Tell us what's happening in your life

Knock 'em dead, Xeph.

As for what I came in here to post, I just finished another poster during my two-day break from my major reading binge (getting through the Inheritance series).  I've been speed-reading 200 pages a day at the very minimum, so I took a break.  But since I haven't been selling very well, I used the opportunity to practice mountains and clouds on Gimp, while also discovering the lighting techniques that can be used.

https://www.deviantart.com/mythbutton/art/Wings-of-Nialoca-Poster-950462579

Awesome poster, Rex!

Thanks.

I'm gonna be hosting a war movies ballot vote on Movieforums for a while, so I might not be as active here.  I'll check in often, but listening to metal albums may have to be put on hold.

Just arrived at the hospital for the birth of my third child today. Pumped to meet her!

Hope mother and baby are both doing well Daniel.

They’re both doing great thanks Vinny. We’re very pleased with our beautiful little girl.

Congratulations to you and your wife, Daniel! Glad to hear your baby girl has finally entered this world.

Some of you may recall me mentioning that a record label called Sphere of Apparition was interested in mastering & re-releasing the two mid-1990's demo tapes from my old brutal death metal band Neuropath. Well, things have been progressing nicely since I last provided an update. The mastering has been completed & both tapes sound as good as it's possible to get them. The CD cover layout is almost finalized. Options for the front cover artwork are being explored at the moment too. I'd guess that the final release date will be some time in the middle of the year depending on how quickly we can get the cover art signed off. It'll be starting in a CD only format but there's potential to expand on that depending on demand. There may be t-shirts too. It's very exciting stuff for an ol' metalhead like myself.

Some of you may recall me mentioning that a record label called Sphere of Apparition was interested in mastering & re-releasing the two mid-1990's demo tapes from my old brutal death metal band Neuropath. Well, things have been progressing nicely since I last provided an update. The mastering has been completed & both tapes sound as good as it's possible to get them. The CD cover layout is almost finalized. Options for the front cover artwork are being explored at the moment too. I'd guess that the final release date will be some time in the middle of the year depending on how quickly we can get the cover art signed off. It'll be starting in a CD only format but there's potential to expand on that depending on demand. There may be t-shirts too. It's very exciting stuff for an ol' metalhead like myself.

Congrats man.  Looking forward to hearing this.

Congrats, Daniel!

Some of you may recall me mentioning that a record label called Sphere of Apparition was interested in mastering & re-releasing the two mid-1990's demo tapes from my old brutal death metal band Neuropath. Well, things have been progressing nicely since I last provided an update. The mastering has been completed & both tapes sound as good as it's possible to get them. The CD cover layout is almost finalized. Options for the front cover artwork are being explored at the moment too. I'd guess that the final release date will be some time in the middle of the year depending on how quickly we can get the cover art signed off. It'll be starting in a CD only format but there's potential to expand on that depending on demand. There may be t-shirts too. It's very exciting stuff for an ol' metalhead like myself.

Sounds super-exciting Daniel. If you don't mind me asking, did you continue with playing in bands after Neuropath split or did the experience deter you from further involvement in a band environment? I am just curious but, of course, if you would rather not go into it then that's fine.

Once Neuropath disbanded I quickly joined a doom/death band from Penrith called Elysium for about six months as I was writing some really great harmonized melodic stuff similar to Anathema & Katatonia in my spare time & was keen to get it out there. I was really starting to get disillusioned with the scene by that stage though & it was more about the people & their continuous focus on image & talking shit about other people that eventually saw me removing myself completely, along with my relationship issues that were playing out in full view of the Sydney scene. I then did an instrumental guitar shred solo project which amounted to one CD called "My Ebony Tomorrows" which was released in 1999. Think Joe Satriani & Steve Vai & you won't be far off the mark. I wrote & played all of the instruments on that one & it was a more rewarding exercise for it but was also immensely draining at the same time. At that point I discovered techno & house music & my next decade changed significantly.

Out of interest, Elysium would later become Stone Wings who would release their "Bird of Stone Wings" album in 2003. Elysium included a virtual who's-who of Sydney extreme metal at the time I was involved with them with vocalist Jamie Marsh (ex-Lord Kaos/ex-Crucible of Agony/ex-Isaacaron), guitarist Stuart Prickett (Horrisonous, Illimitable Dolor, The Slow Death, ex-Backyard Mortuary, ex-Bludgeoner, ex-Broken Anatomy, ex-Decayed Divinity, ex-Of Grief Everlasting, ex-Mournful Congregation (live)), bassist Beau Dyer (Lord Kaos, ex-Across the Scarlet Moat, ex-Innsmouth, ex-Pogrom, ex-Grenade) & drummer Lachlan Donaldson (ex-Of Grief Everlasting, ex-Lycanthia) all being a part of it at that point.

