My copy of the new Turisas album The Varangian Way arrived yesterday, only the day after it was released so I’m pleased about that for starters. I bought their first album on a whim but it pretty much blew my mind, what they dub as “battle metal” is a sort aggressive folk metal with orchestration. I wouldn’t really expect many people to like it if they didn’t give it a shot but personally I think its awesome.

This new album is much more varied than the previous one, there are areas with much more use of the acordian and violin as well as quieter and louder areas with more aggressive stuff that resembles more of the bulk of the metal genre I suppose. For me that’s great as I really love the folky stuff but it also has variation that I really appreciate and given that I enjoy other areas of metal it all fits together nicely. My first listen gave me a good feeling about it, I’m listening again at the moment and enjoying it even more. I would advise people to buy it (and the first one, totally mind blowing) but

1. No one reads my crappy blog
2. No one cares what I have to say about this album

Didn’t stop me writing this post though eh?

I went to the East Midlands Higher Education Festival with my school today. It was essentially just a chance to get lots of random university prospectuses that you have some interest in (perhaps only in theory…) although I think the intention was to ask some questions and get some more information but given that it was very busy and essentially just a free for all it really wasn’t the best time for me. I didn’t bother trying to get freebies, I think the best thing you could get was a personal radio, pretty good really and there was a lot of competition for who could get the best loot from the hour. Came back with a painful back from having my bag on so long and of course a nice bag of prospectuses from various universities, some of which I have no interest in whatsoever. Well perhaps that isn’t true, it’s a bit soon to be making any decisions.

Other than that it was a very boring day, I was very productive in my free period and just spent it reading violent acres archives. Interesting but didn’t really get me anywhere, having said that I did try to do something useful but there is a limit. We were supposed to be having a “band practice” this evening but our bassist is lacking his bass as he lent it to a friend. I put the quote marks because I’m not sure it can exactly sure it can be called a band practice for two main reasons: we don’t have a drummer (or we can’t play with our drummer) and we don’t have a name or any real band credentials. That’s just the tip on the iceberg of the things wrong with it, its essentially three of us and my computer playing along to songs, or for one song just playing with the drumming from a guitar pro tab in the background. It’s not great but it will have to do I guess, or it would have to do if we could actually do it, there’s usually something stopping us and its pretty much never due to me or the other guitarist which is perhaps all the more frustrating. Ah well, that’s how it goes I guess.