Edit: Ok some of the other bands sound decent too

Kane Hodder

Black Houses

Full bill at El Corazon Calendar

The Band members are from a lot of Swedish metal bands, namely Dark Tranquility, but they are far from Metal. I would call this light-metal at best. That said their songs are still sonically pleasing and interesting.

The Venue: Tough to describe when you spend most of the time stuck behind a pillar in a room filled with metal fans young and old. It has a small, dirty metal club feel, a pretty decent PA, and is impossible to transit during a sold-out show. I was impressed the most by the sound since most venues that aren’t particularly deep in front of the stage often get muddy and distorted during a metal concert. I guess they have their act together since they are predominantly a hard rock, metal, punk venue. Security seemed pretty reasonable during some very intense moshing in front of the stage – they take action only when they have to, so don’t be an idiot. Lets just say if its a highly moshable band stay out of the pit area unless you are prepared for a few bruises. Only issue…where the fuck was the bar (is it that tiny thing stage right) and how the fuck do you get to it…

The Crowd: A broad cross-section of age for an all ages show, though mostly men. You pretty standard metal fanbase. I don’t think you go see Meshuggah if you are simply a Disturbed fan.

The Bands: I arrived partway through The Faceless, which was a pretty typical Hardcore metal band in the Bloodsimple variety, which a little less mosh emphasis – but maybe it was just early. Lots of tempo change and screamo…

Cynic was really interesting and musically/sonically awesome. I didn’t know much about them before the concert but they are definitely worth checking out more. Their Drummer has serious skills, definitely owing to a lot of the jazz timings in many of their songs. Everything was purposeful and composed keeping the complex music accessible. The lead guitarist used lots of a dissonance, also jazz like, that added a eerie and new sound to their songs. The vocals were predominantly clean, though the guitarist provided some subtle backup growls, that are much more prominent on the albums. A little change is very welcome after all the cookie cutter acts that are out there now.

This brings us to Meshuggah. They were brutal, in a good way of course. There music was fast and furious, with a lot of seemless tempo change. They provided plenty of foder for the moshers who managed to eccompass the entire floor of the club at times.  The Drummer looked like he was busting ass to keep up with the horrid pace. Some of the drum fills/solos were simply monstrous in their rhythym and sequence, and I think I’d give him a raise. The guitars and bass laid down a very good base for the vocalist who had a great growl that wasn’t just screaming to the point of throat dismemberment. If it is even possible to conceive, there was some melody to his growling.

MySpace Links:

Meshuggah

Cynic

The Faceless

————————–

1. Friendly Fires – Friendly Fires – 2008 – Genre: Danceable Indie-Pop-Rock -  This one probably isn’t new to anyone, but  this is just an all around solid album. There really isn’t a track that seems like a throw away and this Indie-disco-pop-rock is very danceable. If you don’t start taping your feet to songs like In The Hospital you might just not have any Soul-in ya.

2. Black Keys – thinkfreakness- 2003 – Genre: Indie Southern Blues Rock – Just solid rock with a heavy blues sound. This 2003 release has some glorious downright dirtiness that makes you want to roll around in the mud and yell hallelujah! Try Have Love Will Travel

3. In Flames – A Sense of Purpose – 2008 – Genre: Swedish Melodic Deathmetal – Another goodie by the modern-”classic” deathmetal band. Some nice hard cuts on this one such as Sober and Irrelevant and also some great epics like I’m the Highway and Sleepless Again.

4. The Knux – Remind Me in 3 Days – 2008 – Genre: Hip Hop of the Outkast variety – If you heard this album in passing you may have thought it was a new album in passing. That is not meant as a dig, since we’ve come to expect a quality, evolving range of sounds from them. This Album however has all the elements of Outkast’s great, but less experimental tracks with a very unique flavor. You’ll find lots of electric guitar that mixes up the range of sounds you’ re likely to hear and hey they actually have lyrical talent which seems lacking in the mainstream hip-hop world these days. Just a solid, no great album that makes the TIs and Soulja Boys look late shameful posers. Check out Cappucino, F!RE, and Life in a Cage as a start.

The Daily Kos post summarizes it well:

UPDATE IV: George Voinovich was very impressive; I’ll try to find a transcript. Obama is up right now. He’s getting right on to asking questions instead of making a speech. He corners Petraeus about Al Qaeda in Iraq, saying they weren’t in there before we invaded. And he’s asking whether we can ever reach a point where AQI couldn’t reconstitute themselves. He’s trying to pin down Petraeus on some metrics. This seems like a windup for a big pitch. I LOVE that he mentioned that Maliki said there was no room in the security forces for the Sunni Awakening groups and yet he recently added 10,000 Shiite Badr Brigade members, and he’s picked up on Sen. Boxer’s point that the Iraqi government is as pro-Iranian as the “special groups” that Crocker claims is the source of all Iraq’s problems. I think Obama’s remarks reflect a facility with the situation on the ground and a reasonable expectation of the goals we can expect in Iraq when we eventually withdraw. Best of all, Obama is doing his job instead of grandstanding. He added that the two malign groups Crocker and Petraeus keep discussing, AQI and Iran, were a DIRECT result of our initial invasion. He did an excellent job.