Thanks Daniel for sharing that. Did any of the material you wrote for Elysium see light of day because I would be really interested in hearing that?

Unfortunately not Sonny. It's a real shame because I'd suggest that that stuff was amongst the material I'm most proud of as a composer.

Unfortunately not Sonny. It's a real shame because I'd suggest that that stuff was amongst the material I'm most proud of as a composer.

Damn, that is a shame. As a devout death doom fanatic I would really like to have heard it.

It's been 3 months since one of us shared what's been going on in our lives, and what better way to turn this thread back on than with a special announcement involving some big stuff happening in my life? Starting from June 26, I'll be having a lot of work going on every day for 3 months:

Monday and Tuesday: college course

Wednesday and Thursday: work internship

Friday: robotics class

Saturday and Sunday: writing and drawing my next book

Because of how super busy I'm gonna be during that 3-month period, I won't be able to contribute to a lot of the major activities in Metal Academy and will have to take a hiatus from them. So I asked Daniel to cross me out of the feature releases poster, and asked someone else to work on The Revolution playlists. You'll find out who it is when he posts the thread for his first Revolution playlist in the beginning of August (unless he would like me to reveal who it is early, to which I'll just edit this comment). Don't worry, I'll still submit some tracks in the playlist suggestion threads so he won't have to do it all on his own when doing The Revolution playlists. However, I think I have time to squeeze in working on The Sphere playlists during those 3 months. They're easier for me to do than the playlists for other clans because there are only two subgenres in the clan (industrial metal and cyber metal, now I consider Neue Deutsche Härte as part of conventional industrial metal instead of its own subgenre), and since I seem to be the only active Metal Academy member familiar with The Sphere, I don't wanna have to put the Sphere playlists to a halt. Anyway, while I'll be less active in the forums and ratings, I might still do the occasional forum post, rating, and review. So it's basically gonna be a semi-hiatus for me. It's only the feature release submissions and Revolution playlists I can't do during then. So once again, during those 3 months, I'll be less active in the forums and ratings and won't be able to do feature release submissions and Revolution playlists, but I can still do track submissions in the playlist suggestion threads and full Sphere playlists. Wish me luck as I approach these super busy times!

Good luck, and if that robotics class is any indication of what you're going to college for, extra good luck, I hear engineering is a difficult degree to learn.

Thanks, Morpheus! The robotics class is just a separate thing, and it's only just basic robot building and programming, rather than complex engineering.

Haven't checked in for a while, so here's the catch-up on my slow-paced and boring autistic life.

I've been hosting a war movies ballot on Movieforums for a couple months, so I've watched a lot of war movies in prep for it.  Also checking out energy drinks once or twice a week with tip money to motivate me to exercise more.  When I'm not doing that, I've been working on various novels trying to force myself into the mood for any one to no avail.  Thankfully, studying my favorite show FMAB again helps me want to work on the sequel to my first book, especially since Nialoca is a very metal0influenced story and there are also a few new metal albums I need to check out this year by Twilight Force, Thy Catafalque, King Gizzard and even the horrific Total Eclipse, who I was hoping would release a hilarious travesty soon.  I'm mostly looking forward to the King Gizzard as some people say it's one of the best prog thrash albums ever.  Is there anything these guys can't do?

On that subject, the new Gloryhammer is nice but not great, Immortal's new album is unfortunately their worst, the new Lovebites rocks the shit hard, and no surprise, 72 Seasons is meh.

So yes, my TV time is now in break mode concerning war movies and is currently spent on FMAB.  Even then, it's not that much TV time a day, since it's gonna be difficult writing and watching the show at the same time.  I mean I can do it if I hyperfocus, but I'd rather not.  I'm also slowly creating a manual for the Nialoca universe so I don't contradict myself.  I've already got the ending of the series planned, anyway, so I have to be extra careful.  Apparently, Rowling wrote both the first and last HP's at the same time?  That kind of inspired me.  However, sales have been empty.  Thankfully, I've got an idea for next year that's bound to raise my popularity a little, but I'm remaining silent on the plot to everyone except my family and closest friends.

