The Opeth concert was fantastic. They played two one-hour sets, the first with their acoustic work and the second ridiculously heavier. It really was like hearing two utterly different bands who just happened to look identical. Although, to be fair, most fans were there for the heavier Deliverence stuff, it was the first set that really made the gig incredible. Hearing these soft songs played live was completely different to the Damnation album iself, because you could hear this undercurrent of power surging forward each time the guitars or drums rose to the fore. While the vocals were soft and steady, these were metallers who were dying to break free into some seriously powerful riffs, and the feeling of restrained and unwillingly harnessed power was electrifying.

And that first set made it all the more enjoyable when they resurfaced for the heavier set: the crowd was already warmed up and broke lose the moment the band appeared. The only downside (other than the crowd which included a few too many lager louts) was that the set was almost entirely restricted to their last three albums, a pity since many earlier songs would not have seemed out of place at all. As this was being recorded for a DVD release, I can only hope that separate recordings of earlier concerts or music videos will be included to give the disc a more career-spanning overview.

Fresh Bourbon Creams. They have to be fresh, because I’ve noticed that once the pack’s been left open for a week or two, the consistencies change as the biscuit softens and the cream hardens. I imagine that if you leave them long enough you’ll end up with a solid lump of soft chocolate flavoured “thing”. So yes, fresh Bourbon Creams are my newly discovered addictive food of the week. I don’t want to know how many I’ve eaten. But it’s a lot.

TOP TIP: open up the two halves. dunk the dry half into tea and eat. lick cream of other half, then eat the remaining biscuit dry and crisp without dunking.

A lovely little package from Amazon dropped through the letterbox this morning. For just £8.49 they had sent me Iron Maiden’s new Dance of Death within a week of its release, and with free postage I’d also got A Perfect Circle’s new opus on the day of release, all by 8am. Not bad going, really.

Although I was rather apprehensive about the new album after hearing “Wildest Dreams”, Maiden were the first to hit the CD player. Skipping over that first track “Rainmaker” started. And suddenly I realised. Maiden were back! There’s a great feeling when you realise that the first single is actually the weakest song on a new album, so the CD stayed on for three back-to-back repeats. Read my Dance of Death review.

Then A Perfect Circle. The album was not what I was expecting at all, bearing little resemblance to the debut Mer de Noms or the single Weak and Powerless. It was actually rather disappointing at first, but realising how quiet much of it was, I turned off the hi-fi, dropped it into my computer and listened through headphones. Suddenly I was hooked. It is a new sound for them, but filled with undeniable genius. Read my Thirteenth Step review.

After coming down from that high, I was off to Croydon. Bumped into Zaki and Anna who kindly took care of me while I was blind (having my glasses’ lenses refitted). There’s nothing quite like that sensation when you put a new pair of glasses on and suddenly everything is perfectly sharp again. Crystal clear. There’s a similar feeling whenever you put them on, of course, but it’s different when it’s a new pair with a perfect prescription. Even stains on a window look cool because now the stain has perfectly crisp edges. The moment always reminds me of Barry White, “oh baby…I love it when the drugs kick in.”

Finally got hold of the aforementioned brilliant book, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, written and illustrated by Tim Burton. As with his films, Burton’s writing often appears childlike, belying a highly sophisticated blend of innocence and the macabre.

He conveys with great skill the pain of being an outsider, through a cast of derrangedly depicted children, each filled with a wide-eyed innocence that inspires our sympathy. In each tale of these misunderstood outcasts they struggle to find love and place where they belong in a cruel world that will not have them. This is not a kids book filled with happy endings for these children, but rather a catalogue of how each one is destroyed in their battle against the world. As the back cover states perfectly, “His lovingly lurid illustrations evoke both the sweetness and tragedy of these hopeful, yet hapless, beings.”

“The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy” is the longest of these poems and the saddest as result, but many of the three-line shorts can be just as moving, like “Jimmy, the Hideous Penguin Boy”. This is not the easiest book to get hold of, but doing so is definitely worthwhile, for Burton’s genius and a dramatic portrayal of loneliness and despair as an outcast. Brilliant stuff.

With an RRP of £12.99 for just 115 pages of about 4 lines per page, it may seem a little expensive, but bearing in mind that this is a hardback book with numerous colour illustrations throughout, it’s more than worth it. Trust me, I’m an outsider…

For those near Croydon, I’d highly recommend Sussex Stationers in The Whitgift centre, near Marks & Spencers, who stock a decent set of new releases and will order any book, offering impressive discounts if their distributor stocks it (my Lord of the Rings black box set was £20 everywhere, and they ordered it in for £9.99!). Friendly staff too, so definitely worth checking out if there’s something specific you’re after.

