Hell's bells, it is too sunny to be blogging.

This weather is stunning. I'm almost ashamed that I took a brief break from my errands day to check my Internets and update things.

Firstly: apparently Vox is being a pooface about transferring my posts over to LJ, so those of you who read me from over there should go back and catch this massive end-of-semester roundup.

Also: the sheer amount of awesome concerts over the next little while is making my bank accounts sad this month. Opeth, Decemberists, and Porcupine Tree (on Sept. 30?! Who the balls puts tickets up five months early, particularly for a seated venue?) are all coming up, and Rotate This! (seriously, fuck Ticketmaster. Go to RT instead. The staff are kind of dicks, but it beats "service fees" the size of fat children) pretty much owns my soul now. Prog Nation (Dream Theater! Pain of Salvation! Zappa! Beardfish! Oh my!) hasn't even been announced yet. It's going to be a loud, loud summer.

Thirdly: I haven't blathered about the awesomeness of a new album for a while, so here's a loud recommendation: Mastodon's Crack The Skye. It's dorkily high-concept in the extreme (astral projection! Rasputin! Assassinations!  Bears in ill-fitting hats!), but I'm really enjoying their new sound. There's much less random barking in the vocals, and it turns out that the screamer-in-chief has a lovely, resonant, nasal rumble of a voice when he feels like it. I think I might still be too conservative a metalhead to dig their earlier albums (Leviathan is pretty fuckin' badass, but a bit too chaotic for me), but I definitely love this new direction.