------ ---------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | .......METALSCENE CENTRAL PRESENT'S........ | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ ----------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------- ------ _______ ______ _____ _____ ___ ___ |\ ___ \ ___ \ | __ | | __ \ | __ \ / _ \ | | | \ | | | |__) / | |_\| | | \ \ | |_) ) | |_| | | | | \| | | __ < | / | | | | | __ < | ___ | | | | | | | \ \ | |_/| | |_/ / | | \ \ | | | | | | | |\ | | | /_/ |____| |____/ |_| /_/ |_| |_| |_/ |_| | | | / \ | |/ \| Issue 05/2000 http://metalscene.tsx.org galahad@netppl.fi / gregjesko@clds.net / rickhal@videotron.ca Contents: ---------- * Editor's Note * Irc Quote of the Month * Quick News * Compo Now 5 Results * RED Music Disk - Spiritual Annihilation * Tracker Development News - Fast Tracker 3 * Interviews - Tarantula - Razor * Song Reviews - Singles - Disks * TiS Boycott * Compo for Coders * New Look of s3m.com * Articles - Diskmag Editor's Diary * Corner of Thoughts ------------------------------------------------------------------ EDITOR'S NOTE ------------------------------------------------------------------ Okay.. so the game review was a bas idea. I'll start something more for the scene in next issue. Also note that not all songs got reviewed. They will get reviewed for next issue. ------------------------------------------------------------------ IRC QUOTE OF THE MONTH ------------------------------------------------------------------ no offense but that my curse remix sucks, too techno for my taste hello... aaargh! don't call it TECHNO hail Lacrimae impiouz da progressive niggah sounds techno to me it's not TECHNO you ignorant cunt! It's like saying Dark Funeral is HARD ROCK or something ------------------------------------------------------------------ QUICK NEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------ * TRACKED AGGRESSION 6 During Irc Meeting 7 FrizzleFried told us that there might be coming new Tracked Aggression music disk, which though would be a cover disk this time. It will be tribute to Slayer. * STORM OF BELIAL'S MUSIC DISK! Storm Of Belial is finally making new music disk. Nocri reported this on IRC a while ago. We can wait it to be released sometime in autumn/winter. * FUNERAL PYRE'S MUSIC DISK Surreal has been asking about the new Funeral Pyre disk, and it will be done during this winter, so the release date goes to next year. I haven't discussed with other group members, so consider this as a rumor right now :). * SOFTWARE UPDATES - XMPlay 1.7 has been released, http://www.un4seen.com/music - Sonique 1.63 has been released, http://www.sonique.com - Modplug Tracker 1.12 has been released, http://www.modplug.com/tracker/ * MC SITE MC site will be re-designed in winter 2000-2001. If you have any good ideas about new features that should be in there, take couple of minutes of your time and drop me mail about it. galahad@netppl.fi (in case you didn't know that for some mysterious reason) :). * MODULICA DELAY Hakan Productions music disk, Riders Of The Lightning, has been delayed. Hakan reported that Modesty Drummer will not finish his song and will be replaced. * EVENTS BOARD From now on all tunes posted on scene events board are automatically reviewed, but disks must be there also. We will check the events board only for reviews so remember to report your releases there if you want them reviewed also. * INVASION Top Metal Trax is organizing a meeting event. It will be a metal trackers invasion to StarChat at TiS. It's an attempt to spread the word of metal tracking in a totally new way by taking us to their channel. It's kinda interesting to imagine 30 metal trackers in there :). More info and schedule will be in Metallurgy issue 03/2000. * MESSAGE BOARDS SYSTEM CHANGE Metalscene Central has abandoned old InsideTheWeb service and founded a new board community with EZBoard. It offers much more features and is much more configurable than the old one. Feedback has been 99,5% good so far. Only Amanojaku (what a surprise) dared to complain :). ------------------------------------------------------------------ COMPO NOW 5 RESULTS ------------------------------------------------------------------ There were 19 entries total and 4 of them were disqualified, which leaves 15 tunes for the compo voting. Without any further bullshit, here are the winners: 1. Outcast by Razor 2. Leuka by Blue Shade 3. Medley by Cadaver, Maelstorm by Einherjar and Fe by Frozen Eyes (same number of votes) Congratulations to the winners! ------------------------------------------------------------------ -->COMMERCIAL BREAK<-- ------------------------------------------------------------------ Regal Embryo Dismemberment -------------------------- SPIRITUAL ANNIHILATION Music disk R.E.D. invites everybody to track a tune or two for the new music disk which will be released in January 2001! No size limit - 2 tunes per tracker - all styles allowed - covers accepted - maximum of 24 tunes - time to track! ...Just don't release your tune, before the music disk is out. Tracking deadline: 31.12.2000 - Formats: IT & XM [http://metalscene.tsx.org / http://metalscene.cjb.net] [e-mail: galahad@netppl.fi / songs and questions here.] ------------------------------------------------------------------ TRACKER DEVELOPMENT NEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fasttracker comes true :) A public pre-alpha version will be released soon. At the end of September or first of October we'll be able to do the web-page. When the web be prepared the public version will be released. Something important : VST2.0 instruments included :) --------- no-error * http://www.error-404.com/noerror/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ INTERVIEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------ Tarantula Interview Organizer note: This is a fine example of grammatical errors in interviews for all of you. Turned out to be very funny session, but at least you will know what's Tarantula up to today! tARANTUL_ buffer saved on Sun Sep 03 15:44:16 2000 It's been a while since the last interview and since we have not heard anything from you for a loooong time...what's up? well, I guess everythings fine. Although the damn school started again How was your summer? quite relaxing, I got this new movie-hobby of mine during it, as you already know :) oh yeah :), anyway, I think more than just few people would like to know how's your tracking? :) well, I've had a little bit of a writer's block here... I got lots of ideas and unfinished songs, but I haven't really finished anything. I'm pretty sure I'll get something finished soon, something really cool! ;) And my samples are much better now Good to hear that, you've been quiet too long :). Still continuing with the current style? no more such crappy samples as in The Chosen One Yeah, I guess so... Although I would enjoy making something more brutal for a change, maybe something Sepultura style But I'll mainly stick in the melodic line That sounds very interesting I don't think that the old samples were that bad, what the hell you're going to do to improve them even more? I've learned to mix the samples better... More bass, no too much middle and some treble A normal program like Goldwave will do just fine to do those things ah...so that's the secret, what about the metal scene in general, is it gone through any improvement during the last couple of years? Yeah, I think so. The samples sound better these days and there are more and more talents coming up for example I think Blue Shade has some pretty good stuff Yeah, I think whole Moonstorm group has some nice stuff :) Yeah, they do :) Any advice for the huge mass of beginner trackers? hmmm... Don't listen to what other people say about your songs, the only opinion that matters your own track only the kind of music you like, don't try to please anyone sounds good to me that's all there really is to it and practice a lot, of course do you have any other future plans except releasing new tune *soon*? I've been planning to get a band together, but I really can't find the right members... And believe it or not: I still don't have a guitar amplifier! I've always played through my stereos. I gotta buy that amplifier soon! :) That's what happens when you buy movies instead of new equipment ;) yeah, you couldn't be more right about that! :) BTW...where you got your nickname? :) uh, let me think... I don't think there really is a good story behind that, I just thought it's a good nick but it wasn't a really good idea to choose that, there are at least three other trackers called Tarantula out there! just like that? if do some analyzing I think it points to tarantella spider..but as a movie freak it also points to quentin tarantino :) yeah I guess you can't find another tarantula very easily around irc or anything :) you know what... Tarantella is finnish, tarantula is english. It means the same spider :) really? really. :) that's what happens if you don't have wordbook right next to ye when doing interview :) now I know that too :) yeah, well it's dictionary, not wordbook! haha! :) f**k you :) :) alright...let's forget these grammatical errors and tell me what you like to drink nowadays to get in the mood :) just coke really, I don't drink too often, but I'll start drinking more when I get 18 ;) I'm still 17, you know I obey the law. :) sure I've drank a couple of times, but that's it really bleh.. this will be very historical interview.. you are actually the first one who answered "coke" :) yeah, probably so! :) I wonder what's that "coke" really is ;) have you noticed we end every damn sentence with a :) or ;) who cares...I guess I'm tired of doing so-serious-stuff- all-the-time interviews this kind of interviews are much more fun to read! and make too :) yeah..well, I guess we really know now what's up with you anyway nice to see you're still active, any last words for the crowd? you actually expect someone will read this? ;) ok: keep it metal everyone! (what a dull ending) :) ------------------------------------ Razor Interview Razor_ buffer saved on Fri Sep 08 22:52:10 2000 Hello there Razor, first of all, tell us all the details about yourself. Well, I'm 14 years old and I live in Sein"joki. I heard about this scene from Surreal and started tracking some shit power/heavymetal tunes... Ah, well you've become quite famous around here, what are your thoughts about tracked metal scene? There is coming very much new trackers and the scene getting bigger and bigger all the time. It's very cool that we have this kind of scene :) I fully agree :) You entered DTC1 with not much success, but you won Compo NOW 5! What you're planning to do now? Hmm... I'm doing my Imapled Nazarene disk which is almost ready, and doing also my Modulica song Ride The Lightning. So you are now officially Modesty Drummer's replacement? Modesty didn't have time (or something) to do it, and Hakan asked me to do it. I said yes and Gutrot wants to sing it by the way... I'm eagerly waiting for the modulica disk, you did some nice job on Modules In Black disk also :) thanks. You joined Moonstorm a while ago, but the page is not been updated for a long time, do you know what's going on in there? I think Malakhai who's the leader is too lazy to update the page =D Damn, and that dude hangs on irc all the time :P ask him. Maybe I should, anyway, what equipment you use to create your samples? Jackson PS-1 or PS-6 guitar, Zoom 505 multieffect pedal and Cool edit pro How long you've been playing? I don't know... I started playing acoustic guitar when I was 9 or something. I playid it about two years, then I started playing electric guitar... Your opinion on what is the most important thing to make a good metalmod? Of course first you have to make some good riff and then track it or play to computer... I don't know! :D Usually vocals makes it much better... Heh.. that was quite hard one, alright, do you have any influences? (bands affected to your style) Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, Children Of Bodom, Sinergy, In Flames, Ozzy Osbourne, Impaled Nazarene and so on.... Nice mix :) No wonder you are able to track so various styles I listen to all kind of styles of metal... Any favorite trackers? I listen to all kind of styles of metal... Cadaver, Ari M, Blue Shade, Amok, Icelizard, Einherjar... and Malekith.. To the end, I'd like to have your opinion about copying other's songs? Like this DJ dude did with Cadaver's tunes? That's shit man! If you wanna copy, you have to copy only some, not the whole song! Yeah, it's sad that this shit still happens.. yeah... I know Alright, you can throw anything you want in as a last comment. God this was shit interview! I can't speak English :-) heheh...I think it was great, wait till you see tarantula interview...now that was shitty interview :) hah :-D thanks for the interview dude no prob gal. ------------------------------------------------------------------ SONG REVIEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------ ** Singles : ------------ Warlord: The Exiles 2 Reviewer: Dragon Score: 5.5/10 Well, some kind of death/blackish metal, with troll-like vocals, many on the Scene like them, but i prefer clean vocals or good quality soft grunts, which is not the case here. Also, the song itself offers nothing new except a melodic part near the end and a potable finish. Warlord has done much better songs. The guitar work and overall sound is kind of itchy, fuzzy, noisy....... -------- URL : http://www.nettilinja.fi/~jaakkola/W_exile2.