New album for 2012

What perfect time to clear some cobwebs on this old blog than by announcing a new album?

What?!? That's right! I've been working on this one for a while, and now present you with:



Mainly a crossbreed of drum & bass, dubstep and breabeat with bits of rock, jazz, metal and other things showing up now and then.
Get your bass speakers on max!
With the exclusive performance of MC T-Tym.

Dj Shackles . Crazy Dubmetalstep thingy

Dubstep is a new kind of thing to me, even though it's been around for like a decade now (as if I'd listen to music through the web when I was nine...), and I've been growing to like it a lot. I dunno, it can be harsh, heavy, it can make you wanna get up and shake your goddamn booty or get you into a trance. And still I don't really know how to describe the music since it all sounds so different... isn't that great? Not like other kinds of music (gangsta rap, reggaeton, metalcore and trance, you all heard me).

So! Dj Shackles (what a name) makes some grindingly heavy dubstep that occasionally sounds more like heavy metal, really, really dancy heavy metal. Anyway listen for yourself this oddity:

SHACKLES - WOLVES AMONG SHEEP by SHACKLES

The mixture is cool, the drums alternate between realistic heavy metal drumwork and more dubstep-ish sounds. The guitars sound a little glitchy for my taste.

Here it almost feels like it could lead nicely into a DnB track but he artfully brings all the weird crap that makes dubstep dubstep. Interesting indeed:

SHACKLES - DARK HARMONIX by SHACKLES

Country Metal?

One makes your head explode (as in Mars Attacks!) while the other makes you headbang (as in Metallica). Okay, not all country is bad, but there's awful country out there. The same can be said of heavy metal (although I like metal a lot more).

Even though both styles have great affinity for some things and after all, share many of the same roots, I've heard relatively little mingling between them. Let's face it; if a band leads the way in an imaginary 'Country Metal' genre, or 'Countrycore' (god I hate the -core suffix), chances are that it's forever labelled as 'cheesy', 'godawful', or a shame in the name of metal. However, I think there have been a few instances that I think could lead to some kind of interesting cool music based on both. Coming from a mix of heavy metal and southern rock, Black Label Society had the damn catchy "House of Doom" track, for instance:


From "Hangover Music, Vol VI".

Okay, it isn't country, but southern rock is well, a fusion of rock & roll, blues and country music! I think that it may be good as a platform to further mingling between country and heavy metal.

Other ways would be through punk music and that very very bouncy hill-billy stuff. Here, for instance, punk band Guttermouth created something really unique; that "barnyard" sort of rhythm fits punk and some kinds of country/folk excellently. Note the awesome violin and banjo interplay in the background and their solos:


I'm Destroying the World from "Covered in Ants".

Kid Rock seamlessly mixed southern rock, hip hop and not-quite-metal in "Cowboy", so figure, you can remove the 'breakbeat' influence and turn the metal one up a notch. It's not a bad song, considering that he managed to mix 3 things so well (when many nu-metal bands suck and they don't even mix country):


Song from "Devil Without a Cause".

Rebel Meets Rebel, with their eponymous track, to me seems to be real Heavy Country (or whatever), however, I'm not quite sure about that fiddle lead before the verses... they are annoying. They could sound a lot better. However, the vocals here, specially when they harmonise bring out tons of potential. Hmm, I think it's okay. Here we go:


From Rebel Meets Rebel album.

It gets better towards the end with that fiddle breakdown solo double-timey part.
"Coyboys Do More Dope" by Rebel Meets Rebel:



Quite like the piano there...

Now, the guitar-shredding angle of music is a good way to immerse into the world of country music. It may get a bit tiring after a while (like most country), but it's briefly the coolest thing in the universe:



We also have another band a bit like Rebel Meets Rebel but maybe a bit more palatable to some; Haf Bitten Moon:



Finally, I'll leave y'all with these two funnies. Meh...

Lion Spider = Lider? Splion? Arachleo!

Back in April when it was still summer here in Chile and life was coming back to normal after February's massive quake, I remember seeing a mosquito-like insect on a wall. I associated it
with horses due to its rather strange shape and although it wasn't much like a mosquito I began wondering what a horsequito would look like. So I had this:


Horsequito by ~skinsvideos21 on deviantART

Yeah... so in the description I jokingly mentioned its natural predator, the Lion Spider. And here I am now, several months later with my Splion (for the lack of a better name). It was even tougher to conceive since spiders and lions share almost nothing in common anatomically. Spiders have 2 body sections while lions, uh... I'd say 3 although the difference between abdomen and 'butt' doesn't mean anything in vertebrates, does it? :3

So, here are a few sketches (I got rid of the roughest unfortunately) with roughies of the idea:



As the sketches above show, I wasn't entirely sure where the hell the legs would go (again, spiders have abdomens that don't have legs and then they have thoraxes with legs), because the way a spider's legs kinda 'spread' outwards while a lion's legs jut below the body and are parallel. So it's just experimenting while the final design was a mixture.
And well, the final (although far from perfect work) is this:

It looks a whole lot better than Horsequito (a million times!) but I'm not perfectly happy with it. That irritates me. Argh!

Click for larger image: