It’s Been a While

Apologies for the lack of updates, yikes, this year!  Life has unfortunately kicked my arse for the last nine months, mainly with work and reaping the benefits of my employment by actually going out and doing stuff.  This isn’t a personal blog so I won’t bore you with those details, so here’s a quickfire recap on a few of the things I’ve missed lately.
The European Football Championship was excellent this summer, of course with Spain winning it after murdering Italy 4-0 in the final.  I must admit that shocked me, I was convinced Italy at least stood a good chance of winning seeing as they had a rock-solid defence and Spain more often than not played without a recognised striker.  Good to see Torres back to his best in the Premier League coming back to recent events, the league is as exciting as ever now that Manchester City have joined United and Chelsea to make it a three horse race for the title this year.  Lots of money has been spent as always, Eden Hazard in particular looks to be a fantastic acquisition for Chelsea as does Santi-Cazorla for Arsenal.  I can’t see them challenging for the league title this year but it would be nice to see them beform consistently between now and May rather than choking towards the end.  Time will tell.

Mass Effect 3 is one of the biggest releases of the year

Video games, always a favourite of mine.  We’ve had some belters this year with the amazing Skyrim, the new Hearthfire DLC is something I’m interesting in purchasing as building a detailed property is a feature I’ve always wanted Bethesda to expand upon.  Good call by them, I’ll try and stick a review up once I’ve played it.  Guild Wars 2 is out as well of course, but I’ve not had the chance to play that either just yet. Luckily it’s my birthday in almost exactly a months time and that’s very high on my list of DO WANT! so again more thoughts and opinions on that when the time comes, no doubt that’s just as fantastic as the first one.  As for games I have played I finally got around to playing and completing all three of the main Uncharted games, which on the whole were fantastic but in my opinion gradually got weaker as the series progressed.  It’s still a memorable experience though and one any PS3 owner shouldn’t miss, so go play them if you haven’t already.   Mass Effect 3 was another big release earlier in the year, and my goodness did that get a reaction.  No doubt you’re aware of the controversy surrounding the… rather poor ending, but thankfully that’s been rectified and the new ending is much, much better.  I can honestly say that the final half an hour before the original ending is the most incredible gaming experience I’ve ever had the pleasure of being on the edge of my seat for, again that’s a series well worth investing your time in if you’ve not already done so.

Alright, music.  There will be a definitive list towards the end of the year but here’s a ‘3/4 of the way through’ effort dor the time being.  Hopefully you’ll check some of them out and enjoy them as much as I do, it is predominantly metal but there should hopefully be something for everyone in here.  So, here’s my top 10 album releases so far this year:

Carach Angren – Where The Corpses Sink Forever (symphonic black metal)

Hypno5e – Acid Mist Tomorrow (progressive metal)

Gorod – A Perfect Absolution (technical death metal)

Overkill – The Electric Age (thrash metal)

Straightener – Soft (Japanese rock)

Kreator – Phantom Antichrist (thrash metal)

Horrendous – The Chills (death metal)

Suspyre – Suspyre (progressive metal)

Dying Fetus – Reign Supreme (brutal death metal)

Circus Maximus – Nine (progressive metal)

OK… so all but one release is metal.  I’ll leave this post at that for now, thank you for your continued patience and apologies for the wait for the regular readers.  As always, you can check out DTO on Facebook and Twitter, and please feel free to leave any comments here.  I’d love to see your thoughts on what you think I should write about (like more focus on games, less on music), and I’m thinking about doing a Q & A on Twitter and Facebook at some point so feel free to get involved over there.  Until next time 🙂