How I would improve TWILIGHT

Accept it,the Twilight craze is everywhere. The same power that has made vampires popular; the sex appeal, the sense of tragedy, immortality and bloodthirst, is what has wrought their undoing.
Vampires are monsters. Sexual monsters, eliminate one from the equation and you have nothing. Long gone are the days of Nosferatu, The Hunger, even Interview with a Vampire, which believe it or not is more than ten years old.

And as I stared agape as how this corny edulcorated travesty became really popular I decided to conduct a little experiment, I would watch it, voluntarilym as it was just starting on Movie City.

And because I found out that it had lovely Christian Serratos in the cast.




So, I went and saw the whole thing, I was not angry at it, I was distraught, as I felt the bloody thing was incomplete, I spent many hours going through it in my mind and all of the sudden epiphany hit!

It could be better.

So, without further ado, Let me tell you how I would make Twilight a better, even watchable movie:

CARLYLE CULLEN IS THE BAD GUY

We see Peter Faccinelli (three months my senior, OMNG) with dyed hair as the spitting image of Tom Cruise as Lestat in Interview with a vampire.



who basically sits around doing pretty much nothing, he is an emasculated patriarch, playing baseball and cooking human food with his pretty-looking family of cardboard cutouts.

But what if things were different?




Carlyle is an outcast of Vampire society, he rejected the way of the Predator in order to follow a legendary way of Vampire Enlightenment (In Vampire:The Masquerade terminology this is called Golconda) and he parted with similar minded vampires in order to create a small coterie dedicated to cultivate their humanity and pursue a semi-normal existence, where they could even, in a limited way, mingle with humans.

Edward is his child, his progeny. Carlyle embraced him because he saw himself in him, even as a human Edward couldn't fit into society, but was kind-hearted (Edward even hints that his appearance is part of his vampire existence, it would be interesting to imagine that Edward was plain looking, even deformed when he was human) as well as the rest of his small cult. Carlyle knows that high humanity translates to a more human appearance, the capacity to blush, mimic breathing (Vampires don't do it), eat human food and develop a higher tolerance to sunlight. (That beautiful sparkle Edward gives while under the Sun? Well, if he overdid it he would be reduced to ashes, as every other vampire)


When Edward meets Bella he sees himself all over again, he makes the same mistake Carlyle made with him a century ago, he sees himself (in my version Bella is even more average looking, just as in the book) so he wants to approach her to understand the human condition, he develops feelings because he perceives her as "safe".

Everything is fine until Edward takes Bella to meet his family and Carlyle lays eyes on her for the first time (Yes I am well aware Carlyle takes care of Bella just after the car crash, couldn't the doctor in the family be Esmee instead?). Carlyle is happily preparing the salad, when he sees Bella he just cracks the bowl. Just as if you showed some quality-grade heroin to a recovering addict. Edward just reintroduced Carlyle to his former primary source of nourishment, young virgin women (we also know beforehand that Bella is menstruating, Oh, the scent of virgin blood!). The dinner goes as planned, but Carlyle has to excuse himself, he is all shaken up by the experience.

Then a series of mysterious murders ensue, girls from Bella's school (Yes, in my version Suzie Crabgrass dies, much to my chagrin). Charlie Swan, Bella's dad, becomes increasingly suspicious and overprotective (then again, who wouldn't? his daughter is hanging out with a kid who is always tense, never smiles and is as pale as paper)

The vampire baseball scene still takes place, but it's not interrupted by the Trackers (they are unnecessary in my version), Bella cuts herself with a splinter, the vampires usually grab the bat a little too tight. At the smell of blood Carlyle goes full vampire, Esmee and the other members of the family contain him and give Edward a chance to take Bella as far as possible from the bloodthirsty monster.

The chase that ensues continue taking place,but Charlie is also a pursuer, in his mind Edward got his daughter in some crazy shiat and now they are running together.Carlyle also goes for Reneé, Bella's mom, but he tortures and kills her losing more of his humanity on the way, and he ambushes Bella at the dance academy with the promise of delivering her mom.

The showdown, where Carlyle delivers Reneé's head, becomes more poignant and tragic, here is a monster who was Edward's beacon of virtue, Carlyle gives Edward the choice of giving up Bella to him and leave his life for good or be destroyed, Edward has no doubt in his mind, he has to stop his sire at all costs. Edward puts a stake to Carlyle's heart and then burns the building to the ground.

Bella is safe, but now Edward has committed one of the worst crimes in Vampire society, he has destroyed another vampire, so now the Volturi, the enforcers of Vampiric traditions, are coming to destroy him as he has become the prey. He can't take Bella with him, nor embrace her as he knows that it would mean her certain death.

And with Edward gone fugitive New Moon starts in an organic, non-awkward manner.

Welcome from the 365 days of Astronomy!!!!

