News!

So...home from work at 3:30am, what are you gonna do first? Why, write a blog entry of course! I'm trying to write myself to sleep, so if I trail off you'll have to forgive me. I did have the extraordinarily good fortune to find $70 on the ground at work tonight though, so adrenalin levels are high...anyway, on with the metal!

Firstly, a couple of notable bands have new songs available for streaming - check out 'War of the Gods' from Amon Amarth, and 'C'est La Vie' from Protest the Hero for starters. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Secondly, apparently Metallica are going to start working on their follow-up to 2008's Death Magnetic pretty soon, according to an interview Lars Ulrich did with a Danish magazine recently. Here's hoping they can continue the positive trend started with D.M., but preferably with a somewhat rawer production this time (a certain large bearded man should not be allowed near the studio). Either way, entertainment is guaranteed through the vitriolic bile to be spewed by the masses of Metallihaterz out there, regardless of whether the album is any good or not. Exciting times!

Nextly, another interesting little tidbit that I've managed to snaffle is that a certain ex-Dream Theater drummer (Mike Portnoy to us mortals) is working on a new project with Russell Allen, the (awesome) singer from DT's fellow prog metal noodlers, Symphony X. While most of the metal world (at least the fans) are sick of Portnoy's attention-seeking post-DT antics, this actually sounds promising, in a vague sense of the word. I'll be waiting for evidence before I make my final judgement, but Portnoy certainly has some ground to make up with his former audience.

Lastly for today, on a more personal note, I've recently managed to score a spot writing reviews for a local magazine (Grok for those in the know); this is significant because I've decided to focus on local (Perth) bands for my Grok reviews, thus leaving me free to indulge my lofty delusions of grandeur with this blog, and concentrate on higher-profile artists for your reading pleasure. Oh, I'll still be throwing a few local reviews up now and then, but it won't be the main focus of the blog anymore - although up to this point, you wouldn't have known it from the content...well, my intentions were good. And they remain so! Only now my energies will be divided, partitioned and segregated, so as to maintain some semblance of sanity (at least on the surface). Haha!

Well, until next time - be sure to check out my next review in (hopefully) a couple of days!

UP NEXT: Echidna - Manifests of Human Existence review!