Well and just like that, in a little over a month, I went from having to grandparents to none. Today my grandfather on my father's side died. I still feel lucky in a way that I was able to have met all of my grandparents (even though I never really knew my mom's dad since he died when I was a few years old). What can you really do? Everyone rolls the dice all life comes to an end at one point or another. Regardless of who you are, dying of cancer is pretty shitty and that's just what life had in store for him. Tonight my dad is flying out Mexico to be there for his funeral tomorrow. I wish him and all my aunts, uncles, cousins and family relatives the best. I'll have to pay my respects next time I'm there.

All Over The Place

Vibes:

It's a bit strange to think that I don't know the lyrics to my favorite DevilDriver song, "Grinfucked" but that's just kinda how it goes. The song itself has many things going for it: fast paced riffs, drums that get the timing right, a sick bass intro and lyrics that sound authoritative and to the point. The song has certain vibe which makes it stand out for me out of the entire catalog. "These Fighting Words," "Horn of Betrayal" and "Pray for Villains" also share that same feeling. I don't think many bands having that pure in-your-face sound. On Beast, only "Coldblooded," "Shitlist" and "Dead to Rights" had that full on DevilDriver sound. That's why I'm happy that this new album is returning to the The Fury of Our Maker's Hand and The Last Kind Words era sound. Just look at the lyrics to "Grinfucked." Amazing:

Lights on but no one's home
I should've left you alone
You can't stand the heat,you're all alone
YEEAAAA!!!
Horseshoes & Hand Grenades
Coulda,woulda,shoulda your bed is made
Another man down & gone

Take advantage,manipulate
Take advantage,you piece of shit

Grinfuck
Debt paid in full!
You won't Grinfuck me!

This time the advantage is mine
This time vengeance is mine
Come seeking treasure
Without a map
It's in the journey & you'll never find your way back

Take advantage,manipulate
Take advantage,you piece of shit

Grinfuck
Debt paid in full!
You won't Grinfuck me!

Drop down!
Fool me once-shame on you
Fool me twice-shame on me
You've been Grinfucked

Even though Mastodon has been give or take more element influenced lyrics in their music, they also have that in your face feel to their songs. That's what makes Leviathan such an amazing album as well as Remission and to a certain extent Blood Mountain. That moment in "Blood and Thunder" where Brent just kicks off the song with "I think someone is trying to kill me..." is the moment you really know what you've gotten yourself into. "Island" has that too (which also comes out in Monsters University). I think of Mastodon as business first band. In more recent year (yes I'm calling you out Crack the Skye and The Hunter) they've lost a bit of edge but still show signs that they've got it thankfully. Their unreleased B-side for Crack the Skye, DeathBound, still easily can rate as one of their best songs. Keep on being classy guys, buisness first.

Lastly there is Lamb of God. I really wish they would sing like rednecks because that would be hilarious. They keep it adrenaline fueled all the time. "Laid to Rest" will always be the song I consider their best but with songs like "Redneck," "Beating on Death's Door," "Ruin," "Broken Hands" and "Ghost Walking," they're going full on metal every time.

Parents and Their Friend:

My mom and step-dad left to Mexico yesterday morning to go and celebrate my mom's birthday with the entire family. Thankfully they didn't really encounter any problems during their trip and made it safely. What is a bit weird though is that my step-dad's friend might go propose to my aunt even though they only met a few months ago. I guess the guy is a sweet talker or something but she's had the same sketchy (and I mean really sketchy, plus no one really liked him cause he always lied about everything, especially connections and how much money he has) boyfriend for the past two or three years, so this is a bit out of the blue. Congrats to him I guess, even though that would make him my uncle, but whatever.

Cycling:

Yesterday I rode from the northern part of the valley all the way to downtown as it has a been an itch of mine for a while. Riding over the Cahuenga pass next to the 101 is pretty cool and definitely has a nice view :)  There was show at the Hollywood Bowl so traffic was super packed and I got to just ride through everyone and leave them all behind in my dust. In recent weeks I've lowered the number of miles I cycle and hoping to use the summer to get that number back up.

Monsters University:

I saw Monsters University with America on Thursday as part of a date. The movie was definitely a change of tone from most Pixar films but I really loved it. They have a goth monster which was really cool (voiced by Aubry Plaza from Parks and Rec) and the cameos are pretty hilarious. I never really excepted seeing movie with whole 80s college tone to it, but it worked out perfectly and still has that same Pixar funniness to it. Squishy is an adorable character by far.

