An exciting week for the bookmaplet!

Wow, I just had a crazy week with the bookmaplet!

One week ago, last Thursday the bookmaplet got featured on Lifehacker, and shortly after this it was also picked up by MakeUseOf.com and KillerStartups. The net result? Tons of people trying it out. Check out this Google Analytics graph:

About 1200 visits on Thursday, and its settling around about 150-300 visits a day. Before that, I was averaging less than 5 visits a day. For those noticing a downward trend near the end, today I'm already at 208 visits. So, overal I'm very happy with this result.

Best of all, I started getting mails from people. There is something very special about creating something that you believe in, that is easy to use and useful, and then having people you never heard of telling you how much they like what you made. I even got some bug reports and feature requests. So, if you have any comments or suggestions for the bookmaplet, don't hesitate to contact me.

In the coming days, I'm going to look into some of feature requests that I got. So keep your eyes peeled for some new stuff showing up soon.

So, if you haven't done so already, give the bookmaplet a try and tell your friends about it.

Crimson Falls: Studio Report

A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to meet up with Crimson Falls in the CCR Studio where they were mixing their new cd, Fragments of Awareness. When I entered the studio, I could already hear one of the new songs, 'The Suicide Circle', blasting through the speakers. The song switches from deathcore to black metal style riffing, has vocals backing both styles up and the singer from Rafflesia as guest vocalist.
In the next song I got to hear, the band still puts a mirror in front of society, with 'The Suicide Circle' being about a wave of suicides with youths not too long ago in Britain.
After this they had five more songs lined up in a first rough mix. The next one, 'Forsaken', will become the opener on the cd. This song reminded me of All Shall Perish through the guitar loops. The lyrics are about Alzheimer's disease and show again that they want to bring real life problems in the open through their music.
The next song, 'If I'd Become A Father', was another deathcore piece with a super heavy slam part near the end with vocals ranging from grunts to pig squeals and even dog barks (? yes, you got to hear it to believe it...).
If you liked the 'In Flanders Field/We Are The Dead' combo from 'The True Face Of Human Nature', then you're in for a treat. They got a similar combo lined up in 'With All Due Respect/Sworn Persistence'. The first part consisting of a clean spoken intro on clean guitar lines mounting of into the slamfest that is 'Sworn Persistence'. Some melodic death riffing near the end of the song turned this into one of my favourites already.
The two last songs that I was able to listen to, 'Cauterize Havoc' and 'Omen', show again the typical Crimson Falls' song writing and Wim switching different vocal styles.
Overall it was clear that Crimson Falls has put another step forward in songwriting, mastery of their instruments and vocal ranges. I can't wait for these rough mixes to get finished and onto a cd. Topping it of with the excellent production of CCR Studio, this new release is going to mark their place in the Belgian metal scene.

Full disclosure: My brother is a guitarist in Crimson Falls and he gave me the opportunity to do this studio report. So I make no garantuees on being completely unbiased...

Lessons learned from building the bookmaplet

Building the bookmaplet allowed me to learn a lot about programming for the Internet, even though it is only small, little webapp. There were quite a few gotcha's as well. Reason enough to share some of the lessons I learned.

Website layouts are hard

Doing the layout for a website is harder than it seems. I have a fair bit of experience with building Java GUIs in Swing, but doing CSS is whole different ballgame. I did not have a lot of practical experience with web programming, but luckily I read Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML a few months ago. The Head First series is an excellent way to get started with a technology you have to learn quickly. Even though there's tons of resources on the Web on this, that book was a godsend to get started in a hurry. Nevertheless, I still plan to have a professional web designer take a look so it can be spruced up a bit more.

Browser differences are real

I naively thought I would be spared of any big issues with differences between browsers. It's only going to be a small site, not a lot of HTML or JavaScript. Of course, I was dead wrong. And it was only after bringing the bookmaplet site live that I noticed that Internet Explorer 6 does not support transparent images (PNGs) like the one I use as a logo. A bit of Internet research later I found a workaround with some HTML and JavaScript mumbo-jumbo, but it is not perfect. You can still see it flicker when the site is loading. I guess it serves me right for not testing in advance.