As part of my contribution we decided to edit the complete interview along with additional graphics in order to explain better the wonderful process by which the Mayans calculated their calendar. This video will be available here August 31st 2009, please be patient! Here is a teaser:



In the mean time you can Buy Victor Torres Roldán's book Ciudades Estelares at Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/oxtkkx
or Contact the author: vientoro (at) gmail (dot) com

Kickyoutube Bookmarklet

Use this bookmarklet to convert and download any video from Youtube to any popular formats, I personally use it to put videos in my iPod, but my brother rather extract the mp3.

Instructions:
Drag the following link to your taskbar

Kickyoutube

When you visit the videopage at youtube click it and it will automatically take you to the KickYouTube frame, choose the option, wait until the system prompts you to save link as.

Enjoy!

A horrible person has died... He will be remembered as a saint.

This single response posted at the latimes blogs summarizes everything I hate.

THE DEATH OF MICHEAL WAS LIKE 9/11 EVENT IN WORLD TRADE CENTER .

IS A GREAT LOST TO THE WORLD AND MOSTLY AFRICANS BECAUSE HE WAS AN AFRICAN DESPITE ALL.

IF THERE COULD BE A RANSOM FOR DEATH PEOPLE LIKE LUCKY DUBE AND 2PAC WOULD HAVE BEEN ALIVE BUT IS IMPOSSIBLE ACCEPT BY MIRACLE .

THREE AFRICAN ILLUSTRIOUS SONS HAVE GONE .

I THINK I WILL MOURN HIM WITH HIS MUSIC WHICH I WILL PLAY TILL NEXT DAY AND A BIG BOTTLE OF WHISKEY AND ICE.

Posted by: AYOKA IMPETUS | June 25, 2009 at 10:29 PM

How do you compare the death of a single individual to the death of 100,000? I seldom call people idiots, but this guy, uneducated, deluded himself into believing that some popstar's life is more important than his and now he is going to get pissed drunk.

And the same brainiac at movieline gives us this jewel, apparently the lad fancies himself a poet:



UPDATE: Another pathetic human used the death of an unknown to waste her life: (Google cache, the original was deleted but there's an image of it)



You may have read at the description of my blog; "If you value someone you don't know more than someone you do then you are no friend of mine". These two retards value their imaginary bonds with a stranger more than those of the people they have, OMNG, the stupid woman is going to abort because of these ideas.

And yet since Thursday 6000 people have died, will they mourn for any of them?

D&D Alignments (Part 1 of 9) Chaotic Good: Jenny McCarthy

The Alignment series is a personal exploration through the nature of Good and Evil, I know that reality is complex and I do not mean to reduce a person to a single aspect, but I mean to question what everyone holds as the paragons of truth, My first subject of analysis is actually a force of good:



These kids are getting better and I will not shut up and will not stop fighting about it.

Jenny McCarthy is a revolutionary, someone who will not just take the authority's word at face value, she senses something wrong and acts upon it. She knew her child Evan was different,and while at first she fell into the Indigo Children trap she knew better, there was another cause, The Thymerosol in the vaccines that The System demands every child to take made her kid sick, so, according to expert advice and her mommy instinct she undertook a one-woman crusade against Big Pharma and is awaking consciences across the United States and soon around the world.

She is a revolutionary and a hero, someone who honestly wants to make the world safe for our children.

So; I prithee, riddle me this...

Why can it be proven that she is directly responsible for (as of 6/28/09) 178 deaths?



She is a genocide and preys upon the ignorance and fear of people to further her agenda, she desperatelt wants to find reason in an irrational world, as her child is not normal she wants to make someone responsible, she wants to ,make someone pay, she is avengeful and close-minded, she already decided on her bad guy, although the study she bases her conclusions upon has been long discredited.

But she is beautiful and a force of good, and yet she murders by sheer indifference towards reality.
Welcome to Supervillain logic: No one chooses to do evil, even the most brutal monsters think they are doing the right thing. And Jenny McCarthy is the Superhero in this scenario, who could lift a hand against that angelic face?

But she must be stopped, people need to tell reality from falsehoods, the problem is people do not want to know reality, they are content with the first thing they are told.
Alongside the series we will see people who have lead to destruction, but are considered Good, and people who have done great deeds, but are considered evil.

Remember; You shouldn't have heroes or villains, they are human just as you and me.

Portable Music, Then and Now.

The disadvantages of the Sanyo Walkman from 1985:
1. Bulky. Carrying that thing required either a leather pouch or a strap which was a fashion don't, or putting it into the backpack, which was awkward if you wanted to change the tape.
2. Requires disposable batteries (you could buy rechargeable, but they are not included in the price tag)
3. You are pretty much stuck with a predetermined order of songs, you could tape a mixtape, but taking into consideration the recording vs. playing ratio (1:1, it takes as long to record as to play it) and the quality loss on each subsequent generation of taping, you get what you originally got.
4. Skipping a song you are not in the mood for listening requires an additional effort.
5. Tapes occupy additional space, you may want to listen to more than one hour of music when you travel.
6. Useless if you want to go jogging.
7. Magnetic tape is vulnerable to wear and tear.
8. You want to listen to that song again? Rewind, which takes a great toll on battery life. We used to counter this by rewinding manually with a pen, which in retrospective looks totally delayed.
9. Utter inability to look for an specific song unless you were familiar with every minute of the tape.
10. Hiss, that bloody, wanker hiss...