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Wicker Man: Hideaway Reviewer: Dragon Score: 7/10 Since Wicker Man is one of the new face in the Scene, he's less skilled than most, but he comes up with an interesting song, kind of Maidenish, especially the beginning. The guitar sound is very basic, a good drum/bass/riff combination, but the lead guit is very archaic. But the good tempo, overall melody and atmosphere is very good. A bit repetitive though, vocals would have been nice. -------- URL : http://pluto.spaceports.com/~maiden/mod/hideaway.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ S. Von Berzerk: Claws Of Tragedy Reviewer: Dragon Score: 7.5/10 Better quality growls than Warlord, not too annoying. Nice guitar, reminescent of Ari. I don't know about the narrator in the middle of the song, who's it from? Anyway, overall, heavy/death with no solo, a steady beat, solid drumming, but a lack of spirit in some way. It's still a fairly enjoyable song. What is it about? -------- URL : http://www.traxinspace.com/Music/Songs/ Download.asp?SongID=39101 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Ur: When Stars Fell Reviewer: Dragon Score: 8/10 Get out of that box, you're scaring me!!! No, nice intriguing debut to the song, and solid bassdrum. I like the mystical, loomy, compelling atmosphere, with hints of 'Le Cirque Du Soleil' or some- thing, with that weird keyboard. Very different and original though. I like it a lot, but it's just a bit short and some storytelling of some kind near the end would have nailed it. -------- URL : http://www.traxinspace.com/Music/Songs/ downloadfile.asp?SongID=39701 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Aeuk: Robbing The Grave Reviewer: Dragon Score: 6/10 Typical Aeuk, though a very looong song for him. We kind of don't know where the song is going or what it's all about. What is the motivation behind Aeuk's songs? What goes through his mind when he comes up with song after song of dark, mad riffs, that make you wanna wear straight jackets and move to the crazyhouse permanently? What is it about Aeuk? He did a very kool guitar solo this time, in one of his best, which is in my opinion a well deserved 6. -------- URL : http://members.xoom.com/tombmaiden/aeuk-a6.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Khali: Full Moonlight Reviewer: Dragon Score: 8.5/10 Oh yeah, that one. Very 7th Guest. Nice little songie. Overall sound very mysterious and very moody, meaning that there's a lot of changes in the overall feeling. There's some speed metal drum- work and orchestral parts, kind of a cross between Slayer and Sava- tage, with some hints of ambient. I like it. -------- URL : http://members.xoom.com/khali1/Fmlight.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Aeuk: Losfer Words (Xtreme mix) Reviewer: Dragon (what a coincidence) Score: 5/10 This has joke mod written all over it. I think i listened to it about 50 times and if it wasn't for that damn wheelchair, i would have fell on the floor laughing every single time. It's badass, it just makes no sense and there are quite many fuckups throughout. But i'm sure that if you remove those fuckups you'd have a very sellable product. As B-side of something good, of course. -------- URL : http://members.xoom.com/tombmaiden/aeuk-lwx.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Blue Shade/Ari Manninen: Emotional Dying Reviewer: Dragon Score: 7/10 Muffled Ari style module, with weird clear vocals, which i didn't think were so bad. Good atmospheric keyboard again, that seems to be becoming a trend, whether in heavy/black/death/melodic or any other style of metal. Of course the best part of it is the bril- liant solo, even though it's not tracked. Who in their right mind could track such a quality solo? Except maybe for NiC. -------- URL : http://www.dlc.fi/~pontto/emotion.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ NordavinD: Soul Skulpture Reviewer: Dragon Score: 7/10 A very good In-Flames like song, with interesting sound effect fills and keyboard. The riff is nothing extraordinary, but the overall sound is what makes everything great and fitting perfectly. The reason for the score of 7 is the lack of anything original. Well tracked though. -------- URL : http://www.crosswinds.net/~nordapoika/soul.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ NordavinD: Horror In Your Sweet Dreams Reviewer: Dragon Score: 7/10 Same style as Soul Skulpture, but with vocals. Low growls, with good reverb, not too annoying. More melody overall and good drums. No key- boards either, or effects. But everything evens up to 7. A good tra- cking effort, but nothing special. -------- URL: http://www.crosswinds.net/~nordapoika/horror.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------- Trooper/Warzone: Flying To The Visionland Reviewer: Murhaq Score 7/10 Yeah, this was somekinda stratovarius stylish powermetal, really enjoyable piece of it's kind. Leadguitar melodies were catchy and easy to listen. Synths and rythm guitars give really 'stratovarius' feeling :) There were some good solos too, and overall song is really enjoyable 'background' music, but not much else. Samples are too sucky for nowadays mods. Would be a powermetal masterpiece with better samples and vocals, missing vocals made it sound a bit boring. Good tracking still. -------- URL : http://www.tutka.net/~jani/flying.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Aeuk: No More Hate (Autopsy cover) Reviewer: Murhaq Score 2/10 Hmm, covers are always a bit hard to review. I haven't heard original or this one so I'll handle this as it would be original one. Well, first of all, it's simple and same riffs repeat all the time, and it's too short. Rythmguitar sound is too 'soft' in my opinion, and drumwork is simple and not-so-good :) Vocals are very unclear, overall not so good or catchy song. -------- URL : http://members.xoom.com/tombmaiden/aeuk-a7.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Morfeus: Born of Cold Seed Reviewer: Murhaq Score 7/10 Quite good slow blackmetal or something, synths give really dark and mysterious mood. Really enjoyable to listen in dark room with candlelight (Yeah really! try that!). Guitar sound reminds me about old Samael, in positive way. Drums were a bit sucky in my opinion, but fit the song fine, but bassdrum sample isn't good sounding. Tracking itself was good. With vocals this one would have higher score, but still must download everyone who like slow quality blackmetal. -------- URL : http://www.gowingo.com/web/Morghlith/Coldseed.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Wicker Man: A Search for glory Reviewer: Murhaq score 4/10 Cover of Warlord's song, original in MW3 music disk. Quite funny one :) quite good as 4-channel mod, musically ok, but i'm not really into chiptunes. Drums were a bit annoying because there wasn't hihat or cymbals at all. Would be nice to know also that has Wicker Man done anything else than changed instruments or has he really tracked this.. -------- URL : http://pluto.spaceports.com/~maiden/mod/glory.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ MatoFly: Precone Reviewer: Murhaq Score: 6/10 Heh it's MatoFly again with his strange songs :) Guitar sound has changed a bit since he bought new guitar, but still can regonize this as MatoFly song. This was darkes than earliel ones, but still sound like technology demo as LIB said. Tracking was again great, but still missing those catchy riffs. Main riff sounds really familiar, hmm ripped from somewhere?:) Somekinda vocals would be cool, a bit booooring without them.. -------- URL : http://www.geocities.com/jussipol/Percone.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Assassin - Holy Arse Reviewer: Malakhai Score: 5/10 This is thrash metal tune faithful to Assassin's early style. Good solid riffs and decent drumming put together but maybe a little too repetitive. Vocals would do a lot of good too. Tracking is good as always in Assassin's tunes but this just lacks something that would make you listen this over and over again. Well maybe that's too much to ask since this isn't so seriously made... overall I'd say this is a nice little thrashy tune but just didn't hit me. -------- URL : http://neptune.spaceports.com/~assassin/home/holyarse.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Claymore - Kingdoms part 1 Reviewer: Malakhai Score: 8/10 Here we have really professional sounding orchestral tune with great samples and awesome tracking. You won't do stuff like this in one night. In fact I think this could very well be in some movie background music. As a stand-alone tune this is also very good but I would've waited this to blast into massive symphonic metal at the end. I'll be waiting Kingdoms part 2 for sure. -------- URL : http://www.traxinspace.com/Music/Songs/ downloadfile-show.asp?SongID=39385 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Gutrot - Torn To Shit Reviewer: Malakhai Score: 7/10 Something for brutal death fans here. Good heavy downtuned riffs and great growling. Samples are overall good which is quite unusual for this era in tracking for some reason. This isn't surely the most innovative death metal, at least not in lyrics. And lenght is only 1 minute which is quite typical to "real" death too. But anyway death metal fans will like this for sure. -------- URL : http://www.traxinspace.com/Music/Songs/ downloadfile-show.asp?SongID=39783 ------------------------------------------------------------------ NordavinD - Death Reviewer: Malakhai Score: 7/10 This is melodic death tune with Betrayer samples. "No not again!!" must be in everyone's mind now but surprisingly this is quite good. What makes this good are Cadaver's vocals. Apart from vocals this isn't very original stuff. Nicely tracked though and riffs and drums are OK but nothing really special there and I have to say that without vocals this would probably be damn boring. But who cares now when there's excellent Cadaver's vocals and make this worth downloading for melodic death fans. -------- URL : http://www.crosswinds.net/~nordapoika/death.