Using your own domain name

Last Friday evening, I was all psyched up to get my app online. I load it up on Google App Engine and I want to put it on my own domain. I had the idea for bookmaplet a bit more than a month ago and I purchased the domain at that time. I used GoDaddy, no problems there, excellent site to purchase and manage your domain, though they do try to get you to purchase a lot of extra services with the domain. What I did not count on, was that I had to register for Google Apps as well. This was not really a problem but more of an inconvenience as it took time to go through the process, modifying CNAME records, etc.  Unfortunately, after I this, I still could not see my webapp on my own domain because of DNS caching. It took about 20 hours to show up on there (meaning it was afternoon on Saturday). Bummer... In the future, I'll probably set up a dummy page already loaded in Google App Engine to counter this.

These were just some of the things I encountered while developing the bookmaplet. I got to learn a lot about web programming which was the whole point, so I'm pretty happy with that. There are still some bugs I have to iron out (websites with frames are nasty!). Overall, it's going as I planned. If you tried out the bookmaplet, don't hesitate to let me know what you think.

Rumor: Slipknot on Graspop 2009?

Yesterday, I was at the Slipknot concert in Antwerp, and Slipknot frontman, Corey Taylor, mentioned (what I think) is a big hint on their possible appearance on Graspop 2009:

You can expect to see us back sooner than you think!

I don't think they'll do new European tour again so quickly after this one (which ends tonight). This opens the door for them to do a string of summer festival appearances. I'm betting Graspop 2009 is going to be on that list!

Official launch: Bookmaplet

With this post, I'm officially launching my first webapp on Google App Engine:

Bookmaplet

Have you ever been on a webpage, saw an address of some company and wanted to know where it was located? Maybe not immediately the exact location, but just to get a general idea of whereabouts it is?

That's what you can use the bookmaplet for!

The bookmaplet is actually just a bookmarklet, which is a link that you can add to your toolbar. Drag it over there and you're set. Now, whenever you are on a webpage and you see an address there, just highlight it with your mouse, click the bookmaplet, and small frame will be appear in the top right corner displaying the location of the address on a map. And moreover, it's a fully functional map in the sense that you can zoom in and out with the scrollwheel on your mouse, or with the controls on the map. You can also bring up the sattelite view of you want.

You can of course just copy and paste the address into Google Maps, and this is great if you want to do more with the address, like calculate a route to it. But it also means opening another browser tab or window, and you have to switch back and forth between the original website and Google Maps. So, if you just want to know the general location of an address, I believe that the bookmaplet is a little simpler and easier to use.

So, why not have a look and try it out. And, of course, feel free to drop me a line and tell me what you think.

A change of course

When I started this blog, I expected to be talking about metal exclusively. However, it seems hard for me to consistently write something about that. 

So, I'm going to mix it up a bit. 

Open it up.

The last few days (evenings actually), I've been busing writing a small webapp. I built it using Google App Engine, and hopefully, I can load it up later this evening.

More info when it's launched!

Oh, and if you did come here just for the metal posts, there will still be more of them coming up.

New Deathstars vid: Death Dies Hard

The clip for "Death Dies Hard" of the upcoming Deathstars album, "Night Electric Night" has been launched:

Death Dies Hard

It's dirty.

It's sleazy.

It's deathglam, baby!

I can't wait for the full cd to come out early 2009.

VirtualPresence: FriendFeed - Rooms

Whoah, looks like I took my sweet time to follow up on my VirtualPresence posts. It's been a few weeks even. But I'm going to make it up by talking a bit about a cool and useful feature of FriendFeed called rooms.

Rooms in FriendFeed are a bit like a forum section dedicated to a certain topic. People can join rooms and post, comment and like items that are shared in this room. Basically, in FriendFeed, you can follow people, if you are interested in the person, and you can follow a room, if you are interested in a certain topic. And don't forget that you can put rooms in a group as well if you don't want to see them in your home feed all the time. Have a look at the Cthulhu room for instance, which I created to share stuff on the Cthulhu Mythos that I find online. 

