Black Crusade

Well, the Black Crusade was certainly interesting. Five bands in six hours, all full-on metal. I went with Ally and his mate Stu, who drove. We headed to Manchester at about 1:30 and got there an hour before the doors opened. We got some Chinese which was really nice, but Stu and I had the chilli chicken, which was very hot. Good though. And then we headed in. It was weird, being amongst the oldest there and the three of us were in the minority, not wearing some band t-shirt or having piercings or tattoos. Ally was wearing a white t-shirt so he was easy to find in the sea of black. We got a spot by the mixing desk in the middle of the arena, which was pretty decent. I got stuck next to a bunch of weirdos watching the England game on their phones, which was entertaining when they lost. Also one of them kept flashing around an iPhone, which he hilariously dropped face down onto a filthy piece of chewing gum on the floor. Also I kept standing on something squashy which turned out to be a Machine Head t-shirt one of them had bought for £30 or so which I had then trodden thoroughly into the beer soaked floor.

Shadows Fall were loud and not that great. Arch Enemy were pretty good although the woman's shouty vocals were a bit much. I was expecting to enjoy DragonForce more than I did but their guitar wankery based songs didn't go down very well and were pretty tedious. The last bands were Trivium and Machine Head, both of whom were really good.

I'm not sure which band the picture is of, but that person doing the devil horns did it just at the right moment, and I thought it summed up the evening quite well.

I quite enjoyed it, although it was seriously loud. Full-on metal isn't really my thing these days and I'm more into the AC/DC style of rock, but I did have a good time. I was worried about going as crowds bother me, but I stayed well clear of the pit and it was fine.

Today went round to my Dad's and had a look at his wife's new car. She got an ex-demo Mercedes C200 Kompressor, which she got with basically every extra you can imagine for the price of a basic model. It even has the sat-nav which is a £2000 option. It works really well and I was able to plot a route to my brother's apartment in Berlin and to the hotel we stayed in at Madrid. The stereo also has iPod integration and we tested the iPod Touch on it. It worked perfectly and even displays the song on the little display in the middle of the speedo. It was a bit embarassing as the first song it played was 'Fucking Hostile' by Pantera.

We had a look at my wipers and had dismantled quite a lot of it before realising we didn't actually have to. Oh well, it was interesting to see how the mechanism worked, and we cleaned it all up and greased it. One is a little off, but at least they both work OK now.

There was very nearly a disaster too. I had left my Discovery at the end of their driveway so it was out of the way. My Dad forgot it was there, and reversed at top speed towards it in his new Fabia. Fortunately my frantic cries of 'STOP!' got through and he braked, inches from collision. His rear bumper probably wouldn't have stood much of a chance against my towbar, so that was lucky.