On Mike Portnoy leaving Dream Theater

Listen, I know it sucks. My favorite drummer leaving one of my favorite bands (the others being Iron Maiden and Sonata Arctica) is horrible. But people need to learn to read between the lines a bit to get the real story.

Being mad at Dream Theater - Come on. Portnoy basically asked four other guys to put their careers on hold while he goes out and makes a shitload of money with a band that has a number one album. They did what anyone would do it that position. Sorry, mate, but we need to make money too. Congrats on your new gig, see you later.

Portnoy on being burned out - Bullshit. He's bitching about Dream Theater's schedule, but meanwhile adds on tour after tour in between Dream Theater tours. He wanted Dream Theater to go on hiatus so that he could make money with Avenged Sevenfold, plain and simple. His story on the press release is just that: A story. It's designed to make him appear in a good light.

On Dream Theater not being Dream Theater without him: Bullshit. If Steve Harris left Iron Maiden, that would end Maiden, because Steve writes most of their stuff and has a large hand in even the stuff he doesn't write. Historically, Petrucci has written the lion's share of the lyrics, and the music is usually split evenly among Petrucci, Myung, Portnoy, and the current keyboardist. (Rudess now, but Moore and Sherinian wrote on their albums as well.) And let's face it, there are so many drummers out there who idolized Portnoy and grew up trying to play like him that replacing him won't really affect their sound too much. I can list of dozens of prog-metal bands with amazing drummers that could fill in for Portnoy with no problem.

So, I can see why Portnoy would want to leave/take a break, but I can't sympathize with him one bit. I think Dream Theater did the right thing.

Top 5 Musicians

For music lovers and musicians:
Top 5
Vocalist:
1- Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden)
2- Tony Kakko (Sonata Arctica)
3- James LaBrie (Dream Theater)
4- Ray Alder (Fates Warning, Redemption)
5- Geoff Tate (Queensryche)

Drummer:
1- Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater)
2- Uli Kusch (ex-Helloween, ex-Masterplan)
3- Nikko McBrain (Iron Maiden)
4- The Rev (RIP - Avenged Sevenfold)
5- David Charlesworth (Dead Air Radio)

Bassist:
1- Steve Harris (Iron Maiden)
2- Geddy Lee (Rush)
3- John Myung (Dream Theater)
4- Flea (RHCP)
5- Justin Chancellor (Tool)

Keyboards/Piano:
1- Kevin Moore (ex_Dream Theater)
2- Heinrik Klingenberg (Sonata Arctica)
3- Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater)
4- Elton John
5- Derek Sherinian (Planet X, ex-Dream Theater)

Guitarist:
1- Janick Gers, Adrian Smith, Dave Murray (Iron Maiden)
2- John Petrucci (Dream Theater)
3- Eddie Van Halen
4- Mark Tremonti (Creed, Alter Bridge)
5- Jani Liimatainen (ex-Sonata Arctica)

Band:
1- Dream Theater
2- Sonata Arctica
3- Iron Maiden
4- Redemption
5- Masterplan

These are mine. What are yours?

A Capella tribute to John Williams

Just...awesome.


via videosift.com

Poignant

Mission Profile by Threshold

can we go on
can we be strong

we've got a system
you're going to use it
we call it freedom
and you are free to choose it
if you're not against it
you've got to be for it
neutral is dangerous
and you cannot ignore it

can we go on
forcing our hand
can we be strong
till others understand
can we go on
to save our wounded land
can we be wrong

we've got the money
we're going to spend it
peace is our mission
we'll murder to defend it
sooner or later
you'll get the picture
we're the creator
and you were just created

devastation
is where we're heading if we follow this illusion
escalation
of all the hurting that is borne of our confusion
unrelenting
as we persist in putting everyone beneath us
never ending
until we understand our honesty deceives us

there is still one truth
on which we can depend
we've started something we can never end

we know
although
we try
to justify the means
the truth
behind
the end remains unseen
and while
we all
assume we all agree
we're giving
up the freedom to be free

disillusion
is always possible but we've got propaganda
mass confusion
is always better than the threat of understanding
we'll deceive you
we've got so many ways to make you stand behind us
if we need to
we'll use them on ourselves to constantly remind us

there is just one lie
that we can still defend
we've started something we can never end

we know
although
we try
to justify the means
the truth
behind
the end remains unseen
and while
we all
assume we all agree
we're giving
up the freedom to be free

there is still one truth
on which we can depend
we've started something we can never end

we know
although
we try
to justify the means
the truth
behind
the end remains unseen
and while
we all
assume we all agree
we're giving
up the freedom to be free

Sonata Arctica to tour NA with Nightwish

Sweet!

My wife and I missed Sonata this winter, but now I'm glad, because I can catch them with Nightwish and get two good bands at once.

Guitar Woes

I had to return my shiny new guitar. I'm sad.

