21st Century Digital Boy

So I was at Bloodstock Open Air last week and had crazy amounts of fun. The Korpiklaani moshpit was FUCKING EPIC, big <3 to all involved. Happy Little Boozer and Beer Beer in particular were glorious. Pretty much my other favourite band of the weekend was Finntroll - even though their show wasn’t quite what I’d hoped it would be and the sound mixing was a bit eh (the keyboarder could just as well have been absent for some of the songs). Trollhammaren in particular was great fun in the moshpit and soiled one of my two pairs of jeans with mud. After they played that, the front guy asked the audience if there were any requests, and some guy from the moshpit just shouted “PLAY TROLLHAMMAREN AGAIN!”. Awesome :D

Two bands I really really liked there in spite of not specifically going for them were In Flames and Beholder, the latter having played cover versions of Soil, Metallica, Pantera, some weird country-ish stuff and god knows what else in the bar tent Thursday night. They also managed to blow one of the amps within the first two songs they played, and their front guy is great and definitely knows how to instigate a good moshpit.

What I didn’t like at all was the mixing on the main stage, particularly on Thursday and early Friday. Scar Symmetry barely had any vocals and no lead guitar for the first two songs, and Testament had no lead guitars for a while as well. Nevertheless, particularly the bands I mostly came for were utterly glorious, and if the lineup for next year gets good enough I’ll most definitely head up there again. In spite of the upped ticket price.

Much <3 also to J and G and their spouses for the lift, Saturday night accommodation and putting up with me for three days. Thanks folks, it was awesome and I’m looking forward to (hopefully) doing the festival again with you next year :D

[edit] Also, there was this guy: Finntroll Moshpit Hero. Must’ve been hell to get all of that mud back out of the furs, too. [/edit]

COMPLETELY UNRELATEDLY, I love Bioshock. My copy arrived a day early and I’ve basically spent the last two nights playing until my eyes bled. I also really like Space Giraffe, in spite of the somewhat messy visuals. A few more very very short reviews of games I’ve recently played a lot:

Crackdown: I am a goddamn VIKING. Who throws cars at Mexican gang members. What’s not to love?

Lost Planet: The cutscenes are gorgeous (even though the plot is rather hamfisted), and carrying mecha chainguns around to shoot giant alien bugs with is badass.

Chibi-Robo: This is more or less what Katamari could have become had it been sponsored by iRobot. I like the style, childish as it may be.

Red Steel: I still haven’t figured out if this game is cheesy on purpose or not. However: Raving Rabbids samples and slowmo gunplay.

Earth Defence Force 2017: Giant ants. Missile launchers that fire 20 shots per second. Two-player coop play. Collateral Motherfucking Damage.

That’s all for now, I think. Time for more Bioshock.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 23:30 and is filed under braindump. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.