there's some RIDICULOUS stuff, that I can't even review saved on this phone.) But I think my music player tries to push the tracks you're more likely to listen to towards the top when you hit shuffle (Which is why there was an All That Remains song in the list.) I kept scrolling down and half the shit I've never listened to was towards the middle of the list. So maybe if I do this again, I'll shuffle, close my eyes and then scroll down for a bit.
Now fuck off, I've got to add a bunch of copyright shit so this article doesn't get taken down.
So Evernote, is a note-taking service that stores your messages in the cloud. You can write notes on your phone, and then you can access those same notes from any computer, using the Evernote website. I've been using it to write my to-do lists, and to take notes for the last three years. This is not a misplaced advertisement for Evernote.
AFTER THREE YEARS OF SERVICE EVERNOTE HAS DECIDED TO START CHARGING FOR
THEIR WEB SERVICE.
It used to be that you could only connect two mobile
devices to Evernote and you could connect to the web anywhere without it counting towards your device limit. Which makes sense. On
the phone it's an application. On the computer its just a website. You
can't connect an infinite amount of phones for free. That would be ridiculous. They have to make their money, somehow. That's reasonable.
But now after three years they're counting connecting to the website towards your two device limit.
Which as I just said. since Evernote is a fucking website, makes no sense.
But I know why they're doing this.
No one wants to buy their shitty premium service, because there's no reason to.
Every other month for the past three years I've been hit with
"Buy Evernote Premium for $4.99 a month! This is an exclusive deal. We
sure as hell won't give you the exact same deal next month!" And
since none of that stupid shit worked they're deciding to start
changing shit up. Which in my case is fine. I don't necessarily need to
use Evernote on my Tablet. I'll stick to using it on my phone and the
internet. Or I could just find another fucking service all together.
Either way, Evernote just fucked itself and did the opposite of what
they intended. I'm not going to buy your stupid premium. It's not worth
buying. If anything, I can just use Google Docs on an infinite amount of
devices for free. And guess what? Now, since I'm not going to be using
Evernote on my tablet, I'm going to uninstall it.
I was recently thinking about how amazing the first two Terminator movies are. And that train of thought got me thinking about how shitty the last few ones have been. So I decided to rank them. And I have a blog, so why not let everyone else know where these movies fall on my list.
Alright, let's do this. Obviously from worst to best starting with -
6. Terminator Genisys
That's ... not how you spell that. Who let their
ten-year-old name the movie?
There was a lot of amazing press for this movie. Arnie was back as the Terminator. Sarah Conor was back (and she was being played by Emilia Clarke). The T-1000 was also going to be in it. Matt Smith was going to be playing the villain. Jai Courtney was playing our favorite 80s everyman superhero Kyle Reese (Although, I don't know who was happy about that. Possibly Australians.)
And then the movie was fucking terrible. They spoiled the big twist of the movie in all of the trailers. And the big twist was stupid as fuck. John Connor as the bad guy makes no sense. Matt Smith was in like one scene and had no lines. They cast some random Asian as the T-1000 (despite the fact that you could go to any trailer park and find like five dudes that look like Robert Patrick) and was only in one scene. Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney had as much chemistry as two drops of water.
Remember when they first showed us this set photo at Comic-Con?
Notice how Jai Courtney is the only one who doesn't look confused.
I'm not going to lie to you, the only thing I remember about this movie is that something happened on a bridge. Also, old Arnie travels back to the opening of the first Terminator and kills the OG T-800. Although, I wouldn't have even remembered that if that scene didn't come up while I was looking up the director. This movie is the worst thing an action movie can be. Forgettable and boring. I honestly can't think of anything good about this movie.
5. Terminator Salvation
This movie had a lot of cool of Terminators in it. It's also the only Terminator movie that we've had set in the post-Judgement Day apocalyptic future. The scenes where the Resistance has to fight the machines are pretty dope. It feels like Mad Max meets I-Robot (if all the robots looked like the Decepticons from Transformers.) The cast is amazing for a 2009 action movie. Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas-Howard, Anton Yelchin. All of those folks were on fire back then. Hell, Terry Crews was even in there as a dead body in one scene.