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ NordavinD - Pohjoisen puolesta Reviewer: Malakhai Score: 6/10 Can't really determine style of this one... maybe something between viking metal and finnish rock music :). Guitar samples are this time Razor's and nothing wrong with 'em. It says on NordavinD's pages that this is joke but I kinda liked this. Of course this isn't technically very good and vocals sound more shouting than singing :). But musically this sounds fresh and especially I liked garage feeling caused by not so perfect drumsamples. NordavinD says on his website also that this is his first and last viking metal tune and I really don't see reason why. At least this is more original than melodic death stuff that he's been doing lately. -------- URL : http://www.crosswinds.net/~nordapoika/pohjola.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Pantheon - Unnaturality Reviewer: Malakhai Score: 5/10 First tune I hear from Pantheon and I was surprised positively although there's still to improve. Very hard to put this into any category... melodic stuff mostly anyway. This reminds a lot of Assassin's tunes in some parts. Riffs are mostly good and nothing wrong with drumming either. Strings sound a little clumsy because they are not spread to different channels and guitar solo is quite horrible sorry to say. But I liked fast part near the beginning and ending part too. Have to complain about actual ending because it's again typical volume fading out... please try ppl make up something else because that's just too easy way to end a tune. Overall this is still slightly over average tune and enjoyable for one or two times at least. -------- URL : http://www.traxinspace.com/Music/Songs/ downloadfile.asp?SongID=40071 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Sahaj Maituna - Metal Devotion Reviewer: Malakhai Score: 6/10 This song surely isn't repetitive. First there's Dream Theaterish part with short power metal part within. Nice clean guitar and good drumming. At about 2 minutes starts almost like totally different song. More heavy stuff with guitar solo (which is unfortunately quite bad once again because of sample). In this part there's some great, really good sounding patterns but also some strange sounding out-of-rhythm riffs and some tuning problems, not many though. But overall better than average this part too and the ending is just excellent. -------- URL : http://members.xoom.com/potrancksz/files/devotion.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ The Wickerman - Die Or Live Reviewer: Malakhai Score: 2/10 Wickerman has still lot to develop as a tracker. Start sounds actually quite promising but after that you can hear that this is clearly beginner's work. Drums and guitar riffs are way too simple and apart from "intro" there's no other instruments used, not even bass guitar. There's some timing problems too. Good thing that this lasts only 1:46... A lot to improve but nobody is good at first. -------- URL : http://pluto.spaceports.com/~maiden/mod/die.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Khali: Mad Dreams of the Cyracuse Moon Reviewer: Daoloth Score: 5/10 I definetly don't like the first part (0:00 to 0:18), can't really say why, but it sounds like something from The Smurfs or something. Pretty standard synth-blackmetal with an arabian vibe is what best can describe the rest of the song. I like the lead, it sounds good, though better samples could have been used. The thrash-like riff at 2:24 is quite good, too, but nothing special. Sounds kinda weird with these samples. The it suddenly ends with fading strings. Nothing special, but still pretty well done. -------- URL : http://members.xoom.com/khali1/Mdreams.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ NordavinD/Nemesis Cathal: Helvetesskare Reviewer: Daoloth Score: 6/10 It's been a really long time since I last heard anything from Nemesis Cathal (mid-1999 actually), and this is the first time I ever hear anything from NordavinD. And I must say I'm surprised. This is pretty good blackmetal with a norwegian feel to it (I wonder why..:) As always Nemesis has very good vocals (I've only heard two songs before, the ones on Vuohisoturit's last disk), but this is the way I'd like to be able to sing. I can't hear much of the vocals, but I guess they are satanic/viking themed. NordavinD, on the other hand, didn't succeed too well with the song... just kidding:) This is, as I said before, pretty good blackmetal, nothing new, but how easy is it to be original these days? I espe- cially like the majestic feeling created by the guitars, proof of the fact that you don't need ten layers of strings to make a song atmos- pheric. Very good. I don't know what else to say. The guitars sound very good, so do the drums. Can't hear the bass, but it has Zack's name on it, so I take for granted that it sounds good. Can't really put my finger on the downsides, but it might be the lack of real originality and the relative lack of variation, more tempo- shifts could fit in, for instance a part with absolutely insane blastbeats and totalitarian screaming. Ah well... -------- URL : http://www.crosswinds.net/~nordapoika/helvete.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Quasian: System 51 Reviewer: Daoloth Score: 4/10 At first I had some real doubts about reviewing this non-metal song in a metal e-zine, but for better or for worse, Dragon made me change my mind. And I'm glad he did. For even if the song itself is not much metal, it is still a good song. It reminds me of Necros (melodywise) and movie music (late 80's Miami Vice-style tv-series about cars, but with a more modern sound). The guitars sound very good, but the wah-wah "flapping" is a little too much, and the drums remind me too much of Village People :) Anyway, this song has some good melodies, but it seems I have heard it all before. This kind of fusion-funk-pop seems to be very popular, and thus it quickly becomes boring unless you put other elements into it. And I think Quasian's own description, industrial/metal is WAY out of line. -------- URL : http://www.traxinspace.com/Music/Songs/ downloadfile.asp?SongID=39498 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Necrotum: Fire Of Hell Burns In My Eyes Reviewer: Daoloth Score: N/A This song was written for the TiS 30 second compo, so there's not much music here. The song is some kind of thrash/blackmetal, and it even has a solo. The riff that leads up to the solo is quite good, and the synths add a lot to the melody of the song. The solo itself is not so interes- ting. It's a fast song, which is basically a must, cause you can fit more into it when it's this short, and that kinda makes it more of a real song than if it were just a couple of repeating patterns. You get the point. All in all, a queezy song that I could listen to about five times in a row. I guess it'll be the same for you. -------- URL: http://www.traxinspace.com/Music/Songs/ downloadfile-show.asp?SongID=39600 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Ari Manninen: Buried in Waiting Reviewer: Daoloth Score: 6 Shit, I've been waiting for a new song by Ari ever since I heard "Belated by the Lurking Shadows". Ok, I know he released that viking song, but to be honest it wasn't any good at all, actually, so I guess for me this is what I've been waiting for. Ok, I almost forgot Duet of the Ritual, but that was in DTC, so I'll count that out too. ANYway, here we go. Slow and grinding black(?)metal with the best vocals yet, and as Ari himself said, "Damn how depressive and dark tune this is". Couldn't have said it better myself. When I heard those vocals, I almost shit my pants. He sounds a little like It from Abruptum, yet with a certain touch of 1992-era My Dying Bride vocalist Aaron. I think my friend called it "hurl-growl" and well, vomit is more like it. Excellent. The guitar riffs are very simple, and in a song like this I don't think they have to be anything but simple. And that horrible metronome is nowhere to be heard :D That alone almost makes this song worth the score. So what can I say? Very dark, brooding sorta song, with excellent vocals and a dense kind of atmosphere that creeps up on you from behind. I guess the only downsides are the somewhat uninspired synths and the fact that this song is slow ALL the time. Some tempo-variations wouldn't have hurt. Overall, a song well worth listening to a couple of times and more. -------- URL : http://phobos.spaceports.com/~manninen/ari_bury.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ MatoFly: Abuse Reviewer: Daoloth Score: 7/10 Ok, first off, what the fuck is the meaning (if any) behind that handle? Explain please, you can reach me at t_asplund@yahoo.se Ok, now the song. When I first downloaded this a couple of weeks ago, everyone complained about the technicalities and the fact that MatoFly just wanted to show off, and I have to say that I disagree. I listen to a lot of progressive music (metal and non-metal), and I like this a lot. Sometimes it reminds me about early Genesis (when Peter Gabriel was a member and they were good and Phil Collins was one HELL of a drummer and he had sideburns and they were so good and...oh, where were I?), espe- cially in the pre-chorus(?) parts (just after the first riff's volume gets too loud) and the lead at 2:13 (ModPlug time, BTW couldn't you have made this solo longer?) and at 2:59 (MP time again). The drums are also very well tracked, and fit perfectly (from what I can hear) into the song. More complex basslines wouldn't hurt, and some Hammond leads would have been very cool. The only thing I can really complain about is the too-short lead at 2:13 and the riff at ~0:30, which really shouldn't be flangered, it would have been heavier that way. A very good song. This is the third time in this issue that I have rated this high, but don't get me wrong, I'd really like to shred a song or two, but almost all the songs were good/great. Except for Mortal's piece of crap, but I'll have more to say about that further down. -------- URL : http://www.geocities.com/jussipol/Abuse.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Mortal: Master of Death Reviewer: Daoloth Score: 2/10 Ok, I got this song along time ago when it was called something else and I hated it. Now Mortal renamed it Master of Death, put in another riff, and re-released it. Same crap as before. But instead of just saying that over and over (and OVER) again, I'll try to be encouraging. Y'know, tips and stuff. First off, don't rip riff-samples like you did here, and use them in the way you did. Second, don't play a G and an A at the same time, unless you can make it sound good. Third, stop fooling around. I don't believe that Mortal really exists. Tell me if I'm way outta line here, but I honestly think that "Mortal" is some other tracker playing games with us. NOTHING can be this bad. Really. Just listen to the second part after the break. Crap. Not even christian heavy metal is this bad. -------- URL : http://www.mir.spaceports.com/~nygard/modi/mor_mod.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Warlord: A Horde of Vikings Reviewer: Daoloth Score: 4/10 For a first tune with new guitar/new vocals/whatever this isn't too bad. Warlord should have added more guitar layers to make the end result sound fatter and heavier, though. As it is now it sounds a little thin. And the volume isn't loud enough, I think that contributes to the overall thin feeling of this. Great growls though, very good actually. When recording whole riffs, timing and beat are two very important things. I can't tell you how many times I've recorded a riff that I couldn't time with other riff, or even itself. Most parts of these riffs are those kinda riffs. It's not horrible, but it's a little untight and that makes it sound worse. My own tune Asama Hit Squad sadly comes to mind. Expect a new version of that one soon, though :) -------- URL : http://www.nettilinja.fi/~jaakkola/Vikings.