Blind Idiot God

If you're taking the southbound stretch of I-91 to SFNE and don't mind going slightly out of the way, there are countless awesome little sandwich shops and whatnot in Northampton.

Arsis - Return

Jeff Loomis - Mercurial

I think that most of the opening-week weirdness is because they're still training the new hires and getting the old ones up to speed, which is understandable if not still highly frustrating and annoying. I suppose it's preferable to just throwing them in and making them fend for themselves, which would almost assuredly result in even slower operations and more than a few major ****ups.

These pictures more or less sum up NOLA in general. It's beyond depressing.

Devourment - Today We Die, Tomorrow We Kill

Exhumed - Death Knell

Hate Eternal - Thorns of Acacia

Katalepsy - Cold Flesh Citadel

Melechesh - Illumination: The Face of Shamash My friend just booked them in NH for their sole New England date on their upcoming headlining tour. AWWWWW YEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHH.

Suffocation - As Grace Descends Goddamn it, Hobbs is on fire here. This is what has to be some of his best soloing since Pierced from Within.

Orange Goblin - Red Tide Rising DAT RIFF

Sounds like there's going to be a sharp rise in people putting in false entry times.

KEN mode - Why Don't You Just Quit?

Friend of mine who used to work at the front entrance of SFMM said that people would try and get in with fake or stolen season passes all the time and would react in a hilariously over-the-top manner whenever called on it.

Alright, change that to Kings Destroy/KEN mode/ASG/Roadsaw/Orange Goblin at the Middle East in Cambridge. God damn, Orange Goblin absolutely destroys live. Killer setlist, incredible energy and crowd engagement, and just a whole lot of fun in general as long as you disregard the fat middle-aged drunk dudes staggering around the pit.

Hmm, still sounds better than my mental image of SFNE SFNE is generally a 50/50 split between decent people (college kids and most of the out-of-staters) and less-than-decent people (entitled rich douchebags from Longmeadow and future Springer guests from Greenfield, Holyoke, Chicopee, Westfield, and Springfield). It's nowhere near as bad as SFA, but I've dealt with some shining examples of humanity there over the years. The Pioneer Valley in general is just a really scummy area with a pair of fairly nice small cities in the form of Amherst and Northampton standing as islands in a sea of hick towns, dilapidated former mill towns, and larger cities that make Lynn and Fitchburg look nice by comparison.

Arkaik - Obscured Luminosity

Eyeconoclast - Dawn of the Promethean Artilect

Led to the Grave/Cain/Hellcannon/Warstrike 666 at the Railroad Tavern in Keene NH. Last big concert was Nile at the Worcester Palladium, which was actually a ton of fun thanks to a sterling performance from Nile and my homies in Parasitic Extirpation. Guess not touring with awful bands gives Nile a reason to give it their all. Also, George is one of the chillest cats on the planet and actually went up and complimented my Defeated Sanity hoodie.

Vale of Pnath - Sightless

The next college kid who tries to rip me off under the assumption that pizza delivery personnel are too stupid to notice that they're getting screwed is going to get several jugs of Clorox poured straight into the gas tank of the brand new Lexus that their worthless parents bought them. If my generation is the future, then we really are boned beyond belief.

Voivod - Macrosolutions to Megaproblems

FNM is easily his most "normal" project. If you want his really weird ****, check out Adult Themes for Voice and Maldoror, his collaboration with Masami Akita (aka Merzbow), both of which qualify as noise music. As for me, I'm listening to Cattle Decapitation - Gristle Licker. Come to think of it, Travis Ryan reminds me of Patton at times, both in terms of range, noise influences (actually, Travis started out as a harsh noise composer before moving to vocals), and ability to cause nightmares.

Hah, I had some drunk guy in a Monster Energy shirt at SFNE tell me to turn my Hour of Penance shirt inside out because he "didn't want his kids seeing that ****". When I told him that being drunk and cursing around his kids was setting a wonderful example, he started swearing at me and invited me to fight him; when I walked away, he kept screaming in my direction until I was practically out of sight. Stay classy, Pioneer Valley.