What about my band?

There are several options on how you can use FriendFeed rooms to your advantage. You could create a room each time you release a new album. The room is the perfect place to gather reviews, share artwork, post music vids of songs, etc. If you have a decent following of fans, you probably won't even have to do much yourself, as they will be doing a lot of the sharing. Post some exclusive info in there first from time to time and you get a total win-win situation.

Another good use of a FriendFeed room would be for live performances (either a separate room for each tour, or just a single room for all gigs). You can post "on the road" photo's here. And it would be an excellent place to invite your fans to share photo's or live vids they made of you playing. 

Do you have a question about using webapps for your band? Drop me an email, and I might answer it on the blog.

VirtualPresence: FriendFeed - Basics

At first, I was planning on gently describing some of the building blocks of the social web, like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and so on. This would then lead into some of the more tricky stuff like FriendFeed. However, as my posting is somewhat irregular, I have decided to immediately go to some of the more fun stuff. If you think I'm going too fast, let me know and I will fill in some of those intermediate steps (and who knows, I might get to them later on anyway...).

So, on to FriendFeed!

FriendFeed is social aggregation web app, which is just a fancy way of saying that they collect what you share on other websites and present this as a single stream of information. You just make an account, add the sites that you use regularly and FriendFeed will capture what you do on those. Posted a Twitter message, favorited a YouTube movie, loved a song on last.fm, these are just some examples of what FriendFeed pulls in. Overall, they now support 48 services. You can also directly share links through FriendFeed.

Next to adding sites you use, you can also "follow" other FriendFeed users. Similar to following someone in Twitter, you will see whatever they shared (on sites they registered) appear in your FriendFeed account. As you can imagine, following a lot of people could become tricky through all different stuff that enters your account. To make this somewhat more manageable, you are able to add people you follow to different lists. I made separate lists to follow tech people, for instance.

You can find me on FriendFeed as well, of course. I share all kinds of stuff over there, not just metal-related items.

What about my band?

FriendFeed can be a good way to augment your online presence for fans that really want to follow what you are about. It makes it easy for people to follow what you do without them having to create accounts on all the same sites. Suppose that you posted a bunch of pictures of your last gigs on Flickr, FriendFeed will pick them up and fans that never go to Flickr will still be able to see them. 

Following other people is also somewhat easier through the different lists you can put them in. You can make a "Fans" list (where you could follow what your fans are sharing), a "Bands" list (where you can follow other bands with FriendFeed accounts), and so on.

Here, I have scratched the surface of FriendFeed because it will get even more interesting once we get to the supporting features and FriendFeed rooms.

Do you have a question about using webapps for your band? Drop me an email, and I might answer it on the blog.

Graspop 2009 dates announced

Mark your calendars!

The dates for the Graspop 2009 festival have been announced: 26-27-28 june 2009.

Now the speculating for who might play can begin. My wishlist:

1. The Black Dahlia Murder
   
2. Amon Amarth
   
3. Slipknot
   
4. Crimson Falls
5. Neurosis
6. Deathstars
7. All Shall Perish
   
8. Anaal Nathrakh
9. Saattue
10. Aborted
11. Cradle Of Filth

Who would you like to see on Graspop in 2009?

VirtualPresence: Do you have that URL in Small?

If you used a service like Twitter for any amount of time, you quickly run into the problem of sharing a link through it. 140 character is not a lot of space, but there is a solution for this through URL shorteners. There is a whole lot of them, but the basics are the same for all. You give them a URL that you want to share, and they return you with a very short replacement URL that you can then use in Twitter (or anywhere else for that matter). When someone clicks the replacement URL, they are sent to the original one.

