Graham

The Mars Volta - Deloused In The Comatorium I'm going to controversial here (ooh get me) and say I think this is Flea's best bass performance

From Saturday night in a busy pub, this sounds a lot better than I thought it did when I was playing https://fb.watch/b0VIjLHeDt/

It was fine

I'm Your Man as well, they had some brilliant performances

Next up is Rolo Tomassi and Pupil Slicer in London this month Then Cult Of Luna's Beyond The Redshift festival in March In September there's Akercocke and Cryptic Shift in Brighton In November it's off to Manchester for Damnation Festival Thinking about Incendiary in June and Lingua Ignota in October, but will have to see how things line up with my own gig schedule.

If you picked the top three or four songs from St Anger, cut about 30% out of those and then called it an EP, it could have been great. Actually thinking about it, that's what they should have done for Death Magnetic and Hardwired too.

Zao - The Crimson Corridor

The singer quit the tour that was going on, releasing a statement that his guitarist brother was actively trying to get him fired from the band. He then came back to play TID The Season shows (ETID curated Christmas festival). Last week the UK tour was cancelled, due to "logistical issues" - this wasn't particularly surprising as all the European dates had been cancelled previously, but the singer's spoken word tour was still going ahead. Very difficult circumstances when family and business clash

Yes, very sad news. To be honest, I'm surprised it took as long as this after the revelations in early December

This photo is from a big gig at a racecourse, as you can see I was leaping around like I was in The Dillinger Escape Plan. That all came a cropper when a poorly planned jump lead to a badly sprained ankle and I couldn't drive for a couple of days. My heavily pregnant fiancé was thrilled

And now this, but the blu-ray of the livestream, rather than the album The livestream is now available on YouTube and well worth watching

I'm learning grindcore songs for a recording project, hope to have the first one recorded this week. It's been ages since I've done any original music, feels great.

I listened to the first three Mastodon albums at work today - Remission, Leviathan and Blood Mountain Remission is superb and criminally good for a debut. Blood Mountain is excellent and better than I remember it being. Leviathan is a stone cold classic though, easily one of the best metal albums of the 21st century and deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Master Of Puppets and Reign In Blood.

I've been learning a couple of the songs from the new Disney film Encanto - We Don't Talk About Bruno is a really fun Latin track

I suspect that's going to be stuck in my head for about a week

Metallica really need someone who can say no to them. Hardwired had good tracks on it, but for some baffling reason they decide to dilute those into an hour and 20 minute double album filled with bland, lifeless material. I just made a Spotify playlist of the best tracks - 6 songs, 37 minutes long, now I just listen to that rather than the album

Have you heard DVNE's new record? I think you might like it

Sounds brilliant, wish this is what the remaster sounded like

I think Lars was a perfectly adequate drummer for what Metallica were doing for their first four records. In an perfect world, he'd have been in a producer role, helping to write the material with someone more competent actually performing/writing the drums.

It's my favourite Metallica album, but that mix 😡 To think how it could have sounded. It's also heartbreaking for Jason, he wrote Blackened, so it's his song opening the first album he recorded with them but then finds he's inaudible.

My tastes are a little niche and from the heavier end of the metal/hardcore spectrum - if post-rock/hardcore, mathcore, black metal or grindcore are your bag then you'd probably recognise the bands I'm listing, otherwise they will probably be completely unheard of Speaking of which, yesterday was the last day of my holiday and I listened to the below - I've tried to give some description of what they sound like Lingua Ignota - Sinner Get Ready (hard to categorise, but think Diamanda Galas dealing with an abusive relationship through the medium of Catholicism and American folk music. It's actually a brilliant record even if it sounds conceptually odd) The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works (mathcore - chaotic, abrasive hardcore/punk in complex time signatures) The Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis Bossk - Audio Noir (post-metal which is exemplified by (often instrumental), music which slowly builds to crescendo with lots of textures, often quite cinematic. Bossk though are like that, but with big, fun, awesome riffs)

Yeah, I'm really not into that Dingwall/Darkglass djent sound, but I do want a very clear and articulate sounding five string

I'm not wild about the finish on the BTB Multiscale, but may have to go and try one in the flesh when they're physically available. There's an awful lot of bang for your buck there, and it's appeared at the exact moment my multiscale GAS has re-surfaced

Yesterday was mostly albums with long titles Poison The Well - The Opposite Of December...A Season Of Separation Emperor - Prometheus: The Discipline Of Fire & Demise Akercocke - Words That Go Unspoken...Deeds That Go Undone Discordance Axis - The Inalienable Dreamless Rolo Tomassi - Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It Cave In - Perfect Pitch Black Last day of holiday today before back to work, gone far too quick