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------- ** Disks : ---------- Violator - The Black Abyss Reviewer: Dragon Score: 5.5/10 1-From The Edge (intro) 2-Black Abyss 3-Guttural Confessions 4-Majestic Invasion 5-Serpent Sacrifices 6-When Suicide Beckons (my final decision) 7-Xeno-morph (transformed by hate) Very curious intro. And a very death second track. Undecipherable vocal grunts. Weird stereo effects... That guttural confessions thing is the perfect qualification for this disk. The stereo effect in this song in particular is freaky. The 4th track is pretty long and starts with a 45 seconds intro. It's the basic death necrosomething follow-up to any song of the disk. It's been a long time since we've seen Violator active in the Scene, he really comes back with a vengeance. He's a master at what he does, but that doesn't mean it's good. But as i read the titles all in a row, i can't help but feel there's one intruder. All the rest seems like a diabolical plan of sadistic self-euthanasia. When suicide beckons, transformed by hate... very macabre. -------- URL : http://members.xoom.com/bloodredsky/Vi_abyss.zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Murhaq - Unholy Paths Reviewer: Malakhai Score: 4/10 1. Black Angels 2. River Of Time 3. Eye Of Twilight Melodic "black" metal in style of Dimmu Borgir and co. All 3 songs are very much alike made with same samples which aren't very good. Especially guitar samples sound strangely thin at least on my stereos. All songs are vocaled by Soul Saver and nothing wrong with 'em except they're put absolutely too loud. Another thing I disliked is that piano is too much used surely for all three songs. There are some good parts in every song but overall they all sound quite quickly made. Murhaq should spend more time and these might be a lot better but now their just punch of mass production songs which fall into mediocrity... -------- URL : http://ajatollah.hes.iki.fi/murhaq/music/unholy_vocals.Zip ------------------------------------------------------------------ Gutrot/Dormant: Satangoat Reviewer: Daoloth Score: 8/10 Gutrot and Dormant have once again joined forces to create what may very well be the best disk released this year. Wait a minute, who am I trying to fool here? This IS the best disk released during 2000, and I think ANYONE will have a hard time beating it. It was not long since I heard Dormant's music for the first time, and well, it seems he's outsmarted his brother once again (like on "Tverheten Anfaller"), 'cause his songs are what truly makes this disk worth endulging in. Not that Gutrot's songs are bad, oh no, but Dormant's are the ones shining brighter than the sun once again. Let's go. Blasphemous Lands by Dormant: beginning with a very strange (at least for blackmetal) guitar riff and some pounding drums, this is blasphemy made real. Musically, it's not very technical, but the riffs sound very good and the drumming is well made, even if the samples could be better. There's a half-acoustic part at about 1:45 (MP time) that somehow makes me wanna go home and track chugga-chugga metal with Betrayer's guitars, but I don't know if that's good or bad. Anyway, this is a very good blackmetal song with real catchy riffs and good singing. Brood from Below by Gutrot: Argh. I hoped that Gutrot would do a majes- tic bm-song WITHOUT synths, but I hoped in vain. Anyway, "blackmetal is supposed to be satanic!" as he himself said, and at least he succeeds with that. And if "satanic" means evil and brutal, then I think he made it once again. Very good drumfill at 2:42 BTW. I guess the lyrics are about satanic victory and stuff, nothing wrong with that, but at least try to be a bit poetic. Better guitarsamples would also have been good, they're not bad all the time, but some of the tremolos have been played with the keyboard, (one samples used to play several notes), and that doesn't sound good. As always, Gutrot's vocals are top of the crop. Wish I could sing like that. The Light Impaired by Dormant: Prepare for the ultimate blasphemy; female vocals in bm! Ok, it's only one scream, and it sounds cool, so I'll forgive him this time. The Light Impaired is clearly this disk's best songs, with true blackmetal-sounding riffs and lots of blastbeats. And he mentions the goat several times. Evil. The first time I listened to this song I thought Dormant had mistyped in the instrument text, 'cause he stated that Maria's scream was at position 1F-20, but the first scream sure as hell sounded like a woman:) Then the song reached pattern 1F, and I realised I had been wrong. Fun. The guitars sound very good, lots of treble, which is good in blackmetal, and together with the vocals, they give this track the prefect blackmetal sound. Lots of treble and reverb, and not at all overproduced, as the trend (at least in "real life-music") has become. Just listen to everything recorded in Abyss studios the last four years or so. Oh, sorry, seems I drifted away there. The solo is quite good, a little offbeat, maybe (a little), and the outro sound very nice. Almost gives me a comforting feeling. Then my illusions are brutally crushed by... Eaten by the Vast by Gutrot: He claims this is "Definetly not one of my highlights", but I beg to differ. What could be more evil than the Psycho-intro and the infernal blastbeats that immediately follow? Very good riffing in this one, too. The first few lines of vocals could have been sung in a different way, though, it sounds like some old Deicide crap, and the cymbal mangling (like at 0:30) wasn't such a good idea, huh? Anyway, the rest of the song is just pure evil blackmetal the way blackmetal should be; brutal and uncompromising, with an evil touch. Powers of Blood by Dormant: I didn't expect the 4-line break in the middle of the first riff, and the strange riff after that part surpised me as well. Witch-themed blackmetal is what we have here. As if those three things weren't enough, Gutrot does a great guest appearance. I didn't think he could sing THIS good. Very good indeed. As I've written this whole review in a row (took about half an hour), and I'm getting tired, I find it harder and harder to figure out what to write. So I'll finish this quick. Great scratchy sound on the acoustic guitars in the interlude, BTW. Time to conclude this: Satangoat is a great disk. Even if it doesn't look like it from the review, I like all the songs very much and I think I have listened to this at least 20 times since it was released. I was thinking about scoring the disk song by song, but I decied that would be pretty meaningless, since every song except The Light Impaired and Brood from Below would have gotten 8 or so. Light... scored 9 and Brood... scored 7. In my head and ears, that is. Check out the fun picture too (Gutrot looks like Peter Wahlbeck, a swedish comedian), and get Satangoat or DIE! -------- URL : http://members.xoom.com/moonfreeze/mods/satangoat.zip ------------------------- In next month's RED RAIN: ------------------------- Singles: AssAssIn - B.F.M. Corpse - SPLASH Aeuk - Weird Rain Mephisto - The Knight Who Said NI"! Warlord - Unchained Aeuk - Gasping For Air NordavinD/Hakan - Everlasting Cruelty Disks: Murhaq - Dark Divinity Cadaver - MW3 Music + A lot more... ------------------------------------------------------------------ TRAX IN SPACE BOYCOTT ------------------------------------------------------------------ In an apparent attempt to improve the operations and overall community at TraxInSpace (TiS), certain artists had removed their Artist Accounts at the site in a protest or boycott, which received a fiery response from TiS founder, Mysterium. He responds in a post to the TiS Public Forums: "As of late I have received a few emails from some artists saying that they wished to be removed. They would write, 'Do not ask why, just please do it.'" Mysterium believes that the reason that people have been asking to be removed as artists is because people in IRC chats have been campaigning to have people disassociate themselves with TiS. "I understand that there are people out there who have nothing better to do than to sit in chat rooms and tell people to unregister as artists," he says in his post. Mysterium was obviously affected by the blind requests for removal, as he uses harsh words to those involved, "If you think you are too good for TiS and our vision, go somewhere else.", "Tough." and "Wake Up". However, after this inital post was made, it turned into one of the longest threads that I personally have ever seen on a message board such as this. People coming forward to 'defend' TiS and it's operations, and those who disagreed. It goes on seemingly forever, but I have collected some of the highlights for you. Please read through them, since if there is one thing that this thread has proved, is that there is a definite line between the different factions of our 'scene'. I think that many people realize that there are many different areas within what is commonly referred to as the 'scene'. For general use, I have referred to it as the 'Digital Music Scene' or the 'Free Music Scene' to make sure that everyone invloved has been included. The oldest part of this 'scene' is the part that includes the demoscene, whose roots go back into the pre-internet days. Since the dawn of the inernet, the 'scene' has been able to reach out, and form other sections. As one person put it, the 'scene' has a "fractured nature". What seems to happen is that people discover the 'scene' through one part or the other, and this seems to be a matter of tension for the other parts who feel that they are being left out. At least, this is what seems to be coming out as the gigantic thread on TiS plays out. There appears to be, as always, two sides to the argument. The source of the whole thing is apparently members of the 'demoscene' who are upset with the way that TiS operates, and decided to organize a boycott of the site through IRC. This prompted some emails to Mysterium, asking him to remove their artist accounts, which prompted him to post his frustrations in the Forums. There were your usual shallow, knee-jerk responses, but others from people who have heart and soul in what they believe in. Organizer note: If you want to know more, visit Modplug Central, where this news flash is from. http://www.modplug.com (message thread samples). ------------------------------------------------------------------ COMPO FOR CODERS ------------------------------------------------------------------ A compo has been announced for coders - the Comprez ANSI Compo. Comprez is a competition for audio coders. not quite trackers, not quite coders. people who can write music in code. The idea is to submit a 'track' as a ANSI-C program. the program outputs (to standard out) a 16-bit, stereo, 44.1kHz, intel-byte order, raw wave stream. then you listen to the output. Due to overwhelming interest, the submission date has moved to 1st December 2000. They are now also accepting entries that generate either a .raw file (rather than dumping to standard out), or a .wav file. Putting more money where their mouth is, they have announced a prize of AU$400 for 1st place, in addition to an Akai SO1 sampler, plus AU$100 for second place. The compo entries will be compiled in Linux, but the organizers want to remind people that this is not a linux-only competition. They have already had some windows entries. Visit the compo web site for examples, full rules, and more details. http://comprez.i2pi.