Oh, and the family got a new goat with the biggest fucking balls I've ever seen.  He's got three long black beards and looks like an evil wizard.  I'm afraid both ends will get caught on something.  His name is Flash, and I'm totally basing a character off of his in something.

Some of you may recall me mentioning that a record label called Sphere of Apparition was interested in mastering & re-releasing the two mid-1990's demo tapes from my old brutal death metal band Neuropath. Well, things have been progressing nicely since I last provided an update. The mastering has been completed & both tapes sound as good as it's possible to get them. The CD cover layout is almost finalized. Options for the front cover artwork are being explored at the moment too. I'd guess that the final release date will be some time in the middle of the year depending on how quickly we can get the cover art signed off. It'll be starting in a CD only format but there's potential to expand on that depending on demand. There may be t-shirts too. It's very exciting stuff for an ol' metalhead like myself.

I've been hosting a war movies ballot on Movieforums for a couple months, so I've watched a lot of war movies in prep for it.

I'm curious, any interesting pre-20th century films on any of that stuff you watched? Like American Revolutionary War, Napoleonic War type stuff, since once you get further back from that it tends to just be historical dramas with some swordfighting thrown in (not that I wouldn't mind that) and later is generally just a western. I think of the the three that I can recall, The Patriot was best, though with the usual historical treatment of the English you come to expect from a Mel Gibson film, who apparently hates the English for some reason. I remember being disappointed in Barry Lyndon and John Paul Jones was dreadful thanks to Robert Stack's awful acting debasing a great American war hero.

I've been hosting a war movies ballot on Movieforums for a couple months, so I've watched a lot of war movies in prep for it.

I'm curious, any interesting pre-20th century films on any of that stuff you watched? Like American Revolutionary War, Napoleonic War type stuff, since once you get further back from that it tends to just be historical dramas with some swordfighting thrown in (not that I wouldn't mind that) and later is generally just a western. I think of the the three that I can recall, The Patriot was best, though with the usual historical treatment of the English you come to expect from a Mel Gibson film, who apparently hates the English for some reason. I remember being disappointed in Barry Lyndon and John Paul Jones was dreadful thanks to Robert Stack's awful acting debasing a great American war hero.

Try all four of Russia's War and Peace movies from the 60's, as well as the Civil War movies Glory and Cold Mountain.  And a couple years ago, I saw the silent five-hour Napoleon biopic just to challenge myself.

My 30 year-old JVC music system has finally gone to the scrappies and I have a new set-up at last. I've now got an Audio-Technica AT-LP120XUSB Manual Direct-Drive Turntable with a Sony STRDH190.CEK amplifier and a pair of Sennheiser HD 559 wired headphones. It's not exactly top-of-the-range, but it still sounds amazing. There really is no better way to listen to doom or OSDM in my opinion. First album on the new deck was 1914's Where Fear and Weapons Meet. Just been playing last month's Horde feature, Apparition's Feel, that I bought earlier in the week and it really does sound incredible.

Unfortunately I have no CD player at the minute, so it's laptop or PS4 for playing CDs and I've still got a shitty Walkman for tapes.

I am still finding my mish-mash set-up of a Marantz CD5005 player and Audio-Technica AT-LP120XBT-USB hooked up to my EDIFIER R1280DB speakers works well enough.  Can get the turntable to hook up via bluetooth if needs be but usually spin it through Line 2 on the speakers and leave the desktop PC to use bluetooth. No headphones for me as simply irritates my ears too much nowadays.

With a heavy workload, I still predominantly play from my desktop PC as it works best if I am working at home.  The next job on list with my vinyl is to get something to protect my vinyl from my cat (the appropriately named Vlad) who loves to chew anything with a soft edge - LIKE MY RECORD COLLECTION!!! (good job I love him).  The unit that my kit sits on has upright vinyl storage racks on it but no doors on the unit.  Currently have cushions in there to keep the records safe from Bitey McBitey Face but looks shit so my wife has suggested locating sufficient sized metal sheet wall art and screwing a grooved piece of wood in to sit the metal sheet in so I can move easily when I want to get at the collection.

Since I got my PS5 I can get Spotify through that also so now have the option of playing music downstairs through the TV instead of relying on that shite Alexa speaker we have in the kitchen which has a mind of it's own half the time.