life, and a little more

Maiden Heaven: A Tribute to Iron Maiden

Jul 29

metalman777music avenged sevenfold, black tide, dream theater, iron maiden, machine head, maiden heaven, metal, metallica, tribute album No Comments

So I’m in my car yesterday and I catch the tail end of the local DJ saying “And that was Metallica’s new single, a cover of Iron Maiden’s Remember Tomorrow”.  Craptastic! How’d I miss that?  Metallica covering Maiden?  Can you say freakin’ awesome!

I do a quick Google search when I get home and find the album on which this song resides.  It is called Maiden Heaven:  A Tribute to Iron Maiden. Now this is a monster tribute album!  It is mostly great, with a few sucky covers thrown in for good measure.

Black Tide starts us off, and boy do they.  Their cover of Prowler is amazing.  Black Tide pulls off the energy and feeling of the song.

Next up is Metallica, covering Remember Tomorrow.  Awesome song!  Metallica stomps and pushes and thrashes their way through it.  Great to hear Metallica on top of their game again.

Avenged Sevenfold nails Flash of the Blade.  I’m liking them more and more as I listen to them.

Glamour of the Kill (who?)  tries to cover the classic 2 Minutes to Midnight and just can’t pull it off.  They sound like some bad 80’s glam band trying to sound tough. 

Coheed and Cambria step things up with their cover of The Trooper.  Although the singer’s voice is, um, unique, it still fits with the song.

Devildriver delivers one of the worst covers on the record.  Those cookie monster vocals just don’t give the song what is needed.

Maybe I spoke to soon….as Sign slaughters Run To the Hills.  How the crap did this band get onto the record?  I know covers are tricky.  You want to stamp the song with your own touch, but you have to pay homage to the original.  You would never ever in a million years recognize this song as the Run To The Hills that all Maiden fans love.

Thankfully Dream Theater does a phenomenal job on the next song, To Tame A Land.  Dream Theater is a natural fit on this cd.  They have their own bootleg album, where they covered the entire Number of the Beast record.  That is a must own for any DT or Iron Maiden fan!

Madina Lake (again, who?) gives us crap with a version of Caught Somewhere In Time that is sucky and horrible and should never have been made.

Gallows covers one of my all time favorite Maiden songs, Wrathchild.  This version is punky/hardcore, but still lets you know it is an Iron Maiden song.  Personally, I like Ultimatum’s cover way better.

Fear of the Dark is covered by a band named Fightstar. It isn’t bad.  They keep the feel of the song pretty well.

Machine Head rumbles in with Hallowed Be Thy Name and they rip it up (in a good way!)  This is a straight cover, almost note for note, and it sounds great!

Trivium brings us Iron Maiden and they do a good job too.  Again, the sound of the song is mostly kept, but with a lot of the growling vocals that Trivium is known for.

Year Long Disaster tries to cover Running Free, but like all of the alternative bands, they just can’t pull it off.  Sounds like a bad sleaze band trying to sound cool.

This last song, Brave New World, is performed by Ghostlines and it is soooooooooooo horrible that it barely deserves mention.  Sounds like The Cure or some crap like that.  How the heck did this even make it on the album?

All in all, this is a great tribute to one of the greatest Metal bands that has ever graced our planet.  It is worth the download!

Truly a Revelation!

Jul 29

metalman777music christian rock, music, rock, third day No Comments

Third Day released their ninth studio album entitled Revelation.  Third Day has been around a good while, and they have always created some good southern tinged rock and roll.  I have very low expectations for Christian music as it tends to be stale and boring.  Third Day breaks that mold with Revelation.  The production is excellent!

You could honestly put this album in a playlist with The Black Crowe’s Warpaint and Tom Petty’s recently re-released Mudcrutch and Revelation would hold it’s own.

This entire album is excellent.  Every song is awesome!  This Is Who I Am starts it off with a great old southern rock swagger.  When I first heard the song Otherside, I could have sworn it was Lenny Kravitz!  By the time you get to Give Love, you are jammin’ to some bluesy/bluegrass melodies.

Third Day has released a phenomenal album in Revelation.  Their faith is well presented in the songs without being preachy and the music is of outstanding quality.

Hellotxt.com – Cross Platform Greatness

Jul 25

metalman777Uncategorized, tech, www hellotxt.com, internet, status, tech, web 2.0 No Comments

WARNING: the following blog contains explicit tech talk and anyone not interested in geeky web 2.0 conversations (read: my wife) might just skip this edition of life, and a little more.

Try as I might, I just can not consolidate my online life into just one place.  I’m spread out all over the place.  Check out the sidebar to the right to see most of my online communities!

More and more I’m using this Wordpress blog as my central web location, with all the aforementioned websites pointing here.  There have been some useful tools that let the Web 2.0 crowd interact with one another.  I’ve been using Facebook’s Twitter application to update my Facebook status from Twitter (as I can’t access Facebook at work, but can access Twitter).  I’ve been looking for something similar for Myspace.  Can’t access that website from work either!  What, my bosses actually want me to work?

So I finally stumbled upon hellotxt.com. It is a pretty useful tool if you are spread out all over the web like me.

To the right you can see all of the Web 2.0 services that Hellotxt works with.  Truthfully I hadn’t even heard of most ‘em!

Once you enter all of your information for all of your accounts you are presented with a text box to input your updates into.  I haven’t played with the picture or video feature, but it is nice to know that it is there if you need it.

Type in your update and it automatically sends it to the services you have selected.

Another nice feature of Hellotxt.com is the Social Time Line.  You can view all of your friends updates right in the Hellotxt framework.  Everything is centralized!  Facebook is not supported yet, but according to the website, it is coming soon.

Of course, Hellotxt wouldn’t be complete without the ability to send in updates via text messaging from your cell phone.  I only have a work cell with no ability to text, so I won’t be using this service.

All in all, hellotxt.com will be helping me out a lot. I’m just glad I can consolidate a little bit!