I would probably have loved the twist where the main character is actually a Terminator if it wasn't spoiled by the trailer. (And if it actually had any impact on the plot.)
The movie is also, somehow, boring. Which is insane. You took the apocalyptic future scenes from the openings of Terminator 2 and 3, made them into a whole movie, and cast Batman as John Connor and it wasn't an instant classic? That's a clear cut problem. (I think the drastic tonal differences between some of the poster art accurately sums up the issue. This is the movie we could've gotten.This is the movie we got. This movie could be so much more badass than it is.)
Note From Future Joe: So I now know this film was a victim of the 2007 Writer's Strike. And in my opinion, that technically would mean there's only five Terminator movies. Despite what Hollywood tries to tell you, you can't make a movie without a writer. There was a script, but it wasn't finished by the strike and it went through so many different hands and rewrites, they might as well have been filming three different movies at once. All of a sudden, Terry Cruise's corpse but not his character being in the movie makes sense. The mismatch of cool looking posters and slow dialogue-heavy scenes makes sense. This movie isn't bad, it's just 2/3 of a movie.
4. Terminator: Dark Fate.
This one was okay. I liked that Linda Hamilton and Arnie came back. I liked that the opening scene ties into T2. Apart from that, this movie was laughably bad. It kind of felt like this movie was trying to push a weird political agenda. The way they repeatedly emphasized Sarah and John as failures kind of felt like the movie was saying "Out with the crotchety old white people and in with the young people of color!" I think at one point, they even free everyone in an ICE detention center. The main character has asthma or something. I'm not against all of that shit, but I don't think it belongs in a Terminator movie.
On top of all that, Linda Hamilton seemed like she didn't want to be there. A lot of her dialogue was TERRIBLE. Hell, most of the dialogue in this movie was terrible. Honestly, the only good parts of this movie are the scenes with the T-800.
Unlike Salvation, where the worst part is when the T-800 is on screen.
Arnie saves this movie from being completely unwatchable.
It may not make sense why I ranked it above Salvation, but if I had to rewatch one of the two, I'd pick Dark Fate in a heartbeat. I have to give it to this movie because there's an intense action scene at least every five minutes. I can't say the same for Salvation.
3. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Yeah, I haven't seen this movie in a while. I wouldn't mind watching it again though. I can't say that about the three movies that came after this. This movie is genuinely funny at times and it's arguably the very last classic Arnie movie. Nick Stahl is also always fun to watch (Have you seen Sin City? It's a shame he hasn't done more movies) and the T-X is an interesting villain.
Although, the movie is indeed a tad bit silly.
Just a tad bit...
The final fight is a lot more boring than a fight between two cyborg assassins from the future should be. This movie isn't bad in my opinion. In fact, it's miles ahead of all of the Terminator movies that came after it. But, it's just average. And the first two Terminator movies are anything but average.
2. The Terminator
This is a classic. I can probably watch this movie over and over again and still enjoy it. And I love how as I got older the way I watched this movie changed. The Terminator can be viewed as a stand-alone sci-fi tinged slasher movie. Think about it. You have the emotionless, inhuman killer, who just keeps coming back. The Terminator is basically Jason Voorhees, merely sharing a scene with him is a death sentence for most characters. All of the important characters are picked off until we're left with one final girl. And this movie is from the mid-80s, the height of the slasher genre. This is a slasher movie.
Apart from that, this is peak Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hell, this is peak Michael Biehn. The man only did like three movies and is a bonified 80s action hero. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is James Cameron's (second) best movie. Fight me.
1. Terminator 2
Imagine you just made one of the most successful sci-fi/slasher movies of all time. Now take the villain from the first movie and make him a genuinely lovable action hero. And then replace him with another villain that's just as terrifying as the original villain was in the first movie. Then take the kid of the protagonists of the last movie and make him the main character. Also, ditch the horror undertones this time and go for straight-up action.
Do you know how hard that would be to pull off? It would be insanely hard, and James Cameron pulled it off so well, there was nowhere else to go.
