The Top 10 Metal of 2011 - The Honorable Mentions

In carrying on the fine tradition established last year, I will be posting my Top 10 Metal albums of 2011 periodically throughout December right here on Crushtor.net. As is customary (as customary as only one year of precedent can establish,) here are my honorable mentions.

The Bronze award goes to:

Anthrax - Worship Music

If there’s one thing Anthrax can be accused of, it’s a tendency to self-implode. As soon as their line-up approaches a soupcon of stability, it ends up collapsing as soon as the last nail is hammered in place. For Worship Music, we few metalheads can truly supplicate before it, perched upon the thrash metal altar. Soundly trumping other forays by the big four (Megadeth’s Thirteen – an admirable record yet missing drive; and Metallica’s unspeakably heinous collaboration record) Anthrax dug their way to the very core of thrash – careering with maximum brutality at breakneck speed in a quest to summon the beast himself. Some may scoff, remarking that thrash metal is intravenously and hopelessly addicted to its own past. The rejoinder? Headbanging riffs trimmed with Sunset Strip groove, plunging bass lines and badass bellows never go out of style, especially when they’re executed this well.

We approach the other side of the dias to hang the Silver award around the abstract neck of:

Within Temptation - The Unforgiving

It’s undoubtedly fashionable to port almost everything over into comic book format and The Unforgiving was spared no quarter. Based on a story that’s made unclear by my reluctance to shell out for the special edition, the band have well and truly taken a bulldozer to Mother Earth, erecting gothic monuments in its stead, neon-signs buzzing above us in the moonlight. Heart-rending, scrunch-faced acoustic touches remind us of their considerable songwriting talent; luckily the blueprints were in place long before notes were committed to hard-drive, for Within Temptation bereft of a raison d’etre is an exercise in guaranteed mediocrity. Splashing into the perilous ocean of pop, the band emerge from the muddy waters slicker and wiser with a splendid array of string-swelled metal club anthems, seething (Shot in the Dark) sumptuous (Sinead), sinister (Murder) and sensual (Faster) all proudly lead by the passion and drama of Sharon del Adel’s sublime soprano.  

Now the crowd buzzes in anticipation for the Gold award winner, which is:

Amorphis - The Beginning of Times

Amorphis metamorphosed into faultless metal creatures upon the release of 2006’s Eclipse, their fealty to strident and lush psychedelic metal unwavering ever since. Tomi Joutsen snarls, swells and soothes as the band lays down arcane grooves upon resplendent 70s space rock soundscapes. It’s not all flowers, faeries and rainbows, though. There’s a helping of hulking muscle that weaves its way through tracks like My Enemy, conjuring up images of guitarists perched atop stage monitors, head banging violently in unison with the pounding riffs they’ve effortlessly condensed to a slick single that’s both uncompromisingly heavy yet still on speaking terms with pop radio deejays. Proposing they’ve stolen the pop-prog thunder of Genesis or Yes melded with cyborg-augmented Doors lightning would be a generous charge indeed, as we’re eternally grateful for their trippy, bewitching and alchemical metal brew.

Coming soon - the Top 10!

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Report: Olympic Gold Medallist talks Taekwondo

Martial arts in films and comics is far removed from street combat or sparring activities. Though many are ancient practices, the knowledge they yield is still pertinent for the modern age. More importantly, many martial artists attain benefits that reach far beyond the physical as routine training strengthens the mind as much as it does the body.

What is often forgotten are the benefits of martial arts in education. The tradition of many martial arts dates back hundreds, if not thousands of years. Passed down from Grandmaster to student, martial arts instill the virtues of self-discipline, harmony, compassion and clarity of mind in its practitioners.

Read the rest at the Melbourne City News.

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The three hour layover on the way to digital journalism

Attending the A.N. Smith lecture in Journalism at Melbourne University last night, Fairfax Media Chief executive and General Manager Greg Hywood outlined the digital media strategy for Fairfax in a "post-classified ad" revenue present and of course, future. Apart from the oh-so humble reminders that the Age and Sydney Morning Herald embraced the internet long before their competitors, his subtle investor pitch demonstrating the media convergence that Fairfax employs to derive its revenue was finally indicative of a media ecological approach to journalism and content communication across a mass yet still fragmented (in terms of point of access) audience. Print in the morning, smartphones on the go and accessing the web during the day, etc.

Mr. Hywood made a salient point in terms of devising a business model to ensure not only survival, but growth in quality journalism and content creation. Leaving the privileged curatorship vs. citizen engagement debate aside; he struck at the core of the problem for lumbering giants resistant to changes in their once robust classified ad "rivers of gold." The journalism, he said, was a solution to the fundamental problem of people trying to "make sense of the world around them." The media can no longer sit idle and react to changes in the consumption of their products, they must now find "solutions" in the skein of Postman and the Media Ecologists.

For example, Neil Postman only months prior to his passing remarked in a lecture that an airline wished to spend a substantial sum to improve the speed of their aeroplanes. Researchers found that they could cut at least three hours from the Los Angeles to New York trip utilizing new engine technologies. But then engineers wondered; what did passengers do with their three hour surplus of time?

Go back to their hotels and watch television.

Thus money was saved by installing televisions into the backs of their seats - the solution was much more ingenious than attempting to appeal to the abstraction of "progress." Just like News Ltd. recognizing that the medium in the afternoon was in fact the train platform and bus and tailored its message accordingly in the form of free, portable and "light" newspapers that can be read while waiting to arrive at one's destination.

Just because journalism can be uploaded and broadcast to smartphones and tablets doesn't mean it always, in every case should; if the problem is not knowing when or where rock gigs are and the solution is a weekly street press to guide you, why force change when it isn't required? Perhaps pondering this question will write the next chapter of journalism; whether in print or online or something unheard of.

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