Everything I see or read makes me annoyed these days, mostly because people are generally stupid and say ridiculous things, making numerous logical errors of reasoning in the process. I have several things to complain about (the fallacious idea that open-mindedness and tolerance are indisputably virtuous, the trend to be negative about copyright and misunderstanding what it's there for, and something else that's slipped my mind but will no doubt return) but for now I'm going to complain about the coverage of the use of so-called 'anti-terror' laws.

The Metro today talks about anti-terror laws being used on 'counter-terrorism minister' as if something has gone wrong. The implication is that certain laws are only for use on certain people. This is obviously a fallacy and represents a clear misunderstanding of the legal system in my mind. Laws are not about 'people', they're about the 'acts' that people commit. The laws will always have been drafted with certain specific examples in mind but they are deliberately made to cover more general examples. This is a typical demonstration of inductive reasoning where individual cases are generalised to come up with a rule that covers not only those cases but other, as yet unforeseen cases. That is a necessary step in writing a law that can be used in practice.

The idea here is that the law prevents certain acts, and is used against people who commit the acts in question, not against a specific type of person. Murder laws are not used against murderers - they're used against people who are suspected of having committed the act of murder. In the eyes of the law, the person is not a murderer until after the court has found them guilty. Similarly, what is a terrorist? One nation's terrorist is another nation's freedom fighter and ultimately the only truth here on a legal level (even if still debatable on a moral level) is that a terrorist is someone convicted of a crime described as terrorism. Therefore for people to imply that an "anti-terror" law has been used wrongly suggests that (a) we already know exactly what constitutes a terrorist, and this person is not one, or that (b) anti-terror laws are only for a certain group of people or a certain type of event, despite neither being explicitly enshrined in the law. Neither of these are true. Putting the word 'terror' or 'terrorism' on the front page of a legal act does not automatically exempt your favoured group of people from its contents just because it's shocking to think that their activities might be covered by such laws. Unfortunately, some act as though it does, and this is another example of the heavily-loaded language of taboos being thrown about to try and convince people of the rightness or wrongness of their opinion without needing to resort to burdensome devices like logic or evidence. (See also: the labelling of anybody who dares to share their opinions on culture as being a 'racist'. That's a future rant.)

The specific law may be too wide-ranging - that's a reasonable criticism. But most laws fall into that category through the necessity of being general, and the necessity to be able to cope with unforeseen future developments. Acting like there's something wrong because a law that contains the term 'terrorism' in its name was used against someone you personally don't consider a terrorist is illogical.

There seem to be a lot of people who think that the key to promoting their event is to invite all their friends on a social networking site, and then send each person nagging reminders about it once every couple of days. Often this has no appreciable effect, sometimes a negative effect as people block the promoter from sending further invitations. Sometimes promoters get disheartened at this, blaming 'apathy', wondering why so many people replied as a 'maybe' and didn't show up, and so on.

I think these people are making a mistake. As I see it, promotion has two distinct aspects: discovering the people most likely to attend, and convincing them to come. Raising awareness and applying persuasion, if you will. In my (admittedly naïve) opinion, the mistake these people typically make is to almost completely fail at the first half and then make a very crude and counter-productive attempt at the second.

I don't have any magic bullets for finding new people to improve awareness of an event, but surely this includes using multiple websites (not just Facebook, but MySpace, Last.fm, forums for local clubs, etc), posters (pubs, bars, gig venues, rehearsal rooms), and physical flyering (standing in the street, or at gigs, or other nights). Use your brain though. I distinctly remember Rock City creating a poster for a monthly rock night and putting up a copy in a Derby guitar shop. This would have been a great idea, except the poster did not specify the venue on it. Similarly, a lot of gig posters I see actually say nothing about the bands that are playing. It's not rocket science - what, when, where, cost. Omit one at your peril.

A couple of years ago a rock night in Nottingham had its opening night on the same day and time as the local student-run rock night. The students were of the opinion that this new night would obviously fail since it couldn't 'compete'. As it happened, the new night did fail after a few weeks, but it was actually very well attended that first week at least, by a lot of people who wouldn't think of going to a student rock night, or might not have known it existed. Where did those people come from? Where did they go? One thing's for certain - they were reached by promotion, so someone was doing their job right.

