Arckanum – Antikosmos

I listened to the latest Arckanum album today, and was completely surprised that I would like it as much as I did. For those not in-the-know, Arckanum is a one-man black metal band from Sweden, the sole product of the troll/man known as Shamaatae since 1992. His first recordings were thrash-influenced, occasionally folkish black metal. Raw and untamed like the forests of Scandinavia, catchy as brutal as hell.

Well, Antikosmos is just like that, only much more musically mature and refined in its purpose. There are a lot of atmospheric, darkwave-y moments in between the metal mayhem, like punctuation to the black metal rituals. And, those atmospheric moments are very ritual-driven, with titles like Blóta Lóka (“Rite of Lóki”).

This is the first full-length Arckanum record in ten years. I have to say it was worth the wait.

Arckanum on MySpace
Arckanum Official Homepage

Samples available on both. Full-length found on torrent networks, p2p, etc. Since I saw Shamaatae on OiNK’s Pink Palace, I pretty much assume that he probably released the work on torrent sites. Please correct me if I’m wrong. I’ll definitely be buying this one.

Carcass

Honestly, I don’t really care about George Carlin being dead. He lived a fairly long time and had an awesome career. Everybody loved him. Let’s move on, shall we?

Well, that was easy, because MOTHERFUCKING Carcass is coming to the U.S.! Dear sweet Jeebus, it finally happened. Ever since Carcass’ reunion was announced, I’ve been obsessively checking the entire intarwebs to see if they were coming over here. Since I blew my overseas metal excursion budget last year on Hole in the Sky (which Carcass is playing this year), I couldn’t justify it this year, but it’s happening. They’re coming here. I feel like a kid waiting for Carcassmas or something.

They’re only confirmed as playing New York right now on Sept. 6th, but “more dates will be announced” according to Blabbermouth. This is just too cool for words.

As the almighty Beavis would say “Thank God! Heh hmm.”

For those of you who either don’t like metal, or who like metal but have lived under a planet-sized stone for the last 20 years, Carcass were one of the most influential and early contributors to the grindcore genre, and later became the very bestest melodic death metal band of all time END OF STORY.

Sunday ride

I had a pretty awesome ride today. I rode a little over six miles, on a completely new route, to my supervisor’s house for his “going-away” barbecue (although he’s not going to leave for a few weeks yet).

It was a nice ride, except that I actually rode a little over seven miles because I got lost, sort of, on the way there. Ha! So, a little over 12 miles today… and I barely even felt it. I could have done another 12 no problem, I think. Provided I did have a break halfway through… but I’m feeling more comfortable and confident in my riding ability. I think the fact that I climb a long, semi-steep hill every day on my commute has really helped me in my “training.” Which is also weird because I never think about “training” as a cyclist or anything like that.

To me, cycling is something that I do not because of some goal- be it getting in shape or riding a certain speed, or doing some big event. It’s something I do to save myself from getting inside a car. It’s just what I like to do.

That said, I don’t ride 20 miles a day or anything. I pretty much stay within a neighborhood or two of where I live, and everything is pretty compact and convenient. Which is great, because it doesn’t take me very long to get anywhere. But it’s also bad, because it means I’m not in the saddle as long as I could be. Because I do want to be a strong cyclist. What if I want to visit the Red Hook Brewery? Or somewhere like that. I wouldn’t want to drive my car to get there, with all the crazies out there on the highway. Also, riding is fun and I’d just like to do more of it.

On the plus side, it looks like we’re probably going to be buying a home sometime in the next 6 months plus, which will probably be much farther away from work. That will naturally get me used to riding for longer periods of time.