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ NEW LOOK OF S3M.COM ------------------------------------------------------------------ Jason Hanley, webmaster of S3M.COM, reports: "...I've majorly overhauled the S3M.COM Digital Music Archive site. I've totally streamlined the HTML and cut out anything unnecessary. The new design is somewhat similar to the Google.com philosophy of simplicity. "Hard to believe S3M.COM is 2 years old. Easier to believe when Network Solutions comes knocking for your domain renewal. Of course, I decided to switch from those thieves to a friendlier domain registrar. "So in celebration of S3M.COM's 2-year anniversary, a small update. S3M.COM should now be quicker and slicker, sticking to my promise to give you the music, with no added fat. The HTML has been simplified, and the interface chopped to its bare essentials. Please send comments and bug reports to me. "Everything with the site seems to be working smoothly, which is good. I don't have much time to do updates these days. Very busy finishing up my last year of school, and working on an open-source game called Fate. "But in the meantime, Composers: Keep signing up and telling other musicians about S3M.. and Listeners: Keep enjoying the high quality music, with no added distractions." Take a look: http://www.s3m.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ DISKMAG EDITOR'S DIARY ------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a huge article about organizing a diskmag. It's a detailed story of the Hugi magazine editor's daily work for the magazine. It also shows what it is to be an organizer sometimes. I don't want to scare possible new organizers away by publishing this article in Red Rain, in fact I hope it will encourage new people to start doing it. At least I personally got interested when I read similar articles years ago. - Galahad [Source: Hugi magazine preview] "Thesis: Editors are intelligent. Only intelligent and well educated fellows can write good articles which are worth reading. Antithesis: Editors do not have to be intelligent. Writing articles is a matter of practise and dictionaries." (Ghandy) "Neutral-thesis: Diskmag editors are the poor suckers who have to edits piles of bad ASCII text into some kinda readable thing... *grin*" (TAD) Welcome to a new, unique section. Like so many good ideas, this one came to me when talking with TAD about Hugi. There are many myths about diskmag editors and my person. Like, that I have to be "hyperactive" to release a mag like Hugi very often. Or that I'm an arrogant ego-centrist. It is commonly believed that making a diskmag is hard, highly exhaustive work, because diskmags editors like telling that their audience. Yet sometimes things happen which show that some people don't really know what a diskmag editor's work is all about. "Wait a moment, I have to format a last article, then I'll pack the mag and upload it." - "Format? What? What do you have to format? The Hugi interface, the bonus pack or...??" And hey, this is just one funny scene. Knowing what's behind something, background information on how something was created actually is often much more entertaining than the actual product! This is what made me promise TAD to keep a kind of diary about the making of a full Hugi issue on the next possible occasion. The diary now begins! Thursday, August 10 The day of the release of Hugi 20 is the first day in the story of Hugi 21. Actually these release days - or let's better say nights - are one of the funniest and coolest things I experience in my life as a diskmag editor. Traditionally, I finish off issues online. It's simply a great feeling to do finishing touches to the design while checking mail for last-minute contributions, formatting the last articles and chatting to the waiting masses at the same time. So it was for Hugi 20. Actually I could have finished the mag some days earlier. But CoaXCable, who wanted to send me an updated version of his tune that was going to be used in this issue, had been at Assembly2k in Finland. He would not return to Israel before August 9th. So I set the release date to the 10th of August so that he could send me the updated tune. What I didn't know then was that he had the tune along with him in Finland anyway, so he could have sent it to me from the party place. Anyway, on August 5th I had also been promised a party report from the Nextempire guys, which would take "2-4 days" to finish. Besides, I had to write the editorial, finish the news corner and other regular columns, and wanted to create some filler articles for the then still small diskmag corner. So it was just fine to have some more time. In fact I didn't announce the release date on the official channels, that is the website and the mailinglist, but I mentioned it to several people on IRC. I therefore assumed the word was spreading in the scene and I had to be punctual. Actually I had not posted anything to the Hugi mailinglist for weeks, not even HugiNews - I had not made a new newsletter since the first of July. So I guess it was pretty much of a surprise for most people when this posting appeared on their screens: "Hugi 20 will come tonight! Just that you all know... so if you want to have a news or even article to be published in it I need to get it before 6:00 pm Central European Time (about two hours from now). Then the mag will be closed and uploaded." In the meantime, having the editorial and section design finished, I sat down in the garden and read in order to relax. Short after 6:00 pm it was time to go online - during the next hours, the phone costs would be less than one dollar per hour. I had arranged with Kozmik on the day before he should send me the party report until this minute. Well, it wasn't in my inbox yet, but I had got two news items in response to my mailinglist posting. Anyway, the Hugi 20 bonus pack was finished and ready for upload, so I decided get it onto an FTP server first and then check if the report had arrived. Meanwhile I was already flooded by a couple of people via ICQ asking me when they'd finally get the mag - "the scene is waiting :)", as Morph put it. I knew why I had decided not to log on to IRC yet. Already now the few people on my ICQ contact-list that were online had so many questions regarding the contents of the mag ("So tell me a pre-secret, did I get any votes for best writer?", to quote Morph once again - yeah, he talked the most) that I could hardly concentrate on evaluating and including the news I'd just received. Finally, when an email by TAD with some graphics for the option and quit screens arrived, I simply had to log off... Back online, having noticed there seemed to be something wrong with the button feature and thus implemented the quit screen in a different way, I was reported by the people whom I had given the URL of the bonus pack that the file contained CRC errors. Damn! Recently things like this had happened several times: upload a large, but okay zip file in binary mode, then select to download it and get an equally large, but erroneous zip file back. It had happened on different two servers, using two different freeware FTP clients. I hadn't been able to find out the cause. Talking to Sulphur about this, as he happened to be online, I was suggested to use command-line ftp. Now, however, the server was slow, I didn't manage to connect to it. He then gave me an account on his own server. Well, the result was a successfully uploaded file. Neither of us still knows what the reason for my CRC errors was, but at least a method had been found to avoid them. In the meantime the Assembly report finally reached me - two hours after the "final deadline". Just in time, as I was about to upload the mag! Under high pressure, while being regularly bombed by CoaXCable and consorts ("man sopes :> was ist met der hugi zwonzik :>?"), I proofread and formatted the text, encountering a few - maybe two - sentences that seemed to make no sense, as it seemed for grammatical reasons, and trying to carefully alter them so that the content would be preserved. Usually I'd have contacted the author but there was not enough time. Having finished the text, I decided it'd be better if the names of all demos were written with a starting capital letter, so I went through the thing again... Meanwhile I got a reply from Domainator, whom I had lately reminded to send me his article if he wanted it to have published in Hugi 20. What? He had already sent it two weeks ago and was wondering if I hadn't got it? Well, indeed I hadn't received the article or I'd have had answered to his mail. Quickly I replied, the mag was going to be released on this very day, but if he submitted his article "NOW", I'd probably be able to include it, as I was formatting a last article. I also received an update by Venior of his Writers-on-Writers statement about Morph... (now you finally know why their statements about each other look so similar!) Including this resulted in misaligned pictures and paragraphs on the next pages. I had to reformat about half of the article. Furthermore, Andromeda sent me an update of his article... fortunately just a little change in the members list that had no bad consequences on the layout. When I'd finally selected seven of fifty pictures I'd got for the Assembly report, scaled them to fit the column width and put them into the article at appropriate places (that is: start mag - open article - check for a suitable location for the first pic - close mag - include tag at this place in the article script - start mag - open article - check for a suitable location for the second pic - ...) - well, as far as I remember, then the mag just had to be encrypted and packed. Then it was finished. "Now it just depends on my modem :)", was my response to all further requests. At the same time I uploaded the mag I also replaced the html documents at the three mirrors of our website and, finally, logged onto IRC where the hungry wolves were lurking. They were especially on the #pixel channel, where the topic had already been set to "HUGI 20 = Y2K = year 2000". But now I had time to respond to all questions with humour and enjoy chatting. I still had to do other things simultaneously, too, of course: like posting announcement messages in the mailinglist, the most important newsgroups and news sites, and adding new download mirrors to lhugi20.htm. But the baby had been born, the rest wasn't so serious. I could tell several more anecdotes about Hugi 20 day, like the fact the first download mirror, ukscene.org, was stormed by so many hungry wolves that it took minutes until Distance managed to access the file in order to copy it over to ftp.scene.org - which itself was equally unreachable for outsiders, especially as many people were still leeching Assembly stuff from it. I also met a Latvian scener, Raver, who told me what I hadn't expected in my most megalomaniac dreams: that Russian sceners regard me as god and take my word for absolute truth. "Well, nice to see they like the Russian edition of Hugi", I replied. Maybe I am the Prophet of Scene Journalism, but just for fun, because nobody else claims this title for himself, but God, infallible, absolute truth...?? Then the first feedback reached me. The usual online-liners - hugi rocks, hugi rules, hugi ownz, and of course, but seldom, hugi sucks, mostly intended to provoke the others. Of course I couldn't expect long comments on individual articles such a short time after the release. If anybody would claim on that day he had already finished reading the mag then I'd have to be sure he either lied or hadn't read it thoroughly at all. On the first day, serious, valuable criticism was only expressed concerning the size-to-text-ratio. Indeed Hugi 20 was pretty huge to download, 3.8 megs packed, which mostly was due to the music. Unfortunately I had promised two musicians to use their tunes in this issue; in one case actually I had already promised almost two years ago that I'd use this tune as soon as it would be possible to play .it tunes in Hugi. .it support had been implemented in issue 16, yet I hadn't used the tune. Now I hadn't been able to postpone it any more, I had to use it in Hugi 20. I've sworn no more to promise that anything will be used in a particular