Next Gen Consoles:

Playstation 4 is way cooler than the Xbox One

Tomorrow is CicLAvia :) On the downside, I have not ridden a bicycle in about a week and a half so today and I'm going to ride and most likely get soar because it's an ambitious ride but I hope to end it off with treating myself to ice cream  hehe Going all out today

It has been a few days since my last post so just going to post a song before I got to sleep since I have to wake up in three hours. Good night everyone

Little Pet Peeve

I'm terrible at using Tumblr so who am I to complain, but one thing that really annoys me are gifs that people post/reblog with text that doesn't match the actual picture or scene. 3/4ths of the time you can looks at people's mouths and go "yeah they did say that" but it's really annoying seeing a person's lips barely move/or even move in general and it goes along side a large block of text. It just bugs the crap out of me. I'm sorry for taking time out of your day. You may resume whatever you were doing

New Songs

I always love discovering new songs and over the weekend I found out about Hammerfall's "Hero's Return." It's a power metal song, so really catchy and nice fast chugging guitars.

The other song I found out about was Manu Chao's "Panik Panik." This song is one of those obvious songs I would like because it makes absolutely no sense but really catchy.

Check them out if you want to :)

I Am Amir of the Desert

I know I'm never going to be part of a band that will ever record an album, so let me get that out of the way. Anyways, if I ever did though, I would like to record a song like "Amir of the Desert" from Coal Chamber's self-titled debut album. This is the only song on the album that has that demo sound to it and pretty obvious they were messing around in the studio and recorded it in one go. The song itself is just a playful 45 second improvised jam session. The song itself is also short and catchy. Can't ask for more than that. Check it out if you want to.

Coconuts

I've had a headache all day. It was weird earlier today (even a bit yesterday) in which I lacked motivation to ride my bicycle. It's a feeling I've rarely gotten since really seriously taking up cycling. I felt out of shape (I'm not really out of shape when it comes to bike riding) with the constant need to grasp for air, a hurting stomach and a headache that developed (which I still have now since 1 in the afternoon).

Motivation isn't usually a problem. I love to ride my bicycle. I love the adrenaline rush from just peddling as fast as I can alongside cars, that love/hate relationship with drivers and my want to just shout at them. Just peddling was hard for me to do and there wasn't much wind to provide resistance. On top of all that, I had my bicycle playlist blasting to get me in the mood but yet nothing. I've gotten my 12 mile ride down to about 50-55 minutes all in one go. But today it took me close to an hour five/hour ten and I had to stop three times because I needed to catch my breath. I felt queasy while riding. I threw up in my mouth a few times, but just swallowed it and kept riding. I'm still confused now as to why it happened, but hopefully tomorrow I don't have it and if I do well just going to push through it and ride. One way or another I need to find that self motivation.

I had really been in the mood to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail these last couple of days and finally got around to watching it today. I watched it with my mom and step-dad and they ended up falling asleep so I pretty much just watched the whole thing by myself. It's an enjoyable movie so I didn't really mind it in the end. It made me forget about my headache for periods of time before the pulsing reminded me it was there.

Yesterday America and I went to park to have lunch/dinner and read. It felt really nice and I'm really looking forward to do it again in the near future :)

Sorry for the Distraction

hehe Remember this:

(He's the guy who does the duet himself of "A Whole New World") I wonder what ever happened to him. It just crossed my mind. Continue whatever you were doing.

CloudKicker

I like CloudKicker. I forgot the name of the guy who does all the music himself but he's very talented. Programs the drums himself and records everything else in his in home studio and releases it. The coolest part about it is that it's just a hobby for him. The guy works a day job and then records this stuff for fun. These are my two favorite songs by him: "Dysphoria" and "Tip Your Van Driver." Check it out, they're really cool instrumental stuff.

Album Covers

It's 6:07 a.m. and I'm already wide awake. But anyways, that was yesterday's ranting. I would like to talk about shitty album covers. Right now there are four that stick out in my mind:

WTF is this?! I have no idea how anyone at either Bleeding Through or their record company could have looked at that and said, "yeah I like this one." I hope this wasn't a fan art submitted contest because man your fans have really shitty drawing skills. For something released in 2010...WTF!!! (Korn had a contest for their album Issues where they would take fan submitted art and choose one for the new album cover. What ended up happening was that when they brought it down to the final four, they couldn't decided on which to select, so they released all four. Here are versions one, two, three and four. They all still look better any day)

I enjoy Heavy Heavy Low Low but again WTF is up with this. Super bright colors and again a terrible design. You're a damn metal band! I do have to say though that this is at least a little easier on the eyes than their upstairs neighbor. I understand their music is chaotic and random all bands need to have at least a decent album cover. I don't care if they play it safe, just don't release some pile of shit that isn't easy on the eyes.

