Semjaza

Coldplay is more of a British pop rock group than anything. Again, I think the idea that random soft, fuzzrock sounding groups of all varities get associated with "indie rock" and then in turn some of those get associated with "emo". On the other hand, I've never heard anyone refer to Coldplay as emo in my entire life... There's more to fitting into the genre (emocore or the newer, more accessible variety) than writing things that are "emotional". I mean, honestly, what even qualifies as "emotional" to begin with? Where is a line drawn that says "This isn't quite emotional enough to be emo!!" What happens when a metal band has emotional lyrics? An R&B group? A country group? It's really just not that simple. Genres are a pain in the *** and I personally wind up just sorting all my music by very, very basic genres when I want to find something (rock, industrial/electronic, punk/hardcore/emocore and metal -- that's it). Some people like to differentiate and there's always a time and a place for that (particularly when you want to recommend something), but beyond using them to describe the evolution and branching of music I don't quite see the point in being very stringent about it. Really, though, the commonplace idea is that "emo" fits in hardcore music with "emotional" lyrics and more pop punky bands with "emotional" lyrics. Things like Coldplay wouldn't really fit in there even by those standards.

I've never gotten to see any of these guys unfortunately. I really enjoy Rob Zombie's work, although I suppose it gets kind of tiring after awhile (I'm sure it's not just me, but a lot of it sounds very similar). I too have heard he's amazing live from several people, though... sometimes you're surprised by who turns out great live and who doesn't lol. I know I am.

Reading this metal thing is rather ridiculous. I've not seen someone so preoccupied with what has to fit inside what label in quite some time. I thought people into punk were bad. Every review and music site (such as Allmusic) would fit every last one of those bands under the general "metal" container term. I mean, honestly, what could you possibly call some of these supposed non-metal bands otherwise? Some random offshoot of metal? It's all in the same generic set, regardless of the subgenres like alt metal, nu metal, industrial metal, thrash metal, speed metal, black metal, whatever metal applied. It's all metal in some facet. Tool seems very out of place in that list, especially compared with some bands that have been left out of it and bands you're saying don't belong under "metal" in the slightest. Hell, Unearth, for example, is more of a metal-influenced hardcore group than some sort of pure metal, if you want to be [i]that[/i] picky... so why include them? I don't understand the point of getting worked up this much over something like this. The only thing I can figure out here is that you seem to think metal has to contain certain themes and ideas, which isn't necessarily true. Otherwise, I have no idea how you're determining what fits under this decriptor and what doesn't... you really haven't listed any reasons other than giving a shitload of band names.

A lot of people think oil will be at peak production soon. If that's true, at our current rates, we'll basically be out of the stuff well within our lifetimes. The sad thing is that most governments have chosen to remain idle and deny these things. Sometimes it has to do with who pays who what, unfortunately, and obviously oil companies have a large stake in this sort of thing. Hopefully those in charge will wise up eventually and realize that we can't just concern ourselves with how much we're going to be using today, but also the general future. Considering the current state of environmental policy in the US, I'm not very optimistic. Talking about drilling the likely miniscule reserves in Alaska underneath supposedly protected park areas does not make me happy. Even the things that are currently being done tend to be largely just words and smoke screens. What's being done with current air polution laws is pretty much extending the deadline for actually fixing and improving things, which wasn't necessary honestly. Stuff like this will probably always come up until we're living in tar pits or something lol.

[QUOTE=satan665]We may be overwhelmingly fat, but really even us Americans don't care much for that celebrity gossip crap and kidnapping news. People have been complaining for years that the news is sensationalistic, negative and too entertainment-based but nobody is changing their broadcasts anyway. Most people don't want to watch all this garbage, its just all you're stuck with. If someone actually put a smart and comprehensive global news show on the air and gave it any sort of decent publicity, people would watch it. Its just all thats on, what choice do you have? Watch depressing trash about the next attractive white family to be hurt or abducted; or celebrity marriage updates. I'd lean towards the celeb stuff myself even.[/QUOTE] How about not watching it at all and reading decent papers and getting news on the internet or the radio? There's alternatives for everyone and some of them even happen to be on TV. I don't think the complainers are in the majority whatsoever and even if they are, complaining and doing absolutely nothing to rectify it just is another amazing example of how freaking lazy our country is to begin with. It doesn't take any more time to pop onto a couple of newsfeed websites and read some articles than it does to sit on the couch and watch the local news.

