A storm is coming...

After a bit of a personal drought, there are finally some hugely exciting gigs on the horizon. Firstly, skate punk legends Strung Out are at the Camden Underworld on July 27th. This pleases me greatly as despite having listened to them for the last 15-odd years, I'm pretty sure I've never seen them live.

At the other end of the spectrum is oriental oddballs Dir En Grey in August, again in Camden. Their unique mashup of industrial-Japancore-Rammsteiny-Slipknotism is rather splendid, plus the lead singer Kyo is completely fucking batshit mental so provided he doesn't set fire to his eyeballs this is likely to be a pretty epic gig.

There's also the Hell on Earth tour in August. Headliners Unearth have a new album to promote (Darkness in the Light, out July 5th) and the fact that Evergreen Terrace are on the tour makes this a proper exciting proposition por moi.

My home town then plays host to much-applauded post-hardcore upstarts Letlive in September, all for the hilariously retarded sum of £6. And who said there's no money in music? The venue has a capacity of 250, so a sell out would be £1,500, plus a bit of merch. Then their support will need paying, and I suppose all final profits once the venue has taken it's cut

will have to be split between all five members of Letlive...they'll be rolling it it...

Finally, Deep Purple are undertaking an arena tour complete with a 38-piece orchestra which will be nothing other than awesome. I've not shelled out the necessary £50 yet so if anyone fancies sending me a gratis ticket I'll be sure to buy you a beer.

These are my planned movements so if anyone is intending to break into the house on the above dates, the PS3 is upstairs and the single malt is in the kitchen. Enjoy.

I'll leave you with this, from Dir En Grey. Feel free to have nightmares:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvpMhw5ALw

M

\m/

Ah, memories...

You know what sucks? Not being a teenager anymore. Me and Si-KO were talking at work the other day about the simpler, happier times. I know this is Metal Harmony but allow me this brief digression into the world of 90's punkness...

During my spotty, bumfluffed years there was a massive group of us who used to hang around our country market town with our skateboards, smoking roll-up cigarettes and generally looking immensely badass. I'd like to point out early doors that, despite having a skateboard, I was without exception the shittest skater ever to grace the earth. I think I successfully jumped, or "ollied" (fuck I'm a loser) a kerb on one occasion in about two years. I also fell off once after hitting a leaf. Yes, a leaf.

The bare essentials to be in our righteous cartel were:

Spiky hair (my mum wouldn't let me dye it green)
Skateboard
Wallet on at least one chain
Some kind of bracelet
A 12.5g packet of Amber Leaf/Cutters Choice/whatever tobacco came with free papers
A 16th of solid cannabis resin, normally full of plastic

And then we get to the music. A million people will have a million opinions about what's classified as skate punk so please feel free to leave a bitching and whining comment but for us, it was all about NOFX, Lagwagon, Ten Foot Pole, No Use For A Name, Propagandhi, Strung Out, Millencolin, and some more old school stuff like The Misfits, Black Flag, and so on. For me, I've got to say that The Offspring's S.M.A.S.H has to be up there as Self-Esteem is one of my favourite tunes of all time

Me and Big Mearz used to spend all our hard borrowed cash on everything Fat Wreck Chords had to offer - he got some absolute shitters but most of the time, the music was exactly what we wanted; full of energy, always catchy, often retarded (please see Diesel Boy's Titty Twister) and absolutely fucking awesome. We even made the long arduous journey from the East Anglian countryside to London aged 14(ish) to catch a Lagwagon/N.U.F.A.N double-header which was one of the best gigs ever.

So what's the point of this post? Why the arse-suckling fuck should you give a rat's vulva about my youth? In a nutshell, you probably shouldn't. But listening to these songs for the first time in years reminded me of a fucking ace time in my life. Metal is clearly my passion, and nothing gets my bumps goosed quite like a bit of serious thrash and double-kick mayhem. However, if I listen to Lagwagon's Violins or Undeclinable Ambuscade's 7 Years I can help but get a wee skip to my step.

Now I'm gonna jump on my deck, go spend £10 on weed and sit in the park drinking cider.

All in favour, say "I".