Some of you will be able to predict what’s coming, because you’ve heard this speech before. But then, you probably didn’t listen to me the first time anyway, did you?

One thing that really irritates me is the number of fairy tales that have been ruined by “disneyfication”. This process is the conversion of a whole range of superb childrens stories into identical pieces of trash about talking bunnies and a genetically modified strain of royalty that bursts into song every two and half minutes. Disney are not the only culprits, of course, because that is now how fairytales are printed in books, but they started it, or at the very least made it popular.

The worrying thing is that now whenever any such story is told in a darker fashion, those responsible are accused of perverting a nice wholesome kids’ story. Recent examples include American McGee’s Alice, or even your average Tim Burton movie. The truth is that they, along with authors like Roald Dahl, are the only ones who remember how fairytales are supposed to be written. Dahl’s dark children’s tales like The Witches are truly terrifying, not watered down drivel with dancing ladies who happen to have a penchant for dark clothes.

They’re supposed to be scary! Kids want to be scared. Hey, maybe kids need to be scared, but people don’t think about things like that before messing with a tried and tested formula. What gives Disney the right to edit stories that were so masterfully told a century before? Did they think The Brothers Grimm was supposed to be ironic!?

My biggest gripe is naturally with the portrayal of my favourite Snow White. Even forgetting for a moment how bland their main character was, Disney went so far as to cut a scene involving a magical girdle that constricted her because it may “disturb children”. Who did they think the story was written for in the first place? While Snow White: A Tale of Terror, with Sigourney Weaver as the evil queen, was not a standard interpretation of the story, at least it maintained the dark character in which fairytales are supposed to be told. The best compromise was the recent Snow White: The Fairest Of Them All, starring the delectable Kristin Kreuk (which admittedly almost singlehandedly won me over because she looked perfect). It was still bold and brightly coloured, but was also extremely surreal and otherworldly (and restored the girdle scene!).

These fairytales were written back in the 1800’s and many were told long before then, so while I’m all for reinterpretation, the fluffy bunny syndrome the world seems to be infecting its kids with at the moment is disastrous. No wonder kids are so screwed up these days: they’re being taught the sterile Disney way of life only to suddenly find out all alone that life is actually harsh and cruel. That’s what they used to learn through fairytales and that’s what we’re denying them now, leaving them isolated and confused in a very cold world. That sounds crueller than any wicked witch (singing or not) to me…

Saw an absolutely astounding movie about drug addiction from a few years ago that everyone should see. It makes Trainspotting seem like a kid’s movie. It’s not an easy film to watch towards the end, and because of the last quarter of an hour, it’s difficult to say you “enjoyed” it afterwards, simply because the closing is so intensely harrowing. Nonetheless, the moment the credits roll (as the music fades to the quiet sound of the dripping water) you cannot question that it was truely spectacular, no matter how draining.

Read my Requiem for a Dream review.

Upgrading the lenses in one’s glasses is a worrying business because it means being blind for an hour or so while the new ones are fitted. A quick thought for those with glasses who haven’t been getting an anti-glare coating put on their lenses: do it! I’ve been using it for a year and a half and it makes a huge difference, especially in that awful sunlight we’ve been having recently. You can tell if the coating is there because if you take the glasses off and shine light across them, you can see a greenish tinge, which doesn’t usually show. You also look better in them because the glasses are less reflective so your eyes can be seen properly. The only slight downer is that they pick up oil/finger marks etc. more easily.

While chatting to my optician he also interestingly said that he wouldn’t recommend photochromic lenses because they make your eyes very sensitive to subtle changes in light because they become used to exactly the same level of brightness. While my eyes are already a little sensitive to very bright light, he suggested that a decent pair of clip-on sunglasses were a better alternative, still meaning you don’t have to carry around an extra pair of prescription sunglasses, but without making your eyes overly sensitive. I think it’s just that photochromic lenses are difficult to stop using once you start, so avoiding them is just money-saving, lol. But I suppose if you have the money…

I was up and in Croydon at the crack of dawn today (well, nine o’ clock anyway) due to a shiny new album. Actually it wasn’t Iron Maiden’s Dance of Death, although it was certainly great to see so many Iron Maiden T-shirts around (I’ve already preordered my copy from Amazon for just Ł8.49 – bloody impressive! As a quick aside, the album cover is the one we’ve seen and been shocked by – it looks a little better shrunk down and glossy, but for a band who’ve had some of the greatest album covers in history, this poorly rendered piece of digital crap is a bit of a traversty.). No, the reason I was out at such an ungodly hour was Dimmu Borgir’s new opus, Death Cult Armageddon, and oh yes, was it worth it! There’s something about a full 46 piece orchestra battling alongside one of the most powerful black metal bands currently playing that just blows you away. And the gorgeous digipak release opens in all directions and is full of superbly photographed landscapes littered with human skulls and bones, and some decidedly strange mechanical structures. It’s nice when bands pay that kind of attention to detail. ;o)