The disadvantages of the iPod Shuffle 1 Gb from the XXI century;
1. Your dog can swallow it.

Little Fears - Role-playing Game

Your sister has been kidnapped and taken to the depths of the Realm of the Demon-Lord Amduscias, who needs the life force of young women to open the Gates of Hades and wreak havoc and destruction upon everything you know and love. It's only you and your ragtag party who are aware of this. Heavily outnumbered you have another problem, everyone else thinks you are being silly, that monsters and demons aren't real.
Then again, you are only eight years old.
Little Fears asks the question;
'What if every single thing you believed as a kid was terrifyingly real; the Bogeyman, The Man with the Sack, but also your imaginary friends'?
In the genre of Survival Horror this game stands out as your character faces the greatest disadvantages, ones that we ourselves suffered as kids, feeling we couldn't control a hostile world.
Besides Monsters, the characters of Little Fears also have to deal with real-life horrors; bullies, abusive teenagers, criminals and other abusive adults. The game still offers a very real possibility of Kids being shot to death, kidnapped or abused.
I offer this game in PDF form as it has been out of print for a long time and copies on eBay are rare and expensive (starting at $150). As a bonus you can listen to the unofficial soundtrack the Industrial Band Janus composed for the German version of the game.

Enjoy!

Download the Soundtrack!!!
Janus - Kleine Ängste

http://rapidshare.com/files/123323223/JA-KA.rar

Read The Book
Little Fears - The Role-playing Game of Childhood Terrors

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Fiction children culture

How I would improve the Star Wars Movies

Jedi Trainer intense stare
Originally uploaded by FrogMiller

11.- The Jedi Council is a corrupt and complacent cult more interested in holding political power than defending the galaxy. The Head of the Council is not Yoda, but a fat slobbering Huttese Jedi who hasn't seen a day of action in its life.

10.- No midichlorians, of course. Qui-Gon has little or no evidence to support his claim (that Anakin is The Chosen One) and he is viewed by the Council as a lunatic. Obi-wan is torn between loyalty to his master and loyalty to the Elders.

9.- Boba Fett is not a clone, just an awesome bounty hunter who got himself a Mandalorian Battle Suit in a Flea Market. Jango Fett is pure Mandalorian stock and both are not related, Boba Fett's past remains a mystery.

8.-A complete rewrite of the scene before Darth Vader; Anakin, charred and mutilated, is found by Palpatine, who is surrounded by troopers, "Well, look at yourself, dog, you look like Bantha droppings. You are of no use to me, please die". Palpatine turns his back on him and Charred Anakin points a stub of flesh where his arm was and mentally chokes everyone around. Palpatine laughs; "Now we're talking! come." and the fully armored Darth Vader scene does no longer include the DO NOT WANT.

7.-Love triangle between Obi-wan, Anakin and Padmè. Anakin's jealousy is an integral part of his fall to the Dark Side and Obi-wan is fully responsible, and all because of a fine piece of blue-blooded booty. His twisting of the facts in Episode IV are because of guilt.

6.-Anakin slaughters Amidala in a fit of rage before Obi-wan's eyes, the royal showdown ensues. Luke was already born.

5.-Boba Fett decides not to hang out with Jabba much longer, he continues preying upon rebellion targets and there is a big showdown between him and Han Solo, whom he tracked to Endor.

4.-Anakin Skywalker is a teenager when found by Obi-wan. he is already a great pilot.

3.-Jar Jar Binks is an anarchist primitivist who oposses Boss Nazz' regime based on his politics of racial hatred against the human squatters of Naboo (ruled by Amidala) and he is certainly not goofy. His distrust on institutions and his idealism makes him a puppet for Palpatine's ambitions anyways.

2.-The Battle of Endor takes place in Kashyyyk as originally intended, in episode three we get to return to the Wookie planet.

1.-Luke and Leia are not brother and sister. Luke is certainly Anakin's and Padme's child, but Leia is Bail and his wife's child. Leia's mother plays an important part as a Harriet Tubman-like character who helps a few Jedi escape the Great Jedi Purge.

Why I don't believe in... (Part 1, UFOs)

I a an openminded person, that doesn't mean I will believe everything you tell me. I like fantastic things, I am ready to believe a bacteria can live inside a can of hairspray. But I also like to put ideas to the test. During my life there are many things I stopped believing and many others I started to know.
When I was a child I was fascinated by the possibility of extraterrestrial life but as more information has become available here are the questions that made me stop believe. If you can give me informed evidence backed by real science I will believe, but the "I don't know and we cannot expect to know" answer just doesn't really cut it for me.