I agree with The Drizzle's picks offhand, although I'd replace OK Computer with The Bends personally. This is pretty difficult. Usually when I think essential I think of older albums, but I'll see what I can mix into here without writing way too much. David Bowie's Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars: David Bowie is my favorite musician and these are easily two of his absolute best albums. Amazing from start to finish. The Rolling Stones' December's Children (And Everybody's): A phenominal band with a huge amount of great records. This is my personal favorite. It has a very rough, garage band sound to it. Beck's Odelay and Sea Change - Two albums from the same artist that cannnot be more different. Odelay is just freaking crazy and is probably the best Summer album of all time. Sea Change is one of the most depressing and beautiful albums I've ever heard. At the Drive-In's In/Casino/Out - The best album from a really great rock band that was mostly focused in the late 90s. They're broken up now, but some of the members are probably most known for being in Mars Volta right now. B.B. King's Live at the Regal - The unquestionable king of the blues. The fact that the best of his many great albums is a live recording really showcases how freaking talented this guy is. The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds - Most people think of random, dorky surf rock when they think of The Beach Boys, which is understandable. Still others think of the horrible Kokomo. However, what you should be thinking about is Pet Sounds, an amazing album with a more mature edge to it for the band. Many considered this the best produced album of all time (not best album ever, best produced lol). Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique - One of the earlier albums that proves that sampling is an art that should be protected. At the time of its release it was largely isunderstood, but over time people realized how amazing and important it is. Madvillian's Madvillainy - As far as I'm concerned MF Doom is the best rapper out there. He formed Madvillian with Madlib and produced Madvillainy, which is probably MF Doom's best album. There's not much to say. I'd not recommend a single rap album higher than this one. Say Anything's Is a Real Boy... - One of the best rock albums of recent years from one of the most talented guys in music right now. Phenominal writing, great music and a wonderful sense of irony and sarcasm. The Beatles' Revolver - A lot of people name other albums before this, but this is my personal favorite Beatles album. There's not much to say other than that you should have this damn CD already. Black Sabbath's Paranoid - Despite how much of a charicature Ozzy is today, Black Sabbath was responsible for some of the best hard rock, early metal albums in existance. Paranoid is probably the best of them. Blue Oyster Cult's Secret Treaties - A seriously underrated band aside from some of their singles (like Don't Fear the Reaper). This is easily their best album and one of the best albums ever recorded in the history of rock music. The Who's Who's Next - The Who are, without a doubt, one of the top bands of all time. They played recently at Live 8 and had one of the best sets there. They're still amazing. Who's Next is one of their many amazing albums and I cannot recommend it enough. Bonnie "Prince" Billy's I See a Darkness - Also known as Will Oldham.You'll see this one pop up from time to time in the Top 10 albums of all time on a lot of more indie-based lists. It's really amazing but will take time to grow on you due to its pacing. That's all I feel like typing right now. lol

I watch the Daily Show sometimes. The sad part is that what basically amounts to a comedy show goes over news and problems that other news outlets don't even attempt to go after for some reason. Most of the news here is basically like Extra with some local crap thrown in. You find about about celebrities and how some new odor absorber works and then, if you're lucky, you'll find out about something bad that happened in some other country. Of course, certain other countries are completely ignored (a recently occurring genocide, for example). I'm not sure what the reason is for this, but I know a lot of it revolves around how stupid, fat and lazy most people in America are. We'd rather hear about how Martha Stewart was called "M. Diddy" (stupidest nickname in existance) about 40 million times than what's actually going on with our own laws, politicians and general hometown related things. If any of these news outlets actually report news they make heavy attempts to slant it in some liberal or conservative way. It's hard to get anything remotely objective anymore. The idea that I should have to read foreign papers for important breaking news related to our own country is absolutely disgusting. It's all just really sad.