From a technical standpoint, a URL shortener is not that hard to create which is probably the reason why there are so many. Let's have a look at a few:

1. TinyURL: This is about the first one I remember seeing online. Basic stuff, convert a long url into a short one. As a bonus, they'll let you choose an extension if you want to (good luck finding something readable that's not yet used).
2. icanhaz: A URL shortener based on the lolcats. They also let you suggest an extension yourself.
3. bit.ly: A newer URL shortener that took the idea further. If you shorten a URL with bit.ly, you can later on go and see how often it was clicked. They also download the page you referred to and archive it, so you can still see it if it would go down.

What about my band?

I recommend going with a URL shortener that can show you clickthroughs, like bit.ly. New services that build on Twitter start up regularly, if someone clicks your shortened URL through any of those, it will show up on the bit.ly info page as well. If you're not interested in clickthroughs, I'd still use it. Bit.ly is one of the shortest domains, and you never know when you change your mind and want to see them anyway.

Do you have a question about using webapps for your band? Drop me an email, and I might answer it on the blog.

Murder Manifest is following you

Two days ago, I noticed a new follower on my Twitter account. It was none other than Dutch death thrash formation, Murder Manifest. It looks like they got their online presence well established through their own website, and Twitter, Last.fm, and YouTube accounts (among a few others). They appear to be a good example of what I try to describe with the VirtualPresence posts.

But there is more - and this is the real kicker - they released their entire album, called Mental Surgery, for free online. You can go to their site and download it. Which I immediately did, of course. Especially as they mention being influenced by bands as Aborted, The Black Dahlia Murder and Dissection. They also released the album on cd on the 1st of September. I expect this type of distribution to grow further in the coming years, as even more mainstream artists are starting to do this. The best other example that I know about is Trent Reznor of NIN who seems to be at the forefront of developing new ways to interact with his fans and the public.

Now I'm going to put this Murder Manifest album on and listen to what they managed to produce.

An automatic lyrics evocifier.

I got an interesting comment to my previous post on the lyrical analysis (of Nocturnal by The Black Dahlia Murder). The idea that was proposed went as follows:

• Would it be possible to build a tool that could take a (first draft) of the lyrics to a song and propose more evocative words, or maybe introduce certain figures of speech?
• Would someone want to use it?

My short answer would be: 

Build such a tool? probably yes. 

Would someone want to use it? it depends.

Let's dig a little deeper and see what such a tool could look like and what kind of features it might have:

1. A thesaurus: I would probably start with this. Easiest way of getting synonyms. I can envision a tool where you paste in your text, it gets analysed and you get a smart ui for displaying the results. Maybe the original text with possible word replacements in a different colour and when you hover over them, you get a pop-up with possible replacement words.
2. Smart replacement algorithms: You can't just blindly replace words in a song as the timing of the song needs to be respected. Therefore, you need more or less the same number of syllables when you replace something or you have to replace multiple words. You might need to take phonetics into account as well to make sure replacement words sound "correct" next to the other words.
3. Figures of speech: Now we get into more tricky territory. Working figures of speech into lyrics will be hard. Some of the more technical ones (like an alliteration) seem doable, even though you will be working on multiple words at once. But it doesn't take long before you need your tool to be able to understand the meaning of words, which brings us to...
4. Semantics: The joy and trouble with English words is that you usually have several synonyms for a word that mean more or less the same, but convey slightly different nuances of that concept. Unfortunately songs can be about anything, which means your tool needs to know about the general meaning of words as well. There isn't one specific domain that you could try to model. You basically have to do them all.
5. Automatic translation: There exist a lot of bands whose members do not natively speak English. If they could write in their mother tongue and have tool translate it correctly to English and introduce more descriptive words and figures of speech while all the time maintaining the underlining meaning and atmosphere... Killer feature, I'd say.

Looking over the list, I think it would be possible to build a tool that does 1, 2, and at least part of 3. Entries 4 and 5? years away.

Part of the problem is indeed also who would be using the tool. At least for metal bands, not all of them go the atmospheric way. If you're in a down-to-earth band with songs about real life and society, then you are going to want to use words like "bloody" instead of "sanguinary". And even if you would want to use such a tool, a lot of bands probably would not want to pay for it. You can find a thesaurus online for free, ask friend who knows English well to help out, and save the money for other stuff like instruments...

