TOP 5: Danzig Albums

This is the first of many future Top 5 lists that I'm going to piece together on this blog as they sporadically spill out of my brain. Why? Because.

This Top 5 was inspired by the announcement of Danzig's upcoming 2011 Spring Tour. Being that Danzig is one of my all-time favorite bands, here is one random internet asshole's Top 5 Danzig Albums:

5. I Luciferi (2002)

Admittedly, I wrestled with choosing between I Luciferi and 4p, but ultimately I chose the album which I spend less time skipping past songs. If you asked me back in 2003, I would not have rated I Luciferi this high, but this album has continuously grown on me over the years.

This album kicks your ass for eight straight songs before getting into the so-so territory of the CD. If anything, it was just nice for Danzig to finally get back to such a guitar-driven sound again.

Highlights: "Black Mass", "Liberskull", "Dead Inside"

4. Deth Red Sabaoth (2010)

The best thing about Deth Red Sabaoth is that it is consistantly good from beginning to end. After the first couple discs, Danzig albums each contain their own varying amounts of Danzig filler, but Deth Red Sabaoth is arguably filler-free (well, except for maybe the gothy musical piece, "Infanticle").

While this album may not have a true standout song like the many Danzig albums before it, Deth Red is a collection of pretty darn good songs. Loyal Danzig fans have been rewarded with a great modern day effort from our beloved evil Elvis.

Highlights: "Hammer of the Gods", "Rebel Spirits", "Deth Red Moon"

3. Satan's Child (1999)

I'm probably in the minority of Danzig fans who would rate Satan's Child this high in the Danzig catalog, but like Deth Red Sabaoth, I feel that Satan's Child is a solid effort thoughout.

This was the first album where Glenn Danzig's voice started to show some real wear-and-tear from years of screaming at the gods above. Still, Satan's Child rocks pretty mightily and is easily the best non-Rick Rubin production a Danzig album was ever treated to.

Highlights: "Belly of the Beast", "Unspeakable", "Firemass"

2. Danzig (1988)

Danzig's debut album is usually noted as his best album by most... and understandably so! It's hard to argue when it contains three of his most iconic tunes -- one being the mega-hit, "Mother".

Beyond the hits, this album is fleshed out with some of the better songs of Glenn Danzig's career. This is certainly one album that every metal fan should own.

Highlights: "Twist of Cain", "Not of This World", "Am I Demon"

1. Lucifuge (1990)

Lucifuge was the first Danzig album I bought way back in 1990 and I remember it made such an impression on me when I opened up the cassette and it folded out into an upside down cross. Go Satan!

Right out the gate, Lucifuge immediately gets you into a fist-pumping frenzy and then you're off and running into Danzig's finest masterpiece.

Highlights: "Long Way Back From Hell", "Snakes of Christ", "Devil's Plaything"

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Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and let me know!

I'll closeout this post with a video of my all-time favorite Danzig song:

"Devil's Plaything"

Poll: Health Care Law Repealed?

Apparently almost half of America either believes that the Health Care Law passed in 2009 was repealed or might have been repealed according to a new poll. Seriously, WTF America?!?

How can we live in the 'information age' and have so many misinformed people? Are folks really that dumb or are they just willfully ignorant to the facts? Unfortunately, this isn't the only major issue people are clearly misinformed about.

In 2010, a poll was taken where only 12% of people correctly knew that President Obama actually lowered their taxes while 24% believed their taxes were raised. Even scarier, as the year went on, the number of people who believed they were paying higher taxes actually grew!

By election day in November 2010, 52% of likely voters wrongly believed their taxes went up during Obama's first two years in office.

Then you got those kooks who believe that our US president isn't even a US citizen. Of course, if there were a single ounce of credible proof of this, Barack Obama would have to step down as president. Obviously, that hasn't happened.

A poll of GOP voters in 2010 showed that an eye-popping 72% of them were either unsure of his US citizenship or believed he was not a US citizen at all. Clearly such beliefs aren't based on facts so why are so many people willing to accept false information as truth?


For some, the origins of false beliefs simply come from hate (see photo above). For others, it's a matter of ignoring the facts because it plays into how they feel about those who are different from themselves (i.e. political views, skin color, religion, etc.). Still, the fact that this many people accept these lies and falsehoods for truth is really quite alarming.

