...Since my last blog post. So, I am taking my time out of playing my summer away in Fallout 3 to write this, what I hope to be extensive blog post.

First off

I built myself a pretty sexy desktop computer over my Christmas break, which led to me not posting blogs as I was quick to pirate (and buy a few) computer games I missed out on over the past year or two. This included, Mass Effect, Dead Space, Fallout 3, Oblivion, Crysis, The Orange Box, Left 4 Dead. I was pretty quick to make myself a Steam account and Steam has been enough to make me pay for a game here and there.

Concert Reports:

Since December, my concert outings have been spread thin, but I had a few cool experiences.

Torche: I met Zach of these here fine MetalReview.com boards in my fair city of Boise for a rather interesting concert. Torche was playing that fateful day with a bunch of no-name horribad, terrible local high-school rock bands. Spotting out Zach in the "crowd" was fairly easy, he was the only one other than me that was over the age of 18 and has the height to boot. To be honest, Zach is the first person I have ever met in person after meeting them online. Now, for the show, Zach and I caught the end of some sort of musical vomit that was opening for Torche. Their little group of high school followers were also annoying, but thankfully they all left before Torche even got on stage leaving a maximum crowd of maybe 15 people. Torche kept truckin otherwise and put on a great show, their music sounds fantastic live as well as their drummer being one of the most energetic drummers I have seen live. Very few pieces of his drum kit was left standing at the end.

Cannibal Corpse / The Faceless / Neuraxis / Obscura: Going to this show was a last minute decision, and it was well worth it. Opening was Obscura, I was most excited to see their stuff live. it had only been maybe a month since the release of Cosmogenesis when I saw this show and it was heavy on my listening rotation, I do believe they said it was their 5th show in the US as a band. Overall, they have one of the clearest, most accurate, true to album sound tech death bands I have seen live (comparing to Necrophagist, Beneath the Massacre and The Faceless). Their bass player is very fun to watch, all other videos I have seen of them playing live show the same strange stance he was in doing some sort of robot movement all the while obliterating his 6-string fretless bass. Neuraxis was pretty impressive, though their sound was at times inaudibly loud I enjoyed their show even though I have not given them much of a chance when it comes to albums. The Faceless were a giant let-down, though was not expecting much out of them, they have always seemed like the Job for a Cowboy of Tech Death to me, but I liked a few songs. Their newest album wasn't all that great either. Most of the stuff they played live didn't really sound like anything they have recorded. The Faceless should have been the opening band as to give Obscura a longer set. Cannibal Corpse, their ability to attract the Hispanic population to a metal show is outstanding. I don't think The Knitting Factory has ever smelled worse. Their set was around an hour and a half long and included songs from their entire collection as well as playing one of my personal favorites "I Cum Blood". I was also one of the lucky ones who caught one of Mazurkiewicz's drumsticks at the end of their encore.

Opeth / Enslaved: What can I say? This was one of the greatest days of my life. I had been dying to see these bands live since the day I first heard them. The show was on May 11th, I had my ticket ordered  February 2nd. My entire spring semester was spent memorizing every single Opeth and Enslaved song, I bought some albums I had missed and not a day went by I didn't spend at least a moment thinking of the concert. A couple of weeks before the show, I noticed that Wolves in the Throne Room had been added to the line-up. Sadly they ended up not playing due to stage size and drum kits (or at least thats what I'm told) I did get to meet them and buy some merch afterwards however. Enslaved live was everything I thought it would be plus more, they had a meager 50 minute set with only around 9 songs and nothing older than Below The Lights. I was very pleased when during RUUN and that first transition, everyone in the crowd was in a chant. It was perfect. Opeth had a massive set-list, almost 2 hours long covering almost every album, they did miss The Grand Conjuration, which I'm sure many people were hoping for, but never the less had a kick ass set. In the end it was the best $65 I have spent in LONG time and was totally worth having a bit of sore neck all through finals week.

Now that summer is here, I don't work the for the devil like last summer instead I work for my Dad's business doing random things that need to be done. Like cleaning caked on nicotine from tobacco smoke off of speaker cabinets and jukeboxes that have been sitting in Bars for years. It's enough to convince me never to smoke again in my life.

Coming up this summer, Clutch and Baroness are playing together in Boise in July so I'm thinking about making a bit of a road trip, hopefully I don't have to do it alone.

My copy of Ki from The Devin Townsend Project came in today along with a hand written thank you from HevyDevy records. So I have some listening to do off this phenominal album.