Friend of the music business

My metal biorhythm seems to be stuck. I do wonder if the pendulum will swing back in hip hop's favour sometime soon (I did very much enjoy listening to Onyx - Bacdafucup yesterday in my left ear) but for now I'm well and truly in the clutches of guitarists. Went up town to pick up my Unholy Alliance II tickets yesterday, an exercise which cost considerably less than the next couple of hours spent in HMV, Virgin, and Sister Ray. Ended up with:

• Scum and From Enslavement To Obliteration by Napalm Death. Can't believe I didn't own these before on CD (IIRC I have 3 vinyl copies of From Enslavement...). I wanted the version of the latter that contains the former as bonus tracks, but I guess it's no longer in Earache's best interests to do things like that. Should have bought it in 1992 I guess!
  
• Deicide by Deicide. OLD SKOOL DEATH METAL. The weird thing about Deicide is that first time round I didn't really like them that much, and thought the lyrics were incomprehensible. But when listening to Lunatic of God's Creation the other day the words were simple to make out.
• Altar by Sunn O))) & Boris. I have no idea what to expect from this.
• The Shape Of Punk To Come and Songs To Fan The Flames Of Discontent, both by Refused. If memory serves, Refused were supposedly a fantastic punk band. I'm hoping so. Much like Nasum I missed their entire career through taking very little notice of metal for too many years.
  
• Dead Gone by Winnebago Deal. I saw Winnebago Deal in July, there's only 2 of them but by christ they made a fucking racket. A good 'un at that. I was going to go and see them again the week after, can't remember why I didn't. Anyway I thought it was about time I bought some of their music, just hope this album's a good choice.
• Phoenix Risen - A Candlelight Records Compilation by various artists. If not entirely black metal it's at least partially so. I bought this on the basis of it being a double album for 5 quid and containing a track by 1349 on it.
• Rephlexions by various artists. A "braindance" compilation from Aphex Twin's label, bought because it has a track by Bogdan Raczynski on it and I've wanted to get hold of some stuff by him for a while. This way is cheaper than spending the 30-odd quid his individual albums seem to command on Amazon. Having this album in amongst a pile of, I think, 4 of the above metal/punk CDs didn't half make the guy serving me at Virgin laugh.
  

Come the end of the day I also had The Best Of 2006, Uncut's cover disc for this month. Bit odd having a best of 2006 in my hands on November 1st but who am I to judge. If some people are to believed then the year might as well be over once October's finished anyway. I reckon Chris is a bit jealous that my October lasted 31 days and 14 or so hours this year ;-)

Going back to Unholy Alliance II finally, I'm wondering whether I'll actually be able to hear the bands there. Plans are vaguely afoot to make that the hat-trick in a long weekend of metal: on Sat 18th there's a 5-band black metal line-up playing down the Peel, and on Sun 19th Napalm Death are at the Underworld. Eek. Good job I kept all the earplugs from the various amenity kits the airlines gave me.