Gallery: TesseracT @ Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, BC Date: October 27, 2023 Photographed by: Danielle Costelo

Some of our many wonderful vice presidents and also sonic the hedgehog

Monday, December 5: Tesseract, “Concealing Fate, Part Two: Deception”

The “Concealing Fate” suite was released as a standalone EP about 5 months before Tesseract put out their proper debut One, which also included the 6-part epic as its centerpiece.  Within either context, “Concealing Fate, Part Two: Deception” stood out as both the heaviest and arguably most song-oriented composition in the set, with the djent guitars intertwining seamlessly with Daniel Tompkins’ vocals.  Although djent as a sound was firmly established by 2010, and Tesseract didn’t do anything new with it, the band did seem more conscious about their craft and, by virtue of forming in person, were able to focus as much on interplay as on technique.  And while the group was one of many working this approach, Tompkins immediately stood out with his emotive singing. Tesseract didn’t quite break through on a larger scale, but “Concealing Fate”, “Deception” in particular, showcased their considerable abilities.

Interested in more deep dives into heavy metal, including reviews, rankings and analyses?  Announcing the premiere of the Metal Analyst substack, which will cover all of the above along with long-form articles playing out various metal debates and “what if”s.  If you enjoy the commentary on this tumblr, please check out https://metalsongoftheday.substack.com/ and subscribe for FREE to our recurring newsletter.  Thank you!!!

Jon Gomm Feat. Daniel Tompkins - Ain't Nobody (Chaka Khan)

Man, Earthside are fucking killin it. This whole damn album is a unique masterpiece.

Today's 5 Links

Seth Godin on Attention, Trust and GPT3.

"If your work isn’t more useful or insightful or urgent than GPT can create in 12 seconds, don’t interrupt people with it."

Gary V is walking back his NFT hype in Why I Said 97-99% of NFTs Would Fail. Didn't he issue Vayner tokens or some other such BS?

In all the hullabaloo on AI, lots of blog posts on how AI is going to change everything, not so much thought on how it will be integrated into existing processes. This article from Smashing Magazine "The Future of Design: Human Powered or AI Driven?" is therefore quite refreshing. FTC is looking to Block the Microsoft - ActivisionBlizzard Merger. Grab the popcorn. This is going to get good.

Listening: Daniel Tompkins - Ruins.

HOW I MET YOUR FATHER | 2.07

Historical figures stuff from requests (thank u all for your service :3)

has anyone else read stephen graham jones don't fear the reaper yet

I finished The Angel of Indian Lake recently and there were so many feelings. I was originally just going to say a couple of things and it got away from me so I just did it this way. If you want to read my rambling, cool, if not, long story short: Stephen Graham Jones is fucking awesome, Jade Daniels is 100% my Final Girl of all final girls, and the Indian Lake Trilogy is such a good read on so many levels so everyone should read it.

There is an amazing amount of depth and heart to it that you just don't usually see in horror fiction and on top of that, the trilogy starts out as a total love letter to 80s slashers and final girls, with the real surprise being the protagonist, half-Blackfeet and full outcast Jade Daniels, the rebel girl who is always in trouble for something and has memorized everything about every slasher film (up to that point) while praying for a real slasher to hit her town of Proofrock, Idaho, but be careful what you wish for, right? Love her!! Lots of subplot about the colonization and takeover of Native lands, as SGJ is a Native American writer and that figures into his work. So much depth. Anyway, did I say this was the short version??? Just read the books! 😂🔪🖤🫀🩸

to celebrate her big move sloane went to the hazakura lounge to get drunk and made a pretty friend!!! she bought her drinks and they did karaoke together <33

2 and a half weeks until JC passes Cactus Jack!

It took me a little bit to figure out what you were referencing, but yes, Jimmy Carter will pass John Nance Garner as the longest-living President or Vice President in American history on September 18th. And if he is still with us on October 1st, Carter will be the first President or Vice President in American history to celebrate their 99th birthday.