How are we to be the greatest country on earth when we have this many tool boxes in our shed? Stop choosing to be 'morans' America.

Oscar Weekend Predictions

The big mystery this weekend is all about who will win at the Oscars! Actually, it's not a mystery at all. Everyone knows who is going to win all the major awards because Hollywood can't get enough of congratulating itself during the prior two months preceding the Academy Awards and by now, it's pretty obvious who most of the winners will be.

As if this topic hasn't been done to death everywhere else on the interwebs, here are my predictions for a few of the key awards at this Sunday's Oscars:

Best Picture: The King's Speech

If I had one vote and only my vote counted, "The Fighter" would win Best Picture. It was a great film and it was my favorite of the nominated lot. "The King's Speech" is also a deserving film and my runner-up for the award. IMO, it's also more deserving than its main rival in the category, "The Social Network". "Winter's Bone" and "127 Hours" both deserve a tip of the hat as well.

Best Actor: Colin Firth

Everybody (well, except for maybe Jeff Bridges) gave a true Oscar-worthy performance. That being said, Colin Firth was by far and away the Best Actor in a Motion Picture in 2010. Jesse Eisenberg also gave an great performance and it's unfortunate for him that he has to be going up against an such a strong performance by Firth. James Franco also deserves an honorable mention as he was a one man show in "127 Hours" and the film is only as good as his performance.

Best Actress: Natalie Portman

This one's not even a contest. While I do think that Natalie Portman gave the best performance of 2010 for an actress, I wouldn't necessarily say it was one for the ages. Aside from her solid acting job, she ultimately deserves the Oscar due to the added difficulty of ballet dancing and, of course, her incredibly fappable bedroom scenes.

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale

Christian Bale's acting performance was probably the best of the year, but because he wasn't the main character in "The Fighter", he'll have to settle for the Best Supporting Actor trophy. In almost any other Oscar ceremony, Geoffrey Rush would be taking home the gold for his role in "The King's Speech", but he's just no match for Bale this year.

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo

I'm not sure I was entirely sold on Melissa Leo winning this award until I saw how different she really is from the character she plays in "The Fighter." Of course she's great in the movie, but then so is Amy Adams. It's just more of a stretch for Leo to become her character than it was for Adams. Hailee Steinfeld's performance was also noteworthy in "True Grit", but since no one in the film had a larger role than she did, Steinfeld simply does not belong in this category.

Best Animated Film: Toy Story 3

The biggest scam going at the Oscars is if an animated film gets nominated for Best Picture, it can still be nominated in this category as well. Sure "Toy Story 3" was a good flick and it pulled at your heartstrings like no other animated movie I've ever seen, but it still should only be represented in one category. Unfortunately, "How To Train Your Dragon" is going to get robbed.

While the Oscars are an enjoyable watch for movie buffs like myself, my main gripe (as mentioned earlier) is that there will be no surprises awaiting us this weekend. There are just too many award ceremonies before the Academy Awards ever takes place that suck most of the fun away from guessing who might win an Oscar.

Maybe it's time for the Oscars to move its date earlier in the year so that they can snuff out all of the other lesser award shows who collectively erode the impact of their show. Just a thought...

Top 3 Free Cloud Music Sites For Your Droid

Not long ago, I scoured the web for tips concerning the best free sites/services to upload my music in order to stream on my Android phone. Personally, I didn't find a lot of great resources for this advice so I decided to devote a blog post to it. Please leave a comment if you found this post at all helpful and/or if you have any cloud storage suggestions.

So without further adieu... in my experience, here are the Top 3 Free Cloud Music Sites for use with your Android phone:

3. MP3tunes

The Upside: MP3tunes gives you 2 GB of free space. Actually, the best thing about MP3tunes is that they'll give you the most space to play with. When I signed up, they started me with 2 GB and at some point upgraded me 10 GB. I don't know if every new user will get this perk, but 2 GB is about the maximum amount of free space you'll currently find out there.