1. Let's assume that UFOs are piloted starcrafts from another planet and there are sentient beings inside; What do they eat?
Really, have you heard about Moctezuma's revenge? Foreigners can get violently sick when trying food from a different continent, and that's assuming the aliens are carbon-based chordates like us. (Sillicon-based lifeforms present a yet-unsolvable problem; Carbon Dioxide, the stuff we exhale is a gas, but Sillicon Dioxide, what such lifeform would exhale; is a solid, so no Rock Monsters)

2. Let's assume they can eat our food without major discomfort; How did they build their immune system?
If you read War of the Worlds you will remember this spelled doom for the Martian Invaders. H. G. Wells based this conclusion on the fact that visitors from other lands bring with them and are exposed to new pathogens. Let's say that somehow they developed immunity thanks to advanced medical techniques, what about the pathogens they bring? Smallpox caused many deaths in the New World upon the arrival of the Conquistadors, who were very few. If a pathogen from beyond the stars ever arrived and contaminated us, we would surely be all dead as our immune response would be unprecedented, or an alien substance would kill us by anaphylaxis, that's the root cause for allergies.

3. Let's assume they can eat your food and are sterile; How do they propel their spaceships?
Let's assume our visitors come from the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, which is 4 light years away; Michio Kaku analyzes the matter in this article. Not even Planck-Energy propulsion is able to propel a single atom to anything closer to lightspeed and Wormholes, which are largely theoretical, are either; too expensive (in energy requirements) to produce, largely unstable or one-way streets.

But Kaku gives us a way around the first three problems:

4. Unmanned, Robotic probes are far more plausible than manned spacecrafts which must account for the ticket back home.
Here are two very elegant solutions;
a) The probes were sent long ago and left to drift in space, just as our Voyager probes and they are able to transmit information back home.
b) The probes were sent via a wormhole. As they are one-way, they can utilize all their energy in research, collect samples and send back information.

I am more fond of this solution, it paints the aliens as not different from us, as we have sent robotic probes to explore our own solar system and it is not far-fetched that another civilization does the same in a bigger scale. However this solution also brings its own problems we must tackle.

5. If they can't return, what happens to them? How come there aren't any remains?
What happens to the probes after they finish their useful life? Do they self destruct? If so why haven't there been any unexplained explosions without any debris? Why hasn't anyone found a carcass of one?
We must remember something if we were to extrapolate from our own experiences, we sent our probes WANTING THEM TO BE FOUND.That's why the Voyager missions include messages and the Golden Record, so a possible alien may know us and locate our system and why not? return the call.

6.You may say; There are captured probes, they are held by the military in top secret locations, they were reverse engineered and that's why we have had such a great expansion in technology. But there is no evidence for that.

a) You are thinking too USA centric. A probe may have fallen into other government, agencies or individual's hands. The rule of thumb regarding conspiracies is the lesson we learned from Watergate, a high-end government conspiracy can be brought down by a single individual. Where is the Deep Throat of the UFO conspiracy?

b) You can't find a single technological advance that appeared spontaneously without any antecedents. You can backtrack any invention in evolutionary levels. Even the greatest invention of all, Quantum Computing, can be traced to small, logical steps, and that's technology we don't have as of yet.

c) C'mon, dude, you are taking your science fiction too seriously. The so-called UFO phenomenon can be traced back to stories in Pulp Sci-fi Magazines from the 30's, the same magazines that once contained stories from Hollow Earth. The Writings of Richard Sharpe Shaver depict UFOs as not coming from outer space, but from inside our own Earth and they were not piloted by aliens but by DEROs (Detrimental Robots), who are the sadistic and inbred offspring of an advanced civilization that abandoned Earth in prehistoric times.

Certainly the DEROs explanation avoids many, if not all of my objection, if it weren't for the fact that it's the rambling of a single individual who spent the last years of his life in a mental hospital.

We need to say that Sharpe depicted the DEROs ships not as saucers, but as rockets, the saucer retrofitting was added by one of his alumni.

d) We need just a single sample of alien material to prove the probes exist, No government is powerful enough to cover the whole earth all of the time. Also, Kim Jong Il, Ahmajenihad , Chávez or any other dictator would love to put their paws into alien technology.

7. What do they want?

a) Exploit our natural resources.

Kardashiev, referenced in the Michio Kaku article, measures possible alien civilization in types, Type II, which can harness the entire energy of a star, is the minimum requirement for interstellar travel,so they certainly don't lack on energy resources.

This is to say; It's like if you walked all the way from San Francisco to the Amazon in order to eat a single mango.

b) Warn us from impending doom.

Remember Billy Meyer? The message the supposed aliens gave him was that the Governments should stop producing nuclear weapons. That makes sense, it was the 70's it was the height of the Cold war and the zeitgeist was full of nuclear scares. Why didn't the Aliens warn Meyer of Global warming? If they were so advanced they should know our way to harness energy (Type 0 for Kardashev) is dirty and inefficient.

c) Knowledge for knowledge's sake.

This is more likely for a Type II civilization that moved beyond the local concerns of energy, research, however that still brings the problems I described above.

d) Enslave humanity.

You have to be f***ing kidding me.

8) Where do they come from?

According to Michio Kaku, were interstellar travel possible it would be restricted to a mere hundred of light years, of course, the farther the distance, the more energy is spent and the less likely it is for the spaceship to return.

