Standout Songs

"Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)" By Pink Floyd

This song is a perfect example of flow. It's natural. It reminds me of a stone dropped into a river, rolling with the current across the riverbed, bouncing off rocks and skimming across the soft sand. Everything falls into place. The song includes catchy jazz bass lines, funk guitar chords, and a "chill" solo. The vocals of this song are also unique, with haunting, tired words and the voices of children who. This song is about being meaningless, being another "brick in the wall", being another overlooked support brick for our capitalistic economy.

"Paranoid" By Black Sabbath

Wow. In my opinion, this is probably one of the most important songs in metal history. Black Sabbath was doing something that none of the other bands back then were doing. They were experimenting, and by doing so started a revolution. The distorted, haunting riffs by Tony Iommi were very captivating. The guitar in this song is straight up genius, they're very blues oriented but still manage to sound "metal". Ozzy Osbourne's vocals act as the nails in the coffin, in making this a masterpiece.

"Paint It Black" By The Rolling Stones

This song is amazing. I love the middle eastern influence (as seen in the sitar and drum beats) and surprisingly dark lyrics. I really like the transitions into this, it almost seems to go from to depressed to crazy and vengeful, the back. There are so many weird components included in this song, and frankly I'm surprised it turned out so well, and I have to give The Rolling Stones Props for pulling it off. The perspective of the song is from someone who is depressed and pessimestic, and feels almost disgusted at the thought of happiness or beauty.

Album Review

As I Lay Dying's An Ocean Between Us
4.5/5



Local band, As I Lay Dying, has definitely accomplished a ton since their debut album “Frail Words Collapse” in 2003. As I Lay Dying has been pioneering the metalcore genre, leading the pack and influencing hundreds of bands that follow in their wake. Their new album, “An Ocean Between Us” (Metalblade Records, produced by Killswitch Engage's Adam Dutkiewicz) has been one of the most impressive albums of the 2007, showing the raw musical talent of the band.

What I loved about this album was the progression that the band has made over the years. They’re definitely still the same band, but improvements can be found in almost every aspect of there music. The technical riffs and overall song writing has been a major step up. More noticeable advances include the amazing drums and more defined vocals.

This album also appeals to a much broader audience than their previous one with amazingly catchy songs like “The Sound of Truth”. However, old As I Lay Dying fans will still enjoy this album just as much because of the brutality and straight up skull smashing, circle pit metal in songs like “Wrath Upon Ourselves”. Overall, “An Ocean Between Us” puts As I Lay Dying in front of the other outdated bands of the genre and shows us that As I Lay Dying isn’t going anywhere. They possess something that not too many bands have: the ability to adapt and evolve.

Literature Circle Response #2

Since our last meet, we've began the book "Notes from the Underground". So far we have gotten to page 36 of this puzzling book. The main character, "the underground man", is a very intelligent, masochistic, self-loathing man. This book is different from any other book that I have read. It's not traditional at all, but instead shows the very interesting and different views of the main character. This book is truly a physcological trip into the mind of a free-thinking and puzzling man. I love the style of the book because it's unlike anything I've ever read. It's more theoretical, and spontaneous, than usual but the biggest difference is how its strictly thoughts of the character, the brain of the character. When I'm reading this book I feel more like I'm looking into the mind of "the underground man", and the character is extremely well developed and complicated; completely believable as a real person (even in our modern society). His attitude is very interesting, he believes strongly in freewill and loves to exercise it, to do the unpredicted. He also likes to feel pain for that reason, I think it's because he truley enjoys to be human and he feels almost trapped by his intellegence. He is an existentialist which means he believes that it is up to him to make his own decisions, regardless of reason. Overall, this is a very interesting book and I look forward to continue reading it.

Literature Circle Resonse #1

Since our book, "Heart of Darkness" was so short, by our second meeting we had completely finished it. Although it was very short it covered a lot of ground. I think the overall theme of it was greed and the potential for madness to overcome us all. The cause of greed in the story, ivory, could be implemented in modern society by money, oil or really any other thing that has value. The scary thing about this concept is that we all have the potential to go made, be overtaken by greed. There is nothing to predict in the story because, like I said, I completed the book. Some other themes that were present were imperialism and mistreatment of natives. The main story of "Heart of Darkness" was about the journey of Charles Marlow to the Congo as a captain of a steam boat. He experiences life in the Congo for several months when his boat breaks down and he has to wait for parts of it so it can be fixed. During his stay he learns of a man named Mr. Kurtz who intrigues him greatly. Mr. Kurtz is a manager and ivory trader at the Inner Station. After his steam boat is fixed, he travels to the inner station and on his way he is attacked by natives. Once he gets there, he learns that Mr. Kurtz has gone mad and taken the position as a native chief. He was overtaken by his greed for ivory. Mr. Kurtz gets sick and dies and mutters his last words "The horror, the horror." There were two parts that I had amazing visualizations for due to the authors amazing use of descriptive language (although it was often a bit overdone). The parts were: Marlow's first encounter with the natives and when Marlow saw the heads on posts. This book was very confusing for me and didn't make sense a lot of the time, but I got the overall idea and theme of it.

Water Turbidity #11

Today, we finished up the last presentation. Overall, this experience has been several things. Extremely boring, is the first that comes to mind. Watching hour after hour of presentation while having to take notes at the speed of light wasn't the funnest thing. But, on the bright side, I learned a lot about different aspects of water and really got an appreciation of it. I also learned a lot of useful things that will help me when doing tests on water and such, and I know how different things effect water. Anyways, I'm glad that I learned all of these things, but also a little disappointed of them method, but maybe, it was necessary.

Water Turbidity #10

Today, we also had presentations. It was pretty brutal watching all the presentations and being enslaved to taking notes. One that I thought was pretty cool was Water Hardness by Emlyn, Alec, and Marissa. I went into the presentation knowing nothing about water hardness (I thought it was like ice, lol) and came out knowing a whole lot. I found that general hardness (GH) is the number of divalent cations (minerals that have lost 2 electrons) dissolved in the water. And the water usually contains calcium or magnesium if it is hard.

Water Turbidity #9

Well i guess this isn't really about water turbidity, but it has to do with the project. Today we watched presentations. These presentations were really interesting, one that I thought was really good was pH, by Danielle, Kerstin and Coco. This presentation taught me a lot about something that I knew absolutely nothing about. I learned that pH literally stands for potential of hydrogen. It basically means the acidity of water. pH varies in levels between 0 and 14. 0-6.9 is acid. 7 is neutral and 7.1-14 is alkaline.