Just listened to Minutes to Midnight. Excuse me, how bad is that?

Linkin Park has always been quite a blind spot in my musical taste since I like too many songs even though they all sound alike and are the quite the opposite of well composed or somewhat creative.

But this album is just awful!
Softer than ever, Chesters voice is so unbelievably ugly, the rap parts are something between disgusting and ridiculous. The electronical beats are below most things I ever heard in the emo sector. Possibly Indie(lectro)might be the only style that might prove to have even…

It's a long story (nope, actually it's a short story, but you might not want to hear it), but I've given up illegal ways to get my music. This is quite a challenge for me. Legal Downloads are no option - if I pay, I want my CD. But that'll mean I gotta buy everything I want to hear. Phew.

And I'm still not quite sure how I should handle things like trading music via LAN, ripping CDs owned by friends, etc.

So if you wanna tell me:

a) how stupid I am to give up illegal downloads,

b) that…

This is just meant to keep up my tradition of writing concert reviews. There were 3 concerts in Juni I've been to.

First of all: Tool, Alsterdorfer Sporthalle (Hamburg), 6.6.06

A year ago I wouldn't have believed they would ever go on tour again. And I definitely wanted to see the greatest band on earth live.
There were many negative aspects about the location. It was too big, the sound was quite bad and I missed the chance to fight myself to the front.
But the band was worth it. It was just great to hear all these songs…

What can I say?

Sylvan has been my first concert with music, that is not really meant to make you move. I had no idea, what expected me yesterday, when I went to the Logo, Hamburg.

A friend of mine had asked me to join him - I didn't know this band and the few previews I had listened to were quite nice, but not that much of a well-founded impression about Sylvan.

But what I heard this evening blew my mind. They started playing their newest Album Posthumous Silence through. A concept album, about 70 minutes long, without any…

It tooke some time to accept the new Tool Album. Most surprising fact about it - it actually doesn't surprise. I had expected something completely weird, in fact the songs sound quite familiar. It definitely reminds me of Lateralus, which is a really good thing.

But finally, after listening to it a few times, my interest in lyrics and all these hidden meanings is raised again.

I just listened to Lost Keys (Blame Hofmann) and this one is really great. Very mysterious and now I finally got the motivation to soak up all the lyrics and the music to get…

What a lucky person I am!

I coincidentally got to the web page of Neal Morse yesterday and there (I couldn't believe it) I found his European tour dates that said he was going to give two concerts/services in Hamburg - for free of course. I couldn't make it to Hamburg on that Saturday evening, but I went there today with two friends of mine.

There were less than 100 people in that relatively small church - but a really strange drumset (very tiny bass drum and snare, a few cymbals and nothing else), lots of percussion instruments, one grand…

Has anyone seen Paul McCartney performing live with Linkin Park and Jay-Z recently?

I haven't been able to forgive Linkin Park the complete destruction of the pretty nice song Numb by performing it with one of these mega gangsta idiots, who do their best to destroy the last small pinch of respect I got for "Hip Hop".
But what they did via the Grammy show was unbelievable bad!

How could Chester Bennington dare to cover Yesterday with his sissy voice?
Don't get me wrong, I really don't hate Linkin Park, sometimes I almost like listening to some of their better…

I can't solve it!
Help me… I hate geometry =(

I took my time to listen to some German artists who might be not that famous at all. I know that there are a lot of great Newcomer bands, who might have a chance to get more attention in the next years, for example the Emergenza Winners State of Emergency or Mr Brown.

But to my own surprise I found some bands actually speaking German and they're still good. The only bands I had in mind for this were Die Ärzte and Knorkator.

The "Acapella-Pop-Comedy" band Ganz Schön Feist - even though they're actually not doing that much…

Feel free to add something - it just has to be beautiful and a bit sad ;)

Rain (my new favourite)

Goodnight

Wenn das Liebe ist

The start of something beautiful

Collapse the light into earth

Dust in the wind

Simon

Overcome

Thinking about forever

Angels

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Love never dies

Broken

Emotion Sickness

Skeleton Song

Epiphany

Roulette

Disposition

How do I live

Winter

I forgot so many, but I felt these songs are worth being listed here. I hope someone can add a few songs for me…

And yes: Lyrics do matter! I chose these songs definitely because…