Nothing wildly important to say here. Just a couple of minor updates.
First off, Dellenar; my main who is a level 70 mage. Last week I got Revered with The Consortium, which got me a bunch of new jewelcrafting recipes. And I've now begun the long grind to Exalted. Also, today, while running the Daily Heroic (Botanica), I hit almost 3 milestones. First, Incanter's Robes dropped for me, which gave me 5/5 of the mage Dungeon Set 3! The gear isn't particularly good, but it's a start. Before today my chest armour and cloak were my only two pieces of gear that weren't a level 70 instance/quest drop. But I got a nice blue 70 robe for myself. Also, I got up to 25 badges of justice, which meant I could buy myself a nice epic cloak! So now all my gear is of level 70 blue quality or above, and I have 3 epics! That is, my cloak, my boots, and a ring. Hurray! I'm also within about 600 reputation points of exalted with The Sha'tar! Which means after any one Tempest Keep run, I'll be exalted!
Next, my new highest level alt, Nellius, the human priest. He's currently level 42. It really shows me how great the new levelling patch was! First, there's a whole new zone of quests in Dustwallow Marsh, which is cool. A bunch of quest rewards have been beefed up in power. And a whole bunch of previously elite quests and areas are now non-elite! So there's a whole bunch of new quests for me to do. And to top it off, less XP per level, and more XP per quest. So I've gone up 12 levels in the past week! And I currently have 290/300 Tailoring, 245/300 Enchanting, 214/225 Cooking, 260ish/300 First Aid, 175/225 Fishing. I've spent pretty much all of Nellius and Dellenar's gold doing that! All I need to do now is spend a bit of time fishing, and I'm sorted for all professions for a while.
I went from level 30-40 by doing only a couple of zones! I did all of the quests in arathi highlands, hillsbrad foothills and alterac mountains; except for one level 40 underwater quest I haven't got round to doing yet, but I bought an underwater breathing potion for it. That took me to about level 36. I then did all the quests in Dustwallow Marsh, which, along with finishing off the arathi/hillsbrad/alterac quests got me to level 41! I'm currently doing the whole of Stranglethorn Vale just for completeness.
I'm loving being a shadow priest! I got shadowform at level 40 which is really cool. My main issue with being a priest is that I have no way of avoiding interruption through damage, except through Power Word: Shield, which costs a shitload of mana! So, while I can quite easily kill a baddie 4-5 levels above me, my mana consumption is huge. Vampyric Embrace is great, and combined with PW:S use to avoid interruption, I'm left with constantly high health. But I don't get the mana equivalent until level 50. Bah.
My current spell rotation consists of:
1) Buff with PW:Fortitude, Shadowform & Inner Fire (Shadow Resistance if needed)
2) Pull with mind blast (8 sec cooldown)
3) Apply VE
4) Apply Shadow Word: Pain
5) Power Word: Shield
6) Mind Flay x 2
7) Mind Blast
8) Wand to death
It's brilliant for damage, but rubbish for mana. Oh, well! I'll only be shadow until I can spec for healing in Outland, anyway. Long live the WoW!
Sunday, 23 December 2007
Friday, 7 December 2007
1990s Norwegian Black Metal
Recently I've been getting quite into First Wave of Black Metal music. The generally lo-fi production, combined with brutal music is heavenly. And of course, naturally, I begun to listen to some early 1990s Norwegian Black Metal.
Norwegian Black Metal is notorious for the crime waves that surrounded the genre in the 1990s. Murders, suicides, and church burnings to name but a few. Unfortunately, it's those murders and suicides which are the tragic part of the genre. By 1990-ish, the biggest up-and-coming name in Norwegian Black Metal was a band called Mayhem. They used the typical black metal formula of using evil-sounding pseudonyms as their names. In 1990, the line-up of Mayhem was Dead on vocals, Euronymous on guitar, Necrobutcher on bass, and Hellhammer on drums. Based on bootleg recordings of the time, the lineup is simply fantastic. Dead was one of the best guttural vocalists I've ever heard. The tragedy is that in early 1991, Dead commited suicide, without ever recording anything in the studio. Two years later, in 1993, Euronymous was murdered by former friend known by the pseudonym Count Grishnackh, of the band Gorgoroth. The crimes of course gave the bands notoriety, and made their music much more popular, as well as inspiring other young scandinavians to form bands. But the real tragedy is the impact it had on the music. Dead was an incredible vocalist, but the world doesn't get to hear it, because he never recorded anything. Euronymous was a great guitarist, but he only recorded one album with Mayhem, which was released after his death. Count Grishnackh recorded a couple of albums with Gorgoroth, and appeared on the same Mayhem album as Euronymous, but he's spent the last 14 years in prison, and as such hasn't recorded any black metal.
If you ask me, these deaths are much more tragic than a lot of the more well known rock deaths, such as Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Randy Rhoads. All those artists recorded a great deal of music before their deaths, and everybody can hear them today. But the casualties of the early Norwegian Black Metal movement don't have that privilege. They died without really recording anything. One wonders what effect they might have had on black metal had they lived just a few years longer, and recorded a couple of albums.
Norwegian Black Metal is notorious for the crime waves that surrounded the genre in the 1990s. Murders, suicides, and church burnings to name but a few. Unfortunately, it's those murders and suicides which are the tragic part of the genre. By 1990-ish, the biggest up-and-coming name in Norwegian Black Metal was a band called Mayhem. They used the typical black metal formula of using evil-sounding pseudonyms as their names. In 1990, the line-up of Mayhem was Dead on vocals, Euronymous on guitar, Necrobutcher on bass, and Hellhammer on drums. Based on bootleg recordings of the time, the lineup is simply fantastic. Dead was one of the best guttural vocalists I've ever heard. The tragedy is that in early 1991, Dead commited suicide, without ever recording anything in the studio. Two years later, in 1993, Euronymous was murdered by former friend known by the pseudonym Count Grishnackh, of the band Gorgoroth. The crimes of course gave the bands notoriety, and made their music much more popular, as well as inspiring other young scandinavians to form bands. But the real tragedy is the impact it had on the music. Dead was an incredible vocalist, but the world doesn't get to hear it, because he never recorded anything. Euronymous was a great guitarist, but he only recorded one album with Mayhem, which was released after his death. Count Grishnackh recorded a couple of albums with Gorgoroth, and appeared on the same Mayhem album as Euronymous, but he's spent the last 14 years in prison, and as such hasn't recorded any black metal.
If you ask me, these deaths are much more tragic than a lot of the more well known rock deaths, such as Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Randy Rhoads. All those artists recorded a great deal of music before their deaths, and everybody can hear them today. But the casualties of the early Norwegian Black Metal movement don't have that privilege. They died without really recording anything. One wonders what effect they might have had on black metal had they lived just a few years longer, and recorded a couple of albums.
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