Protest Without Words

I’ve mentioned the band Protest the Hero here a few times, naming them as one of my favorite bands. Well, I just discovered something that makes me like them even more.

Their latest album, Fortress, came out in January of this year, and it was awesome. But I recently discovered that they’ve made it even more awesome—there is now available a version of the album that has all the regular tracks, plus instrumental versions of all of the tracks, and it’s still the same price as the regular album. (Of course, I paid double, since I bought the album when it originally came out, which did not have the instrumental tracks.) Or, I’m assuming this is new anyway—I bought the CD version of the album, and this double album version seems to only be available via iTunes [link (opens iTunes)], so it could have been there all along as an iTunes exclusive.

In any case, the instrumental version of the album is equally awesome, and speaks highly of just how intricately crafted their songs are. I’d imagine that you couldn’t strip away the vocals of just any song and still have a “complete” song—it would seem like it’s missing something. Having listened to the with-vocals version many times myself, it’s harder for me to judge the instrumental version of Fortress purely—at first, to me, it did sound a bit like there was something missing, but after having listened to the instrumental version a couple times, I have to say, I’m not sure that anyone who wasn’t familiar with the vocal version would ever think that, and the more I listen, the more I think they work beautifully without the lyrics.

If you like metal at all, or you just really dig fancy guitar-work, I’d highly recommend picking up the instrumental version of the album. I don’t think you can listen to whole instrumental tracks anywhere online, so if you want to try before you buy, I’d suggest buying “Sequoia Throne”—it’s probably their best song with or without vocals.

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books4barack.com

If you’d like to make a donation to support Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and you’d like to score some free, autographed books at the same time, hop on over to books4barack.com.

From the website:

So how do I get one of these books and help Obama at the same time?

It’s really quite simple. If you donate $250 or more to Barack Obama’s campaign through Ayelet’s MyBarackObama website, you will receive a mystery bag of 10 books, all in a canvas tote printed with the BOOKS FOR BARACK logo. The bags will be assembled randomly and tied closed so that no one — not even Ayelet — will know the contents of any specific bag. Your bag could contain a signed first edition copy of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, a signed first edition copy of Stephen King’s Hearts of Atlantis or a fine collection of poetry by a writer you’ve been waiting to discover.

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Watch New Film by Michael Moore for Free Online

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Documentarian Michael Moore has a new film out called Slacker Uprising. Because it’s about voting, and here we are in presidential campaign season, Moore has made the film available online for free in its entirety. Go download it or stream it now!

Or first, go make sure you’re registered to vote, and if you’re not, go do that. Then go watch Moore’s new film. Unless you’re planning to vote for McCain, in which case, feel free to not register.

 

 

 

 

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Gratuitous Hoofbeats

You know, I would be totally okay with it if I never heard another metal song that included the sound of hoofbeats and/or the sound of clashing swords. I would also be okay with it if I never heard another one of those 30-45 second interludes consisting entirely of hoofbeats and/or clashing swords.

I’m just sayin’.

(Thankfully, since my iPod is my primary listening device, and I use playlists, I can just eliminate those interludes, and iTunes lets you alter the start time of a song, so if a track opens with gratuitous hoofbeats, I can make it start at the 25 second mark or whatever.)

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Sacramento Book Review needs reviewers

The debut issue of the Sacramento Book Review just came out (which you can pick up for free in the Sacramento area, or download as a PDF). In this era of papers eliminating their review sections entirely, it’s nice to see a new upstart publication like this one making a go of it. In the first issue, I note that there’s a call for reviewers. Though it is unpaid, it looks to be a good venue to build up a clip portfolio, if you’re just starting out, and the reviews would be good showcase reviews for landing a gig at PW or Kirkus and the like, due to the brevity and style. They reviewed quite a lot of SF/fantasy in the first issue, so readers of this blog should feel right at home.

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The Living Dead on the verge of bestsellerdom?

Night Shade Books editor-in-chief Jeremy Lassen sez:

So, I just found out that the Night Shade title THE LIVING DEAD made the NY Times best seller REPORTING "In Contention" list.

It doesn’t mean the book made the list (regular or extended), but what it probably means that it shifted enough copies at the distributors and wholesalers that it was one of the top books in its category (Trade Paperback adult fiction), and is thus considered "In Contention" and retailers are asked to enter the number of copies sold. Without this prompting, a book only gets counted if it is a "write in" title, and books that are write ins almost never make the list.

A Rough estimate shows that just under 100 books get pre-listed in this category each week.

I’ll find out on Tuesday if we made the extended list. But still. It’s kind of cool. For the last couple years, one of our company goals has been to crack the NY Times Extended list. This is a nice first step.

Oh, and if you were planning on buying The Living Dead, or get copies for people as a gift, if you were to all run out and buy it this week, That might help us for next week. If everybody who reads this message buys 2 copies, and posts this message to their blog, we’ll be on! 

Yeah, so holy crap.

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LibraryThing users love Wastelands

Over on LibraryThing, a user gave Wastelands a really great review: “Without question this was one the best books of the last 5 years. … [Adams] has put together one of the best anthologies in the genre that I have seen. Although I was initially a bit cautious, once I began reading I found it nearly impossible to put down.”

Someone else started his review "When reading the back cover of this book, it looks terrible, like classic bad sci-fi" but gave the book 5/5 stars and said some very nice things about it. Kind of surprising that someone would thing the back cover makes it sound terrible and would then go on to not only read it but love it. (He seems to have read it because of the contributor list.)

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