Prometheus sucks bigtime

Some years ago I heard about the planned prequel to Alien (1979) and I thought it would be awesome if Ridley Scott would direct it and allow his idea of the Space Jockey to bear fruit on a cinema. Sadly this would not be the case. He tossed that idea (with the usual pushing from commercial production retards) and set forth to direct a spin-off, namely Prometheus, which would tangent some elements of the Alien universe but not have the Alien creature actually in the movie. The synopsis is pretty lazy and are common ideas from older sci-fi, that humanity has been created from alien intervention, and evidence of that thesis is found in ancient dig-sites on separate places on Earth, showing a starmap to a distant planet. Scientist is sent to this far-away location in space to discover if these aliens were the ones responsible for creating humanity, and if so, ask them what the purpose of human existence is.

The end result? Pretty bad.

The movie had a budget of 120 millions USD. From that money stack you’d at least expect some well-thought and well-analysed script, character development, environment process and universal brainstorming to be made. But no, that’s not the case. With the amount of time the film crew has spent on this, plus the big budget, the following mistakes, flaws, sloppy handwork and overall amateur-like storytelling is beyond my comprehension.

The characters are, in 9 out of 10, quite stereotypical and shallow. Everything is served on the Hollywood smorgasbord, from the geeky scientist with glasses (Millburn), the bad boy with a Mohawk haircut and tribal tattoos (Fifield), the black captain working as a comic-relief (Janek), the strict businesswoman who plots for corporate power (Wickers), the pretty boy scientist (Holloway), and the weak, emotional female (Shaw).

When entering the planet atmosphere, the crew immediately finds what they seek for - alien structures, resembling buildings. No orbital scanning or similar necessity in order to pinpoint the location needed?

When entering the alien structure, the crew scans the atmosphere on the grounds, concludes that it’s breathable air, and takes off their helmets, Did they ever stop to think about airborne viruses or bacteria?

Millburn has to pat an alien creature, because it’s sooo cute. Imagine if that was a mistake. Once again the fuzzy scientist, who relies in raw data and Darwinism, dies first. Reprise of an older movie scene, perhaps? Also, with Shaw, being the single “survivor” AND a true believer of higher purpose (God, anyone?), this moves towards the notion that the faithful will earn success while the disbelievers will fall. More Christian infiltration in the media?

At least one of the crew has to freak out at a minor accident (Fifield), when they are all supposed to be experienced and has a professional payroll from a multi-billionaire company. Sounds feasible, no? I don’t think NASA would hire these amateurs.

Fifield, who is supposed to be a geologist and is mapping the alien structure, has no clue where his instruments are leading him when they are stranded in the alien structure because of bad weather. At the same time, no one monitors their situation from the space ship. Sounds like a bunch of professionals?

Shaw gets impregnated with alien DNA. The schizoid android David therefore restrains Shaw and has set his mind to freeze Shaw into stasis to analyze her, but she lures him that a sedative is working on her, so David leaves her alone. Shaw then breaks free and gets the alien DNA inside of her, which is a squid-like creature, surgically removed herself, staples her stomach wound and runs away from the operation table. No one follows her. She unexpectedly meets up with the old Weyland, who funded the scientific space trip and secretly tagged along, along with his personal watch and David. No one comments on her wounds or trials. Is this some kind of joke on inconsistencies, plot holes or just bad script writing? Anyone? I’m still baffled on how illogical and extremely irrational everything gets from this point on, at the same time keeping in mind that this is fiction and not reality. But come on, some coherencies would be nice.  

When you see a space ship comes crashing down, falling towards a specific location, you would do well to try and move away from that location. In Prometheus you obviously don’t. Wickers get (assumingly) crushed when she tries to run a straight line, the same line the shadow of the falling ship is casting on the ground.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Many other important flaws have been pointed out on IMDB, but if I would point them all out it would be a novel in the end. It’s that bad.