The Downside: In my experience, the Droid app is riddled with problems. For starters, some of the albums simply won't display in Album mode. The album is listed, but he songs won't appear. The only way to find those songs is in Song mode. Another flaw is if you have songs with the same name. Maybe you have a studio, live and demo versions of the same song -- or if another artist has a song with the same name -- the app will sometimes not play the correct song. There are other problems, but that's just a couple of the bigger issues that I've experienced.

Overall: MP3tunes has potential -- especially since they are pretty generous with free space, but the web and app experience can be buggy. It's definitely worth signing up for, but its flaws may make it more frustrating than fun.

2. Mougg

The Upside: Mougg offers 1 GB of free storage. From my experience, Mougg is the easist to use as it takes a fairly bare-bones approach to the music storage process. In terms of uploading, it is the easiest and most hassle-free process that I've dealt with. On your app, you can either view your music by Songs or Artist. You can also create playlists on the Mougg website in which you can then play on your Droid app.

The Downside: Mougg is indeed pretty bare-bones -- actually, it's currently a bit TOO bare-bones. Mougg doesn't care about song order. It completely ignores the song numbering information saved in your MP3 files. In the main folder, it orders the songs the way you uploaded them. Under Artist view, it simply orders them alphabetically. Here is where creating custom playlists could be a helpful workaround for listening to songs in album order, but unfortunately, this is Mougg's biggest flaw: you cannot custom order your songs in a playlist.

Useful Tip: Because Mougg gives you absolutely no control over the ordering of your songs, you won't be able to listen to your songs in album order unless you upload the songs in backwards order. When using Windows, click Browse to find the folder with your MP3s. When in folder mode, make sure you sort the songs by song number so that they are in numerical order. Then when you highlight the entire group of songs, make sure that the first song to be uploaded is the last song on the album and that the entire album uploads in backwards order (i.e. 10, 9, 8.... 3, 2, 1). When they are all uploaded, they will display on the main screen in the proper chronological order. Now when you create a playlist and you pull over each song into it, they will remain ordered in the proper album order (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc.).

Overall: It's worth claiming your free 1 GB of space. For me, it's been the site where I store all the additonal albums that I was unable to fit onto...

1. mSpot

The Upside: mSpot gives you 2 GB of free space. The great thing about mSpot is that it not only gives you 2 GB of space, but depending on what quality you want your songs to play at, it may convert the files to a lower bitrate than your MP3s were ripped at giving you even more space for music. I currently have almost 90 albums and over 1000 songs consuming 1.98 GB of space at the medium quality option. It's sure nice to have all that music available to stream saving me 2 GB (or more) of space that I now don't have to store on the internal memory of my phone.

The Downside: There honestly aren't a lot of downsides. The uploading process is probably my main gripe if I have one. For some unknown reason, it can develop issues with certain songs and will feel the need to re-upload them again and again with each computer restart. In one instance, I just decided to just re-rip one problematic song and doing so seemed to satisfy mSpot. There are some other little annoyances, but overall, not enough to make a stink over. Also, mSpot's customer service is actually pretty responsive should you run into any issues.

Overall: I use mSpot more than the other two cloud music services combined. It's really pure awesome overall. If you are looking for just one cloud music service to use with your Android phone, download the mSpot app and get started!

Dallas: Congratulations For Murdering Animals

This morning I went online to check the latest sports news and I came across a headline so bizarre that I had to blink a few extra times just to make sure that all the sleep gunk was cleared from my eyes and that I was really reading it correctly:

Dallas Honors Michael Vick
With Key to City.

So let me get this straight...

Fight, torture and murder innocent animals and run an illegal dog fighting ring right behind your home and what do you get?


Injure your knee in the second quarter of a playoff game and because it doesn't appear to be severe enough to the beer-swilling slobs at home to merit not returning to the field, what do you get?


Worse yet, the unlikeable human behind Jay Cutler in this ESPN poll isn't even the dog killer guy, but the guy who has a thing for raping women for offseason fun. Boy, ain't that funny...


You would think it would be easy to now go off on a long rant about how wrong Dallas is and all of the rest, but I'm honestly at a loss for words. I simply don't understand people and there just aren't enough faces or palms to express the disappointment I feel towards those who are so willing to celebrate such horrible human beings all because they win some meaningless sports games. Ugh...