Benedictum - Uncreation

Holy crap, what a stonking great album this is - absolutely one of my best finds of the year. This is pure, unadulterated audio dynamite!



LA based power metal five piece Benedictum really have to be heard to be believed. Powered by female front Veronica Freeman, I was immediately blown away by her voice, which really is impressive, both because of its shear force, but also due to her vast range. Impressive technical guitar work, topped off with some excellent production, means this album is a real gem. 

Classic metal never sounded so good and so contemporary.

Download: http://rapidshare.com/files/327915686/Uncreation.rar.html

Relaunch

So, having failed to do anything really constructive with this new blog since I started it in May, I'm going to give it a kick in the butt and try to actually do something with the damn thing.

Keep your eyes peeled for music related postings soon...

FILM REVIEW: Star Trek

With frankly unacceptably high levels of fanboy excitement, I sat myself down in the Odeon Holloway last night to watch what has been, for my money at least, one of the most hotly anticipated new releases of the last few years - Star Trek.

The previous films had, to be honest, tapered into mediocrity, despite the sterling performances by Patrick Stewart, and had really lost direction. Nemesis had felt old, tired and flat - could this new film live up to the hype of the 'reboot'?

Coming as it did on the back of a fantastically produced trailer of staggeringly epic proportions, my expectations were high - very high - but then too, so was my anxiety - could J.J. Abrams and co really pull this off? Could you really successfully relaunch one of the biggest franchises in sci-fi? I was worried that such a treasured childhood series was going to be trashed down to the lowest common denominator (Transformers anyone?)

I was, let me assure you, not disappointed. Oh no.

I genuinely can't remember the last time I enjoyed a film so much, on so many levels. The production is utterly spectacular - the effects are flawless, the intergalatic visages breath taking, the costumes and make up perfect, the spaceships and cityscapes powerfully presented, and everything really just hangs together visually in a very satisfying way - there isn't a sense that the entire effects budget has been spanked on one or two scenes.

And yet if the film was just affects, it would have got boring pretty quickly. The real strenght of this film, running through it consistently, is the simply brilliant cast - it is pretty much flawless.

Each and every actor has encapsualted the essential nature of the character from the original series - update them certainly, but in a sense that has really renewed the energy and vitality of the entire franchise. Christ Pine cuts an excellent Kirk, cleverly balancing the arragonce, humour and decisiveness of Shatner's original, and the dynamic between Pine and Zachary Quinto as a young Spock was great to watch. At the same time, all the old favourites, Chekov, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu and Uhura have all been wonderfully cast.

Of course, coming off of the back of such a strongly character driven series as Lost, I was confident that Abrams would put together a winning formula, but in this film he really has excelled. The pace of the film is extremely well judged, and furthermore, the balance between action and humour is maintained expertly throughout - an important element which I think is central to understanding just why the Next Generation series of films started to wear so thin - they just weren't smart or funny enough. I really challange anyone not to enjoy this film, at least at some level - it's great entertainment, and exactly what a Star Trek film should be.

Overall, simply a great film with enough for everyone - fans will, like myself, find themselves wryly smiling at the clever winks to the original series and will be thrilled to see such a masterful resurrection of the series, and newbies too will enjoy the film simply because it is genuinely very, very good all round.

I'm already far too excited about seeing the next one.

GIG REVIEW: Buck 65 @ The Jazz Cafe, London

Yesterday evening I had the good fortune to find myself watching the indomitable Nova Scotian alt hip hop guru, Buck 65, at the Jazz Cafe in Camden, North London.

As a musician who has long transcended the rather harshly drawn lines that define traditional hip hop, it shouldn't come as a surprise to discover that his show has so little in common with the likes of 50 Cent that the label of 'hip hop' starts to wear terribly thin. Then again, is a skinny white Canadian dude ever going to even try to enter the gangsta rap world? Probably not.

As the man himself makes clear, he's always been interested in things much bigger, in a sense, and certainly much older, then strictly hip hop on it's own. To that end, his show was something of a combination of slam beat poetry and spoken word, punk and rock, folk and blues - and that's not even including the frankly hilarious quasi-stand up routines between tracks (the tale of the booze fuelled orgy with a shop manikin will bring a smile to my face for a very long time indeed.)

The showmanship was fantastic, the backing mixing and decks provided by Buddy Peace were great, and I loved hearing such a diverse set list - a personal favourite was the bluegrass inspired song about a grave dinner who couldn't be killed - and I loved the sleazy, dirty disco version of Wicked & Weird, an classic Buck 65 tune that goes straight to the heart of what his music is about. Even the technical problems (dead iTunes!) at the end of the set couldn't take away from what was a fantastic evening, and the impromptu acapella ending was really refreshing to see.

If you're looking to see someone very different, very genuine, and overall, very likeable, you can't go wrong with Buck 65. His ability to bring together to many different musical styles and influences, to fuse them into a style so uniquely his own, and deliver such blindingly articulate lyrics and stories, which can be both poignantly sad and wonderfully funny (often at the same time), makes this guy one of a kind.

One of the best gigs so far this year. Highly recommended.