Nevertheless, I found it a cool thought expirement. Now it's up to you! Did I miss a cool other possible feature? Am I underestimating what is possible linguistically? Or if you're in a band and write lyrics, would you pay for a tool like this?

Lyrical Analysis: Nocturnal by The Black Dahlia Murder

I pay less notice to the lyrics of songs then I used to. Now, when I buy new cd's, I have a quick look through the booklet for the artwork, usually while I'm ripping them for my mp3 player. But for a lot of releases that is the only time the written lyrics pass by me. 

Once in a while however, a hear a song that does make me want to now what exactly is being sung. One of those is "Nocturnal" by The Black Dahlia Murder. There are some hooks in that song that made it interesting, certain parts that could be clearly heard that draw you in. I had a closer look at the lyrics and found more than I expected.

Let's do some analysis:

1. A minimalist booklet design: Apart from the front page, the booklet does not contain any artwork or pictures. Each song has its lyrics printed on a separate page in a light font on a dark background. With the lyrics before you and nothing to distract you, your own imagination will draw up visions of what is being sung about. This is a trick that horror writers sometimes use as well. Instead of meticulously describing every physical aspect of a monster, they stay silent on specifics. This way, the reader will imagine the monster as something which is particularly frightening to him personally.
2. Free flowing text: The lyrics of a single song are printed as a continuous sentence. There is no punctuation to break up the text. No indentation indicating the start of a chorus. It puts your brain into a higher gear because it is harder to follow the lines. But it also has the side effect of keeping you better focused on what is going. Your mind is less likely to drift away.
3. A dark ritual: I read from the lyrics the description of a dark ritual going on: a sacrifice, a forbidden book, the calling upon an unholy master, blotting out the sun, ... Good stuff!!
4. Figures of speech: The choice of words used to compose these lyrics was not done haphazardly. Serious effort went into provoking a sense of dread through vocabulary and style. 

Perfect for a closer look (lyrics are in italic):

between the lines of dead language tongues 

before the dawn our hearts they shall hunt 

the smell of blood excites the nostrils

at first cut the sanguinary worship of 

"sanguinary", not "bloody", but "sanguinary", excellent word.

red spraying punctures a sight so divine

clutching her carcass face frozen in time 

Here we have the first of a set of alliterations (clutching-carcass, face-frozen), more will follow

a distorted dialect for the draining of veins 

Like before, more repeats (distorted-dialect-the-draining)

to the flooding of bedsheets with sick crimson rain 

They could've gone with "reddish" maybe, but "crimson" has a more evocative feel.

a warped diction of scriptures befouled 

traditions steeped within disgraces reviled

father, unholy one, to your nightrealm we bow 

nocturnal majesty, sworn to black we'll always be 

damnation's diction, a deadly disclosure our poisons in their goblets drip 

More repeats (damnation's-diction-deadly-disclosure)

How perfectly hideous, so eloquently scribed each scripture so skillfully sick 

And more (scribed-scripture-skillfully-sick)

parchment scabbed over with plasmatic prose, prophesize permanent night 

And even more (parchment-scabbed-plasmatic-proces-prophesize-permanent), be assured, this is no coincidence. Writing lines like these takes time, effort and talent.

the words of sheer blackness paint ebony my soul and bestow me with infernal might

"ebony", another choice for a more evocative color than simply brown. And not to forget, a bit of rhyme (night-might). 

A warped diction of scriptures befouled 

traditions steeped within disgraces reviled 

Father, unholy one, to your nightrealm we bow 

nocturnal majesty, sworn to black we'll always be 

A call and an oath upon the dark one. It would indeed be unlikely for a cabal of cultists to request something from their master without them having to pledge themselves to him for eternity. I suppose, who knows what it's like to be a cultist these days...

hatred and persistance 

destined to see 

a complete eclipse 

of that hated sphere the sun

Blotting out the sun, a lofty goal... not so easy to reach...

by the light unspoken 

this language of brutality

enraptured I have become 

unholy night's arms welcome me

nocturnal majesty, sworn to black we'll always be 

hatred and persistance 

destined to see 

a complete eclipse 

of that hated sphere the sun

VirtualPresence: Hashing up some more Twitter

Last week's post on Twitter was on basic Twitter usage. Today, we'll see another aspect of Twitter that you are bound to run into when you start using the service.

