4am

A demanding weekend is still exhausting me from inside, but that gave me some free-time to cover some of the recent visual kei releases, which are nothing you should be dying for. But because I’m in a really good mood today, I accidentially rewarded both upcoming singles one star more than they deserve in the long run. Consider yourself lucky, Vidoll and Dali!

Six more Hallo Pizza coupon stickers and me gets a piiizza for free, hooray!

Arrr, that new Vidoll single is so horrendously dumb at times, but actually pretty funky, if you’re able to ignore those very shitty parts (you’ll instantly recognize those in the first few seconds). In fact, the title song even has to be one of the best Vidoll songs I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard way too much Vidoll songs, uh. “Blue star”, that’s the song, is a harmless visual kei pop-rock lalala hymn, but it has some nifty parts, like the bridge and chorus, and vocalist Jui delivers on point.

What leads us to “Delivery to Hills”. A song that feels dangerous and is pretty well executed. If there weren’t all those average standard visual kei moments that make your eyes roll. Take the chorus, for example, which is bullshit. But the following instrumental interlude restores some life to “Delivery”’s health bar.

The last new song on this release is “Berry Jam Cleaner”, another one of those nasty visual kei metaphors for virgin oral sex or something even more likeable. The song is pretty surprising, as it totally goes for some really strange rhythm, reminiscent of veeery early visual kei, but actually is pretty interesting in itself.

It’s hard to ignore the good parts here; Vidoll have definitely learned a lesson after their tremendously boring last album. Alas, the songs are no genre classics, but you will have fun with ‘em if you also like some other of the less interesting visual kei bands like…  ★★★★ of 5

…Dali. They started a promising three-months release spree with “Heroine” in April. Yet, the May single “Inkblot” really blotted a fat spot of ugly ink on their established picture. Now, the closing third single has come, which is called “Endroll”. So, I listen to it.

Title song slowly sets in, almost pretty so far, but is he going to penetrate that little instrumental with his ugly voice for the whole five minutes? Well, I definitely like what the guitars and drums do, I like the bassline, but I can’t stand Ren’s voice in this song at all. He’s the most inconstant band member here, and that’s why Dali will always fail in the long run.

“fake a go go” describes really good what you have to expect here. Now what do you think of when reading the title “fake a go go”? I basically…hum…think of nothing at all. And now guess how much you’ll remember this song? I guess…not at all? I can’t even remember many bad things about it, there’s just nothing.

Well, as long as KISAKI is watching over them, they’ll never be able to flee from those chains of repetitive boredom and absolute mediocrity, I believe. Anyway, “Endroll” is your average UNDER CODE release of the month - for fans only!  ★★★ of 5

Last night we went to the empty and desolate outskirts of Düsseldorf-Flingern, to the only location worth a visit once a year or so: the Stahlwerk. Time for some decent J-rock party, right?!

So we assembled the core of our Party Havoc Squad - Dave, Mirei, Gorden, David, Toji, Lilly, Nils and den Müller or what he’s called - and joined the so-called 1st Tokyo Rock Night, after destroying a bottle of Sambuca in like 30 minutes.

Good things about German J-rock parties: You won’t see more girls at 17 dressed in…almost nothing…anywhere else. So many mini-skirts, so much make-up, and so much of glorious we-cannot-dance-but-we-will-nevertheless action, it’s hilarious and sexy at the same time. I think we really harassed that one blonde girl that actually didn’t wear more than, let’s say, a bikini. Sorry! :D

Bad things about German J-rock parties: The cost! 5 € entrance fee, and then you suddenly get hit by the beverage prices! I’m really no penny-pinching poor person, but 6,50 € for a little glass of Vodka Lemon is basically over the top. I understand high prices if there’s an expensive band playing live and you have to make up for your expenses, but at the Stahlwerk, they only had a DJ, not even some band playing or anything like that! Sucks! As well as the 75% of unfavourably dressed girls.

The music: It was alright. We didn’t spend too much time indoors, because it was frickin’ hot, but I guess we also didn’t miss the songs of for the win. The DJ played alicenine.’s “Kowloon”, X JAPAN’s “X” and Gackt’s “Vanilla”, so there was enough variety for every type of J-rock fan.

Now, I try to hold on to some of my recent memories, but I guess I had enough Jägermeister to annihilate any of ‘em by tomorrow. Sad, but then again, I surely won’t forget that half-nekkid blonde!

If you’re a stalker, feel free to check out my gallery of the evening over at flickr!

» Click here to see more of those dreadful, really disturbing party pics!