And since I'm a huge dork who finds this stuff interesting, here's the big, complete list of longest-living to shortest-living Presidents and Vice Presidents in American history: (Presidents are in bold text, Vice Presidents are in italics, and those who served as both POTUS and VP are in bold italics.) John Nance Garner: 98 years, 351 days Jimmy Carter: 98 years, 337 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Levi P. Morton: 96 years, 0 days George H.W. Bush: 94 years, 171 days Gerald R. Ford: 93 years, 165 days Ronald Reagan: 93 years, 120 days Walter Mondale: 93 years, 81 days John Adams: 90 years, 247 days Herbert Hoover: 90 years, 71 days Harry S. Truman: 88 years, 232 days Charles G. Dawes: 85 years, 239 days James Madison: 85 years, 104 days Thomas Jefferson: 83 years, 82 days Dick Cheney: 82 years, 216 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Hannibal Hamlin: 81 years, 311 days Richard Nixon: 81 years, 104 days Joe Biden: 80 years, 287 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) John Quincy Adams: 80 years, 227 days Aaron Burr: 80 years, 220 days Martin Van Buren: 79 years, 231 days Adlai E. Stevenson: 78 years, 234 days Dwight D. Eisenhower: 78 years, 165 days Alben W. Barkley: 78 years, 157 days Andrew Jackson: 78 years, 85 days Spiro Agnew: 77 years, 261 days Donald Trump: 77 years, 81 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) George W. Bush: 77 years, 59 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Henry A. Wallace: 77 years, 42 days James Buchanan: 77 years, 39 days Bill Clinton: 77 years, 15 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Dan Quayle: 76 years, 211 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Charles Curtis: 76 years, 14 days Al Gore: 75 years, 156 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Millard Fillmore: 74 years, 60 days James Monroe: 73 years, 67 days George Clinton: 72 years, 268 days George M. Dallas: 72 years, 174 days William Howard Taft: 72 years, 174 days John Tyler: 71 years, 295 days Grover Cleveland: 71 years, 98 days Thomas R. Marshall: 71 years, 79 days Nelson Rockefeller: 70 years, 202 days Elbridge Gerry: 70 years, 129 days Rutherford B. Hayes: 70 years, 105 days Richard M. Johnson: 70 years, 33 days William Henry Harrison: 68 years, 54 days John C. Calhoun: 68 years, 13 days William A. Wheeler: 67 years, 339 days George Washington: 67 years, 295 days Benjamin Harrison: 67 years, 205 days Woodrow Wilson: 67 years, 36 days William R. King: 67 years, 11 days Hubert H. Humphrey: 66 years, 231 days Andrew Johnson: 66 years, 214 days Thomas A. Hendricks: 66 years, 79 days Charles W. Fairbanks: 66 years, 24 days Zachary Taylor: 65 years, 227 days Franklin Pierce: 64 years, 319 days Lyndon B. Johnson: 64 years, 148 days Mike Pence: 64 years, 88 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Henry Wilson: 63 years, 279 days Ulysses S. Grant: 63 years, 87 days Franklin D. Roosevelt: 63 years, 72 days Barack Obama: 62 years, 30 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) Schuyler Colfax: 61 years, 296 days Calvin Coolidge: 60 years, 185 days Theodore Roosevelt: 60 years, 71 days Kamala Harris: 58 years, 318 days (As of Sept. 3, 2023) William McKinley: 58 years, 228 days Warren G. Harding: 57 years, 273 days Chester A. Arthur: 57 years, 44 days James S. Sherman: 57 years, 6 days Abraham Lincoln: 56 years, 62 days Garret A. Hobart: 55 years, 171 days John C. Breckinridge: 54 years, 116 days James K. Polk: 53 years, 225 days Daniel D. Tompkins: 50 years, 355 days James Garfield: 49 years, 304 days John F. Kennedy: 46 years, 177 days

"Live Music Performance // 20/09/2022"

Got tagged by @hocuschlocus to shuffle my main playlist and post the first 10 songs. For the record, my playlist is titled "Bops, Bangers, and Breakdowns," and shuffling it is very funny sometimes because of the juxtaposition.

1. "Cowboys from Hell" by Pantera

Fucking iconic riff (even though Dimebag's tone sucks let's be real).

2. "Riders on the Storm" by The Doors

I love electric piano, and the intro to this song is, again, iconic.

3. "Feel Good Inc." by The Gorillaz

I will admit this is the only song of theirs that I know but I am such a sucker for a good bassline.

4. "Thank You for the Venom" by My Chemical Romance

This riff. Like, listen, I'm into far more complex subgenres of metal and I've learned some tricky riffs in my day. This fucking riff took so much practice but I can finally play it (mostly).

5. "Still Waiting" by Sum41

Just a good, angry punk track. I am, in fact, still waiting for the world to stop hating, and I'm still pissed about it.

6. "Tits of Glass" by Trust Fund OZU

This one's a fuckin BANGER there's a lot of hyper pop I'm not super into but Faye adds prog metal influence to it (she used to be the drummer for Thank You Scientist).

7. "Contraband (featuring Courtney LaPlante)" by Make Them Suffer

This song is heavy, has a verse from my second favorite vocalist (I'm sorry but Daniel Tompkins from Tesseract is still my number one), and ends with a pretty sick breakdown 👍

8. "DA DA DANCE" by Babymetal

This one's basically a dance song played on a 9-string guitar. And it has a breakdown. I have simple tastes lol

9. "Under Pressure" by Logic

I'm not into many rappers (which I need to fix) but I really like Logic.

