Def Leppard - Overture

Check out the guitar solo from 5:01 onwards.

I thought this place needed some tunes, so I thought as a regular feature I could showcase one of my favourite songs every other Sunday and ramble about it. I must admit, of course, that I know very little about music, but I know what I like.

That said, it's hard to explain the anomoly which was On Through the Night, Def Leppard's 1980 debut album, much less Overture, which caps the album nicely with a solemn, satisfying ending. This is not exactly the Leppard best known from Hysteria and its ilk. It's short on heavy-pop sounds and songs about how apparently awesome hot chicks are. It doesn't even much look like a Def Lep album -- nor is it treated like one. It's been disowned by the band itself, and goes together with Slang as the two of their albums that I know of that just aren't Leppard enough to exist. In fact, at the time the band had difficulty gaining a fanbase in the United Kingdom, due to an obvious intention by the Sheffield-based group to court America, with a disproportionate presence in US tours, and the single Hello America, meaning that this album and Slang are probably Def Leppard's two least-popular albums. Naturally, they're also my two favourites.

It's a bit hard to describe what it actually is though. On Through the Night's seems to be described as the most naturally-raw NWOBHM of their work. Except that it isn't, at all. Jesus, play that video and tell me that it sounds remotely like Iron Maiden's Sanctuary or Angel Witch by the band of the same name. I dare you. However, it's certainly a lot more rocky than Leppard's later, more poppy stuff (yes, I've nailed the terminology here). It's also horribly produced. I'm awful at detecting musical quality, and I can hear how poorly recorded this is. It could've been a lot better.

I think that's why I like it though. I just can't really think of anything else that's quite like it, with the same sound and futuristic themes and suchlike. Although this song did get me thinking that all great albums should end with a slower-paced, summarising epic of sorts, which becomes instantly obvious when you find that my other favourites include Iron Maiden's Dance of Death (ending with Journeyman) or 90125 by Yes (ending with Hearts).

Well, that's enough from me for now. Enjoy.

Civilization V Announced

You know, I'm not much of a gamer. I have a few game reviews under my belt already here, but it doesn't quite reflect how I actually use most of my free time. Before I got my DS at Christmas I had never owned any gaming platform other than my trusty PC. Game releases drift by while I take little or no concern, like oncoming traffic. And when I hear my friends talk about gaming most of it's as incomprehensible to me as human emotion.

And then this happened:

We are not worthy! We are not worthy!

Civilization V was announced earlier in the month. The most terrible part about this is how difficult it's now become to hold onto my fanboyishness. Its predecessor, Civilization IV may just be one of the best PC games ever released, and its expansions improved that winning format by enormous amounts. I'd go as far as to say that Beyond the Sword is the most extensive expansion pack I've seen for a mainstream PC game. Add to that one of the largest modding communities in the world and you have a winner.

But now five years have passed, and now that I have a PC that can actually run Civ4 all the way through without struggling, it's time to entirely shit over my technological investment. There are only a handful of in-game images so far, but even at this early stage they look so utterly beautiful that I fear my computer may involuntarily shut down out of sheer awe. And possibly insufficient memory too.

I'm going to need some fresh pants.

Of course, the great thing about a series this well established is getting to guess what's going to change. As you can see, Civ5 offers a hex grid, which affords more natural landscapes and more accurate measurement of distances, instead of the conventional square grid. Early reports also speak of a completely new combat system and a diplomatic model that might make talking to other leaders a remotely appealing prospect.

You still can't convince him to save the British children.

Of course, the community's also generally hoping that they'll leave in the extensive modding capabilities that's kept people coming back to Civ4 again and again. I'll go one step further: I hope that they'll take time to look at what the modding community most focuses on, and ensure that most of the biggest headaches involved are greatly streamlined.

And what else? Well of course, every Civilization fan has different priorities and interests. There are many who believe Civ4 was actually a low point in the series and would just like to see most of it undone. However, I have simple wants. I'm just hoping for unique art for every civ, better civic options, unique units and buildings throughout the entire game, and truly round worlds. We'll see what we'll actually get.

One Civ Under God

Be my valentine.

Strictly speaking, this isn't a review for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword. There will never be a review, by me, for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword. This is because it is quite simply one of the best games I have ever played in my life, and certainly the best game that I've actually spent real money on. I mean, I could just rave about how much I love it, but that'd be pretty much as redundant as telling a girl that she's special to me. Bitch just plain knows it.