Similarly, I met someone recently who's been going to many of the same clubs and pubs as me for most of 10 years, who also likes all the same obscure bands that I do. Yet I've never come across her before now.

The lesson is to not pretend that because you have several hundred Facebook friends and are affiliated with the local university's Rock Society that you necessarily know everybody or even most of the people into rock music near you.

As for the second part of the equation, the persuasion aspect, I think that many promoters don't really try and understand and provide what people want to see. If you put on an event for the love of it, that's great, but there's no point being bitter about low attendances if what you're offering isn't actually that interesting to many people.

I'll talk a little about what sways my decision as to whether I go out to a certain pub or rock night or other event that some person, place, or organisation is hosting. The main consideration, the mission statement in a way, is to go somewhere that will give me a more entertaining evening than staying at home. Generally speaking, this requires the right people, at the right place, with the right ambience, at the right cost. Obviously it also has to compete with any other venue offering those aspects to some degree, of which there are several.

Personally I will want to go with my friends. There's little point being in a room entirely full of strangers because I'm unlikely to talk to any of them, nor they to me. In that case I may as well have stayed at home because it's offering me nothing I can't get there. It's not good enough to just be playing the right music. I have the right music here on my computer. No DJ is going to play a set that is more suited to me than what I can cue up for myself right here. So there have to be other factors too. This is the main reason why my RSVP of 'maybe' doesn't become a 'yes' - I reply with 'maybe' on the assumption that I will go if my friends do, but if it doesn't interest them then I will have a better evening elsewhere.

So what tips the balance between having a load of undecided people all waiting for others to convince them to go with them, and a large social group showing up en masse? There are many other minor issues which are often overlooked by promoters who are too focused on the music and not on the idea of providing a night's entertainment. Loudness is an issue. If your venue is too loud absolutely everywhere, then you can't chat to your friends. If it's too quiet, then people won't want to dance. If you can't accommodate both activities in the same venue then some people will stay away. A similar dilemma arises regarding seating and tables - too few, and you can't sit down and chat, too many, and you can't move and mingle and there's no dancefloor space. Drinks are important - if all else fails, people like to drink, as it is enjoyable and passes the time. But provide them with a dire selection of drinks, or make them overpriced, and they'll move on to somewhere else. By way of example, the SEVEN venue here in Nottingham has failed on all of these fronts the last few times I went to any special event there.

Live bands are a significant problem. If you have bands playing, and nobody knows them, why do you expect anybody to watch? Watching a death metal band growling completely incomprehensible lyrics over muddy and indistinct sound while playing songs you've never heard of is just not enjoyable for most of us. One of the organisers of the Hellfire festival said to me that £75 is good value for over 50 bands. But he was missing the fact that most people simply don't care about discovering new live bands that much, and with that in mind it's far too much cash.

When people say they like music, they typically mean that they like certain types of music or certain bands, and they enjoy knowing the songs and singing or dancing along. It's very hard to do either of those with a band you've never seen before, which is most likely sounding awful in a tiny venue. This is presumably why tribute and covers bands do so well. Probably the best thing you can do with smaller bands is to provide a second quieter room so that people can switch between checking out bands and chatting to their friends, and can enjoy the night even if all the bands turn out to be awful.

So yeah, in summary:
- don't spam people on Facebook. If I want to go, I'll go. One invitation and maybe one reminder just prior to the event is enough. Cast the net wider to find new people, instead of harassing those already on the list.
- sort out the problems with the venues that make them an uninteresting place to spend an evening. In an age where people can get as much free music as they like and carry it everywhere, your choice of music does not conquer all.
- think from the perspective of a customer rather than a promoter. It's likely that what you're offering is not as tempting a deal as you believe it is.

Not much is happening - I work during the week, sometimes see one of my friends on an evening, and mostly sit at home during the weekends. Boring.

There's a lot of tales of horror in the news recently. Someone covered his girlfriend in petrol and burned her to death, someone else plucked out his ex-girlfriend's eye, a third person appears to have cut off his ex-partner's hand and killed her. I can't imagine what possesses these men to treat these women so badly.

