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Love and marriage…

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Television warned me about it, but I’m going to try it anyway. Dutch bureaucracy and medical realities willing S. and I will get married in the next two weeks. Not so much from a deep seated romantic need for a marriage as an symbol of our love (though that is nice) but to make sure our legal situation is stabilised just in case. As y’all know, S. has been going through a very rough patch this year after the kidney transplant what with opportunistic infections and other calamities, so now that she’s fully recovered from the previous bout the doctors want to schedule a long overdue cleanup operation. I won’t go into details, but the idea is that if the operation is succesful it will break the cycle of infection-recouperation-reinfection, by tackling several sources of infection at the same time. It’ll mean S.’s basic health level will be up, helping her cope better with the anti-rejection drugs while still able to fight off new infections. But it’s heavy duty surgery, things can go wrong and we want to make sure that if somethings happen, everything that needs to be arranged can be arranged with the least amount of legal hassle. It’ll make it that much easier to actually undergo the operation, scheduled for less than two weeks from now…

The hospital has been incredibly helpful, the doctor in charge having contacted the city council to help arrange an emergency wedding, which could be held in the hospital itself, and I have an appointment first thing monday sharp to see if we got all the paperwork to actually be able to marry, something already complicated as the Dutch bureacracy seems to ask for certain documents actually unknown to their English counterparts. Oh well, my job the last few years has largely been about convincing well meaning but rulebound civil servants to things my way, so how hard can it be (famous last words).

So no flowers, no ring, no big party, just get it done and dusted, get S. out of hospital hopefully to not return there soon and we’ll see about a proper party sometime next summer, when her family can be there as well (we hope).

Metal Monday: crossing the T

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From feast to famine… Too many bands starting with an “S” to feature them all, but when it comes to “T” it’s another cup of it altogether. Two possibilites, Testament and Therapy?, though undoubtly fine bands both I’ve never really gotten into, even if they’re probably the best known metal bands of the lot. There’s also Thin Lizzy, though I’m not sure I would classify that as hard rock, let alone heavy metal, as the BNR Metal pages have done. Still it gives me an excuse to feature one of my favourite sing along to the stereo turned up to eleven songs:



Moving on to a slightly more embarassing band to like: NWOBHM influenced hair band Twisted Sister:



Brainiac begs to differ — You can stop rock ‘n roll — with a caravan!



After that particular brand of naffness, let’s go for something a bit darker. We all thought we were oh so edgy for liking Type O Negative, not just for its anti-Christianity and slight aura of e-ville but also because they supposedly broke the ultimate taboo of using nazi symbols….



Christian Woman:



And in remembrance of lead singer Peter Steele, who died this april — Everything Dies:



Dust in the Wind

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Caught this on one of the five thousand or so interchangable music channels our cable company thinks we need. So rare to find a Dutch language song that’s actually interesting and good enough to show the world. Most Dutch artists either go for local succes or pastiche rock.

Metal Monday: you slay me

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Four bands today: three old favourites and one newly discovered old veteran. To start with the last, Saxon is an old unrepentant New Wave of British Heavy Metal band, of whom I got a couple of albums but which was never a true favourite. Until I rediscoved this:



S.O.D., Stormtroopers of Death on the other hand I’ve always liked. A side project with several of Anthrax’s original members, they don’t really take themselves at all serious. Some of their ballads are on the long side however:



Slayer is one of the Big Four of Thrash Metal, together with Anthrax, Megadeth and of course Metallica. They deserve two songs/ First up, South of Heaven:



And this is their most evil song: Dead Skin Mask:



Then there’s Sepultura, another giant of Thrash Metal, with Dead Embryonic Cells:



Metal Monday: R is for ummm

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Plenty of metal bands starting with “R”, but none that I actually like all that much. Rainbow? Rush? Not my cup of tea to be honest. The only band I actually got music from at the moment is Rammstein and personally I always think of that as industrial rather than metal, though I do have a fairly personal definition of industrial, true. So what the hey, let’s have some Rammstein anyway.

The band is actually named after that US Airforce base, Ramstein, which you may know of that horrible airshow disaster back in ’88. Their self-titled song on their first album Herzeleid refers back to that disaster:



As per usual when any German band actually sings in German, goes for a heavy sound, goes for militaristic looking outfits and dark lyrics, they’re accused of glorifying nazism or terrorism. To be fair, Rammstein does like to challenge their critics, with songs like this:



Actually one of their less offensive songs about (homo)sexuality and such — Buck Dich:



And let’s end with two videos for the (old) superpowers — Amerika:



Moskau