The movie is over 2 hours, yet it fails to focus on the story itself. Once again Lindelof is set loose to fuck up a generally decent idea of story and go Frank Zappa on everything, too much mad-hat ideas that I barely understand how the fuck Ridley Scott would hire someone like Lindelof, let alone allow himself to divulge in these kind of confused, schizophrenia behaviour in the story. Dozens of ideas are created, but nothing is followed up. I know the script style of avoiding answering too many questions, to leave some scenes out to public speculation, but this is far beyond that. Not everything has to be explained, but to constantly create more questions than answers are just the poor work of an amateur. 

This movie had more style than substance. A poor balance of production, and once again proves that a big budget doesn’t mean shit if you have hacks that are allowed to run amok with the script.

So, there’s too much idiotic behaviour from an already flawed script. Shame on you, Lindelof, you are truly overrated! Refrain from doing any more scripts ever and stick to production only! Do not direct either, who knows what you would let slip pass the radar!

2/5 in review. It's not as bad as Avatar or Alien vs Predator at least, but not far from it.

The Christian infiltration of extreme metal

Don't get me wrong. The tag line might be problematic in its formulation, and I recognize its implications.

Christianity has never been a big supporter of folk music, jazz, blues, rock 'n' roll, and later on hard rock. But the shapers of these genres were often raised from Christian societies, and some of the cultural baggage were transferred into the music.

When extreme metal developed during the late 80's, it often adopted the stylistic approach of agitation, and many times lyrical ideas from Christian theology, such as the concept of Satan, Hell, demons, sin etcetera. Bands like Bathory, Mayhem, Morbid Angel, Slayer and Venom all used these kind of visual and lyrical concepts for provocation and resentment of modern society and also to explore the individual stand points.

For Black metal bands the anti-Christian themes were explicitly devoted to in a lyrical sense and in the imagery of the artists. It raised the religious question in extreme metal and took a stand against the Christian religion and its dominance over the morals and society.
It also showed great resentment against the latter development of Trash and Death metal, with the cleaner productions, more focus on technicality, commercialising the artists and the fading principals behind the Death metal, which was originally to be aggressive, with heavy sound, raw and antagonising. That was one of the key points as to why many Death metal bands started developing their musical ideas and lyrics into Black metal instead. The ones who merely jumped the band-wagon is not worth mentioning here.
Black metal has become a safe haven from Christian culture-infiltration. At the same time, without Christianity and the society it has created, Black metal would loose a lot of its reason to exist. The antagonism between these two cultures is at the center of Black Metal, just like Communism wouldn't exist without the historical serfdom of feudalism or the economic injustice of liberalism. So, one might say that this is an interdependent relation.
If Christian religion ceased to exist, or Black metal developed into something else, then their relation is altered. Black metal has always been about development, just like any extreme metal, and we've all ready seen some progress in this scene. But what will happen when the core of its existence is questioned?
Over the last fifteen years there's been several announcements of reborn Christians in other metal and hard rock scenes, artists which formerly didn't give a flying fuck about Christian norms, but now, all of a sudden, are father figures of high morals and family values. I mean, what the fuck? Where is it going to end?

In the 80's we had these hacks in Stryper and Mortification. But nowadays they're growing in bigger numbers.

As I Lie Dying, one of the most disgusting knuckle-dragging, tribal tattoo macho metal band ever to be seen, is Christian.

Norma Jean has infiltrated the hardcore scene with their religious filth.

In the pop punk scene Rise Against has established themselves a name. Well... the scene is worthless, even without the Christians it sucks donkey balls big time. Fucking fratboy crap.

In the post-hardcore scene you have talentless tools like Blindside, Callisto, trying to brainwash the hip teenagers.

In the Death metal scene you have The Devil Wears Prada. One of fucking worst band name ever to be conceived. To quote Thom Yorke: "When I am king, you will be first against the wall".

Creed, one of the most boring fucking attempts to be musically creative, is another of these powerless tools in the service of the Christian machine. The band started out just when the original grunge scene had faded, and copied some of that ideas into a Christian theme, at the same time doing videos appealing to teenage women.

