free stuff from Relapse and Hellbound

Hellbound.ca is running a contest from now until Dec 15th. If you drop by the website you can enter to win one of 3 prize packs with new Dying Fetus, Baroness, Black Anvil and Revocation CDs and a limited edition art print of the full artwork for the new Baroness CD.
Enter here: http://www.hellbound.ca/2009/11/contest-relapse-records/.

And while you're there, read some of the recent stuff posted on the site:

• a cool multi-part video interview with Sacrifice
• a report on Calgary’s Noctis Festival
• my Paradise Lost review
• and lots more

remembrance day music

Remembrance Day seems like a good day to play war metal. If I was still deejaying I'd definitely host a war metal show today, probably starting out with Bolt Thrower. There's even a poppy of sorts on the band's website today.

Here are some possible song choices (all from the Bolt Thrower discography):

"When Cannons Fade"

"Honour"

"Valour"

"Pride"

"As the World Burns"

"Cenotaph"

"All that Remains"

and heck, probably the entire ...For Victory record.

And as a counter-point, I might play some Anathema, maybe

"The Silent Enigma"

"Inner Silence"

leading into a moment of actual silence...

...

vegan metal cooking

The bitter sidekick brought this entertaining resource to my attention: a heavy metal vegan cooking channel on youtube.

I haven't watched any yet (cooking really isn't my thing) but Trevorkian sat at the computer for quite a while today viewing several of Heavy Metal Kitchen's videos. I think his pick of the day was "Seitan with Satan," featuring a recipe for homemade seitan (dubbed here the "most evil" of dishes).

factory farms and disease

Scanning the science headlines today I came across a CNN opinion piece by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, whose latest book – Eating Animals (Little, Brown and Co.) – is a nonfiction commentary on the implications and complications of consuming animal products.

(that I can even call on the commodity-oriented rhetoric of referring to meat, eggs, and dairy as "animal products" is, perhaps, a commentary in itself)

This particular article must be a promotional intro to his book, and focuses on food-related illnesses. There are two main threads to this here:

1. diseases that we get from the food we eat, whether that's food poisoning or flus that originate in food-animal populations;
2. the increased risk of human illness from antibiotic-resistant microbes caused by feeding food-animals antibiotics on a preventative basis.

Worth reading if you're concerned about these kinds of issues.

In one of those common but slightly odd coincidences, Safran Froer's focus on poultry farms is somewhat in tune with an old episode of the tv show Bones that aired last night. I didn't catch all the nuances of the episode (I was doing other things at the time) but I gather one of the threads involved the health hazards of industrial poultry farming.

metal vegetarians and Type O in Detroit

If I knew Liv Kristine, from Atrocity and Leaves' Eyes, was a vegetarian, I had forgotten. Apparently Deciblog has got the scoop on her favourite recipes. I'll skip the egg and cheese stuff but I could really go for some of that pumpkin soup...

We just survived a weekend in Detroit complete with a Halloween Type O Negative concert (how serendipitous was that!). First time I really listened to Type O offshoot Seventh Void - really good stuff, kind of Sabbath-y but with a higher goth than doom factor. There were other bands too, but really Seventh Void and Type O Negative were all I paid attention to. So much that I suffered a little shock paralysis when the walking freak show that is Peter Steele took his place looming over us from Harpo's delightfully high stage. Two non-musical highlights: someone throws a drink a Steele and it lands on his leg - he says something along the lines of "nice shot" and keeps going like he'd swatted a fly; the usual "you suck" chant starts up and he tells us we're hurting his feelings. Definitely one of the best Type O shows I've seen. Hellbound's got the full review (by Jonathan Smith) and some great photo shots (by Adam Wills). We've also got a few more low-res photos here.

Being metal vegetarians in Detroit (there were three of us) was a typically tricky proposition. Apparently the best vegetarian eats weren't in safe walking distance, but we made out okay. That said, I think if I ever see (or more importantly, smell) someone eating lamb right in front of me again I'm going to projectile vomit.