We also have to consider Fermi's Paradox;

The apparent size and age of the universe suggests that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist.
However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.

The Drake Equation gives the possible number of civilization in our galaxy as 10,000, but our galaxy is not 100 light years in diameter, but 100,000, and we also have to ask if any of those are Kardashev Type II civilizations instead of Type 0, like us, or Type I.

This question is the motivation behind observing the skies through radiotelescopes and other methods (SETI) and as the technology to detect extrasolar planets is here, it could be inevitable to discover a Type II in our lifetimes, but then again, Fermi's Paradox; Why haven't we seen them already?

9)OK, Ok, they might not be manned spacecrafts or robotic probes or Robots from inside the Earth, but you cannot deny the phenomenon is real... Think again.

If you believe that you haven't done your homework. Every instance must be analyzed separatedly, explanations range from the mundane (camera defects, lens flare, aluminum balloons) to the exciting (artificial satellites, weather conditions, electromagnetic discharges)

If you find an unexplained phenomenon THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT EXTRATERRESTRIAL VISITATION IS AUTOMATICALLY CORRECT.

Remember; Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, a camera phone video or a doctored photo is only evidence that some light appeared in the sky. Show me the evidence and we can discuss it and explore it together. But you see, you have a lot of explaining to do before assuming there are aliens.

Speculative Fiction part 3: Nirvana never formed.

(The Speculative Fiction series is an exercise in narrative merely done to practice my writing skills, the speculative fiction genre has reached history, but not music and it would be fun to imagine; what if Led Zeppelin never recorded Starway to Heaven? What if Grunge never had commercial success?)


Lfm:Today we are speaking with Kurt Cobain, bassist of the legendary Sludge band Melvins. Cobain was so kind as to invite us to his home in Aberdeen, Washington with his wife, Melanie and his three kids. Cobain, now in his forties, tells us about the Seattle scene in the late eighties and late nineties;

KC: I was just a kid carrying the equipment for some friends back then, The Melvins, Boy, was I obsessed with that band! Even though I knew [Crover and Osborn] from high school... I knew I was being silly when I asked him to audition. I was so nervous I even forgot how to play!!! When I asked; "Can I start again?"I knew I was doomed. I went home knowing I would never make it in life, but Buzz, oh, man. He called me to repeat the audition and I made it!!! I don't know what I 'd done! For sure you would find me with my brains sprayed over the fucking wall!! *laughs*

Lfm: You had a chance to work with William S. Burroughs...

KC: The man was larger than life, you know? You read all his books in secret when you were a teen, you know his life story and yet he treats you as if he were no different from you. And yet when he spoke you pondered his every word... Such clarity, I wish I live to be as sensible as he was...We did a single track in 1992... and some years later I was able to work with him again, short before he died...

Lfm: Although your work has gathered a large following you somehow have eluded the mainstream... With Houdini you had a short-lived success at the charts...

KC: Yes, The people at David Geffen were really into new sounds, they had worked with Sonic Youth... I remember there was some people from a major record company that was looking for something else, I remember the guy, he was genuinely sick and tired of the crap MTV was pushing at the time... he seemed really smart, but when he saw me in private and told me that the other members of the band were dragging me down I knew there was no deal possible. We and another band, Soundgarden, were in rotation on MTV for a couple of months... But the glam bands were so aggressive... The powers that be would never take risks with new stuff. We would never translate into merchandise or toys as the other bands did.

Lfm: Or Saturday Morning Cartoons...

KC: They were the worst!!! I sure didn't want to see myself solving mysteries in space!
Mainstream has become increasingly stale... prefab bands had a limit and it was crossed time and time again. The new wave of Gothic Glam and Dark Glam,, just makes me sick... We worked with Brian Warner from Coma White... He used to be in a Glam band, The Spooky Kids, he simply could not take it.. all the executive meddling. His Idea was to combine divas' names with serial killers, but after the fiasco of the Charles Manson Tribute Album by Guns N' Roses... I think it was for the best, Warner and Trent Reznor have made some very interesting music...

Lfm: For the Mainstream you are a one-hit-wonder... Do you resent that?

KC: Not at all!!! I am not sure if I could handle some executives demanding new material, Melvins has given me the opportunity to listen to myself. The short period we were pushed to promote our MTV material was, like, torture. There was all this material we wanted to explore and people just wanted the same tired song from TV...

My Thirteen favorite Black Sabbath covers

(DISCLAIMER; I am never saying they are the best, just my favorite)


Worthy of note, but not my favorite.
--Dio N'arap - Sopor Aeternus and The Ensemble of Shadows
Not so much of a cover but an adaptation based on Black Sabbath's Paranoid, changed lyrics and added atmospheric vocals. I would listen to Sopor Aeternus more but I am freaked out by that Anna-Varney person.


--Symptom of the Universe - Metallica
You should always praise someone who happens to interpret his favorite song. It's Metallica (you may have your opinion of them, I don't even listen to them anymore) paying tribute to the Masters of the genre.