David and Nils paid me a visit tonight and we partied until 4am just now; Dave was also here, but his appearance didn’t leave many blocks of stored information in our brains.

Anyway, the cool thing of today is: I own a new webcam. Dunno what I’ll be doing with it, but it’s good to have one, right?

Yeah, I bet Nils and David (and I) will be pretty exhausted tomorrow. But doesn’t matter, as long as that funky party we’re going to fulfills our hopes of a decent evening of Always Hardcore!!

That’s it for today, I’m tired out and need to get some rest for tonight and the next week. So enjoy this out-of-my-window picture from some minutes ago…Düsseldorf at 5am…and have a good night!

 

My God, is it HOT today?! Must have been 35 degrees centigrade this afternoon, but now, there’s a thunderstorm giving his best shot. Well, maybe we can see at least a rainbow after the rain…

(Caution: This transition is really awful.)

Check out the new alicenine. single “RAINBOWS”! :D

Basically it’s MUCC’s “FUZZ” crunched into a new, powerful outfit. And isn’t that solo bridge strangely known from Guns N’ Roses’s “Sweet Child Of Mine”?!

But…after they copied the Smashing Pumpkins on their last album already, I am surprised no more. Are they running out of own ideas?

Nevertheless, enjoy the great track! It’s probably the best single song they had since “Kowloon” and it will be released on 6 August.

alicenine. - “RAINBOWS”

(Ripped from the just released, official PV.)

No review for this indie production, because everyone is entitled to forming their own opinions.

But if you haven’t heard about Zeitgeist - The Movie by now, you should really go and watch it!

The two-hour documentary film by Peter Joseph is not only a relentless continuation of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 revelation, but it adds a lot of interesting bits to the 9/11 controversy, religious issues and political decisions, that you probably haven’t even considered considering so far.

Be warned: Zeitgeist is a purely subjective film by the convinced documentary filmer and he doesn’t cite many sources, but the overall picture and intention should be obvious to you in the end and it will give you reason enough to think about essential matters.

» Watch Zeitgeist online & for free here!

(Thanks for reminding me of this, Laura! =)

As you should have realized by now, there are only few gaming genres that I enjoy more than adventures. And because I still haven’t come up with some full-size analyses for the following two brain teasers so far, I’ll quickly drop a little sneak peek to tick both off my list in one swipe.

Edna bricht aus is a humorous, charming little game by Deadalic Entertainment, starring a girl called Edna. She doesn’t know why she’s in the nuthouse where she’s being kept and talks to her plush bunny Harvey all the time. Task: get Edna out, preferably with the help of some even more insane and strange people, and solve the mystery why she’s been institutionalized in the beginning.

At first, the graphics will remind you of average flash comics, and then you’ll almost be crushed by the amount of space you may explore soon, but Edna has a unique charm to it, that never ceased until after I had finished it. The funny characters, the many absurd (but strangely fitting) riddles, the moody atmosphere and the exciting storyline really make Edna a curious and interesting departure from the historical and wide-spread adventures of our present time.

The only faults I find with Edna are the missed chances - why do we get so few flashbacks? The mystery of Edna’s past is solved so abruptly, that it doesn’t really flatter all the foreplay. And some puzzles may prove too absurd, even for the setting. But in the end, this adventure is one worth playing!  ★★★★ of 5

Now that we had the fun, here’s the grim! Dracula Origin by Frogwares is a distant relative of adventure siblings like the Agatha Christie games, or some of the earlier Sherlock Holmes games also developed by Frogwares. Means: you’ll feel at home pretty quickly. The story itself - of course another Van Helsing versus Count Dracula hunt - is nothing new, but Origin adds a few interesting twists to the storyline, taking the ambitious professor to places like Egypt and Vienna.

Origin puts not only Van Helsing on a real quest, but also the player himself. You’ll get to do a lot of pixel hunting and difficult puzzles with a minimum of clues early on, but especially the stunningly drawn, extremely atmospherical settings more than compensate for the not so stunning gameplay issues like the the just mentioned cluelessness, some logic failures or the laborious item-journal inventory, which always seems too full.

In return, the grim adventure is excellently dubbed and won’t let you go until you see the outcome of this version of the classic duel. I will strongly recommend Dracula Origin to you, if you can live with the few downsides. Chances are few that you’ll find an equally enthralling adventure soon.  ★★★★ of 5

[Final]
 

Germany		0:1		Spain
		(0:1)	33′ Torres

GER: Lehmann - Friedrich, Mertesacker, Metzelder, Lahm (46′ Jansen) - Schweinsteiger, Frings, Ballack, Hitzlsperger (58′ Kuranyi), Podolski - Klose (79′ Gómez)
ESP: Casillas - Sergio Ramos, Marchena, Puyol, Capdevila - Iniesta, Xavi, Senna, Fàbregas (63′ Xabi Alonso), Silva (66′ Santi Cazorla) - Torres (78′ Dani Güiza)
 

What a poor performance, so sad! =\

Congratulations España!
 