Good, you read that comment. I never checked if you responded to me lol. Most animated features in this country top out at 90 minutes. I severely doubt the Futurama ones will ever top this. I'd personally expect 65 to 90, myself. This is big news to me. Not simply because what is honestly the best TV show I've ever seen in my entire life is returning in some form, but because of what it means for the storylines themselves. Can you honestly imagine some of the things these guys could tackle in a longer format? The 25 minutes or so of the original had an insane amount of things packed into them and they were almost always completely solid and amazingly paced. Applying that to a longer format just seems like this show can be almost epic by comparison now. ******* awesome. I cannot wait.

I read about this weeks upon weeks ago and sent the link in to some other news sites. Regardless of who is pushing for it, it's really just very sad. The Fifth Amendment is not supposed to be twisted in this way. It was meant for things of importance, not a private entity wanting to install a new mall or office center. Repeating what has been said, a home you live in isn't just about money. I wouldn't want to move out of a home I've lived in all my life for an office complex or a McDonald's, regardless of what I was paid. There's an attachment to something like that. It's not the same thing as the government wanting to extend something like the Pentagon onto my property. I read about that Souter thing soon afterwards. It's really perfect irony.

[quote name='Retribution][SIZE=1']I thought emo stood for emocore. Hm...[/SIZE][/quote] Yeah, basically. Emo is short for "emocore" which in turn is short for "emotional hardcore". Emocore was a take-off of hardcore with more "emotional" lyrics. What that means exactly, I have no idea. I guess as soon as you sing about life and love problems you're a new genre? lol Obviously over time this has slightly changed. There's still plenty of emocore out there, but it's been pushed to the back. Emocore's general idea has been popularized and evened out into what most would personally consider a whole new genre. It's kind of the same concept of pop punk splitting off of more traditional punk. Emo of today split off of emocore and probably would benefit from being called "pop emo" because I think it's more accuarate. I don't mean this in a negative way, but just something that is a better description. This is the stuff most people probably think of when they think of the word "emo": pop punk songs with "whiny" and/or "emotional" lyrics. Not many people think of the heaviness and screaming of emocore when they think of "emo". In fact, many people who like the more poppy version of emo today refer to traditional emocore in a derrogatory way. I'm sure people have seen the word "screamo", which [I]isn't[/I] meant as a compliment. Of course, this leads into various arguments. People who are into emocore resent the fact that this more accessible music is also called "emo". People who like the more poppy emo don't like that what they listen to is called the same type of music as bands with tons of screaming and almost metal-like sounds. I'll say "emocore" when there's lots of screaming and then "emo" for some of the more popular things like Dashboard Confessional. I personally find myself differentiating heavily between emo and emocore because of this because someone who claims to love emo will be like "I ******* hate screamo." It's just easier in discussions and music recommendations to separate them. At some point "emo" wound up not just describing a lyrical theme, but also a sound. This isn't for any real reason other than general misconception, I suppose. If there is some band with a whiny, nasaly guy a lot of people I know of just go "oh, that's emo and it sucks". It isn't necessarily correct. Then you have the people who equate this "pop emo" with anything that's lowkey, indie fuzzrock. Again, this mostly just revolves around the sound and not necessarily the actual lyrical content. Unfortunately, all of this is extremely confusing thanks to genres like post-punk, post-emo, post-hardcore and post-rock. Unfortunately there's nothing much that can be done about this. A lot of it has gotten so confused and intertwined that there's almost nothing to argue about. It's all just music. If someone likes it, then cool. If someone hates it, then whatever. I myself am not big on the stuff. I'm far more likely to listen to emocore, but I don't really go out of my way for any of it. For me, personally, there's a strong difference between a band writing about "emotional" things and actually being an emo band. Anyone can write love songs or songs about emotionally charged topics under any genre. Most of the time bands I would personally refer to as emo (core or otherwise) tend to go to the extremes with these topics. It's all they talk about, it's exaggerated, they cry during the song, etc. To each their own, as usual lol.