I'm angry that the punishments won't be enough, like the person who plucked out the girl's eye who could be out of jail within 6 years, whereas his ex-girlfriend is disfigured for life. Similarly, a 16 year old boy was convicted of killing a pensioner in Manchester by hitting him with a car, and despite having 19 convictions for 49 offences he was still out on the streets stealing vehicles. When I was a kid, I lived in fear of going to jail if I did something wrong. It obviously was never the case but it was a useful illusion that helped keep most of my misbehaviour on the side of mischief rather than crime. Now children are all too aware that you can commit some hefty crimes and hardly be held accountable.

Elsewhere, a policeman left his 4 kids, went to work, and never came home, drowning in the floods in Cumbria. And another pair of dead soldiers return from fighting an ill-defined war to prop up a corrupt government.

I should stop reading the news!

Last Sunday afternoon a small posse of us ventured down to Birmingham to the Hellfire festival being held in the exhibition centre. The original 3 day affair had been scaled down to 2 days, allegedly due to lack of interest, and this made getting information about when bands were playing rather difficult. Luckily we managed to establish a day or two before the event that "It's open from 12" and "The main stage starts at 5", at least. Since nobody I knew cared about any bands not on the main stage we got there a little after 4 to allow darkwaveart a chance to do his various press-related things for an hour before it all started.

At first there was a lot of wandering around the concourse aimlessly because the main stage was behind closed doors and the other stage was rather underwhelmingly signposted, confusingly labelled as being 2 stages, but was really just 1. (There was a fourth/third stage too, currently under construction.) We went in and found a stage in a conference room where about 50 people were watching some awful band. We stayed for 2 minutes, then left again. I've no idea who the band was because there were no running order posters anywhere around the venue that we could see.

Apart from a half-mile walk to find a working cash machine, we just ended up waiting around outside the entrance to the main stage area until it opened. While there I encountered a variety of people following the same routine of wandering around in mild confusion. First up was hakucho_cygnus , along with the not-terribly-talkative (at least to me) neojezebel , followed by my Romanian friend Ada (who I didn't recognise at first, oops. Girls are always much shorter in real life...), and a bit later synphony came by and was probably the first and last person I saw that day who had any idea what was going on.

At shortly after 5pm the doors opened and we made our way inside. The main stage was of a decent size and ambience, and there were a few stalls along the back and a rather odd bar area past the stage in a rather bleak warehouse/aircraft-hangar style setting. It felt a bit like the indoor Bloodstock events, except a little less cosy. Before long I met a few other people, eg. omghellokitty , infestchris , etc. At one point I also got talking to a random redhead called Claire (or Clare (or Clair? who knows)) who was there on her own and had a strange half-Aberdeen half-Birmingham accent which sounded distinctly like it came from the Southern Hemisphere. I got my picture taken with her and someone else (might have been Leilani, I forget) by some Vince character who I think yourapocalypse will know. "This might be in Metal Hammer - not the next one, the one after that" he said. I hope not, for the sake of everybody's eyes. I also shook DJ Beerman's hand, though I don't know if he knew who I was. That's ok, because sometimes, even I don't know who I am.

On to the bands then: Serotonal were good, although I still can't describe them adequately. (They're certainly not 'doom' despite how often that term is thrown at them, and 'dark rock' is far too wide to carry much semantic weight.) October File were awful (and almost everybody I spoke to agreed). Katatonia were great, but played exactly the same set I'd seen in Sheffield the previous Wednesday. Anathema opened with the first 4 songs from 'Alternative 4' which was a bit of a masterstroke, but with only 4 more songs to go it meant neglecting the majority of their back catalogue which is always a shame. Luckily the last song was 'Sleepless' featuring their original vocalist Darren White, which was great to see. After them came My Dying Bride who, since the last upheaval of their line-up, seem to like playing a mix of new songs and the more obscure tracks from their history which means I have little idea of what they played. It sounded fine, however. Finally came the Fields Of The Nephilim, goth icons that I was keen to see for the first (and probably last) time, and they put on an atmospheric and engrossing show. Possibly an odd choice to close a metal festival, since even though they play metal these days it's not their metal albums that they're most famous for. Still, I don't think many people went away disappointed.

Barring the last-minute disaster that nearly arose when Pink found out that he'd lost his car key (quickly finding it in the pub, quelle surprise), getting out and home was trouble-free, although standing around at 11:30pm in 3 degrees Celsius in just a t-shirt was an interesting experience, even for one so used to braving the icy winds as I.