Last night we had another barbecue party at the Rhine, because Toji turned 21 and we never have birthdays without decent celebrations following up.

I could not give 100 percent when we played some more football last night, still being slightly damaged from the Friday football excess, but I still scored twice in our neat five vs. five game. Alas, some of us didn’t stay longer than midnight - I didn’t, because I really, really needed some quiet time at home to recover from the last days.

So, here I am. Enjoy the few pics!

» Click here to see more of Toji’s birthday celebrations at flickr!

Been to my company’s annual summer party at my boss’s home today.

Wow, he’s got a really loveable home plus garden, and we took advantage of that! Jan and I quickly had two squads ready for football action and played…the entire day, almost. I hadn’t played football since last summer, so my physical condition was real turn-off, yet I fought hard and even recovered some of my scoring qualities, yüar! =D

Pre-game warmup

Jan tripped heavily on the bumpy green early on, suffering a knee injury which didn’t really stop him, and I ended up struggling with pain to climb the 81 steps to my door because of a strained groin. But it was so much fun and I really had forgotten the natural joy of having spent a day with sports.

We even played dodgeball with our entire staff - lol! -, my team winning a spectacular 3-0 games. And after much barbecue, poker and home-brewed Bailey’s Dieter drove us home. Thanks again!

Every Friday should be like this.

Somehow I totally missed this release until now, which may come from its iTunes-exclusive distribution. But it’s nice to see a visual kei band floating away from those horrible three editions per single methods and resorting to common sense, at least for once. D’espairsRay did it recently, too, so…way to go, Japanese bands!

But on to the two new tracks! “Minadzuki, missou”, not to be confused with the recent Ayabie single “Mikadzuki no kiseki”, is a pretty standard Megamasso track, a happy and delightful upbeat rocker, reminiscent of “LIPS”, but a little more playful and charming. Kinda the way I like Megamasso, though not very innovative or special at all.

INZARGI (v), Gou (b), Ryouhei (g)

“Minadzuki, missou”

“Yureru monooki” is the aggressive B-side, and it sounds like any random indie visual kei band that’s just released their debut. Means: disappointing. Those awkward changes in the vocal melody and the irritating special effects are nothing I cherish, and I can’t see them going anywhere with this song.

A four-star title song and a two-star B-side - you do the math. As with Megamasso’s latest album “Matataku yoru”, I’m not happy with their sense of coherence. Now and then, you see the greatness of former Ayabie star and songwriter Ryouhei shimmering through the songs, but then you also see them doing petty stuff over and over again. I’d love to hear more of option one on their August single “Beautiful Girl”!

This is making me SO HAPPY!!

Wii owners and NES fans, cheer up! As the latest issue of Nintendo Power reports, Capcom silently recruited a team of former 8-bit Mega Man developers to make another classic game with the sympathetic blue robot hero, exclusively released through WiiWare soon!

 

Mega Man 9 is said to be no easier than its brutally difficult NES predecessors and there are eight new bosses to beat - Magma Man, Galaxy Man, Jewel Man, Concrete Man, Hornet Man, Plug Man, Tornado Man and Splash Woman. Of course you won’t be alone - Capcom also included your familiar old friends Dr. Light and Rush, the helpful shape-shifting cyber dog.

Look here for more information and some screenshots of the upcoming nostalgia!

We are so excited! =D

[Semi-finals]
 

Russia		0:3		Spain
		(0:0)	50′ Xavi 73′ Dani Güiza 82′ Silva

RUS: Akinfeev - Anyukov, V. Berezutski, Ignashevich, Zhirkov - Zyrianov, Semak, Semshov (56′ Bilyaletdinov), Saenko (57′ Sychev) - Pavlyuchenko, Arshavin
ESP: Casillas - Sergio Ramos, Marchena, Puyol, Capdevila - Iniesta, Senna, Xavi (69′ Xabi Alonso), Silva - David Villa (35′ Fàbregas), Torres (69′ Dani Güiza)
 

No surprises tonight - the Russian rush has come to a halt, and it’s Spain we have to beat for the title on Sunday. A great final, don’t you think?