miko2

My Apartment complex annoyed me today. Early when I first moved in there was a discrepancy in the rent they told me to pay and the rent they actually wanted me to pay, and they put a note on my door telling me to pay up immediately (it was something less than $10 if I remember right) or else bad things were going to happen to me.

Anyway this seems like their favorite way of communicating with residents, and since then I've always looked as I came around the corner and down the stairs to see if anything was stuck to the door. Nothing ever was, until last night.

I got a message saying that half of the parking lot was going to be pressure washed Wednesday and Thursday. Okay, no problem, I'm sure they have to do these things. But the way they put it, we were ordered to remove all cars from the parking lot (they had a a map showing roughly half of the complex parking area that the order applied to) by 7 am, or our cars would be towed at our expense.

Gee, these people communicate in such a friendly manner. And they gave me a whole 10 hours notice too!

So I went out and moved my car to the other half of the complex. After all, I'm very much asleep at 7 am, no way in hell (which

genebreshears does not believe in, but if he did, Mr. Tim Eyman would wind up there) was I planning to wake up at the ungodly hour of 7 am to move my car. Not to mention, my chances of getting a good parking place were better if I moved right away.

And we're not going to even consider the fact that walking a block or two to my car is probably very good for me. I'm still annoyed.

But the most annoying thing is that, when I left for work just after noon, there were still cars parked in the wrong section of the complex. There was no sign of anyone doing any pressure washing, and no evidence that anyone had been towed. Which means that I probably could have ignored the threat and parked normally and been just fine.

Except that, if I'd ignored the threat, it would have worked out differently. You know it would have!

I've been listening to Orphaned Land the last day or two. While some of the bands that I listen to are hard to categorize, Orphaned Land takes the "uncategorizable" label to a whole new level. My friend Griid was telling a story about how he downloaded the Opeth cd "Ghost Reveries" twice, listened to the first song for 30 seconds, and then deleted it -- because people he respected kept saying what a great cd it was, but it is death metal and he hates that death metal growl. He's a huge fan of prog metal, and finally so many people said what a great cd Ghost Reveries was that he downloaded it a third time, forced himself to listen to more than 30 seconds of it, and discovered that despite the death metal vocals, Opeth is an amazing prog metal band (with a lot of non-death metal singing too).

Well, it seems to me that there's an awful lot of creativity springing forth from death metal, which seems pretty odd to me, but some of the highly creative bands that I like are offshoots of death metal. Orphaned Land is one such band. How do you categorize them? They have death metal vocals, but they play a style of metal that is epic, progressive, power-metal in a way, but also symphonic and orchestral (and I don't mean just the rock music, they employ a symphony and a choir during the course of their cd). But they're also folk metal -- they employ a variety of Middle Eastern instruments and melodies, and do so very well. They also sing a few passages in Hebrew and at least once in Latin, and have some nice Middle Eastern ballads, just as Leaves' Eyes has some lovely ballads that probably would fit better on a Loreena McKennitt cd instead of a folk/goth metal cd. (Leaves' Eyes is another band that kind of doesn't fit any easily-defined categories. I like bands like that.) ^_^

All that, and Orphaned Land tells the story of the flood in very religeous terms. Are they Christian metal then? Not at all -- they're an Isreali band, all members clearly Jewish, quoting the Torah in their songs. So is this Hasidic Metal? While I find the idea very appealing, of course it isn't. This isn't even mainstream Judaism, I think. The subtitle of their cd Mabool is "The Story of The Three Sons of Seven" and the first song talks about them this way:

"The seventh had seven descendants
The seventh was then divided into three
They were given their first symbols
They bore the faces of animals
A Snake, An Eagle, & the Lion

The first was known as magic
and he bore an enchanted heart
A Star of David upon his crest
was his eternal mark

The second was strength
half a moon was he
A triangle he adorned
a sword for all to see

The third was Lion wisdom
a mind unmatched
Represented by the cross,
the white was his essence
A crystal his defense

The three were one, divided at rebirth
Forbidden to unite
For fear of their strength"

And the song goes on... but obviously what we're dealing with here is no normal retelling of the flood story, although they do quote from the old scriptures quite a bit and stress God's wrath upon the wickedness of man and all of that. But this is some form of Jewish Middle Eastern mysticism incorporating the three major religeons that sprang out of ancient Judaism.

In the middle of the cd, before the flood comes, is a song called "A Call To Awake (The Quest)":

"'On to the lands we must go to warn all,'
Said the Snake, to the Eagle and the Lion
'Beg them to repent so they might be saved
From the fury and the anger that shall claim them.'

And so they set sail across the land and seas alike
In a quest to avoid the setting of the sun

'God's rage is true
He urges you to awake...'"

Well you get the idea. Jewish-Christian-Islamic-Middle Eastern Mysticism, I guess. I'm not sure if they're following an actual sect or if they're just coming up with this stuff on their own, but it certainly give them something different to write about.

Anyway, I suppose the whole death metal growl thing was originally created to represent demonic singing or pure evil or voices from the land of the dead, or who knows what. But you know what? Orphaned Land seems to use it most often to represent the voice of God. And given that we're talking about a jealous, vengeful, wrathful Old Testament-style God who is threatening to wipe out all of humanity (but who relents and saves just one man and his family)... well, the death metal growly voice works pretty well for that kind of God.

"Hell hath no fury as a God scorned
Unleash his wrath
he will let death be adorned

I will cleanse the world with fire
Scorched earth forevermore
Purple tongues that burn,
shall climb higher
Seas of flame will crush ashore
Shed the blood of mortal man
The pains of birth are felt again
Reduced to none, though art unborn
The end of man, human dethroned
All light is gone..."

Well okay, thematically they probably still are a death metal band part of the time... and just like in the Old Testament, they don't really need a devil to cause carnage, God can do it all on his own....

But this is beautiful music with a hopeful ending to the story. Really. I'm not making that up! It's a cd that

berblang would love! Well... actually I don't know that for sure. It's perhaps the kind of cd that only I could love....

Although it hardly qualifies as Engrish, this made me laugh: A cd case that "automatically becomes portable when carried". Wow, talk about amazing features! What the hell¹ more could you ask for?

1 Please note once again that

genebreshears does not believe in hell, but if he did, Tim Eyman would have a special place waiting just for him.