I stayed home from work yesterday. I picked a bad day to do that. Yesterday afternoon we lost power on our island due to a really nasty day-long storm that raged through the Puget Sound area. We got the generator going, but the DSL service in our area went down at the same time the power did, and it didn’t come back before I went to bed. This morning, the power and the DSL were both back.

The experience vividly demonstrated how obsessive I’ve become about this fucking blog. Being disconnected from the internet for about 12 hours prevented me from keeping up with what was happening in the world of metal. I experienced feelings of anxiety and intense frustration. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

It got so bad that I drove in the darkness  through the driving wind and rain to the ferry terminal, where the power was on and an internet connection was available. I sat there for about 30 minutes, getting this morning’s first post ready to appear automatically and doing a bit of web surfing, and then decided I shouldn’t leave my wife alone in our powerless house any longer and went home. Fucking sick, that’s what I am. I need help of some kind.

This morning I spent hours catching up on what I missed while the net connection was down. I found dozens of interesting-looking things. Even after winnowing out the ones that turned out to be less interesting than they first appeared to be, I still have more shit to share than would manageably fit in one post, so I’m dividing them into three posts, of which this is the first. I’m going to cover the new music and videos in alphabetical order.

But before diving in, here’s one piece of breaking news: Year-end listmania is almost upon us, and it begins with DECIBEL magazine selecting All We Love We Leave Behind by Converge as its Album of the Year. Here’s the proof, as it appeared on the Converge Facebook page: Continue reading »