So my friend @MRJWAR on twitter informed me that COB has a new album out — on Monday, during my furious purchasing of music since my emusic subscription renewed and Gaga’s new album was $.99 on amazon. @MRJWAR reminded me that I like metal.  So I got Children of Bodom’s new album, Relentless, Reckless Forever. And it’s awesome. Here’s the title track.

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I am beyond excited to see this band next week when they trek through Des Moines.  They’re a bit of thrash, some Iron Maiden-esque meets death metal vocals with some southern rock infusion. They’re at the Vaudeville Mews next Wednesday, March 2 at 5:30 PM  Enjoy!

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I’m going to a Children of Bodom concert tomorrow and I am SOOO excited. Wellll … as long as I don’t forget to pick UP the ticket. Whoops.

In case you didn’t know, these guys are one of my favorite metal bands. They have fabulous guitar, driving rhythms and they are apparently HUGE fans of The Big Lebowski.  They released a cover album last year about this time that included a bunch of songs from the Lebowski soundtrack.

Anyway … I am sharing with you two songs. One that I enjoy and one that I think most of my audience can at least appreciate.

The first song is “Are You Dead Yet?”.  This song is near and dear to me because it got me through some really tough training when I started running after rehabilitating a leg injury.  I was upset that I couldn’t run the high mileage that I used to run. Instead of 5 or more miles a day I was stuck at 1-3 and I couldn’t even run two days in a row.  This song reminded me that no matter how far or how fast I run, put my all into it because I’m not dead yet.  Not to mention, that album reset my slow tempo to a 2-minute per mile faster pace. So, thanks guys.

Aaand I’m sharing with you the cheesetastic Britney Spears cover these guys did.  Oops! I did it again … It’s interesting.  And funny. Love a band with a sense of humor!

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It’s another weiner-free weeeeeeeeeekend.  I shouldn’t be this excited, but my lil dog is kind of like having a misbehaving 3-year-old.  If you’re reading this, that means I’m in Minnesota and Barnabus is at Steph‘s place for the weekend.

Why, do you ask? Because I’m going to see SLAYER. MEGADETH. AND TESTAMENT.

Yes. Almost the big 4, but not quite.  Good enough for me — good riddance to Metallica anyway.  Dave Mustaine is where it’s at, as you can tell by my fabulous kitchen decor.

(a super old pic … but seriously. this guy is badass).

Anyway, I so can’t wait to see Megadeth and Slayer again … and I’m excited about Testament. I’m kind of disappointed that we’ve got nose-bleeds because last time I saw Megadeth I was close enough to touch Dave. On the railing. Man, you MN peeps are wimps. I got more beat up at the Jimmy Eat World show in Iowa than I did at Gigantour that year!

Wow. I’m rambling. Sorry — I get excited about these things then go into douchey metal dude speak.

Anyway, I’m going to have a great time and maybe get some decent photos. Regardless, I’m so going to H&M when I’m in Minnesota … seriously.

Gotta love how I’m going to a thrash show and all I can think about is shopping …

I’m going to leave you with one of my favorite Megadeth songs.  I say one of them because they’re all pretty much amazing. Enjoy!

Not to mention — this one is a gem from ’91 — Dave Ellefson on bass … drool (not because I think he’s hot, but because he’s amazing!) … it’s almost a shame I don’t have the same hair as these guys anymore.

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CHILDREN OF BODOM

is

coming

to

Des MOINES!

October 1 — they’re supporting Black Label Society, who, I’m cool with seeing again, but more importantly:

ALEXI LAIHO is coming to Des Moines. AND it’s a small venue.  Which means.  I could be. Within. His. Reach.

Oh man.

By the way … for those of you who don’t know me, did I mention that I’m a huge metalhead? I think that needs to probably be in my sidebar bio somewhere.

It’s soooo cheesy, but Children of Bodom are my end-all-do-all favorite metal band (aside from the ‘deth of course, who I’m scheduled to see again in August). They really came into play when I had my leg injury from running the 2008 Des Moines Marathon … I started listening to their album, Are You Dead Yet? and the lyrics from the title track became my mantra: “Should I regret, or ask myself, are you dead yet?” I even did a metal craft swap last summer and received a very cool cross stitch with those lyrics.  It was their driving speed that turned me from a jog-paced distance runner into a competitive shorter distance runner (I killed the last half marathon I ran!).

And in case you forgot, I may or may not have a minor crush on their lead vocalist and guitarist … Alexi. Laiho.

Anyway, I’m sure noone that reads this is even close to half as excited as I am about this, but I’m about ready to pee my pants over here waiting for them to announce ticket sales at the 7 Flags Center here!

