Listen to Hour of 13’s The Ritualist

If you’ve paid attention to metal magazines and blogs this past year you’ve no doubt heard of Ghost’s Opus Eponymous.  That album took the metal world by storm with its Blue Oyster Cult by way of Mercyful Fate sound and had everyone salivating over this catchy satanic return to true metal.  What nobody seemed to remember was that Hour of 13 beat them to it by a few months (years if you take into account that this is their sophomore album).  If Ghost’s sound is equivalent to a modern day Blue Oyster Cult then Hour of 13’s would be Black Sabbath.  Not that these guys are Sabbath clones, far from it.  Instead I’d say that this is exactly what most of the moral anti-Sabbath groups that popped up around the 70s feared: an evil, doom-laden metal band who would lead the youth down the path of darkness.  Whereas Sabbath always had some wholesome rock sensibilities and spoke of fearing the devil, Hour of 13 just plain sound evil both musically and lyrically.  The kicker to that is that they’re also insanely catchy.  Take the closing track “The Crawlspace” for instance.  The song starts with a plodding down tuned riff that fills you with an impending sense of dread before launching into an awesome NWOBHM inspired guitar line.  Then the vocals start with an epic, sing song quality to them.  After getting into the song you realize that the lyrics are all about abducting a woman and imprisoning her in a crawlspace.  Around the four minute mark the song gets decidedly more sinister and even catchier with one of my favorite riffs on the whole album.  I’ll leave it there to let you discover it for yourself but this closing masterpiece pretty much sums up the whole album: awesome evil doom metal inspired by the classics of the genre.  Pentagram, Saint Vitus and even the aforementioned Black Sabbath have some true contemporaries.- ASW

See a play

Alright, so everything has been done on the web.  That is all well and good, but if you want to see some actual vibrant performances, get off your computer chair and go see a play at your local theatre.  Any play will do, really, but feel free to read reviews and excercise some discretion.  Either way, the performance you see will be one-of-a-kind.  Last nights show had a different pace, and tomorrow’s show might have a different energy, and come to think of it last week there was an understudy that changed the whole feel of the thing.  So go see a musical or a drama or some one-acts TONIGHT…discuss it with other audience members and transport yourself away from our isolationist society where we all watch the same unoriginal youtube video and comment anonymously about how “gay” it was. Nothing on the internet can move me as much as live theatre.  Real people coming together and rehearsing their asses off so they can make an impact on the audience…there’s nothing else like it.  Movies are pretty powerful too, but the actors get to film 4 lines at a time and cut in the best take, while live theatre actors have to give it their all every night so they deliver the best take one each line, every night.
One more amazing thing about live theatre?  The relevance.  I can write a play about the Japan Earthquake/Tsunami today, rehearse it with some thespians for 2 weeks and perform it while it is still in the news.  Even Law & Order can’t do that, with their “ripped from the headlines” episodes.

So I am going to get a teeny bit theatrical now: I entreat you, for your own sake as well as that of current and future actors, please get off your lazy ass and go see some live theatre.  It will engage you, entertain you, and unless its Our Town, it might even impress you too.-LF