Yesterday myself and Becky went to try and buy a pub lunch in town. Easier said than done.

First stop, The Dragon. Nowhere to sit.

Second stop, the Pit and Pendulum. Having decided on burgers, we were told that they had no burgers (and that there was a 45 minute waiting time for food anyway). No good.

Third stop, the Salutation Inn. One cheese burger and fish and chips successfully ordered with drinks. Then, 2 minutes later, the serving girl, who had kindly given me a discount that I neither asked for nor qualified for, came over to say that she'd "had a blonde moment" - despite her hair being blue or something - and that they weren't actually serving food that day.

Finally, we got to the Old Angel, where we had to choose from about 45 different types of burger, and finally got food made and delivered by an authentic-sounding American woman. Added entertainment was provided by said woman walking straight into a table when taking our plates away. We should go there first next time.

Ok, so to sum up my recent cd purchases of note:

Swallow The Sun > Insomnium > Katatonia > Paradise Lost

...and that's about all that needs to be said. Each band put out a fairly typical album but the quality differs.

Recently I also got 'To Lay Like Old Ashes' by Austere which is supposedly in the 'depressive black metal' genre but to me sounds more like simpified mid-period Katatonia with someone wailing over the top of it, and 'They Whispered You Had Risen' by Cryptal Darkness, who were basically Australian doom/death band The Eternal before they started down the route to mediocrity. They had Martin Powell of My Dying Bride/Anathema/Cradle of Filth 'fame' playing on this album and the violins are definitely reminiscent of early My Dying Bride.

Speaking of Martin Powell, he was at the Paradise Lost and Katatonia gig on Wednesday in Sheffield, along with Nick Barker and probably various other important people from the world of British metal who I wouldn't recognise due to not being 'in' enough. The gig was mostly good although a little disappointing. Katatonia played well but I would have liked to have heard more songs that weren't from Viva Emptiness or The Great Cold Distance. They only played one song from the new album, which was 'Forsaker', not one of the 2 I would have expected ('The Longest Year' or 'Liberation').

As for Paradise Lost, it was strange to see Nick in a sleeveless t-shirt for probably the first time since 1995. Recapturing his metal youth? Who knows. The band seemed to play well for the most part but it was hard to enjoy the gig. Firstly, the awful sound. Aaron's guitar was too quiet, Greg's was too loud to the point of getting feedback between all the notes, and Steve's bass was louder than absolutely everything else in the room. At least Nick couldn't complain about the vocals which were fine this time. And the setlist was a bit narrowly focused for my tastes. I don't expect them to play anything from Lost Paradise or Believe In Nothing, but this time there was nothing from Gothic, Icon, Host, or the self-titled album either, if I remember correctly. And they didn't play Last Regret off the new cd either, instead preferring some of the more meandering tracks. Ah well.

No more gigs for a few weeks, but Swallow the Sun and Insomnium come around in early December. I still haven't received my tickets for that, but I did get a 'You were out' card from the bastards at Royal Mail regarding something that was sent to me by recorded delivery. That was more likely to be Bloodstock tickets than StS tickets, but who knows. Needless to say the Royal Mail card had a date on it that was at least a day earlier than when it appeared in my mail box, and that when I tried to arrange a redelivery online, it refused because it said the date I entered was illegitimate, as they only hold recorded mail for 7 days. The fact that the date given was 6 days ago counted for nothing, apparently. More than typical.

"This audio CD was not found in FreeDB", exclaimed my media player, maybe knowing that I'm not meant to have this for another week or so.

I expect great things in the next 54 minutes.

I've been playing around with some soundtrack and dark ambient sounds recently and trying to get the hang of joining them up into something listenable. My first attempt is up at this address, and I think it's a decent start but I have some way to go. It's quite hard finding a balance somewhere between aimless noise and a traditional song structure, and I'm having to learn different ways of filling out the mix that don't involve 5 layers of distorted guitar plus bass and drums.

I intend to add a few different kinds of music to the playlist there as it becomes ready, which hopefully won't be too far into the future.