Ultimately it wins by being one of those infinitely replayable games that never stops being amazing fun, but what puts the icing on the cake is that Civ4 is quite easily the most widely customisable games I've ever even heard of. I mean sure, you may think that being able to change a few graphics might make your game "customisable", but you'd probably be wrong. Call me when you can gut the entire combat mechanics and turn it into a fantasy RPG and then I'll look to see if your game even comes close.

This is pretty lucky then, because five years after Civ4's initial release, I'm finally starting to get really fed up with the tech tree and civic systems.

For some reason, this does not happen to Paradox games.

This is a real danger for any 4X (empire management) game: that given time the failings of the entire game's technological progression, military model, economy, or what-have-you will turn out to be unrealistic or insufficient. Players will always want a deeper experience after long enough.

Civilization IV, at least, equips you with the tools to fix this, and there are literally hundreds of mods out there which address issues I have with the game. Civ4 has the largest modding community I know of -- and possibly the largest modding community there is (if you assume games like Spore don't count, that is). The problem is the tendency for modders to bundle their changes with larger mods. There's no picking-and-mixing here: it's all or nothing with these mods. So while someone might indeed have extended the tech tree to the distant future, this comes at the cost of lots of new retarded religions, for example. Yes, you can have a huge map of the earth with tree new terrain types and new resources, but only if you give up random starting locations, accept a series of history-enforcing events, and put up with ten new widgets cluttering your entire screen.

So here are my current problems: the tech tree is limited as hell and predictable. I hate having religions founded as a result of someone researching a tech first (and of older religions having an unfair advantage). I want future tech to actually mean something. And above all, the civic system is crap.

Firaxis realised that just switching your entire government over to "Fascism" for a few years didn't make a lot of sense. Governments have nuance, and policies. When I first read a review for Civ4, which entirely sold the game to me, one of the things that excited me the most was the civic system. In essence, each civ would be able to choose its stance on religion, economy, and so on, and get bonuses based on their choices. It sounded great.

But like so many things that sound great drunk, it turned out to be pretty awful in practice. I'm not entirely sure what's the worst part of it: the fact that they're so poorly balanced, the obvious progression of quality as civs become more advanced, the fact that the legal and economy trees only have the vaguest thematic separation, or the clear pro-Democratic vibe. Actually, I think it's the latter -- slavery is bad to modern America, so it only has one benefit which causes crippling population loss and massive unhappiness. Don't ask me why the ancients routinely slaughtered thousands of people every time their slaves built anything.

Fact: Chichen Itza is made entirely out of slave hearts.

This is made a lot worse when you consider that during the same point in the game you can build the Pyramids wonder, which gives you access to Universal Suffrage, which gives you the same benefit in exchange for gold and makes your towns more productive, thereby potentially limiting how often you need to use it. Get it? Because democracy is good, and slavery is bad! Don't even get me started on Emancipation, which gives a cumulative unhappiness penalty to every civ that doesn't have it, even if they've never heard of any civ that has, or aren't advanced enough to enact it.

This doesn't just upset me because Firaxis appears to have the same views on cultural expectations of personal liberty that my dad has. What upsets me is that Civ4 is meant to be a game of fun escapism where we create worlds that could never be. There's nothing more fun than when you realise that you're playing a Jewish Greece near the southern hemisphere involved in wars with a Hindu Sino-Incan alliance over islands in a huge interior sea. I love that utter disconnect from reality. What I want is for my society to actually have an identity of its own that's distinct from those of my enemies. I would like to try out an oppressive police state and see how that actually works, instead of being penalised for it.

So I guess I'm back in the modding community again, attempting to figure out balanced civics that are an inseparable part of a civ's identity. And for this I'm looking to Paradox games. Sadly, the best example of this done well is Victoria, a game so unbelievably complicated that it actually gave me two new mental disorders overnight. Wrestling with Victoria's micromanagement is a lot like wrestling with a terminal illness, complete with family looking on, consumed with despair, wondering if it would be more merciful for everyone just to euthanise you now. But it at least has ambition, and depth. If the game wasn't real-time involving global empires of hundreds of provinces each all of which have their own micromanagement (yeah, I know) then the political system in the game would actually be really good. I'm certainly going to take a lot of ideas from this game.

The New Zen

Welcome to the new Zen of Matt. I've just moved to Blogger from Wordpress. Hopefully now I can get back to making actual posts, and cutting down on my fucking swearing.