issue. I must also mention a rather unpleasant experience. Around midnight I heard the release of Hugi 20 had obviously been the cause for a discussion on #coders.ger about my person. "Your image is being damaged badly", I was warned. I didn't intend to interrupt the discussion, but my contact suggested me to join the channel to "put the facts straight", so I did so. Immediately I was flamed by a few people there in a very rude manner. "When you talk about shit..." was how they greeted me. I was called "gay" and the lyrics of a song were quoted: "i know you want respect ... but contempt is all you get from me". It is clear that in such an atmosphere you can't lead a constructive discussion, and I decided to keep rather silent. It's a fact that some people on #coders.ger are not the politest gentlemen in the world, but how come they show this disdain for me? I suspect it's to do with several things. First of all, envy. Remember, Hugi originally was a German-language mag and didn't have to do much with the demoscene before issue 11. The sudden rise of popularity among the international scene made some of the people who had first dismissed the mag as lame and uninteresting especially hateful. In the course of the time some of these people became friendlier, others left the scene - as you can guess people with such attitudes don't have enthusiasm for today's scene. Yet jealousity probably remained, even if it was not expressed. Second, when I published articles about some people containing too personal facts, the growing enthusiasm among these people quickly came to an end. It was replaced by increasing hostility. After a discussion among how to treat person-related articles ended without a definite conclusion - people wanted me to send all articles they're involved in to them before they would get published, while I preferred no more to publish personal articles at all - I began to avoid entering German scene IRC channels. Hence the contact broke off, and the situation is like it was a year ago, just a little bit more hostile. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find a solution. Although I published a new version of the issue without the articles in question, many people and some ftp servers certainly still have the original one. If something is published in a diskmag, it's incredibly hard to get rid of it. Although this usually is advantageous, as in this way it's not likely that these pieces of computer culture will get lost for ever one day, it sometimes can have negative consequences. Well... at about 2:00 am, I logged off and went to bed. Friday, August 11 It was around 10:00 am and 12:00 pm when I left my bed and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Okay, this hasn't got anything to do with diskmag-editing, so I guess I could've skipped it :) Anyway, one of the things I had sworn to do more often is updating the Hugi website. As already six people had sent me emails that showed they had found Loxley's hidden tune in Hugi 20, I spontaneously decided to update the page including this news. Nothing so special, of course, but just so that the visitors would see that there are some fast dudes. Well, looking closer at the new emails I saw something that actually was a better reason for updating the page: Domainator's article on his OS project. "Well, it may be the last day (God this is just like school :)), but here it is"... Damn, had I got it a few hours earlier, it would have made it into Hugi 20. What to do, publish it in Hugi 21? Sure, but it contains a status report that won't be up to date in four months. An article for HugiNews? Well, I had a better idea, I htmlized it and put it on the Web. At least a good occasion to post another announcements to news sites - and after all, announcing Hugi at some decent place once every day has been another of my plans. The first feedback mails had arrived, yet they didn't contain too many details, either. But, then again, we know from earlier reactions what kind of articles the people who regularly send feedback like or dislike, and the ones who submit feedback for the first time are usually willing to tell a bit more on request. Probably some authors have been contacted directly via the email links included in the articles. Interestingly, nobody has submitted a support sheet yet. Well, probably that's because the online support form isn't linked to from the Hugi 20 download page. After all, now that we don't have charts any more it's mainly about feedback, and how should people give feedback before downloading the mag? And afterwards, they rather write freely instead of using a form. This is good anyway. The form should only encourage people to contact us. In the evening I get the last hidden part notices. That is, the last in order to fill the top 10. In fact Zyrax, who's made the 10th place, told me about it on IRC by passing. I had to make him aware that he had to use the email link included in the hidden part so that his discovery could really be counted... Louk bugged me to tell him where to find the hidden part. Now that the top 10 was filled I could give him a hint, as I was planning only to publish the first ten people in the "hall of fame". After some guessing he asked me if the hidden part was in the options screen - "yes", I answered, as it applied. Happily he boasted on IRC channels that he was the 11th. But as it turned out a few minutes later, he in fact hadn't found the hidden part yet: "i didnt know it was secret because i went into impulse tracker before loading hugi to check out mods :)" Erm, the secret tune is in the encrypted data file - he couldn't have played it in Impulse Tracker! It turned out that he thought one of the three tunes that were listed in the options screen was the hidden one. But none of these was. The hidden tune was, as said, hidden. After some experimenting Louk did find it in the end and, as nobody had reported having found it in the meantime, he remained 11th. I didn't decide to put the hidden part "hall of fame" online on that day as I wanted the visitor's attention not to get distracted from Domainator's article. Saturday, August 12 Wayfinder reported me the hidden tune was a chiptune remix of a track by Elwood. I hadn't known this before, otherwise I'd have included this information in the hidden part. I put the hall of fame together, mentioning Louk and the others who had meanwhile sent me noticed as after-rans. Obviously I hadn't been hard enough to resist Louk's begging to include him although he was just 11th and I had helped him. But anyway, he isn't in the actual table, so I guess this is a fair compromise. Actually I found the name "hall of fame" to be quite stupid and replaced it by "page of honour". That may be a bit exaggerated, too, as it's really not a great achievement to have found a hidden tune (although the little time some people needed is indeed impressive). But at least it fit our royalistic corporate identity. The statistics showed that there had been a thousand hits on the main Hugi website alone since the release of Hugi 20 - even though only the direct download address from ukscene.org had been spread at first. In my inbox, I found a new background picture by Tomaes - much better than his last attempt - and a tune by CoaXCable, whose samples reminded me of his welcomes.it used in Hugi 20. A phrase I had lately grown accustomed to was included in his mail: "hehe i am almost a hugi member/crew dude". On IRC/ICQ it has been possible to avoid reacting to this hint by emphasizing on another detail, but what should I reply to his mail? I decided to consult the other Hugi Core members. TAD suggested: "tell coaxcable he first needs to write 500kb of articles.. hahahah". Hmm, at least Dante, our new proofreader who also dreams of joining the Hugi Core one day, would have something to do then... :) Anyway, in my reply I thanked CoaXCable for the tune and forwarded TAD's suggestion to him. Apart from that, as far as I remember replying to email-feedback was what I mostly did on this day for Hugi. I went out in the evening so I hardly organized things on IRC that day. Sunday, August 13 CoaXCable kept firm. "well can i become a hugi member.. i am definitley looking for some good things to do... like music and some outlines and active things..." was the beginning of a rather long email in which he explained what he could do for Hugi. I replied to him I'd ask the other Hugi Core members about it and opened a new mail addressed to all of them. This was a good occasion to send my fellows the most interesting feedback I had got on Hugi 20 and inform the others of Dario's and TAD's ideas to base the design of the next issue on a horro/alien-abduction theme mix. I already had suitable title pictures and backgrounds, and even a good tune with the right atmosphere. I attached a couple of the graphics to the mail. Also, I analyzed why there had been a decline of article contributions from outside, from the readers, since issue 18. It is a fact that becomes obvious immediately when you count the number of people in the credits and even more when you count the number of "main authors" - i.e. not interview-partners and contributions to Writers on Writers, but people who wrote entire articles or posed the questions in interviews. This is my conclusion: 1. People got the feeling enough articles come in anyway 2. People didn't think contribs were important (only in h20 I reinstalled a "how you can support us") 3. Maybe lack of advertising? 4. Newssites (e.g. ojuice or cfxweb) 5. Lack of enthusiasm among "oldtimers" 6. No specific deadline until a month ago if I remember well - now the deadline has been included in support.txt In any case the 'How you can support Hugi' is included again in Hugi 20, the submission deadline has been set to OCTOBER 31st (and is included in support.txt), and I'm trying to get an announcement about Hugi posted to a different place every day. The place where I announced Hugi on this day, by the way, was scene.de. In the evening I received a funny response from TAD starting as follows: "I cannot express my views concerning the matter of a Mr. CoaXCable joining Hugi strongly enough. It would be against my religion, my honour and my moral convictions if such a, a, bounder such as Mr. CoaXCable managed to infiltrate the sacred inner circle of the Hugi cult. As I am a free mason this would be a gross injustice, a crime against humanity and above all else take up more space on the credits screen. So why must we humour the scally-wag with his satan inspired graphics and blatant demand that he would be shown into the underworldly realms of Hugi?" Of course it was a joke to catch my attention. As he wrote in the end of the mail, he'd be happy to see CoaXCable join. Of course I ran into CoaXCable when logging onto IRC. It was then that he became a member of the Hugi Core and thus automatically the Royal Family as well. Actually his initiation rite was quite funny: He said he currently was "CoaXCable of trsi/taat/he/ne/wij/xtg/bnc" and as a Hugi member would write "HUGI/TRSI/tAAt/STAM" in his group list. I said "the latter would look cooler" - which he understood as: "Okay, you're accepted." Actually it's nice to have CoaX in the group, as he's on IRC practically all the time, or so it seems. He can advertise for Hugi and answer people's question when the next mag will be released. He also makes weird but occasionally - in my opinion - good pics that could be used in Hugi as illustrations. And of course he is a musician and a friendly guy, too. On this day I wrote a kind of political-theorist article about the left/right scale and how nonsense it actually is. TAD was even more diligent: he sent me two articles. On electronics and the scene, respectively. Actually it's in some way similar to the usual the-scene-is-dead rants that occasionally make their ways into diskmags, but in