Metallica's Death Magnetic is Bad Ass

Hey there. My wife pleasantly surprised me with this album a few weeks back. A "just because" gift, so to speak and I after having a good two weeks of listening to it, I've decided... This album is bad ass! It's the first album in years that I can listen to from beginning to end without skipping a song. I wanted Metallica to "come back" with this album. Considering that their last few albums went away from their standard sound, I naturally figured that their new album might be another expansion of that. As a musician, you can understand wanting to expand and try new things. I didn't knock them for it, but c'mon, let's face it... it's nowhere near being their best stuff.

In comes Death Magnetic, the latest entry in 20+ years of Metallica music. It's not thier "old" stuff but it's not their "new" stuff either. It's a perfect blend of what made them who they are while continuing to expand and venture off to new sounds. Take the track, The Unforgiven III, for example. It starts off with a piano intro. Nice, melodic, and easy going. Not standard Metallica. After the minute mark or so, the band plays jumps in, with a clean sound, a little more intricate than Fade to Black, but closer to Unforgiven II. Not "standard" Metallica, but you can see them playing this. Then comes the verse. Heavy moving rhythm and lead guitars and the voice we all know and love all kept in time with a strong bass and drum. Good stuff. Perfect blend of what was done and what is to be.

Then we have a the heavy tracks like All Nightmare Long and My Apocalypse. I mention those two cause they're my personal favorite on the album. Fast, furious, and again, simply bad ass. There also is an instrumental track on the album. Suicide and Redemption is a perfect blend of 3 different songs. Each section sounding completely different from each other but sound so right together. Great stuff, this is.

I have a 2 Gig micro card on my phone. I'm very selective as to what music I put on there since 2 gigs is simply not enough to even come close to catalog all the music that I own. Without hesitation, I downloaded the whole album on my phone and play it at work, while working. lol If you guys haven't had a chance to take a listen, you definitely should. For all us Metallica fans that have been yearning for that classic Metallica sound, this is the album that should have come after the Black Album, if not before.

I haven't really learned to play any new music on guitar. Don't know if it's just that I prefer to play their older stuff like Creeping Death or Trapped Under Ice, or just plain laziness, but this album is sparking that bug in me to pick up that guitar and learn me some songs. I already started on Unforgiven III and This Was Just Your Life and it's definitely an album that I would like to learn to play from start to finish. The only album that I am able to do that with is Master of Puppets, sans solos of course. lol This may just be what I needed to get my ass back on the axe and grinding out to this album.

Take a listen to the album. Here's My Apocalypse for you guys to enjoy. Later!

Rock Band at Metallman's

Hey there friends. Man, it was a mission to get Rock Band on at our place this weekend. In a previous post, I stated that I was able to get it at a reasonable price while getting 30% cash back. Well, I received Rock Band on Thursday and to my dismay, there were no breakaway cables in the box. You need those cables to hook up the instruments to the XBOX 360. Considering that it was pretty late, I left a voice message to the store I got it at. Discouraged, I put the instruments away and figured I'll try em on Friday. Come Friday, I called again and their customer service people said they would ship the cables to me. BUT IT'S FRIDAY AND I NEED IT BY SAT!!! I figured, I'd go buy a cable and at least that way I can test the drums and guitar that came with Rock Band, considering that I got a Wireless guitar, we should still be good to go. So I get a cable at my local Gamestop and hook it up to my drum set. NO POWER! WTF?!?!?! Everything is hooked up yet the drums are not turning... Let's try the guitar. Put batteries in the guitar, hooked that up, NO POWER!!! I was getting pretty damn upset at this point. I tested out the microphone... NO DICE! Shit! I figured that maybe my USB ports on my XBOX 360 were disabled or something, so I ended up calling the XBOX 360 support line. After registering my console, the agent gave me a pretty simple test to check out the USB ports. He simply asked me to plug in my phone via USB into the ports. If the phone starts to charge, then the ports are fine. I hooked it up, and phone was charging... I was shipped a defective Rock Band! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

Feeling pretty bummed out on Saturday morning, since friends and family were coming over to rock out later on, I decided to call the place I got Rock Band from. I wasn't expecting to get through since the place is closed on a Saturday. Angels smiled down that morning because someone picked up. I told them the situation and without hesitation, they offered to replace all the instruments. But they were going to be shipped via UPS. Not today, friends. I told them I'd go grab them myself since I needed it that night. I grabbed my little one and off I go to Burbank, CA to get my gear. Traffic was horrible, naturally, and after going through all kinds of traffic jams and accidents, I finally get there and get my stuff replaced.

