PAGANFEST USA definitely makes it in the top 5 shows I attended in 2008 (along with such epics as Judas Priest and Barlow’s glorious return to Iced Earth). It was an amazing way to kick off Chicago Powerfest, and it was an outstanding lineup of bands in it’s own right. Eluveitie and Turisas blew me away, and though I wasn’t (and still am not) a huge fan of Tyr, I do have to say that they played a good show. Headliners Ensiferum closed out the night in such glorious folk metal fashion, I think most of the concertgoers didn’t even mind they were watching 4 shirtless, sweaty, longhaired Finns in skirts. It was certainly much more badass than that last sentence makes it out to be.

Well, to the glee of metalheads far and wide who enjoyed last year’s show, organizers Rock The Nation America have announced the second annual folk-fueled metalfest will be making it’s way across the U.S. of A. this upcoming year! This year’s installment will feature some truly phenomenal bands, such as fellow Finns Korpiklaani & Moonsorrow, Ireland’s Primodial, & Switzerland’s Eluveitie (who I am supremely happy to see returning from last year’s bout). Opening the show will be Canada’s Blackguard (formerly known as Profugus Mortis) and New Jersey’s own axeshredding freebooters Swashbuckle.

One of the exponentially lessening reasons to keep HBO’s +$12.00 line on my monthly cable bill is the hilariously absurd “Flight of the Conchords“. If you were unlucky (or soulless) enough to have missed the first season of this television program, well, you need to get on that before I bicycle kick your worthless ass Ryu-style toward the nearest DVD outlet. Additionally, and somewhat more on topic, I’m sure you weren’t nearly as excited as I was to hear that FunnyorDie.com would be giving an exclusive sneak peek at the second season premier… an entire freaking month before it hits the Home Box Office on January 18th!

From December 17th to December 21st, Funny or Die will be giving us our first look at the ongoing saga that is Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie (who’s disembodied floating domes grace the photo above respectively). Enjoy the Kiwi musical duo trying to make it big in New York with their eclectic blend of “guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk” as their now-bigtime manager comes crashing back to reality… in usual Murray fashion.

Hit it while you can… continue on to see the video:

New episodes of the new Music That Doesn’t Suck series will be posted every Tuesday from now until I run out of tunes that don’t suck, which I’ve projected to be about 3 weeks after our sun collapses in on itself thus becoming a blackhole, sucking all matter within our universe into nothingness. At which point, I think people will care even less than they do now about stupid shit I post on the Internet. That is all. You may now return to not reading my website.

As I now know that everyone visiting this site isn’t aware, and just in case any of you zany peeps are wondering, if you’d like to put cool little pic next to your comments here on Heavy Metal Geek, it’s easy. Not long ago, I updated the site to use the simple and convenient, widely recognized avatar solution that is known as… GRAVATAR!

Though this sounds like the name of some long-defeated Decepticon, I assure you fine people (and Autobots) that it’s something far less diabolical. Simply visit www.gravatar.com, sign up for an account, upload the photo you’d like to use, and you’re all set. Your newly-created avatar will now show up here on HMG along with a plethera of other website and blogs. Well, as long as you put the electronic mailing address you used to sign up to gravatar.com in the e-mail field when adding your comment. That’s it. Easy. So do it.

Mercenary – “11 Dreams”
From the album: 11 Dreams

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Why this song most certainly doesn’t suck:
I’m going to start off my new Music That Doesn’t Suck series with a special one (to me at least). My first encounter with Mercenary was roughly 3 years ago, thanks in part to a Shoutcast station that was kind enough to treat my ears to the band’s unique brand of Dannish asskickery. Since then, I’ve been a huge fan of their entire catalog, which spans the last decade and includes a grand total of 5 albums. They’re pretty consistent with releasing a  new album of  power metal influenced melodeath awesomeness every two years or so, their last of which, “Architect of Lies”, was released this year (and yes, it’s amazing).

As some of you may remember, I’ve been compulsively saving the movie tickets from every flick I hit up in the theater for the last, oh, 11 years or so. A while back, I decided to take all of these tickets out of their dank, carboard prison and add them to a shiny new Excel spreadsheet (and no, I didn’t get rid of the physical tickets after that… they’re still safe and sound in my desk drawer). Check here for the original post.

I took some time this weekend to do a quick update to the list with the latest batch of tickets I’ve collected since the end of the busy Summer movie season. And this year’s by far the winner! With a few movie-going weeks left in 2008, here’re the results so far:

Number of Movies Seen: 47
Total Spent on Movies: $376.25
Total Amount of Time: 86 Hours 12 Minutes

Now, though I do count movies I see more than once into these totals, I think this has been the most successful movie-going year of my life. And just for the hell of it, I’ve posted the complete list of the movies I’ve seen this year directly from my spreadsheet, complete with date, time, cost, and runtime… kind of puts things in perspective when you have to actually scroll through the numerous flicks I’ve spent my weekends basking in the glow of. Oh, and feel free to make fun of me for seeing some of these numerous times… it was totally worth every penny.

Now, onto breaking the 50 mark!

For an abundance of mockery material, read on…