a more elaborate style. Yet a pretty uncommon article for him. Well, I guess all these three articles are rather "fillers", but at least it's good to have something in stock. I also did some organizing stuff on IRC... I got Rigel to make an interview with Ska of Apocalypse Design in Italian, as Ska isn't so good at English. Rigel will send the translation on Thursday or Friday. Good... Then someone stated on IRC, apparently a bit disappointed, the Hugi Size Coding Competition had still not begun. This called into my mind that there are actually a working example program and a test suite, and I could easily finish the rules. I told him I'd start the remaining work on the rules now - "right now? great". Well, not now, but tomorrow, I had to slightly lower his enthusiasm, but apparently he didn't mind: "heh, its your compo, you can release them any time you want ;)" At least I knew what I had to do on the next day. Monday, August 14 I didn't reply to any email on this day, although I had got some interesting ones, including the offer to take another scene magazine over for just one issue while its main editor was busy with his professional life. Rather than that, I redesigned the Hugi Compo website and created the final rules. I was out almost all day, so I could upload and announce it only in the evening. Tuesday, August 15 As I was planning to update the descriptions of both public mailinglists I moderate, I checked out parts of the Groups index and found directories that were more sutable for the lists than the ones they had been in before. As a side effect, both the Hugi Magazine and the Hugi Compo mailinglists will be listed at the top of these directories, as they have more subscribers than the other lists in there. In this way I also found a website called Ezine Links to which I added Hugi. It's mostly about electronic "magazines" spread via mailinglists and similarly lame stuff, but I couldn't find a better equivalent to diskmags outside the scene. In return, by the way, I got the address of an Ezine Archive - something like the diskmag archives hosted by public scene ftp servers, but for all kinds of electronical publications. This archive seems to be pretty new, in fact it's still under construction. When you go to the site you are asked to fill in a poll, including questions like how unique the Ezine Archive is and what you'd be ready to pay to have your magazine stored there. Of course I selected "not unique at all" and "0 dollars". Too bad there wasn't a comment box where I could have explained that these things are common and free in the demoscene, but I included my email address. Will they dare answer me? At lunch I remembered I had planned to write this article to document the making of Hugi 21. So after finishing my vegetarian pizza (yum!) I started Notepad and typed in everything you've read so far. Now it's 7:48 pm. August 16-18 On Wednesday I was at a kind of private demoshow at the WIFI in Vienna... It was organized by Entropy and Crest with the intention to convince the authorities of the plan to organize a similar demoshow for the public by the end of the year. I started writing a report after returning at about midnight, but didn't finish it as I was tired. Now, re-reading what I've written so far, I don't like it. Too much of a naive event-report. Well, I'll try to re-write it and then decide if it's worth publishing. Got some more articles of course... good ones at that, like StyX's Assembly partyreport. Also nice fillers like an article by BloB about the idling on IRC. Well, I still have to look out for some very interesting scene-related articles to write about and make interviews. Chris also updated his engine. He fixed the "primary bug" (some black pixels that appeared when you moved the scrollbar - you see? :)) and made a universal version that works for both diskmags that currently use it, that is of course Hugi and a little hackmag named Anti-social Magazine. A BeOS port is out, too... I guess it needs being reported on the website. Today (Aug 17... no, Aug 18 already!) during an answer-all-emails-fit, which somehow has now ended with only 23 unanswered emails in my inbox, I polled my mailbox and noticed Ghandy has started spreading my Showtime & Hugi joint voting form! Damn! Actually it was just meant as a draft, and meanwhile I had decided to stop the charts in Hugi, as I wrote in Hugi 20... Well, if he gets some votes in the PC categories, I'll store them, and perhaps I'll spread the sheet after all. But I'll publish the results only if I get enough votes, at least 100... Hm. Some extra work coming up... Tuesday, August 22 Hell, I'm a lazy diary writer. So many days have passed... and I didn't open this file. Why? Maybe because I thought "oh well, some more articles and graphics - will this really interest anyone"? Then again, I'm writing this stuff to show you what's happening with Hugi in detail. Anyway, my "real life" activities occupy a lot of time even in the holidays (I guess... I can't remember doing much specific, actually)... so it's not like I write 100kb of articles a day as I often want in my dreams. But this is getting boring, let's come to the real thing... I wanted to publish this thingy on Saturday on the web but didn't do so. I just announced the BeOS port of Hugi, then probably wrote a lot so that in the end I forgot that in the same posting to the Hugi mailinglist, I'd announced to put "something more" to the Hugi website on the same day... Well. Of course I got some more articles and graphics, good suggestions blabla... and on this very day... erm. I had better start with yesterday, or was it the day before yesterday? Or maybe already Saturday? Anyway, on one of these days I put together a preliminary design for Hugi 21, that is a selection of music and graphics. No background picture really fits in, though. But I received a new background on the next day - yes, I'm sure, it was Sunday - with wrong proportions, but which generally didn't look that bad. I replied to the author, of course (I guess I won't be listing all the mails I've replied to in this diary...), and he said he'd try to make the place for the text window bigger. I also had to fuss around with the Hugi Compo as there were problems with time measurement on Win98, so this took some hours which I'd have otherwise spent on the mag. Well, I was at Fiasko2k on Sunday so this day I couldn't immediately work on Hugi, but as I am able to write a report it might result in an extra article for the mag. And after all the mag is not something isolated, it's a part of the scene and making it part of my so-called scene-activities, just like the party. I got some cool topics to write about, only that I'm not sure if all would result in really interesting articles. I guess I'll just start writing sponaneously, then see what will come out. In the worst cases I'll have to rewrite the texts or move them to c:\adok\articles\_unused\bad. At least I wrote a little review article today and also embedded the first articles which I'd already formatted before in the mag. I played around a little bit with headlines and decided to make them a little bit larger than the normal font. As a compensation the space between the author name and the start of the actual text will be a few pixels smaller, but that doesn't matter. I'm still uncertain whether to stick to the standard font or use a different one for headlines. But thanks to the fontstyle command of Panorama 2 it's possible to define such things globally. So I will just have to change it in the config file if I want to have a different font in the headlines of all articles. Ah well, I also translated stuff - got one article in German, which was for Hugi and not for the GER mag. Actually it isn't much of a problem for me to translate technical articles from German into English. No need to look up anything in dictionaries, which would be inevitable for prose & poetry... anyway, this is getting too boring. Saturday, August 26 Well, I thought only three days had passed since the last entry, but I guess I am not correct here. Actually I don't remember any more what I exactly did, except that on these days I thought I had done something valuable that would make a good entry in this diary. I just remember I finished the Demoshow article after getting Crest's and Entropy's feedback to the internal pre-version. Only little details were changed. I also wrote something about trends in the demoscene. And digital haze said he had planned to write about two of the topics which I covered in this article. Now he didn't want to write his own articles any more but I convinced him it would be good to write them anyway as he could go more into depth about these topics than I did in the article that summarized all trends I noticed. Well, maybe it was also in one of these three days that I included my Scene Fiction story about Neuroticism into the mag. I also wrote some other little texts, I remember. Maybe some of them will be used in Hugi one day. Anyway, yes, I was somehow inspired to write. That was my main activity during these days. Ah yes, now I remember: I also wrote a review of a book! Actually primarily for school, but it also fits into Hugi. A cool topic, biotechnology. I'm also looking for material on how computers and computer science are used in the Human Genome Project. This would be a nice topic... linking the scene and current research. Ah, and well, there are lots of smallie news to report but not all of them are that interesting... I wonder if anybody will make the effort to continue reading this strange diary if I continue in this style. I guess I should resume being more disciplined. At least you see how much style can vary in one text, if it is written over a long period of time (and, besides, kept rather colloquial)... Also trying to get some more graphicians for Hugi... Soda has offered to do something. Great. MysteryBit aka BitMystery also made a bg pic and sent me the second version today, but it still needs some change in order to suit the mag. The contrast in the upper part of the text window background is still to high. Or, let's rather say: this part of the picture is too bright. Monday, August 28 Okay, I didn't do anything for Hugi yesterday (oh well, apart from collecting news), and now it's Monday morning... perfect! My timing, my synchronization with reality, has improved. Now I can just report Converse/A51 sent me an article and a tune. Ah well, and there is feedback... but if I list everything I get... no, I forget the most interesting things anyway. Like 10 new votesheets forwarded by Ghandy. This time not only the Amiga sections were filled in. Maybe it will be possible to get a decent amount of votes. Update. In a fit of nostalgia I've now read through Hugi 17 and 18 again, and I'm fascinated by both of them, both contents and design-wise. Hugi 17 with its fresh flame-stories and beautiful colour-set, the issue that was made within only a month's time and thus features only articles about really up-to-date topics, like an Assembly 99 special... and Hugi 18 with Dines' cool graphics design and the two columns, with "Charts suck!" and these things. It was fast to browse through them compared to the work that had been put in them. After all, what the reader sees is just the final layout. There have been dozens of drafts in the meantime... "Do we need the reviews we have?" is also an example of an article into which more work has been invested than the average consumer would notice. The article minus the author's signature at the end occupies a couple of full pages. That means, as I usually put a line-break between the end of the text-body and the signature, the signature would have appeared on the next page. This would have looked very ugly! So I had to place the signature in the same line as the end of the text. (Perhaps this even meant removing some