13 Sabbath Jam - Eyehategod

Finally, someone understands that Cornucopia has a killer intro, but is a lackluster song. So they take the intro off it in order to introduce Hand of Doom and end with Behind the Wall of Sleep. A great amalgamation of three great songs.


12 Black Sabbath Medley - Candlemass

Why only cover one when you can cover seven for the same price? Begin from Symptom of the Universe, then turn on Sweet Leaf, follow right through Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, use Into the Void to enter to Electric Funeral and finish with Supernaut and the deep riff that started it all from Black Sabbath. Doom doesn't get more epic than this.

11 Iron Man / Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - The Cardigans

What? You dare turn Metal into Britpop??? A largely silent and soothing ballad that tells the story of the metal monster from the future, that's trippy, man!!!

10 Black Sabbath - Amber Asylum

What? You dare turn Metal into Neoclassical? Amber Asylum creates gloomy ambients that would easily fit into funeral doom, but retain that sweetness of spring rain.

9 Heaven and Hell - Solitude Aeturnus

What? You dare cover a song from the Dio years? Rob Lowe demonstrates he belongs to the great voices of Metal alongside Ronnie James Dio. They also make a killer job covering Ozzy Osbourne's No more Tears.

8 Behind The Wall Of Sleep - Static X

Not the best cover in the world, but I admit I have a liking for Static X's brand of brash, young and energetic metal that does not fall into Metalcore.


7 Black Sabbath - Wraith of the Ropes

Again, take the killer intro for Cornucopia to create a dirty and heavy cover of the original Doom masterpiece and lace it with horror movie undertones. The piano takes a lot from John Carpenter's scores.

6 Black Sabbath (From the Satanic Perspective) - Type O Negative

Change the lyrics, but remain true to the original, they decided to be the Devil instead of the victim. Don't you find it funny that the original, which spawned many interesting things, says "Could this be the end?". Instead, they say; "This is just the start!"

5 Snowblind - Evoken

Masters of Funeral Doom Evoken bring their gargantuan weight and special brand of darkness to the original Stoner Doom masterpiece.

4War Pigs - Ozzy Osbourne

Not a cover but a correction, back in the day they could not sing about Black Magic so they renamed their song "Walpurgis" into something more political (early 70's zeitgeist, after all). This is the song restored to its original glory and the lyrics for my taste are much, much better.

3 Hand of Doom - Slayer

They change the coda to something more fitting of a heroin trip, instead of finishing with a whimper they go on an adrenalin stroke.

2 Solitude - Ulver

This version of Solitude is more silent and intimate, more at home in the Shadows of the Sun album. and let's face it; Kristoffer Rygg's voice is much better for the song than Ozzy's

1 Zero the Hero - Cannibal Corpse

No one covers the Ian Gillan era of Sabbath!!!! But this cover is so surprising, the fade-in intro creates an abbatoir-like ambient that Corpsegrinder's vocals are more at home than the original.

My Life in Metal; One Metal Album from Every Year I Have Been Alive.

1974 Judas Priest - Rocka Rolla

Tag: heavy metal

This album defines the first Not-Sabbath band, Metal begins taking shape as it goes farther away from simple Hard Rock. This is also the year Kiss and Van Halen form.

When I was a kid I was turned away by Judas Priest when I knew they didn't want kids listening to their albums, I rediscovered them much later in life.


1975 Black Sabbath - Sabotage

Tag: heavy metal

Black Sabbath's seminal first five albums have already been released, however it includes one of my favorites, Symptom of the Universe as well as my least favorite, Am I Going Insane (Radio).

1976 Scorpions - Virgin Killer

Tag: heavy metal

Metal begins the long hard road of being stereotyped as controversial, by now Shock Rock by the likes of Alice Cooper and Kiss is in full strenght.

I never listened to Scorpions seriously, when I was discovering Metal their glory days had already passed.

1977 Motörhead - Motörhead

Tag: heavy metal, speed metal

The reticent fathers of Speed Metal make their debut this year. A scene that is only seven years old begins showing signs of being diverse.

1978 Van Halen - Van Halen


Tag: heavy metal, glam


The seed of the very decadent and brief incursion of Metal into the mainstream, I would know about them alongside everyone else, with their album 1984

1979 AC/DC - Highway to Hell

Tag: heavy metal

By now, AC/DC is a well established band and shirts with their logo are common in the street, my introduction to AC/DC was thanks to a lone song in a compilation; I knew I liked it, but I dared not look for more.

Well, what do you expect? I'm five in 1979!

1980 Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard Of Ozz

Tag: heavy metal

I love the riff of Crazy Train,yet I secretly wish the song was better...

1981 Venom - Welcome to Hell

Tag: heavy metal

The beginning of Extreme Metal and yet I am oblivious to this. No death growls yet, but the satanism associated to Black Metal is there.


1982 Witchfinder General - Death Penalty

Tag: doom metal

By now, Both Witchfinder General and Saint Vitus have taken the original somber sound of Black Sabbath and created Doom Metal, a distinct branch of tye Metal tree.