Now this is one of those releases that still has me scratching my head. Iron Maiden has one of the thee best track records of awesome album covers. Derek Riggs is the man when it comes to knowing what it takes to draw an awesome album cover. (For those who don't know, Riggs drew every Maiden album cover and single from their first self-titled release to No Prayer For The Dying and came back for Brave New World). So you take Maiden and remember that to grace a Maiden cover, that shit has to look good (check out Virtual XI right here. That's what I'm taking about) but this pixelated screen shot of just terrible looking people and why is that baby standing on the side of the dog/wolf thing?! C'mon Maiden...really?

Helloween also falls into this category of shitty digital art. Except Dance of Death was released in 2002, Straight Out of Hell was released in...2013. I wish this was a joke too. If this released somewhere in the 90s I would have happily forgiven them but in 2013 you can't be releasing this kind of crap especially when A) you have a track record of some pretty damn good album art (Keeper of the Seven Keys and Metal Invaders look good) B) your name is Helloween. Seriously guys, some needs to inform me how these kinds of crappy computerized works of art are approved. Even paying $500 for fan art off of Deviant Art would have done these guys better. I still cringe looking at this thing. The pumpkin with the gas mask in the logo could have looked so much cooler!!!!!

Our Theme

About a year ago I left to Germany and one of the songs that stuck with me while I was away was "We're Going to Be Friends" by the White Stripes.

Internet

I need to find new web pages that interest me. I only view the same ones over and over and non of then constantly update. Metalsucks, Joystiq, and Kotaku have an update about twice an hour while they're operating (let's say 8-6 but for MetalSucks they stop at 3) and then there's Cracked that updates once a day at 8 in the morning (but their writing has gone down as well as topics of interest so I visit once every few days). Tumblr...well I'm still terrible at it and still search for almost everything I repost. Twitter gets boring after a while. Facebook, I just get tired of seeing the same people post over and over again so I'm taking a nice break from it. Lastly there is GameTrailers but their best content is only up on the weekends: Annoying Gamer, Pach-Attack and Bonus Round (and they're all one episode a week). Which means I get tired of the internet pretty quickly. I'll eventually figure out something to entertain me past 6:35 in the morning

Sleep

I don't think I've ever really gotten used to being a morning person. I hate the inability to sleep in. I wake up between 5:30 and 6:30 on a daily basis almost regardless of what time I went to sleep. About 99%, the second I wake up, it's over for me. In that instance,y my body just decides "well looks like you're wide awake." An annoying side of it definitely is my mom being baffled every time for me waking up so early. "Why did you wake up at 5?" It's always as if I had a choice of when I could wake up. Not even tiredness of the body makes me sleep in. About 50 miles on my bike the day before, still up at 6 in the morning.

I think part of it is also a bit of jealousy. The significant majority of my friends can sleep in until 10, 11 or 12. When I use to sleep over at my friend's house, I would wake up at 6 and have to patiently wait until 12 or 1 in the afternoon until they woke up to actually do something. It's always a pain 24/7. Can't sleep in during the summer even though I'm going to sleep at 2 or 3 in the morning.

But it seems more like a two-for deal. I don't get to sleep in or have dreams. Where is the compensation? Waking up at 6 in the morning super hungry? That just makes the situation that much worse. I haven't even eaten yet and I woke up an hour ago (6:30 am).

I think my body goes "hey, you're tired. Your should go to sleep...but only for a few hours because you don't deserve more than five hours of sleep."

But what's funny though is that when I sleep in her arms, I can wake up later. We can wake up at 9 or 10 no problem. Or just wake up and fall back asleep immediately. Maybe it's the cuddles. Damn do they feel good. She used to almost only sleep in my arms but pretty much the tides have turned. It's okay, I get all comfy at night and don't mind at all.

Well enough from me, I'm super hungry and need to eat. PRONTO!

Down on Fascination Street

There are certain bands that I'm constantly falling back in love with after taking breaks. DevilDriver, Mastodon, Norma Jean and Chimaira. Right now I'm going through my Chimaira phase as they were the first artist I reimported into my computer. I think the two songs I'm the most obsessed with at the moment are "Pass Out of Existence" (that entire album is just awesome) and "Fascination Street." It's still a bit weird to think they have a person who does samples, but it works out really well. Their songs are heavy and smooth. I think they're an awesome band, but that's just me