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Back for another installment. I would have made an entry sooner but the last week has been fairly crazy. Played some paintball on Sunday and promptly got sick afterwards and today I’m still suffering from a pretty miserable cold. The worst part of it all was that Sunday was a really great day other than me being ill. Along with the paintball a group of my friends got together and had a mini marathon of episodes of “Firefly”. If you’re a Sci-Fi fan and haven’t seen Firefly go get it, I doubt you’ll regret it. Firefly was a T.V. showed aired by Fox for only 1 season. It was written by Joss Weadon (not sure if I spelt his name right) who was the writer for both Buffy and Angel. When I first heard about the series I was a bit skeptical, while I liked watching an episode of Buffy or Angel every now and again, I wouldn’t consider myself a fan. The other part that gave me pause, was that it was a western set in space, which I’ve always found to be a very weak concept (we have interplanetary travel, but still depend on six shooters and horses?) couple with that the fact the show got canceled after just one season and I figured it was gonna be horrible. I was proved very wrong. While I still think the space cowboy thing is a bit hoaky, luckily you quickly learn to over look that aspect due to the rich character development. Everything that Joss did well with Buffy he brought over to Firefly, great character interaction, good writing and just enough humor mixed with the serious to keep it all very entertaining. Luckily he opted to leave out a lot of aspects of Buffy that I never really liked, such as ridiculous bad guys, over the top fight sequences, and overall campyness. I always enjoyed Buffy & Angel for their characters and witty banter than for their storylines. So anyway Fox in all of its wisdom picked up the series and decided that it was too character centric and not action packed enough and instead of airing the series in the original order, beginning with the pilot so everyone could get a proper introduction to the characters. Fox decide to air them out of order so they could air some of the more action packed episodes first. As you would expect this idea flopped and Firefly got canceled at the end of the season. Thanks to a lot of fans who came to love the series, Sci-Fi channel has picked up the rights to the series and is airing it now in its proper order. The fan response has been so great that it has prompted Joss to make a movie based on the series called Serenity which is due to air at the end of the month. Well now that I’ve given ya show to watch lets finally talk about music. I’m going to try and review bands that haven’t hit it big, cause all those that have I’m sure you’ve already heard about and have your own opinions on. So lets talk about a band called Little Matchstick Girl. My good friend Iggy stumbled upon this group and turned my ear to them. A goth/electronic European band. LMG maintains a strong industrial sound throughout its self titled album. Iggy was only able to obtain the album by ordering it online from Europe. But if he can find it with a little bit of work I’m sure you can dig it up too. Now first off I want to say that while I’m willing to listen to just about anything and can usually find something redeeming about most bands, there is a much smaller segment of bands that I would classify as really good. Such it is with the genre of “Goth” music. I can listen to most of it but what I classify as good leans much more heavily to the Industrial end. I’m not really all that big on the 80’s European sound that oft is embraced by a lot of the goth culture. Bands such as Sisters of Mercy, Him, Bella Morte, etc. really don’t do much for me. I prefer something with a little less lilt and a lot more raw emotion.
So having said that LMG really caught my attention. The vocals are often distorted and aggressive. The female vocalist sounds a bit like Manson more yelling her lyrics than singing them. This is no wheres near as bad as it sounds, the only draw back is there is a lack of vocal range and most vocals on the tracks sound fairly similar. The music is fast and energetic. An electronic back beat and techno sound and distortion play overidden with heavy guitar lics. The overall sound comes off like a mixture of Manson and KMFDM. Its a mix that works and comes off dark but a bit frantic. I'd give the vocals a 3 of 5, the music a 4 of 5 and the overall sound a 4 of 5. Check 'em out. Finally its time for II’s rant for the day. Lately I’ve been checking out a couple of match making sites. I know its stunning huh? That a brilliant (note the sarcasm) guy like me is single… Its sad but true. Anyways back to ranting :P I noticed after viewing a few profiles here and there a disturbing trend. I keep finding profiles that have completely contradicting statements in them. The most notable being those that claim they are Christian. The site I’ve found the bulk of these gems at uses keywords or phrases that people pick when they generate their profile to help you find people with similar interests. So you have a little history I grew up in a very strict Christian environment and was involved with the church until I was about 16 and could start thinking for myself. I quickly realized that organized religion and I were not a good match. I have since done what I can to fix the problems which I feel the religious experience caused in my life. I’m happy to let others believe as they will, it just greatly upsets me when others try to tell me how to live my life. So when the first keyword I see in a profile is Christian my first response is to just stop reading and move on. But 1 caught my eye and I had to laugh cause I found it pretty ridiculous. The first keyword was Christian, the next were, Music, Ozzy, Megadeath, Pantera. That I found amusing enough to start at least reading some of the others and I was surprised to find many others that just dumbfounded me. One said Christian, partying, getting drunk, 420. Another read Christian, guys, sex, horny. I just kept finding more and more of them. I sat there bewildered for a while. I mean if someone really thinks that God doesn’t mind them getting off while listening to Ozzy sing Suicide Solution, then more power to ‘em. But I generally came away with the feeling that these people really didn’t know that they were contradicting themselves by claiming one set of morals and then blatantly going against those same stated morals in the next breath. At first I found the trend kind of humorous and thought it provided more ammunition on my stance against religious judgementalism. But then I started to get upset at the way people were casually throwing around beliefs, stating that this belief system was a defining trait about them, but then not having the moral fiber to even follow that system during the same discussion. I don’t like Christianity but if you are gonna claim it, at least have the intelligence not to prove that you don’t actually practice the morals that you claim have such significance in your life. It just struck me as sad that people could be that shallow. Tell me what you think, and don't forget to spark one up for Jesus! :P II~