1983 Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind


Tag: nwobhm


When I was a kid I was absolutely terrified of Eddie! I could not stand watching at the covers! This is my favorite Maiden album, although my Favorite song is Fear of the Dark.

1984 Ángeles del Infierno - Pacto con el diablo


Tag: heavy metal


When I was in Secondary school they made me watch this documentary where a priest spoke about how Metal was evil and had subliminal messages and was corrupting the youth (yeah right). He continually used the song Maldito Sea Tu Nombre as evidence of thus, because it presents the Devil in a positive light. so I listened to that song, I loved it and got myself the tape, Guess my soul was beyond salvation at that point!

1985 Possessed - Seven Churches


Tag: death metal


Extreme metal at its finest and I am still playing with my action figures from Return of The Jedi...

1986 Candlemass - Epicus Doomicus Metallicus


Tag: doom metal


This album contains one of my favorite songs ever; Solitude. This is one of the reasons I started previewing albums from the Internet, CDs are very expensive in my country, so I have to make sure the one CD I do buy is not going to be a waste. I only knew about this album as from recently.


1987 Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark


Tag: black metal

The world has to suffer the decadence of mainstream metal from the likes of Ratt, Skid Row and Cinderella and this jewel is brewing, the future seed of all metal is silent but extrtemely loud...


1988 - King Diamond - "Them"

Tag: heavy metal

I love King Diamond because he dares to sing evil in that chipmunky voice! In that moment of my life I believed all metal had the same operatic, Dioesque quality but oh no!

1989 - W. A. S. P. The Headless Children

Tag: heavy metal

I entered preparatory and I had to save for a week to buy an album. I saw this one at the record store and bought it the same reason many other kids do, because it looked "evil" and was I surprised!!! Many of you may think less about W. A. S. P. but I still enjoy this album very much.

1990 - Solitude Aeturnus - Into the Depths of Sorrow

Tag: doom metal

Although many people like Beyond the Crimson Horizon better, I rediscovered this jewel thanks to a fading memory, I had this lyric I could not take from my mind, so one day I googled it and found it was from White Ship, which remains one of my favorite songs.

1991 - Thergothon - Fhtagn-nagh Yog-Gothoth


Tag: doom metal

Yay! Lovecraft inspired music that is not corny,. but actually captures qhat I felt when I was a kid and read "The color out of space" for the first time!


1992 - Root - The Temple In The Underworld


Tag: heavy metal

If I ever have a daughter I am definitively naming her Casilda because of Casilda's Song.


1993 - Brujería - Matando Güeros

Tag: death metal, grindcore

My first real approach to extreme metal. To this day I prefer Death Metal in a language that is not my own (spanish), because actually being able to understand it creeped me out big time.
And the cover is a real classic!


1994 - My Dying Bride - Turn Loose the Swans

Tag: doom metal

I heard this album for the first time in a discman that a girl I was dating gave me while I waited for her outside her class. She had been looking for that album and she finally got around to order it and I was hooked instantly! Back then I liked all sorts of music that I consider stupid now. (I actually took band names from MTV! ugh!!!)


1995 - Paradise Lost - Draconian Times

Tag: doom metal

One of my regrets in life is not going to concerts when I had the chance. I actually missed them when they came to Mexico!!


1996 - Saint Vitus - Born Too Late

Tag: doom metal

One of the only albums or pieces of art that have made me realize the sad reality that I have the personality of an addict, but not the access to the drugs.
That might be the reason I like stoner doom so much.

1997 - Burzum - Daudi Baldrs

Tag: black metal, dark ambient

I love the mental pictures this album gives me, so cold, so desolate, so majestic.. Free Varg Vikernes!!!


1998 - Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle-Earth

Tag: epic metal

The only album of Epic Metal I like, I haven't been so proactive in listening to more Blind Guardian or Iced Earth or other Epic bands, just because this album fills me so completely.


1999 - Morgion - Solinari

Tag: doom metal

What? You got the name wrong!!! It should be Nuitari!!! Get your Dragonlance deities right!!! You almost make me ashamed of having played Dungeons and Dragons so many years!


2000 - Ufomammut - Godlike Snake

Tag: sludge doom

For years and years this band eluded me, it was the holy grail for me, I just listened to a preview in an obscure website and I was hooked! Until recentñy I got the albums and they don't dissapoint!

2001 - Anorexia Nervosa - New Obscurantis Order

Tag: symphonic black metal

Do you remember Audiogalaxy? It was a lot like last.fm, with genre clouds, recommendations, forums, live chat... Back in the day of dial-up it was the place where us Napster refugees went to discover new music, I still listened to a lot of garbage The New Shins? blechhhh!!! I got Stabat Mater Dolorosa because I was hooked on a play by the same name and I got this jewel. I got to admit that it was hard for me to get Black Metal, but once I did I never regretted it.


2002 Funeral - In Fields of Pestilent Grief

Tag: funeral doom

I loved Funeral Doom from day one! The ambient, the atmosphere, the twenty minutes or more-long songs. That's why I don't scrobble more songs, my average song is ten minutes long! (and also I listen to one-hour podcasts, last.fm should take into account the time you spend scrobbling!)


