Metal Madness: Album Review - 'Venereal Dawn' by Dark Fortress

How the heck can it be September already?

*sigh*

That would be a gloomy sigh, but right now I'm listening to the new Dark Fortress album Venereal Dawn and I just can't quite be gloomy because metal awesomeness is pouring into my ears and as much as I want to feel gloomy about how the year is passing so fast and there's a disappointing lack of awesome writing sitting on my computer, I also want to headbang and generally act all crazy and hyperactive over the music.

Um... yeah. Readers of this blog already know the Blackwood is not quite sane so the above is probably neither news not out of character.

Anyway, Dark Fortress. When I decided to attempt an album review my initial thought was that it was probably going to start with something about how I want to mash the keyboard, headbang, jump around, scream and generally act crazy, but at the same time I feel like I'm probably supposed to be intelligent and sensible about it. Then I was just going to add some links and do a bit more flailing.

So...

DARK FORTESS HAS A NEW ALBUM GUYS AND ITS TOTALLY AWESOME AND EVERYONE SHOULD LISTEN TO IT!!!

Listen on Spotify, read more about it on Encyclopaedia Metallum, or there's 'buy' links on Last.fm and through Century Media.

Sound good?

Okay, done.

*starts combing knots out of post-headbang hair*

Now it's probably time to sound intelligent and sensible or whatever.
The music is black metal... sort of. Looking around the internet, you find a lot of trailing off and adding 'sort of' to genre classifications for bands that have Morean in them. The lyrics are like some kind of bizzaro/sci-fi poetry and well worth a read all on their own.

Every time I listen to the album (and I've pretty much just had it on endless repeat since the release) I pick up new bits and pieces in the music. It's huge and complex, overwhelming in the combination of head-exploding metal and layered subtlety. I still don't quite know how to process it all, which is probably why I started my post the way I did.

Okay, that's about all I've got. Go and listen to the album already.

Links again:

Listen on Spotify, read more about it on Encyclopaedia Metallum, or there's 'buy' links on Last.fm and through Century Media.

'Daily Goats' #1: B1 and B2

First kids of the 2014 season!

I'm finally doing a thing I've been planning for the past at least three years, so goat pics!

These two are 'B1' and 'B2', still-unnamed daughters of my doe Bellatrix. They were born on the 24th of August and they're two days old in this picture.

Blog Necromancy II: The Return of 'The Return of Siana in Black'

For reasons, I've moved from my former location at sb.siasan.com to a brand-new Blogger blog. This may possibly mean that 'blog necromancy' is going to be a successful thing. There's a list of things that could be involved in the revival of Siana in Black in my previous post.

Anyway, over the next... some time... I'll be tidying up and reviving all my old posts, making sure the images still work and updating a few things that would otherwise be hideously out of date. Also probably a lot of talking about heavy metal, which is totally an ideal subject for a writer's blog.

Anything else I need to say?

Oh, right - shameless plug required. Visit Steve the WriMo Forum to hang out with my writers' group. I'll probably have to talk a lot more about Steve if I'm going to get back into this blogging thing.

Blog necromancy - the return of 'Siana in Black'

I don't know about this 'blog post' business. I thought about the writer's block option, but I'm really not sure how to explain it. Then I thought about doing a metal album and I didn't really know which one I'd pick or what I'd say about it. Then I had an idea about talking about songs related to my Camp NaNo project and basically I think I've come to the conclusion that I'm a lousy blogger. I suppose I should put my writer's block comments together and post them, but... yeah, don't know.

Zim hacks part 2: split a single-file manuscript into chapters and scenes

In a followup to Zim hacks part 1: compile a manuscript, this time I'm going to split a single file into chapters and scenes (pages and sub-pages) within Zim. For me this is actually the more useful of the two tools, since I write in FocusWriter and only transfer completed drafts into Zim for ease of reading and note-making when I'm preparing to do some rewriting. Anyway...

Zim hacks part 1: compile a manuscript

The following script runs in the Linux terminal and will compile a manuscript that has been divided into Chapters and Scenes in Zim Desktop Wiki. It's twitchy and a little annoying, but it's the first step in my attempts to find a comfortable Linux equivalent to Scrivener and yWriter. Scrivener runs natively if you don't mind some UI problems with dark-on-light OS themes and yWriter (sort of) runs in Wine, but I really want something that doesn't have all those qualifications added after the word 'runs'.

SeptNoWriMo - September Novel Writing Month

I've been telling myself that I'm going to revive my blog for what turned out to be something like seven months. I never seen to find time, though. Anyway, the thing that's finally pulled me back to my blog is this:

September Novel Writing Month

September Novel Writing Month, or SeptNoWriMo as it's known for short, is sort of my baby. It was to begin with, anyway. Since I opened this version of SeptNoWriMo in 2011, I've also ended up as a staff member on NaNoFiMo (December), FebNoWriMo (February), MarNoWriMo (March) and NaNoPlotMo (one of the most awesome year-round writing groups ever). However, SeptNoWriMo is the only one that's entirely under my megalomaniacal control.

*sad face*

Apparently 'megaomaniacal' isn't a word. Too bad - I'm using it anyway.

So, SeptNoWriMo. There are four types of goal - 'planning', 'writing', 'editing' and 'I have no time to write but I want to hang around my friends while I do other things'.

Daily and multi-day challenges abound, because Fearless Admin suddenly remembers that yes, she really can write 2,000 words in a day if the other alternative is to lose a challenge. There's at least one variant on the 3-Day Novel Challenge, something I haven't decided yet for Talk Like a Pirate Day and an awesome thing called 'Seven in Seven'.

SeptNoWriMo starts at 00:00:01 (one second after midnight) in your timezone. See you there!

*spams link again in case you didn't notice it enough the first time*

September Novel Writing Month

You can't tell I'm trying to drag as many writers into it as possible, can you?