I don't have to tell you about how awesome Terminator 2 is. This movie is a bonified American classic.
What Now?
I honestly think they should call it quits and stop making these movies. The big issue here is that none of the sequels since 2003 are even canon anymore. And all of them have been at best, mediocre movies. Another gigantic issue with the franchise has been shitass marketing. Salvation was marketed as a kid-friendly, action-packed blockbuster and its mostly pointless talking, shooting, and running in the desert. Genisys was obviously just a bad movie to begin with, but they put everything that could've redeemed it in its trailers. And I don't even remember seeing any marketing for Dark Fate. Which is just shameful, because I'm a twenty-something nerd. You know, the exact target demographic for the goddamn movie?!? I didn't even know there was a new Terminator movie, until we got to the theater and Joker was sold out.
And not to mention, that anytime these last movies have had even a slight plot twist, the ad company made sure to put it into every trailer.
I don't believe that Disney owns the rights to the movies, but this is one case where I think it would be better if they did. In the state this franchise is in, I don't think the House of Mouse would even attempt to make any more sequels. And if they did, they'd do a better job than Skydance. They wouldn't allow trailers that reveal key plot points. They wouldn't keep recasting everyone. They wouldn't make sequels that retcon each other. And if Disney is good at anything, it's knowing their target audience.
Honestly, the best thing to do would be to make a loose sequel to Dark Fate and move on from there. It doesn't matter if Dark Fate sucks and this new movie is going to be completely different. The Child's Play franchise is a perfect example of working around bad movies. You acknowledge the good parts of those movies, and you mock the bad parts. You don't just ignore them and start over.
I wanted to surprise y'all with a gift for labor day but I realized something. I'm fucking tired of reviewing All That Remains. I never thought that I'd ever say that. I try to be honest in my reviews. Which works really well if I'm reviewing a band I've never heard before or a shitty band. But when I have a band that I really like (such as All That Remains) there's only so many ways and times that I can say "The riffing is amazing!", or "Everything is on point, here.", before I sound like a broken record. I guess I found out that in this case there really can be too much of a good thing.
So instead of reviewing my favorite band, I'm reviewing one of my favorite records. - Allegaeon's self-titled EP.
Flawless logic I know. But, this EP only has four songs, so I can't
possibly repeat myself that much this time.
I discovered this band because of their dopeass album art. I was Googling for something and the cover of this EP popped up, so I downloaded it on my phone.
I mean, look at that shit. That's some next-level artwork.
And then one day I was looking for some new music to listen to so I pulled up the record. And after I heard 'Nex of Terra.' I immediately bought the EP.
And I know I've complained about tech-death being stupid. But let me clarify. There's a right and wrong way to tech-death. When you're so focused on being complex and unique that the music sounds weird and unlistenable, you're doing it wrong. (Brain Drill playing so goddamn fast all you hear is screaming and guitar notes comes to mind.) But when you're just good as fuck at your instrument and you want to show it off by making complexly structured music, but you make sure it sounds good. You're doing it right. (Revocation definitely comes to mind. I wish they were on my review list.)
Allegaeon is on the right half of the tech-death spectrum. I know goddamn well I won't be doing any covers of their songs unless I get GOOD.
I'm not the biggest fan of this song in particular but that's where I take into account how unique this band sounds. I don't know too many vocalists that sound like Ezra Haynes. He has that nasty, 90s Melodeath-esque snarl, but he enunciates perfectly. The fact that you can actually understand him, makes him seem like that much more of a monster in my book.
Imagine if you were watching Friday the 13th and Jason started speaking in clear English. That motherfucker would be way scarier.
"Oh, yeah, I'm still going to silently kill you. Just felt like chatting for a sec."
Yeah, I hear all that insane riffing and drumming. Yeah it's insane. Yeah, I take my hat off. But its nowhere near as good as the next track -
Nex of Terra
Oh, boy. I've got so much to say about this one. Firstly 'Nex of Terra' is a cool Latin way of saying 'Death of the Earth.' And the lyrics are a cool way of saying that we're all carelessly destroying the earth and it's inevitably going to kill everybody. And it sounds badass. We're wrecking the fuck out of the planet and it's fucking awesome. Which it honestly shouldn't be. And I'm guessing that's exactly the point of this song. Polluting the earth is so awesome, it's a national pastime that you can write a dopeass metal song about. It doesn't help that the rhyme pattern makes it sound like Ezra is rapping. And the juxtaposition is how fucked up that fact is.
