New Sonic Youth album on the way, and more

Sonic Youth's "The Eternal" comes out next week. I've already got a preorder, here's hoping it's as good as the rest of their post-2000 works. The band is back to a five-piece for this one, with touring bassist and former Pavement member Mark Ibold joining the band officially to supplement our core Fab Four. I'll let you guys know what's up whenever "The Eternal" gets here.

Mission of Burma is putting the finishing touches on their album, I don't have a deadline yet, but rest assured, it's gonna rock. Expect it within a few months, and my own examination of the as-yet-untitled disc soon after.

I've been completely immersed in a role-playing game recently, a little older than most of what I play. Now, I appreciate gameplay over graphics, this is true, but no one likes looking at a butt-ugly game, am I right? To be fair, though, one must account for when a game was made. So I was pleasantly surprised by Troika's Vampire: The Masquerade- Bloodlines. When it came out in 2004, it didn't sell too well, mostly because it was based on Half-Life 2's engine and came out on the same day. Piss-poor timing, that. The game was buggy, as even its ardent supporters admit, but underneath the grit was an unpolished diamond. It's one of the few games I know of that really transcends its technical issues by telling a superb story and having great gameplay at its core. If one can overlook some framerate issues and graphical problems, the core game is fantastic.

Lately, my most-played album has been Lou Reed's "The Blue Mask". Recorded with a superb band consisting of ex-Voidoid Robert Quine, bassist Ferando Saunders, and Doane Perry on drums, it's by turns an evocative and poetic work that isn't afraid to run ragged into an inferno of guitar immolation. There's pastoral beauty in "My House", an aching melancholy in the chiming guitars and emotionally fraught bass riffs. There are penetrating character studies in "The Gun" and "Underneath the Bottle". However, what is perhaps the most inspiring song on the album is the raging, spittle-flecked title track. After a minute of feedback, "The Blue Mask" explodes into rampaging drum fills and a roiling, violent bass riff that anchors down Lou's delivery and carefully pens in the screaming guitars. Reed's lyrics are some of the most perverse and deliriously misanthropic I've had the pleasure of singing along with- check this out.



If this song doesn't make you dry heave and bang your head simultaneously, nothing can be done for you. I can't resist letting this one get me all riled up.