Eclipse

Saturday night is rarely this special. How often do you see a total lunar eclipse on a clear winter night? It was spectacular and eerily beautiful. The reddish hue that engulfed the moon late this evening is one of the most fantastic natural phenomena I've ever witnessed. Did you see it? What did you think?

My personal build-up to the eclipse consisted of producing my weekly podcast. Not exactly the first thing I would have chosen to do before the eclipse, were it not a Saturday night.

Mużika Mod Ieħor has not featured much heavy music this year, so this week's edition makes up for that. If you're not into metal and other such sounds, fear not, it's not full on mayhem. The opening song comes from BNI's 2006 album On and On. Play Dead has a somewhat dark title but it is one of their lighter tracks. It's more ska and reggae than punk. A welcome variation for those who appreciate that raw power this band is backed up with a passion for great melody.

The much-anticipated return of Norm Rejection will take place on Friday, March 9 at Poxx Bar in Paceville. They've been gone for about six years and they've been sorely missed by fans of heavy rock in Malta. Their song Malta Not for Sale from 2000 remains on of my personal top 5 Maltese songs ever recorded. To mark this reunion by Norm Rejection I've chosen to play the wonderful Straight Jacket from their second album 0002. This is clearly not an ordinary band.

If you're looking for extreme metal, few Maltese bands are more hardcore than Loathe. The band is about to embark the Enemies Of Mediocrity Tour, which has them playing alongside non-Maltese metal bands like Allergen, Subliminal Fear, and Seven Years Dead. The tour takes them to a number of English towns, which are not too far away from where I live. The shows start on Friday, March 9 in Chesterfield, and continues on in Barnsley, Wakefield, Sheffield, Doncaster, Lancaster, Manchester, ending in Birmingham on March 23. If you've never heard Loathe you can catch Hell to Burn, a track off their 2005 album Up Close and Personal, on this week's edition of my podcast.

Since this we're keeping it heavy, I think it's most appropriate to end this edition of Mużika Mod Ieħor with a band new recording by a young new death metal band from Malta called Thy Legion. I think the reference is military, but somehow I have a feeling that one of the band members used to attend Legion of Mary meetings until not too long ago. I could be wrong, of course. Thy Legion have recently completed recording six tracks for their upcoming CD release Proclaimer of Chaos. The one I've selected as the closing track for this week's podcast is called Domain of Eternity. Metal doesn't get much harder than this.

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