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I so don’t have time to blog about this in its entirety, but for now — I’ve got to post pix at least!  SOOOOO cool.  I’ll share more about what this is about later, but I swapped crafts with my way cool crafty co-worker (who loves metal/punk/cool stuff) and here’s my bounty! I’ll separate it out later, but here’s a gallery in the interest of the short amount of time I have on my lunch.

I’m missing TWO things which I need to photog and post yet.. I will explain all of this later!

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I’m participating in another craft show on the 29th of this month (yes, that’s 2 in one day!). This one is completely different than anything I’ve done before and it seems to be MY kind of people!

Here’s the details taken from Satanimals’ website:

Once again, here comes another art show where the weird are most welcome. Quickly gaining an awesome customer base, these art shows reflect the talent of folks who you wouldn’t ordinarily see in a Gallery around town.

Butch Von Dreaux is making another trek all the way from Louisiana to be here and Spookshow Pinups has been added to the list of amazing artists as well!

D. Ryan Allen will be there again showing all of his amazing work from zombie sketches to kid’s coloring books for the macabre.

In addition to the fine arts folks, we will also have all kinds of goodies like hand-made leather wallets, re-structured clothing, creepy dolls, hand-bags, pillows and everything else in between.

SATANIMALS will also be unveiling a new line of horror inspired pillows.. the first being an amazing SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA pillow!

This is not just your average art show. Pretentious art snobs are discouraged from coming. Although, it is fun to see them stick their nose in the air and turn on their heels when they see Gregg Bensink’s table of amazing goodies.

Attendees can enter the raffle to win numerous prizes including: original artwork from each of the artists, gift certificates for tattoos up to $100 as well as gift certificates to some local businesses including: Best Place Ever, ZZZ Records, Cup O’ Kryptonite and The Beauty Parlor!

The Raffle is at 9PM and you MUST be present to win!!

————

In case you were wondering, I’m on the poster — credited as “toDIYfor” since I’m going to be selling my rock/punk/dark stuff.

I’m super excited for this show!  I’ll finally get to meet Sew Zinski and it sounds like there’s free beer all around. Sounds like a great craft show to me!

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A while back I made a “hardcore” quilt top out of a bunch of band t-shirts I had lying around. It was sort of practice for piecing since it was one of the first things I pieced.

Anywho, I only used half of the 50 blocks I’d created for it and shoved the rest of them in my closet to be used at a later date. Well, today was that later date.

This quilt top isn’t as cool as the other one, however; I did find one of the blocks I’d started embroidering back when I was all “ooh I should embellish these all with embroidery!” Not so much. Would have been cool, but too time-consuming for the likes of me.

Here’s a closeup of the embroidery.

what I love about these two quilt tops is that any-which-way is up.

Yay!

Now I’m off to Hancock Fabrics to get some batting, some backing (I think I’ll use the backing to bind in this case), some contrasting thread, a walking foot, some artist’s tape and a bunch of safety pins. You guessed it. I’m going to use this guy as my practice quilt to actually QUILT.

Wish me luck!!

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Metal in general is known for cheesetastic design, but I found a logo for a great band that is pretty decent.

I’ve been listening to At the Gates all day today and got to googling the band and came across their logo. It’s kind of cool. Not exactly cheesetastic like the Slayer logo…or my personal favorite….the Lamb of God logo (eek! in all its papyrus glory).

Here it is.  I think I’ve got a t-shirt of Kasey’s in my closet with this logo on it as well. 

I like how it still has that “metal” look to it while keeping in mind how the letters go together and how they go with the gates in the background. It’s really kind of hard to read though, which is probably the biggest downfall.  All in all though, much prettier and more well-thought out than the band’s contemporaries’ logos.

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Haha…for those of you who don’t remember Tiger Beat, click here to see the wikipedia article.

Here we goooo!

OMG Alexi Laiho is soooooo dreamy! I’m kind of in love with him. Seriously — like, he is way totally hotter than Ashton or the Jonas Brothers (who by the way are probably like 12 and I have no idea what they look like)!!

Alexi Laiho is the lead singer and guitarist for the Finnish metal band Children of Bodom. Not only does he totally rock on guitar, he’s also extremely hot when he does it! He is definitely the hottest guy in melodic death metal these days!

Here are some gratuitous pictures for you to admire and print out and tape all over your 8th grade English notebooks!

Okay guys, for reals – I do kind of have an über metal crush on him. The cute Finnish accent doesn’t help (listen to She is Beautiful or Bed of Nails covers for reference). Not to mention, there’s really not that many cute guys in my musical genres…. 

I mean…here are my other choices:

George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher (Cannibal Corpse) 

Johann Hegg of Amon Amarth 

Kerry King of  Slayer

And of course… MY HERO… Dave Mustaine (not that attractive, but a very cool guy)

Also, I may have picked this photo on purpose because he’s making an awesome guitar face.

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