Shortly after getting home, I nervously hook up the instruments. People were coming in less than 2 hours and I don't even know if the instruments will work. I put in all the replacement parts and hooked everything up and to my relief.... SUCCESS!!! Whew.... The kids and I got our band going and tested everything out and it all worked like a charm. That was a close one.

So how was it, you asked? Pretty bad ass, thank you. lol Family and friends showed up shortly and while it was still "early", we allowed the kids to stay up with us to enjoy the game. Once their bed time rolled around, the party started. If someone failed at their instrument, causing the band to fail, you were forced to take a shot. Liquid courage definitely got people off their asses and into the drum set, strumming away, or singing the night away. Great time, it was. Got to see some old friends, made a few new ones, all while hanging out with family. The band didn't start disbanding until after 4 AM. Great stuff. Below are just some of the snap shots of the night. Next time you're in town, you should follow the music over to Metallman's. That's really where the party is at. Later!

Here we are with our cuz, starting the night off right.
Haven't seen you since forever, buddy. Glad you were able to make it.
Damn proud of our accomplishments.
My babe, living the high life. lol
Can you tell that we are enjoying ourselves? lol
I'm telling you, a little liquid courage and everyone will start singing.
Even Metallman got into the act.
Our daughter playing guitar for her Nina. She's so bad ass, she doesn't even need to see the TV to know what she's doing. lol
I walk into the kitchen to grab a few brews and this is what I see. Don't ask me what happened cause I don't know... lmao

Christmas Lights

My wife has been on my case to get the Christmas lights up. Now that they're up, for some reason she won't talk to me...

Up and Running with XBOX Live

Hey there. I received my XBOX 360 on Monday. I hooked it up and I was welcomed into the world of XBOX 360. I needed a game to test out so I ended up getting Bioshock. G4 highly recommended it and I ended up getting a special edition of the game that came with a soundtrack and behind the scenes DVD. I popped it in and to my dismay, I needed a memory card/ hard drive. Aw man. I figured it would of had a small amount on internal memory that I would be able to use. No chance. Not even enough free memory for a gamer profile. What's a Metallman to do? Get his ass over to game stop and get one, that's what. After doing some shopping around, I decided that the 60 Gig hard drive was the best choice. It even came with a 3 month's subscription to XBOX Live and a headset to communicate with friends. How bad ass is that? So last night, I set the whole thing up. Welcome, METALLMANX.


That's my gamer code (or profile... I'm still not all familiar with the lingo) so if any of you out there want to get it on in Rock Band or Bioshock (that's all I have so far) feel free to add me. As an added bonus, I'll cough up 250 ECs for anyone that adds me as a friend and mentions it in the friend request. I want to take full advantage of the XBOX Live community and gamers are allowed to play with or against friends from all over the world. Later!

Cashback With Live.com

Hey there. As many of you know, I was on a mission to get Rock Band for the XBOX 360 at the lowest possible price that I can. Notice how I wrote WAS. lol After many a search, and getting tired of seeing $139.99 or $129.99 for Rock Band (that's just a little too rich for me) I turned to an online search for rebates slash cash back offers. Low and behold, Live.com offered me 30% cash back on a purchase from Ebay.com. 30% cashback! How bad ass is that!??!?! You need to have a live.com account (basically a MSN or Hotmail account) and a Paypal account to qualify and use live.com as your search tool for shopping. Once you're there, the results will post will small symbols telling how much in cash back you can receive based on the retailer. It just so happens that I'm an Ebay addict and they offered 30% cash back on any item I buy with the "Buy it now" button. I found a brand new Rock Band for $109 - 30% = Rock band bundle for about $75! That's a great deal!

I'm still a little sketchy on the details, though. It says that you can wait for as long as 60 days for the cash back to be paid out on your Paypal account, but it also said that the cash back can be paid sooner based on Paypal's discretion. Either way, you're going to get paid and I use Paypal to pay for everything online so it's a win - win situation for me. Online shopping is on, friends. Cyber Monday just started so boost your savings with Live.com. Who doesn't want cash back on their purchases. Doesn't hurt to check it out, friends. Later!

Blogs of the Month for November

Hey there friends. Here are the top 10 blogs that have dropped regularly for the past month. I plan on providing links and credits only to the top 5, but decided that I'll post a screen shot of the top ten to show some recognition to those that were close, but not in the top 5. My top 5 is changing up some, but Picture to People continues to be my top supporter, staying in that top spot for yet another month. Many thanks and 200 credits are going out to the top 5. Many thanks and keep on dropping. Later!