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I'm sure we'll get used to it and it certainly seems more professional. One thing though is that the banner at the top looks bare, and as said, the main text area is a little anorexic.

Just a little bit of trivia but 'breaking kayfabe' is when professional wrestlers break character to express something more personal.

MC Lars did this with his album last year, released it for download a week earlier than in stores.

Good idea for smaller artists where not all stores will carry their releases.

To be fair "Well, in the immortal words of Sven Goran Eriksson: ‘First half good, second half, not so good’." made me chuckle at work.

I think it's an interesting enough piece, might be worth someone sticking a proper review up to go with it though.

I think 5 might be a little harsh, but it isn't a classic.

Not upto standards of 'Mellon Collie' or earlier releases, but the album stands up next to 'Adore' and 'Machina'.

Good song, not great, but it's one of the better things I've heard for a while. Certainly better than the latest generic indie bollocks being pushed by NME, see any band beginning with 'The' for an example!

The album listing is available now, check out somewhere like play.com

Only heard 'Tarantula' and 'Doomsday Clock'. The first being fucking good and the second having some awesome instrumentation. Should be a good album.

Far too much emo here.

The Ben Kweller one might be worth a download.

I saw them in Birmingham a few days earlier and I had the chance to go this too and snapped it up!

Was a great show, even better than the one at the NEC which had left me sitting there spellbound for the first few tracks.

'Machina' is a reasonable album with some great singles, and 'Adore' is a good concept album (for the record listening to it always gets rid of my headaches).

While we're at it I like 'Untitled' it's a nice little light number. You're though in regards to 'Mayonnasie' and 'Thirty-three' they really should be on here.

Bring on 'Zeitgeist'!

Is this a re-release because I got it from Virgin on 7" about this time last year?

I have no doubt as to the general good sense and taste of the DiS crew! Was just a little surprised at what I found. I wonder if Kittie are going to bush the borders with the next record and create nu-emo?

After seeing this I thought I'd check out Kittie's reviews on DiS, to see what witty piss-taking was aimed their way.

I am speechless...

I quote: "One of the best albums this year, one of the most together albums of the year, one of the most (internally) varied albums of the year."

http://www.drownedinsound.com/release/view/2791

That in 2001, a year that gave us gems such as Fugazi's 'The Argument', Mogwai's 'Rock Action', and Tool's 'Lateralus'!!

Haven't heard anything by or indeed of them before, but I enjoyed the review!

...an ex-member of the mighty Sunna I believe.

Well about 10 days ago iTunes took it upon itself to sync my iPod to my computer (the first time in 3 years!). I am now nearing completion of GiRP (Great iPod Recovery Project) and have to admit the MP3s were easier than ripping CDs.

But, not all of my downloads were necessarily from iTunes, about 10 CDs worth are from elsewhere (some ripped from borrowed CDs, some from P2P *gasp*). It was at this point I regret not making hard copies, just in case.

So I guess my point is, as convenient as MP3 downloads are, they take up hard drive space. It is all very well having some iTunes purchases on there, but you wouldn't want 30GB worth, and that is where CDs show their true stock.

For the record I buy vinyl singles only, all my CD singles are gifts from artists themselves. If I like a song that I have on vinyl I will then download it. I don't know what it is about singles jewel cases but they just don't sit well with me.

Maybe if they did singles on those small CDs they would have some aesthetic appeal.

He's holding the Heavyweight and Intercontinental championships, the former of which he never won (I will bite my tongue!) Anyway he and Flair engaged in many feuds for various promotions, so I'm sure one of them must have happened in '92 when Flair was WWF Champion and Roddy was I/C Champion.

Yes, that was geeky!

According to IMDB: Samuel L. Jackson only signed on for this film because of the title. It was later changed to "Pacific Air Flight 121", but Jackson demanded they reverse the change. "We're totally changing that back. That's the only reason I took the job: I read the title."

So we can expect another Deep Blue Sea ("We need to get these motherfucking sharks out of here??" Maybe.)

I'm thinking future Samuel L. films might also hint at content through their titles. Pending roles include:

Pulp Fact
The 52nd State
xXx 3: The Next Next Level
Shift: Shaft's iGeneration brother

Seriously though he is currently making:
Farce of the Penguins
Black Snake Moan
2004: A Light Knight's Odyssey

He was good as well. Bugger.

