Leese's Top 5 Anticipated Albums

Now that we're up and running again on the website, I figured a post of some kind is long overdue. After recently falling in love with Fozzy's new album "Do You Wanna Start a War" and Sixx:A.M.'s latest single "Gotta Get it Right", I decided that a post of what other musical releases I'm looking forward to seemed fitting. I was going to get Joobs to add her most anticipated albums, too, but she's busy climbing mountains and running marathons because she's mental. So, you're stuck with mine. In no particular order (apart from Sixx:A.M. being number 1 because I've been waiting for it for over a year already):

Sixx:A.M. – "Modern Vintage" (October 7th)

As you may have already guessed, Sixx:A.M. is one of my favourite bands, and I fell in love with their first two albums as soon as I heard them. From the preview and hype I've seen so far, Modern Vintage sounds set to surpass both of them. The first single, released this week, is catchy and groovy and leaves me wanting more. There's also talk of them touring this album, which is something I'm extremely excited for. This is one of the few bands I'd go to the ends of the Earth to see live. Here's hoping they bring it over to Europe so I won't have to do that!

Dragonforce – "Maximum Overload" (August 13th)

Dragonforce is a band that a lot of my friends talked about, but I never paid attention to, and boy do I regret it! While cleaning out my room a couple of weeks ago I found a CD a friend from college loaned to me about 10 years ago (evidently I never returned it... oops). That CD was Dragonforce's "Sonic Firestorm". I don't think I ever listened to it at the time, but I gave it a play after finding it again and realised I'd been missing out for years. Dragonforce = awesome. I'm looking forward to their next release... Matt Heafy features in a few of songs, and I'm a big Trivium fan, so that wins me over a little bit, too. His vocals seem to compliment the band well.

Opeth – "Pale Communion" (August 26th)
I'm a casual fan of Opeth - They're a band I throw into my playlist when I fancy a little bit of change from the usual bands that I listen to and want to prog it up a little bit. I don't own all of their albums and only became a fan within the last five years, but I own enough to know they're a solid band and anything that they put out there is worth a listen.

Burn Halo – "Wolves of War" (September 23rd)
Burn Halo is another band I found through recommendation from a friend. I really enjoyed their first two albums, their self-titled debut especially, and at the beginning of the year when they released the first single from "Wolves of War", it led me to believe that good things are to come from their third full-length release.

Nonpoint – "The Return" (September 30th)

I first heard of Nonpoint back when I was an avid wrestling fan. One of their songs ("Bullet With a Name") was used on a video game and I dug it. I haven't been a consistent fan, and I've only recently woken up to them again over the last few months, when nostalgia drew me into listening to bands I loved in my teenage years (Trapt, Staind, Soil, TRUST Company, Saliva... Good times!) After hearing the first release from the new album – "Breaking Skin" – I can't wait to hear the rest of it!

Mastodon – "Remission Reissue" (August 5th)

Yes, I'm doing six, but this one doesn't really count. Well, it does, because it's an album being released later this year, but I originally wasn't going to include it in my top five because it's a reissue. I'm a long-time Mastodon fan and, with as much as I love the debut album from them, I'm really looking forward to hearing it remixed and remastered. This one's already out, but it wasn't when I started writing this post! The deluxe edition is limited to 2,000 copies... I envy those who have it already.

So there we have it. 2014 has been good for music so far, and it doesn't seem like that's going to change. I'm sure there are more to look forward to, and if there's a big one I've missed and should definitely pick up, please do let me know!

Avenged Adventure!

HI. YES. WE'RE STILL ALIVE.

Have you ever felt compelled to go and see your favourite band as many times as you can on a tour they're doing of wherever you live? Have you ever decided to actually make that happen no matter how much of a bad idea it may be, or no matter how much you know you're going to regret it afterwards for whatever reason? (Financial, health, sanity...)

Invading The Pit had a fun experience with this lately, and not for the first time!

As you may or may not know, Avenged Sevenfold recently toured Europe on their Hail to the King cycle. We are both huge fans of the band and had been looking forward to seeing them live again for a long time.

Before they hit the UK leg of the tour, Leese had the amazing opportunity of taking her little sister to her first A7X show ever in Amsterdam, and great times were had by all. There was one incident of a particularly annoying female becoming an enemy throughout the show, but she was taken care of during Unholy Confessions...

Anyway!

The shows in Manchester and London were always going to happen. There was never any doubt that we'd be attending these shows, but we thought that would be it. Even though it was only two shows, we had a crazy plan in place. We booked a hotel in London for two nights, and decided to head off to London after the Manchester show and make the 200+ mile journey on zero sleep at a silly time in the morning.

We arrived at our hotel at a time when most people were waking up to begin their day... 7 AM. This didn't really give us much opportunity to get any sleep, but that didn't matter because we had another night of Avatar, Five Finger Death Punch and Avenged Sevenfold to look forward to. Who needs sleep?

The two consecutive nights we'd spent at awesome shows left us wanting more. There were only two shows left: Dublin and Birmingham. Dublin was a definite no as neither of us would have been able to take the time off work. Birmingham, however, presented some kind of possibility... with the biggest problem being that the show had sold out.

Through sheer luck and perseverance we managed to score three standing tickets for the show for £75 – Yes, less than face value. We never thought THAT would happen.

Actually getting to Birmingham, though, was a massive headache. It was on one of the days when the UK was being absolutely battered by wind and rain and the country had pretty much come to a stop as far as public transport was concerned. This made it difficult for us to meet up (as Leese STILL doesn't drive) but we managed it through Joobs taking a little detour to pick her up in Knutsford as opposed to Stafford.

Thanks to a lorry that broke down on the motorway, we arrived at the show two hours after it started, missing our beloved Avatar, and Rob Halford singing on stage with Five Finger Death Punch. To say we were unhappy would be an understatement. We got there just as Avenged finished up the first song.

It turned out to be a great show, though, of course. Definitely worth the stress and anger of getting there. Afterwards, we spent 2 hours trying to get out of Birmingham because for some silly reason they close the motorway at night.

Made it back to Joobs' house around 3-4 AM, slept a little bit, and then Leese had an asthma attack running for the train to work a few hours later and ended up in the hospital.

SACRIFICES, PEOPLE. IT'S WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT.

To some extent, anyway.

Stay tuned for a generic end of year post sometime soon...