Happy new year!

The title says it all! I hope to keep on top of this better in 2012, be sure to keep on top of reviews and pushy opinions and everything else you don't need to read but I feel the need to write :D

So to you all I wish a peaceful and happy new year, and I'll see you on the other side!

- Break

2011 in review: lives

2011 has delivered lessons when it comes to lives, lessons that shall definitely be retained for future reference. None have been poor enough to go to the bottom of the list, but one has been good enough to reach the top 5. Or ok, maybe 10. It was definitely good though.

D, way back in May, were almost certainly my gigging highlight of the year. I've already gone on about them in a report back here but they absolutely deserve a mention here. They were the first lesson learned about lives this year - STAY OPEN-MINDED. I didn't have any interest in this band at all, cast them aside as standard visual kei, until I saw them live. Brilliant show, flawless vocals, very fun. I'd like to see them again.

Also previously mentioned here, girugamesh's live in London back March (known as Marchgamesh for its epicness this year). Lesson number 2: lives aren't what you see, but who you see it with. Was I overwhelmed by the show? Not as much as I'd like to be. Was I entirely surrounded by some of my nearest and dearest, hand in hand, in either side, always within reach? Yes. And so sentimental as it may be, that show features in the top of the year. And finally:

Dir en grey in Camden back in August, riding the tail-end of the London riots. I was accompanied by my sister and had the pleasure of spending the show with some very missed friends, and as ever the band put on a very good show. However it really was lesson number three in this one though, and that is that Dir en grey are not made to be watched from a balcony. My biggest live regret this year is that I opted to stay a safe distance away, third balcony up, rather than enjoy the pit - although this afforded a great view, and good sound, it just wasn't right.

Honourable mentions go to Yellow fried chickenz, more for lolz than anything else, and to Versailles ... actually for the lolz too.

2011 in review: music

How tremendously underwhelming was this year for music might I ask? Personally I've had a complete year of musical regression, re-living my school years with flashbacks to Linkin Park (when they were good), Avenged Sevenfold (when they were new) and Metallica (when they got themselves a goddamn orchestra!). This has mostly been nostalgic and hilarious, and the only way to get around the fact that there really has been very little to appreciate in the way of new music lately.

Of course 2011 finally brought us the eagerly anticipated Dum Spiro Spero from Dir en grey, which was quite good at dividing the crowds to say the least.

Ten points right off the bat for being the only album to feature a track that actually scared me, within barely a minute - indeed after the first track played through I turned the record off and didn't return to it for the hour that followed. I still don't know whether or not I like the whole album but I think it is nigh on perfect, in the sense that it accomplishes everything the band said they wanted it to accomplish. Months down the line I am still listening to it to try and figure out a real opinion but too many tracks are still being skipped in disdain and impatience. And other than Dir en grey we had:

the GazettE's latest offering of TOXIC. Once more the word "underwhelming" comes to mind. The album featured some particularly outstanding tracks but nothing as show-stopping as previous albums have seen. It should go without saying that the GazettE really do create things in their own world and with their own sound, and TOXIC still keeps that going, but ... "average" isn't a word I want to be using for them.

Honourable mentions must go to Sel'm's dusty doll single (reviewed here) and Sadie's COLD BLOOD album (featured here), for possibly being the music highlights of my year. Honourable mentions do NOT go to girugamesh's GO (undoubtably the biggest let-down of 2011) and lynch.'s I BELIEVE IN ME, which I still can't make myself go back to.

Finally honourable mentions go out to one of the most important bands to me, UnsraW, who broke up back in March, and to Sel'm whose outstanding vocalist and guitarist left in the same week. Swings and roundabouts, huh?

2011 in review: movies

in 2010 I accomplished the task of seeing at least one new movie a month in the cinema, but this year I've barely made it to any! What a tragedy.

My film of the year I think should probably go to X-Men: First Class, for excessively brilliant onscreen chemistry between the delectable Mister McAvoy and King of the Shark People Mister Fassbender (Charlie X and Erik, respectively).

Add to their perfect performances a brilliant training montage (I hear every film needs one) and definitely the best ending to a film of the series yet (which of you didn't experience that brief heart-stop when What Happened Happened?) it has probably been the film I have talked most about this year. That is apart from this one:

Sucker Punch. Sorry public opinion, I thought this film was just damn brilliant. The cinematics are wonderful, the dialogue and scripting is brilliant, and the overall story is great. I had the misfortune of watching it with someone who got confused enough to begin wearing his popcorn as a hat, but after a rewatch I enjoyed it just as much the first time. I love how there's virtually not a speck of blood int he whole thing, just inspired streams of steam and light. Steampunk nazi zombies - does it get better? But how did I wrap up my cinematic year?

Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. I was dragged almost against my will to see the first one and actually loved it, and against all odds I found the second to be just as great as the first. I don't know who to favour out of Charles and Erik or Holmes and Watson, but it was another shining example of great cinematics and fantastic dialogue. It's a complete toss-up for favourite film of the year, but it has to be between these three.

Honourable mentions go to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt2 for wrapping up one of my favourite stories in a truly explosive and moving manner, 127 Hours for totally blindsiding me with humour and the sound of sliced tendons, and Insidious for providing one of the scariest moments of cinema I have ever personally witnessed (RED-FACED DEMON WHUT?).