Avatar

AVATAR! James Cameron's alleged magnum opus (2009, Lightstorm Entertainment, 20th Century Fox) is, as of this month, the highest grossing film in history, surpassing Titanic, and is still taking in the cash. It's a monster: a triumph of cinematic technology that has been dwarfed by its own hype. For a long time Avatar was almost a myth, and even now that it's released and edging ever closer towards box office returns to the tune of nearly two billion dollars, with millions of people having seen it, with the media being saturated with its visuals and marketing paraphernalia, I and many of my friends still had practically no idea what the film was actually about. It seems like the movie had been swallowed whole by its own legendary status.

Well, it just so happens that I went to see it a week ago. Here's a plot summary for those of you who are still a bit unsure of what you're in for (yes, there will be spoilers all over this post): It's 1609 and the English, lead by Governor Ratcliffe, have just arrived in Virginia looking for gold. While in the wilderness handsome hero John Smith meets the native chief's beautiful daughter, and they fall in love. In the end, John discovers that the white man's conquest of the new world is founded in greed and disregard for life, and ultimately the English are driven away.

This story may sound familiar to you. This is because it's Disney's Pocahontas. Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm in now way implying that Avatar is just Pocahontas with a science fiction skin. John Smith certainly never "went native", and the Disney English never had a climatic battle with the so-called savages whose land they so desired. Nope, I'm implying that this movie also heavily rips off Dances With Wolves.

Is this bad? Well, not so much. I personally have little problem with the plot being very similar to a brilliant and moving epic, or even being similar to Pocahontas, but it does cheerfully ascribe to the ridiculous myths that both those films also celebrate. But I'll get to that in a little bit.

The movie actually opens in 2154 on Pandora, the moon of an extrasolar gas giant, where the resident Evil Corporation is mining for precious unobtanium. I'm going to stop here and point out that I did not make that shit up. There is a mineral in this film called fucking unobtanium. So far the only film to ever give such a blatantly half-arsed name to a precious metal has been The Core, and even that was done with a degree of implied irony. And that was The fucking Core, a movie so retarded it made my rectum implode.

Well anyway, it turns out that Pandora also has a native population of ten-foot-tall blue humanoids called the Na'vi. The Na'vi and the humans have a strained and often violent relationship. A bunch of human scientists want to negotiate with the Na'vi and find a solution that's good for everyone, because they're scientists, and therefore implicitly love peace and progressiveness. However, the mercenaries hired by the mining company would much rather just kill them, because they're soldiers, and therefore implicitly love killing things even when diplomacy is still an option. God have mercy on your soul, James Cameron. In an attempt to interact with the natives, the scientists have made remote-controlled Na'vi/human hybrid bodies (or Avatars), operated by humans whose genetic code they match.

This is sort of justified. The Na'vi and (apparently) all life on their moon have organic USB ports built into them, meaning that they literally are connected to each other. It stands to reason that remotely networking a human brain to a Na'vi body would be possible under the right circumstances. Which makes me wonder why the scientists apparently know nothing about their ability to interface with other life forms. I guess they never thought it'd be useful to look vaguely at the things that were growing in vats right outside their office doors, just in case they risked becoming useful.

They also sparkle and have inexplicable sex-appeal, which means this movie also plagiarised Twilight.

Anyway, to cut a long story short Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic ex-marine who ends up unexpectedly becoming an avatar operator after his twin brother is tragically murdered. During a routine mission gone wrong, his avatar becomes separated from his colleagues. He soon meets Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), the daughter of the Na'vi tribal leaders, who impressively manages to never reveal her nipples at any point during the entire movie, despite being topless. She interprets his arrival as some kind of sign, because in Hollywood all native peoples are superstitious to the point of being totally fucking retarded, and the tribe decide to teach him their ways for some reason or another. This opens the door to diplomacy, and the two pretty people fall in love, because it'd just be unrealistic if two people of the opposite sex from entirely (and literally) alien cultures met and didn't want to fuck each other's brains out.

However, the Na'vi are too much of a bunch of stubborn and self-righteous cockfucks to consider coming to even the smallest compromise, and all the soldiers are comically gung-ho war fetishists. You know that two groups of people who furiously masturbate over being sickeningly racist and self-centred are going to come to blows sooner or later. Of course, the humans have incendiary missiles and mecha, while the Na'vi have some sticks and maybe even a few dried leaves. The Na'vi end up having to fall back, but luckily Jake manages to (after what feels like an hour of being punched in the dick by everyone on both sides) rally up a force of ... two thousand blue guys to fight the "sky people" off Pandora.

