Music Review: Seether - "Holding Onto Strings Better Left to Fray"

Just picked up the new Seether album off of iTunes. I love this band and have since their first album "Disclaimer". It was a good, solid rock album that tore stuff up and when it did slow down it was really good and melodic. This album is nothing like that. I started off liking it, the first couple of songs were in the same vein as "Disclaimer" heavy, driven and smooth, then the album just nose dives like a plane with no engines. It just degenerates into a soft repetitive mess. It becomes hard to tell when one song ends and the other begins, it's just depressing really. I usually judge an album by how many songs I have to skip on the CD. I have many, including "Disclaimer" that I can listen to all the way through. By the time I got to the seventh song of sixteen I was skipping like a mad man. There are a couple of bright spots on the album though. "Fur Cue", "No Resolution", and "Effigy" (an iTunes bonus track) are all great tracks that go back to what the band was all about. "Country Song" is surprisingly good despite it's different feel and if they had decided to do a few more with that kind of melody I wouldn't have minded a bit. Over all this album is the second worse album they've put out. Nothing beats "Karma and Effect" for shittiness and this doesn't even hold a candle to "Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces" or even in the same galaxy as "Disclaimer". I give it a 2.5 out of 5 mainly just out of the hopes that the next one will be better and they're on a good album, shitty album, good album, shitty album, good album pattern.

The First Saturday of May

Every year something awesome happens on the first Saturday of May. Every year at Churchill Downs, they run the Kentucky Derby. For those of you that don't know the derby is the first part of 3 of one of the hardest championships to win. A horse must be perfect to win all three races and join the ranks of Triple Crown winners like Secretariat. But that's only part of why I love that day. This is the 137th running of the Derby and this will be the 32nd one I've watched. I've had the privilege of watching 28 of them with one of the greatest, most influential  people in my life, my grandpa. With the exception of three races when I just could not get home (and even then we talked on the phone while watching the race) I've watched every one in the same house in the same place with the same man, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Now granted, I don't remember some of the first ones I've seen, but the ones I do remember have made indelible marks on my memory that I will cherish till the day I die. I don't know how many I'll have left to see with Pa but I know that I'll be making them count even more till then, cause after he's gone the race will never be the same.