Do That To Me One More Time

Kolja has arrived. England and Brazil are out of the World Cup. The aboutmalta.com July newsletter is done and dusted. Ruth Davies is now a full-time staff member with the MaltaMedia Online Network. Xtruppaw played another gig last night...and I wasn't there, again. It's really time for another visit to Malta, isn't it? Well, soon enough I'll be heading off to Malta for a little project I'll tell you more about within the next couple of weeks. If you're the curious sort you can sneak a peek at the website but be warned that a major update is due very soon.

This is the backdrop for this week's Mużika Mod Ieħor podcast. Number 28 in the series brings back the established format following last week's special edition marking the passing of Frans il-Budaj. The first song is Scar's new single Unmake You, which is being released as a radio single this week. A major objective beind Mużika Mod Ieħor is to present music that's not played on the radio often enough or not at all. Scar's song will no doubt get a fair amount of airplay but I want to commend Konrad Pule' for making use of the Internet to spread the word since it really is a more immediate medium than radio. Besides that, David Cassar Torregiani's seasoned rock guitar sounds great to my old ears too on a busy weekend.

MySpace has become a major point of reference for my weekly podcast. Last month I came across a Maltese musician I hadn't seen or heard in about twenty years. His real name is Aldo Lombardi but he's now known by the spiffy name of Kemic-Al. He has an impressive repertoire and recently released his second CD album on his own Butterfly Records, which is distrubted internationally on the dance circuit. The Dark Journal is a concept album, something quite rare for the genre. Then again Kemic-Al's style is rather unusual in itself in that it is closer to a film soundtrack than it is to what you'd expect to hear at an all-nite club. Welcome to My Home is the opening track from the 14-chapter story of Vlad the Impaler spread out over 80-minutes of non-stop music. This is an extraordinary piece of work. It's even more remarkable coming from the Maltese music scene. It surely doesn't disappoint anyone who can appreciate music that is produced through an artistic vision rather than a simple entertainment jab.

Speaking of concept albums, I'm thrilled to bits by Is-CD tal-iXtruppaw, which was released exactly one month ago today. They will continue to promote the album through a series of gigs this summer...and I will finally get to catch them playing at Naasha's in San Gwann during the last weekend in July. Meanwhile, if you still don't have your own copy of Xtuppaw's debut CD, I wholeheartedly encourage you to listen to the track I've selected to play on this week's podcast and make sure you catch them at one of their upcoming gigs this summer. With Xtruppaw you can bet that details are always available on their official website.

The summer gigs are in full swing all across Malta. A couple of days ago, hardcare Metal fans had a feast at Liquid called Art of Death featuring Arachnid, Abysmal Torment, and Erythuria. Abysmal Torment are off to the USA for a month-long tour of the mid-west that takes them from Urbana and Chicago up north in Illinois all the way down to Albuquerque in New Mexico. Quite impressive. To my knowledge, no other Maltese band has ever embarked on such an extensive American tour...and it makes a lot of sense (to me) that they're not going anywhere near the coasts with this genre of music. If you're into this type of Heavy Grindcore Death Metal you'll most certainly enjoy Abysmal Torment's Incised Wound Suicide, which is the closing track on this week's Mużika Mod Ieħor

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