Musical Phases/The Hunt For New Music

I have a terrible habit of having musical phases. I guess it ties in with the obsessive compulsive I'm sure I mentioned in a previous blog, which runs in my family, but I will go through a phase of listening to certain bands, a certain style or just one singular band. For example, I've been listening to a lot of Opeth, Blinded Colony and Threat Signal recently. Before that, I was between In Flames, Soilwork and Terror 2000, and the other year, I was only listening to industrial bands.

After a few weeks of listening to the same albums over and over, you get a little bit bored. I've been trying to bring in other bands, but I need something totally fresh to break me out of this. I have gone off all my metal at one point in the past and listened to crooner music, Rat Pack/Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin, for a good few weeks!

So I am currently seeking a mixture of bands really. I want to find more doom style stuff, along the same lines as Katatonia, Anathema, Tiamat, Swallow The Sun and Novembre (who have elements of melodeath in them), more melodeath stuff along the same lines as Opeth, Soilwork, In Flames and Blinded Colony, or just some metal which I really should have discovered a long time ago by myself!

I have a Last.FM account, http://www.last.fm/user/mentalinfest, which may help anyone wanting to recommend me some music. I am pretty fussy about vocals. It seems to drive people around the bend when they're recommending me new music! I would have been a big fan of Smashing Pumpkins, for example, if Billy Corgan didn't sound like he was singing through his nose! And I don't like black metal. I can't be doing with the high pitched girly sounding squeely vocals, I like my metal in the same way I like my men... With balls!

So please feel free to leave comments of recommendations for me to check out! I would really appreciate your help in my hunt for new music!

Exercise Books

My granny always used to try to encourage us in our spelling and sums, I'm sure I recall her having exercise books for us at her house (I must be getting old forgetting these things). We certainly had them in school (though we called them "jotters"). They were always so drab, horrible colours with very little on them, apart from "Name:", "Age:", "Class:", and perhaps who made them. You always wanted to cover them with drawings, and you always got in trouble for it!



So I thought, it's about time the "Exercise Book" was revamped. With a little bit of retro creasing effects, these are my newest creations for Mental Infestation! With different colours and designs, I'm hoping these appeal a lot more than those nasty jotters I remember from my youth!



Perfect for drawing, sums or jotting down notes!

The Sacred Metal Festival

I've been to a number of music festivals over the years. Big Day Out in Milton Keynes 1999, Leeds 2000, 2001, 2002 and Download 2004. But in the UK we don't seem to know what a metal festival is!

For the past few years, I've not been festing it up, because there just hasn't been any I've wanted to go to! Well, not in the UK. There are plenty of decent festivals in Europe and North America, and I eye up Wacken with envious green eyes as I see many a band I would just kill to see.

I remember after the Big Day Out they were discussing bringing an Ozzfest like festival to the UK. I was planning on going, but they cancelled it. I'd been waiting a couple of years before Download was first announced! Though I didn't make the first Download, I did get along to the second one. I thought "at last! We have a metal festival in the UK!"

To my horror, this festival has turned slowly more and more soft and dare I say "emo"! Maybe my taste has got a lot heavier in that time, but I still like my softer metal acts like Deftones, Disturbed, Lacuna Coil etc. But when you see the headliners are wimpo bands like Linkin Park (who admitted that they'd only jumped on the "nu-metal" bandwagon cause they saw how big it was getting), My Chemical Romance and a whole array of "past it" acts such as Metallica, Iron Maiden etc as well as one of Corey Taylor's bands, you wonder where proper metal fans will get their festival fix without leaving the UK!!!

I've just been on Kerrang! (or as I more fondly call it, Kerrap!)'s website to see the first acts announced for Download 2008. I just couldn't believe just how bad it is!

The Offspring









Lostprophets








HIM (or should that be Ville Valo and some backing band or another?)












Judas Priest












Oh fantastic! I mean I do own a couple of albums by The Offspring (who I have seen in the past) and one by Lostprophets (their first one), but they've had their day! Judas Priest will make a few people think "ah it's not all bad", but I personally can't stand 80s metal. It oozes cheese! And as for HIM, the less said the better!!!