He intends to use a force of two thousand people. I accept that these people are very tall and very blue, and have crazy alien horses and pterodactyl mounts. But they're still two thousand guys with bows and arrows (oh, they also get about three actual guns), going up against, oh, at least five hundred heavily armed mercenaries. The Na'vi warriors are basically all hunters too (being too enlightened for war with their own kind), while the humans are without exception from the finest military traditions on Earth. And they have mechs, and airships, and machine guns, and long range missiles, and artillery. And Jake thinks that two thousand hunter-gatherers will not only push them back, but force them to abandon the entire world and the many trillions of dollars worth of minerals under its surface. I should point out that Jake's Na'vi nickname translates to "moron".

And the humans kick their butts with minimal casualties. That is, until Pandora itself freaks the fuck out and the wildlife starts beating the shit out of them. The survivors leave pretty hastily, while the good humans (i.e. anyone with a name) all stay behind. Jake really didn't think about that shit, did he? Yes, a dense rainforest inhabited by luddites seems like the perfect environment for a wheelchair-bound cripple who has to wear an oxygen mask to survive in the moon's toxic atmosphere. Idiot.

The reason I'm being so unfair towards this movie is because it embraces total idiocy. I don't mean that the film itself is idiotic -- far from it. Avatar is exceptionally well constructed, and has a very entertaining and watchable story, with clever and original science-fiction ideas, and thoughtful deconstructions of certain expected tropes. However, it has exceptionally shallow characters. Scientists seem socially out-of-place, soldiers are all jocks, and the Na'vi are all noble savages. It's like they used the same casting company as High School Musical. Pushing aside for now that soldiers and scientists work side-by-side every day in real life, and are often the same thing, the noble savage myth is the one that really irritates me. Technological advancement, Avatar tells us, makes entire cultures greedy, selfish and bloodthirsty. Lack of technological advancement makes cultures graceful and "in tune with nature". The Na'vi are god damned dirty hippies. No pre-modern culture in the world is as respectful to nature as they are. Heaven forbid that there might be anyone living in a stone age culture who maybe doesn't feel that killing an animal for food requires a minute long prayer, or who thinks it might be nicer to clear some trees and sleep in a bed, or who looks at the humans across the road and thinks, "hey, these guys almost never have dysentery. Maybe we should talk to them with an open mind."

And this Victorian belief persists mostly to justify the fact that western audiences want a white male hero. Oh snap, did I just pull the race card? Yes I did, but it's not because I think audiences are racist. It's because as much as the Na'vi get totally wet thinking about how superior and noble they are, it would seem indulgent for one of them to be the movie's lead, telling the audience how life was much better before people had movable type or penicillin. So a white guy has to do it instead. A white, modern man has to the one to tell audiences that societies that support bloggers, film makers, and other white modern men are inherently evil, and that we were much happier when every day was a struggle to survive filled with hunger and disease, otherwise the movie might actually have to focus on the messages that I didn't find retarded. It might have to be a movie that says, "maybe genocide is bad, and maybe the rights of the people who lived here before we turned up are more important than company profits." But no, in Hollywood it's impossible to get behind any message unless there's a total black and white morality.

I can only hope that the humans later decided that since they don't want anything on Pandora's surface anyway they should just nuke the place first next time. On the other hand, the smurf chicks are kind of attractive in a very wrongful way, so six out of ten.

The Inexcusable Awfulness of US State Flags

Yes, it's another flag related post, immediately after the last one. But this one also involves mocking America, so it's cool.

In today's lesson we'll be seeing how American state flags are generally among the most ill-conceived and hideous designs in the history of vexillology. Most of them are just plain awful, with astonishingly lazy, crowded, and/or eye-watering designs.

American state flags have an odd little history, which is to say that most of them have none at all. More than half the states in the union had their flags designed during the latter part of the nineteenth century through to the early part of the twentieth. They were mostly invented through a contest and destroyed through a committee. Those that were not were instead adopted through the simple method of shoving the state's seal onto a plain blue background and writing the name of the state next to it in large, child-friendly letters, just in case the citizens of the state didn't know where they were.

Here's a map to illustrate my problem with these abominations:

If your state borders Canada, its flag is probably shit.