Extol and King's X is another of these mediocre musicians with mediocre goals that infiltrate the progressive/experimental rock scene.

Nowadays it's widely accepted that Tom Araya is a Christian. So, obviously his journey of "officially debarking" from Christianity were no longer than the thin line of mere provocation (as with the rest of their "anti-Christian" themes).

Ralph Santolla claims he's a Catholic, and were allowed to play in Deicide for several years. What the fuck?

Dave Mustaine announced several years ago that he was a reborn Christian, and has since then become the biggest turd on the planet. His public appearance will do him no good however, and I seriously doubt his contribution to the Christian infiltration in metal scenes to be any productive. His views on ethnicity, the sexes and sexuality has summarised his diminishing intellect, so far.

And nowadays we have "Unblack metal" bands that explicitly incorporate Christian religion in the music. Bands like Antestor, Crimson Moonlight, Drottnar, Frost Like Ashes, Lengsel and Slechtvalk.

The question now is: Since Black metal was created as an alternative to Christianity, how will these new Christian bands affect the development of the BM scene? Will it be swallowed up in the culture of pure commercialism and mediocrity? Or have we all ready passed that bar?

When do music journalists grow a brain?

When Hell freezes over. Most of these culture critics and " music journalists" rarely show any quality. Mostly they just defile paper editions and net 'zines with pseudo intellectual ideas, wishful-thinkings and pure garbage of opinions. They have no insight in music (or they choose not to reveal it, which is unreasonable) and they don't contribute to anything in the discursive agenda of musical development, except drawing gullible people into self-exploiting bands with shitty images, which is stupefying the individual.

If you come from Stockholm and play death metal, does that automatically make you sound like Entombed? No. If you come from Norrköping and play black metal, does that automatically make you sound like Marduk? No. If you come from Gothenburg and play melodic death metal, does that automatically make you sound like At The Gates? No. When do journalists grow a brain and realize that many times there is nothing in common between two bands, except their localisation. I wonder how many times hardcore bands from Umeå were compared with Refused, how punk bands from Piteå were compared with Randy, and how many times an experimental rock band from LA were compared with Tool or System Of A Down. It seems very likely that as soon as there's a new scene growing and there's some artists gaining reputation in that scene, the "music journalists" stick to these names and use them as reference out of sheer laziness, stupidity, or both.

The only music mag' worthy of reading in Scandinavia was Slayer Mag, which contributed to a small scene, and fanzines during the 1990s. Nowadays you only have Sweden Rock Magazine, who still have these fat douche bags who interviews and listens to Dokken, Def Leppard and Stratovarious (for fucks sake, can't they just die of bad pyrotech'), and Close-Up, which, to a smaller degree, exhibits the same kind of people (the idiots who listens to prog metal but tries to review something entirely different, or the shallow listeners who always sings the high-praise of their favourites, without a glimpse of self-awareness or broader perspective of the work). These have something tangible to interesting reading, but it's mostly the same questions, the unmoving goals of interviews and the superficial idea behind the business as a whole.

When has crust gigs ever been good?

I've probably heard over thirty crust albums now and about fifteen crust bands live, and none of them resembled anything like a real band.

On stage, everything seemed like a fucking joke. No serious performance, no band coordination, no craftsmanship whatsoever. In short: nothing even remotely close to professionalism in music. They all suck big hairy balls, music wise, mentally and aesthetically. They're attitude is brain-dead, they're instrumental handling is even worse than a twelve year old (some couldn't even tune their guitars properly). I smelled clams all over the fucking place, not to mention the stench of rotten people. It is a rare thing to meet so many zombies and clueless morons at the same time and at the same place. Imagining diving into a big cesspool of vermin, and there you have a crust festival.

On albums, most of them resembles older hardcorepunk bands from the 1980s and 1990s, but with less craftsmanship than the originals (the old hacks-and-copycats story). Not all of them are utterly pointless though - some even have the personal conviction and seriousness in the music that makes you regard them as a decent or really good band (for example Driller Killer, Doom and Wolfbrigade).