As it happens, people on Twitter often post messages on the same topic. They might, for instance, reveal their thoughts on an upcoming event (like elections, etc.). These messages only go as far as the circle of people they are followed by. In order to find these kinds of messages, the #-character was introduced as a convention. For example, if you are going to put a message up on the upcoming American presidential elections, the you can include the word "#election" in your message. And this makes it easy to find those kinds of message. Just head over to the Twitter search page, enter "#election" as a search term, and voila, all recent messages about the elections show up (well, at least the ones that also had "#election" inside the message).

These #-tags are not imposed by a certain company or institution. Anyone can start using a new one. The hard part is getting others to use it as well...

What about my band?

So what do you need to do with #-tags for your band? I wouldn't bother with them too much. Keep an eye out for those that are actively used and that you can use. Maybe a festival that you will be playing at has its own #-tag... If you find any of these, don't hesitate to try them out, but otherwise, there's going to be more useful things to do instead of doing this kind of semantic tagging.

Do you have a question about using webapps for your band? Drop me an email, and I might answer it on the blog.

VirtualPresence: Twitter

First of all, I changed the name of this series from "Social Sites for Bands" to "VirtualPresence", while the former was kind of a bland description, the latter has a better ring to it and is shorter to write.

So, today I'm gonna talk about Twitter and there's lots of stuff to say about it (probably enough for multiple posts) so let's start with the basics. Twitter is a small webapp where you can make an account for yourself and post messages. The trick, however, is that your messages (often called tweets or notices) can only be 140 characters long, similar to a text message (SMS) on a cell phone. For this reason, Twitter is often referred to as a microblogging site. Twitter also lets you follow other Twitter users. If you're logged in and you look at the profile of someone else (like mine), you'll see a button under their picture that reads "follow", press it and you are linked to them. The result is that when you log on to Twitter, you will see their messages as well in a single timeline.

Sometimes, when you see a message form someone else, you might want to reply to this. The @-character can be used for this, as follows:

• A_Band: Touring Germany for the time next month, anyone know about a good tourbus company?
• Dafmetal: @A_Band You should have a look at Bunny&Devil-buses.

Now my reply will show up in A_Band's feed. This works even when you aren't following each other!

What about my band?

This should give you a basic overview on how Twitter works. Now, the question remains, what's the best way to use Twitter for my band?

Keep the messages band related. For your band account, your best bet is to keep it band-related. Keep the "My cat is going to the vet."-posts for your personal account. Some good topics?

• Gigs you're going to do or just played.
• Recordings you're doing.
• New merchandise that you're bringing out.
• Post about the equipment you use.
• ...

Decide what your following strategy will be. A Twitter account for a band will mostly be about getting info to some of your most loyal fans. Once you start being followed, there is the temptation to follow those who are following you. But when you follow someone, they'll partly expect you to be interested in what they post, and you might not be able to keep up. If this means that you no longer add people to your follow list, you are essentially breaking up your follower base into two camps. With one side feeling let down and possibly giving you a bad rep. My advice is to decide up front what your following strategy will be and choose: 

• Follow no one.
• Follow everyone that follows you.

Remember, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't @reply to people if they post something good. Twitter is really meant to connect with people indirectly.

The best way to get a feel for this stuff is to try it out, so head on over to Twitter and make an account. And don't forget to let your fans know about it through your website, blog or newsletter. And make a comment on this blog so we can find you.

Do you have a question about using webapps for your band? Drop me an email, and I might answer it on the blog.

