it's been quite some time since I've done one of these. As a matter of fact, it's been somewhere in the realm of six and a half months, really. Go figure. And no, I make no reservations about being back next week. But, hey, it's been almost seven months since I've done a weekly chart summary, so what makes me think anyone is left to read this anyhow? On with the reflection, even if it's to an emtpy cyberspace.

1. Pain of Salvation - 28 Plays
One thing that may be fun about this particular summary is that I have…

Putting together a greatest hits package for Dave Matthews Band is no job to scoff at. Three innate problems come bundled with the task. Firstly, the band’s discography is downright massive. The second problem comes with the fact that this huge discography features the same material over and over again, at least in name. The band’s six studio albums are respectable bodies of work, to be sure, but they don’t hold a candle to the goods brought by live release after live release. Not only must the right songs be chosen, but the right versions of the right songs have…

I don’t do memes very often, so cherish this one. It doesn’t completely reek of idiocy.
If you could make an album containing songs from your favourite albums of all time,
how would it look?
You have to pick songs according to the following rules:
- Song No. 1 must be No. 1 on the original album, song No. 2 must be No. 2 on the
original album etc.
- Max 1 song per original album.
- 8 to 15 tracks.
1. Lamb of God – “Ruin”
2. Opeth – “Deliverance”
3. Clutch – “The Mob Goes Wild”
4. Dave…

It is fitting, albeit in a disturbing way, that musical mastermind Devin Townsend has so many different projects, each neatly separated from the others. After all, the man does suffer from bipolar disorder, and he has more than once suggested that his various projects are ways of channeling his contrasting attitudes. When his more chaotic side comes out, the result is Strapping Young Lad, a group that has gained a reputation over their 12 years of existence as one of the most brutal, intense, and energetic metal bands around. Townsend’s other material lends itself to more progressive and less…

I’ve heard the new Breaking Benjamin song three or four times now. Called “Diary of Jane”, it is the first taste of the upcoming album, Phobia, which will be released on August 8. I’ll start checking for leaks on Independence Day.

So how is the tune? Well, when I first heard it, I thought, “Is this Breaking Benjamin?” That is to say, it definitely carries some of their distinctive sound, but there’s a slight change in the atmosphere of the music that made me second guess myself when it came on. Ben frequently uses a tactic I’ve associated with Three…

I’d like to apologize to the both of you that were heartbroken over the fact that me and my Last.FM self were completely out of commission for a couple weeks there. My PC situation was gnarly, and for a while I had little music on my PC. No doubt that would have skewed my charts, so when I did have Winamp playing, I left Audioscrobbler turned off. Last Sunday it came back to life though. And here I am with the first week of my resurrected music library. If you care to, note the shift in some listening habits over…

I just quickly wanted to drop a thanks to all of you who helped me with the recovery of my music library. The endeavor is not complete. Chances are it never will be. Tonight I reached the conclusion that enough was recovered to turn Audioscrobbler back on though, and that is, for me, a pretty big milestone. There’s still certainly some of it I’ll never get back. Some of it I don’t really want to. And there’s plenty of new musical exploration I’ve been able to do on account of people not only sending me what I had, but using…

Gone. All of it. All 5,000 or so songs. All 42.3 gigs of music. All wiped out because Windows cannot read its own dynamic storage when running the setup utility. It claimed my media partition was "unpartitioned space". I thought it would be safe to install Windows on supposedly unpartitioned space. When Windows was installed, my music was gone.

Oh, but that's not the worst of it. I have a data recovery tool sitting around here, called Recover My Files. Damn good application. It even claims to be able to recover formatted drives. So, I figured I'd put its greatest…

OK. I’m sounding off on some new discoveries, old favorites, and revitalized appreciation. I just like writing about music. Sue me.

Were it not for another member of last.FM, K'Hash to be specific, I'd have no idea who Farmakon was. He threw out the recommendation in a brief journal post about a week and a half ago, and I put it in the always expanding line of music recommendations. I finally got a chance to listen to A Warm Glimpse, and I will admit I was impressed.

The first thing I was listening for was the comparisons to Opeth…

I’m blatantly ripping off a new facet of my weekly summary from another Last.FM user. I’m not going to give him credit until the end of the post though, because in his infinite lack of wisdom, he ripped on Dream Theater in the same entry. He might as well have ripped on Dave Matthews Band, the fool! Anyway, on with my plagiarism.

“ I'm back. This week, I want to take a slightly different spin on the weekly artist shtick. See, I'm noticing something about last.fm. It's uncannily telling about me and my taste in a lot of ways.…