unnecessary words from the text in order to get space in the line at all... I don't remember this any more.) I thus had to insert a tag and count the number of pixels in order to get it exact! After trying ten times or so I had finally found the number that made the signature really right-aligned. Now, what could I write about? Perhaps another book-review. I still have one book to ramble about. But, this isn't scene-related. Although genetics is far more interesting than the demoscene, people mainly download Hugi to read about the scene, so I had better write something scene-related. Maybe a report about Fiasko2k? But I was there only on the second day, just to see most of the compos and talk to people. Well, maybe that has been the most important part of the party, anyway. Still, if I write a report, I'll also have to get photos, i.e. contact Shakul and AdaMM about it, otherwise... a text alone makes no report. And then I'm not sure what to write in the text. Maybe the peculiarities of this party when compared to what you can induce about "normal" demoparties from other party reports. Well, let's see if I'll do it. Wednesday, August 30 Good that I opened this diary, otherwise I'd have thought that today was August 31, and one of my articles (the Fiasko report) would have had a wrong date in them. Yesterday I wrote a review of another book, which is also useful for Hugi. Chavez sent me cool chiptunes. Four good ones, all of them 19 kbyte zip-packed! I should be using just chiptunes in Hugi. At least I like them. But I'm not sure if the majority of the readers will agree. On the other hand, you can also play external tunes, so if you want to have a big tune, download it and play it. Now I'd just need real oldskool but good gfx to fit the chiptunes. I should look out on #pixel tonight if I catch someone who could make it. FloOd also offered to make a flash intro yesterday, and yes, now it's here... for the Hugi website, not compulsory but as an add-on, in another section, so that only people who want to afford downloading 100 kbytes for some minutes of animation need to watch it. Kinda nice, maybe he could experiment a bit with the colours? The daily hits number to www.hugi.de has sunken to the standard 70-120 - Hugi 20 is no longer new. If I were to write as detailedly as I wrote about the first days, I'd have to mention a preview of a new chapter of The Wake Up Call which I've got to read, as well as Virtual's suggestion to release the Russian translations of articles from Hugi 19 and Hugi 20 now, although there are few, so that they will not become outdated. Some days ago I got the idea to make a biweekly online magazine, and I'm still wondering if it would make sense. At least during these two weeks since Hugi 20 I've written enough stuff for a first issue. More than 50k. But I'm not sure if I would be ready to keep such tight-knit deadlines. This is my sparetime. If I remember how irregular HugiNews became... Perhaps it's better to stick to the concept of a mag released every 3-4 months, filled with around 800k - 1.4m of good stuff, presented in fine design. I have not yet made the perfect issue, the perfection of this concept, so maybe I should keep trying until this dream materializes. Ah well, now, in the evening (the former paragraphs are already a few hours old), I'm sitting online, trying to find a good person who could contribute cute graphics. People are, however, pretty idle on IRC, and so I do what I usually do, open Free Agent to check the newsgroups. While Free Agent is loading, I'm surfing on a new website and then ponder over what to do next - ah, I should read the newsgroups, I decide, and only then remember: whoops, that's what I had just been planning to do! There's a limited range of activities to get information and inspiration online... 26 new postings have arrived in csipd since the last time I polled - maybe three hours ago -, but I see there are hardly any new threads, mostly replied to older postings. That makes it less interesting, as the topics recently discussed aren't much of my taste. I should be contributing stuff to the outer world by uploading what I've written so far into this diary, but I can't, as I've updated the www.hugi.de site on my PC with the Flash intro, but FloOd has told me in the meantime it's just a beta-version... and I don't want to make an intermediate update, as I'd then have to remove some of the changes I've made in the meantime, or store the current website to disk and then modify it. Nah, let's wait for the final intro and then upload it. Then, some days later, this thingy may go online. Actually it would have been better if I had already upped it several days ago, perhaps on the same day as I started it, as it's becoming long and of incoherent style now. But well... What I'm actually doing in these last days of my last vacation from school is to wait until I can enter school again. Thursday, August 31 Perhaps it is time to release the Russian edition of Hugi 20... soon. It's making little progress at a slow pace. Better to release 100 kbytes of articles now than to wait until they are outdated. So I was suggested, but others think it's better to wait... Wait? Work... I wonder if it makes sense. "It" being what I write, perhaps? Anyway, this day FloOd sent me the final version of the Flash intro for the Hugi website. I'll upload it tonight. The differences to the beta are big... Only the rotating vector object appears in the final version, too, everything else has changed. The fonts look better, there is a vectorized Hugi logo, and even the code is smaller (90 kb). FloOd sat on it six hours in a row yesterday... wow! That people make such great effort! Also got some photos to include in the Fiasko2k report. Some are pretty dark but I have no other choice... As I wrote in the report, there were no windows in the party hall (or were there some? Don't think so). I've reduced the contrast of MysteryBit's pic so the title bar is a bit more readable... I've sent him the pic for his approval. Well, I'm still desperate about the graphics. I'm glad there are people who help. But nothing is perfect. I've experimented a bit rotating the pics, moving the status window and such to other places... changing the title pic... I don't get a glimpse of oldskool feeling into the optic appearance of the mag. Hugi 17 and 18 still looked best. Now I've re-read the whole diary. It is a good feeling. Now the world will see what a desperate idealist I am who doesn't even dare to approach a most talented guy and say: "Hey! I'm the main editor of the leading diskmag, we can get your name spread around the world! So make some gfx for us!" I always ask myself if it wouldn't sound too impersonal, too much like if I was just demanding without caring about the actual person, if I acted in this way. Damn, I should be like all those guys who pretend sympathy but still manage to get what they want. Maybe I should try something different, a co-op project with all other still active diskmag editors. Some have contact to great graphicians, after all. Someone else could take over all the design, I could do the contents or just a few sections. But then our views might be too different... My aim is to make a mag with the current engine and text layout, consisting of the 300 kbytes of most interesting articles I usually get/write for an issue, with cute graphics, cute chiptunes and a packed size of no more than a meg. Well! I decide to finally pre-release this thing. I wonder if anybody will read it thoroughly. But maybe... let's see. I'll release this simultaneously with FloOd's flash intro so there will be a lot for the readers! (And then I've forgot to write that I've brightened up the link colours at the Hugi site... that Ghandy's method of getting votesheets is cool... that TAD has had a nice flyer idea... well, and more.) Organizer note: This diary will continue and will be released in next issue of Hugi (issue 21). Check it out if you're still interested. http://www.hugi.de ------------------------------------------------------------------ CORNER OF THOUGHTS ------------------------------------------------------------------ This is all new and shiny section where I, (Galahad), write something for every issue from now on. I'm not sure why I started this column, maybe it's because every month there are things I feel like I should write an article, but when I think of it more, they are not good enough subjects to build article on, so I handle them here. So what I have in mind this time? Umm.. I'm not really sure. I just finished editing/writing session that took over four hours. Currently the time is 03:15 and I know it should be time to get some sleep, but what can you do if you're on vacation and not tired :). Actually most of my four hours session was about editing that superhuge article about diskmag's editor. It was very interesting for me as an organizer, but I found many good parts which should show you what kind of a mess this whole shit (we often call it as tracked metal scene :) is sometimes. Talking about shit, I was on irc earlier tonight and there were some note about shitscene. I replied something like "the scene is just as shitty as the people on it", mainly joking, but when I thought of it a bit more I realized that it's actually the plain, pure and only truth! I have been reading a lot of stuff like "99% of the songs released are shit" lately and it really bothers me. Especially because these comments usually come from people who I don't think can say things like that with fully standing behind of it. It partly amuses me a lot, but also brings some bad vibes, if you know what I mean. If somebody thinks himself to be above everybody else, I think he/she has pretty much wrong attitude to be around tracked metal scene. I have, from the very beginning, considered us as something special. We are rather small, but.. now what is the right word? "Hyperactive"? That sounds to be the most correct way to describe it. The so called evolution has been very good from the beginning with quality as well as with music itself. I mean by this of more music styles and more composers entering the scene. I wish this will continue in the future too. There are always shitheads around, no matter how much you try to prevent it, they always come out somewhere along the way. I've seen it so many times that it doesn't really surprise me anymore. What comes to being "the one above others" is kind of a mutation of pure shithead. In the beginning I thought there are certain trackers that just can't be overcome by any newbie tracker. I feel like I can mention the names here too since it was so long ago. To me Betrayer, Zack, Bmt and Ackers seemed to be god-like figures that have, and will always be. There was no way of somebody beating them. That's why I was most proud to have them on R.E.D. music disks. Fortunately my illusion died quite quickly. I heard IceLizard's and Vantage's tunes. I don't say that anybody would be above anybody else, but instead I learned that there can be at least equally skilled trackers that just seem to pop out of nowhere! Listing all now would be impossible. Gutrot, Razor, Surreal, Blue Shade, Malekith, Warlord, Nocri, Dismal, Balzeloth, and so on and so on. I could go like that forever. What I really want to say here for short is, take a pee and keep your ears open. Finished reading of what I just wrote. Makes sense to me in strange way. So I managed to go through the first one. Don't get this wrong, I'm not going to write all dead serious stuff here in every issue. This just has been bothering me for a while, so I decided to speak it out. See ye. Ah yeah, time is 03:45 now, off to sleep. - Galahad ------------------------------------------------------------------ Red Rain 06/2000 release: 21.10.2000 (dd.mm.yyyy). ------------------------------------------------------------------