2003 - Necrophagia - The Divine Art of Torture

Tag: death metal

An album inspired by ultrahorror films! Both Flower of Flesh and Blood and A meia-noite levarei sua alma are films that inspire me.


2004 - Aarni - Bathos

Tag: funeral doom

The only reason I got this album is because someone tagged it as Industrial Doom. For years I thought that Industrial was my favorite genre of music (I love Velvet Acid Christ, Skinny Puppy and KMFDM, but not that much). This album also oncorporates elements of Thelema and Magick, subjects that fascinated me in the past.


2005 - Reverend Bizarre - Crush the Insects

Tag: doom metal

Thanks, because By This Axe I Rule! taught me that great metal can also afford to be self-aware and parody itself without being silly and rock harder than ever!


2006 - Saturnus - Veronika Decides to Die

Tag: doom metal

Same title as the novel by Paulo Coelho, but the most badass title for an album ever!

2007 - Novembers Doom - The Novella Reservoir

Tag: death-doom metal

Twilight Innocence brings tears to my eyes, it's so beautiful, and yet it's between br00tal headbanging tracks. If I ever learned something from the original Black Sabbath is that Metal always had a place for ballads, Solitude and Changes being perfect examples of this. (of course, the 80's brought us the power ballad, but I dare you to say that 18 and Life does not rock)


2008 - Ataraxie - Anhédonie

Tag: funeral doom

Avide de sens may last 20 minutes, but I can listen to it again and again. The song that made me buy an Ipod, so I could scrobble while in the street.

2009 -

Thirteen songs called 'Solitude'

13.- Solitude - Black Sabbath
Tag: heavy metal

Oh where can I go to and what can I do?
Nothing can please me only thoughts are of you
You just laughed when I begged you to stay
Ive not stopped crying since you went away

The world is a lonely place - youre on your own
Guess I will go home - sit down and moan.
Crying and thinking is all that I do
Memories I have remind me of you

In the middle of the Stoner/Sludge/Doom Masterpiece Master of Reality there is an island of sadness, a place to remind us that the affair with pleasure leads to loneliness. True Metal understands the necessity of being alone, The Metalhead is a lone wolf, hunting alone, suffering alone, but sharing the glory with others.
Covered by:
12.- Solitude - Cathedral
Tag: doom metal
Cathedral would go a conventional way in covering the Sabbath masterpiece, every chord, every syllable is where it should be, as correct as it is it might be unnecessary, as this cover adds nothing to the original.
11.- Solitude - Ulver
Tag: avant garde
Ulver integrates this song seamlessly into its seminal Shadows of the Sun. when a cover seems done by the artist performing it then and only then it can be a good cover. All the pain of the original is there, all the understanding.
10.- Solitudo (Solitude) - Rondellus
Tag: medieval
Rondellus makes a monster work in translating the Black Sabbath originals to Latin and then singing them in choruses. A delightful work.


9.- Solitude - Death in June
Tag: apocalyptic folk
Not a cover. Death in June gets a new voice in David Tibet for this track.
8.- Solitude - Intaglio
Tag: funeral doom
Not a cover. Intaglio follows a different solitude, the one that comes after the realization that death is inevitable and that there is no heaven nor hell awaiting.
7.- Solitude - Candlemass
Tag: doom metal
Hate is my only friend
pain is my father
torment is delight to me
Death is my sanctuary
I seek it with pleasure
Please let me die in solitude

Receive my sacrifice
my lifeblood is exhausted
no one gave love and understanding
Hear these words
vilifiers and pretenders
and please let me die in solitude
Candlemass created a masterpiece of Doom with this song, they dared defy the creators of the genre with a similar named song. Here death is not something to fear, but a release. Mortality is a theme in every song dealing with loneliness.
Covered by:
6.- Solitude - Anorexia Nervosa
Tag: symphonic black metal
The strengh of Anorexia Nervosa comes not from evil, but from the deepest suffering. As the coda of New Oscurantis Order, this track is the end of angry tears.
5.- Solitude - Desire
Tag: death doom metal
This cover has an epic stature yet unmatched; four voices, four ways to deal with the greatest sadness. the only cover with a female angelic voice surrounded by a whisper and two distinct death growls.
4.- Solitude - Pale Divine
Tag: stoner doom
A clean voice straight cover, but it has a psychedelic bridge, a way of dealing with loneliness through pleasure, the solace of drugs (Stoner is never complete without hallucinations)
3.- Solitude - Swallow the Sun
Tag: death doom metal
As this song should be performed, a clean voice crying in almost silence, giving its way to the biggest of funeral wails.
2.- Solitude -Blodsrit
Tag: black metal
The only cover in all death growls. Somehow the lack of contrast mitigates the extents that other covers have reached before.
1.- Solitude - Midgard
Tag: doom metal
A straight clean voice cover. done in sheer admiration. It appropiates the original, yet it does nothing to take it to new levels.