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B-FEST 2026 - Bad movies are the safest form of mind transportation

A few weeks late, but it is once again time for my increasingly out-of-place writeup of a movie festival on what is otherwise exclusively a music blog.  Plan is to continue doing this every year until either I or the festival dies.  Ms. Tweet and I often mockingly proclaim the internet-ism "so tired, y'all" when describing how we're doing.  Well, there are some B-Fests where my main lingering impression is less the fun we had so much as the exhaustion it bore.  This was kinda one of those.  For the first time of which I'm aware, the festival was pushed to March, leading to some schedule scrambling.  I was in the throes of a busy month that wasn't over yet in the midst of a time of great uncertainty, however much I slept it wasn't enough, and I showed up already about ready to nod off in my chair before the first movie had started.  At every chance to talk to those around me between films, I was bothered by the fact that I was dazed, feeling my least in...
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?Classics? of power metal #15: PALADIN - Ascension (2019), upon further review

I just accomplished a major - task? challenge? - today * , and wanted the sort of song that proverbially makes me want to run through a brick wall.  At the moment I can't think of a better candidate than "Awakening."  Talk about propulsive.  Listening to the chorus reminds me of exactly what power metal does well.  Ye gods, do I ever feel like my dreams and memories will be immortal when listening to the song.  Since this band shamelessly writes songs about  Chrono Trigger , *** I'll say that they've given me the metal equivalent of the  Chrono Cross  intro **** , mixing adventure and wistfulness into one. So as the killer riff of "Divine Providence" started around listen #5 or so to Ascension , I finally sorted out why, listen after listen, I was having a hard time maintaining interest in these songs all the way through.  Because so many of them are so clearly good stuff.  At first I thought maybe they lacked hooks, and I was...
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SLOW SPEED DATING: (Proto)-power metal of the '70s

New format!  Shortly after I decided to start my explorations of power metal and had started blogging about power metal, after months of wishing there were a conveniently explained "starter pack" of bands or records to check out, I came across a list at metalstorm.com  created by writer "ScreamingSteelUS," that I've been low-key obsessed with ever since.  A collection of power metal records that uses a very big-tent definition of the subgenre for maximum diversity?  Sounds like what I wanted.  Kept to a convenient number - ten per decade - in perfect chronological order?  I feel seen.  With explanations as to what exactly each record represents and what aspects of PM it can highlight?  Yes, please.   Sure, one can critique.  With the biggest critique being that it's just one guy's list and is prone to the quirks inherent to that.  Of note, ScreamingSteelUS goes out of his way to frame it as "potential starting points"...
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?Classics? of power metal #15: PALADIN - Ascension (2019), early impressions

Previous exposure to this artist/album :  Half-listened to a song once on YouTube, had to hear more. None of us multitask as well as we imagine we do.  I know for a fact that my retention of music is basically zero unless I'm devoting time to listen to it.  Yet I do imagine that half-listening to something during work is a useful "initial screen" to decide if something's worth devoting actual music time to.  That's where I kinda fell in love with the  idea  of Paladin.  I was sampling one of their songs, can't remember which one, and was struck immediately by the immediately catchy heft that, as half of my brain told me, so neatly balanced power metal and death metal.  There have of course been loads of power/death bands and that crossover started way before 2019, but how often does a song catch the aesthetics of both equally convincingly, with its two singers playing off each other?  Hearing that Paladin only had managed ...
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WARREN ZEVON - My Ride's Here (2002)

In my personal imagined Zevon career arc, the  Mutineer/Life'll Kill Ya  duology was always the glorious return to form, perfectly setting up the swan song of  The Wind .  And then  My Ride's Here  was kinda... there, in between the two records, interfering with the narrative.  So, I've listened to the record before, but really only a few times, mostly in passing.  It was fun to finally dive deep into it, in context. Track One:  "Sacrificial Lambs" I think on some level Zevon was keen to show that he was still a rock and roll singer who could make music with a bigger rock feel.  Not that "Sacrificial Lambs" is a super heavy song or anything, * just that it returns to the rollicking full-band feel that was once Zevon's stock in trade but was less pronounced on the records that lead up to  Ride .  Very straight-ahead song with a vocal melody that sounds, well, like most of the other Zevon openers.  P...
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?Classics? of power metal #14: LOVEBITES - Awakening From Abyss (2017), upon further review

Now that I've had some time to sit with Awakening From Abyss , you know what I notice more than any individual element?  Well, in other entries in this series, I've frequently brought up the vaguely described feeling that some songs' disparate elements don't come together.  I don't always have the right words to "prove" anything, but I frequently try to evaluate whether or not something has that coherence that makes the difference between a great song and a song that has a bunch of cool elements haphazardly mixed together.   Artists with grand musical visions, musical virtuosity, or both, are prone to the latter.  I've even floated my little unfounded pet theories that certain bands with multiple hands in the songwriting had different members trying to write different albums and were thus, musically speaking, at war with each other, whether they knew it or not.   Lovebites' debut stands out to me as the antithesis of that.  Whet...
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