Lulu

Well, I'd call this post a review, but it isn't. I can't bring myself to even listen to most of the songs all the way through. This is just bad.

So, I've long been a Metallica fan. My first album was Reload, then I went back to Load, then was S&M, before I finally dove back into the discography. I'll be frank, I think S&M is Metallica's crowning achievement. I like Load and ReLoad better than any of their older albums. Master of Puppets was my favorite album of the "hair" era. Then Garage, Inc. hit, which had a few neat songs on it (Turn the Page, Whiskey in the Jar), but most of the dual CD outing was trash. Then St. Anger, which, to this day, is the only album I've ever thrown away the same day I bought it. If Garage, Inc. was trash, then St. Anger was the burning pit of talentless hell. I'd equate that CD to listening to a toddler beat on his mommy's pots. Death Magnetic was better than the previous two, but it still couldn't hold a candle to their pre-Garage days.

So, I'm already so-so on this Lulu album, which is Metallica instruments backing the vocals of Lou Reed, whose non-Metallica music I am wholly unfamiliar with. Hit the music.... and if I'd purchased this album, I'd have snapped it over my leg before throwing it away. As it is, I'm considering burning the album to a disc before deleting it so I can break it anyway.

The Best of 2008

I what's become a bit of a tradition since I started my fist blog on myspace, I've compiled a list of the best things I've done since the dawn of 2008. Video games, books, and movies, all ranked for my pleasure, below.

Best Movie

Uh, The Dark Knight. There is no question here. Not only was it one of the best movies I've ever seen, it easily takes the cake as the best movie this year. 

Runners Up: Cloverfield, The Wrestler, Ironman

Best Movie Score

Same as above. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard scored The Dark Knight perfectly. From the pumped up action sequences to the simple yet chilling theme for the Joker, there was not a better soundtrack to come out all year.

Runners Up: Cloverfield (yes, it only had one original song, but it was badass), The Wrestler

Best Book I Read

It certainly didn't come out this year, but Watchmen takes this cake. Again, one of the best books ever, so it;'s easily the best book of the year.

Runners up: Nothing was even close to this good.

Best Movie I Watched That Did Not Come Out in 2008

That would have to go to V for Vendetta. It's one of those movies that I can watch again and again and again and it gives me the chills every time. It takes a special talent for an actor to make an audience sympathize with a man whose face you never see, and Hugo Weaving does a fantastic job of it. Put that together with a drop-dead amazing score, plus great acting from the supporting cast and a very powerful, relevant story, and you have one hell of a movie.

Runners up: Prime, Running Scared, The Da Vinci Code

Best Video Game

I had to think long and hard about this particular one. There were a ton of great games that came out this year, so I had to find a way to narrow the results. After much thought, I narrowed the list to 2 games, but I just could not decide which was better, so I've decided to say they are both the best game of 2008. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Dead Space. I wrote about how great The Force Unleashed is here. A review of Dead Space is forthcoming. They are both phenominal games in their own rights, and they set a standard for what gamers should be able to look forward to from the future of video games.

Runners Up: WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009, Rock Band 2, Fallout 3

Best Video Game Score

Yet again, there were a metric ton of great scores for video games this past year. I could prattle on and on and on about how great a year it was for video game soundtracks and even longer about how much time I've spent listening to them. Again, this was a very hard list to narrow down, but in the end, the award goes to only one. Steve Jablonsky (who also had my favorite movie score from last year with Transformers) gets the nod this year with Gears of War 2. As I said in my short review, I'm not much of a fan of the game itself, but the score is just mind-blowingly good. The themes Jablonsky creates, coupled with the grandiosity of the soundtrack as a whole make it one of the most compelling listens of the year.

Runners Up: Too Human, Infinite Undiscovery, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Best Album

Death Magnetic, by Metallica. Easy one here. None of my favorite bands came out with anything particularly great this year, but Metallica released a CD that renewed my faith in their music writing skills. After the tragedy that was St. Anger it was refreshing and relieving to hear guitar solos and drums that sounded better than a baby beating on mommy's pot collection. 

Runners Up: Cartographer (Piri Reis Remixes) - E.S. Posthumus

That covers my list of the most awesome of the awesome from 2008. Cheers to a very happy and healthy new year to everybody reading this, and everybody who hasn't discovered it yet. 

And I thought all hope was lost....

Then they came back and sound f-ing fantastic. Who? you ask. Well, uh.. let's start out like this. When they started making music, they were grungy but talented. Then they cleaned up and their music style changed and they lost a lot of fans (but that was the era that I joined in). then they released S&M, which is, to this day, one of the best albums ever... then they released St. Anger, an album that's existence I will barely acknowledge.

Then this. Metallica's Death Magnetic. The name sucks, but the music.... um, yeah. Fantastic. Amazing. Back to the Metallica we all know and love. Guitar solos. Drums that don't sound like they're actually trash cans in disguise. Great lyrics. Did I mention guitar solos?

I hope they have something epically awesome like One or Fixxxer. I will die of sheer joy.

To this day, no album has seen more play time in a stereo/CD player/iPod/etc than ReLoad. I bought it in April of '97, and it was in my stereo constantly until whenever Disturbed came out with The Sickness. That's how much I love Metallica (and meanwhile, Disturbed has faded into mediocrity... sad panda).

For those rockers out there, especially those who lost faith after that disasterous angry album, check out the new singles, which are online at:

http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=601119 (the better of the two I think) and http://www.metallica.com/index.asp?item=601136 (not nearly as good)

Note: please don't sue me for posting that, I'm only giving you more business :)

Consider my night made!