Feckless, Witless and Chocolatey

Since my alma mater Harm.us (I remember writing for them in Year 11 of High School with a B average in English) is all but disintegrating from the inside out (it no longer works with the newer version of Firefox - in my view it's a write off.) I'll write my article on the watershed year for metal - 1994 - and how Kurt Cobain's legacy actually served to rejuvenate the metal scene despite the new wave of Alternative/grunge virtually decimating interest in the ailing genre just two years prior. I'll chronicle my progress right here at Crushtor.net in installments. I'll also be trying to contact the key players scene at the time as well as other journalists for their opinions, all the while shopping it around to various magazines to see if they'll hop on board my self-indulgent nostalgia trip and print out tickets for it (er...print it.)

The focus of the piece will center on six key albums that not only rode out to new frontiers but smashed old boundaries, breathing life into a moribund, directionless genre.

The names of the albums are:

Threshold - Psychedelicatessen
Cynic - Focus
Dream Theater - Awake
Edge of Sanity - Purgatory Afterglow
Tiamat - Wildhoney
Opeth - Orchid

As well as three albums on the cusp of this crucial period:

Paradise Lost - Icon (1993)
My Dying Bride - The Angel and the Dark River (1995)
Anathema - Eternity (1996)

See if you can guess the common elements they share! (Hint: they all broke the unwritten oaths of flirting with the "enemies...")

Thanks go to Jan for giving me the Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" for my birthday, as well as Rae and Kris for "The Harvest" (a collection of literary Australian fiction) and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", Nat and Ash for the gift card. And thanks for all that braved the weather to attend the shindig too. Special mention goes to Shai for making a compendium of Achewood quotes in his inimitable literate and lyrical style. What's better than the awesomest thing in the world? An easily accessible Wiki in order to quote from it, of course! The man's an absolute genius - the extensional definition of a polymath if I ever saw one.

By the way; does anyone have a video camera that I could borrow?

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Guardians and Monsters

Thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday today (especially Elyse, who deserves special mention for sending me international well-wishes.) I'm sitting like a Buddha as I write, stomach distended from too much food (I ate like it was my last meal today. Maccas breakfast, meat and potato lunch, lasagne dinner...I felt my body decaying too much to refuse the salad put in front of me) ... bring on the party this Saturday.

I am also absolutely sick to death of the promotion for Australia at the moment. I know what I'm technically doing is giving them more free marketing, but if there was ever an extensional definition for overkill, this campaign would be it.

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Superfreaky

A conversation between Crushtor and Mr. Shai
C: I disproved Aristotlean logic yesterday.
S: Oh yeah, how?
C: On Facebook, of all things. I told someone that "maybe ain't no yes."
S: (pause) That's brilliant.

If Shai thinks its good, it must have merit. He got me on to Achewood, after all.

Apart from a mind forced to tread water in a sea of novocaine every time I set foot into work and a declining love life (moribund is still better than dead) everything should seem much better than it feels.

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http://twitter.com/crushtor