OK, not really. Sad, that is. I did have to return it. The low E string buzzed on the frets, and - more importantly - my right wrist does not appreciate strumming a pick on the guitar strings. It lets me know that it doesn't appreciate it by causing me extreme pain. Weighing pain versus my desire to screw around on the guitar, I decided to return the guitar. I need my wrist to be pain free for a lot of other activities, so guitar-playing is right out. (Yeah, yeah, insert your pathetic masturbation jokes here. Ha. Ha.)

New Guitar

It's an Ibanez (of course) GAX70. I tried a bunch of guitars that cost $200 and under at Guitar Center, and ended up liking this one the best. The action is nice, the sound is nice, and it looks great.

I also picked up a Line 6 amp that has a bunch of built in effects. I'd really like a metal effects pedal, but this 15W practice amp is nice for now. (Besides, it's not like I intend to play the guitar in a band. Like my drum set, it's mostly for writing music and having fun with. )

Gibson making self tuning guitars

WIRED

How cool is that?

New Music

I just picked up a couple of new, mainstream (mostly) albums last week: Avenged Sevenfold's self titled album, and Blackbird by Alter Bridge.

Avenged Sevenfold (AX7) seems to be going off on that weird path some bands follow: We got famous by doing a certain style of music, but now we're going to keep changing it up so that we alienate all but the most hardcore fans. AX7 jumped on the scene doing intricate metal music with a mix of screaming and clean vocals. I understand the frontman injured his voice and was inclined to switch singing styles on their third album, but City of Evil by and large was a metal album, still having intricate, heavy music.

By contrast, the new album has a mix of songs that sound similar to AX7, songs that have no similarity, and a song that makes you think they lost their f**king minds. The singer sounds like he is trying to emulate Axl Rose (badly, I might add), and the album as a whole seems disjointed and schizophrenic. The songs that sound like metal are fairly good (though they ruin one right at the end with some weird pre-pubescent vocals that sound awful), but the other songs are bad. Really bad. They close the album with a song that comes off like they tried to mix circus music with metal and rock opera lyrics, and a country western tune complete with pedal-steel guitars.
I am expecting either a complete return to form on the next album, or a completely ridiculous release that kills their relevance.

On the other end of the scale, Alter Bridge returns (finally!) with a new release that does them justice. On their first album, they were basically Creed with a new singer. That's not really a bad thing, but it left many of us wondering why they didn't just continue under the Creed moniker. Blackbird is truly a release from a band that is no longer Creed. Singer Myles Kennedy contributed heavily to the composition of this new album, and the rest of the band molded itself in to a new entity.

Blackbird is still filled with the stunning guitar work of Mark Tremonti, but he breaks new ground here and manages to stay away from his signature Creed guitar riffs. They even changed his guitar tone for most of the album to further differentiate themselves from their former band.

All in all, Alter Bridge delivered a very listenable and enjoyable album while proving they are much more than just Creed with a new singer. Here's hoping that they can keep releasing good albums without weirding out like some other bands.

Amazon MP3 store

Amazon is now selling MP3s. Why is this better than iTunes, Napster, or any of a host of other sites? It's a very simple answer:

Amazon sells DRM free MP3s.

What does that mean? It means you own that MP3 when you buy it. It means you can put it on all of your PCs (iTunes an others limit the number of PCs), it mean you can burn it to a CD to put in your car, you can copy it to an MP3 player, in short, you can pretty much do what you want with it, short of redistributing it.

All for the same price as an iTunes DRM loaded file. Nice.

ABC news has a story on it HERE.

I purchased several single songs, and an entire album tonight. The purchase was fast, and the downloads were very speedy. And the MP3s are all 256kbps encoded, so they sound great. I've been waiting for this service to go live for a long time, and I'm very happy with it now. The only tiny problem is that not all labels/artists have signed on yet, so you can't find every song you want, but I think most of them will sign on in time.

Within Temptation

I keep hearing people complaining that there aren't any other bands out there playing the style of music Evanescence is famous for. Personally, I liked their first album, but this new album does nothing for me. (Probably due to the parting of ways with songwriter Ben Moody.)

However, there are always alternatives, you just have to leave the safe comfort of American Radio Land and enter the land of the truly free: International music.

For instance, the band Within Temptation - from Holland - is a gothic metal band, like Evanescence. Unlike Evanescence, they have more than one good album under their belts. Hell, they even have an American release now. (The newest album, The Heart of Everything.)

Check them out!

Also, a brief plug for my favorite music shop: The Laser's Edge. Ken has almost everything you could want in terms of metal and progressive music, and he's cheap, too!

Serenity

No, not the movie, although that was great.

This is an awesome prog-metal band out of Austria. They sound like a mix of Dream Theater and Sonata Arctica - two of my all time favorite bands. So, naturally I think they kick ass.

SERENITY

Thunderstone

Another fantastic Finnish band that I found while browsing LaserCD.com.
They sound similar to Masterplan, one of my favorite bands.

http://www.thunderstone.org/