today was a sunny, beautiful day, even though pretty hot. it resulted in another trip on the zürisee:

after that, it resulted in a photo featuring me and two soccer players:

simply beautiful, filling me with happiness.

another thing making me happy are two small presents, one being already a few weeks old, the other being new:

thank you, i really like them a lot!

on thursday, we made an excursion to the open air museum ballenberg, which shows old buildings from all over switzerland, from centuries ago, together with animals, lifestyle and lots of traditions, including making of cheese and chocolate. this resulted in a lot of pictures, some of which can be seen here.
anyway. it was a really great one-day vacation. thanks a lot!

today i did another boat trip on the zürich lake, after getting up pretty early. it was really nice, as the weather was great (the sun was burning, but not too bad), and it was pretty empty. i got one of the seats in the very front of the boat. listening to great music (unholy‘s really great for that, as is vintersorg’s a cosmic genesis). here are some impressions:

three years after releasing ghost reveries, opeth released their 9th observation, called watershed.
it is opened by the beautiful, instrumental coil, sung by mikael akerfeld and nathalie lorichs. this is followed by the intense, heavy tune heir apparent, which i already have been able to listen to live two times. after that, the lotus eater follows, another heavy track with lots of proggy interludes which was already available for download some time ago. track #4 is burden, a melodious, more mellow, proggy track, the first half of it being sung by mikael, the second part being instrumental, with an accoustic guitar finally shifting downwards, until an abrupt strange ending. then, porcelain heart, which was already released as a video before, starts. again, alternativing between loud and quiet, beauty and wildness. after that, hessian peel, starting mellow, beautiful. then, after a small piano solo phase, the brutality returns, in its beautiful complexity, and complex beauty, the end reminding me a bit of the end of sentenced‘s no one there. finally, hex omega launches, beginning heavy, though slow, turning more mellow, changing back to heavy, alternating. pure beauty, floating through the air, crawling down my ears.
i hate making such statements, but for me, this is the best release for this year. definitely. even though the year’s just half gone. watershed is simply ingenious, such a beautiful mix of death metal brutality, progressive rock; this is audible aesthetics. so damn beautiful.

recently, moonsorrow released an ep called tulimyrsky, featuring a 30 minute song called tulimyrsky, a metallica cover (for whom the bell tolls), two old demos (taistelu pohjolasta and hvergelmir) and a merciless cover (back to north). the main track tulimyrsky can be seen as a sequel to last year’s viides luku: hävitetty. again, it begins with a slow, melodious, mystic atmospheric part, lasting 3:45 minutes, until a scream fades in from far away, guitars and drums kicking in, finally launching a black metal thunderstorm after five minutes, evolving into a stream of brutality, speed, piercing melodies. then, later, the music gets slower, less brutal, still intense. a speaker telling a tale. then, the action returns, sounding heroic, somehow, until it fades out into a beautiful, orchestral and melodic piece of music. beautiful.
the two demos feature pretty black metallic sounds, still very good though. moonsorrow is really one of the bands which started as a success and continued to be a success over the years. finally, the two covers are pretty ok, too. and, tulimyrsky is the longest ep i ever saw, having 68 minutes of playing time, from which 30 minutes are the main song, tulimyrsky. again, probably one of the best releases this year.

after five (long) years of silence, tiamat released a new album, amanethes. when i listened to a few samples around one month ago, i didn’t like it too much. i still bought it (hey, it’s a tiamat album!) and, after listening to it a few times, the ice melted, turned into fire. this album is amazing. heavy, dark, gothic. probably one of the best releases this year.

i was staying in hannover this weekend, with some friends. we were staying in a kind of hostel there. as probably no one would be there to hand us the keys, we were instructed to check out safe number 3 in the entrance, having the code 3456. sounds really complicated, does it? well, everything worked good, we got our keys. later, someone was trying to open it again, but accidently shifted the code and typed in 2345 instead of 3456. it made “click” again but, surprisingly, door number 3 didn’t opened. after trying all the possibilities, we noticed that door 2 opened. well, we then tried combination 1234 to see that it opens door 1, and 4567 to see that it opens door 4. well, and now guess the combination for door 5 and 6 and 7 and …
do i have to comment on this any further?

today i visited the rock sound festival in huttwil, switzerland. just for one day though, with one specific aim: to see the second band, opeth. before opeth, black tide played, which was ok. after opeth, the headliner for this evening played, namely avantasia was playing, from which we basically just saw the beginning of the first song they played, when we decided to leave (so guess how much we liked it).
ok. having seen opeth just recently, i was in particular curious on what they would play this time. unfortunately, the set list was pretty similar to the last one: they started with demon of the fall, continued with master’s apprentice, then with baying of the hounds, then to rid the disease, wreath, heir apparent and the drappery falls. and again, the sound quality and in particular the mixing was pretty suboptimal. but, an important difference was the denseness of people. the hall in which the concerts took place was filled, but with enough gaps to be able to breathe without problems (and not even being touched most of the time). and, there was no mosh pit. so one could stand in peace, enjoy the music, and throw some hair around without having to fear to be stomped to death or getting injured otherwise.
though there was another bad thing. namely, the infantile behaviour of some people in the audience, most notably by whistling loudly (which is really nice if people do that next to your ear, big fuck you‘s to them) or start clapping rythmically to certain parts of the music (hey, is this musikantenstadl?!)… well, shame on you, guys.
anyway. this trip was definitely worth it. opeth rocked the house again, and even though i already heard that set list, i still enjoyed it a lot. probably in particular also because of the way nicer atmosphere. and, mikael promised that opeth will come back in the end of this year! :-) and, last not but least, i had really nice companions. not being alone at concerts rocks!

somehow, it’s funny that people don’t complain when planes get delayed for two hours, but almost start crying when a train is say 30 minutes late…