I should point out for the unaware that Dimmu are somewhat Satanic. Possibly a little more than that. As a Christian I find it a little annoying how the metal press like to focus on satanism because it’s cool at the moment and is clearly an image that sells. The result is that other alternative artists are often overlooked as a result because they aren’t “satanic enough”, whatever that means. Funnily enough I’m quite used to people not sharing my opinions (from a Christian vampire perspective! ;o) so I don’t find the satanic element of such music offensive but more…tiresome, I suppose. Fortunately Dimmu’s music and anger is more focused on modern humanity than Christianity. No church burning for them, then…and that’s just fine with me!

While I was out, I also ordered Tim Burton’s illustrated book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, so I should be a proud owner of that dark little gem by the end of the week. I’ll let you know just how wickedly funny it is then…

Just rewatched Ghost World after a long, long while and I love that film. No, it’s not a horror flick, despite what the title may conjure up, but a film about teenage alienation and suburban stagnation. What I love is the way in which you are at first drawn towards Enid as a disillusioned and slightly quirky teenager, but slowly the film makes you realise that although there are some harsh things in her life, she’s really angry at the world not because she thinks it’s cool, but because she refuses to compromise at all. She’s alienated because she chooses to be. Ultimately, though, the film accepts that it’s not always in our power to change things, but we always have the choice to leave. And when you finally want to just get the hell out of somewhere or something, there’s only one way to do it: just stand up and leave.

Read my full Ghost World review.

Yes, you read that right: “Porcupine Tree” is our topic for today. When people mention progressive rock music the two big guns that will come up are Radiohead and Tool. But not, for some reason, Porcupine Tree. Well, the reason is pretty obvious: no one’s ever heard of them. They are softer than Tool, and unlike Radiohead do not always sound depressed, so are in fact a far more accessible band. However, they still retain a huge variety in their sound from rock to pianos to jazz sections. It’s unsurprising that the hugely varied Opeth (the “growly metal” band who released an entirely acoustic album a few months back) cite them as a huge influence.

So what should you listen to? Well, if your taste is for softer music, then the 1996 Stupid Dream album should be your first port of call, especially the tracks Don’t Hate Me (Radiohead with a touch of jazz) and Piano Lessons. If your taste is more varied, their latest In Absentia is less accessible but far more accomplished, especially Trains and Blackest Eyes.

Give them a listen. They’re different. But you’ll thank me.

Today I’m mostly writing letters to various law firms around Croydon: have about a dozen so far. I’m swiftly discovering that in finding real work, experience is far more important than any shiny qualifications, so I have no idea how successful this is going to be. I’ll let you know.

Oh, and since I mentioned Opeth further up, they’re playing a gig at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire on the 25th that’s being recorded for a DVD. Tickets are Ł12 (about Ł19 with all the handling charges). I know I’ll be seeing some of you there!

So what’s this all about? Well, it’s a new site obviously. It’s essentially a place where I can share my thoughts and generally what I’m up to. First, let’s get straight on what it’s not. It will not be filled with juicy gossip and sordid tales of drunken debauchery (well, okay, maybe a bit!) and it will not be a diary of rants and sobs in tradition live journal style (I do not, and never will, have an online journal).

So this will let me know you? Not exactly…you won’t find anything deeply personal (you’d have more luck with the poetry at The Crypt) because my dark secrets are still…my dark secrets. Instead, this is a collection of thoughts and interests, as a “personal site” should be, letting me keep other people up to date on what I’m doing and the latest news on things I happen to be interested in and would like to let others know. There will be a section of deeper thoughts which might help you understand my views a little better, though.

So why now? Okay, since half my friends are disappearing off to uni around now, and I will most likely be disappearing in a puff of full-time work at some point soon, now seemed like as good a time as any for this new venture.

So what was wrong with the old site? Actually, nothing. The Crypt will continue to run alongside this, but it is a very different sort of site. This site will be updated regulary with information that, by and large, will only be of interest to friends or people who at least vaguely know me, while The Crypt is irregularly updated, but holds a wealth of information that will interest anyone involved in that scene.

So anything else? Check out all four of the “About” sections to understand how the site is divided up and functions. And then keep checking back for updates. Simple.