But without those few shining representatives, this scene is useless. The motives of the bands are scattered by their confused, childish and hack performance. Why on earth do you want to play and act like a fucking idiot piece of shit, when you can invest time and effort in creating a musical imprint that is truly personal and demands brains and patience? This looser attitude, this I-want-to-look-and-behave-like-a-fucking-hobo act, is really beyond my comprehension.

Opeth goes retro

Basically Opeth's new album, Heritage, is a retro album. Mix together the influences of 20 or 30 prog-rock bands from the 1970s, like King Crimson, Yes, Gentle Giant, Genesis, Rush, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Van Der Graaf Generator and a couple of dozen other bands in the same vein, and there you have the Heritage result.

I don't find it bad, nor really interesting. This is a retro album. It's both produced and feels like a mimic of the old progressive/experimental rock sound of the 1970s. If I want prog-rock, with moog, hammond and mellotron, then I can pick up the classics. They're always better than the retro bands out there today.

A big surprise was that Martin Axenrot could play convincingly enough in a prog-rock atmosphere. It doesn't sound like a stiff metal drummer is behind the cymbal front, but someone who has the inspiration and groove for this kind of genre. Especially the aesthetics of jazz and fusion beats slips through the rhythms in a convincing manner. I've found myself respecting Axenrot far more for this contribution than anything else he's done before.

I don't mind change of direction, but I find it sad that they just copy the old ideas of production, arrangements and musicality of Mikael Åkerfeldts old favourites. If I had the chance to play in, let's say Änglagård or Anekdoten, I would try my best to influence the sound to move away from the expected sound of the bands that everyone in this kind of genre listens to. It's one thing to be influenced and adapting a genre in a broader point of view, music wise. But to simply throw away the sound that made your band unique and go back to the roots of your musical upbringing and just copy that musical entity feels a bit too "easy" for my taste. Still, I respect Opeth for changing up, just not their direction.

Bill Hicks had the right idea, he was just too early

So, amidst the darkness and despair of human devolution I've fully embraced Bill Hicks.
- Man, you're like 20 years behind the rest of us.
I know, and that bugs me, but for those who wait for something good... Some artists, musicians, politicians, philosophers and those in-between the seats of contemporary idiocy with labelling work, have over the years touched some part of me, projecting different understandings of the world we live in and how our actions affects us all. The sceptic in me, however, often hinders my fascination of ideas alien to me, and lets it sink in over a long incubation period. So, it's a rare thing when an individual comes out and wins me over, instantly.

I've tried to maintain a somewhat positive view on humanity, or at least acknowledge that I was ambivalent towards human society. But over the years, when you encounter the douche bags, the idiots and feeble minded turds, who believe they can behave like kings, treat others like slaves, and who always craves the centre of attention, that's when you start to wonder how this kind of human garbage can pollute the media, the production circles and the different platforms for performance, where honest people have to endure the sight of their donkey-headed faces. How can we change the world to something better, when we allow these idiots to ruin it with their short-sighted minds on exposure and personal gain?

I imagine a world without them, without their superficial personalities, their useless "ideas" and their masculine insecurity, and I find myself in the deepest respect of Bill Hicks' sincerity and willpower to address the commercial world in Western society that lobbies for human mediocrity, human shallowness and how he makes no discrimination when he challenges an asshole in the audience.

Now, for some reasons, some feminists have found Hicks' approach to simple-minded idiots to be sexist and abusive. This is bizarre, if not plain stupid. Have they even understood the broader view Hicks introduced during his sets? Or that Hicks' had a calm and loose approach on sex? Not everything is about your fucking body, you self-centered attention idiots.

Thalamus' Mr Avenson reviewed

What first pops to mind when listening to Thalamus' Mr Avenson is change. Change of time, structure and beat. In short, change of expectations. It keeps your ear twitched, your mind set on awareness. This album you have to really listen to. It's not something you can play on the background while doing your morning sit-ups.