I think I did nothing of interest on the Thursday and Friday after the Ensiferum gig. Saturday however found me trundling over to Jim AKA
ironlord 's place to get a lift down to London to see Amorphis, supported by Before The Dawn and Amoral. The trip down was uneventful and finding parking and getting to Camden was gloriously simple, leaving plenty of time for a pint and a steak in The Monarch before wandering over to the World's End to wait for doors at 7. There I was introduced to _mauler_ (who I'd seen on various LJ communities and on my friends' pages for probably 7 years now but never actually met in person before) and got another drink in, only to be told by Jim that they'd already opened the doors almost an hour early. My Magners was swiftly downed and we went out to queue up for descent into The Underworld. If I was the 'squeeing fanboi' type then I would have 'squeed' when Before The Dawn's bassist and guitarist came out and stood next to us, but I don't do that sort of thing, oh no, not at all. Luckily I already had a spare ticket for Jim, as it turned out it was a sold out gig.

Once safely downstairs I proceeded to the merchandise stall and broke my "no more band t-shirts" rule to get a Before The Dawn t-shirt. I also got an Amorphis wristband, primarily to stop the aluminium bit on my Wacken wristband from scratching my guitar when I play. Practical!

Amoral were on first, and looked like a bunch of miniature Alexi Laihos. They were competent but ultimately uninteresting to me and I don't remember what they sounded like. I think they were a bit more straightforward heavy metal compared to the next two acts. They were off before the doors were even due to have opened.

Betwen Amoral and Before The Dawn I went to grab some toilet paper for makeshift earplugs (which ended up being unnecessary - Amoral were a little too loud but everybody else was fine) and on the way back bumped into Daniela who I know on Facebook and Last.fm. I really need to stop being surprised when I meet girls and find out they're shorter than me, though...

At maybe 7:15 or so, Before The Dawn came on. They are one of my favourite bands and this was their first ever UK gig so I was quite happy to be there near the front. They sounded great and delivered the goods. In particular their current drummer was a bundle of laughs, playing around with his drumsticks while grinning inanely. One drumstick went flying at one point towards the front of the stage - much mirth ensued. I would have had no idea what they played since I am not one for remembering track orders or even knowing the track names, but thanks to this awesome site I, and indeed you, can see.

Amorphis were on at about 8 or not long after, which seems like a crazily early time for a headliner to start playing, but there you go. Amorphis are one of an almost empty list of bands that I love but hadn't seen yet, so it was great to tick them off the list. They played a predictable set comprised of much new stuff, some really old stuff, and one or two from the middle period, and I think most people went away happy. The performance was flawless and the sound was superb where I was standing, and they made it look effortless without looking bored - a trick that Opeth usually only manage the first half of, by way of comparison. Tomi's vocals were perfect and I think he did a reasonable job of sounding like old vocalist Pasi on the songs that required it. I can't say I approve of his carefully curled moustache however. Overall it was a great performance and it left me wondering why they don't seem to be more popular in the UK, given that they don't really have anything negative going for them.

It was all over by 10pm. All that remained was to go and mingle for a bit, whereupon I was introduced to Ann (who I think is hakucho_cygnus ), and then we went outside to grab fast food, and in my case at least, be smiled at coyly by a pretty blonde lady who'd been in the gig. Then it was back up the Northern line to Brent Cross, and some roadwork-avoiding diversions through Dunstable and Milton Keynes, and we were back not long after 1am. All in all, a good day's work.

I just got back from the Ensiferum / Metsatöll / Tracedawn gig. I only saw one Tracedawn song since they started at 7:20, even though the tickets clearly said "Doors: 7:30", and I turned up at 7:50. Fuck you Rock City! Ahem. Metsatöll were a pleasant surprise, with one guy pulling out a variety of instruments some of which I couldn't even name let alone play. Finishing it off were Ensiferum who were vastly more entertaining than Finntroll had been last week, although I was getting a bit bored towards the end.

The next gig will be Amorphis / Before The Dawn / Amoral on Saturday. Bring it on.

It's also a week and a half since I got the new Paradise Lost album. In that time pretty much all of my friends have heard it and almost unanimously think it's great. I've listened through it five times now, and I'm sticking with my judgement - I think it's the worst of their 'metal' albums since One Second. But hey, if everybody else loves it, great. I still have new Katatonia and Swallow The Sun to look forward to in the near future so all is well.