Social Sites for Bands: Intro

As a software engineer, I spend a lot of time behind a pc and online. There has been a big shift in the last years towards social websites and webapps and more seem to crop each month. It's easy to find your friends on these sites, but when I started looking for bands (or band members) on these sites, I almost couldn't find any at all. Now, I'm not talking about MySpace where everybody and his dog has a page (and which I do NOT like at all, spam anyone?). But rather sites like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and more...

Of course, so many pop up that it is almost impossible to register at all of them, let alone have an active presence, yet this can't be the only reason. When I talk with other people, a lot of them don't really know what they are about and how to best use them. So, this might be the case for music bands as well. Therefor, I'll be running a series on my blog on those social sites and webapps and on how they can be put to good use.

Some ground rules:

• I'm mostly gonna look at this from the point of music bands. There will be useful info for personal use as well, but the target is bands.
• And when I say bands, I think metal bands. This is still supposed to be a metal blog. Now, most metal bands have a pretty positive DIY attitude which is excellent for this. If you're not in a metal band most of this will probably still apply. I just won't be thinking of you  ;-)
• Lastly, and most important, I recommend using different accounts for your band and for band members. I'm a firm believer in providing focus to your online presence, and having different accounts is a first step in that direction. More on this in future posts.

I'm also open to suggestions. So if you have any questions on this subject, drop me a mail and I'll look for an answer in a future blog post.

I use such sites as well of course, best place to find me is FriendFeed.

Alright, stay tuned for the first real installment in the next blog on Twitter...

lolmetal IV: archeology is a hobby

I found some more lolmetal pictures that I made a while ago.

Graspop 2008 review

The 2008 edition of the Graspop Metal Meeting was once again a resounding success with some excellent bands, a record-breaking crowd (about 135000 visitors!) and of course beer and hamburgers galore. I managed to get there for all three days and really enjoyed myself.

So, let's have a look at what I think were the top 5 performances:

5. Arch Enemy:
Arch Enemy was much better than I expected them to be. The Marquee was totally packed and you could see the horns go up all the way till the end with each song. They also played my two favorite Arch Enemy songs: "Dead Eyes See No Future" and "The Last Enemy". So no complaining from me.

4. Deathstars:
Deathstars was for me the discovery of 2006. I saw them live that year at the Biebob too, and last friday at Graspop. It was one of the first bands I saw, and it seemed like they were having a good time too. I am a big fan of their deathglam and live shows. They found a niche and I can see them grow a lot in the coming years. I guess a lot will depend on their next release due out later this year. Oh, and if you're not convinced yet, they had the largest crowd of good looking metal girls.

3. Immortal:
Black metal pioneers, Immortal, came to Graspop this year for a reunion gig. Once again lots of people in the Marquee, and a very nice show with fire and pyrotechnics. If they keep this up, they might become the KISS of black metal.

2. Ministry:
It was a difficult choice between Morbid Angel and Ministry (as they played at the same time), but as Morbid Angel will be coming to Belgium again in the fall, I decided to go the farewell gig of Ministry. And boy was I glad I did that. The sound was good, the band was having a good time and the crowd was going wild. It really is too bad that a band of this calibre decides to call it quits.

1. At The Gates:
Another reunion gig, At The Gates, totally blew me away. I still remember buying their "With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness" release as one of my first more extreme cd's. This band had the best sound at Graspop this year by far. It was a 40 minute energy burst without equal. When the show ended it, you could see people looking around, saying: "it was good, but why didn't they play Blinded By Fear?" at which point the band comes back on stage and the intro to Blinded By Fear starts. Excellent! I celebrated by buying their tour-shirt.

New Crimson Falls song online

Belgian deathcore formation Crimson Falls have just put a new song online, called " A Period Of Consequences". You can check it out on their MySpace page. It turns out to be layered song with a lot going on inside it, and the intro should be able get a pit started during live shows in no time. You might have to wait a bit before you can see them live however, as they will be concentrating on rehearsing and recording their next full length.

Oh, and one more thing, the song will only be up for one month, so listen while you can!

Full disclosure: My brother plays guitar for Crimson Falls. So I make no garantees on being unbiased...