All states shaded in green have writing on their flag. All of them! There are four levels of transgression:

• Very pale green states have writing on their flag in the form of a motto or other vaguely excusable form.
• States in mute mid-green have the name of the state on the flag.
• The more lurid green shows states whose flags display the state's great seal (featuring writing), but not the state's name.
• Dark green indicates states that literally did what I jokingly implied above: pasted their seal along with the state's name and called it a day. Tossers.

You might wonder why this bothers me so much. There are many reasons why. For a start, a flag is not a book. Nor should a flag be so poorly designed that you actually have to tell people what it represents on the flag. seals are what bother me the most. There's an implication that a flag should be a fabric version of logo, but that's not the case. Flags should be easily recognisable, be capable of being drawn by children, and be evocative. The other good reason why this is a bad idea is that the flag should look absolutely fine when the wind is blowing in the opposite direction. Think about that one, Michigan!

(Oregon gets around this by having a different image on each side of its flag, thereby getting two for the price of one. Both are irredeemably ghastly.)

Yet there are more stupid things about US state flags. The flag of Alabama is required by law to have a red saltire (a big X) that's no less than six inches wide. That's right: an Alabaman flag on a coffee mug would have a cross on it larger than the mug itself. Welp.

To quantify their utter godawfulness, I've mapped out US states by how much they disprove the existence of a loving god.

As you go further south, flags become more attractive. This is the only thing that becomes better in the south.

I've quantified the flags with a score of 0 to 16 depending on how much blood poured out of my eyes when I looked at them. An ideal flag (not necessarily an attractive one) gets a score of 0. Flags gain points based on several factors: more than one star, because they're just so overused in US flags; writing, sorted by the severity of the offence; state seals; and awful colour choices. Oregon gains a point for the reason described above. Nevada gains one for having a violent motto. Good God, America, for shame.

And it really is a shame. The US national flag, despite criticism by ... er, critics, is actually pretty good in my opinion. And the flags that got a score of 0 are generally excellent (well done New Mexico). I should point out though that my scoring was not based on whether or not I personally liked them (otherwise the map would be almost entirely red), but on a fair and impartial system based on my own opinions for what makes a flag that isn't so bad that it's unworthy to even serve as toilet paper.

Check out The Flag Designer (abandoned) or Welcome to America for some alternative proposed state maps. I may well design a few myself. I think I have an idea for Vermont's that doesn't involve fire.

2009 Flaggy Awards

Hey kids! It’s that special time of the year where we look back on the most notable flags of sovereign states from the past twelve months and recognise them for their most notable achievements. Remember such classics as the flag of Vanuatu, the flag of Vietnam, and the flag of Kiribati? Neither did I. Here are some much more memorable flags instead.

Bangladesh: Most Eye-Watering	Bhutan: Most Ripped From a Fantasy Movie
Chad: Most Similar to Romania	China: Most Ironic
Croatia: Most Containing a Better Flag	Cyprus: Most Geographical
France: Most French	Haiti: Most Badly Photoshopped
Lebanon: Most Unintenionally Christmassy	Libya: Most Green
Macendonia: Most Inviting to Snipers	Mozambique: Most Violent
Nepal: Most Intentionally Awkward	Romania: Most Similar to Chad
Saint Lucia: Most Corporate	Somalia: Most Likely Temporary
Switzerland: Most Square	Turkmenistan: Most Carpeted
Uganda: Most Cocky	United States: Most Often on Fire

Scribblenauts

Those of you who were gaming in the early to mid 90s might remember a little puzzle game series called The Incredible Machine. The premise was simple: you were given a task and a set up of various devices on the screen (boxing gloves, monkeys on bicycles, bowling balls, etc.) and you were tasked to complete Rube Goldberg machines based on the resources available for the level.

Anyone who has played this will be familiar with the occasional moment of frustration in which one might yell aloud: "If only I had a god damned [object], this would be so simple!"

Scribblenauts (5th Cell, 2009) entirely averts this issue by allowing you to insert absolutely anything you can think of into the game at no cost. No really, anything. The game's library of objects is vast boring on the absurd. I'll give you an example of just how mind-bogglingly huge the library is. The website Scribblenauts Guide has an object list which has literally hundreds of listed items, many of which are so obscure that I may need a dictionary to find out what they even are. And yet in an hour's gaming session today alone I managed to summon at least two things that are not in that list. Of course, for legal and censorship reasons there are certain things you can't put in there, like Mickey Mouse's giant vagina - nor can you put in things that don't exist, even in fiction. Manticores and time machines are fine, but you're not likely to find a car-jet or transmogrification supercannon in the game (I might check later though). Abstract concepts like love or racial intolerance, despite being perfectly fine nouns, also do not make an appearence. However, there are toucans, football players, mirrors, God, unicorns, pillows, hams and coffee makers galore.