But then again, I had a feeling it would be yet another rubbish line up. I'm getting used to seeing it. I'm just working out who to put bets on. Slipknot, since they have a new album due this year, or Stone Sour? I think it'll probably be Slipknot this year, am I right Corey?

I lost respect for Slipknot a long time ago, but that is a different story that I may come back to at a later date.

So as my music tastes develope into a somewhat darker and heavier place, away from the hair over one eye pretty boys producing radio friendly, over produced, mind numbing crap for the masses that frequents Kerrang! TV and Scuzz, I find myself looking for something a bit more evil, twisted and altogether more brutal!

BLOODSTOCK!!!

Hell yeah! Finally a festival that has at least a couple of my favourite bands playing. Now, there are a lot of bands on their line up so far that I'm not too keen on, a few I'd never even heard of before, but the line up isn't full yet, plenty of room for more of my favourite acts to sign up!

So far I'm excited about Opeth (well they are my all time favourite band, don't dare say a bad word about them to me), Soilwork and Swallow The Sun. There's a couple of others who look interesting that I will have to check out!

This is a festival which appears to cater to those of us looking for a metal with an edge! Bringing in bands who don't appear in the popular metal magazines, but have loyal fan basis. They even encourage you to suggest bands and vote for bands videos (I'm still hoping they take into consideration my votes and suggestions of Blinded Colony and Smokescreen for Bloodstock 2008).

It's still not the "ideal" festival, it doesn't bring in the middle range bands, the ones who could play both Bloodstock and Download, which would probably bring more people, but I think it's pretty close. And it's a hell of a lot cheaper than Download! Cheaper + Better Bands = Hell Yes I'm Going!

Best Selling Design of January 2008!

January was a good month for Mental Infestation! It saw our second year birthday on Cafepress, and sales were above the monthly average!!

This months best seller was an unusual winner. With our sales prodominantly being ecologically friendly designs, I found it rather surprising to see sales of Pyrite go through the roof!!! It's a design which as been up for a while, and it appeared to be a design that had very little interest from customers, until this month!


Pyrite Jr. Ringer T-Shirt, Januarys best selling item.

Seriously Cheap Stuff from Mental Infestation!!!

I've posted some of the best selling items up in the 2 Year Birthday Sale section, at rock bottom prices (from $1.25!)! Everything is now up there, so make sure you take a look!!!

http://www.cafepress.com/mentalinfest/4681036

If you want to make suggestions on what else should be in the 2 Year Birthday Sale, then leave me a comment and I'll get it on there asap! :-D

Mental Infestation Celebrates 2 Years On Cafepress!

Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, yesterday was our second year birthday on Cafepress! And to celebrate this, I'm asking you to get in touch and let me know what you would like to buy (design and style) so I can put it into our 2 year birthday sale, as a thank you for your on going support! I will add a section to the store and I will add items suggested with big reductions!

So let me know, and I will put these up later on today, and I'll keep them up for a month! So start your suggestions now!

http://www.cafepress.com/mentalinfest

Top Selling Cafepress Designs By Mental Infestation

Tomorrow will be the second year that Mental Infestation has been on Cafepress! Hooray for birthdays! And in that time, we've had some highs and lows. The biggest high was April 2007 which was our best month for sales, with Earth Day designs being our best sellers. The low was finding someone that I had high regard for, stealing ideas from my store. I have seen a lot of this happening on Cafepress, especially in the military based stores.

Over the last two years we have had some designs which have sold really really well, so I thought I'd share with you the 3 top selling Cafepress designs by Mental Infestation.

Number 1.



Save The Polar Bear! Stop Global Warming! has been the best seller on Cafepress by Mental Infestation! This has become our number 1 monthly seller several times over! The Jr. Ringer Tee has been the best selling style to have this design on.

Number 2.



Environmentally Friendly has been the second best seller for Mental Infestation, and has been the best selling design of the month twice! The Woman's Cap Sleeved Tshirt has been the best selling style for this design.

Number 3.



Climate Change is the third best seller. Though it has never been a best selling design for a particular month, it has been one of the best sellers overall! And the Women's Light T-Shirt has been the best selling style for this design.