Erm... there are 8 people in Mushroomhead... where did the other one go? Maybe it's you? I put it to you Raz that you are in fact Mushroomhead bassist Pig Benis!

Nah seriously though 'XX' is a decent take on Faith No More, people should check a couple of songs out, maybe 'Solitaire Unravelling' and 'Bwomp'.

I realise this is a late post to a dead thread, but it is something I feel all Cobain and Nirvana fans should read.

Would be interesting to get some feedback on this!

For the record all the below is my own work and has been submitted elsewhere, hence it is copyright protected. A full version of the essay in its original context is available on request.

We can never truly know if we are sane. What is acceptable - that which doesn’t disturb the individual or that which doesn’t upset society? If we do not adhere to the codes of culture then we are said to be insane. The problem is that insanity is a dynamic term, varying between ages and societies. Perhaps for that reason then sanity should be based on a personal barometer of tolerability, leaving us to decide for ourselves what we think is inappropriate behaviour. This does not bode well for society, as surely more intense feelings are more pleasurable to the human psyche than the mediocrity culture allows.

As it stands though, culture determines the markers of sanity. Issues begin to arise from this if no one in society particularly cares about whether an individual is of sound mental health or not, or rather becomes fascinated with an idea.

There is often in the depressed a genuine feeling of guilt that they feel unwell because they have no physical maladies or can recognise no single causal depressive event. This search for a validation of her depression leaves Cobain not only waiting for an answer to its cause but waiting for a revelation. He is convinced that one day he will reach a moment of catharsis and he will pass through the darkness of depression back towards the light of normality. For all his talk of this though, we are left questioning if he really means it, if he knows that he will never find the answers because there are none.

"Depression is not a sudden disaster. It is more like a cancer... If you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he’ll never know." (Wurtzel, E. 'Prozac Nation' 1996, pp. 18-9)

Simply put we must appreciate the effect society has on the human psyche in assimilating and numbing it to such a degree that sometimes individuals feel the need to test it in order to acknowledge their own existence. The extent of human experience is defined purely by the rules of the society in which we live, and so in order to experience anything beyond what is presented to us, the limits of such experience must be tested and subverted,

“Culture, mental illness, and personality development are intimately related�.
(Castillo, R. 'Meanings of Madness' 1998, p.37)

Often it can be that social anxieties are projected on to the individual and result in feelings of personal unease.

The deliberate undermining of the symbolic order is an idea discussed by Julia Kristeva in relation to the concept of abjection (see Kristeva, J. 'Powers of Horror' 1941, pp. 1-31). According to Kristeva, the abject is no particular thing, but rather something we instinctively reject and put beyond the thinkable; it exists outside us. Even though we are unable to assimilate to it, we are fascinated by the border of non-meaning it represents. This idea of nothing being a part of our minds evokes terror in the sense that we realise that we could not-be. Essentially the abject allows being and not-being, living and dieing to occupy the same territory by blurring the lines between them. Insanity comes into play when someone takes such delight in the abject that they constantly engage it, in Cobain's case through drug abuse.

Moments such as this explore the fragile boundary between being and non-being. In wanting what is inside to cross the border to the outside, (or vice versa) one plays with the idea of not existing. The skin is the boundary of life and by making even small breaks in it Cobain tests his existence.

Self-harm is not the only flirtation with the abject and the desire to not exist. In finding repulsion attractive one is being wilful and self-obsessive, and gets a thrill from transgressing social codes.

This is narcissistic depression.

This type of depression, if untreatable, can result in suicide representing a method of release from living with the pain of constant lacking.

There are two forms of narcissictic depression.

In the first form there is a general feeling of lacking or absence which the sufferer wishes to rectify in order to become complete, but doesn’t know what the solution is. This void is referred to as ‘jouissance’ by Lacan, who believes that it is something we will spend our entire lives trying to fill but will never be able to.

The second type of narcissistic depression is formed not by the process of separation from the mother, but rather through a loss that has occurred in life. Freud observed that the accusations melancholic patients aimed at themselves were usually more applicable to a loved one, but had simply been shifted onto the sufferer’s own ego.

Freud describes one of the symptoms of melancholia as being an expectation of punishment. If no such punishment is administered then the sufferer may seek to harm themselves to create in their minds some balance of justice.