Roxie: I think you're misunderstanding some things I meant here. The idea that anyone can practice "true" alchemy quite simply relies on the ideas of magic in the first place. The idea that someone in here knows the "secrets" that he will only tell you through PM obviously relies on something of questionable descent in the first place. The idea of "things we can't see" relates to magic or religion or mysticism in some way as well. How can it not? I might as well say that about magic itself or random goddesses. Obviously the Philosopher's Stone is a myth and I heavily implied that. The idea that anyone would even consider its existance at this point in time is ludicrous. The truth remains, however, that this was something Alchemists were heavily concerned with. So were the ideas of eternal life, universal cures and "playing god" in general. If modern "alchemists" don't believe in such things, why even call themselves alchemists? There's the term "archemy" for a reason. If someone wants to have any sort of conversation about this stuff, you can't simply just be like "well, everyone knows that's not possible!!!" simply because that's what alchemy was meant to do to begin with. I don't know how the history of this stuff can just be completely dismissed like that. The methods in which alchemists wanted to create things like gold or mutate other elements is extremely different from the methods that can be used today with particle accelerators or whatever else. Considering that, I'm not even sure why people still even equate this stuff with anything scientific. The fact that someone like Seaborg transformed lead into gold doesn't make his methods fit into "alchemy". Same goal, different methods; there's a difference between accomplishing what alchemy originally set out to do and accomplishing it with alchemic processes... no one has yet to do the latter. I don't see why they should be directly associated.

I think the game looked great, personally. Dragon's Roost's opening was freaking amazing. It's a small thing to just have particles flying around, but coupled with the style it just looked really impressive. Animation rocked too, which is always a bonus. Storywise it's mostly the same old stuff, but I was glad to see a further development of Zelda and, even more surprisingly, Ganondorf. His last words in the game were something I didn't expect and easily added a whole new side to him that I've never considered. I'm not so big on the gameplay, though. It's still a good game, but really, it's the same stuff we've played before. Nothing all that new was done with the battle system or item usage or dungeon layouts. I guess you could count those tag team style dungeons, but I couldn't stand those. It also didn't help that there weren't many dungeons to begin with. I don't know about anyone else, but when I found myself getting major, important items in one room caves I was pretty annoyed. Plus it's just way too easy. The fact that a large pig in your home village does more damage to you than any other boss in the game is ridiculous.

Calling this the predecessor to chemisty is a misnomer. It's a combination of so many things that the comparison is meaningless. Chemistry has nothing to do with religion, astrology or mysticism. Surely it led into accepted chemistry of today, but it's practically before science as well. There's no reason to really claim you're able to utilize it because the goals of it are impossible. If you just want to study it for interest or enjoyment then be my guest. If you want to do chemistry, then do chemisty... why would you try to rely on a "science" whose [b]main goals[/b] are transforming regular metals into gold or silver or inventing a panacea (basically a cure for everything that lets you live forever). I mean seriously, those are the two main goals of alchemists and anything decent and objective written about it would tell you that straight out. Where are these things? Oh right, no one has ever done either of them. Silly me. The other goal of alchemy was to create human life. Something tells me that people trying to clone humans right now are not using alchemy. The very idea of all of this requires a freaking [b]magic[/b] item in the first place. How anyone here would have or even know the location of a mythical thing like the Philisopher's Stone is beyond me. Like I said, have fun with it all you want, but don't pretend you can actually do anything alchemists have been trying to do for countless centuries. Modern alchemy is far different from what I've described above. If you want to buy into that stuff then whatever (the goals and requirements are thought of things within yourself in that case). I'm just speaking against the whole magical idea given by some in here lol.