10. "Shout" by Tears for Fears

This song fuckin rules and I want to do a cover of it because I don't need to shout I need to scream.

@artemisstratus @chroniccr0w @chaos--themralds @chiyana I want to hear the shit you're into

TOP 3 Metal Albums I Enjoyed from 2023

A lot of great metal came out this year and it was hard to narrow it down to my Top 3. There were some great EPs released this year— Spiritbox’s The Fear of Fear, Brand of Sacrifice’s Between Death and Dreams and Knosis’s The Eternal Doom among them. Singles I enjoyed include: "On the Verge" by thrown, “Masterpiece” by The Anchor, “Enemy” by The Gentle Men (ft. Andy Cizek), “Weight of the World” by Harper (ft. We Came as Romans and Brand of Sacrifice), “Viking” by Slaughter To Prevail, "III" by DEATHPHONK (Nik Nocturnal's weird project); and Knocked Loose had the double, “Deep In the Willow”/“Everything is Quiet Now”.

My Top 5 honourable mentions: 5. [m]other by Veil of Maya, their newest does everything I want it to do, good riffs, cool effects, great vocals; 4. Soul Elegy by Termina, Nik Nocturna, Andy Cizek and friends deliver an awesome metal album; 3. Chaos Horrific by Cannibal Corpse is a strong entry and shows why they're still so loved after so long; 2. The Fox and the Bird by Ok Goodnight mixes folk, rock, metal and whatever else they want to create this really entrancing album; and 1. Take Me Back to Eden by Sleep Token is one of the albums I listened to the most because it's easy to put on when you're tired of being relentlessly pummelled by deathcore, but though its highs are super high, it just misses out landing on my top 3 because there are a few spots it lags

3. ...And Everything In Between - Unprocessed

Manuel Gardner Fernandes has quickly become one of my favourite guitarists between this release and Unprocessed's previous album Gold. The combination of styles on this album exemplify modern metal: bludgeoning heaviness, thumpy prog riffing (à la Animals As Leaders or Polyphia) and a mix of harsh and clean vocals. Despite the polish of these 9 tracks, some express such raw emotion and a ferocity that they really get me hyped up. The variety of tones and vocals kept me engaged throughout, and they blend and balance heaviness and melody so well. The guitar sounds so angry sometimes–especially the part of "Thrash" where Manuel beats the shit outta his guitar after screaming, "But you're just a fucking lie!" I love that. Other songs like "Blackbone" and "Die on the Cross of the Martyr" continue the trend of excellent instrumentation, the latter featuring guest solos by Polyphia's Tim Henson and Scottie Lepage. It's so well done and so engaging. In the short time I've had this album, it's become one of my favourites of 2023.

2. Periphery V: Djent Is Not A Genre - Periphery

When Periphery released "Wildfire" as a single I immediately bought into what they were selling. The way they transition through the various parts is seamless, the mix of vocal techniques and the jazzy interlude are all fantastic. It really captures the spirit of the whole record. Songs like "Dying Star" and "Zagreus" are also so hard. Periphery continues to show off their musical dexterity, and the band members prove once again they're not only some of the best musicians djenting their way through the world but as a collective they add up to more than the sum of their parts. My hottest take when it comes to this album is that I love "Silhouette" — it's like if you ran 80s soft rock and 90s/00s boy bands through a progressive music filter. I think they wrote this song and put it on the album just to prove they can do anything. And if Periphery is Djent, and Djent isn't a genre then why shouldn't they go in every genre direction they want to explore?

1. War of Being - TesseracT

In other years this top 3 could have been entirely deathcore or melodeath or metalcore, but this year it was djenty prog metal through and through. It's the music I gravitated to the most this year and nobody did it better than TesseracT. Daniel Tompkins vocals are incredible throughout, his cleans sounding particularly great on "Echoes" – giving us one of the best choruses before following it up with another great one on "The Grey". The album offers engaging lyricism throughout and the instrumentation is at a pedigree one would expect for a band in the vanguard of this genre. The album gives us atmospheric moments, synths, meditative passages before blasting us with metal. In many ways the whole album does what the best tracks on Sleep Token's Take Me Back To Eden do. Each song and the album as a whole provide an expansive experience. And that's why it's my number one. More than any other album released this year, TesseracT's War of Being makes me want to sit down and listen to it from beginning to end.

Other great albums: SUPERBLOOM by Silent Planet; Fatalism by Polaris; Feral by Left To Suffer; Foregone by In Flames; Ashen by Humanity's Last Breath; The Sin of Human Frailty by END; Symptoms of Survival by Dying Wish; and The Death We Seek by Currents.