And I told y'all NO ONE sounds like Ezra Haynes. Every time he shrieks "FIIIIIIRRRREEE" you can just picture the world engulfed in flames. The badass intro riff that gets repeated at the end of the song makes this song feel like a warning wrapped up in one heavy-hitting, metal-ass, book of prophesy.
Preaching the Machine
Pretty decent intro riff on this song. I feel like I could actually play it. This is an okay track. Definitely the weakest off of the EP. I don't know what Ezra actually needs because I can't understand the chorus of the song. It sounds like he's either saying, "ALL I NEED IS MY FOOT!", or "ALL I NEED IS MY BUTT!" Which is hilarious either way.
Cower Before Me
Boy, what the fuck was going during those first few seconds? That was like a death metal marching band. It sounded like there were eighteen people playing.
And this song exudes Hatebreed levels of "I'll fuck you up if you cross me." energy. You know how you can listen to a song and know the exact moment a circle pit would open up? This is one of those songs. This song would have fists flying and arms windmilling. Even the security would be shoving folks to the ground.
And this one time, I'm not spoiling it for you. You click that fucking play button and listen for yourself. But you better be in an empty room. Cause if you ain't then you'll be slamming someone against something. This is fucking war music!
Final Verdict / So What's Next?
Y'all know I don't like to give my opinion in the first review of the series. But if I have to sum up this album and Allegaeon in one word - "Fun." It's fun to listen to Allegaeon, and their music videos will have you on the floor laughing (sometimes unintentionally.) I discovered this band during my senior year of highschool, so listening to them gives me nostalgia. I know y'all probably don't care but I used to create apps and I remember that I would almost exclusively listen to Allegaeon whenever I was working. Listening to this band again has put me into a creative mood.
Speaking of creative moods, I know you guys are wondering if I'm going to come back. It's been two months since I was regularly posting. And the one thing that always amazes me, is that no matter how long I'm gone, there's always someone reading. Hell, I do this for fun, but I like to think that the three views on every post are diehard readers. And to those three readers, I say "I won't be back just yet." And I know I've still got to wrap up the All That Remains series. But don't worry, the later albums are kind of shitty, so it should be a little more fun to read these next few reviews,
I know this isn't the All That Remains review you guys are waiting on, but trust me it's coming down the pipeline. I just want to tidy up a few things.
But you (probably) read the title. What have I been up to?
I've been mostly going from city to city. I live in a different city than I work in, so I hang out in Atlanta on my work days, then I come back to suburbia for a break. And then I do it all over again.
I've been reading a few books. I'm really deep into this one on building Charisma. And I've also been reading David Goggins' book. And let me tell you, that is one tough motherfucker.
If you've ever read the Bible, the character 'God' was based on him.
Haven't been playing too much Doom or Quake. Haven't had the time or setup. And I stopped playing mobile games.
I think I may have developed a slight addiction to Monster. Every single day I've worked, I've had one. That can't possibly be healthy, but I sure as hell wouldn't be able to get through the day without one.
Besides, it's either that or Pixie Stix every three hours.
God knows I don't have the money for a habit like that.
I have a lot of fun flirting with the guests at my job. We get more than a few smooth brained visitors that do stupid things and telling those stories is fun.
I'm still trying to have my hot girl summer but the ACLU told me I can't identify as a woman for ten minutes a day.
I watch a lot of political stuff on YouTube. Don't worry about my views, just know that I don't judge you unless you're hurting yourself or someone else. I may or may not support your opinions.
All in all, I haven't been up to much. But if you're ever sitting on your couch wondering what I'm doing it's probably one of those things above.
I do have some good news -
There's this one thing I'm working on. And I think you guys are really going to like it, cause I'm having a helluva time putting it together.