Potty Mouth mode is unlocked either by beating the single player game or getting all 6 class medals. You get that Veteran's medal by doing the latter, but it does the same thing as beating the single player. I'm under the impression you unlocked it by beating the single player... but either way, from all I have seen, it only affects the multiplayer game. It would be nice if there is some sort of single player code [i]somewhere[/i], but as of right now I haven't heard anything about it. [quote]Wow, that's terrible. I'm glad I stuck with the N64 original. It's so strange that they would censor the game more for Xbox in 2005.[/quote] Notice how they removed the "Uncut" from the title near release? lol

From all I've seen that's just an untrue rumor. It doesn't exist in the single player. You can only unlock it for the multiplayer, which you've already done.

I've been trying to be more accepting of this stuff as of late. I've liked the Pillows for a long while, but I found several Japanese artists recently that I actually really enjoy. Bugy Craxone, Kururi (some spell it with a Q for whatever reason), Asian Kung-fu Generation, Sparta Locals, Green Milk From the Planet Orange (this one is really interesting instrumental rock), Walrus and a few others I forget the names of. Oh and YMCK, who do this weird Famicom/Nintendo pop stuff that's really great. I've been very happy with these... far more than the stuff I usually see mentioned many times in threads of this type. It got me thinking that the country didn't have much that personally interested me, but I'm glad to see I was wrong. EDIT: If someone wants to answer your Gackt question they will... there's no reason to delete your post that was right before mine and repost it right after me lol.

People who were pushing for anime in the early days are adults now. I wouldn't even know about the stuff if it wasn't for my uncle and he's like 50 now.

Man, if any of you actually have "magical" powers let a lighting bolt hit me the second I submit this.

Man, some of you guys have crappy graphics cards. I look at these and I'm like "the textures!!!!!" lol. Anyway, I hope to be playing more again. My current character is Semjaza Azazel. I went with Necromancer/Monk. I was N/Me, but there were several of those. I'm actually liking how the opposites work together... I wind up with a ton of healing magic, for one.

Not many people care about godhead, unfortunately. They kind of got somewhere with some singles on 2000 Years of Human Error, but not too big. I think a lot of people here would like them though. I have most of their albums. The stuff prior to 2000 Years of Human Error is good, but has some amateur qualities. For Human Error they were signed to a new label and fixed up some of their older songs and came up with several new ones. It's one of my favorite albums of theirs. After that Evolver came out, which is far more guitar based. I've really not listened to it as much as I should have.

There were a few people interested in a PAL release of this game. It turns out the rumors were true and Ubisoft and Midas Interactive published the title under the new "Ghostlight" label in Germany, France, England and Australia. I strongly recommend getting this title. In my opinion it's the best RPG on the system hands down. Of course, you're best off reading my old impressions before picking it up.

Most American grade schools do not offer other languages. It becomes pretty much expected in High School, though. I think starting off so early in your life learning other languages puts you in a much different situation than someone who is suddenly learning Spanish at age 13 and only bothers to do so a few times a week for four years. You're not going to get very far with it. From what I've read, it's easier to pick up new languages as a child.

I really enjoyed the first two. I bought the original when it came out for the Playstation and played the hell out of it, largely because I felt it was the best RPG on the system at the time. It's a bit dated in some ways now, I suppose, but there was just so much to do that I never really concerned myself with much outside of the fact that I was enjoying it. II absolutely owns the first, however. I think it's the best in the series. It has the best story, characters and pacing on all four games. As for III, I really enjoyed it for awhile. At some point I kind of just stopped playing it and I have no idea why. I wound up selling it, which I actually really regretted. It looked great and had some interesting mechanics (trading items between towns is a great idea that I'd love to see in more titles) and I liked most of the characters. I wasn't a huge fan of the battle system, though, and I absolutely HATED the whole "tunnel dungeon" design (which also appears in FFX). What's the point? I've not played IV.

I'm pretty sure it's just called Zool 2 lol.

I like both types, as long as the game is good. I played the hell out of F-Zero GX and I've been playing the hell out of Forza Motorsport. They're totally different racing concepts even excluding the whole idea of "realism". I think both types have different feelings to offer, really. Sometimes you want a more arcade experience and sometimes you wan't something else.