This would be a lot easier with a toucan and God on my side too.

The objective is to use the vast array of tools at your disposal to enable your character, Maxwell, to gather starites. You'll either be required to complete seemingly simple objectives to make the starlite appear, or get to a starite that's out of reach through your imagination and ingenuity. The classic example is if a starite is stuck up a tree. You could chop it down with an axe, or summon a lumberjack, or burn it down, or climb with a ladder, or fly up, or summon a beaver. Ultimately many levels can be played using the same tried and true methods; the game doesn't really require you to be imaginative. You could just get through the levels as quickly and easily as possible, but that would make you a douchebag.

Try "kuala lumpur".

Ultimately the game relies on players being imaginative for the sheer hell of it. It's actually a little refreshing: video games have always been accused of stifling creativity, but here we have a game that encourages it, on the level of the absurdist and ferociously logical problem solving we barely remember from early childhood (along the lines of "Well I use a magic flying reindeer to fly up and use a freeze-gun on the nasty zombie!" -- and yes, you can do exactly that). In fact the sheer freedom's a little dizzying. More often than not you'll be required to find a way to fly. Initially I was enthralled by this idea, and challenged my friend to help me come up with the most implausibly awesome way to fly possible. Naturally, we gave Maxwell a jetpack. However, it's turned out to be far and away the most effective way to fly that I can think of, allowing me to fit in spaces in which a dragon or helicopter or roc could not fit. I am certain that there are alternatives, but the sheer breadth of opportunity has robbed me of innovation.

The game does at least try to encourage you though. For a start, you get style points for the obscurity of your summoned objects, as well as achievements (called merits) for managing certain feats (from using two different tools in a level, to using all new objects, to using a sea animal as a vehicle, and more). And if you choose to revisit a completed episode you will be asked to try and complete it three times in a row, without using previously used objects in subsequent attempts. These really keep your imagination working as you search for new solutions to familiar problems.

Another small complaint is that obvious solutions rarely seem to work. For example, in one level I had to move a powerless car. I summoned a mechanic, who promptly did absolutely fuck all. In another level I tried to get an undertaker to bury a corpse, and he also did absolutely nothing. I'm not entirely sure what all the different professions available are for. None of them seem to do anything when they encounter anything their job would involve. Put a doctor next to a leper and, although the two are attracted to each other, they have no interaction. I once tried to help a short-sighted man see with the healing hands of God himself. Turns out God's too fucking lazy to do anything.

Let's be fair though, there are a great many objects that have almost no possible use. In one mission I'm required to dress a mannequin, and the clothing options are vast. Is there a purpose to these items otherwise? Probably not. However, this is a game of whimsy and make-believe, and the enjoyment of the game comes not from solutions, but from realising your creative impulses instead.

Medieval Germans Were Fuckin' Metal

The image above is a display of the arms of the member states of the Holy Roman Empire - a political entity mostly covering Germany (and other German-speaking lands) during the medieval period and the Renaissance. It was a loose confederation of many tiny, forgettable kingdoms. And they invented metal album art.

Pffft, amateurs.

Just look at that thing! That double-headed eagle transcends heraldic stuffiness and launches itself into a completely other world. It's a creature right out of hell - but it's a distinguished hell. Sure, the night-black mutated monstrosity does have crimson eyes that open directly into a realm of flame and torture and nightmarish huge joker grins from which ghastly blood-coloured tongues emerge to lap pure sin from your wounds. Sure, it's got claws so hooked and unnaturally vicious that they could rip a man's heart out in a moment, and the whole thing is so dark and terrifying that it somehow manages to eclipse the image of the savior of mankind nailed to a piece of wood and left to die that has been laid over it. But let us not forget: it also has crowns. And halos.

And -- holy shit -- are those flaming meteors with crowns or something?

Unfortunately it would be some five hundred years before anyone wrote music that would be benefiting of such hardcore artwork, not to mention the entire concept of an album at all. But you can tell that they were definitely heading in the right direction. Kudos, Holy Roman Empire. Rock on.

Happy New Year!

It’s now past midnight in the United Kingdom! Happy new year, and I hope 2010 is a good one for everybody.