No. Unlike the Didacts latest bit [http://didactsreach.blogspot.com/2016/10/happy-helloween-2016.html], this is not a well written piece on the need for tradition, etc. Incidentally, despite the name, it also does not indulge in any form of metal, death, or otherwise. Instead, the title is a clue to the name of the band sufficient to run a train through driven by a coked up engineer, and if you still haven’t figured out I’m talking about the Grateful Dead, your loss. Look, I get it. They’re n…
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I promise to get back to the song-by-song overview of The Last Stand, but while I’m getting things together, a bit of big-hair 80’s style glam and gloriousness alongside some seriously great Nightwish: Which due to the very 80’s look of the video, made me think of the Scorpions: and…
As the Didact has observed, my tastes in metal run more toward symphonic. This is in large part because my musical background included several years of violin, and before that, a couple years of piano, a southern upbringing, and a northern European heritage steeped in both classical and folk music. That said, I’ve found it’s consistently easier for better metal bands to incorporate symphonic elements into their music, with many metal bands already doing more complex music than the pop norm, than…
Background: On January 22nd, 1879, a British force of nearly 2000 men fought a force of nearly 20,000 Zulu warriors in the battle of Isandlwana, and despite the technological advantages, was nearly totally destroyed. 4000 warriors of the reserve broke off near the end of the battle to cut off some of the British forces, and ended up marching onto a small garrison of roughly 150 men called Rorke’s Drift [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rorke%27s_Drift]. Burdened down with hospital patie…
Background: Much of the below is cribbed from Infogalactic [https://infogalactic.com/info/Lost_Battalion_(World_War_I)]: On October 2 of 1918, near the end of WWI, American forces of the 77th division led by Major Charles White Whittlesey advanced into the Argonne forest as part of a planned offensive. They advanced, reaching their objective at Hill 198, a defensible position, but, the French forces expected on their left flank and the other American forces on their right were stalled, driven b…