I had the good luck of seeing these guys down in Mönchengladbach almost three years ago, and they were smoking hot at that time. Especially the drummer, Roland Kozubek, performed very well. He's versatile, hard-hitting and into the music on-stage. When it comes to Metal bands, a lot of drummers look like robots, not feeling the music, not letting loose, and the biggest failure is that they hit like pussies. Even on a small stage technicians have to mike their whole kits because they can't play hard enough for that small room. It's pathetic and it destroys the sound. Not Mr Kozubek, no sir. He's fucking hammering on that poor kit on this album.

Imagine you're aboard a commercial vessel going west towards N.Y. and you have to share bunks with Dead Soul Tribe, Mastodon and Tool. Occasionally some passengers stroll by and mistake your bunk as their own, like a well-dressed version of Nirvana and some easterners, resembling Indukti. Even a discreet Metalcore fan shows up and presents himself before he walks away. Other than that, it's just you and your room-mates, which doesn't make much noise but let you do all the talking.

This pretty much surmises my experience of the album: It has a lot of obvious influences, as with truckloads of other bands. Fortunately for Thalamus, they manage an unique way, between the trodden paths of the above mentioned artists. It's rock, progressive in its texture and structure. Sure, they're dabbling with Metal - and punk-influences, but ultimately it's rock they master.

The acoustical production has brought out the dynamics of the drums pretty good. You can clearly hear the nuances and the small chops going on there. Occasionally you can hear that it's fairly processed through compressor and equalizer. Minor tweaks, so to speak, but that doesn't alter the overall experience of this most vital part of a progressive rock ensemble.
The guitars have a somewhat dry, middle frequency based rock sound, which works fine, both into the Metal parts and the softer passages in the songs.
It's like Justin Chamberlain rears its head when I think of the bass sound, not that that's bad thing. And what encapsulates the performance is the vocals. Dave Müller's voice moves from being melodic, smooth and fragile to be harsh and raw, which is what I like about this album, since the whole band sounds way more aggressive than I remember them to be on stage. To be honest, I'm always more keen on brutal music, be it fast, middle, or slow.

This is a progressive music album, hence I am not surprised at the changes of time, beats and arrangement that's typical for progression. My mind keeps measuring the odd beats, doing everything the trained ear is supposed to hear, a 6/4 equals an 8/4 with triplets as the original 8th notes, or how a 13/8 straightens out to a regular 4/4. But what made me listen to it again and again is the groove they manage to create. It's not a stiff showdown with music school kids trying to play their asses off, or twirl around in complicated beats written on a computer. This has soul.
Sometimes they take a bite at the darker levels of music, like the song Oleander, and I come to think off Alice In Chains. But mostly they tend to rely on force, groove and melodic patterns belonging to the West rather than the East, if you catch my drift.

But let's get to the down-side of things: There's many things I hate in this world, Metalcore being one of them. So, one of the things that keeps bugging me on Mr Avenson is some of the Metalcore influenced choruses. Not only because they smell Metalcore, but because they don't have the same vibe as with the rest of the material. They divert too much from the initial feeling of the song. Thalamus never do this kind of musical abortion as blatantly as Slayer did on Reign In Blood or Megadeth on Peace Sells..., they're beyond that pubertal mess-up on arrangements. But the core of the song is sometimes lost, misplaced, and that's what I'm missing. Given that these misplacements is only a small fraction of whole songs, it's a forgiveable mistake though.

Another thing I hate, or should I say strongly dislike, is smooth music. Be it soft, calm or whatnot crappy Indie bands try to play. Now, at first glance, I could've been annoyed by Thalamus' smooth parts of the songs, but they're so well directed and applied in the context that it doesn't bother me. They have a essential slot to fill in the arrangement, and they make the songs complete. Without them there's something missing.

That's basically it, these reflections that comes to mind after a couple of times listening to Mr Avenson.