Read the Obama Transcript here for the entire conversation but here are a few particular exchanges that I thought were enlightening. You must read the whole exchange to really get a feel for his handling of it as he sets the groundwork perfectly then he jumps in with the tough questions once Petraeus and Crocker were in vulnerable positions. He wasn’t there for a gottcha moment but rather to get them on record on the true nature of the Iraq debate.

OBAMA: Should we be successful in Mosul, should you continue, General, with the effective operations that you’ve been engaged in, assuming that in that narrow military effort we are successful, do we anticipate that there ever comes a time where Al Qaida in Iraq could not reconstitute itself?

GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS, COMMANDER, MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE-IRAQ: Well, I think the question, Senator, is whether Iraqi security forces over time, with much less help, could deal with their efforts to reconstitute. I think it’s…

OBAMA: That’s my point.

PETRAEUS: I think it’s a given that Al Qaida-Iraq will try to reconstitute just as any movement of that type does try to reconstitute. And the question is whether…

OBAMA: I don’t mean — don’t mean to interrupt you, but I just want to sharpen the question so that — because I think you’re getting right at my point here.

I mean, if one of our criteria for success is ensuring that Al Qaida does not have a base of operations in Iraq, I just want to harden a little bit the metrics by which we’re measuring that.

At what point do we say they cannot reconstitute themselves or are we saying that they’re not going to be particularly effective and the Iraqis, themselves, will be able to handle the situation?

PETRAEUS: I think it’s really the latter, Senator, that, again, if you can keep chipping away at them, chipping away at their leadership, chipping away at the resources, that comprehensive approach that I mentioned, that, over time — and we are reaching that in some other areas already.

…

OBAMA: OK. I just want to be clear if I’m understanding. We don’t anticipate that there’s never going to be some individual or group of individuals in Iraq that might have sympathies toward Al Qaida. Our goal is not to hunt down and eliminate every single trace, but rather to create a manageable situation where they’re not posing a threat to Iraq or using it as a base to launch attacks outside of Iraq. Is that accurate?

PETRAEUS: That is exactly right.

More after the Jump……

And Another…

OBAMA: And so my final — and I’ll even pose this as a question and I won’t — you don’t necessarily have to answer it — maybe it’s a rhetorical question — if we were able to have the status quo in Iraq right now without U.S. troops, would that be a sufficient definition of success?

It’s obviously not perfect. There’s still violence, there’s still some traces of Al Qaida, Iran has influence more than we would like. But if we had the current status quo, and yet our troops had been drawn down to 30,000, would we consider that a success? Would that meet our criteria, or would that not be good enough and we’d have to devote even more resources to it?

CROCKER: Senator, I can’t imagine the current status quo being sustainable with that kind of precipitous drawdown.

BIDEN: That wasn’t the question.

OBAMA: No, no, that wasn’t the question. I’m not suggesting that we yank all our troops out all the way. I’m trying to get to an endpoint. That’s what all of us have been trying to get to.

And, see, the problem I have is if the definition of success is so high, no traces of Al Qaida and no possibility of reconstitution, a highly-effective Iraqi government, a Democratic multiethnic, multi- sectarian functioning democracy, no Iranian influence, at least not of the kind that we don’t like, then that portends the possibility of us staying for 20 or 30 years.

If, on the other hand, our criteria is a messy, sloppy status quo but there’s not, you know, huge outbreaks of violence, there’s still corruption, but the country is struggling along, but it’s not a threat to its neighbors and it’s not an Al Qaida base, that seems to me an achievable goal within a measurable timeframe, and that, I think, is what everybody here on this committee has been trying to drive at, and we haven’t been able to get as clear of an answer as we would like.

….

This would be an interesting development as it would mean that democratic elections would potentially result in the ouster of this dictator who could easily be said to have taken his country to the cusp of irrelevancy and a dire state of economic distress. I’m personally not that clear on what the opposition will bring to the table that will benefit the average Zimbabwean, but Mugabe and his party have really messed the country up so I assume this is a good thing. But only time will tell if Mugabe actually leaves, peacefully or not, and weather whoever may replace him is any better for the country in the end.

A couple other links on this:

NY Times

BBC - They are denying any agreement or talks in the works so maybe this is all premature.

 Update (4/2/2008):   It is looking good for the opposition. The ZANU-PF (Mugabe’s party) is behind 50 to 43%. The Wash Post is still reporting a runoff may be necessary, but that doesn’t make sense considering the opposition party has 50.%